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Comment by andix | Hacker News Reader

In my experience its really hard to find something that connects people of different age groups in a meaningful way, that doesn't involve a workplace-like setting. Older and younger people often just don't compromise enough from an intrinsic motivation to make it work.

If they are somehow forced to work together, and have to make compromises, it suddenly works much better. They also benefit and enjoy it.

It doesn't have to be paid work. But it has to be something with a defined structure and some kind of management. Money is a really good motivator for people not to quit on the first frustrating experience.

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> Money is a really good motivator for people not to quit on the first frustrating experience.

So true. I volunteer in an organisation with many older members, and a few of the older members have a thinly-veiled disdain for the younger people who don't contribute the same time and effort that they do... so some young people just stop turning up because they don't want some retiree with no life judging them for having a job, family commitments etc.

> Older and younger people often just don't compromise enough from an intrinsic motivation to make it work

Could the market itself be encouraging demographic segregation. If we measure and focus on economic growth above all else then the workplace becomes the place more important than all others.

My claim is, that the market is encouraging segregation less than society. Jobs force people to work together. If nobody forces them, they often just don't work together, and stay in their bubble.

It's kind of a six-of-one half-a-dozen-of-the-other situation IMO. Modern society does tend to have extreme social bubbles, but those are also a product of market forces, which in turn were influenced by previous states of society, etc etc back to the beginning of time.

Back to the beginning of time or back several centuries?

Really? This just proves the point of the grandparent comment. I can think of at least three types of activities off the top of my head: sports (granted, not all of them, but definitely true for my sport - squash), music (playing an instrument in a group setting), and volunteering. I also know people who are in a bridge club with people twice their age.

There are still social activities connecting people of different age groups although I agree with the above comment that structurally the society we have has been eroding non-labour market interactions.

All three activities are hobbies. Things people mostly do when they feel good. It's nothing that gives life a purpose.

In the past a lot of activities connecting different age groups was a job or job-like too. Working on a farm or a family business together. Running a household and childcare together.

I disagree quite strongly. I derive a lot of meaning from these types of activities (in addition to family and friends of course) and zero meaning from my job. It's the narrow focus on work to the exclusion of everything else in life that is the problem - and that's what the comments above highlight.

I would suggest that it's the fact your job has no meaning to you that raises the meaning the other things have in your life. That's a good thing. When people really love their job, it lowers the meaning the other things have in their life (I won't say family, necessarily, though it can, but also things like hobbies or friends often suffer, because the job is all-encompassing).

There's only so much meaning one can feel in a life.

I take your point that there is a limit on meaningful activities one can undertake but I disagree that it's some kind of zero-sum situation. I used to find my work more meaningful and I don't think it made any other things less meaningful - I just felt that I spent more of my day doing things that meant something to me. Life, on the whole, can feel more or less meaningful; we don't distribute a fixed amount of meaning across all the things we do.

> Things people mostly do when they feel good.

This sounds like an inversion of cause and effect.

> All three activities are hobbies. [...] It's nothing that gives life a purpose.

I find this to be a dire outlook, myself.

Hustle culture. Everything has to have a purpose. Ideally commercial.

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