Ursula K. Le Guin on “Spare Time” | Hacker News Reader

Ursula K. Le Guin on “Spare Time”

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105 pointsjobbagy13 comments

I think what Le Guin is expressing tacitly that most of us adopt meaning into our lives. We fall in love. We get religion, we have kids, we are dedicated to our vocations, etc. Creative people create meaning for their lives. This is hard work requiring extreme skepticism and bravery (which ultimately can be very lonely): each idea must pass a battery of psychic litmus tests to be considered valid. It's exhausting. But this sort of way of life is the ultimately most fulfilling, I think. Most purposeful. Note: I don't really do this my own life, I feel like I have too many adopted meanings in my life that crowd out this process and lack the fundamental courage to really do this.

Could you elaborate on the difference between adopted and created meaning? Are these terms that you created, or adopted? :-)

Someone who creates meaning for their lives doesn't simply adopt common meanings. They observe their place in the world by removing themselves from their historical prejudices and local attachments to judge the people within a given situation based on the degree of their humane commitment.

Of course it's impossible to do that completely because nobody can fully divorce themselves from their own prejudices and attachments. So it's a struggle.

On the other hand, most people lean into their prejudices and attachments. Many others are even unaware of them. They just adopt what they see others doing. So, if your friends like white supremacy, you will too. Or, to hit closer to home, haha, if your friends like ruby-on-rails, you will too ;)

I really like a recent thing I read about adult development from Robert Kegan. These go in order in his model, and these are kind of adult development levels to "achieve".. which of course itself leads to a discussion of Kegan's work, but here are the interesting ones for adults:

- socialization - your identity is based on your social context, and the society around you

- self-authored - your identity is based on what you've carved out for yourself, and you are in control of it outside of your social constructs.

- self-transformation - your identity is not your own! You see identity as something as movable and constructed as many other objects in your life.

I feel like going through those "levels" in reverse, increasingly being pushed from "self-authored" by to "socialization", through the usual pressure to conform to what everyone else is doing. It's annoying, to say the least.

Ursula was such a boss. Dry humor and insight... the best combination.

She would disagree with a lot of what HN finds important. We (tech industry, SV, whatever) could stand to incorporate more ideas along her line of thinking.

Agreed, true insight like hers would be valuable. People who have no stakes theire, just reflecting from a unbiased outsider perspective. No cultural or counter-cultural pushing to reach whatever results fit ones current perspective.

Parcissons you are shadow banned.

No they're not.

Yes they are. Every single other one of her posts for the last month is flag flagged - and this one is only not killed because I vouched it. Turn on showdead and view her comments. (NB if she has written to HN and got the account un-banned before you do this the posts will probably be un-killed.)

Jeff Bezos often talks about acting now so as to minimize regret when you are 80. Interestingly enough this article says that 80 is a magical number for life reflection. Probably not a coincidence knowing Bezos.

Seems like a weird thing to optimize for. The amount of time you'll feel regret before you feel nothing is pretty minimial.

I think it's just a trick to live a more reflective life in general and to have your higher powers (i.e. cortex) to win out more often over your lower self (i.e. lizard brain)

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