Hacker News Reader

Comment by archarios | Hacker News Reader

IDK about y'all, but being lazy generally makes me feel horrible. I love getting things done. I hate having to labor simply to enrich others and for me to survive. But I love doing work that I think is meaningful and makes a difference so much more than chilling all day. Chilling needs to happen, but not all the time!

View on HN

"Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something."

― Robert Heinlein

"My young men shall never work. Men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams." - Native American chief to the Europeans

Howd that go for them?

They got genocided, which is completely unrelated to their modes of production.

They got murdered for their ideology by a bunch of gross stinky unhygienic Europeans?

> being lazy generally makes me feel horrible

Yes, very much agree. If I get sucked into HN and blow a big chunk of the day on stuff like this, I feel quite terrible at the end. I feel so much better when I can look back on my day and see accomplishments.

What accomplishments are you most proud of this year?

Me too. As a 'victim' of the Protestant Work Ethic, or maybe personality traits of the industrious/conscientious type, I find it the struggle is fighting for my right to be active in a world that increasingly lionises a passive, convenient and dependent life-stance. I just want to shake people sometimes. Look around you and see what needs to be done and the duty life demands of you!

Yeah I suppose if we had fully automated space communism already I may have a different viewpoint..

Makes me wonder. If we did have automated luxury communism, would people like me just not be satisfied and struggle to find new "problems"? Alexis De Toqueville described the "American Spirit" as one of "restiveness"... itching to change and move (FWIW I'm British but tarn with the same brush).

There's a funny line in "Analyse This" where Bully Crystal's character says innocently to Robert De Niro...

  "What are you going to do this summer?"

And the Mafioso gangster (De Niro) replies;

  "About What?!"

>duty life demands of you

I have no duty towards life. I didn't choose to be born, did I? In fact, I vegetate waiting to have enough strength to suppress my fear of death and kill myself.

Yes, I've tried therapy in the last 15 years. Yes, I've tried exercise, meditation, journaling, workaholism, idleness, religion, philosophy, science and so on and on. I just want to be done. Every evening I pray to deities I don't believe in: "Have mercy on my suffering, do not make me wake up".

So, no: there is no duty towards anything, just the futility of existence in itself.

> I didn't choose to be born, did I?

According to the Bardo, Veda, Platonic Phaedo and Tibetan Book of the Dead, yes you did. You just don't remember why your immortal soul chose this adventure.

> Every evening I pray to deities I don't believe in: "Have mercy on my suffering, do not make me wake up".

And every night s/he answers your prayer.

Try it with a different twist. "Have mercy on my suffering, help make me wake up and remember"

I feel like the point is that we shouldn't be goaded into activity for the sake of capitalism, that we should have the right to be lazy even if we never use it.

It would be nice if I could just walk out of my job for 2 weeks and get rested and refreshed and then come back like it was nothing without first having to make an appointment for said vacation and possibly take calls and deal with issues remotely the whole time, you know?

I feel physically ill if I’m completely unproductive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com