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Comment by blueridge | Hacker News Reader

This article doesn't resonate with me. We live our lives as if they were a business enterprise with a balance sheet, always selling, always advertising, always figuring out how to put our personality on display, always judging our human worth by our successes or failures, always weighing the benefits of everything we do. This is the root of many of our modern sociological problems. We attempt to "justify our existence" by our relationship with work. Part of exploring the life of the mind is keeping some ideas, maybe even your most fulfilling work, close to the chest. Life is not all about selling yourself.

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I think you're conflating two things.

You shouldn't need to sell yourself to find joy, contentment, fulfillment; those who try are doomed to be miserable.

But, selling yourself is still important; even if your sense of self-worth and etc isn't tied into recognition, it is still something humans crave, and it has societal value. If you are doing anything of value to others, the only way it can achieve that value is by letting those who would value it know it exists. That's called "selling". Without it, what you've done has no value outside of yourself.

That's not to say (to your point) that something done just for yourself is without some sort of objective value, but it certainly has no value to society (by definition), and we are social creatures; we all have a desire to have at least some of our work be valued by others.

I felt a similar reaction to the tone of the article. Twice the author said 'You may as well not have bothered' if no one recognized the value of your output. And your response also frames it as 'What you've done has no value outside of yourself'.

I think what the post you're replying to is getting at is that by framing things this way we overvalue things which others approve of, and undervalue things we enjoy doing for the sake of doing.

> We live our lives as if they were a business enterprise with a balance sheet, always selling, always advertising, always figuring out how to put our personality on display,

I think this is a very American thing to do. In most other cultures this is not true. Notably the OP is presumably British and my British grand parents most definitely were not "always selling" nor "putting their personality on display".

I also immediately regarded this to be an American thing to do, and I am from the US, so I suppose I am guilty of the following. In any case, I find it slightly amusing that even when a (presumably) non-American does something that fits into this model of things Americans do, it can serve to reinforce the idea that it's an American thing to do. Is there a point at which this ceases to be so?

> Life is not all about selling yourself.

Since we are social creatures, it pretty much is. Social mores and niceties, for example.

Yep. People may not want life to be about selling yourself, but that's the way it is.

Anyone is free to reject it. And that person is likely to live their life without their work being recognized, their ideas being appreciated, or their ingenuity to find the hands of those whom it would benefit.

I wonder how fulfilling that feels?

No friends and no spouse, either.

I have friends and i have a spouse, i never sold myself to them and they never sold themselves to me. Quite frankly the idea of it is disgusting.

So, you never do things just to please them? You have no filters on what you say to them? You're not on your best behavior on a first date? You only bathe when medically necessary? You dress only for comfort? When you have a photo taken you don't try to smile and stand up straight?

I'm not buying it.

That works for short term relationships. Long term ones work differently.

The divorce rate comes from people thinking they no longer need to please their partner.

That's not selling. It's odd that the only coordination you seem to recognise is negotiated between buyers and sellers.

It most definitely is. It’s odd that you refuse to recognize a thing for what it is.

Work isn't the purpose of life, but if you do work for other people (and most of us do) then you need to show those people what you accomplished.

Showing people that you care about them (and their interests) might be a/the purpose of life, and this is one example of that.

We're in a constant state of signalling. Think some book mentions that most of our actions are driven by our need to signal or convey something to parties.

So, I'd argue we are always "selling" ourselves in one way or another, both unconsciously and consciously.

This is so interesting that the two sides to this don’t seem to be able to engage very much. For me, too, the reflex is “Who cares? Why be so prescriptive and pushy about needing to sell (as if it’s humanity’s natural state)?” because that isn’t how I experience my life. But to others it seems to be just instinct.

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