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Comment by miningape | Hacker News Reader

Usually just people of the older generation who contrast themselves to the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s who they call stoners. Younger generations don't have the same cultural context so they just see stoners as chill people that smoke instead of drink.

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> Younger generations don't have the same cultural context so they just see stoners as chill people that smoke instead of drink.

I think some people, even in younger generations, don't know what 'chill' really means. They see it as laziness, because the idea of not 'producing value' every waking moment actually scares them. That fear is the driving force of their lives. They don't have the imagination/empathy/experience to see past it; and judge people (including themselves!) through that lens.

It's deeply unfulfilling, I'm sure, and not just for boomers.

Yeah my biggest problem with this is what is "value" - Sure there's the numbers on a spreadsheet kind of value that you can count and use, and our society is largely built around this (because it's easy and fairly accurate)

But there's also other kinds of value, ever had something sentimental that you couldn't pay someone to take? Things like family photos are practically valueless on a spreadsheet level but immensely valuable on an emotional level. How do you price having your family and friends around you as you pass?

You can still produce value without producing economic value - this was supposed to be the idea behind charities.

Telling people I still easily (and sometimes more easily) “produce value” while being extremely stoned, most of the time makes them very angry, or at least visibly annoyed. I’m still unsure why.

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