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Comment by retro64 | Hacker News Reader

What used to be a trigger for inventing a game, building a den, or making something new with lego is far more filled with minutes on YT.

This hurts to read because it really nails it. This very thing has been on my mind quite a bit lately after watching my older kids now as young adults. We managed to keep them away from much of this simply because we never thought it necessary, but apparently not to the extent I wish we would have. Now with complete freedom of how they spend their time I’m not exactly pleased with the results. They still seem to be lacking the inner drive to create, but instead would rather consume.

My desire was for them to know how to be satisfied from within, developed from their own inner source, not coming from the outside, simply fueled by what they are consuming.

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To be fair to yourself, kids often disappoint their parents, but this is more on the parents.

An anecdote: My dad was driven nuts by how much time I wasted as a kid and teen on gaming, and how it seemed that I had few productive interests,never built anything, and stopped projects as soon as I got bored.. He wanted me to be obsessed with something, but few teens are obsessed with anything but not being lonely, social interactions more generally, and just following a random walk exploration. Dad never won those fights to make me serious then. But you know what? As an adult, I am quite different. I am now a post doctoral fellow conducting cutting edge neuroscience, having completed numberous complex, long-term research programmes that have required obsession, grit, and a determination to perfect his craft.

If your kids can avoid the usual pitfalls (e.g. a serious drug addiction) Im sure all your efforts will come into fruition when they are ready to committ themselves.

Today I buy my son Rasberry Pie's, laptops with GameMaker installed, etc hoping he too will find an obsessio. But he too resists i.e. stops as soon as he is bored.

C'est la vie

I don't mean to be rude, but would you mind sharing the type of financial situation you grew up in?

I don't remember wasting that much time as a teenager, since if I wanted something, I needed to get a job and work for it. If there was any chance of my bettering the type of situation I grew up on, I had to make sure my grades were amazing. I had to deal with someone else's serious drug addiction in the family, and try to make sense of it, while committing to myself. I don't know if you were ever physically abused as a child because of the lack of drive?

I'm just saying, you may have had the privilege to waste time on someone else's dime, and everything still worked out alright. Not everyone has that. Some of us, if we're not willing to fight from the get-go, we're going nowhere.

Anwyays, congratulations on your post doctoral fellowship.

I grew up in a neighborhood of dirt and chicken coops. My parents made less than 12k $ per year as I grew up. My parents never attended college and did not know the first thing about it. My privileges included a stable family that pushed me to succeed where they had not, and an above average IQ.

I got through college with my family on student loans, stipends, and food stamps.And you know what, my kids will have opportunities I never even dreamed of. There is no better feeling.

You decide for yourself what my anecdote is worth.

> my kids will have opportunities I never even dreamed of

On another hand your kids are more spoiled with the wealth they were born into and potentially may have lower drive than you have.

Hard to tell how they would turn out.

To be a parent is to worry :)

> your kids are more spoiled with the wealth they were born into

An afghan (?) proverb I barely remember went something like this: "The king's father grew up in a tent; he worked hard, built his house, and led the people well. The king lived in a house but remembered the tent he was born in; he worked hard, built his palace, and led the people well. The king's children were born in a palace; they have never seen a tent. They are lazy and will not lead the people at all."

My dad always used to tell us this. I am so happy you reminded me of this proverb ;)

Maybe you're thinking of the famous quote from the Saudi ruler in the 60s:

"My grandfather rode a Pony, my father rode a Pony, I drive a Mercedes, my son drives a Land Rover, his son will drive a Land Rover, but his son will ride a camel,"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashid_bin_Saeed_Al_Maktoum

The English language version is:

    Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.

I dedicate my professional life to chipping away at the "drive" required to lead a decent life, and I suspect most software engineers on this forum do too. Our greatest accomplishments as engineers, scientists, etc. are lowering the cost (measured in time and effort) of the things people need. The really deep ones, like food, energy, and medicine, get all the style points. Transportation counts too IMO, but even advertising and finance contribute to productivity (rather than making things cheaper, they make labor worth more).

Economists like to mention that just a few hundred years ago, an average worker's daily wages were only worth ten minutes of artificial light. Now they are worth more than 20,000 hours. This is progress. This is what we do.

Fuck the romanticization of poverty and hardship. That our children do not need to pour as much sweat as us into (literally) keeping the lights on is greatest joy of our success. That drive, grit, pain tolerance, and other survival-mode traits are no longer necessary or adaptive is the best thing that could be happening.

I suspect I will never be able to fully empathize with people who are sad about this. Different mindsets, I guess. Still, I think it's useful for us to be exposed to the opposing perspectives.

Yes, but.

We aren't romanticizing poverty, I'm an engineer too and I'm directly involved in the 20k hours of light part, probably my contribution is a very tiny fraction of it but my children have grown up with not only no desire to work but no real desire to put their all into anything. It's not universal but it does seem more polarized than it was forty years ago when I was the age they are now (20-s).

Of course this is all anecdata but it is something that bothers such a large number of people that I feel there must be a kernel of truth in it.

I'm not sad they don't have to struggle to stay alive, warm, and well fed (not that I ever had to actually struggle either, merely plan ahead a little more) what saddens me is the lack of desire to create. Of course if we go far enough back you had to be creative just to live at all so perhaps we are seeing not a change but merely the revealing of what was always there.

Whenever I start to think this way, I remind myself that "a large number" of adults have been lamenting the same exact deterioration of the youth for hundreds of years, but somehow we keep building, inventing, and progressing.

do you make it a habit to shit on peoples' achievements as foregone conclusions because of their upbringing? do you realize that this is an extremely transparent projection of your own insecurities?

And I wanted to add something else because you make some very good points.

When I first went off to college I failed. I did not know why I was there or how to do things. I dropped out and worked various jobs e.g. graveyard shifts at AMPM for two years, pizza delivery for a year, driver for a repoman repossessing cars..let me tell you that there were some pretty dark years then..

But I did succeed after failing

The point is not so much a libertarian fairy tale though. It was only after I met my wife and started a family did the focus of my life come together with a vengence. It was only because I received a lot of support from a supportive wife, a stable dad and mom, a good graduate advisor,and a minimally sufficient social services system. Without these I would not have succeeded coming from where I did..

To be fair to yourself, kids often disappoint their parents, but this is more on the parents.

This is true, yes!

But I am concerned about what this does to them as a person. Life will kick them down (and then in the head for good measure), and a time will come when they are truly standing alone. If they are lacking the inner self, will they have the fortitude and the wherewithal to navigate themselves back up, even without any immediate payoff? Or will this constant need to feed be so ingrained they won’t know how to push through a hard time with little hope and almost zero positive gain, and instead gravitate towards what feels good for the moment?

But, your anecdote offers hope anyway. Thanks for sharing.

There's also value in having a shared culture when in social scenarios. Those hours of watching Simpsons episodes over and over give me points of reference and things to discuss with new people. Those social connections and the ability to make new social connections help when thrown into a new situation (going to college, starting a new job, moving to a new state, ending a relationship and rebuilding social connections).

I wonder if it's some innate drive for kids because it comes up in multiple generations; listening to music, watching tv, on facebook or youtube?

My parents really wanted me to find an obsession as a teen. By the time I was in high school, my parents were fretting that I didn't have an obsession except for doing well all-around in school, so, they proceeded to tell me what they believed I couldn't do successfully. This ruled out everything except for computers. Ironically, my dad didn't understand how anybody could be passionate about computers, and considered it an to be easy field for mediocre people without an obsession.

I still don't really have an obsession. Committing to a field feels so restrictive compared to reading about a variety of things. As a result, I haven't done very well professionally, but my dad, who was obsessed, didn't do well, either.

I find this with myself. I have articles I want to write and large lists of stuff on index cards on my wall that I want to create.

Every time I come to Hackernews or Slashdot or Reddit, I really should be going to my editor and writing or picking a card off the wall and finishing that thing I want to do.

Obviously, right now, I'm failing. :-P

Saved me the trouble of saying exactly the same.

:-(

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