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Comment by slics | Hacker News Reader

Coming from a small third world country myself, I didn’t know what the market was until I was 19 and came to the states. Everything we needed to survive we grew it or raised it. It was a way of life, at 5 or 6 years old I was able to watch over our farm animals and knew exactly what was expected of me. Now a 6 years old can’t even put their own shoes on by themselves let alone know how to do anything related to self manage.

I don’t blame as much the kids, the way of life in an industrial country is all about wasting time and not helping kids learn and enjoy life. We as parents have failed to transfer our experiences because we are to damn busy trying to keep up with everything it’s going on around us, and in many cases a mobile device is enough to shut a kid up. Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.

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> Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option.

This doesn't seem to follow from the sentences that proceeded it. The remedy to inattentive parenting is doomsday prepping?

Gardening and other "fundamental" activities can be great ways for parents to spend meaningful time with their children, but the goal isn't to prepare our children for the impending collapse of civilization, right?

Are you saying it's a bad thing that our 6 year olds don't have to herd sheep to be able to survive?

It’s a bad thing to not teach kids life skills besides navigating mobile and social apps.

My kids aren’t raised on a farm, but we take frequent trips to local farms so they can see how they operate, touch and interact with animals (help milk a cow and feed livestock, for example).

As soon as they’re a bit older, they’ll learn to weld, tend a garden, change a flat tire, perform CPR, body weight exercises, as well as survival skills. Fortune favors the prepared. And I’ll admit, I’m going to be filled with pride the first time my daughter successfully strikes an arc stick welding and fixes something on the spot.

> As soon as they’re a bit older, they’ll learn to weld, tend a garden, ...

...until one day they'll learn to say "No Mom/Dad, I'm not interested." I'm not being cynical: children have their own minds and it's a really important growing step to find their own interest at some age.

Well, if your kids are like you, they may have a slightly better chance of liking changing a flat tire than my kids, but don't expect it as a given, and don't be alarmed if they decide shooting a minecraft Youtube video is a better use of their time.

How would they know they like it if they don't know how to do it? How does a singer making millions at 18 become a singer if she hasn't been singing since she was 3? How does an artist become world-class if he hasn't been drawing since he could hold a pencil? How does a veterinarian become the best in his field if he's never cared for an animal until he was 18?

I once took a computer build/repair class in college. I learned a couple neat things but it was overall a waste of time. Not a week after that class was over did my friend who took the same class ask me to build his computer. If you don't live it, you probably won't be it. If you've never done anything, you probably won't be able to do anything.

Woof. That is a flaming hot take my friend. Allow me to counter: We no longer require children to produce labor for our living. This allows for all sorts of different outcomes. Some good (more time for education in a wider variety of matters, development of different social skills, etc) some bad (less time focused on the development of "cause to effect" production education, more sedentary lives, etc).

Some parents are bad parents. Some people on simple 3rd world farms abuse their children. Some people in developed metropolises focus on teaching their children to learn and enjoy life. The world is changing, and it's generally a mixed bag. You want to call it sad and depressing, that's fine, do you. I don't see it so cynically.

As the saying goes: You take the good, you take the bad, and then you have...the facts of life.

The perspective which is open to seeing the "good" and the "bad" is usually closer to seeing the "truth".

However, your open perspective does not necessarily counter the original comment.

from the original comment: "Yes, we live in a sad world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option."

If you remove the word sad, would you refute that statement? Yes, there are good and bad things about industrialization. For example, more time for children for things like education. But there are also many terrible things.

The lesson here is that everything comes with tradeoffs. Want to live in a an industrialized society and enjoy all the benefits that brings? Things like, modern medicine, indoor plumbing, independence from weather cycles for food? Well, yeah you're probably going to give up knowing how to live off the land. If your society collapses, you might not know how to survive. Most people view that as an acceptable risk.

That's not to say you can't learn those things even if you live in a modern society, but it takes some effort.

Many of the first Europeans attempting to colonize North America starved/froze to death until they utilized the knowledge of the people who were already living here. So I think the omni-competence that people like to believe in from living closer to nature doesn't actually exist.

That's a fun point: we aren't differentiated eukaryotic cells in an organism, each fixed in our purpose. We're humans with malleable brains that can—if some disaster befalls us—respond by finding the people with the specialized disaster-response knowledge and learning from them. We don't have to pre-load the compendium of all human knowledge into every human; we can just communicate skills as they become needed.

>>we live in a world that we don’t know anymore what will happen if one day markets are no longer an option

Still don't agree with it in any real way. "We live in a world we don't know anymore" is the story of human history. Change is the only constant and all that (yea yea, "industrial revolution", "everything is happening so fast", yadda yadda.)

IDK what "What will happen if one day markets are no longer an option" is supposed to mean? Like, global collapse and we can't buy things at the store? Then it's a global collapse and everything is fucked. The situations that would lead to me needing to know how to make my own tools and farm my own land and fight off gangs of raiders coming for my water and women aren't worth worrying about. You can't plan for "the whole of society as you know it collapses" without knowing specifically what would be replacing your society.

Dude was trying to say that he feels his unique experience is good and his values are good and he sees a society that doesn't respect those skills and values. I believe that is his view. I don't share it. These two things can both exist simultaneously because they're just opinions.

My grandparents had a farm, and while it was sold (in the 1950s) before I was born, just having the connection and hearing about it from family members keeps me from romanticizing it like people are wont to do after a few generations. None of their four kids took up farming, and that alone tells you something. It's a hard life, and my grandfather died from an accident while working on farm equipment, as people do.

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