Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mark_l_watson | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Great article that I agree 100% with.

I think that the problem is that people seek pleasure rather than joy in life. We become desensitized to things that are pleasurable but when we feel joy from love, helping someone, expressing ourself a creatively, etc. that kind of happiness never gets old.

I have a friend who lives a very high life style. He gets a new Porshe every few years and recently at a group morning coffee he was talking about getting his wife a new car when the car she has is very nice. When he was done talking about his upcoming car purchase I started a new conversation about our cars being almost 10 and almost 20 years old and how wonderful it was having older things that still provide great service. I think my buddy needs to feel superior to people who don't have as high a life style. The funny thing is that I have way more economic resources than my friend.

I liked Seth's point that in a networked world where things can be shared that we lose the feeling of exclusivity, which I think is a good thing!

I myself am fully in the camp of driving old vehicles and aim to be mindful of minimizing pointless consumption.

HOWEVER, I would argue that your humblebrag about the age of your cars, right after your friend talks proudly about his new Porsches, is the far more odious of the two boasts.

Conspicuous asceticism carries with it projected moral superiority, and it seems clear you are opening judging your friend's buying choices as inferior. It's his money, and his happiness. And I notice you can't help but add a final coda/dig that you are much richer than your friend.

I'm only sensitive to the pitfalls of your mentality because I was raised to handle money in the same way as you, and have to fight the urge to be obnoxiously gleeful about, for example, my low housing costs when conversations about rent come around.

I remember reading about this in Eckhart Tolle's book. We protect our egos by saying we are better than others in one or another. For example, if I can't out earn my neighbor then I can feel better by being more frugal.

>I myself am fully in the camp of driving old vehicles and aim to be mindful of minimizing pointless consumption.

Of course, you would also have to consider increasing maintenance costs and the lower fuel efficiency (and therefore higher fuel costs) of the older car. The question is how close the upgrade-your-car sweet-spot is to the end of the car's lifespan.

I sincerely envy people who're happy working their asses off to buy fancy cars and even houses, as it's a relatively affordable ideal. Those of us whose ideal it is to do what we please with our time are desiring something that seems to be more expensive on average.

Quote time :)

It is only possible to succeed at second-rate pursuits -- like becoming a millionaire or a prime minister, winning a war, seducing beautiful women, flying through the stratosphere, or landing on the moon. First-rate pursuits -- involving, as they must, trying to understand what life is about and trying to convey that understanding -- inevitably result in a sense of failure. A Napoleon, a Churchill, or a Roosevelt can feel himself to be successful, but never a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake. Understanding is forever unattainable. --Malcom Muggeridge

I'd imagine a Socrates, a Pascal, or a Blake would see a life of understanding as a journey, which doesn't imply failure.

Interesting. By more expensive on average, would this mean pursuing personal interests, with the price being the opportunity cost of hours of labor that could have been exchanged for salary?

If so, this resonates with me. I would add that there's another component to this equation that I found personally valuable: challenge. The challenges that I have faced in professional roles (some unpleasant) have often forced me to grow. During long periods spent away from work, I often came to miss that.

It sounds like you're describing Flow (as defined by the book [1]; not popular culture.)

For me that does indeed seem to be the most common denominator of 'proper' happiness.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66354.Flow

"The funny thing is that I have way more economic resources than my friend."

Good points overall, though I think they would have been strengthened by ommitting this little aside. This sounds like the kind of sentence your friend would have slipped into a post of his.

+1 up vote. Thanks for your comment. That last sentence in my post really does come off sounding egotistic. I need to reread what I write before posting.

Hmm, I get the feeling your friend has less financial resources than you do so he's trying to impress you and communicate to you, you two are equals, while you figured out quite transparently he was trying to impress you, as you know your friend well enough, and so, weren't that impressed.

It's natural for people who have "less" to try to impress friends who have "more", because people are generally friends with people who are similar, and people generally want to stay friends with their friends, so they try to de-emphasise the difference between them. I think that may explain the "boast" about cars.

I put no judgement on the scenario, I'm stating my observations, and of course I don't know if true or not in reality - it's only based on the words you've written.

It's all good, and hey, I appreciate your willingness to hear feedback like that. It's refreshing! I'm consistently impressed by the HN community in that respect, and I try to follow the example y'all set every day.

I would say it's not pleasure vs joy, but happiness vs meaning. Many things can bring us happiness, including money, possessions, and even "being ahead". But these things don't bring meaning to out lives. The things that you listed that bring us joy actually give our life meaning. We want our lives to be meaningful much more than we want happiness. We ought to optimize our life to make it meaningful. That's the only way we'll feel that we had a good life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com