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Comment by armitron | Hacker News Reader

Because I'm not taking anything for granted. I don't see wasting my time playing cards with friends from highschool as being a basic facet of human existence.

Or spending unnecessary time with my parents.

Or moving back to the city I was born in order to pursue that, instead of living in a city where I can make the biggest difference.

My post simply posits the question of re-examining what we've been indoctrinated with. Look at any ancient advanced civilization and you'll see that during their ascension they were not operating with "social life" high up in their list of priorities in life. It was only when same civilizations came crashing down that "relationships" and social-obsession increased a lot in perceived importance.

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Disagree. Civilization exists because of social impulses built into the human animal. The ascension of any civilization was fueled by institutions, cultural norms, guilds and churches and 100 kinds of socialization.

I use the word social in a very specific, narrow way, as I have explained.

Institutions, guilds and churches have nothing to do with "relationships" as exhibited in the article OP linked to, since they are explicitly furthering the same goals I talked about as being of paramount importance.

Did you read the article?

Do you understand the meaning of 'relationship'? You can't be a member of an intimate social construct without one. Marriage, religion, even politics is all about that.

That wasn't an 'article' so much as an infographic. There was little philosophizing present. That's all been introduced in this thread.

That's a huge claim. Do you have any anthropological or historical evidence to reference?

If you don't care about your parents or your high school buddies, that's not really an indictment of social life; maybe you just need new friends.

Even during the European enlightenment, companionship was hugely important to lots of thinkers. Some historians trace the whole era's intellectual climate to the rise of social coffee shops.

That's not the same as playing cards with high school buddies but social life is vast and wide. This right here is social life, indeed you're complaining about social media on a social media site.

"Look at any ancient advanced civilization and you'll see that during their ascension they were not operating with "social life" high up in their list of priorities in life. It was only when same civilizations came crashing down that these priorities became important"

This is as unscientific as it can get. From someone who supposedly care more about science than the rest of us, it presents you as someone with a delusion, not an ideology as you claim.

> Because I'm not taking anything for granted.

You seem to be taking that progress ('Towards what?' one is tempted to ask) has value in and of itself for granted.

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