Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dougmwne | Hacker News Reader

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I have a great counterpoint quote from Edward Abbey: "One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards."

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but that seems complementary to Watterson's quote, not a counter to it?

Same. Maybe they just used counterpoint incorrectly? Misunderstanding?

Or maybe they're a musician, and are using the musical definition of 'counterpoint', where a melody is played with another melody and together they harmonize.

Or maybe they are a continental European, who, of American writings, appreciate mostly the rustic type-- and be stranger to usages of "kontrapunkt" outside of a high art context

Indeed I was using this definition of the word, and quite purposefully as there are both complementary and contrasting elements. Online discussion is biased towards the "argumentative" so sometimes it helps to break people's expectations.

> hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space

I like to keep in mind this romantic i MaDe tRaVeLinG a LifEstYle BS is enabled by the folks who are typically working their asses off in shit jobs like grocery, warehousing, manufacturing, supply chains, transportation, hospitality, etc.

If everyone suddenly stopped their work to pursue this nonsense we'd all quickly find ourselves in a non-enjoyable situation. Life enjoyment is a societal gift offered by the margins of collective suffering. Sure, take your breaks where you need but keep in mind life enjoyment, retirement, etc. are all tremendous blessings and not entitlements.

If you had a job that paid well enough for you to take off and travel and enjoy your life, then you just opened up one more well paying job for someone else (who might be stepping up from one of those shit jobs).

The greedier thing would be to stay on and suck up more and more resources that you don't need and don't even make you happy.

> you just opened up one more well paying job

> stay on and suck up more and more resources

As opposed to creating more value and enabling the company to hire 5-7 more team members? Maybe you view yourself as a zero-sum resource-suck, but I typically multiply what my company does through new ideas and creative pursuits.

You don't need the permission of some company to create value, have new ideas, or pursue creativity.

Corporate profits are not necessarily the same thing as value. Showing ads 0.1% more effectively is not making the world a better place.

> Corporate profits are not necessarily the same thing as value. Showing ads 0.1% more effectively...

Of course not, but when a project idea I architect & develop results in a bunch of new team member hires that 1) I get to train and mentor and 2) are all putting food on the fucking dinner table for their families and getting to enjoy their lives through productive labor and 3) make the lives of our customers a little better I consider that a win.

Move on dude, I'm not even in advertising. Are you really going to keep making replies trying to argue that creating a new team from thin air by building a new product is a negative thing?

I never said it was a negative thing. It's also not a negative thing to step back from that and add value to the world in other ways, maybe raising your kids, tending a garden, or stimulating the economy of some other places by traveling there.

For someone who's so happy and joyful about all the value you get to create, you sure are bitter that anyone else might not choose to do exactly what you're doing.

People who take time off to travel or otherwise enjoy their life don't do it based on the charity of working people as you seem to assume. They already worked, created value, saved some of that value, then spend their stored value as they please. Why does that make you so angry?

> People who take time off to travel or otherwise enjoy their life don't do it based on the charity of working people as you seem to assume. They already worked, created value, saved some of that value, then spend their stored value as they please. Why does that make you so angry?

Exactly. Odd that the parent commenter is bitter about the idea of people enjoying their money. You earned the money, and if you wish to spend it traveling/any other old thing... well why not?

I see this a lot, and I'm put in mind of the Dawkins quote (to paraphrase)

"Nobody preaches about the sun coming up tomorrow. Nobody preaches about certainties. Believers preach about their world view not because they are certain, but because they are UNcertain"

I.E: What people like this are trying to do isn't convince you - it's to convince themselves.

If you choose another path, be it in work, decision to start or not start a family, from the mainstream you get pushback in many forms, because it's very hard for people to not want the choices that they make to be the _correct_ choices, and that must mean the _correct_ choices apply to everyone, right? We can all get trapped on the hedonic treadmill together!

There's a bit of this in the WFH/Office debate, too.

Best advice I ever got: If you want to be happier, get poorer friends.

Why assume that the replacement wouldn't also be such a multiplier? Maybe it really doesn't matter who does the job (the OP or the replacement)?

"Creating value" often means "acquiring more revenue", which comes from somewhere. An insurance company can hire more people if they figure out how to cover fewer people's medical expenses. But I'm not sure that was a net win for society.

Bingo! I don't understand why most people don't understand the concepts of balance, variety and compartmentalization in life. We need variety - physical work, helping others, making money, climbing forests, running rivers and maybe even idling.

First, I will offer you an internet hug. I do think we are all entitled to more than suffering and toil, and I think you are too.

Second, I'll invite you to go back and read that quote a few more times. Sit with it. There is more there. I am half-heartedly fanatic about it.

Third, I think you are overestimating this great society. Might it be creating this suffering instead of easing it? Is joy rare, only produced by capitalism, and built on the sufferings of others or free and abundant? Why are we all working so hard? Is it for ourselves and our neighbors, or do you hear the same giant sucking sound as I do while the profit of our collective labor goes to benefit a few barons and the negative externalities rain from the sky?

IMO, the large majority of jobs that pay very well do not actually contribute to a healthier and happier society. That software engineer running AB tests to get you to click on ads more? That insurance adjuster meeting a quota for denied claims? That food scientist making hot dogs last a bit longer in the fridge before spoiling? That director reorganizing some group of people so they can make their mark and use it as a justification to get promoted? They make more money for their bosses but I'm not sure that they are the things keeping life enjoyable for the rest of us.

Yes, if literally everybody became a rock climbing dirtbag we'd have a hard time feeding everybody our filling up the gas tanks for our vans. But I do not see this as an actual risk. We are almost certainly on the side of the curve where more of this activity makes society better, not worse.

I understood all this as a metaphor because of

> It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.

He does not literally advise you to hunt fish. He advises you to to enjoy the fruits of your work.

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