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Comment by swayvil | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as an artist and a programmer, has it ever struck you how utterly low it is to sit in a room making things? You are interacting with little speck of dead stuff. Staring, unmoving, practically dead yourself. Playing with a little dream. There's something deeply wrong with that. Spiritually wrong even. Sometimes I reflect and feel shame at my wastefulness.

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Soeaking as an engineer, has it ever struck you how utterly low it is to sit in a room making art? Sculptural materials and paint is dead. Words are but faint echoes of human life.

Your comments are more a reflection upon your own worldview.

To improve things you merely need to change your own perceptions.

That's a remarkable question.

Have you, reader of this comment, ever created something that will subsequently never interact with a living being?

I don't think I have... except maybe when I've blinked Morse into the sky with a flashlight or laser.

There's always someone or something on the other end. I try to remember that.

The classic excercise is: write a poem, tear the paper to pieces and throw it away.

Even then, some organism will digest the pieces of paper.

Hello, fellow artist+programmer (:

What do you think of the quote: "Whatever you do will be utterly insignificant, but it is very important that you do it" ?

Personally, I think playing with little dreams is beautiful, but I do hope you find something that satisfies your soul.

In my experience, artistry and a bit of depression often go hand-in-hand. If you spend a lot of time paying attention to things, you're bound to notice the Abyss.

"Gaze not into the abyss, lest you become recognized as an abyss domain expert, and they expect you keep gazing into the damn thing." —@nickm_tor@mastodon.lol

Dead stuff is stuff without structure. I tend to think about my interactions with the universe as extending the structure that is me to dead stuff. Stuff is lifted to structuredness, and becomes part of us as a whole. I don't feel that's low at all.

Low and high are but you imposing your value system onto something that exists irrespective of it. "Low" could very well be the activity of breathing if one argues enough to show it. In reality actions don't and shouldn't exist to serve a higher purpose. Attachment with result is the cause of suffering. Attach yourself to the action.

Sounds like you're going through a bit of a nihilism phase, the futility of it all. It's cool.

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