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Comment by rramadass | Hacker News Reader

Short but powerful article;

Key advice;

Perhaps he understood that what I wanted was a solution to the job, not an escape from it. In any case, he put down his cup of coffee and said, “Listen. You don’t live there. You live here. With your people. Go to work. Get your money. And come on home.”

That was what he said. This was what I heard:

1. Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself.

2. You make the job; it doesn’t make you.

3. Your real life is with us, your family.

4. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are.

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"Whatever the work is, do it well—not for the boss but for yourself."

This is great advice especially to keep in mind when you have a well paying tech job you're getting disillusioned with. There's hopefully the opportunity and flexibility to make projects one is assigned more interesting to oneself to keep oneself engaged instead of always strictly doing what's best and most efficient for the company. I find that sticking strictly to what's best and most efficient is soul sucking.

I will say one thing that may not sound good on paper, but makes a lot of sense in practice. I do the bare minimum at work, and I do it neither badly nor to the best of my ability: I do it barely well enough. Doing it to the best of my ability would be counterproductive because it would affect others in my organization. I don't see a path to promotion because there isn't one. I am well paid.

Sometimes I dream of a job where I am challenged, valued, and appreciated for my professional contribution, not just because I speak well and have the right credentials. But the dreams quickly fade when I think about how much free time, energy, and desire I'd have to give up if that dream came true.

You might find Edward Deci's book Why we do What we do : Understanding Self-Motivation interesting.

A review : https://thorprojects.com/2020/05/04/book-review-why-we-do-wh...

I was hoping this advice would have come from a real worker who has to worry about rents/mortgages, bills, health insurance etc etc, instead I see that the article was written by a very cocooned Nobel-laureate writer which puts it in another perspective, i.e. the perspective of people who don't care about bills, mortgage/rents, health insurance and the like. As such, their advice on whatever work is meant to "mean" is worth close to zero for us, normal people.

Sure, but many people - especially many (most?) on this site - could probably live in about 20% of the space they live in and drive a cheaper car an so on and the rent/mortgage/bills will then at best only make up 20% of their income.

In other words, there is the hedonistic treadmill and then there are human emotions and these are real for you, me and for a Nobel-laureate writer.

Geez you think Toni Morrison lived a cocooned and privileged life because she won the Nobel at age 62, and she never had any challenges like those you mention (and much, much more) in her life leading up to that that she can draw on? Get a grip, honestly

(removed comment as it's been uncharitably misread and I don't have time to argue about it)

By your logic, nobody who has achieved something should ever give advice since their current status invalidates all the hardship they had to endure to get there.

She was a writer and hence was trying to make a point in a forceful way which is relevant to all of us today since we seem to have lost sight of the fact that we should "Work to Live" and not "Live to Work". This is sound advice since it is the Family Support that is crucial to weather/overcome all difficulties in life.

Not OP and I don't 100% agree with the grandparent post, but work to live is a privilege. Do it consistently when you can't afford or be entitled to it, find yourself out.

> work to live is a privilege

I have seen extreme poverty (in India) and materialistic decadence both in the US and India and can assure you that while it is true in some contexts it is false in many others. This is why in India (and i am sure in many other poorer countries) you have various govt. schemes like UBI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income_in_Indi...), UHC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India) etc. to make sure that "Live to Work" does not become the norm.

In the context of Morrison's advice, she is not talking about the above but a far more fundamental mindset i.e. keep your Life and Job separate in your head and realize that your Real Life is with your Family/Friends/Society.

Exactly! I was about to respond with something much harsher but you have put it quite well.

Cocooned, sure:

    When Morrison was about two years old, her family's landlord set fire to the house in which they lived, while they were home, because her parents could not afford to pay rent.

that's happened to all of us, right?

I read this, and yesterday I read about Malcolm X shooting and the lives of blacks in America (and i fear elsewhere), and i get so sad that people can be so mean to another fellow human being for being of a different, skin color or genetic origin?

Come on! Why would you go out of the way to burn somebody's house down, or beat up a person so bad the person get permanent injury[1]? I dont even try to understand how the state ignores the law breaking, states are complex, but a common man doing such things? I can't understand how a person looks in the mirror and not think of himself as a wretch and a demon(?).

I am from Portugal and I am sorry we lost ultramarine territories because i consider the peoples from Angola, Guinea and Mozambique as kindred. But we definitely deserved to lose them with prejudice. What was done to those citizens has no name, and as such I condone their right to arm against their oppressors the same as I would if any other citizen was singled out like they were. I also think all ex-Portuguese peoples(except Brazil) should have the right to claim Portuguese citizenship if they wish to.

All this to say I am very scarred of these events, because if they were so prevalent, it must be very easy to become a monster. I am just ignorant of how, yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X?useskin=vector#Hinto...

There's been a lot of unjustified poor behaviour in history, some relatively recent history.

Jill¹, who I've known since we were both quite young, is barely a generation removed from the Australian frontier wars, massacres for a century+ prior to 1930², something her parents lived through.

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UKu3bCbFck

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coniston_massacre

( two geographically seperate references, I know .. it's to carry a point not to join a specific person to a specific event, which could be done )

> All this to say I am very scarred of these events, because if they were so prevalent, it must be very easy to become a monster. I am just ignorant of how, yet.

Divisive rhetoric that creates "us" vs "them" groups. Then comes the dehumanization and rationalization of violence against the othered group. I recall people calling for violence against people who refused to wear masks during covid, as the most recent example that comes to mind. An environment where neighbors are incited to turn against their neighbor breeds monsters.

> Divisive rhetoric that creates "us" vs "them" groups.

While rhetoric can increase things, humans seem to have an inherent us-versus-them mechanism whereby clans/tribes are easily created psychologically.

A couple of chapters mentioning various experiments in Ezra Klein's book:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We%27re_Polarized

Ironically, the actual violence was the people negligently spreading a disease that harmed the innocent people around them.

There's a funny spectrum between like, someone intentionally infecting the water supply of a city with a disease as bioterrorism which is obviously a crime which society at large agrees the police to use violence against the perpetrator to stop the act from happening, arrest the perpetrator and put them in jail. And then at the other end of the spectrum is things like spreading HIV, herpes or Covid which different people have varying opinions on whether that's acceptable, bad but non-criminal or criminally harmful to the people being infected.

Humans have very natural intuition around some types of harm or violence - directly observable things like punching or stabbing someone. But if the harm is more indirect and not directly observable, things like pollution or spreading disease, we don't have the same immediate fight-or-flight activation type of recognition and so we are often more lenient towards the perpetrators of those types of harm.

> I recall people calling for violence against people who refused to wear masks during covid

Not comparable. There is "us vs them" based on identity attributes someone is born with, that they have no control over, like their skin color, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and then there is "us vs them" based on someone's deliberate choice to be anti-social, belligerent, and put others at needless risk.

Neither justifies violence threats, but they are not the same thing.

It is not about about skin color or genetic origin. Whether we exploit a group or not simply depends on whether we can get away with it or not.

If humanity came across a group of purple aliens, how we would treat them would depend on how advanced they are.

If they were on the level of advanced animals, we might trap them and exhibit them. Keep them in cages and "study" them.

If they were much more advanced than us (maybe the can communicate with us, or zap one of us to death with lasers) we would submit and seek cooperation, and humble ourselves before them.

Tangential: I seriously cannot fathom this logic.

"My tenants are not paying me rent. I have a wonderful idea! What if I burn down my rental home so that I can perpetuate my inability collect rental income?"

You are way way off base here as others have also pointed out : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison

Toni Morrison has had a far more difficult life than most of us normal people here who did not have to worry about whether they will be lynched, whether whatever little they had will be taken away from them, whether they would have a job and be able to feed themselves etc. She most definitely was not born with a "silver spoon in her mouth". Her name/fame/money/etc. which you seem to be sour about came much much later in life after she had survived all of the above with her integrity as a Human Being still intact.

Do not belittle other people's achievements because you have some weird notions which almost seem racist in this context since nobody can see any logical reason for your bias.

While I agree with you regarding Toni Morrison, I'm not sure where you're going with the 'almost seem racist in this context' remark.

When I read the article, I read the article, immediately jumping past the headline and lead graphic, not bothering to check who wrote the article before coming back here to read the comments. I only learned of Ms. Morrison's authorship from your top comment.

Outside the story's impression of poverty versus wealth in the 1940's, and without knowing who the author is, what gave you the idea this article had anything to do with race? Or that the person's notions you commented on 'almost seem racist'?

While the article does not talk overtly about racial topics; the narrative of a young girl "scrubbing floors" in a "beautiful house" etc. were suggestive and on checking the author's name it became clear. Toni Morrison had been quite fearless and outspoken in her writings about race relations and other topics (see https://time.com/6143127/toni-morrison-book-bans/) and hence had courted her fair share of controversy. But for the commentator to suggest that she had a "cocooned" easy life thus invalidating her advice was plainly ludicrous and could only be interpreted as "almost seem racist in this context" since there was no logical reason for this bias.

From the article linked to above;

Her books do not sugarcoat or use euphemisms. And that is actually what people have trouble with.

Morrison books tend to be targeted because she is unrelenting in her belief that the very particular experiences of Black people are incredibly universal. Blackness is the center of the universe for her and for her readers, or for her imagined reader. And that is inappropriate or inadequate or unreasonable or unimaginable for some people.

Checking her wikipedia page I see that she went to university at 18 years of age and by age 34 she was already an editor, about what "scrubbing of the floors" are we talking about here? Doesn't look like she scrubbed any floors for a living in her adult life.

And as for the racist talk, I have people very close to me who also don't have an immaculate white skin, I'm talking about my mother and my mother's mother (my grandmother), does it make any difference? What skin color do your close-ones have?

Hi there! I am the person you are talking about, what with all the worry about making rent each month, bills, various health issues even, all while trying to be a role model for my son, who is just starting adulthood.

I can say that I emphatically agree with the author, regardless of her bavkground.

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