Comment by homeonthemtn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by homeonthemtn | Hacker News Reader

I am condensing down a much longer thought here but I would argue that this is the result of consumerism.

You work to earn, you earn to buy.

But buying is not meaning. It's a momentary sugar high that's lost to the wind the moment the transaction is over. No deeper life meaning can be derived from this.

When your culture is based around constant self satisfaction, there's nothing bigger than the self.

Community is dead, culture over generations is dead, building and making is dead, even cooking your own food is dead - "just order it". There's nothing for us to do except our individual parts, and our individual parts often feel like we're just putting a quarter into a machine that spits out a paycheck.

Etc etc

I think this is, in part, what the article is arguing. Community, and multi-generational culture and tradition, were a technology which helped populations thrive in what we now consider abject poverty. As the world gets wealthier, due to more recent technologies like widespread markets, staying in the same place and interacting with only the same 100-500 people for one's whole life is no longer something that almost everyone has to do, which explodes the basis for those earlier techs.

With TFR rapidly falling, current and future children are much less likely to even have any family other than parents, which cuts out another pillar supporting community and tradition, too.

I don't have a pat answer or know where this is going, but--assuming humanity survives--unless we want to turn into Asimov's Spacers, we'll have to find something to care about.

I feel the same way. That I'm just put through the consume more and more treadmill and it's on social media, news feeds, YouTube, tv and so on.

So, don't condense your thought here, I would love to read everything.

> Community is dead, culture over generations is dead, building and making is dead, even cooking your own food is dead - "just order it".

And people sit around stupidly asking why everyone is pissed off and angry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com