Comment by alexashka | Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexashka | Hacker News Reader

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It may shock you, but some people don't see putting food on the table or providing for a family, to be their life's calling.

You can make a child care about the things you care about, about as much as you can make a homosexual become a heterosexual.

It's absurd.

You know who dreams of growing up to be a provider for a family? Fucking no one.

'Doing it for the mortgage' is what every asshole who sells his/her soul to the devil tells him/herself - it's why I can hardly stand talking to anyone working in big corps, their souls have left their bodies. 'Providing for my family' is another tell-tale sign your soul is in the ether, the corporate zombie has inhabited your very being.

Here's a parents' role - to get to experience childhood for the second time and experience life anew, through the eyes of his/her children, helping them discover themselves and enabling them to realize their dreams and their talents, not yours.

Most parents are such trash - they try and force their kids into what they think is best and most of those ideas are fear-based garbage. The number of children who hate their parents because they pushed them into careers that were safe instead of the shit the child was actually excited about. The number of shit doctors, lawyers and other professions who could've been something great instead. The shit these people do because their soul is dead. It's all so senseless and tragic.

Anyhow - it's never too late to realize you're old, miserable and full of shit opinions. Your son is only 16, you've screwed up your relationship with a teenager, maybe you can have a better relationship with a young adult, but it'll have to come from first starting to have a better relationship with yourself, and undoing the nonsense opinions and fears you have inside your head.

ps. I'm still editing and already seeing the downvotes pouring in :) Folks, I'm sorry for suggesting children are not your clay to be sculpted into a shape you prefer, but living beings who you love and care for and hope they can flourish into whatever shape they feel compelled to take.

> putting food on the table or providing for a family, to be their life's calling

Sure it's not anyone's "life's calling". What it is is a _baseline requirement_ without fulfilling which you can't really pursue higher calling of any kind in a meaningful way.

There is no baseline requirement.

It is only the worker ants that can't comprehend that there can be other ways to meaningfully live this life.

Have you not heard of monks? Have you not heard of travelling musicians? Maybe not, maybe you don't get it, but I can assure you, a higher calling has nothing to do with resources and many of those who do find meaning in working, will be happy to break bread with a travelling monk or hear a musician's tune and tale of adventure.

It's the many colors of the rainbow that make it beautiful. How awful it'd be if we all wanted to work, so that our children could work, so that their children could work, until we've populated this planet and sucked it dry, with our boring diligence.

There is a prevailing sentiment on this site that I can only, for the lack of knowledge of a better term, call American evangelical-puritan. It's, in it's entirety only about getting money, getting more money and getting more efficient at getting more money. The holders of this sentiment seem to find it offensive to find pleasure in anything else than being the best worker ant this quarter they can possibly be. It's rather creepy to witness.

I do find pleasure in not starving and having a roof over my head, that much is true. The rest of your post is so detached from reality I won't comment on it.

I really don't understand. Are you, on a daily basis, in a serious threat of losing your job, becoming homeless and immediately dying with all your family?

> It may shock you, but some people don't see putting food on the table [...] to be their life's calling.

It may shock you, but if you don't put food on your table, you're going to starve and die. Sure, you might rely on the charity of others to provide for you. But if you're mentally and physically able to contribute and be productive, but choose not to, then you're a parasite.

I won't comment on the rest of your post, since it's full of personal attacks, insults, and pure speculation about the another poster's character and motivations. Ironically, the opinions you articulate in your post have a somewhat postmodernist vibe to them.

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

― Socrates

One day, fewer people will freely have children and maybe then this multi-thousand year cycle of brilliant parents complaining about their children's inadequacies will cease.

The quote isn't real. It's from a Cambridge dissertation in 1907 attributing these attitudes to the ancients. With that said, let's assume that Socrates did say something like this. What exactly happened to Athenian democracy in the generations after the death of Socrates?

"Athens, 404 BC. The Democratic city-state has been ravaged by a long and bloody war with neighbouring Sparta. The search for scapegoats begins and Athens, liberty's beacon in the ancient world, turns its sword on its own way of life. Civil war and much bloodshed ensue. Defining moments of Greek history, culture, politics, religion and identity are debated ferociously in Athenian board rooms, back streets and battlefields. By 323 BC, less than 100 years later, Athens and the rest of Greece, not to mention a large part of the known world, has come under the control of an absolute monarch, a master of self-publicity and a model for despots for millennia to come: 'megas alexandros', Alexander the Great."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://phys.org/news/2009-10-athenians-history.html

Are you disputing that some children grow up to be lazier and less disciplined than their parents? No? Then how is that quote relevant? m0zg complained about their very own child, not about children in general.

Wait, now I'm confused. I thought it was Abraham Lincoln that said this, not Socrates.

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