“She doesn’t deserve to be alive” | Hacker News Reader

“She doesn’t deserve to be alive”

blog.asmartbear.com

113 pointsjoeyespo59 comments

The problem I've found, and I know this is true in me, is that people have a gated view of success -- they only consider the people that are more successful than them in their self-evaluation. People look longingly at the friends that went to Harvard Law and have made millions, but don't seem to give a glance to the friends who are having tough times emotionally or financially.

Even Julius Caesar reportedly, upon seeing a statue of Alexander the Great, realized with dissatisfaction he was now at an age when Alexander had the world at his feet, while he had achieved comparatively little.

The point is, if we are looking to find someone better than us in the areas we want to succeed, we will easily find them. It's only upon reflection that we might find that the areas we give no credit to, the areas we have already succeeded in, might be just as important as the things we strive for.

> The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OojsLDYr7RY

Kindly don't post links in isolation -- what is this? A joke? An insightful speech? Something else entirely?

This is a song that was popular in 1999. It's light-hearted at times, but I wouldn't call it a joke.

Find the original article here:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-su...

There's a lot of good advice, but I can't recommend this enough:

> Stretch.

Programming and using computers is both sedentary and physically taxing. You accumulate stress in muscles. Office culture often ignores the needs of body.

Shrug your shoulders as high as they'll go, then slowly lower them for 15 seconds. Release your neck. Feel your back extend, and the energy move through your arms. Don't let the constrained use of a keyboard dominate these neuromuscular pathways. Take breaks, and find gentle stretches that feel good. Stress in the body can be just as detrimental to thought as a preconceived notion in your mind.

Hey, cool. I was 19 when that song hit the charts and I understand a lot of those things a lot better now. It all seemed quite sensible, but I remember that time recent enough to know there's just no way a healthy young adult can use that advice--at all.

And I always wondered about the sunscreen. I bet it depends on your geographic location a lot. Sure, if you get powerful direct sunlight on your skin it's important, but here (NL) that's just a few weeks per year, if we're lucky :-) -- And yes, that's when I wear sunscreen, it's just that considering scientifically proven benefits, I don't understand why "wear sunscreen" is stressed so much vs "eat many fresh vegetables" or "do something that really raises your heart frequency once per day, even just shortly" sound so much more universal (including boosting your immune system and thereby preventing cancer and wrinkly skin!)

Oh well.

Thanks for the link anyway :)

This is great. Can I quote you?

You can always quote Bertrand Russell:

“Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.”

What book is that from?

I don't know and a quick Google search doesn't give any sources either.

Nevermind: The quote seems to be from "The Conquest of Happiness: A Modern-Day Interpretation of a Self-Help Classic".

Feel free, I'm just glad my comments are well received enough to be quotable :)

http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/the-weakest-of-the-great-me...

Pretty interesting to ponder one's life from this perspective. "Keeping up with Augustus", I suppose :)

wait...do people really buy Sebastian's shtick?

Is it self-evident that we shouldn't?

yes.

Care to indulge a fool?

He's clearly either a narcissistic egomaniac or a troll.

I prefer to think the latter since I like to assume the best about people, but I suspect the former.

Hi, I'm Sebastian.

Setting unrealistically high benchmarks and goals usually destroys contentment, makes you go half-insane, and risks you always feeling terrible regardless of how much prosperity and success and accomplishment you achieve.

And yet, it also lets you drive new things to the world....

Hmm. I'll share an anecdote. It's true. I hesitate to share true ridiculous-sounding anecdotes with skeptical people, because the natural response is more skepticism, perhaps even mocking. But what the hell, it's true and maybe something interesting will come of it --

You see, ambition and hubris and uncalled-for faith in yourself both offputs a lot of people (perhaps, yourself) and also gets you into hot water. After having a confirmed appointment cancelled by one of the Director of Communications at one of the largest international organizations in the world, I got into a shouting match with him and was almost arrested.

You know, I had nowhere near the relevant authority, gravitas, channels to actually be justified in being offended at being brushed off and cancelled. In retrospect, this was... sort of ridiculous.

However, that same hubris that got me into the shouting match (with threat of arrest, and all), was applied when being brushed off in a similar situation - and the same pressing and indignant behavior led to us to a meeting with a high ranked diplomatic officer, and later their Minister of Foreign Affairs for a large charity project we're doing.

I was, in retrospect, probably completely unqualified to launch this project. However, having run on faith and hubris for a while, something of substance happened, and once you've got something tangible it becomes possible to recruit actual professionals (what'd Eric Schmidt call himself when he originally joined Google? "adult supervision"?) -- and we did, and continue to do so.

So, I don't know. If you want to be happy, have low expectations, find a vocation you truly enjoy, live below your means, and spend time with your friends and family, do lots of relaxing, spend time in nature, read books, and have a healthy physical life and sex life.

I have absolutely the highest level of respect for anyone who manages this true happiness, and would never once more encourage someone to set unrealistic goals and ambitions far beyond their caliber in order to attempt to drive the world forwards. Frankly, it's lonely and terrifying and miserable much of the time. I wouldn't recommend the path to anyone who wasn't hell-bent on it already.

they only consider the people that are more successful than them in their self-evaluation

We look up, never down. I figured this out while I was driving down the street next to the downtown trail where I run, and I tried to point out to my passenger how going for a run is always a great reminder that I'm a slow, fat, horrible slob. I say "tried" because at the same time I was saying it, I realized it wasn't true, and I couldn't even twist it in a way that reflected the truth. The only truth in it is that when I go running, everyone on the trail who is slower or fatter than me is invisible.

I noticed instances of this much earlier in life, but I didn't generalize. When I was a little kid playing Little League, I only compared myself against better players, so I was always the worst. When I was in college, I lamented to an old friend of mine that no girls had liked me in high school. He mentioned a few names, asked what about them, and I was irritated with him: What do those girls have to do with anything? The ones who mattered didn't like me.

I've always been criticized by my parents, my teachers, and my therapist for being too harsh on myself, but looking upwards seems more optimistic. I don't want to look downwards. It's scary. Plus, every mountain biker knows that your bike goes where you look, so you look at the gaps between obstacles, never at the obstacles themselves.

I've always been criticized by my parents, my teachers, and my therapist for being too harsh on myself, but looking upwards seems more optimistic.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I'm pretty sure that no matter what I ever do or accomplish, I'll never be truly "happy" for any long period of time, or ever feel any real sense of contentment. I am always burning with this drive to do more, accomplish more, see more, feel more, whatever. And I am an optimistic person, and my sense of self-efficacy is off the charts... but I also know that there will most likely always be something missing.

Of course, getting into reading a lot of evolutionary psychology, finally truly embracing my atheism (and not hiding behind the term "agnostic"), etc., have taken some of the mystery and romance out of the world as well... I have a hard time not believing in a strictly deterministic, mechanical universe sometimes, and that seems to take some of the joy out of things....

But I keep ploughing on, and telling myself that it's the journey that matters. :~)

For an architect ought not to be and cannot be such a philologian as was Aristarchus, although not illiterate; nor a musician like Aristoxenus, though not absolutely ignorant of music; nor a painter like Apelles, though not unskilful in drawing; nor a sculptor such as was Myron or Polyclitus, though not unacquainted with the plastic art; nor again a physician like Hippocrates, though not ignorant of medicine; nor in the other sciences need he excel in each, though he should not be unskilful in them. For, in the midst of all this great variety of subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories of them.

Still, it is not architects alone that cannot in all matters reach perfection, but even men who individually practise specialties in the arts do not all attain to the highest point of merit. Therefore, if among artists working each in a single field not all, but only a few in an entire generation acquire fame, and that with difficulty, how can an architect, who has to be skilful in many arts, accomplish not merely the feat -- in itself a great marvel -- of being deficient in none of them, but also that of surpassing all those artists who have devoted themselves with unremitting industry to single fields?

- from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura

http://gutenberg.org/etext/20239

That’s the problem with “success.” After so many years of climbing your mountain, it’s not until you reach the top that you realize the next step is down. And the next mountains after that are lower. What could DHH do that would surpass the thrill of creating Rails or hitting the New York Times best-seller list?

Who's to say that a focus on "success" is what got Heinemeier Hansson to the top of this particular mountain? One way to be effortlessly successful is to just do what you love and thus do it really well; that and a lot of luck can in fact get you a race car.

This perspective that life is a narrative with upswings and downswings can itself be treacherous. Your life is not a prewritten narrative with defined story arcs. You should try to make sure you're happy with what you're doing now, and o do what you can to mitigate future risks and pay down your retirement. But I'm not sure there's much to be gained from explicitly plotting your ultimate success.

> This perspective that life is a narrative with upswings and downswings can itself be treacherous.

Is this not certainly true?

> Your life is not a prewritten narrative with defined story arcs.

It seems to be that someone could believe in the statement before this and not this.

No? It's definitely not true? It's The Gambler's Fallacy?

Ah, now I understand. You're saying that it's fallacious to believe that an upswing will necessarily have a downswing, and vice versa, is that correct?

What I understood (due to hastily coming to conclusions) was it is dangerous to believe that life has lows and highs.

That's right, but it's also important to realize that, in fact, there is no grand narrative[1].

Humans are compulsive pattern-recognizers and can turn any arbitrary independent sequence of events into a story.

That doesn't mean the story is wrong, per se, but it does mean you cannot presume to know where a story "is leading up to". Because the only "complete" story is the one that is told afterwards.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_narrative (lots of "blah" btw)

Ah, yes, thank you for the explanation.

Nobody deserves to be alive. Use of the word "deserves" in that context is one of those subtle abuses of the capabilities of language that verge on indoctrination. If you unpack it, you'll see that it implies the existence of some form of universal scoring system that everyone is a part of whether they want to be or not. Which is of course very far from the case, despite the existence of large groups of very missionary-minded folk who would like you to subscribe to that irrational belief.

This is one of many forms of what we might call adversarial grouping - very common when you see words like "we" and "should" showing up in sentences - in which the writer tries to place people, often the readers or listeners, into a specific memeplex without their consent. Given that the placing is usually happening at a level below the active topic, it is often surprisingly successful.

In this it shares a lot with the art of propaganda and advertising, illustrating that these things are points on a spectrum of abusive linguistics both grand and small. But all worth trying to keep an eye on as they arrive at your doorstep.

I don't even bother arguing these points anymore. I've started just saying "pale blue dot" to people (and to myself) whenever stuff like this comes up.

Try it, its fun. The next time someone complains about the rich being too rich, or the unfairness of 'the system' just shrug and mutter "meh, pale blue dot". The quizzical looks will make you feel better.

Well, I think what Carl Sagan was getting at was that, while indeed all our problems and strife are virtually zero in comparison to the awe and majesty of the universe that surrounds us, since this pale blue dot is all we have, we should strive to improve our lot as much as we possibly can. So you really couldn't have missed the point more than you did. I'm not sure those quizzical looks mean what you think.

Oh yeah, the Sagan thing. I was thinking more about the Voyager picture. Insignificance and all. Being the richest person on that speck of dust in the corner there doesn't seem like such a mighty accomplishment after all.

I like it better than my previous use of, "quid ad aeternum". Whatever. Something tells me its not that important either way...

Ah, okay. Sorry about that :-)

Do you think that there are other portions of the universe capable of comprehending itself? Other than this pale blue dot, do you think there are parts of the universe that manage a reasonable projection of its entirety into a small low energy volume?

Oh yeah, the Sagan thing. I was thinking more about the Voyager picture.

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Sagan requested that Voyager turn and take the picture as it exited the solar system, which is the reason we have it. I'd say his 1994 book and the original photo are pretty well intertwined.

His conclusion went a step further than yours: since we're insignificant, we must take care of each other and the planet, because we're all we have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections_by_Sa...

Whereas stopping with just "we're insignificant, so who cares" is apathy, the most destructive force.

For anyone else feeling quizzical, Pale Blue Dot is the name of a photograph of earth taken by voyager in which the earth is nothing but a pale blue dot.

And to save everyone else the time, here is the picture on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png

It looks like lens dust 1/2 down the right side of the picture.

I'd never seen this picture before, so thank you. I'd imagined it differently before viewing. Seems more like a pale blue speck.

Why should bigness connote worth?

The author, as it seemed to me, opened the topic of three semi-related issues -

  people who've done an incredible amount,

  social media and how he reacted to growth,

  and how life is after you've reached (what seems to be) your highest point

- all of which are fascinating, yet did not wrap any one of them up.

All story's only have one ending.[1] As long as it's entertaining there really is no need to try and wrap things up.

[1] And then after a while, everyone died.

I strongly disagree, for entertainment is not the only reason I read things.

The internet is filled with bad advice walking around as anecdotal just so story's. If you are looking for more than entertainment, I suggest you avoid anything that shows up in 'story' format.

(This is the author)

That's true. I was hoping to stir thought in the reader rather than provide an answer.

If I had to wrap it up, I think it would be that we have to strive anyway even if it's "futile" in some sense of the word. Because of course it isn't. We do what we do, and that's enough. Perhaps there doesn't need to be a reason, a goal, or an end.

More and more I feel like this the most important truth I can teach to my 5 year old son. I think the earlier you grasp the concept of the journey being the reward the better. It changes your perception about so many life events. School being one of them. I want my son to realize that learning is the goal, living and doing what you love.

What could DHH do that would surpass the thrill of creating Rails

Sorry for overlooking the rhetorical point, but one of DHH's biggest dreams seem to be racing at Le Mans and he's doing it this year.. so winning that, perhaps? :-)

Why is it that people won't accept that life simply isn't fair?

Usually nobody disagree when you say that life isn't fair, but then they go ahead and pretend that it is. They will even go so as far as to invent religious concepts like karma do explain how this supposed "cosmic balance/scoring system" can work.

Yup. Cognitive science people even have a fancy word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Justice is something we have to bring to the world, its not anything we should ever expect to find there naturally.

It's just modern day religious conceptualization.

In the past, people hoped in "God" to handle the very obviously unfair world they could observe around them every day. The idea that "you'll get yours in the end, and it will be grand" is the basis of pretty much every religion on the planet.

Recently, the modern western world has fallen away from religion; a drive through the American Bible Belt notwithstanding. The problem is that people have not been able to adjust to the concept of living in a world that is not only unjust, but without purpose. It's a very difficult concept to reconcile with and maintain a sense of sanity - but this is what religion had been providing to us all these years.

Accepting life isn't fair by default means that you must accept that you have very, very little control of things. Humans hate not being in control; we're programed that way.

Life is perfectly fair. I don't understand why people must try to think different.

A great nurse who gets cancer. OK, so either she caused it with life style or something genetic bought it on. Why is that not fair. She was either always going to or, she caused it.

I really don't get this "fair" business at all.

A very poignant piece and a reminder that pursuing goals by doing what you enjoy is more important than actually reaching the goal.

I agree with the above commenters but I also like your crisp takeaway. I sometimes like to remind myself: there is no destination. You're always just on your way to somewhere, better enjoy the ride.

This sort of reminded me that code is the new currency, not all currency is equal and blogging and social media is only marketing. Now matter how you want to play it. If you play your hand just right you might hit the jackpot. Vehement whining about how I didn't get to be dhh is beyond this point. Game of making money does not depend on your feelings but your actions and in long view strategy - everyone is unique and no one should be DHH. Yes DHH was in the right place and right time. He played both hands, rails his brain child however was quite a mess for some time. Documentation was missing, errors led you to wrong places and still do.

Perhaps you can look at his and learn something, from afar not too close - not to see who he dines with and maybe get some of his own philosophy and make it your own...

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end

-Ursula K. LeGuin

“Well look at her, she’s beautiful, she’s rich, she’s smart, she’s an amazing cook, and did it all with with kids. No one should have all that.”

She also watched her husband and father of those children, John Diamond, die a long, slow lingeringly horrible and miserable death from mouth cancer.

In life, no one gets off scot-free. And no one deserves to be on the receiving end of stupid, sour, ignorant, sweeping statements like this.

If any one is interested John Diamond was a journalist who wrote about his experiences in his newspaper column as he was going through treatment. I remember reading them at the time and being affected by them, it's easy to be flippant about other people when your viewpoint is purely superficial.

Here are a couple of good articles about his experiences.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1198541.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/mar/04/features.review1

It is funny, because you are really what the article is all about.

>In life, no one gets off scot-free.

That statement borders on cosmic woo-woo, but you make a good point about comparing your insides to other people's outsides.

Not everyone is as happy/perfect as they appear in their well-groomed public profile.

The longer you live the less like "cosmic woo-woo" it gets. Believe me. It becomes a mundane certainty. And if you can't give people the benefit of the doubt when you are well, then when it comes time for you to bear whatever cross comes your way (as it certainly will) then you will have no tools at your disposal to deal with it.

Be kind to people and don't prejudge. Grudge and jealousy are hideous, crippling afflictions (and its half of what's wrong with us as a species) and they don't help you in the time of your own need.

We all pay for the gift of life with death. All living beings suffer.

Perhaps it is how you deal with that truth that limits you.

No one here gets out alive - that's a truth.

Every good thing is balanced by some bad thing, or vice versa - that's mystical bollocks.

I wasn't sure which side of the line the OP was coming down on.

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