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Comment by wyclif | Hacker News Reader

My educational background is heavy on Classics, but that's not it at all. I really thought about what she was saying before commenting, and for me it has nothing to do with the incidental that the author is a woman.

The problem here is the millenial-style privilege. It's all so shallow, first-world-problem-ish and child-like in its naivete. So she bought into the lie that having a job is a mystical road to self-fulfillment, discovered it's not fulfilling and set out to live, strangely enough, a lot like a housewife, except without the husband.

It's curious to me that it's so often bankers, techies, and other members of the 1% who find the courage to "strike out on their own."

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The thing is, once you're financially secure and rising up Maslow's hierarchy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs), these first-world problems are your main concerns: what am I doing with my life, and why am I doing it? Of course it is a luxury to be able to worry about self-actualization and finding a comfortable identity/purpose, but so what? Should she not worry about these things? Should she not question her trajectory?

I understand that injustice is happening all over the world, but isn't it still important to examine your own life? Isn't that basically the goal of being alive: to figure out what you really want to do with your time on this planet?

I don't consider that Millennial privilege. I consider it a good idea.

The goal of doing something "more important" like solving world hunger or whatever should be to get more people able to concentrate on 1st world problems.

It is good both for people to help others get up to first world, and for people to deal with first world problems too.

Life examination can be done on wildly different levels. Putting things into perspective helps examining things the right way.

If I was a hard working immigrant laborer perhaps I would say she was lazy and shallow. If I was a psychologist I would diagnose her with anxiety and possibly depression.

The vagueness is strange. This doesn't feel right -- well people can be manipulated in to making the wrong decision by making that decision feel right and the right decision feel wrong (sales people do this all day.)

However, if you have spent all of your life with tunnel focus on education & then your job, there is a good possibility that you have missed out on a lot of the periphery parts to living. These small things matter a lot more once you reach a higher level of personal achievement. They also allow you to comprehend the rest of the world.

High performance environments, whether in a city like Manhattan or in a 100-hour work week company, breed a whole new set of problems. You don't need to run away from them, but, I do believe some times you need to take a good step or two back. When you return, the actions you take which impact your lifestyle will be more well intended and thought out.

> If I was a psychologist I would diagnose her with anxiety and possibly depression. > The vagueness is strange.

I agree. On my first reading, even I wondered, "why is she trying to solve by quitting a problem that need to be solved with anti-depressants?". But then I realized that her only fault was not articulating her problem properly. I'm sure there are some strong feelings going on there, but I can't seem to make out the reasons.

That's exactly how problems like that can be solved - not with antidepressants.

I'll ignore the inflammatory parts and focus on the 1% thing.

Why is it that someone who is privileged isn't allowed to want something more? True, they have a lot, but that's the way of life at this point, people move up, people's position gets better, that's the story of human history. However, this person is SO well off, that they're not allowed to question or look for something better?

Just because there is suffering in the world doesn't mean I can't want for more for myself and family.

Edit: Nope I lied, I'm not going to ignore the inflammatory bit, fuck you for saying it.

Well said. All this "first world problem", "1%", "privilege" bullshit is, well, bullshit. A person's problems are their problems, regardless of what me, you, John Doe, Kevin Mitnick, Paul Graham, Barak Obama, Kevin Spacey, Kevin Bacon, Tom Selleck, or the sterno bum at the corner of 3rd and Main, think about them.

Sure, it would be nice if everybody spent their energy worrying about poverty in Africa or South America, or human rights in China or whatever, but no one is under any particular obligation to devote their energy to those problems, or to prioritize them over their own favorite issues, whatever they may be.

"No one is under any particular obligation to devote their energy to those problems." Why?

Because no one has the authority to impose such an obligation.

But everyone should learn to put their problems into perspective while growing up (and between first world problems and Africa there are a few shades in between).

In other comments i've seen often the word "maturity", well, not to be excessively critic, but that's not the first word that came to mind while reading that article.

But everyone should learn to put their problems into perspective while growing up

Perspective is important no doubt. And don't get me wrong, my own take certainly includes a large degree of concern about "big picture" issues. But as somebody who is admittedly a radical individualist whose interest in philosophy tends towards Existentialism, and who realizes that we are all living very short lives in a brutal and uncaring world... I don't have much of a problem with people who choose to focus on their own problems, needs and concerns.

Like I said, it would be nice if everybody willingly chose to focus on poverty, clean water, vaccinations, clean energy, pollution, etc. But if someone chooses not to focus much (or at all) on that, I can understand and respect their stance.

I take your point, but "The 1%" she is not. At least, not unless she happens to have a net worth of ~$9M, which is the floor for 1%erdom in the U.S.

Nor are most "techies", even if they are fortunate enough to be an exception to the downward trend in real wages (for the moment.)

The floor is more like 370k$.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Distribution_of_Annual_Hou...

http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/20/news/economy/top-1-percent/i...

bstrand mentioned net worth, not annual income.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/measuring-the-t...

The linked article, states a floor of $8.4 million, which is ~ $9 million.

To further the point, $370k is like ~5pc of 8-9 million. Which is to say that if you are <working> for wages, even at 370k your not that well off. If you had $9mm in the bank/investment portofolio, you wouldn't be "working", you'd be counting your passive investment income of ~$370k.

Does your education extend to existentialism?

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