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Comment by tom_rath | Hacker News Reader

It looks like somebody should ask Santa for a thicker skin next Christmas.

The advice I read here was of the tone: "Hey, we were once where you are now. Take it from us: It gets better, but your current mindset is set for failure."

The author should spend a day picking through the youth-directed angsty tunes and movies of the early 90s. He's not the first to go through crap like this, even in recent history.

Suck it up and take on a McJob to pay the bills until things recover. The experience in social survival will do you a load of good the next time things get rough.

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So you see a problem, which is, "The way that modern society works puts a lot of people in soul-killing menial jobs and wastes their childhood", and your solution is "It's okay, other people have gone through it, stop complaining"? That's both cruel and obtuse.

Hardly! I'm saying "we're not strangers to what you're experiencing, but your conclusions are incorrect".

You can believe whatever you want, but belief alone won't make it true. Accept the environment you've found yourself in and then do what you can to adapt to and correct it. That's what I've done.

Bitching about it without action is going to do squat.

Bitching about people bitching about it does worse than squat.

I agree, but I also think that there's great value in trying to change the environment entirely.

...and how's that working out for ya, Bruce Lee?

Many, many generations have come before you with exactly the same idea, and all struck out (most notably the "boomers", who went a long way towards giving us the environment we're facing now). It sounds as though you want someone else to fix the problems you're facing rather than pick up your tools and fix them yourself.

Learn about the environment you've found yourself in and then try to fix it to the extent you are able. If _everyone_ did that in their own corner of the world, we'd get the result we wanted.

I faced a load of crappy jobs when I graduated in the early 90s and found myself far, far behind where I thought I'd be. Today, I'm running the kind of company I wanted to work for when I graduated.

I've worked at fixing my corner of the world and have succeeded to some small extent -- what have you done?

> If _everyone_ did that in their own corner of the world, we'd get the result we wanted.

That's awfully naive. Systemic problems can't be fixed piece-by-piece, and it ignores the fact that there are people actively working against these kind of corrections.

I don't agree with the people who're looking for some huge revolution in society. I prefer the guys who're quietly ducking out and finding some place where they can be happy. That's the subject of a whole different diatribe that doesn't belong here.

However, I sympathize with the thought that society as a whole does a lot of harm, and I don't like the people who get mad at the people who complain about it. That holds even if I disagree with some of the ideas of the original complainers.

Good for you, Sparky.

Now, what are you going to do about it out here in the Real World?

I'm afraid I don't know who Sparky is. I'm guessing he's not another martial artist?

I don't care much about the Real World. I'll just keep things stable and happy where I am, and avoid the rat race as much as possible.

So, nothing then? Of all the plans to 'change the world', that's the worst I've heard.

Kindly stay out of the way whilst the rest of us continue trying to improve things.

My actual stated plan was to worry about my world, which is to say the people and places that matter to me. If people stopped trying to treat the world as a single breathing mass, we'd have less conflation and we'd all be a lot happier.

Don't act like you're on some sacred mission I'm not. You're on Hacker News. I know why I'm here - I get a thrill out of debating people. You're here for no better reason. The difference is that you seem to think that your argument is above mine.

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