[HN Gopher] I've had the same supper for 10 years
___________________________________________________________________
I've had the same supper for 10 years
Author : pumpkinhead
Score : 803 points
Date : 2021-05-08 00:42 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| asidiali wrote:
| What struck me the most from this article was that he has had
| multiple strokes and was hospitalized for two weeks once.
|
| His diet doesn't sound the worst, he seems to be active, just
| genetics? The beans every morning? He didn't mention what he does
| for dinner.
| jumaro wrote:
| The first thing I thought after reading was that it's no wonder
| he's so happy and content. He's been literally doing dopamine
| fast for years.
| Magicstatic wrote:
| Many of us including myself are unable to fathom living a life
| like this, but I imagine this man will die in peace with a flock
| of sheep to his name, listening to the cuckoos.
|
| And he will be just as happy (if not happier) as any of us
| reading this article.
| analog31 wrote:
| I spent a time period living by myself in the South, and I didn't
| have the same supper every night, but certainly followed the same
| algorithm: Buy whatever veggies look nice that week, some meat,
| and tortillas or rice. My lunch was similarly algorithmic:
| Sandwich and a piece of fruit. Breakfast: Oatmeal.
|
| Having family members who get sick of things changes that. There
| are certain of my favorites that are now off limits because I
| made them too many times in a row. Those things have to wait
| until they're all out of town for some reason. ;-)
| cfqycwz wrote:
| A britishism I've never come across--does anybody know what
| "sandwiches with paste" are?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Paste is basically pate, long life, in little jars, with the
| exception of (confusingly) "sandwich spread" which many would
| say would be a paste but it's more like chopped pickle salad.
| mrmincent wrote:
| My mum spent a couple of years in the UK and refers to peanut
| butter as peanut paste. Could be a term for 'spread'.
| zabzonk wrote:
| Us UK people call peanut butter "peanut butter" - it's what's
| written on the jar.
| mrmincent wrote:
| Maybe it's an old Australian thing then :)
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| Nope, it's peanut butter here in Aus too. Maybe it's your
| mum's thing :)
| batiudrami wrote:
| in WA it was called peanut paste back in the 90s and
| prior. Uncommon to hear it now though
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| It definitely isn't a term for 'spread'. It specifically
| refers to meat or fish paste sandwiches. The paste comes in
| little tins. Meat is most common, but when I was a kid I
| loved crab paste.
| munificent wrote:
| Probably meat paste: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paste_(food)
| zabzonk wrote:
| https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/food-cupboard/jam...
| thamer wrote:
| Good find! Some of these products though...
|
| Princes Beef Paste 75G, description: "Beef Paste with Minced
| Chicken". Price: PS0.50 ([?] $0.70)
|
| Good for him that he enjoys his four(!) "sandwiches with
| paste" for lunch, but this doesn't sound particularly
| appetizing.
| zabzonk wrote:
| No, I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. But I do
| remember my grandparents eating such things in the early
| 1960s. And British cuisine (?) has a long (centuries)
| history of potted meats and shrimps, which I guess these
| are trying to emulate. A bit like the French and pate.
| t_von_doom wrote:
| Here (in the UK at least) you can buy little jars of paste,
| often made from some kind of meat or seafood. It seems the
| intended use case is to spread it on bread. I personally have
| never tried it nor plan to but see for yourself via James May:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdodVA3qTk
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Liverpaste is popular in Scandinavia. It's great on dark rye
| pumpernickel. It's really quite tasty especially topped with
| some sliced cucumber and fried onions.
| guerrilla wrote:
| True true but we also have things similar to these pastes
| but they come in tubes and often have mayonnaise. Don't you
| think that's kind of the same idea?
| pmorici wrote:
| I believe paste is a general term for any kind of spread made
| to put on a sandwich.
| [deleted]
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| > I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city
| would be terrible - people living on top of one another in great
| tower blocks. I could never do it.
|
| He should visit - most people in London don't live in tower
| blocks, and there's lots of nature around.
|
| There are wild deer in Richmond Park, and Hampstead Heath is
| almost indistinguishable from any other forest (and quite close
| to the very center of London).
| flr03 wrote:
| Coming from the "actual" country side, Richmond Park and
| Hampstead Heath feel like parody of nature for me. Don't get me
| wrong I like to go cycling and see the deers in Richmond but
| I've never had a feeling of being really in the nature. Too
| many people, too many cars around. Hampstead Heath is bigger
| I've been a couple of time only, but I remember how poor the
| soil was at places because of how many people walk around.
| ckdarby wrote:
| Sounds like a much simpler life that for a lot of the readers
| here is doable.
|
| I purchased 3.3 acres of land this year to begin the process of
| simplifying. I'm leaving the software world over the next couple
| years to have a life of homesteading.
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| Farming isn't any easier than software I'm afraid. However I
| live in the countryside and work remotely and I love it here.
| Just down the road from the chap in the article.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| So I'm the only person who's reading this as a parody? I'm trying
| not to dismiss it, I understand this might be a real person's
| honest thoughts and experiences. But it has a cadence,
| repetition, provocation and smart innocence that could be an
| Onion article if penned by Douglas Adams.
|
| I recognize a lot of myself and several of my family members in
| the letter, but I think they'd take it the same way.
| davidedicillo wrote:
| Beside when I travel, I have only had 3 type of breakfast for the
| past ~35 years. First 20 milk and cookies (a specific type from a
| specific brand), then honey bunches of oats with almonds for
| another 13 years, and the past couple of years I switched to a
| different brand with less added sugars.
| kaiku wrote:
| This guy better brace himself for internet fame, he's got a full
| page dating profile on The Guardian. He might never leave Wales
| but I bet people come to him now.
| drcongo wrote:
| I'm surprised there's this many comments and none of them are
| wondering the same things as me: what does he do with that onion?
| Is it eaten raw like an apple? Roasted?
| paul_f wrote:
| I only looked at the comments to find the answer to this
| question. How does one eat an entire onion?
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Now he's 72, what happens if he grows too old to care for
| himself? How do they care for the elderly in rural Wales, when
| they don't have a family?
| robotmay wrote:
| It'll start with his neighbours and friends helping out, and
| maybe eventually he'll have to scale down and be looked after
| by carers himself. But there's an equal chance he'll die happy
| on his farm - I've seen farmers with very progressed
| Alzheimer's that could run their farm without any trouble, as
| it's something they've done literally their whole life.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Reminds me of the person that has only eaten macaroni and cheese
| for 17+ years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1TWvXwgKr0
| nessex wrote:
| I've found a lot of freedom in similar decisions. Not sure I
| could take it to the same level, but even just having a small set
| of meals to eat every week makes shopping, cooking and planning
| around expiry dates so much easier. Clothes can be similarly
| hacked such that everything goes together and every combination
| is something you are comfortable wearing, leaving you never
| needing to consider what to wear. I've optimised these to the
| point that they take up nearly zero mental space and generate no
| stress. In my case, I use pre-prepared frozen meal delivery
| service, but I know some meal preppers who find similar freedom
| that way. Don't cook or order anything you won't eat at any
| arbitrary time, and you'll never be stuck with wasted food or
| indecision. And for clothes I found a small set that works for me
| and can be worn in any given situation (except formal, though
| that doesn't impact me in any way).
|
| I see a lot of comments that seem to see all the things you miss
| out on in this situation. But in my mind, it frees up a lot of
| mental effort, time and stress. If I ever get bored I can go to a
| restaurant and eat something wild and it will be all the more
| exciting given I don't optimize for excitement or luxury in my
| everyday steady-state.
|
| When Soylent came out I was super excited about this idea. Don't
| think about three meals a day that you normally fuss over, and
| instead have two predictable, quick meals and optimize to make
| the third one amazing. Soylent was OK, and DIY soylent offered
| some hope too. The third meal WAS always amazing, in a relative
| sense, and tasted better somehow than when I had the same thing
| before this diet. Unfortunately liquid diets are just not
| satisfying to me and so frozen meals won out.
|
| I'd love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly
| optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the
| annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or
| similar automated financial services. Doing these things manually
| offers no excitement and no added value beyond the transitively
| provided service so I don't think they should take up my life.
|
| The amount of time wasted across the whole human population on
| things like preparing meals, choosing outfits and managing
| everyday responsibilities must be huge and that is all time that
| could be spent doing other exciting or valuable things.
| chubbyish wrote:
| Cooking is enjoyable and you can get the same flow state
| cooking that you can coding. And it's where you can let your
| mind wander and come up with sparks of new ideas/approaches.
|
| Soylent is terrible for your insides.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I also find cooking enjoyable, but I would hate it if it just
| became an extension of work! One of the reasons why I
| continue to cook dinner every night despite having a fairly
| minimal life in other aspects is because it's a set of
| physical actions that helps to get my brain out of work mode.
| This is especially important during pandemic/work-from-home
| era because there is no commute (I used to cycle).
|
| But this experience of finding value in cooking is not really
| universal. I have some friends who legitimately, actively
| dislike the process. It's not that they're bad at it, they
| just consider it a waste of time. For them Soylent, or a food
| delivery service might be just fine.
|
| I think the key is to aggressively optimize out the things in
| your life that aren't working for you. We shouldn't feel like
| we "need" to do things just to have a "normal" life, I think
| that's one of the causes of stress and unhappiness for a lot
| of people.
| theonething wrote:
| May I ask which frozen meal delivery service you use?
| nessex wrote:
| I'm in Japan so I use nosh.jp. It's decent and surprisingly
| cheap, not much more than food from the supermarket here
| which is expensive regardless.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I completely agree.
|
| I recommend decreasing your gadgets to just a phone (for when
| you go out) and a tablet or laptop for home. That is, no TV, no
| stereo, no games console. Assuming you live on your own, you
| can do all the same things you did before, just move your
| laptop screen to a comfortable distance. I suppose you could
| buy headphones if you also want loud audio, but personally I
| prefer to go out to a bar or nightclub or movie theater to get
| that experience.
|
| You can also optimize most of the furniture away. The last few
| places I lived I just had a mattress in the main/living room
| and cooking supplies in the kitchen. Not only is the up-front
| cost less, but you can live in a much smaller apartment,
| cleaning the whole place is much faster, moving house is easy.
| Personally I like to work lying on my stomach, so I don't need
| a desk, but I suppose you could get a small table and chair if
| your body isn't comfortable lying down or sitting on the floor
| for a lot of the day. More available floor space means it's
| easier to pace or work out too.
|
| Other recommendations... Best to live somewhere without carpet,
| so you can clean it with a broom - saves buying a vacuum
| cleaner. You can use toilet paper for the bathroom and also in
| the kitchen and also to blow your nose. You can use shampoo for
| everything in the bathroom, including washing your hair, hands,
| body and clothes (if your house doesn't have a washing
| machine). You can use dishwashing liquid to clean most surfaces
| in the house, as well as your dishes. You can avoid using
| lights for most of the day/night by keeping windows uncovered
| and using the ambient light from outside.
|
| The upsides are exactly as you say - since you're not spending
| as much time and money maintaining your house, you have more
| time to go out and visit interesting places, and you can spend
| more money at nice restaurants or splurge for a comfortable
| hotel if you want to enjoy some luxury every now and then. But
| I find I don't really want to. Life is a lot more enjoyable, in
| my opinion. Way less stress than cleaning and maintaining a
| bunch of stuff.
| snoshy wrote:
| That's certainly one kind of minimalism, but I think it goes
| well beyond what GP intended. While your comment and
| lifestyle seems earnest, it's a bit too far for most given
| the GP context, in the sense that rather than minimizing the
| time taken to do routine things, it optimizes many of them
| out entirely to the point that it does not appear practicable
| for most (ex. mattress being the only furniture). Such things
| can certainly be taken to even further extremes: why buy a
| mattress? A sleeping bag might do fine and might well be good
| for your back. Everybody draws a line, and for even
| relatively extreme folks, that line is certainly shaped by
| social norms.
|
| I'd wager there's a rather large number of folks like GP
| intending to minimize the effort required to do drone-ish
| tasks rather than eliminate them. I don't deny that it's only
| a logical next step to eliminate them entirely, but that
| seems a step too far for social conventions. After all,
| culture defies logic rather often.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I tried living without a mattress for a while. It wasn't
| super comfortable but it wasn't really a major problem till
| winter, at which point I realized I would need some more
| insulation, and a mattress seemed like the best bang for
| the buck. I might be able to make do without if I lived in
| a warmer place. Right now, though, the place I'm renting
| came furnished, so it's not an issue.
|
| (Bonus with a furnished place - I don't need to worry about
| the kinds of bills that the OC was talking about because
| one flat monthly payment covers rent, water, electric and
| internet. My only other bills are phone and media/content
| subscription services, all of which are also flat rates,
| set up once and paid automatically.)
|
| For me simplifying my life doesn't mean living with nothing
| at all, it just means living without unnecessarily
| complicated or laborious things. Clearly different people
| will draw a line at different places.
|
| The point of my previous comment was more that it doesn't
| hurt to try eliminate things from your life, if it seems
| they're just a hassle. Who cares about the social
| conventions? I think a lot of people find themselves caught
| up in the rat race and take part without really thinking
| about why they're doing it, or whether it actually is worth
| all the effort. It turns out you can forego a lot of things
| and, actually, life isn't all that bad. That's especially
| the case if you are earning a decent salary, so you afford
| to can go out and treat yourself whenever you feel the
| urge. I think now is probably a better time than ever
| before to live simply, because we have immediate access to
| all the world's knowledge and art from a tiny computer in
| our pockets.
| nessex wrote:
| That's pretty much the exact philosophy I live by. I've
| definitely found no bed frame to be a hard-sell to family
| and friends, and it's hard to see why once you've tried
| all the options. A mattress makes a lot of sense, but a
| bed frame adds little value unless you are short on
| storage and one has storage built in, or you aren't
| mobile enough to get to the ground. But maybe I'm missing
| some utility that others have found in their bedframes!
|
| Living in Japan now, I had a few months with a padded mat
| + quilt on the floor as is tradition (and a damn cheap
| one), but upgraded to a mattress on the floor because the
| floor was too cold in winter as you mentioned.
|
| There's as much to be gained from taking stuff away that
| isn't useful, as there is from adding useful stuff to
| your life.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| If you only have a mattress, you can still move to a
| different apartment on your own. If you have a bedframe,
| you will need help. I never want to help anyone else
| move, so I try to keep my belongings small enough to move
| myself.
| jkepler wrote:
| Hmm, in my experience helping others move has been a
| great was to care for others, and its usually also meant
| people were willing to help me move.
|
| But if you prefer the independence of minimal living,
| that's also advantageous.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| When I lived in China I found it a lot easier to live
| this way because the apartments are smaller and there
| seems to be more of a culture of going into the community
| to eat at local restaurants or finding entertainment in
| public spaces.
|
| Now I am back in the North America I think it's harder,
| because people build houses much bigger, and seem to
| associate not having much stuff with being unhappy or
| underprivileged instead of well-optimized and free.
|
| I've found a bit more in common with the rubber tramp and
| liveaboard communities in this part of the world. They
| are very mindful about everything they buy because space
| is limited, so trying to find things that are
| multifunctional is a high priority. A lot of those things
| work in houses too.
|
| On the other hand, I don't think their lives are as low
| stress as I would like, because they end up needing
| maintain an entire vehicle as well as the stuff in it.
|
| Two other hacks, for women at least, is to quit makeup
| and shaving. I quit makeup about 5 years ago by accident
| forgetting to put it on one morning, and then I realized
| no one at work noticed anyways. Quitting shaving has been
| more of a corona era thing. I'm not sure if I'll stick
| with it over the summer, but I've been out a few times in
| shorts and it seemed nobody much cared. That cuts a bunch
| of unnecessary maintenance time out of my life, which I
| can now use for other things.
| nessex wrote:
| Right, it's about eliminating the mundane parts, not about
| having nothing in my life. It's a balance that will be
| different for everyone.
| nessex wrote:
| Sorry if you saw my original comment, I misread this as a
| dismissal through exaggeration, but after double checking my
| comprehension I realise I was both wrong and missing the fact
| that I can relate to most of this. I've tried many of the
| things you mention, and while I don't do all of those things
| still, many of them do make my life easier and more stress
| free. It's interesting how many of the things I've just
| stopped thinking about as I tried them and subsequently rid
| my conscious mind of other more time consuming or stressful
| options.
|
| There are so many better things to spend time on than the
| mundane parts of life.
| [deleted]
| auslegung wrote:
| > I'd love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly
| optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the
| annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or
| similar automated financial services.
|
| You're probably familiar with auto bill pay (I think most
| services have it, and many banks offer it as well), and index
| fund investing with automatic transfers, so I'm guessing those
| don't solve the problems you're talking about. I'm interested
| what you mean then.
| nessex wrote:
| Yeah absolutely, that's kind of what I'm talking about.
| Though even then, managing different contract durations
| across many different companies for many different bills each
| month is annoying, and there are companies that can do that
| part for you as well. Haven't ever tried it, nor checked the
| cost, but it sounds like something that might be beneficial
| to not worry about. They can send me a summary each month to
| make sure I'm not spending too much.
|
| The index fund investing with scheduled transfers is exactly
| what I meant by automated financial services. I probably
| micro-manage it a little too much right now for no real
| benefit.
| auslegung wrote:
| > I probably micro-manage it a little too much right now
| for no real benefit.
|
| I do my best not to even log in to my account. One could go
| so far as to change one's password to something impossible
| to remember, then delete it, so that signing in becomes a
| huge hassle of password recovery and identification
| verification at a banking institute (one of Dante's levels
| of hell iirc)
| Xcelerate wrote:
| It seems a lot of this comes down to personality differences,
| particularly with regard to novelty or sensation seeking. There's
| no right or wrong, but it's interesting that both groups don't
| really understand the other.
|
| For me personally, I have a very high inclination for novelty,
| even if that novelty comes with the risk of a bad experience. I
| just can't imagine doing, seeing, eating, working on, or talking
| about the same things my whole life. Heck, I work in tech but
| keep floating the idea of opening a restaurant to my wife (which
| promptly gets shot down).
|
| For other people in my family, they know what they like, and
| that's that. Why fix what's not broken? I can't relate to that
| viewpoint one bit, but I can respect it.
|
| Edit: Actually, now that I think about it some more, my desire
| for novelty might depend on the topic. I rotate between about
| three colors of T-shirts and wear the same brand of jeans every
| day and have no desire to branch out beyond this. Maybe openness
| is not a personality trait that applies universally to
| everything.
| globular-toast wrote:
| My girlfriend and I are at opposite ends of this spectrum in
| many respects. I seek novelty in most aspects of life. I often
| choose novelty over guaranteed enjoyment. My girlfriend, on the
| other hand, is afraid of novelty. When we eat out, if we have
| been to the restaurant before I can order her food without
| asking 100% of the time. It will be what she had last time.
|
| My desire for novelty can be problematic. I find it difficult
| to maintain long term sexual relationships. I'm so bored of
| having the same sex in the same positions over and over again.
| But I'm also too introverted to be happy with polygamous or
| short term relationships, not too mention how expensive that
| lifestyle is.
|
| Like you, though, I don't seek novelty in all aspects of life.
| I too wear the same few t-shirts and same pair of jeans every
| day. Maybe there is just so little room for novelty here that
| it doesn't matter? What difference does it really make to me if
| I wear a pink t-shirt instead of green? My girlfriend, of
| course, buys new clothes almost every week.
|
| I also don't change things for the sake of it. My desire for
| novelty doesn't override if it ain't broke don't fix it. When I
| cook something I've cooked many times before, I will reproduce
| the method exactly and produce consistent results. My
| girlfriend will slightly change things every single time,
| sometimes consciously, sometimes not. My dad cooks like this
| too. I think he actually does seek novelty in the way he cooks
| something. If I cook a dish and it's delicious it will be just
| as delicious next time. If he cooks and it's delicious, next
| time he'll add a completely new ingredient to it, for better or
| worse.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Can't think of anything that semi-reasonable would do that would
| make me less happy.
| qwertox wrote:
| To me this sounds a lot like that he's built himself a solid
| foundation in evading critical thinking about himself, possibly
| to avoid a more serious psychological harm which he thinks he may
| face if he looks at the bigger picture.
|
| He compares himself to the animals: " _They_ never ask for
| anything different for supper ".
|
| > "People might think I'm not experiencing new things, but I
| think the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work. I could
| never stay indoors and watch TV. I hear London is a place best
| avoided. I think living in a city would be terrible"
|
| As a bachelor, how will he know what it is like to look into the
| eyes of a loved with whom you form a new family? Without watching
| TV, how will he know that movies like "Up" (Pixar 2009) or series
| like "Breaking Bad" are well worth spending their time, without
| incurring a dramatic time penalty in your life? Take the TV out
| to the porch, if staying inside is such a pain. How can he be
| sure that a visit to the British Museum in London isn't worth the
| effort, or time, or whatever he thinks that speaks against it?
| Will he find laughing people in the cafes of the city?
|
| All of this feels like a "too afraid to discover" that he
| disguises it as a "secret to a good life". Not a _happy_ life,
| but a _good_ life. His sheeps make him happy. Like his spouse or
| kids could make him happy, or a trip to the city or watching 40
| minutes of TV once a week. Or a delicious steak. Or riding a bike
| on a trail, if he weren 't so old by now.
|
| I wonder if the Welsh radio station has told him about the
| current dilemmas which AI is confronting us with, or if he
| thought about where and under which circumstances all this gear
| he owns to exercise his role of a farmer has been developed and
| produced and if his lifestyle, if applied to everyone, would have
| made it possible for this gear to exist.
|
| It's OK if he decides to eat the same supper every day, if he
| prefers not to live with people, but to me this feels more like
| an elaborate thinking system designed to avoid something which
| would cause him pain, which doesn't cause pain to others.
|
| Sure there is a lot to criticize about our modern life, and many
| people aren't happy living in the city and with their day to day
| jobs, or with their family situation, but he has built himself a
| very tall wall in order to be shielded from him being possibly
| affected by these problems and calls it a good life. Not much of
| a difference to a suburban man who tolerates his job, hates his
| kids, but has the biggest amount of fun when he jumps into his
| glider on the weekends, watches his favorite TV series at the end
| of the day and loves to go jogging every day for an hour. Or have
| a beer with a friend.
|
| At least his sheep are among themselves, maybe some of them enjoy
| spending their time together and are glad to get anything to eat
| at all. But how would he know, if he's just happy pretending to
| be a fellow sheep and calls it a day.
|
| Then again, there are comments like the one from _telesilla_.
| telesilla wrote:
| "This valley is cut in the shape of my heart". I've known farmers
| like him, bachelors who are mild mannered and love their lives
| and the extended family that comes with living an entire life in
| one valley. He maybe goes to Sunday service for socialization and
| the local pub to watch the game, and as long as his sheep are
| healthy and the sky does what it promises (because he knows the
| day before always if it will rain), the peace he feels is the
| result of being in place, of not creating too much fuss, the
| satisfaction of seeing the stone walls he built in his 20s
| holding strong and knowing they'll be there long after to tell
| his story. He leaves behind him more of a legacy than many of us.
| notjes wrote:
| This man is independent. The powers that are, hiss in horror at
| his sighting, because they want him in a cubicle and in debt.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| He's not independent. Caretakers, probably state funded, come
| and provide care to his sister. The "powers that are" are
| providing for both of their general wellbeing.
| quonn wrote:
| Who in particular?
| tomrod wrote:
| Tax collectors
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| I don't think the "powers that are" would care much about
| what this dude does, they probably have a lot on their plate
| already.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Have you seen what China did to all their farmers in the
| last few decades?
| leetrout wrote:
| I'm not too lazy to search but is there something
| specific?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I am alluding to the forced migration to city life
| (including malls to spend money at). This was
| simultaneously done while razing the villages and all of
| their history, interestingly, China as we know it, with
| all of their history erasing going on, is only about 70
| years old.
| throw698765 wrote:
| They are basically building urban apartments and trying
| to entice them to move.
|
| A Japanese director made a documentary about one of the
| poorest regions in China.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GgWZDvgW9OA
|
| There are English subtitles.
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| I watched your link, it is one-sided. Who knows if there
| is real opposition. Sure, this video is not showing any
| behaviour worth criticizing. Maybe it is true, and
| everybody really does love moving to the city. But just
| given the fact that it comes from a region with no free
| press, I can't trust them on that.
| microtherion wrote:
| I respect the simplicity and contentment of his life, but it
| seems to stem from a base of incuriosity that I find harder to
| respect.
|
| The complete lack of variety in his dining routine in
| particular is something I'd never want to emulate. This man is
| basically a low tech Soylent bro, using food as just a source
| of nutrients. He raises sheep (and is not a vegetarian) yet
| never even eats mutton or cheese?
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| A successful businessman on vacation was at the pier of a small
| coastal village when a small boat with just one fisherman
| docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin
| tuna. The businessman complimented the fisherman on the quality
| of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
|
| The fisherman proudly replied, "Every morning, I go out in my
| boat for 30 minutes to fish. I'm the best fisherman in the
| village".
|
| The businessman, perplexed, then asks the fisherman "If you're
| the best, why don't you stay out longer and catch more fish?
| What do you do the rest of the day?"
|
| The fisherman replied "I sleep late, fish a little, play with
| my children, spend quality time with my wife, and every evening
| we stroll into the village to drink wine and play guitar with
| our friends. I have a full and happy life."
|
| The businessman scoffed, "I am successful CEO and have a talent
| for spotting business opportunities. I can help you be more
| successful. You should spend more time fishing and with the
| proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger
| boat, you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a
| fleet of fishing boats with many fishermen. Instead of selling
| your catch to just your friends, you can scale to sell fish to
| thousands. You could leave this small coastal fishing village
| and move to the big city, where you can oversee your growing
| empire."
|
| The fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"
|
| To which the businessman replied, "15 - 20 years."
|
| "But what then?" Asked the fisherman.
|
| The businessman laughed and said, "That's the best part. When
| the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your
| company stock to the public and become very rich, you would
| make millions!"
|
| "Millions - then what?"
|
| The businessman said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small
| coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a
| little, play with your kids, spend time with your wife, stroll
| to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and
| play your guitar with your friends."
| nicbou wrote:
| I've heard this story so often that if I just say "the
| fisherman story", most people know I mean this one.
|
| I enjoy a lifestyle similar to that of the fisherman. My
| humble little website works well, and though I could build
| other things, I'd have to start setting an alarm and making
| phone calls again. I'd rather not. If you reach a point in
| your life where you can stop turning the crank and still
| enjoy a good life, by all means do it.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > I've heard this story so often that if I just say "the
| fisherman story", most people know I mean this one.
|
| I almost posted the "parable of the stonecutter" too.
| cm2012 wrote:
| The reason to accumulate wealth is for security. The
| fisherman's current income could disappear any day. He could
| be injured, the area could be overfished, a glut of foreign
| fish could reduce prices, etc.
|
| This is just the story of the ant and the grasshopper in
| reverse.
| sidlls wrote:
| That's a cute story. However there are vast differences in
| reality. The fisherman is likely an uncultured bigot and
| xenophobe with life experiences that reinforce this
| condition, and who will suffer terribly from the ailments of
| aging that the businessman's wealth can afford respite from.
| For example.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| You're assuming the CEO is not an uncultured bigot and
| xenophobe with life experiences that reinforce this
| condition.
| sidlls wrote:
| He's almost certainly exposed to more cultures, though
| you are right: he could be extremely bigoted and
| xenophobic. It's just less likely, even if marginally.
| barfingclouds wrote:
| Your comment says way more about you than it does about
| some hypothetical small town fisherman
| batch12 wrote:
| While we are making things up, I submit that the fisherman
| is an extraterrestrial who keeps his space faring ship in
| the sea. Every day he paddles out to check on his alien
| family before returning to his social studies back on
| shore.
| genericone wrote:
| It looks like elitism never changes, and rural people will
| never shake the scorn of city people, internet or no
| internet.
|
| Unless that's sarcasm of course.
| machello13 wrote:
| I think the scorn goes both ways.
| covidthrow wrote:
| Perhaps, but what I've witnessed: (in the broadest
| strokes of unspecificity)
|
| Rural: "I don't like what the city folk are doing. They
| should change."
|
| Urban: "I don't like what the country folks are doing.
| This is how we should change them."
| purple_ferret wrote:
| But the fisherman rents and when his generous landlord sells
| to a real estate corp that capitalizes on market
| inefficiencies, he'll find himself out on the street and
| replaced by a remote software developer.
|
| When he gets heart disease in 20 years, he'll find himself in
| an underfunded public hospital too.
|
| When his kids grow up and he wants to send them to uni, he'll
| find himself taking out a 100K loan.
|
| Then he'll find himself fishing all day long just to pay off
| the interest on his debt/to stay afloat and he'll regret no
| capitalizing on his younger days, but it's too late because
| all the fish are gone thanks to foreign fishing trawlers.
| adflux wrote:
| Beautifully written
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Yeah, and if everyone in the world did exactly the same thing
| we would be already a) out of space on the planet b) starving
| because you can't just eat sheep c) dying because there's no
| high-functioning medical industry requiring a working
| manufacturing facilities to have nice things like MRI
| shafyy wrote:
| Ah, legacy. It always makes me happy to listen to Carl Sagan's
| words on his text "The Pale Blue Dot":
|
| _From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of
| any particular interest. But for us, it 's different. Consider
| again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it
| everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard
| of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The
| aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident
| religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and
| forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of
| civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in
| love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and
| explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician,
| every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and
| sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of
| dust suspended in a sunbeam.
|
| The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think
| of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and
| emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the
| momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless
| cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this
| pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other
| corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they
| are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
|
| Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that
| we have some privileged position in the Universe, are
| challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely
| speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in
| all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from
| elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
|
| The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There
| is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our
| species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or
| not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
|
| It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-
| building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration
| of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our
| tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal
| more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the
| pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known._
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g
| codecutter wrote:
| Thank you for your comment and the video link. I really
| enjoyed it.
|
| _The delusion that we have some privileged position in the
| universe_
| cold_fact wrote:
| Highly recommend this documentary, one of my favorites
|
| https://www.pbs.org/video/the-farthest-voyager-in-space-
| qpbu...
| usgroup wrote:
| I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children
| leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s.
|
| He's a 72 year old Batchelor who's once stepped foot outside a
| Welsh valley. If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who
| don't choose it.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > those of us who have children leave behind much more than
| stone walls we built in our 20s
|
| Ah, yes. A planet completely ruined by overpopulation. That
| is your legacy.
|
| Also, your existence is just as meaningless as this farmer's.
| You probably remember your grandparents, at least you know a
| little about their lives. What about your grandparents
| parents, or your grandparents grandparents. They were people
| with their own full lives, hopes and dreams. Do you even know
| their names ? Let alone what they were like, what they cared
| about, what their life was like ?
|
| They are forgotten, just like you will be, regardless of how
| many children they had.
| layer8 wrote:
| Also, after a couple generations the ancestors become so
| many that the "legacy" contribution from a given ancestor
| to a given descendant becomes statistically negligible.
| tirant wrote:
| If that would be true, we would all be living in stone
| age.
| tirant wrote:
| It saddens me to read such nihilistic comments here.
| Specially based on such cliches.
|
| Under which metric is the planet complete ruined? and why
| do you think it's overpopulated? what's then the maximum
| number of people that should live on this planet according
| to you, and based on what?
|
| Under lots of metrics, today's planet is a much healthier
| and prosperous place to live for humankind than it was 100
| or even 50 years ago. As an example, for most human history
| life expectancy was no more than 30 years. Nowadays we are
| around 70 and quite some countries already over 80. Poverty
| was common some centuries ago, with around 90% being
| considered poor. Nowadays it's only around 10% of
| population. Literacy has also advanced tremendously, with
| now around 90% of people under 25 being able to read and
| write.
|
| And all of that has been happening thanks to those that
| were here before us. Yes, the ones we have forgotten their
| names, but for whom we live now in the capable and free
| societies that are most of the western countries.
|
| Having children is an extremely important part of that
| legacy. They are the immediate inheritors of the ideals and
| visions of the ones that were here before us.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > Under which metric is the planet complete ruined?
|
| Nature is being destroyed, we polluted our planet enough
| that it affected the climate. The air we breathe is
| filled with ultrafine particles. The water is full of
| microplastics.
|
| Sure, we are able to afford more things, and we have made
| advances in the medical field. Our expected lifespan has
| gone up, but are those last few decades worth it ?
| Spending your last years in adult diapers and being
| regularly tortured by doctors in an effort to extend your
| life as much as possible doesn't seem like a big win to
| me.
|
| Our good years are spent working longer days than ever,
| doing unhealthy, stressful work to the point that we have
| to spend our little free time exercising to keep our
| health. All the while the majority of humans spend their
| lives in cities that resemble ant hills more than a space
| designed for humans. More people than ever suffer from
| anxiety and stress-related mental health problems.
|
| Is life really a better experience now than it was 100
| years ago ?
|
| > what's then the maximum number of people that should
| live on this planet according to you
|
| I would say about 10 million people globally.
| ben_w wrote:
| "Nature" is us, too. It's constantly changing, but
| there's as much of it as there ever was, because our
| nature is to build. Indeed, so are the ants whose ant
| hills that you criticise cities for resembling.
|
| The improvements to duration of lifespan have also come
| with improvements to quality of life.
|
| My father's final year of life started with a cancer
| diagnosis, and while it was an extremely long way from
| "fun", tech gave him mobility, and he'd only lived that
| long because of half a lifetime of treatment for disease-
| induced epilepsy.
|
| My mother had a few years of Alzheimer's -- still
| essentially untreatable, and yet tech made it easy to
| keep her entertained, and GPS tracking made it easier for
| us to look after her without her getting lost due to a
| moment of intention on our parts.
|
| Our good years involve less and easier work, in better
| conditions, than 1972, much better than 1921, and
| insanely better than 1871. When did we start mandatory
| schooling? When did we end actual slavery? Conscription?
| When was polio vaccination introduced, when was smallpox
| eliminated, when was anaesthetic easily available for
| childbirth? So yes, life is much better than it used to
| be.
|
| Of course, I actually _like_ living in Berlin, metro area
| population 61% of what you think the _entire plant_
| should have.
| mLuby wrote:
| So pessimistic!
|
| Why _wouldn 't_ older folks' quality of life continue to
| increase as we develop new medicine and technology?
| Cancer and Alzheimers will _never_ be cured? We 'll
| _never_ be able to induce cellular regeneration like many
| other species can, or artificial body parts will never
| advance beyond their current crudeness?
|
| How many people spend their working years doing mind-
| numbing or back-breaking manual labor compared to even a
| century or two ago? How many people back then would have
| been radically oppressed from birth but even today can
| pursue their own dreams? Life is still relatively "nasty,
| brutish, and short" but it is getting better and I see no
| reason to expect that progress to end, let alone regress.
|
| While you despair over a grim dark future, I look forward
| to a garden Earth, resplendent in biodiversity, home to
| fifty billion humans free from disease and material
| needs, yet with less footprint than we use today.
| Technology can do this for us, as long as we don't get
| stuck.
| II2II wrote:
| > Under lots of metrics, today's planet is a much
| healthier and prosperous place to live for humankind than
| it was 100 or even 50 years ago.
|
| We have created healthier and more prosperous societies.
| It is difficult to argue that we have created a healthier
| planet, yet our long term survival depends upon the
| health of the planet.
| ageofwant wrote:
| This is such an myopic human-centric world view. If every
| other species had a voice, or an opinion on what the
| success of man has meant for their own lives, their own
| families, their own future, what would they say ?
|
| Consider how much man has cost every other living thing
| on this planet today.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| I so much appreciate your point of view! I don't
| understand those nihilist statements as well. Looks like
| Satre's smoke has permeated most minds.
|
| We are having this convo because someone had a child.
|
| If someone really thought and believed life isn't a great
| thing (equating a stone wall to a human being) he'd be
| either a dishonest person or a weakling to be alive
| educating us.
|
| For if he truly believes children and humans are all
| nothing, then, why toil in vain. Why procrastinate, why
| suffer at all for nothing.
|
| Why is it that the majority of the humans that live and
| has ever lived chose to toil and provide for their
| family? Why is it that many folks that has ever lived are
| happy to have kids and nurture them. Is it ignorance that
| has given our ancestors the joy they experienced in child
| bearing and nurturing?
|
| An "intellectual" that is enjoying the wealth of our
| ancestors turns to proclaim it all nothing because we
| cannot remember their names.
| Aaargh20318 wrote:
| > For if he truly believes children and humans are all
| nothing, then, why toil in vain. Why procrastinate, why
| suffer at all for nothing.
|
| Because suicide is vastly different from never having
| been born at all. Like every animal people have an
| extremely strong survival instinct. So strong that people
| have to be under extreme physical or mental pain before
| they consider taking their own lives.
|
| This is not an argument for procreation but against it.
| It adds to the absolute horror that is life.
| ageofwant wrote:
| Gut ist der Schlaf, der Tod ist besser - freilich Das
| beste ware, nie geboren sein.
|
| Sleep is good. Death is better, but the best is to have
| never been born.
|
| Heinrich Heine 1797-1856 Morphine 1835-1836
|
| http://www.vhemt.org/philrel.htm#antinatalism
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If you truly internalized your belief that this is all
| meaningless, rationally you wouldn't care if the planet was
| ruined.
| Tddddd wrote:
| It is a simplified illusion.
|
| I always wanted to do ancestry for my family (family tree?)
| And I realized and still realize how far away people really
| become.
|
| My last grandpa will die soon. I know his stories everyone
| knows but I don't know what he would have voted, what his
| favorite food is, what music he liked.
|
| He has dementia now and forgets that he is at home and asks
| go go home.
|
| What do I know from his life really?
|
| He will end in some online tool as a name, two dates an image
| and lines connecting him to other family members.
|
| I thought about making a legacy somehow and if I would make
| children I would create a family book and create rules which
| would share my thoughts with every future generation and
| everyone gets reached to follow it and enhance it like having
| Familie values and keeping them.
|
| But at the end of the day I do realize for myself that this
| will not work as imagined and it doesn't matter at the end
| anyway.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Your child is just as likely to be a terrible person as they
| are a good one.
|
| In fact, having children significantly increases the risk
| that what you leave behind is actually detremental to the
| world overall.
|
| It takes a special lack of irony to write a comment like
| this. One of the most closed minded comments I've ever read.
| PostThisTooFast wrote:
| Wait, WHAT?
|
| Maybe you're a dick.
| max_entropy wrote:
| Children are continuations of your own or someone else's
| membrane, but this man built one himself /s
| teatree wrote:
| A human being's inability to accept he is a finite random
| experiment with no specific purpose is the cause of most of
| suffering.
| mrphoebs wrote:
| Children as your legacy are no less consequential or
| meaningful than this man's stone walls. In the end you are
| grasping for empty meaning and purpose in the same way the
| farmer is, your children will perish, their children will
| perish, you will be forgotten and so will they like the rest
| of human existence. Our lives have no larger purpose or
| meaning beyond what ever we pretend gives meaning to your
| life, like children or stone walls.
|
| We are mere Spatiotemporal blips of information in the infant
| universe with delusions of grandeur. So if you have to tell
| yourself deep in the night that you actualising your
| reproductive prerogative makes your sad little life more
| meaningful than the farmer, please grasp at those straws.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| What if you're wrong?
| Tddddd wrote:
| How much do you rally know and remember from your
| ancestors which is more than a handful and always the
| same stories?
|
| How did that really influence you?
|
| We can look back, we are not a magic generation unique to
| all the other generations before us. We know what's going
| to happen with us and our legacies.
| lukeck wrote:
| One difference between the current and previous
| generations is just how much information is recorded by
| and about us. There will be a lot more evidence of the
| existence and experiences of people alive today than
| people of a century ago. Whether people will care to look
| is a different matter.
| Tddddd wrote:
| True and that makes it even more visible how little the
| future cares for you.
|
| My mum is the only one who likes to look through our
| holiday pictures.
|
| They will be there and no one will care.
|
| Only some ml tool to potentially tell my future Familie
| members that I might have been depressed based on
| pictures and the ml notes it down for potential medical
| relevant information.
|
| No one will know what I liked and disliked. No one will
| see that my life had ups and downs.
|
| I really thought Facebook would be a great thing. Sharing
| and seeing what my Familie is up to but no one is using
| it for sharing family pictures. And I myself I'm
| sometimes annoyed by too many WhatsApp pictures.
|
| I do get why it is like this but realizing and accepting
| it took a bit
| daniellarusso wrote:
| One large-scale EMP incident, and that is no longer the
| case.
|
| We have alot more data now, but I am not sure how durable
| it all is.
|
| I have quite a few DVDs and hard drives that no longer
| work.
| jll29 wrote:
| CDs/DVDs typically oxidize after 15 years.
|
| Print the book version on vellum, and you'll preserve it
| for a few thousand years (or ANSI paper with the infinity
| sign, which supposedly lasts for at least 750 years).
| busymom0 wrote:
| We do have a lot more data however we don't have enough
| time to absorb it. Until something like Neuralink
| improves that, I don't think it would be much different.
| So many of us take pictures all the time but how many of
| us really go back and look at the old pictures? And do we
| really have the time to view all pictures from our own
| time let alone previous generations?
| mrphoebs wrote:
| I don't know what specifically you are referring to but,
| the sun is going to be a red giant in 4.5 billion years,
| earth cannot sustain life. Deep into the future, all the
| stars will eventually burn out and there will be no more
| new ones born. The night sky will be dark. The only
| radiation emitted will be black holes slowly evaporating
| on a time scale so huge we can't even meaningfully
| comprehend it. There is no energy to sustain life. Then
| there is the heat death of the universe to look forward
| to.
|
| Humans might survive past earth, but oblivion will come
| for us all the same. We just get to play around in our
| little imagined worlds of purpose and meaning a little
| longer all to no avail beyond living one's life.
|
| And that's all any of us can really do, chose how to face
| existence knowing there is no grand scheme in which each
| of us is some how important or matters. Choosing to live
| is equally as valid as choosing not to. We are
| evolutionarily engineered thinking emotional machines
| where certain states make us feel good(love, friendship,
| self actualisation food...., accomplishment) and certain
| states make us feel bad (sickness, loss, pain...)
|
| All we can do is live a life we are happy(good state)
| with, be it building stone walls that last or having kids
| and raising them.
| [deleted]
| JackFr wrote:
| > We are evolutionarily engineered thinking emotional
| machines where certain states make us feel good(love,
| friendship, self actualisation food...., accomplishment)
| and certain states make us feel bad (sickness, loss,
| pain...)
|
| Certainly this could lead one to be a little more
| circumspect about grand pronouncements.
|
| It seems like you're saying some people are being tricked
| by our brains, but others (like yourself) are able to
| pull aside the veil and truly understand our place in the
| universe. Perhaps we're all being tricked.
|
| Regardless, in a universe where nothing matters, truth
| and knowledge have no more value than children or stone
| walls.
| mrphoebs wrote:
| > It seems like you're saying some people are being
| tricked by our brains, but others (like yourself) are
| able to pull aside the veil and truly understand our
| place in the universe. Perhaps we're all being tricked.
|
| I make no such claim. We interpret and navigate the world
| with the mental models and toolsets we have. If you can
| do math, you can calculate, estimate, plan,
| budget....etc. Similarly, some toolsets give you access
| to insights and paradigms eg: religious toolset might
| make you interpret the world differently. I merely have a
| certain toolset which lets me look at the world in a
| certain way, does not mean this toolset is exclusive,
| leads to authoritative interpretations or it's
| acquisition is special in any way.
|
| I could just say "In my humble opinion"
|
| >Regardless, in a universe where nothing matters, truth
| and knowledge have no more value than children or stone
| walls.
|
| As always value is in the eye of the beholder, there is
| no objective value beyond what a subject is able to get
| out of it. So if you feel truth and knowledge are
| important, they are. If you feel faith is more important
| than truth, it is, to you at-least.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I could just say "In my humble opinion"
|
| One problem I've noticed with the way human beings
| communicate is that for any given situation, there's no
| way of knowing whether the person speaking is doing so
| with an implicit "imho", or whether they mean the things
| they say literally. In this case, I thought that you were
| speaking literally.
|
| I wonder how much this phenomenon (and others like it)
| contributes to the amount of polarization and disharmony
| we are experiencing in the world right now, or in the
| past for that matter, all without our knowledge or
| interest.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| we will have left earth (and inevitably our sun) long
| before 4 billion years away, most probably as a hybrid
| species by then
|
| on the theorised heat death timescale humans have only
| been around for less than infinitesimal fractions of
| quadrillionths of a percent of their potential. what's to
| say we don't in that time escape it by transiting to a
| new, younger universe?
| mrphoebs wrote:
| Or, you know an asteroid hits us causing the 6th
| Extinction Level Event killing humanity. As long as we
| are doing wild speculative Sci-Fi the Great filter in our
| future is a real possibility to consider.
|
| For now, we are an incredibly young species who has time
| and again demonstrated our penchant for chasing after
| short term incentives at the cost of longterm harm. We
| are making the earth unliveable faster than we are
| progressing towards being a multi-planetary species
| (which seems like an insurmountable leap given the
| candidates and the cost structure we have to work with).
| But humans are inventive and resourceful so here's hoping
| we grow beyond living on earth.
| I-M-S wrote:
| > But humans are inventive and resourceful
|
| What's the benchmark?
| rainbowzootsuit wrote:
| A short story that explores this premise:
|
| The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (c) 1956
|
| https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
| usgroup wrote:
| I can't tell if you're trolling, but in case you're not and
| unless you think there's a mathematical certainty to your
| argument, you might do well to spread your bets.
| scared2 wrote:
| Does it matter if they are not forgotten?
| mrphoebs wrote:
| Legacy implies transmission of information. So forgotten
| not in terms of memory, but a total loss of information
| (genetic, memory or otherwise).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Some assert that life has meaning.
|
| So assert that life has no meaning, as alluded to here.
|
| These are axiom-like statements that cannot be proven.
| Everyone has a faith as to which of these assertions is
| true.
| tomrod wrote:
| Existentialism to the rescue!
|
| Life can have meaning because we choose to give it such.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That relies on a supernatural belief as well (free will).
| akudha wrote:
| A different perspective is - why do I _need_ to leave
| something behind (children or otherwise)? What matters is
| how I spent the little time I have on this planet, while I
| am alive, isn 't it? Why do I care what happens after I am
| gone? There are enough things to think about, to work on,
| while I am alive. As long as I am happy and helpful while I
| am alive, that seems more important to me than anything
| else.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| You don't need to. But entire worlds are destroyed every
| day, and if you should fall in love with one, you might
| find yourself interested in it's preservation.
| mistermann wrote:
| The human species relies to some degree on people leaving
| things behind, new discoveries being one of the more
| important ones.
|
| You don't need to leave something behind of course, but
| the species benefits from it.
| [deleted]
| krimbus wrote:
| Yet, our very existence is a consequence of reproduction,
| even if we may have forgotten our ancestors.
|
| The only true delusion of grandeur is thinking that
| dwindling others' experiences against the vastness of the
| universe is enlightenment: If we don't experience our
| existence in geological/cosmic time scales, why waste time
| believing we are mere blips?
| mrphoebs wrote:
| I'm not dwindling others experiences against the vastness
| of the universe. I'm merely pointing out the absurdity of
| the parent comment that somehow elevates the
| meaningfulness of having kids over building a stone wall.
| My position is neither is any less or more meaningful
| beyond individual experience.
| oblio wrote:
| A stone wall has no chance to beat its fate. Humanity,
| however unlikely that might be, does stand a chance.
|
| We're very far from where we started. We're here because
| of both people that had kids and because of people that
| built stone walls. In many cases they were the same
| people.
| mrphoebs wrote:
| Agreed, and no matter if we manage to beat our fate or
| not, doesn't make this thing called life any less
| precious.
| kaladin_1 wrote:
| Hmm... Since when did we reach this height of
| "enlightenment" that children (humans) are now being
| compared to a stonewall in relevance, no matter how
| sophisticated the wall might be?
|
| Yes, it is more meaningful to have kids than to build a
| stonewall.
|
| Aren't walls inventions of man, as such, an effect caused
| by man. How can an effect (invention) of man be equated
| to the inventor?
|
| Do you compare the effect of human freedom to the effect
| of unconscious matter in history?
| randallsquared wrote:
| Of the people that lived 100K years ago, we have almost
| nothing. Possibly some cave paintings, though the vast
| majority of art from then must be gone. However, every
| single person alive today is descended from people who
| lived then. You may or may not find that meaningful, but
| it would be hard to disagree that having children was the
| most impactful course of action available to anyone alive
| then. The same is true for nearly all of human existence.
|
| With the current pace of change, having children may no
| longer be the obvious winner it has been for all of
| history, but it might still be...
| mrphoebs wrote:
| Fossilised remains in the sediments on earth are all that
| remain of the species that have come and gone before us.
| Many species are lost to time, because they weren't
| fossilised or their effects preserved. And our fossilised
| remains will be lost to the cosmos as well. You
| experiencing humanity in the midst of it might make it
| seem substantial. But we are a genus a mere 2 million
| years old and a species as young as 200000 years. For
| comparison, the dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165
| million years. All of human history is 200000 years,
| again seems of consequence to us because we are
| participants in it but on the grand scale really isn't.
|
| Does that mean we shouldn't just bother, absolutely not,
| we are given this gift of experiencing life. Something
| rather than nothingness...etc. But we can do with a
| little more perspective on how utterly inconsequential we
| are in the grand scheme of things. Having kids seems
| consequential in the context of human existence, but when
| human existence is inconsequential (there is no lasting
| impact or transmission of information beyond our
| temporary side-effects on the environment) it puts our
| existence into perspective.
| SamPatt wrote:
| The vast overwhelming majority of matter in the universe
| is inert.
|
| The fact that we've hit upon a certain arrangement of
| matter which yields consciousness and the ability to
| manipulate the matter around us is something which seems
| worth preservation.
|
| I contain the information for how to give life to inert
| matter. I've done it three times now, and I think it's
| worthwhile.
| mrphoebs wrote:
| You thinking it is worthwhile is all that should matter,
| just as a farmer thinking it's worthwhile to build a wall
| that lasts. Both instances are us giving meaning to self
| actualisation of individual drives be it preservation or
| propagation of genetic information or building something
| that will outlast you.
| xfer wrote:
| > Yet, our very existence is a consequence of
| reproduction
|
| It's a consequence of evolution. Right now we are limited
| yes. But nobody knows future.
|
| > If we don't experience our existence in
| geological/cosmic time scales
|
| Feel free to experience your existence without deriding
| others existence.
| axiomattik wrote:
| Strikes me as a fallacy that in order for something to be
| meaningful it must persist. Meaning can exist and perish in
| a moment.
| noir_lord wrote:
| I made a conscious choice to not have children for personal
| reasons (deeply fucked up family and while I know I'm not
| callous and cruel like my father I simply couldn't rule it
| _out_ enough to be willing to risk it).
|
| I'm completely at peace with the thought that a century
| from now no-one will think about me one way or the other.
|
| I mean statistically the chain of events that led to me
| ever existing as me was so small that after winning that
| hand, it's time to leave the table and enjoy it.
| podgaj wrote:
| As a descendant of the Saami, I agree. We leave our
| heritage in everything we touch. Child or stone, no
| difference. Our ancestors are everywhere.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >I appreciate the romance, but those of us who have children
| leave behind much more than stone walls we built in our 20s.
|
| How many children are optimum?
| M277 wrote:
| People are different, with different desires, personalities,
| mentalities, ..... Isn't it only natural then that
| 'happiness' would be different from one person to another?
|
| Why speak low about him? You're content with your life, and
| he is content with his... it really is that simple.
|
| You can't go up to an artist and say, "Hey, your painting is
| crap, you should change x, y, z," because it is _the artist
| 's painting_, not yours.
| renewiltord wrote:
| These threads are always so entertaining. Someone will make
| up this pastoral romance while implying that the city life
| is somehow lacking. Then someone will do the opposite and
| the wars will begin. Very entertaining.
|
| For my part, I enjoy modal editors so I think vim is better
| than emacs and I like the GPL over BSD.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| > For my part, I enjoy modal editors so I think vim is
| better than emacs and I like the GPL over BSD.
|
| Calm down, Satan
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I prefer <TRIBE_DESIGNATION>. The other tribe is wrong
| sick and cease to be. :D
| celticninja wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the issue people have here. It
| is not the pastoral Vs city life that is the issue. It is
| the OP assertion that this guy has been lobotomized
| because he is content with his life.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha no, that's par for the course. Each one of these
| people will always make some remark like this. "You leave
| no impact on the Earth. 40 yrs in your apartment and then
| burnt in a crematorium. Who knows you existed? Villageboi
| leaves legacy. Cityboi never existed. No trace."
|
| "Yeah, but villageboi is a lobotomized mole. I am
| sophisticate. You have no frontal lobe"
|
| The peak of discourse. Hahaha. And then depending on
| which lifestyle you have chosen, people will pick some
| arbitrary thing to argue about.
|
| "You said villageboi. Actually, I am village girl. And
| it's not village. It's farm"
|
| "You said lobotomy. Actually, it's a corpus callosotomy"
|
| That's what makes it so entertaining. The idea that
| people think they're being all this sharp when really
| they're just offended that their preferences were made
| fun of.
|
| But you're clearly an Emacs user. See you on your way
| back from the RSI doctor, nerd!
| noir_lord wrote:
| Yeah that was an offensive way to put his point for no
| reason.
|
| It's also a failure of empathy on OP's part - we look at
| the world through our own lens but we should at least try
| to look at it through other peoples before accusing them
| of choosing "lobotomy".
| lelanthran wrote:
| > For my part, I enjoy modal editors so I think vim is
| better than emacs and I like the GPL over BSD.
|
| We need more fuel on this fire. What's your take on
| spaces vs tabs?
| jkepler wrote:
| That farmer is happy keeping tabs on his space. He enjoys
| his work, his place, and doesn't much mind (it seems)
| what others think of him.
| hughrr wrote:
| Ask 'make' about that :)
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| The Butlerian jihad is coming for you all.
| glitchc wrote:
| Tabs of course. Spaces are for people who keep missing
| the tab key. Maybe the target is too small to hit.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| What an arrogant opinion. You're unduly proud of being a
| parent. There is no inherent value to it at all. You force
| beings into this world and believe this is a feat?
| Ridiculous.
| ojhughes wrote:
| This sounds quite sanctimonious, just because you have
| children doesn't mean your life is somehow more valid than
| those that don't. This mans life is arguably more valuable to
| society than us sat in an office. He's producing food and
| helping to feed a nation
| bicepjai wrote:
| is it that hard to accept others perspective ?
| Haga wrote:
| *I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said--"Two vast
| and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near
| them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose
| frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that
| its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive,
| stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them,
| and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words
| appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my
| Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round
| the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone
| and level sands stretch far away."
|
| This valley dwellers will be there long after the ruins you
| created swallowed all you touch.
| shafyy wrote:
| Oh man, this is great. Thanks for sharing. Here's Bryan
| Cranston's reading of it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts
| kebman wrote:
| That man has set the _ideal_ conditions for raising a lot of
| children. While most city dwellers scramble from 9 to 5 to
| own but a cramped apartment--which also leads most of them to
| forgo having children in the first place--this farmer has
| plenty of time, and plenty of space. And he grows his own
| food! It 's the ideal condition to raise children. And it's
| far safer too. I would know, because I grew up on one. But
| today both women and men are of course taught that a career
| is much better, toiling for the dreams of another man. Well,
| I'm not so sure.
| astura wrote:
| >today both women and men are of course taught that a
| career is much better, toiling for the dreams of another
| man.
|
| What kind of awful garbage take is this? It's objectively
| false, people who willingly don't have children are saw as
| society as second class citizens who are thought of as
| pathological. The VAST majority of humans have children at
| some point in their lives. It's true that there's a larger
| amount of people who willingly forgo having children than
| in the past, but it's still an incredibly fringe way of
| life.
|
| >I would know, because I grew up on one.
|
| Not saying that nobody should ever raise children in a
| rural area but the majority of people I know who grew up in
| rural areas got heavily involved in drugs and/or alcohol
| during their youth out of boredom. So there's downsides as
| well.
|
| The world doesn't have an infinite amount of farmland, you
| can't raise "a lot of children" on a farm and have their
| children raise "a lot of children" on a farm indefinitely
| without running out of farmland. That, by definition, makes
| it not "ideal."
| celticninja wrote:
| Why is it a lobotomy to enjoy something? And sure you might
| have added code to Facebook to more accurately track users,
| or you made a 1% difference to your employer's bottom line,
| but this guy is a farmer, and you can have all the money in
| the world but at some point you still need a farmer somewhere
| to supply you with goods. No one NEEDS what you create. So
| perhaps don't be so derogatory about others life choices, I
| am pretty certain that this farmer would not criticize you
| for your choices.
| paganel wrote:
| My peasant grandmother very rarely set foot outside her
| village's mountain valley. When my grandfather got to held an
| important political party position she had to make do with
| living ~20 km down the valley in the area's only town (that's
| where my dad was born), but as soon as the chance arose to
| get back to her village she immediately took it (and I
| presume she also convinced my grandfather to take it, he
| became the village's mayor).
|
| She was very, very happy with her way of living (she lived to
| about 85 or 86), almost no medical problems in her entire
| life (apart from the last couple of years), why would she
| have wanted to give that all away? For some fancy trips to
| the seaside? That was not what she considered a good way of
| living.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| They are not rich, but they do have way less stress then
| the city dwellers. And if stress is to be considered the
| one thing you do not like, they spend way less time in
| situations they do dislike.
|
| Unless they go into debt. Then the bank owns them and the
| farm, and the debt turns into stress and you have the city
| experience, out in the great outdoors.
| chuckSu wrote:
| Hater alert!!
| celticninja wrote:
| Children learn from their parents and if this is your
| attitude then I expect your children will inherit it. Will
| the world be better for them and their perspective of it is
| the same as yours? I very much doubt it.
|
| Hopefully your children will learn how not to judge others
| for different life choices, perhaps they will be more humble
| and not assume superiority over others just because they had
| children.
|
| In case you had not looked around the world recently, having
| children is no great achievement. Any idiot can have them.
| astura wrote:
| This person's children are so fucked, its obvious they
| don't see their children as human beings with thoughts,
| feelings, dreams, and emotions of their own - just as a way
| to extend their own personal ego. It's an emotionally
| damaging way to be raised.
| timeon wrote:
| I'm afraid that those children of yours might not be left
| behind with good manners.
| [deleted]
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| That's such an unkind thing to say about another person's
| life. He seems like a contented and inoffensive person, and
| he's quietly living the only life he'll ever have. There's
| real dignity in that. I do wonder why you wrote this.
|
| As for children: being a parent myself, I think it's best not
| to instrumentalise them by viewing them as a legacy that
| you'll leave behind after you. They're their own people. They
| don't owe you that obligation.
| jorvi wrote:
| Children aren't much of a legacy either. They have 50% of
| your DNA and nurture. Grandkids 25%. Grand-grandkids 12.5%.
| Within a few generations your contribution is watered down to
| almost nil. Children are amazing in their own right, but
| they're not exactly a legacy. If you want legacy, write a
| good book, start a successful company, etc; ideas are things
| that _can_ become legacy.
| whobar wrote:
| If you meditate then ironically you're trying to achieve the
| state of mind this man has achieved and lives every day.
| bobmaxup wrote:
| Are we to infer that you aren't happy?
| nindalf wrote:
| JFC, who speaks like this about someone else? Have some
| respect for a kind man who's content living a simple life.
|
| Imagine if someone looked at your comment and denigrated it
| "oh wow you had unprotected sex with your partner and managed
| to not kill your kids before they turned 18. Congrats on the
| achievement!"
| boredtofears wrote:
| Yes, what an amazing world we are leaving our children. I'm
| sure they'll be so thankful of the task our habits and
| livelihoods have left them. You've left them so much, indeed.
| testmasterflex wrote:
| You speak as if everyone of us is guilty and actively
| participates in making the world worse. Perhaps you should
| evaluate your nihilism.
| ageofwant wrote:
| To put your accuser in the nihilism box does not absolve
| you. It would be extremely unlikely for you to not be a
| active participant in the process of making the world
| worse.
| oilostthelast wrote:
| There's such a slim number of people to pull from in any
| "developed" nation that aren't complicit in a long chain
| of subjugation and destruction that I'm absolutely sure
| you're not one of them. It's not your fault, but you're
| guilty by association, you're part of the scourge simply
| by the virtue that you honor the social contract and
| maintain the status quo - not that we're given
| practicable options, but fortune never resulted in
| absolution.
| indy wrote:
| There are many paths to happiness, no need to denigrate this
| man's life.
| makach wrote:
| I don't think he was doing that. It's just a perspective.
|
| It is when I read these stories that I truly consider how
| short our lives are. I can't stop thinking about how
| fragile our beliefs are once we hold them up against
| someone elses values, earthshaking.
| CognitiveLens wrote:
| The grandparent post compared the farmer's experience to
| being lobotomized - if that's not denigration of
| someone's life, what is?
| celticninja wrote:
| He very definitely was being derogatory.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| Perhaps he gets more satisfaction out of a stone wall than a
| child. Happiness and achievement are completely subjective.
| It isn't a credit to anyone who doesn't grasp that, much less
| denigrate another out of that lack of understanding.
| laichzeit0 wrote:
| Happiness is a negative. It's the absence of pain and
| boredom. It's achieved by negating those two forces. Or so
| sayeth Schopenhauer.
| StavrosK wrote:
| > If happiness is a lobotomy then credit to us who don't
| choose it.
|
| Why not? By definition it would leave you happy, what does it
| matter?
| Wh1zz wrote:
| You seem to make of happiness some sort of end goal of
| life. It is not, and should not be.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Why not, and why not?
| joshjdr wrote:
| Existence is pain to a Meeseeks, Jerry!
| raffraffraff wrote:
| People who have children do indeed leave a lot more behind.
| Yet almost nobody can name their great great grandparents,
| know what they looked like, or in fact, know anything about
| them. Sure, "you're their legacy", but they never got to know
| you and vice versa.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I think this is a more recent phenomenon of the modern's.
| One can look to other ancient societies that still exist in
| small pockets, and their storytelling is orders of
| magnitude better than ours. Especially when it involves
| passing down family history.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Oh there's a great history of story telling on my
| father's side of the family. He's 94. There's a solitary
| photo of him sitting on his great grandfather's knee when
| he was about 5. He has an astonishing memory (that I'm
| afraid to actively doubt for a number of reasons, mainly
| though, he's the oldest person I know and nobody alive
| could corroborate or deny anything he says). He's
| recently been on TV, being interviewed about his time as
| a steam train fireman. An example of the amazing stuff he
| knows... My mother grew up in a large country house that
| her family somehow inherited. (Honestly, I have no idea
| and neither does she - they were broke, like most people,
| but they were rattling around in this large house, and
| totally mismanaging the land). It was built by a
| decendent from a French Knight who landed in Ireland in
| the 1100s during a conquest. There's next to no
| information about the family, beyond what you might find
| in Wikipedia about the Knight, and a few generations of
| the family before they blended into the population.
| Still, they retained status (justice of the peace, and
| owning a large estate) and were definitely wealthier than
| the locals. But the last of that line was Richard
| DeVerdon, who only had a daughter, Elizabeth. She died at
| the age of 18, in the year 1845. I was doing some
| research on the matter an found a large headstone in an
| ancient graveyard a few miles from our house. My mother
| knows next to nothing about her family history, and there
| are few records from the time. Talking to my father
| opened up a surprising story from _his_ side of the
| family. My great great great grandfather was a young boy
| living high on the hills above the graveyard. His own
| father was ill in 1845 and could not go out to the end of
| the field to look down to the graveyard, so he asked his
| young son to go out and look down at the funeral
| procession and come back to describe what he saw. It 's
| probably why the boy remembered it so vividly. It was a
| huge funeral, because the young girl was heiress to the
| estate. He related it directly to my own father when he
| was a boy, as they stood in the same field looking down
| at the graveyard. And my father told it to me simply
| because I asked if he knew anything about the De Verdon
| family, and the girl's death. It astounded me that I
| could barely read her name from a very worn headstone,
| but he could give me a description of the funeral
| procession that he got from someone who saw it with his
| own eyes in 1845.
|
| Still hope the old man wasn't just trolling me.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| You also have to realise that only partial family history
| can ever be truly handed down, particularly when there
| are no official records. Look back 6 generations in your
| family and there are 64 direct ancestors (if you're lucky
| and there was no inbreeding). There's no way all of those
| names and personalities get preserved. I went looking for
| family history in parish records and thought that I found
| a goldmine. Turns out there are about 5 people with the
| same name in the relatively sparsely populated town that
| my great great great grandfather was born in. Maybe some
| were cousins. Maybe one of them was a first-born son who
| died in childhood, so the traditional first-born name was
| recycled. It sounds cold hearted, but that shit happened.
| beaner wrote:
| Such a close-minded view. Children are great but they're just
| more people with their own experiences, like this man. And it
| seems rare these days that they might be as naturally at-one
| with the world around them as he is.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| I hear you. In not sure if want to be raising kids today.
|
| I had a moment in my 20s where I just stopped and thought,
| "Every single ancestor I had from my parents back to algae
| had offspring. What if I don't?"
|
| If you consider the whole Ocean as history, and the present
| moment as a single solitary wave heading towards the shore,
| and your life as the surfer on that wave, it doesn't matter
| what came before you. What matters is the wave. You get to
| ride it and wipe out. And that's it. I don't care if that
| wave is a composite of a million unknown ripples in the
| cast Ocean. It doesn't matter really.
| tomrod wrote:
| I have three kids.
|
| It is wonderful.
|
| Tiring, taxing, exhilarating, inspiring.
|
| It works for me. I make no claims for others.
| kebman wrote:
| Why would you have children if you live in a cramped
| apartment in an equally cramped and dangerous city? The
| amount of effort you're putting in for that tiny life is
| barely enough for subsistence, much less for having
| children.
|
| The answer to that isn't having material wealth,
| especially when you get no time left over to appreciate
| it. So the problem is having enough _time_ when you waste
| most of it toiling for the dreams of another man, and for
| next to nothing in return. Because that 's the _real_
| economy. (If you do, though, then congratulations I
| guess, but then you 're not in the position of most
| people anyway.)
|
| I think, however, that you'd change your mind about
| things if you had the freedom, the space, and the ability
| to grow your own food. Then you'd see how foolish most
| city dwellers actually are. As for the philosophical
| musings about whether you _should_ have children... Well,
| it 's your life, man. If you don't want a shot at
| prolonging your true legacy, then that's up to you. But
| you're certainly doing a service for everyone else who
| _do_ want their kind to succeed.
| joeberon wrote:
| For me it was just a realisation that reproduction is
| just one way we pass ourselves on, but one that has a lot
| of evolutionary push to make us want to do. For me, I was
| just born without that push for whatever reason. I'm not
| sure if it's a symptom of undiagnosed asperger's that I
| suspect or some other thing like that. Regardless of the
| reasons why I don't possess that drive, I don't think
| children are the only way we pass on. In fact I think
| every action we do is a form of reproduction, including
| building stone walls. Maybe people think that there is
| something inherently different between biologically
| producing a living being and other forms of interacting
| with the world but I don't believe so personally.
|
| In terms of your moment in your 20s, the way I see it is
| that it goes beyond my conventional existence as a human:
| I'm not just the product of all my direct ancestors, but
| also of all the causes and effects which have effected
| those ancestors. It's obvious that I am the continuation
| of my great great great grandfather, however I am also
| the continuation of my great great great grandfathers
| lunch that fed him, or doctor that saved him, or the Sun
| that supported him. Reproduction is an essential
| component for continued existence of sentient beings, but
| so is food, so is warmth, so is water. I feel that the
| Sun is just as much my parent as my biological parents.
| verbify wrote:
| > "Every single ancestor I had from my parents back to
| algae had offspring. What if I don't?
|
| A large proportion of your ancestors offspring didn't
| themselves have offspring.
| nly wrote:
| Something like 10% of all humans that have ever lived are
| alive today.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| They must be so fucking old. I bet they have some good
| stories. /s
| CalRobert wrote:
| In enough generations, not one atom of your descendent's DNA
| will be specifically yours. The impact of your parenting will
| be diluted. The time spent on parenting shuts off an infinity
| of other options. I adore my children but the ways we enrich
| our culture and those around us matters just as much as our
| kids. And besides, why should a well-lived life look the same
| for him as for others?
| livinginfear wrote:
| > ...not one atom of your descendent's DNA will be
| specifically yours.
|
| Ignoring the fact that you are probably not correct
| scientifically speaking, I think that the constitution of
| your descendants is _figuratively_ , _symbolically_ , if
| not scientifically, yours (please pardon my English). It's
| _yours_ because you played an entirely crucial role in
| creating this lineage. Whatever path it took after your
| role in it, that path was shaped by your involvement. You
| don 't have to believe in the spiritual importance of
| lineage to acknowledge that your actions, and simply
| _being_ , have some important, significant impact upon it.
| I find this outlook a bit too modern and nihilistic for me.
| ageofwant wrote:
| But it could have been absolutely anyone else, with a
| penis.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I take the view that it's more optimistic, and our impact
| is felt in many ways, parenting being one of them, but I
| take your point.
| LocalH wrote:
| Children are not the penultimate achievement of humanity. In
| fact, they're one of the core things that take zero learned
| skill and can be created and raised entirely via instinctual
| means.
|
| I would argue that those who leave the _most_ behind are
| those who are kind and thoughtful to those in their lives.
| They leave behind one of the most important and precious
| things that anyone ever could - pleasant memories in the
| minds and experiences of _others_. They brought direct
| happiness to others through their kindness. This is the type
| of person I strive to be, and I feel enriched and deeply
| fulfilled when successful in doing so. In some ways, the type
| of peace that can bring can be one of the few things that you
| can "take with you" in death, in that you will feel that
| happiness until your very last moment, which you will most
| likely _not_ generally do with material possessions.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Penultimate means "second to last". But what is your
| message, that children are the most precious heritage or
| not?
| LocalH wrote:
| I don't believe children are _inherently_ our most
| precious heritage, but I believe they can be up there if
| raised with care
| asidiali wrote:
| Just like one could live their life wholly not applying the
| same level of effort you describe here to their lives,
| living on "zero learned skill" and purely "instinctual
| means" alone.
|
| I'd argue having children is the same. You can do it with
| zero effort, or you can do it with intention, to leave
| behind a better off generation, and devoting yourself
| selflessly as a parent to that cause.
|
| I believe the lifelong quest of high-quality intention is
| what ultimately is the greatest achievement of life one can
| chase. Whether that is intentionally treating others with
| kindness and leaving pleasant memories, or intentionally
| raising healthy and inspired children who will continue to
| take up noble intention.
| slyall wrote:
| Think of all the people who made an impact on history and the
| world. How many of them did it by having children?
|
| This guy at least got an article written about him, what have
| you done?
| tomcam wrote:
| Hoping cperciva answers this
| milchek wrote:
| One of the reasons that this is quite beautiful is that it
| portrays the ideal of having just enough, living simply, and
| being grateful. There is something also stoic about the
| character described.
|
| I imagine the farmer you're telling us about doesn't want
| attention, material possessions, or any kind of excess at all.
| This person is happy to build something slowly over time, in
| small increments. They're happy with what they have, who they
| are, and that they exist.
|
| I think there are elements in your portrayal that we can all
| strive for, whether this person was a farmer, carpenter, or
| programmer, doesn't really matter.
| tromp wrote:
| This man exemplifies the saying
|
| A rich man is not he who has a lot, but he who needs little.
| xtracto wrote:
| This tenant is true at so many levels. In the everyday
| ratrace that we are all living, the "financial freedom " we
| all strive for is nothing but our passive income being
| enough to cover our expenses.
|
| Most of us race to increase our passive income, when maybe
| the healthiest choice would be to run to decrease our
| expenses.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I don't know this guy, but I know the area a bit and it is
| not so different to where I live about 70 miles away...
|
| >A rich man...who needs little
|
| This guy is rich in several ways. A farm in Wales is still
| a pretty valuable asset, especially in a valley rather than
| on a hill. Owning a farm gives you a lot of financial
| independence, which can take a lot of stress away!
|
| It was a lovely article, but...An old country man told me
| that the three rarest things were
|
| 1) a dead donkey 2) a red headed parson 3) a contented
| farmer
|
| Here are the tests I would apply before I would agree he
| had reached some zen state of contentedness
|
| 1) how would he feel if a parcel of land came up for sale
| next to his. Would he itch to buy it. Most farmers would
| move heaven and earth.
|
| 2) How would he feel about me walking through his fields to
| share what he has got?
|
| 3) Is his stocking rate excessive?
|
| 4) If someone told him that by managing his flock
| differently he could damage the ground less and improve
| water quality in the river, would he take that advice?
|
| 5) If there was an awkward corner of his land next to my
| house that was not useful to him, but it was perfect for
| me, would he sell it to me at a fair price?
|
| 6) Why is there no succession plan. When he dies his sister
| will move into a home and the farm will be liquidated, the
| flock of sheep sold, the land broken up, the house sold
| off...because he didn't let anyone else in.
|
| I'm afraid I have met enough like him to remain cynical.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| I'm not sure about 1-5 but I was actually worried about
| his succession plan when I read about his stroke.
| PapaSpaceDelta wrote:
| The fact that he went into hospital and came back out to
| a functioning farm suggests that he has a good
| relationship with his neighbouring farmers. My guess
| would be that he's planned for exactly what will happen
| to his livestock and farm when he passes.
| patentatt wrote:
| I love this comment, but also had a chuckle at the contrast
| between "not wanting attention" and having a newspaper
| article about yourself being discussed worldwide on hacker
| news. I understand you were referencing someone else's story
| they were telling in another comment, but still found it
| amusing.
| oftenwrong wrote:
| This is similar to Sven Yrvind's philosophy on eating at sea.
|
| >I will eat twice a day, breakfast and lunch four hours later.
|
| >...
|
| >I say, "Cows only eat grass and wolfs only eat meat"
|
| >Modern society is so boring and there is so much food that we
| have to be stimulated by spices and chefs and different foods to
| eat. At sea in a small boat its different. Life itself out there
| is so interesting that I do not need stimulants.
|
| >My breakfast consists of one can of sardines, one slice of dense
| dark rye bread and muesli.
|
| >...
|
| >My lunch is the same as breakfast but no sardines.
|
| https://www.yrvind.com/provisioning/
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Yrvind
| ip26 wrote:
| Sounds like starvation rations...
| nabogh wrote:
| I agree the food itself is pretty bleak. But this resonates
| with me because I have a fond memory of a rushed meal after a
| surf with my father.
|
| We were on a camping trip so all we had in the car was two
| small cans of tuna and some multigrain bread. After getting
| out of the water and feeling completely exhausted, there was
| something satisfying about slapping the contents of the can
| onto a slice of bread and biting into the most basic meal
| imaginable.
| enw wrote:
| Somehow one of the tastiest memories I have is as a kid
| being outside and eating rye bread with butter.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Hunger is the best ingredient.
| goostavos wrote:
| Don't sleep on the canned sardines. They never stop being
| good imo. Their high protein and fat content makes them
| really satiating. I think they're the ultimate food if you're
| dieting.
|
| Since gyms were closed, I cut for about 4-5mo at the start of
| lockdown. Everyday for those 5 months: sardines. Never got
| tied of 'em or felt like I was on horrific starvation
| rations.
| nhooyr wrote:
| Appreciate the tip. It does seem like a really good dieting
| food. Definitely going to buy some tomorrow.
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Be careful eating tinned fish that much. My cousin became
| very ill in university - losing hair, losing weight, sleepy
| all the time. They tested her for everything. Eventually
| they realized she had high levels of mercury from eating a
| tin of tuna daily. Sardines might be okay because they are
| smaller, so they bioaggregate less.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Sardines are small short-lived fish. They don't
| accumulate mercury the way that larger predatory fish
| such as tuna do. Sardines present a much lower mercury
| risk.
| ericjang wrote:
| Contrary to popular belief, cows have been known to eat small
| animals / meat for extra calcium or protein supplements
| https://farmhouseguide.com/do-cows-eat-meat
|
| And vice versa, wolves also eat plants sometimes
| https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/feed-your-dog-like-
| a-w....
| Shorel wrote:
| Hah.
|
| I eat the same thing for both breakfast and dinner.
| weeboid wrote:
| COOL STORY BRO
| sampo wrote:
| > two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a
| few biscuits at the end
|
| How do you eat an onion for supper? Raw, or cooked? If cooked,
| how do you cook it?
| sleavey wrote:
| You can bake onions. Quite nice.
| telesilla wrote:
| A white onion can be eaten raw thinly sliced. Perhaps a dash of
| vinegar but that might be too fancy for his tastes.
| mastazi wrote:
| Besides baking as the other comment said, you can also
| caramelise onions on a frying pan with a tiny bit of oil,
| they're quite nice that way.
|
| If you like stronger flavours, you can add your favourite salad
| dressing to a chopped or sliced raw onion (I usually add extra
| virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano).
| watwut wrote:
| Cut raw into small pieces and eat it slowly. As a spice or
| something like that - it adds flavor when mixed with other
| foods.
|
| For example, you can put butter or lard on bread, spread those
| small pieces of onion on it, add salt. It is actually good.
|
| You can also cut it into thick ovals and bake. Third option is
| to caramelize it. But, these two are time consuming.
| Koshkin wrote:
| I call it "an acquired taste." (Many things in life are.)
| kebman wrote:
| Ah, the simple life...
|
| My grandfather would take me along and we'd go to the neighbour
| to fetch eggs. He had a plastic bucket that he put them in with
| some old newspapers scraps in the bottom. I heard that before the
| war they didn't even need money. He'd simply bring a bucket of
| milk, and he'd get a bucket of eggs in return. But it was of
| course a lot simpler to bring money. It was far cheaper than in
| the store too.
|
| My grandfather knew what all the birds were singing. Every bit,
| plus their behaviour. He'd especially heed the magpie, because
| it's a smarter bird. If it warbled this way, it meant that the
| weather would stay warm. If they warbled in another way, it meant
| that it might become rainy. He said that the birds knew, because
| their lives depended on it.
|
| Another more commonly known sign is dependent on where the magpie
| makes its nest. If it it's high in the tree, then it will most
| likely be a warm and sunny summer. But if it is tucked way down
| in the tree, the summer will be cold and wet. It makes sense.
| There's more protection from the elements further under the
| leaves, but it's also colder there. If I were a magpie, I'd want
| to make a warm and nice nest for the summer, but all that could
| be ruined if I didn't heed the weather.
|
| One day, the grouse was seen perching atop the family house. When
| I told this to my grandmother, she went silent at first, and then
| she told me that it means someone will die in the family. This
| was of course terrifying news to me. But it also turned out to
| become true, because my grandfather also died that year. May he
| rest in peace.
| danielrangel wrote:
| Beautiful family memory thanks for sharing
| skzv wrote:
| That was a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing it.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Both your story and the article seem quite controversial, and
| I'm not entirely sure why. For your story, I've noticed there
| us a certain sort of atheist that becomes offended of even a
| ghost story is told with too much sincerity. It reminds me of
| conservative Christians denouncing harry Potter for
| supporting witchcraft. So that might be it. But there is also
| the urban vs rural thing. People can't seem to accept that
| some people like living differently than they choose to.
| mcbishop wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I love a book called 'What the Robin
| Knows'. It's about the knowledge of birds, and the insight they
| give other animals.
| axaxs wrote:
| Thanks for the rec, just ordered it!
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| This highly enjoyable comment reminds me of the pleasure of
| reading Walden (by Henry David Thoreau)
| BearOso wrote:
| Except Walden was either satire or hypocrisy. Thoreau was
| rich through inheritance. Emerson lent him the cabin and
| land. It was only a 20-minute walk from his mother's house,
| where he went for dinner every night.
| axaxs wrote:
| Nice story, thanks for sharing. A shame this isn't written down
| someplace. I'm still learning and trying to teach my daughter,
| myself.
| randompwd wrote:
| > One day, the grouse was seen perching atop the family house.
| When I told this to my grandmother, she went silent at first,
| and then she told me that it means someone will die in the
| family. This was of course terrifying news to me. But it also
| turned out to become true, because my grandfather also died
| that year.
|
| Do you actually believe the grouse perching on house was
| foreshadowing??
| LocalH wrote:
| Everything is filtered through human perception and pattern-
| matching. _Everything_. There 's a difference between
| groupthink religion (which tends to spread exponentially when
| unchecked) and harmless little beliefs like this. So what if
| someone notices a pattern where there isn't one?
|
| It's known that animals can sense certain scents that can
| indeed be foreshadowing of death or health decline. Isn't it
| even the slightest bit possible that the grouse may have
| smelled something that humans couldn't begin to perceive?
| More importantly, do you have any proof or knowledge that
| would actively disprove this? No, that's not a _requirement_
| in science, but it is a handy discussion aid.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Could be a gentle way for an elder to let their grandchild
| know that they are passing soon.
|
| Does the Grouse know? Probably not. The grandmother would
| though.
| bluepizza wrote:
| That's a very nice way of seeing things. Thanks for that.
| zikzak wrote:
| We had similar sayings around the number of crows you'd see
| together. As I got older, I realized if you spend enough
| time outside you'll see any combination of crows you might
| need to fit the rhyme and have a little talk.
|
| One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a
| boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret
| never to be told.
|
| We would say "Crow" instead of "for".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_Sorrow_%28nursery_rhy
| m...
| wrboyce wrote:
| Interesting, in the UK I know this for magpies but I also
| know some additional lines which are absent from the Wiki
| page...
|
| One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a
| boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret
| never to be told, eight for a wish, nine for a kiss, ten
| for a bird you must not miss.
|
| EDIT: It seems the 8/9/10 lines are from Magpie, a
| British children's TV show: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Magpie_(TV_series)#Theme_son...
| samvher wrote:
| Huh - I know these numbers from a Counting Crows song ("A
| Murder of One", one of my favorites). Never knew this
| came from cultural heritage.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| In rural England I've heard of that for magpies (which
| are corvids I think), but never crows themselves.
|
| Someone I know from Scotland sings a song with the same
| sort of pattern but about crows proper (like 'Ten green
| bottles' but for crows - "the last craw wasna' there at
| a'").
| kebman wrote:
| Does it matter? This is an old belief told from one
| generation to another. And in the instance of my family, it
| certainly turned out to be true.
|
| Later that summer, during an especially hot and bright night
| (it's midnight sun where I come from because it's above the
| Arctic Circle) I saw that grouse on the tractor road further
| down the fields of the farm. It silhouetted in the midnight
| sun. It surprised me to see it standing in the middle of the
| road like that, like it was mocking me, so I got angry and
| chased it off the property.
|
| It went off into the property of my grandmother's sister. And
| later that year, also she died.
|
| But look, there's probably a reasonable explanation for it.
| When farmers grow old and sick, they often move away from
| their cabin, and in with their younger family and children
| further away, who take care of them. So when the house
| becomes derelict, wild and otherwise shy animals dare to move
| closer. But of course, old people would only move away from
| their farm if they were in a bad shape. And there's your omen
| and the logical explanation for it.
| graderjs wrote:
| No need to surrender your beliefs to some egghead who's not
| imaginative enough to see the world with wonder. Who cares
| about someone else's logic that is too narrow to contain
| the wonder of the universe. No need to pander to their
| inability to believe. They sit on their high horse telling
| other people they are crazy, then the grouse sits above
| them and they drop dead. Good story. The end.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well, maybe so but they say a stray dog come howling
| around Johnny Miller's house, 'bout midnight, as much as
| two weeks ago; and a whippoorwill come in and lit on the
| banisters and sung, the very same evening; and there
| ain't anybody dead there yet.
| asiachick wrote:
| Those kinds of beliefs are what lead to anti-vaxers,
| belief in homeopathy, astrology, etc... It has nothing to
| do with good or bad imagination. An egghead can imagine
| Star Wars or Lord of the Rings but that doesn't mean they
| aren't imaginative when someone tells them a grouse
| predicted a death as though they actually believed it.
| busymom0 wrote:
| The ending of your comment gave me a chuckle. Thank you.
| randompwd wrote:
| This isn't an English creative writing class hangout
| space. It's a space dedicated to intellectual curiosity.
|
| Quite ironic you hoisted yourself on a high horse to
| write that comment.
| dkersten wrote:
| Humans are also great at seeing patterns in noise and we
| like to attribute various things to things we see. So its
| also likely that you remember these coincidences because of
| your loved ones deaths and don't remember the many other
| times these animals were around because nothing happened to
| make them memorable. Also, "later that year" is a very long
| period of time for _something_ to happen.
| RhysU wrote:
| I like the word describing this tendency:
|
| apophenia : the tendency to perceive a connection or
| meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things
| (such as objects or ideas)
|
| I learned the word on account of http://apophenia.info
| which is open source software used for the book "Modeling
| With Data" by Ben Klemens. His "21st Century C" is more
| commonly encountered.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| I love how people will do anything to deny the lizard
| brain. We have a "spidey" sense just like all the other
| animals and for good reason. Ignore it at your peril
| should you ever have a brush with the side of nature that
| cares not for your "lack of studies".
| mitchdoogle wrote:
| We're talking about birds portending human death. The
| author even suggested a likely explanation for how the
| old wives tale started (animals being attracted to run
| down places because the building's owner is being cared
| for elsewhere), which would seem to indicate they don't
| actually believe birds can tell when someone is going to
| die. I don't think this situation qualifies as "Spidey
| sense".
| dkersten wrote:
| I'm a strong proponent for listening to your gut, but
| that's very different from a bird landing on your home
| predicting death, especially when the correlation is weak
| (sometime later that year). It's easy to attribute
| something to something else if there's an indeterminate
| timeframe in between.
|
| Remember that people see what they want to see in noise
| too. Clouds often look like something tangible, that
| doesn't mean it's a sign. If I squint, I can see shapes
| in pretty much any random pattern. And people tend to
| remember events that they attribute meaning too (in this
| case the old wives tale about the birds and then the
| family member dying) and forget the events that have no
| meaning to them (how many times did the person see said
| birds without anything happening and just forgetting
| about it?)
|
| Nobody has yet managed to prove the existence of the
| supernatural, but many people have tried. That doesn't
| mean it doesn't exist, but it seems pretty unlikely,
| especially when other better-understood causes exist.
| monoideism wrote:
| It doesn't have to be supernatural. We know, for example,
| that dogs can smell various diseases. Also, someone
| pointed out that as people age and become ill, they tend
| to do less outside the house, and shy animals will start
| to come out and stay closer.
|
| "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than
| are dreamt of in your philosophy."
|
| Blanket ridicule of such phenomena is just as irrational
| as are many superstitions.
| dkersten wrote:
| Sure. But in this particular case, it sounds like there
| was a fairly longish period of time between seeing the
| "omen" and the supposed effect. Yes, the shy animals
| coming out was given as a reasonable explanation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The existence of cognitive biases may help in some
| instances, and may harm in others. But they are not a
| substitute for data and proper experimentation or
| mechanism of actions.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| How many people died in that town in your lifetime where no
| bird perched on a roof. How many birds perched on roofs that
| nobody noticed where nobody died.
| thisCtx wrote:
| I grew up rural.
|
| I buy into a lot of the "bird" wisdom. Science is discovering
| dogs can smell disease.
|
| Our modern world isn't more complex, just more distracting with
| asinine theory chasing. It's always been ridiculously complex
| in ways we can't imagine, we've just started realizing it in
| detail.
|
| Turns out animals with their "lesser" cognitive powers are
| tuned into the hidden complexity in ways we barely understand.
|
| Yet we deem ourselves the more advanced species.
|
| Humans will surely kill themselves off and the specifically
| evolved for their ecosystem "dumb" animals will remain.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| You consider an animal having evolved a sense for certain
| properties of the natural world so they can survive more
| advanced the humanity? I seriously cannot comprehend how you
| can view that as more advanced then humanity going to space,
| manipulating matter on the atomic level and the most
| important: beating evolution for the most part.
| yourapostasy wrote:
| _> Turns out animals with their "lesser" cognitive powers are
| tuned into the hidden complexity in ways we barely
| understand._
|
| I take this as another description of Moravec's Paradox.
|
| Which I do not think of as a paradox, but as one domain
| knowledge set (information theory/computer science) not
| intertwingling (to use Ted Nelson's lingo) with another
| domain knowledge set (biology). The more we delve into the
| integration of the many biological layers, the more we
| appreciate how finely-tuned all that biological complexity is
| to reality's complexity. I bet the rabbit hole goes a lot
| deeper than we even believe in the common scientific
| narrative today, and we'll need every scrap of power we can
| bring to bear from quantum computing to help us understand
| it.
| pjbk wrote:
| That's trial and error knowledge gathered through billions of
| years and quintillions of individuals from multitude species.
| Hard to compete with that.
| schuke wrote:
| And to think that science has enabled us to do vastly more
| in a few hundred years.
| adverbly wrote:
| I didn't believe you at first with quintillions... but my
| back of the envelope came out as sextillion lol...
| zadler wrote:
| Still, it's hard to justify a grouse signaling a coming
| death by sitting on top of a house. That is magic to us at
| this point and such a tale would usually be met with
| skepticism. The things about the weather I don't have much
| of a problem with.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| Seems perfectly possible to me a bird could sense the
| difference between a vibrant, active person and a person
| close to death.
| generalizations wrote:
| I agree it seems possible, but the motivation for acting
| that way seems missing.
| thisCtx wrote:
| Same motive you have when smelling something rotten;
| embedded biological response.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Why would it have evolved a response to communicate to a
| predator species that one of the predators living in a
| dwelling is going to die in a fashion that would expose
| itself to a large chance of becoming prey.
|
| Here is a far simpler explanation. Our brains are evolved
| to find patterns even when they aren't there. Look how
| weak the correlation is. His family simply discarded all
| the times the correlation failed to apply and remembered
| the one time the bird cried not on the day his
| grandfather died but merely that same year.
| CRConrad wrote:
| But why would a grouse, a shy wild bird, go smell some
| dying person inside a house and then fly onto the roof of
| the house to mark it out? It has no reason to care, and
| even less to stick around.
| edeion wrote:
| Seems even more possible to me that a grandmother can use
| something that's fascinating a kid to tell them about bad
| things looming. That's somehow enchanting the situation.
| chx wrote:
| > Science is discovering dogs can smell disease.
|
| Bees too. Yesterday news included the Dutch training bees to
| smell covid.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/oddly-enough/bees-
| netherla...
| mrits wrote:
| It seems like the bird would want to position itself based on
| the current day's weather and not the average of the next 3
| months.
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| The bird is going off of the 50-day moving average
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Itself, yes. Its nest, no.
| goda90 wrote:
| They can't exactly move their nest after they lay their eggs.
| You gotta choose what will survive the worst case.
| jim-jim-jim wrote:
| Are you talking about European or Australian magpies?
| mellavora wrote:
| Shouldn't that be: "What do you mean, an African or European
| Swallow?"
| falsaberN1 wrote:
| I know you are referencing something, but in this case it's
| a very legit question, Eurasian magpies are corvidae (and
| remarkably clever ones at that), while the ones found in
| America or Australia aren't.
|
| Now if I could find who decided to name them the same...
| xvedejas wrote:
| American magpies are indeed corvidae, unlike the
| Australian ones.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Monty Python became unavoidable after the above comment.
| Thanks.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Grouse only exist in the northern hemisphere so it will
| likely be some type of Euro-Asian magpie.
| DarknessFalls wrote:
| What if he grips it by the husk?
| [deleted]
| anonymousiam wrote:
| It's an inspiring article, but it left me wondering what is his
| exit plan. He's got nobody to pass the farm on to, and his sister
| is dependent upon his care. At 72 and with his medical history,
| he will not be able to continue much longer.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| He never married, presumably has no kids, so what happens to
| the farm after he's gone probably isn't a big concern of his.
| Osmium wrote:
| This is in the UK where there exists something of a social
| safety net. For example, I very much doubt he pays for his
| sister's carers (speaking from experience), and he will have
| healthcare available for himself if he needs it. So he may not
| feel the need to consider an exit plan.
| User23 wrote:
| My understanding is that in the UK if you have no heirs your
| property reverts to the crown.
| flatline wrote:
| > She has two carers who come in four times a day, and they are
| wonderful.
|
| My dad arranged something similar for my mom in the advanced
| stages of Alzheimer's. It is nearly impossible in the US, I don't
| even know if you can still do it without being wealthy. It
| required long term care insurance prepaid for years, and it was
| still a nightmare of weekly paperwork to manage all the claims.
| The care for his sister, and treatment and recovery for multiple
| strokes - out of reach for many farmers around the world. This
| man is very lucky indeed.
| hycaria wrote:
| It's not really a sustainable solution though is it?
| worik wrote:
| Socialised medicine. It is great
| someelephant wrote:
| Even small European communities have adult day programs for
| people with Alzheimer's etc. The idea of old folks homes is
| foreign in places where people aren't wealthy to begin with.
| Interesting how a market appears to extract wealth when it
| exists.
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| This is pretty common on the NHS. Also, as Wales is a devolved
| nation, we can plough more money into the NHS than happesn in
| England. Also less privatisation.
| scared2 wrote:
| LoL, i Don't know why it got a lot of attention.
|
| If it is for the meal i would be surprised, because he eats the
| most diverse meal than a few billion people in the world.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Farmers typically describe their animals as happy. This doesn't
| jive with the depictions made by activists vegans of even non-
| commercial farming.
|
| One of you is wrong. Which is it?
|
| That aside, articles like these are more about convincing the
| author than anyone else in my view. That doesn't necessarily mean
| he's wrong. See for example Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. He
| repeatedly mulls over the prospect of death, with aphorisms to
| suggest it's nothing to be afraid of. Death was on his mind. This
| farmer seems to focus on conveying that he has every reason to be
| happy. It's no coincidence that suicide rates are highest among
| farmers - is this man simply built different, or is he convincing
| himself?
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| It's bothering me that he is 72 and has 71 sheep. Someone get
| this man one sheep
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| It's bothering me that he's 72 and has 71 sheep. Somebody get
| this man one sheep
| doe88 wrote:
| I usually have the same dinner or close variants 6-days a week,
| then after few months when I'm tired of this menu I slowly update
| parts of it and it then evolves to something new. I don't force
| myself in doing it, it's often just about the simplicity of
| knowing that a given meal has the right balance of calories by
| knowing _it works_ (i.e. maintaining the same weight) from one
| day to the next.
| arketyp wrote:
| I do the exact same thing. Usually parts are rotated by things
| which come in season or on sale. After a day's work I enjoy
| spacing out doing something predictable.
| narrator wrote:
| "People might think I'm not experiencing new things, but I think
| the secret to a good life is to enjoy your work."
|
| Very true. Especially if one never starts a family.
| znpy wrote:
| > I've had several strokes.
|
| I wonder if his eating routine might be linked to it.
|
| Four sandwiches for lunch, that quite and amount of white bread
| for a single person, every day.
| satyambnsal wrote:
| Wow. What an amazing story!. I'm glad, I started my morning with
| this one.
|
| State of satisfaction and living in present moment is one very
| difficult to achieve.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I wonder about the two strokes. Him and his sister. Probably
| genetic or is it a result of the same diet they both share? Is
| eating an egg a day really bad for you. Science has gone back and
| forth on this. He would get plenty of exercise what could have
| caused the strokes?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| From the photo, he does look overweight. Could be hypertensive.
| greshario wrote:
| Genetics and aging? He's 72.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Strokes can be caused by a variety of factors and are
| increasingly common as people age regardless of physical
| fitness and diet.
|
| An injury or illness leading to bed rest can cause clots to
| form. Clots can just form anyways. High blood pressure. Which,
| again, becomes increasingly common as people age regardless of
| fitness level and diet.
| watwut wrote:
| Then again, vegetable intake lowers chance of stroke too.
|
| The guy lives wholesome lifestyle, but that lifestyle is not
| that terribly healthy as people want it to be. Simple
| lifestyles are not always the most healthy thing you can do.
| His diet is limited by habit/routine, but also possibly by
| cost and additional effort it would take to cook more
| healthier. He already works a lot and healthier food woold
| require more effort.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| > If I could go anywhere, it would be to the Great Wall of China.
| The amount of work that went into building it is unbelievable.
| I've been a stonemason; I understand the ingenuity involved.
|
| There are some rich people here on HN. Can somebody pay him a
| week there?
|
| I know I'd do it if I had 7 digits on my bank account.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| This guy doesn't really farm. If he did, he'd be in much better
| shape. I had family who were serious farmers (many chores
| everyday) and they were lean/skinny like runners even in old age.
| This guy overeats and doesn't get much activity.
| guerrilla wrote:
| What a disgusting comment, as if you've surveyed the weight of
| all farmers and are some kind of authority that approves who is
| and isn't a farmer. Really, individuals differ and there are
| millions of fat farmers, you just haven't met them yet.
| trainsplanes wrote:
| That's... an odd assessment.
|
| As someone from a family of farmers, yes, people can be fat and
| work on farms. I know people who are in the fields everyday and
| with beer bellies like you wouldn't believe.
|
| This man is 72. The fact he's working outside well past the age
| of retirement for most people shows he's not in completely
| terrible shape.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I dunno about that, I grew up in a Welsh farming town and there
| were plenty of farmers that looked a bit rotund but had
| astounding strength behind them.
| tyingq wrote:
| Appears he once tried to venture out and try a pizza instead, but
| was thwarted by Pizza Hut:
|
| https://twitter.com/WilfDavies3/status/1244888108413394944
|
| Edit: Yes, just a different Wilf Davies, but also from Wales.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| LOL, good find. I wonder if the whole story is made up.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| It's not the same person. Look at the pictures of each of
| them.
| axiom92 wrote:
| Two different Wilf Davies (unless you were joking).
| waihtis wrote:
| All the highly important software people (myself included) would
| do good to remember that farmers are literally keeping us alive
| while basically working 7 days a week - and in many cases barely
| getting by.
| simonhfrost wrote:
| Happy international workers day the other day (May 1st), I hope
| you celebrated it.
| waihtis wrote:
| Not entirely sure if this is coming from a sincere place or
| not, but Labour Day is a rather large event here in FIN. Of
| course like anything the original meaning has been lost to
| most people, and many treat it as a "drinking holiday."
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Working the same code base for 10 years could have you eating dog
| food every day.
| worik wrote:
| Seventy one sheep? And he makes a living?
|
| Something missing here.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| he eats for a few bucks a day, never eats out, never travels,
| etc. he probably doesn't need much cash to live
| peteretep wrote:
| Couple of cellphone towers on the property maybe, leasing some
| land to other farmers, and/or he did a bit more before his
| stroke and now just focuses on the sheep? All pretty plausible
| inimino wrote:
| He's 70 years old. Nothing said his sheep were the only source
| of income he ever had over his entire life.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| At that age he'd be collecting a government pension yes?
| desas wrote:
| Yes, that'll pay about PS7000 pa, depending on payments in
| and other wealth.
|
| 70 sheep will probably attract a farming subsidy too
| robotmay wrote:
| Farmers in Wales are pretty canny and they have some unique
| advantages due to the hillyness. Leasing out land for mobile
| towers is one option, as someone said above, but I've also seen
| them group together to build small hydro power installs in
| their streams, or set up solar panels, and sell that power to
| the national grid. Sheep are pretty much all you can raise due
| to the geography of the place.
|
| Wales is poor, outside the cities. You can still buy a house
| for PS10k here (it'll be shit obviously). He'll likely get some
| subsidies and his pension now too, and I imagine he probably
| trades for some of his food. Eggs for fish, that sorta thing.
| chrismarlow9 wrote:
| Stop and listen but also discover new things. There's only so
| much time and too much spent on one or the other seems sad.
| jollybean wrote:
| "Feeding the sheep and seeing how happy they are makes me happy,
| too."
|
| That is some heavy Zen right there.
|
| Also: "two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and
| a few biscuits at the end"
|
| Is probably very healthy. Minimal sugar, high protein. Would be
| nice to have a bit of veg and that would be it.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| A very content man , a rare quality these days.
| adeltoso wrote:
| With that diet sure thing he had several strokes!
| kewrkewm53 wrote:
| There's just something inherently satisfying about farming,
| growing your own food and taking care of land. Obviously it's
| hard work and difficult if you actually need to make a decent
| living out of it, but as a hobby it has been most refreshing for
| someone who spends his days staring at display.
|
| I hope eventually I can raise my family in a farm-environment
| while working remotely, and get some extra income on top of that
| by growing stuff in small scale.
| urbandw311er wrote:
| On much of Reddit this thread would have been dominated by snarky
| comments about his food choices and lack of variety. I was
| positively lifted by the HN response/vibe on this.
| haihaibye wrote:
| 71 sheep is a hobby, not enough to make a living as a farmer. In
| Australia a family farm can have 10-20x that number.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| They also use different tools and methods size is relative.
|
| My favourite anecdote for visiting Welsh friends is to tell
| them about Anna Creek Station, a cattle farm in South Australia
| that is slightly larger than Wales.
| haihaibye wrote:
| I have no doubt Welsh land can support many more sheep per
| acre, but to make minimum wage (PS17k) off 71 sheep you need
| to make PS240 profit per sheep per year.
|
| At PS100 per fat lamb, you still haven't made minimum wage
| even if all 71 have twins and you have zero costs. Maybe they
| sell some wool, too.
|
| In reality you have bills, sheep die, and you need to keep
| some lambs for breeding stock
| zwayhowder wrote:
| Absolutely, and I suspect there are other things to
| consider as well, he certainly doesn't need minimum wage if
| he owns the land and lives on a diet that - based on my
| last trip to a Tesco in the north of England - would
| require significantly less than minimum wage to subsist on.
|
| I'm not saying it's a life I want, but unlike an Australian
| or American farmer he doesn't need to drive for several
| hours to get to the nearest hospital/major shopping
| centre/his mate's farm. His sister's carers are paid for
| presumably by the UK version of the NDIS which ours was
| modeled on with all the good bits taken out because they
| were too expensive. Unlike an American farmer he won't
| spend the rest of his life paying for the ambulance and
| hospital stay from his stroke because it was covered by the
| public system.
|
| It sounds to me like he is contributing to society as best
| he can, and as someone who has hiked through farms in the
| UK, and gazed at them from the train for hours on end, I
| think he has done more to improve the general condition of
| England than many other people can claim.
| rcpt wrote:
| How does the newspaper find this guy?
| slics wrote:
| The beauty of a simple life. Away from noise, stress and all
| things that make one miserable. Being content with simple things
| in life is nothing more than a beautiful life for you and your
| family.
| dzink wrote:
| I find that our childhood joys imprint and become adult
| obsessions for some. If you grow up in one place, like this man,
| you may crave to stay there. If you are taken to new places
| frequently, you condition to want that. Happiest moments on the
| beach? You crave beaches. Favorite foods for a kid become comfort
| foods in adults. I grew up in the delta of the Danube, rich with
| fruit trees and amazing tomatoes. Ended up settling in a place
| that has great orchards within driving distance as well (every
| other climate felt really uncomfortable). Be careful how you
| condition your kids :)
| visarga wrote:
| Many people over 40 in Romania still crave the communist era
| sweets. I crave my grandpa's smoked meets and his wine, and my
| grandma's home baked bread (they lived in the countryside as
| peasants).
| smcameron wrote:
| > I've never had Chinese, Indian, French food. Why change? I've
| already found the food I love.
|
| Jeeeeeeeeezus. That's some pathological parochialism right there.
|
| Try some new things, you might find some new things that you love
| that you didn't know you loved.
|
| You're rejecting Chinese food. You're rejecting Indian food.
| You're rejecting French food.
|
| And you're expecting anyone to take your opinion seriously?
|
| GTFO of town. You're a moron.
| mod wrote:
| Have you tried eating the same thing every day?
|
| You might find that you love it and didn't know you loved it.
|
| You're expecting anyone to take your opinion seriously?
|
| ...etc
| newbie789 wrote:
| That's a good point aside from "trying a new dish" and
| "trying out a lifestyle for a decade" being entirely
| unrelated aspirations even if they have eating in common.
| vasco wrote:
| He's not expecting much, he only shared his life with a
| journalist. You on the other hand expect a lot from him it
| seems.
| earthlingdavey wrote:
| He's content, I admire that.
|
| Not much curiosity when it comes to food, but it sounds like
| he's interested in nature.
|
| And to say that he is rejecting the other foods is a bit of a
| stretch, I mean, for example, are you rejecting a career as a
| sheep farmer? You might love it.
|
| Or maybe you're content with something too
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| He's had 'several strokes.'
|
| Who knows when his first stroke was? His sister's history of
| stroke as well could indicate that there is something more
| going on. He could have had multiple microinfarcts over the
| years leading to a mild form of vascular dementia with
| cognitive impairment or something.
|
| He probably isn't holding the secrets of the universe in his
| noggin, but cut him some slack. I'd have tea with him. Sounds
| like a chill guy.
| liamwire wrote:
| I think this is an incredibly poor take, and done with
| incredibly poor taste - pun not intended.
|
| Experience is, broadly speaking, able to be considered as a
| spectrum with both vast breadth, and depth. I believe this
| holds true not only for external experiences, in this instance
| cuisine, but also for internal qualia and more compounded
| experiences.
|
| It is, to my understanding, widely accepted that people are
| capable of living lives that can be vastly alien to what we
| might consider 'consensus reality,' or everyday life, more
| loosely. Look towards monks, yogis, and more briefly,
| psychonauts as examples of living beings with, presumably,
| internal lives vastly different to our own. Yet in those people
| we hear accounts of deep personal satisfaction, even euphoria,
| from no external source. Contentness, at a minimum, doesn't
| demand a minimum breadth of experience, or any experience at
| all, as a prerequisite.
|
| I'd go so far as to argue that the small-mindedness you've
| presumed of this man, may be an acute reflection of your own
| base assumptions about others.
|
| It pays to be mindful that others lead lives as rich,
| meaningful, and subjective as your own, even if the set of
| experiences in question may vary vastly.
|
| I see no good reason to not take this man on his word when he
| says he truly is satisfied with his life, particularly when
| he's at a point where he can reflect back on it - something not
| afforded to those of us still living what we can only hope to
| be the bulk of our lives.
|
| Everything I've written prior notwithstanding, let me ask: do
| you actively go out of your way to try every new experience
| possible to you, costs be damned? If you answer no, then you
| accept that there's a radius you choose to set, within which
| you're satisfied knowing that the experiences you've had thus
| far, and their costs, are in equilibrium, and that you're
| content with not exceeding that boundary. Who are you to say
| that his 'smaller' radius of experience, ignoring the
| incredible amount of contemplative time afforded to this man,
| and what that may imply for his internal life experiences, is
| any less of a valid choice than yours is? Surely you'd then
| accept you very likely fall within a subset of a larger radius
| of possible experiences, of which there are people willing to
| explore past the boundaries you've set for yourself.
|
| Ignorance may in fact be bliss, but I wouldn't be so quick to
| assume this man is the ignorant party here.
| irjustin wrote:
| Happiness - he's found it.
|
| Sure, he's an extreme and very few want to emulate it because
| there's a mild element of delusion. But, he's found the thing so
| many of us work our entire lives for only to never find.
|
| Part of life is letting happiness find you, part of life is
| finding happiness, and part of life is pushing away things to
| find happiness in what you have.
|
| I say, well done.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Happiness is a terrible word because there are different kinds.
|
| I think contentment is closer to what he's found, his world
| makes sense in his context and is comfortable and familiar.
|
| Happiness is what you want when you are young, contentment is
| what you get if you are lucky later.
|
| I think that is how it should be, it's a good progression since
| too much contentment when you are young would have made me less
| driven and been less driven wouldn't have helped me reach a
| point of contentment in my late 30's.
|
| I have a partner who loves me and I her in return, a stable job
| I enjoy, money in the bank and time and money for my hobbies -
| it's not euphoric happiness but that never lasts, contentment
| can.
| matwood wrote:
| Happiness::Contentment as Motivation::Discipline
|
| Searching for happiness or thinking that one needs to be
| happy all the time is not the path to any sort of lasting
| happiness. Contentment, much like discipline, is what has
| staying power.
| psychomugs wrote:
| " Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a
| target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like
| happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does
| so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication
| to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's
| surrender to a person other than oneself." - Victor Frankl
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| you did use the word "mild". but it made me wonder if not every
| person I've ever encountered that looked happy seemed like that
| a bit.
|
| The happier somebody is the more deluded they look to the rest
| of us. People in love are perhaps the most obvious. But it says
| probably more about the observer.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| The specific happiness that we're talking about here is
| contentment -- with your life, with who you are.
|
| I think it looks so odd to so many of us because we tend to
| be an ambitious bunch, and I find ambition to be pretty
| inversely related to contentment. The sort of acceptance that
| this man displays feels like giving up, in a sense. And in
| many ways, it is -- but that's something that Buddhists have
| been teaching for centuries.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| "Giving up" seems to imply unfulfilled ambition, though. It
| only feels like giving up because we project our own
| ambitions onto him. If his ambition always was to lead a
| simple, predictable life close to nature, he's achieved
| flawlessly. Maybe I'm just re-stating what you said, sorry.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| I think this just tells you that happiness is not objective.
| ikurei wrote:
| I feel like us (hyper connected city dwellers, constantly
| chasing personal growth or success or novelty) are the deluded
| ones.
|
| Why do you say he seems deluded to you?
| anbende wrote:
| The farmer has a lot of ideas about what it would have been
| like to leave or do something different and why there was no
| point in doing so. Having never left, these ideas are not
| based in experience, and there is likely an element of self-
| justification. It is very very common for people to come up
| with reasons to justify their choices. To the extent that
| these reasons are unexamined and not evidence-based, they are
| deluded. That doesn't make them bad or even ineffective, just
| not fully based in reality.
|
| It's likely mild, and he's likely genuinely happy with his
| life despite.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Indeed, they are rationalizations. Whether out of fear of
| the unknown or attachment to what he has. Our cognitive
| bias is such that losing something feels worse than
| gaining. I think some are more or less novelty-seeking by
| nature, but the environment around you has an impact.
|
| If I think of it as a strategy it makes more sense, i.e.
| "doing the same thing has worked well and will probably
| continue to do well, so I'll continue to bet on it". That
| hardly demands all the extra pre-conceived notions, but
| people view challenges to their ideas as a threat when
| they've made them part of their identity.
| User23 wrote:
| Reminds me of Steve Jobs and his closet full of dozens of
| identical black turtlenecks.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I can kind of see the advantage of having one outfit.
| Eliminates all decisions about what to wear. But if I did that,
| I would not have a closet full. Maybe a weeks' worth, to get
| from washday to washday.
| Talanes wrote:
| I did that with pants in high school, wearing 5 identical
| pairs of black dockers that fit my after-school job dress
| code. Worked fine until another kid pulled me aside and asked
| if I needed help getting another pair of pants.
| williesleg wrote:
| Hacker news!
| blimplab wrote:
| I think this is the first HN article that I upvoted. Thank you
| for a wonderful article.
| hermitsings wrote:
| That sounds like present-day Lao Tzu, man.
| TruthWillHurt wrote:
| "An open mind is a fortress with gates unlocked"
| slothtrop wrote:
| People often do behave as though new ideas, or changing their
| minds, is a threat. They make ideas part of their identity.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Does it strike anyone else as oddly ironic that he is so sad that
| people don't go to the effort to hear the cuckoos, and yet he
| basically doesn't want to experience... well, pretty much
| everything.
|
| It's great he's happy with the life he has chosen. But I
| personally find people who are even slightly like that (i.e.
| closed off to new experiences) depressing to be around. My
| parents are kind of like that, and have been as long as I can
| remember. But to each their own.
| graderjs wrote:
| Is his way better? Nah, it's just what he prefers. But he's
| smarter than them, because, he doesn't try stuff he's not
| committed to. He just keeps doing what he loves. But they try
| things, but don't commit to it, and so they miss out. His ROI
| is higher. He invests in 5 things, and they all pay off. The
| cuckoo "fly overs" make a bet on the cuckoo, but don't persist
| enough to see it pay off. We can definitely learn something
| from this guy, in our "ephemeral age".
|
| As Dang says about attention on HN: people give it their all,
| only the moderators do that, and that's what keeps the place
| from descending into madness. But everyone else can only give a
| part of their attention to HN. Fair enough, but you need some
| people giving it their all if you want HN to be good.
|
| Caveat is, he's probably great at narrating his solitary life
| and justifying his seclusion. We don't hear from him about all
| the stuff that isn't great. It's possible there's lots of that
| stuff, too :) ;p xx
| kwdc wrote:
| I got the sense he laments others lack of depth in what he has
| experienced, "They only stayed a moment and didn't see
| everything!". The irony is that others wonder about his lack of
| breadth of experience. "He hasn't explored enough and didn't
| see everything!"
|
| People are different.
| [deleted]
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| To me it seems he's saddened by knowing the beauty that they've
| missed out on for such trivial reasons of impatience and
| rushing through their lives.
| fastball wrote:
| I mean, everybody ever is gonna miss out on the vast, vast,
| vast, vast majority of beauty this world has to offer. Even
| if you were immortal and could teleport you'd miss out on
| most of the beauty.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I think maybe by trying to experience many things, those
| people end up having experienced nothing deeply? And his
| advice would be to pick one or two of those things and
| really dig in.
| industriousthou wrote:
| Yeah, but they took the time to go there for the experience
| and still missed out on it.
| isoskeles wrote:
| I find them a bit less depressing than people frantically
| trying to experience "new" things as an effort to quiet the
| constant agitation of their souls.
| koonsolo wrote:
| I think that people who achieve great things definitely have
| some kind of unrest inside them. "quiet the constant
| agitation of their souls" is a clear description of that. I
| like to call it "feeding the little monster inside you"
|
| I'm not making a judgement call to what is better, being at
| peace where you are, or never be at peace and always wanting
| more.
|
| It reminds me of when some interviewer asked Elon Musk: "How
| can people be more like you?", to which he answered "You
| don't want to be me... I'm not sure I want to be me".
|
| My theory is that you have 2 things inside you: the
| individual and the DNA. The individual can be at peace, but
| it will be at the expense of the survival of the DNA. The DNA
| pushes you to be the best and find the best partner to
| reproduce. The DNA makes sure you are always at unrest and
| want to achieve more, get better, etc.
|
| I think this story illustrates it well, because he is a peace
| even though he never married, and so will not give his DNA
| setup to a next generation.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I don't think that the reason I've tried Chinese food is to
| quiet the agitation of my soul. Do you?
| isoskeles wrote:
| No, I don't think that about trying new foods. But I do
| think that trying new foods is on a more trivial level of
| openness to new experiences. When you've done it enough,
| it's all the same experience.
|
| I don't mean the food all tastes the same, but rather,
| you've adapted to the idea of trying unfamiliar foods. At
| this point, every new food you try has a risk-reward where
| you could feel somewhere between extreme disgust or delight
| on either end. And people who are more open to trying new
| foods just weigh the reward higher than the risk.
| Conversely, less open people will weigh the risk higher, or
| they just might not care. Maybe they think, "Food doesn't
| move me that much. It doesn't make me nearly as happy as my
| sheep." (Of course, maybe they don't know because they've
| never tried sesame chicken.)
| culturestate wrote:
| I literally _moved to China_ to try and find whatever I was
| missing at the time; a decade, four other countries, and
| countless adrenaline-seeking excursions later, some part of
| me is still searching.
|
| It may not apply to everyone, or even a majority of people
| who go out of their way for something _new_ , but I know
| _exactly_ what the parent comment means.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > I know exactly what the parent comment means.
|
| Well, firstly, there was a misunderstanding in the parent
| comment, but ignoring that, I understand you are saying
| that you derive enjoyment from new experiences, which you
| have actively sought out for at least a decade, and don't
| enjoy the company of people who are not like that.
|
| But do you mean to say that you wouldn't enjoy meeting an
| old Welsh farmer who is not like anyone else you know?
| From what you've described about your interests and
| activities, I imagine you might enjoy the experience, at
| least for a while.
|
| From what you've said, you wouldn't want to _be like him_
| , but that's a different thing to the experience of
| meeting him, isn't it?
| culturestate wrote:
| No, it's nothing like that. I was referring to this...
|
| _> people frantically trying to experience "new" things
| as an effort to quiet the constant agitation of their
| souls_
|
| ...and pointing out that there are different kinds of, I
| guess, _opportunistic openness._ One is the normal, well-
| adjusted kind where you say sure, let 's try some Chinese
| food or hey, I've never been to Wales, should we go to
| Cardiff this weekend? It's the Michael Palin version.
|
| The other, darker one - the one I had and which the
| grandparent was referring to - is the kind where you're
| constantly looking for the next _thing_ or _place_ or
| whatever that will make you feel content with life. It 's
| not about experience for experience's sake, it's about
| trying to find something, _anything_ , that will soothe
| your soul. This is the Anthony Bourdain version.
|
| It's not that I wouldn't want to go to Wales or meet the
| farmer; I would, of course. The difference is in the
| motivation and the satisfaction I would derive from it.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| OK.
|
| I used to be in Anthony Bourdain mode. In that time,
| Michael Palin mode seemed a world away - non-resonant and
| unobtainable.
|
| Eventually I changed into Michael Palin!
| gabaix wrote:
| Calling it the Anthony Bourdain version resonates so well
| with me. He was someone I admired and pity at the same
| time. Looking back you can see the deep sorrow in his
| documentaries.
| humanafterall wrote:
| "Sehnsucht" in German. Seek-search. Finding what you're
| even looking for.
| fma wrote:
| That's not what he's saying. He's saying that those who want to
| experience things...don't. People drive from far away probably
| just to stay there for a few seconds and call it a day, while
| sitting in their car. Probably take a selfie and say they were
| there to experience the cuckoos...but really didn't. That's why
| he's sad for them.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| That's not what he saying either. He's saying that cuckoos
| don't care if you watch them, because the sounds they make
| aren't for those people who pass by. The cuckoos are for
| cuckoos and he is a sad one indeed.
| [deleted]
| Rapzid wrote:
| > As told to Kiran Sidhu
|
| Who knows what he really said. Not us.
| oilostthelast wrote:
| You find noble, humble and virtuous souls depressing to be
| around?
|
| Look at this austere man, so capable. Entirely singular. Wholly
| content. How can you come to find even a hint of the vaguest
| ennui. Truly I envy the man, I aspire to be so contented,
| unfortunately I've decades of conditioning to unravel to attain
| such a saintly outlook. Imagine how simple and _humane_ the
| world would be if it was populated with people like this. The
| man is wise.
|
| Would it be fair to assume you find such people "depressing"
| because they're resistant to your superficial intellectual
| rotundity? Because they don't play your games?
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I find people who close themselves off to new experiences
| depressing to be around. Often it comes with age. I'm 57, but
| have a 7 year old daughter. I love how excited she gets to
| see new things and I enjoy them with her. My parents,
| meanwhile, are what you might call "world weary." Depressing,
| and boring.
|
| Being "noble, humble, and virtuous", if that is what you call
| the author of the article, is an orthogonal property. I'm not
| really sure he is particularly notable in those respects
| though. He's not harming anyone, but he's not out there
| making the world better for others to any great degree
| either. He's just living his life.
| Decker87 wrote:
| I can't tell if this is satire. If it is, bravo, well done.
| oilostthelast wrote:
| On the contrary, I'm deadly sincere. You'd do well to read
| up on the Roman views on agriculture. It was, perhaps, the
| most respected occupation. In any case, this constant
| goading of science, the excision of religion, the
| exorcising of divinity of the soul and the blatant
| machinations which analytical minds use to crush the
| working class into their finely cut time pieces are
| abominable. All for the sake of... What? There's nobody in
| this world that could convince me there is a meaningful
| direction which all of this unremittant locomotion trends;
| other than ruin that is. And that's despite a deep desire
| to find precisely that.
|
| We're sacrificing humanity for the vain and meagre rewards
| of the flesh and conditioned from birth to tow the line.
| This man seems to have entirely insulated himself from
| that, he renders his services seemingly for the sake of it.
| Lives, very apparently, with great modesty. He does this
| despite the social pressures to do otherwise, it is quite
| probable that he sacrificed romance to avoid the capricious
| intermingling of someone else, since few are contented
| without effecting their next step on the hedonic treadmill,
| their sisyphian burden.
|
| I respect and admire the man.
| cldellow wrote:
| I read that differently from you.
|
| I think he's sad because they _do_ go to the effort of hearing
| the cuckoos, but they're rushing. They're not fully present,
| and so they don't get the full experience.
|
| He, by contrast, is very present in the things he does. That he
| doesn't choose to do many things is a different topic.
| taneq wrote:
| Is it different, though? Can you do things that deeply
| without limiting the number of things you're doing?
| riffraff wrote:
| I believe there is probably a balance to be struck.
|
| I am from (near) Rome, and am familiar with the phenomenon
| of people visiting the city over a weekend, or even worse,
| on a day trip.
|
| That literally means you cannot experience the city, you
| can at most put some checkmarks on the 3 most popular
| sights. In a month you may spend a weekend in Paris,
| Madrid, Rome and London, but I believe it would be better
| to spend a few more days in only one of those. This is
| still different from, say, spending six months in a given
| city (which is what some people do to really experience
| it!).
|
| To each their own, some people do prefer broad & shallow to
| restricted & deep, but I think these days we do tend to
| over-emphasize the shallow side.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Yeah, it's crazy. When I went to visit my cousins in
| Paris, I stayed for 19 days, and it was awesome. A friend
| said that 3 days was enough, and it would be nice to
| travel to a few other places too. Maybe enough for a
| quick glance at some tourist spots, but not to actually
| experience the city. I could have stayed for a whole
| month, or two, and would still be getting new
| experiences.
|
| As you mention, there's a good balance, and maybe 20 days
| could have been spent in 2 cities. But a weekend is very
| shallow
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I think it is. There are people who experience time
| differently due to disabilities, who simply are like
| this[1], but I it's also possible when trying to make an
| effort: Meditation is meant to give this ability: Also the
| Japanese _" ichigo ichie"_ living in the moment is based on
| the concept, and some people I know not just "practice"
| this but are incapable of multitasking - because they chose
| not to.
|
| Something can be gained by not stripping away boredom, but
| instead "savouring" the moment to see where it leads
| (essential for creativity).
|
| Then there is the idea of taking a cold shower as first
| thing in the morning to tell your subconscious to better
| not be to comfortable, and prepare "properly" for your day
| ahead (without "expectation" of comfort). Eating the same
| supper is a similar spirit and strips away the comfort and
| thinking that "one has an entitlement to something".
|
| See also the Stoic philosophy etc. ___
|
| [1] this is a truly fantastic book if anyone was looking
| for an unsolicited recommendation
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discovery_of_Slowness
|
| from the wikipedia link:
|
| > _" Slowness" -- in German, "Langsamkeit" -- had, before
| Nadolny's novel been primarily associated with mental
| retardation. In Nadolny's world, however, this seeming
| disability is in fact a powerful asset; the possessor of
| "slowness" can afford to wait, because he must wait. As a
| result, he attains victories unimaginable to the more
| "hurried" multitude. Nadolny's choice of a hero is apt in
| this regard; certainly the historical Sir John Franklin was
| never known for his mental alacrity, but beyond that, his
| "slowness" is more of a post-modern conceit. In a manner
| reminiscent of Roland Barthes' "autobiography" of Jules
| Michelet, Nadolny's Franklin is completely consistent with
| the known facts, all impeccably researched. Yet interwoven
| with the truth there is an entirely fictitious construction
| of Franklin as "slow," ranging from an imaginary ball-game
| in which the hapless John always arrives several seconds
| after the ball has departed to a fictitious re-creation of
| Franklin's efforts, at the height of Admiral Horatio
| Nelson's naval battles, to find and shoot a sniper from
| atop the masts of an enemy warship. By waiting, without
| panic, and carefully noting the angle at which the sniper's
| shots have been discharged, Franklin pinpoints his location
| and takes him down with a single shot. _
| raffraffraff wrote:
| No, I don't think you can. But most people get enjoyment
| out of life without doing anything deeply. Sometimes you
| can look down your nose at them (eg people who get their
| science "facts" from Scientific American or
| /r/ifuckinglovescience and love to quote amazing bullshit
| at you). But sometimes it makes sense to take a shallow
| interest in things because, as you say, you can't go deep
| in everything, but that shouldn't stop you from singing
| badly, failing at some side project, gardening badly and
| doing high-effort low-quality DIY at the weekend.
|
| The contrast reminds me of a fad among 20-something's back
| in the 90s, spending a year "roughing it" on a grand tour
| of some third-world country. They'd come back with a
| tattoo, weighing 60kg, tanned and full of derision for "...
| _your_ first world addiction to consumerism, man ", and
| laughing at people who take their jobs seriously. Telling
| stories of dysentry, dangerous situations, psychedelics,
| corrupt police, bribing border guards, and living on
| pennies a day. "You get to see the real <wherever>". But
| while they certainly got closer to 'grit', they never
| really blended in with the locals for the same reason that
| they couldn't appreciate poverty. It was because they knew
| they had an exit strategy. They were fake, like Carla in
| Fight Club, going to terminal cancer support groups. Like
| the rich girl in Pulp's song, Common People, hanging out in
| a rough neighborhood, renting a flat above a shop, getting
| a shitty job and pretending she never went to school. But
| she never gets it right because she knows she can call her
| Daddy any time and he'll rescue her. And true enough, every
| man-Jack of those 20-something's had a car and a career
| within months of their return, and they're rightfully
| embarrassed about the enlightened crap they gave everyone
| when they first got back. Maybe a 2 week holiday to see the
| scenery is just as good after all?
| Osmium wrote:
| I think you slightly misread the article. His sadness was for
| those people who _wanted_ to hear the cuckoos (for example,
| birdwatchers) but could not because they were in a hurry, or
| did not have the patience or the time to listen.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I think that most rich-country urbanites and suburbanites are
| spoiled for choice in things to experiences. It wasn't that
| long ago that most people hadn't traveled much further than the
| next town over, let alone another state or country. Logistics
| has gotten to the point where its practical to have most
| everything everywhere that lots of people are.
|
| Life before plenty was hard and boring by our standards. You
| can still see this in poorer, remote areas -- my experience is
| mainly with the American midwest and random foreign travel.
| There simply isn't much to do (or eat, or see), unless you're
| close to a big city.
| rdiddly wrote:
| The hedonic treadmill has a slow setting too!
| lapnitnelav wrote:
| Reminds me a lot of my uncle that had sort of taken over my
| grand-parent's farm and never really moved away from there.
|
| I can definitely empathise with his mindset, especially after
| many years in the city. Though being from a culinary-centered
| culture, the one size fits all meal is really depressing to think
| about, especially that he probably can get some really good
| produce from people in his network.
|
| Being a farmer is really something different and here in Western
| Europe (I'm going to assume there's not that much difference
| between UK and FR farming cultures), it's really a labour of
| love.
|
| I've been lucky to have some exposure to this world through my
| family and people often have the wrong perception of it and quite
| often looked down upon by people that should know better.
| canadianfella wrote:
| That's the dumbest "manage my cookies" popup I have ever seen. I
| will never click on a Guardian link again.
| [deleted]
| tomcooks wrote:
| > I've had several strokes.
|
| This sums up the article
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| [Removed by myself to obey voting result of being a bad post.
|
| Please do not beat the post's corpse any further :) Thank you.]
| patrickm129 wrote:
| Can you share what meals you enjoy making? :)
| rubidium wrote:
| " By not leaving my apartment for a year except for shopping"
| this is entirely foreign to me. Where do you live?!
| giantg2 wrote:
| Anywhere in the world due to covid the related fear/concern.
| bwship wrote:
| I live in Charleston, South Carolina. Moved here in September
| because LA was so locked down. I go out pretty much anywhere
| I want here all the time, and nothing is locked down
| whatsoever. Could not have been happier to move to somewhere
| where they don't chain up the swings and let nobody into the
| parks except the homeless.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| [Removed by myself to obey voting result of being a bad post.
|
| Please do not beat the posts' corpse any further :) Thank
| you!]
| marmot777 wrote:
| Are there outside places to hike outside? That might be a
| healthy and safe. Frankly it doesn't sound healthy to not
| leave home but you aren't the only one who's been shut in
| for a year. Millions of people.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| [Removed by myself to obey voting result of being a bad
| post.
|
| Please do not beat the posts' corpse any further :) Thank
| you.]
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| Dilution is generally the point when a specific threshold
| must be breached to succumb to infection. You can always
| where a mask, like a serious gas mask. People wi think
| you're weird, but fuck them.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Deleting all your comments after there are replies is a
| shitty thing to do.
| mkmk wrote:
| Have you given any thought on how you plan on reintegrating
| into society, and the negative health effects of this type
| of isolation? I'm curious what the balance is between covid
| risk and isolation risk.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What negsibe health effects? Plenty of people live
| isolated lives and enjoy it.
| mkmk wrote:
| Social isolation is, on a population level, associated
| with poor health outcomes. The data shows this most
| strongly in the elderly, but it's true at all ages.
|
| Of course, certain individuals may enjoy and thrive in
| isolated environments.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-
| older...
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was saying that there are people who live long lives in
| relative isolation. People in rural parts of the US and
| places like Alaska.
|
| Frankly, I believe those types of studies rreally about
| happiness with ones social life, not about ones social
| life relative to others. But that's just my take.
| coldtea wrote:
| Or think they enjoy it. People can fool themselves in
| many ways.
|
| There are however negative health effects, and have been
| studied quite well.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Are there studies that actually show that? It seem to me
| that lower life expectancy might be true in some cases
| but not all. I think it's mostly tied to ones enjoyment
| of being alone (more relative than absolute). Sure some
| people would not fare well, bit I fo believe other can be
| truly happy and do fair well. I know a guy in his 70s
| that lives pretty remotely in Alaska (and have you ever
| read one man's wilderness). I'm not saying it's for
| everyone. I am saying that it's essentially stereotyping
| to say it not for anyone.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I 'm not saying it's for everyone. I am saying that
| it's essentially stereotyping to say it not for anyone._
|
| Well, someone can smoke for 60 years, from 20 year old
| onwards, and never get cancer either. Actually, tons do
| just that. But lung cancer from smoking is not
| "stereotyping", it's a causual mechanism and a
| statistical reality.
|
| It's not like that you mechanically and deterministically
| die or your health becomes predictably worse at the
| individual level.
|
| Not to mention there's also the psychological health and
| the developmental effect.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| [Removed by myself to obey voting result of being a bad
| post.
|
| Please do not beat the post's corpse any further :) Thank
| you! :)]
| mkmk wrote:
| Very interesting response. Thanks for sharing!
|
| It would be interesting to hear if this desire for
| isolation goes away as you start spending more time
| around people (which, if I'm reading your comment
| correctly, it seems you will do). Wish you all the best,
| either way.
| rubidium wrote:
| " easiest way to not die" are you super high risk? B/c
| you've already likely deceased your chance of dying by just
| not driving compared to Covid. But if you're over 65 or
| have other major health issues then makes some semblance of
| sense.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| Where do you live? I live in Portland, Oregon. I haven't left
| the home except to go on walks around the neighborhood and to
| pick up groceries from the store (I order them online and
| they bring them out to my car) since last March. I'm
| seriously dreading the end of the pandemic. I love never
| having plans to go anywhere.
| rubidium wrote:
| You're (likely) seriously overreacting. I've lived in
| Portland. Live in Midwest now. I would've been hiking non
| stop in pandemic times should I be in PDX area.
| scubbo wrote:
| Where do you live where you _have_ been leaving your home for
| non-essential reasons? I recognize that different countries
| have had differing levels of effect from COVID, but I'm not
| aware of any that hasn't had at least _some_ impact.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| On the US west coast, and other than bars / restaurants
| being closed a few times last year, I've been out and about
| as normal.
| rocketpastsix wrote:
| Im in the southeastern United States, we never really
| totally shut down. We had a few weeks but then yea it
| pretty much ramped back up to near normal-ish levels.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| The US. While many businesses (especially restaurants)
| shuttered in 2020, most retail businesses reopened rather
| quickly though usually with a limited capacity (Home Depot,
| a massive store, was permitting something crazy small like
| 200 people in at a time here last spring and early summer).
|
| Hiking trails and state parks in CO opened up by late
| spring or summer 2020. Restaurants and bars were really the
| places most impacted from what I saw of last year in the US
| as they went a much longer stretch without allowing indoor
| dining.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Many schools in the US also went remote. I think indoor
| dining/bars and schools are the things that were
| significantly restricted more than a few weeks in the US.
|
| (work from home isn't really comparable to those I think;
| I worked from home for months and liked it, and I think
| for people that don't like it, it still isn't as
| impactful as the restrictions for restaurants and
| schools)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| True. I have a blind spot around the schools situation
| since I don't have kids of my own. I tend to forget the
| full extent of it as it didn't impact me or my immediate
| friends much (school closures) as I have few friends with
| school aged kids anymore (they're all infant to toddler
| or college aged or older).
|
| Restaurants, bars, and schools were the things most
| consistently closed. Around here, they opened up for this
| current (now finishing) school year but had frequent
| closures based on COVID cases amongst the students/staff
| with an option to stay home the whole time if desired.
| scubbo wrote:
| I live in the US too. I wasn't asking "where wasn't shut-
| down?", I was asking "where was it _safe and responsible_
| to leave your home for non-essential reasons?". Just
| because a facility has opened, does not magically make it
| safe to attend.
| greshario wrote:
| I live in a small city in Vietnam. There have been about
| four weeks of lockdown in the past year, besides that my
| life has been pretty much normal, dinner parties,
| festivals, hiking, island hopping. I've traveled a lot
| around Vietnam over the past year, there's so much to see
| here.
|
| The only thing that's really changed is that there are no
| foreign tourists, but the local tourists seem to be making
| up for it.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Midwest US. Restaurants and "non essential" businesses were
| closed here for a little while but everything reopened
| (with some capacity limitations) by about June 2020.
| Supermarkets, department stores such as Target, Walmart,
| never closed.
|
| I've been working from home but going shopping, going to
| the gym, etc. as normal since the reopening last June. I
| never was much for eating at restaurants but they have been
| open also.
|
| Other places in the US were far more locked down. I'm glad
| I don't live there.
| ufmace wrote:
| I'm a little sad that it's removed. Votes on HN are a fickle
| beast, a popularity contest. IMO, it's usually worth saying
| what you really think even if it might not be received too
| well. Especially if it's a unique and genuine perspective,
| rather than spam or mindless snark. IMO, if you've never been
| downvoted to -4, you've probably never said anything really
| interesting either.
| scjr wrote:
| I feel like the truely happy aren't writing articles about how
| happy they are. Happiness in this way is a hidden thing amongst
| us.
| auslegung wrote:
| This guy is a saint. To have that kind of contentment and peace
| is the goal of most religions. Honestly I'd like to hear more of
| his life, would love to talk to him.
| sxv wrote:
| You may enjoy this video (and others in the series) which had a
| similar flavor: Appalachian Man interview-Elmer,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqwy0dPRVOw
| mosdave wrote:
| thanks for this
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| Come and visit Wales, specifically Mid-Wales, like say
| Lampeter, or Newcastle Emlyn. Go to a pub in the evening and
| have a chat to some of the local farmers, if you buy the beer,
| they'll be chatty enough.
| teleforce wrote:
| Probably being a shepherd has something to do with that. It is
| interesting to note that all the prophets of Abrahamic
| religions have been a shepherd at one point in their life, for
| examples the most popular ones namely Moses, Jesus and Muhammad
| were all once shepherds.
| marmot777 wrote:
| Yes, he kind of reminds me of the aesthetics in India and
| elsewhere. Respect.
| [deleted]
| scubbo wrote:
| (In the interests of educating, not of "dunking") I suspect
| you mean ascetic? The difference is explained
| [here](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-
| play/aesthetic-vs-a...).
|
| (Of course, it's also possible that that was just an
| autocorrection failure)
| giantg2 wrote:
| I feel like my could hear that kind of contentment. But of
| course there are property taxes and the like. It's easy to lose
| what you have and what makes you happy. I want land, but will
| never get it.
| IkmoIkmo wrote:
| Glad it works for him, sounds terribly boring to eat the same
| supper every day, and be so religious and stubborn about it, too.
| Imagine living your entire life and not having enjoyed Indian
| food, but only had the same meal every day, when you have a
| choice...
|
| Being content with what you have is great, but arbitrarily
| avoiding new experiences, even those at small cost (e.g. trying
| an Indian lentils recipe) is probably the biggest regret
| maximiser I can think of, for me personally.
|
| All the other stuff about enjoying nature, his surroundings etc,
| is great of course. But I don't see how it's mutually exclusive
| with some of the other things (like trying different foods
| worldwide nature + worldwide culture has to offer) that feel more
| like a stubborn pride to be able to say 'look how down to earth I
| am, compared with you fancy city folk'.
| faichai wrote:
| I'm not trying to be mean, but there is a chance this guy has
| some deep anxiety and self-esteem issues which means he doesn't
| even think to look outside of his comfort zone. Routine is a way
| of not stressing yourself out with newness and the possibility
| you might not cope, and fail.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| If he is happy and content, why would he want to leave his
| comfort zone? Why does that denote some mental flaw? You could
| just as easily say that those who feel the need to challenge
| themselves outside of their comfort zone suffer from some deep-
| seeded inadequacy that they are trying to fulfill.
| throwawayhermit wrote:
| > I'm not trying to be mean, but there is a chance this guy has
| some deep anxiety and self-esteem issues which means he doesn't
| even think to look outside of his comfort zone.
|
| As a person with some anxiety and (what I have diagnosed in
| myself as underlying) self-esteem issues, this is something
| that I have been thinking about.
|
| People around me tend to think that "oh, throwawayhermit is
| just a bit of hermit and likes to be on their own", which is
| partially true and my introvertedness needs time on its own.
| But on the other hand, a big part of my closing off from others
| is anxiety and self-esteem issues, which I presume are not that
| easy to spot at first when a person "seems confident and well
| off".
|
| So, that has got me thinking, how many of the people closing
| themselves off from others are doing it because they are happy
| that way and how many are hiding from issues/fears (regardless
| whether they realize it themselves or not)?
|
| > Routine is a way of not stressing yourself out with newness
| and the possibility you might not cope, and fail.
|
| I feel that there is a place for routines. They can give you
| space to focus on something that actually matters, teach you
| mental discipline and give you some kind inner peace from not
| constantly searching for new and shiny things.
| guerrilla wrote:
| There's no evidence of anxiety or self-esteem issues in the
| article at all though, so what are you basing this on? It
| specifically says he's happy, which people with those problems
| generally aren't. As an extremely cynical person, I have to say
| I think you're being way too cynical.
| Snoogans775 wrote:
| This is a shoe-in for membership in the Dull Men's Club
|
| https://www.dullmensclub.com/
| avaldes wrote:
| >4. Is the DMC a movement? > >No. We prefer to stay put.
|
| Gave me a good chuckle.
| lmm wrote:
| How incredibly small-minded.
|
| I respect people who've tried something and decided it's not for
| them. But to never even try a different kind of food? I suspect
| it's less that he's found what he likes and more that he's scared
| he'd find out he actually liked something else better, and has
| wasted those 10 years.
| noofen wrote:
| > How incredibly small-minded.
|
| How incredibly patronizing.
|
| Have you considered that people have different tastes?
| Personally, I hate eating; if I could take a pill to replace
| all my nutrition needs, I would in a heartbeat, even if it
| costs _more_ than my current dietary expenses.
| lmm wrote:
| > Have you considered that people have different tastes?
|
| Yes. If he'd tried eating a variety of foods and hated it,
| I'd say fair enough. But how can you possibly know something
| like that without having tried it? To just dismiss so much of
| human experience without even considering it is honestly
| tragic.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| As Proust put it in his somewhat overused but in this case
| relevant quote "The real voyage of discovery consists, not
| in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes".
| Understanding the human experience is first and foremost
| learning introspection, not tasting thousands of different
| fruits. Everything you can learn about the human experience
| is probably somewhere in that little valley where the man
| lives already.
| slothtrop wrote:
| I think it's in reference to the rationalizations made in the
| article. It's perfectly sufficient to have preferences. But
| the author makes irrational projections about what change
| might be like to justify his choice.
|
| I think "stick with what you know" can be a sound strategy if
| you are loss-averse and generally content.
| auslegung wrote:
| Have you tried Soylent? https://soylent.com/
| s-lambert wrote:
| You still need to eat soylent and chugging it down is
| unpleasant at best.
| smabie wrote:
| I mean soylent is pretty easy
| cogman10 wrote:
| The Welsh live a different way of life. This guy's attitude is
| far from unique. A bunch of people live in the same town, with
| the same job their great great great grandparents worked, that
| rarely travel more than 10 miles away.
|
| Don't knock it, though, there's something to be said about this
| level of extreme stability. It simplifies a lot of life's
| worries.
| robotmay wrote:
| It's something I never understood until I moved to Wales, and
| now I do understand, and I think it's one of the most
| admirable characteristics of the people here.
|
| You can go out in the valleys right now and ask someone, ~40
| years after the mines were shut, whether they'd want the
| mines back. And a significant proportion would say yes
| without pausing.
|
| I went to university with a guy who turned around to me one
| day and said "I never want to leave the Rhondda". Not sure
| what he does with his design degree up that way but I'm sure
| he's happy.
|
| There's a great tie to family and friends and where you live,
| here, which has somewhat died out in the south of England. I
| hope it survives even as more travel to experience things
| elsewhere. Of course the south of Wales does have one
| advantage that was taken from elsewhere, and that's that it's
| possible to live cheaply in the valleys and commute into the
| cities by train for work, so it's possible to do both here. I
| feel like England lost this somewhat with the Beeching report
| ripping half the rural railways out.
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| I don't think that many people want the mines back tbh.
| Easy to get and simple jobs maybe, but I don't know anyone
| who'd want the mines back. Anecdata I know. Wife's family
| is a mining family and I've lived and worked in South Wales
| for a while now.
| robotmay wrote:
| Yeah I think it's less the mines themselves and more
| having guaranteed employment, and the camaraderie of
| working together in such a way. There aren't many
| professions that employ entire towns. You are right
| though, in that the attitude has changed - I think those
| who were alive at the time of the mine closures likely
| see it differently from those who have never known it. In
| that aspect it has changed since I first moved here, as
| that generation who grew up with the mines open has aged
| or passed away.
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| That sounds about right. My wifes side is a mining family
| and several of the men died young, not from accidents,
| but from lung issues so that potentially colours it a
| bit. On the tech side of things, I do see a lot of people
| who want 'better' jobs and there's often a lot of
| frustration in start-up folks I know that the Senydd just
| want call center or manufacturing jobs.
| robotmay wrote:
| Yeah it's a bit of a shame that there's not more
| investment into tech startups here. Bristol seems to
| attract much more of that scene. Swansea seems to have
| more than Cardiff, possibly because it's slightly further
| from Bristol. I think there's pretty good support for
| starting your own small business here, but there's a bit
| of a gap after that which I imagine restricts the
| opportunities somewhat.
| herbturbo wrote:
| Dude just loves his life. Doesn't feel like he needs anything
| else. Lucky him I say.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think I would be more worried about the nutrient diversity
| and serious deficiencies of vitamins and minerals for having
| the same meal for 10 years.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Fiber seems to be the main thing he's missing (typical for a
| British diet). Other than that, he's eating a pretty well
| balanced meal. Between the fish, bread, and fruit, you end up
| with most nutrients you need.
| rubidium wrote:
| Aw ya poor nutrients and mineralogy be out of tune. Worry is
| your life unless you decide not to.
| darkerside wrote:
| How incredibly ironic
| seaknoll wrote:
| Maybe food just isn't that important to him as anything but
| sustenance. He sounds like a very kind and content person.
| and0rskr wrote:
| This article hit home to me.
|
| I married into a traditional small town Indian family last year.
|
| One of the biggest idealogical challenges I've faced is the
| duality of ambition. My family in law live similar to the farmer.
| Low entropy. I know where they will be every day every 15
| minutes, what they will eat, with little exception.
|
| It's such a stark contrast to my personal life, which has been
| characterized by the constant need to improve, challenge, and
| adapt. I don't know what I'll be doing 15 minutes from now let
| alone 2:00 - 2:15 a year from now.
|
| I personally am not an absolutist, and so I don't think there's a
| particular lifestyle that is wrong or right, but it's an salient
| dichotomy and something that I've found challenging to reconcile
| in practice.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| There is value in finding your place in life and being content
| with it. Yes, you might be able to change it, perhaps to conform
| to more traditional standards of 'success', but why bother if
| you're happy as you are?
|
| If we humans optimize by happiness, then we should have nothing
| but envy for a life like Wilf Davies leads.
| megablast wrote:
| Sure, but you don't do it by never leaving home and never
| trying anything differently.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| That is according to your definition of "living life and
| being happy". The person in the article is clearly happy and
| has found his place in the world that he's happy with. For
| that, he has found the thing most people miss out on or just
| don't get. Leaving home just for the sake of it, more so if
| you're just happy wherever you are is just wasting time.
|
| I would like to travel the world because that would give me
| the happiness this person has found just by staying where he
| is. That doesn't mean he should change his way because my
| definition of being happy is different that his.
| FractalParadigm wrote:
| I came to this realization in university - I love software, I
| love writing programs and solving problems, but I really don't
| love office work or the idea of sitting at a desk all day. I
| dropped out of a software engineering program to work on a
| factory floor, a decision I haven't regret once in five years
| (even if my parents would consider me a failure). The hours are
| good, the wage is good, benefits are good, I get to come in
| stress-free and leave 8 hours later in the same cheery mood. I
| tried stints in "more successful" fields like in-house software
| or sales teams, but there was just something about it I
| loathed. To the outside world I'm just some deadbeat small-town
| factory worker, but I don't think I could make my life any
| happier or more enjoyable if I tried.
| rambambram wrote:
| Good to read this. I'm a software developer working on my own
| projects, and to still have some income in the first years I
| decided to work as a garbage man. It's so wonderful. Meeting
| different kinds of people all the time, doing physical work
| (more flirting with women during my workday haha), and when I
| get home I'm physically tired but mentally prepared to write
| another software module. Perfect fit, this mix of
| mentally/creative work and physical/'stupid' work. Indeed,
| for the outside world I'm also a deadbeat (although they
| never say out loud). But my real smile makes them doubt their
| selves, makes them even envious sometimes. Such is the power
| of making choices for yourself.
| rhapsodic wrote:
| > Indeed, for the outside world I'm also a deadbeat
| (although they never say out loud).
|
| I don't know what the slang term "deadbeat" means in your
| culture, but in mine, it would not be applied to someone
| because they worked as a garbage man.
| lostcolony wrote:
| I can relate a little bit; early on I worked a job where I
| basically just wiped computers and confirmed they were
| working, then loaded them on pallets. It was purely physical
| work (lift a computer, take it to a desk, connect it, power
| it on, boot to a CD, confirm HD was wiping, go to one that
| had finished, pop out CD, shut down, disconnect, carry to
| pallet), in a hot warehouse, but the whole time I did it I
| felt good.
| natmaka wrote:
| There is a huge satisfaction, or maybe even a need, to do
| something then feel the patent and "finished" result of our
| action.
|
| In most occupations we are a cog in some huge machine
| working in a way forbidding us to enjoy this feeling.
| berkes wrote:
| It is not always possible, but as a senior software
| developer, I try to keep the feeling of 'finished' in my
| team. It is, by far, the most important piece in keeping
| a team happy, productive, cooperating and improving.
|
| Definition of done, demo's, releaseparties, well-defined
| delivery requirements, chopping up tasks, user stories,
| etc. All help a lot here. But all require effort to
| maintain, establish and improve. Continously and
| significant effort.
| natmaka wrote:
| The curse is that upper management perceives this effort
| but doesn't perceive its effect. Even from the common
| fundamental perspective (the enterprise has to optimize,
| to dissipate as few resources as possible in order to
| reach the more financially beneficial and durable state)
| this effort is justified, however as they don't know its
| real impact...
| lostcolony wrote:
| So I've actually never cared much for release parties. I
| think because by that point the work is 'done', and I'm
| ready to move on. Plus, if upper management is involved,
| it feels very parasitical ("let me attach myself to this
| launch"), and if they aren't it feels unnecessary (we
| know we did a good job). And the timing is always
| problematic; if it's literally as we release it feels
| disingenuous just knowing that if anything goes wrong the
| team has to step away from any sort of party (but not
| upper management, or others who glommed on), and if it's
| after the fact I've mentally moved on.
|
| That said, all the other things are must haves, not just
| because of morale but because of effectiveness. Things
| don't get done without definitions of done, things don't
| get proper feedback and iteration without demos, etc.
| berkes wrote:
| A friend of my parents was a professor, lecturer and author
| in biology. One day, he was fed up and became a Tram Driver.
|
| I'll never forget how he explained the bliss of coming home,
| dropping your company-bag in the hallway only to pick it up
| next day before going to work. How he never had to read up on
| recent insights in the field of driving a tram on weekends.
| How he was finding joy in reading biology-books in the
| evenings, free of any pressure, again.
|
| (If this sounds denigrating to a tram driver, it is not meant
| as such, at all)
| hzay wrote:
| Wow, I didn't expect to find you on HN. What do you work on
| in the factory?
| VLM wrote:
| People use the same word "team" to describe both
| hypercompetitive groups of mutual enemies playing a zero sum
| game, and happy groups of cooperating people striving for a
| common goal.
|
| Usually the first group is seen as more socially acceptable
| and usually makes more money, but the second group almost
| always has a superior quality of life.
|
| Coworkers and the relationship with them matter. Its almost
| never talked about.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I wish I had made that decision when I could. I'm over 20
| years into software development and every few years I try to
| get out of it, but most places won't hire someone with
| professional experience because they're scared you'll quit,
| and that problem just compounds itself over time. Instead I
| now work software for a few years on, then take a year off.
| During the working years life is a real stress, constantly
| thinking about work stuff, even on my off-hours. I can only
| dream of having a job that I could just switch off at the end
| of the day. Or - better yet - a guaranteed basic income so I
| didn't have to work doing something that exhausts me so
| thoroughly.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Have you tried moving into a related field, such as
| computer security (ie pentesting), network administration,
| etc?
| vilts wrote:
| I don't see a reason why any time is too late to get out. I
| was in software development and sysadmin field for about 15
| years. Then started hand engraving (got quite good at it)
| and now I'm a full time CNC machine shop and growing
| steadily. Loving (almost) every day of it. Also went to
| college to study mechanical engineering. Of course being
| your own boss usually doesn't let you switch off at the end
| of the day, but that was just the choice I made for myself.
|
| I believe I could get back to IT if I really wanted to, or
| needed to. Would need few months of getting up to date with
| all latest developments and living in the "land of the
| unicorns" I don't think getting well paying job would be a
| problem.
| watermelon59 wrote:
| How old were you when you went back to university? I've
| been wanting to do something like that but I feel like at
| 33 that's too late.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Any advice for making a transition like that?
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Look for work in an industry with demand. In US that would
| be electricians and plumbers. If you take the time to get
| certified, no one will doubt your sincere interest. I don't
| think anyway.
|
| You could always start your own business too.
| casefields wrote:
| You still can! You just need to find someone willing to
| give you a shot. If you're financially able to, definitely
| tell them your story and offer to work at a reduced
| "probationary pay" for some months to show you're dead
| serious.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| My happiest period with relation to work was similar,
| laborious but satisfying because I got something done every
| day and didn't have to think about it after work. When you're
| writing software, it's hard to turn off the switch (I think
| _especially_ if you find software development itself to be an
| interesting subject) when you leave the office. It 's hard to
| not think about the design, the thing you'll do tomorrow,
| continue pondering that failed test case or new bug report
| into the evening. I only really got past that myself by
| introducing a significant break between work and the rest of
| my day with exercise in the 1-3 hours after work. But that's
| a rather high cost for anyone with a family.
| nly wrote:
| Working for a big software company (thousands of software
| engineers under one roof) will make that off switch work
| again. You'll leave the office and instantly not care or
| think about anything you do until you cross the threshold
| the next morning.
|
| This is the positive side (along with the salary) of being
| a tiny cog with no power to influence broader design
| decisions.
| watermelon59 wrote:
| That's hasn't been my experience at all.
|
| Worked at Microsoft and now I'm at one of the big AAA
| game companies (working on their online services side,
| not games directly) and both were/are very stressful.
| High expectations of commitment and personal investment
| in what I do.
| chubbyish wrote:
| Same here. I love software but also hate it. Too many
| decisions.
|
| During lockdown I relish the opportunity to clean the house
| and cook because they are straightforward tasks where there
| are clear goals and I always achieve success.
|
| Software for me these days involves too much despair and
| worry over whether things are done the right way.
| eloff wrote:
| You'll never find the right way. But there are lot's of
| ways that are good enough - you can learn to get
| satisfaction in a good enough solution and move on.
|
| And if you got it wrong, and it wasn't good enough, you
| can take another stab at it later with the wisdom gained
| meanwhile.
| tomcam wrote:
| That is a fantastic life as far as I'm concerned.
| dilawar wrote:
| I mostly work at desk. I feel really good whole day if I had
| sweat in the morning even while working with PHP (cycling for
| a couple of hours). I was wondering if sweating at the job
| has something to do with the satisfaction.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| I respect your choice tremendously. On the other hand, on
| plan on retiring in 2-4 more years and devoting myself to
| dangerous and obviously excellent adventures which will
| likely have me dead by 50!
|
| I'm rationalizing my decision to stick it out just a bit
| longer, but I have zero fucks left. I'd rather dig ditches
| than write software for one of the big companies at this
| point, but I'm not digging ditches.
| doublejay1999 wrote:
| Heart warming story. MUch respect.
| shimonabi wrote:
| That is all good and well, but nowadays not everyone can get
| a decent factory job.
|
| When I didn't have my CS degree finished and no IT
| experience, I've applied to thousands of factory and
| warehouse jobs and got nowhere. I only got a curier job
| through a family connection.
| [deleted]
| medium_burrito wrote:
| one must imagine Sisyphus happy
| matwood wrote:
| On a long enough time scale all the tasks we do are futile.
| Either we find contentment and purpose in the task itself or
| we live a miserable life.
|
| You know that you have reached a level of understanding that
| if you ever did get the boulder to the top, you'd push it
| back down.
| timeon wrote:
| Some people do enjoy grass mowing.
| nemo44x wrote:
| When we bought a home, mowing the lawn became my
| responsibility. I knew I could look at it as a chore that
| needs to be done but eventually a task that annoys me and
| could make me bitter about the whole thing.
|
| So I decided to learn all I could about lawn maintenance,
| which tools I need, and how to use them. And it became a
| point of pride for me and a challenge rather than a chore.
|
| So mowing the lawn, the very act of it, is now a joy and
| something I look forward to. All my work (de-thatching,
| aerating, seeding, fertilizing, watering, pH balancing,
| edging, etc) pays off when I mow the lawn now and it makes
| mowing something I look forward to and never have to be
| bothered to do.
|
| It was a shabby lawn when I took it over and now it's a
| thick, lush carpet that I enjoy very much.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Nice idea. There's a moral there somewhere.
| matwood wrote:
| Taking an hour once/week over the summer to do the yard is
| actually very relaxing. Put a podcast on or music and shut
| out the world for awhile. When done, it's a great physical
| reward of a completed job.
| marmot777 wrote:
| Well said.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I agree. If you don't want or like this person's life, more
| power to you. But here is someone who works hard and finds
| satisfaction and enjoyment in what they do. I hope we can all
| be so lucky.
| nly wrote:
| > I hear London is a place best avoided. I think living in a city
| would be terrible - people living on top of one another in great
| tower blocks
|
| His voice of London seems to be relatively naive, since there are
| relatively few what I would call 'great tower blocks' here.
| momirlan wrote:
| What he needs is a blog
| marmot777 wrote:
| A buddy of mine has rice and beans nearly every dinner though he
| knows how to cook variations so it's a surprisingly tasty diet.
|
| I'm surprised the guy in the article could go decades without
| eating any veggies but his diet has clearly worked for him.
|
| The strokes could just be genetics and/or old age catching up.
| jkepler wrote:
| > I'm surprised the guy in the article could go decades without
| eating any veggies ...
|
| Doesn't he eat a whole onion every night? Onions are vegetables
| right?
|
| I would agree it sounds like a lack of green veggies, though,
| if that's what you meant.
| kohanz wrote:
| > but his diet has clearly worked for him.
|
| Is it clear, given the multiple strokes? We don't know with
| certainty whether the diet was a significant factor, but it's
| possible.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I know of people who do not eat veggies an have lived into
| their 70s before they have a stroke. The are also people who
| have strokes or other problems before 70 even if they eat
| their veggies. I fully expect that my high stress and
| sedentary life of a software developer will kill me long
| before 70. Such are the trade offs of a well paying
| profession.
| watwut wrote:
| Vegetables lowers the chance of stroke. They are not
| supposed to completely prevent it. There are many more
| factors that go into whether you get stroke. But, vegetable
| intake makes yours blood pressure go down somewhat and make
| you less likely to have stroke.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| You must be young if you think that dying in your 60's is a
| long, well lived life. The retirement age is around 65
| (depending on where you live and work).
|
| Surely you want some time to live life without the
| obligations of work? Otherwise what is it all for?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| As I have gotten older and felt the speed-up in the
| passage of time, I realize a few years one way or the
| other won't matter. You'll reach the end of your time
| before you know it either way. The key is to be
| satisified with your life now, not waiting for some
| "later" that will be over and done with far too quickly.
| refactor_master wrote:
| I can definitely feel when I break out of the routine
| once in a while. A weekend feels like an entire week. Now
| with corona and winter I can barely recall what I've done
| for the last 6 months, if not just work.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >I fully expect that my high stress and sedentary life of a
| software developer will kill me long before 70.
|
| You may need to negotiate better terms for yourself if you
| work in the most financially rewarding field of work in the
| world, maybe the history of the world, and you can't find
| the time to exercise or de stress.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Lol this is not the most financially rewarding. There are
| plenty of other fields that have higher average salaries.
| I don't even make $100k.
| joegahona wrote:
| He said he has an onion every day.
| chubbyish wrote:
| Humans ate only meat for 2 million years.
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-humans-ate...
| caturopath wrote:
| No mutton, no malvern?
| ericls wrote:
| Such a happy man
| lacker wrote:
| Wow, he eats a whole onion at dinner every day? That seems like a
| lot of onion to eat! I wonder how he cooks his onion.
| jhomedall wrote:
| If you roast an onion for long enough, the flavor completely
| changes and it becomes quite sweet.
|
| See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV9spqCzSkQ or
| https://joythebaker.com/2015/01/whole-roasted-onions/
|
| Garlic can be roasted in similar manner.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I would assume it's fried or cooked with his other food. Eating
| a whole onion is pretty hard on the stomach.
| exciteabletom wrote:
| Onions are quite nice to eat raw like an apple. The perfect
| combination of spicy and sweet.
| jkepler wrote:
| Tor, the onion router, perfect combination of spicy and
| sweet, as long as the TCP/IP packets are raw.
| fridif wrote:
| If this is HN's opinion on onions, I now know how React got
| so undeservedly popular.
| chrischattin wrote:
| That was a publicity campaign by Facebook. It never would
| have grown organically from the open source community
| because it solves a problem only a handful of companies on
| the planet have - to offload processing power to the
| client.
| asciimov wrote:
| A big onion in the UK is most likely not the same as a big
| onion in the US.
| alibarber wrote:
| "A lot of people, locals and birdwatchers, come here wanting to
| hear the cuckoo, but they don't stop long enough; sometimes they
| don't even leave their cars. This makes me feel so sad that I
| actually cry a bit; it pains me that others don't get to enjoy
| it."
|
| Probably the most inspiring two sentences I've read in years.
| There's good in the world.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| My partner was horrified to learn that I ate the same breakfast
| pretty much every morning for something like five or six years
| when I was a teenager. I always had cereal with milk. If I was
| extra hungry, I would have a second helping. Very rarely, I would
| try a different cereal brand, but I would always gravitate back
| to the same one.
|
| The funny thing is that at the time, I thought nothing of it! It
| was just a part of my morning routine, not a sign of poverty or
| an unusual personality. I still don't think it's unusual at all,
| many people eat the same breakfast every day.
|
| Yet, this _horrifies_ her. She cooks a different breakfast every
| morning and refuses to eat leftovers from yesterday. I never had
| a problem eating something my Mom cooked on the weekend for three
| or four days in a row. Schnitzel is delicious for breakfast,
| lunch, and dinner!
| nly wrote:
| I'm 35 and pretty much have the same cereal for breakfast every
| week day. It's not even a wholesome cereal. Sometimes I'll mix
| it up and have toast.
|
| People have very different ideas of what meals should be.
|
| While we have similar ideas about breakfast, my girlfriend
| makes large ish but quick cooked meals for lunch, whereas for
| me lunch is always a light meal like a sandwich and a cup of
| tea. Dinner is the main event for me, a reward for a day's work
| and a way to unwind, whereas to her it's just to tide you over
| until bedtime. Living together reveals these things.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I'm a foodie, and still, I eat cereal with milk, for the
| straightforward reason that I just don't feel like cooking or
| doing any extra effort at 7 AM.
|
| Of course, if I'm at a hotel, I storm the buffet and try all
| kinds of things. Surely my breakfasts would be much more
| creative if I had a cook and a butler.
| pkorzeniewski wrote:
| I've "rediscovered" cereal with milk after a long time and it
| became my favourite "default" breakfast - fast to prepare,
| nutritious, healthy (if you choose the right cereal) and easy
| to diversify.
|
| I highly recommend a YouTube channel called Cereal Time TV
| [1] where you can find reviews of old and new cereals - I
| don't even know how I found this channel but after watching
| dozens of videos about old cereals I thought to myself "man,
| I want some!" so I bought a pack of cereals that I remembered
| from my childhood and that's how it started, I now eat cereal
| with milk almost everyday :-)
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/MrGabeFonseca
| [deleted]
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I did the same thing when I was an amateur weightlifter. Granted,
| I only did it for about 2 years, but the level of peace it
| brought was real, especially since it made it way easier to keep
| track of calorie and macronutrient intake, which is important in
| weightlifting.
| lifeformed wrote:
| No vegetables?
| seaknoll wrote:
| Doesn't the onion count?
| timeon wrote:
| And baked beans.
|
| Also there may be some wheat in those few biscuits.
| justapassenger wrote:
| I often envy people like him.
|
| Working in tech it's very hard not to get lost in rat race and
| always go for more money, more knowledge, more everything. I'm
| actively trying to avoid it, but it gets to me as well. And most
| of my friends think I'm weird that I don't want to get one more
| promotion or why I don't want to push myself outside of my
| comfort zone. I'm fine where I am.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you don't at least pretend you want a promotion, you might
| be fired. It almost happened to me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes, that can happen, but it entirely depends on where you
| work. Some employers are fine with letting people stay at a
| level if that's what they want. Of course their salary tends
| to stay pretty constant too in that case, you'll basically
| just get COL raises.
| p1mrx wrote:
| I was basically doing that in tech: working for food and a
| place to be. It was like living in a VM. After 2020 and 14
| months of isolation, I'm retiring. Need to find a real place.
| float4 wrote:
| I'm about to start working (in tech) soon, and I know the
| exact same thing will happen to me.
|
| Just don't know what to do instead.
| paxys wrote:
| Here's an interesting thought experiment - would you (and
| everyone else here) have the same reaction to this article if it
| was written by a North Korean farmer who was perfectly happy with
| life being in the exact same situation as this Welsh one?
|
| Would he still be "enlightened" and "content" or brainwashed,
| oppressed and a victim of propaganda?
| c3534l wrote:
| You mean if there was a strong implication that there wasn't a
| genuine choice, but an adaptation to hardship brought on by
| human rights abuses and an authoritarian government? Call me
| hypocritical, but no. I don't think I'd have the same reaction.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| - You are living a certain life and don't know a different
| world exists
|
| - You are living a certain life and don't have the means nor
| the inclination to change it
|
| - You are living a certain life, can probably strive for
| something more, but choose not to
|
| Can people be equally happy/content in all these situations?
| MattRix wrote:
| You can't just boil an entire life down to a single metric
| like being happy/content. Many things (like freedom) may
| even decrease "happiness" yet also have deeper value.
| bombcar wrote:
| People have a range of "happiness" - in other words they can
| look at X and say "I think I could be happy doing that" and
| hold that the person truly is happy.
|
| But if it is outside their range they will adamantly refuse to
| believe the person could truly be happy.
| greshario wrote:
| Well, my reaction to this one is suspicion that it sounds a
| little too perfect and either the farmer is idealizing his life
| or the journalist has taken editorial liberties.. so, maybe?
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| Journalists love to craft articles around some narrative
| theme.
|
| Edit: I'm talking about consistency within the article and a
| "focus on the subject" stance. If the author wants to present
| the farmers happiness, that's what they're going to frame the
| whole piece on.
| ricktdotorg wrote:
| mini quote from a good article about the Guardian's
| Experience column works:
|
| > [Our writers] tend to interview the subject and then work
| with them to tell their story in their own words.
|
| via https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2021/feb/15/expe
| rienc...
| greshario wrote:
| > work with them to tell their story
|
| Hmmm... Suspicioun that this is heavily editorialized
| intensifies.
| fencepost wrote:
| _suspicion of editorializing_
|
| Not editorialized, but likely transcribed from one or
| more interviews and the interviewee and interviewer edit
| lightly.
|
| There are people who couldn't write something like that
| given weeks but get them to start talking and they do a
| marvelous job. Drawing that out of people is one of the
| things that marks good interviewers.
| greshario wrote:
| I do mean editorialized:
|
| > To present an opinion in the guise of an objective
| report.
|
| As in, I'm suspicious that the words the farmer spoke
| were heavily edited by the journalist before being
| published to better fit the narrative.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I don't know that a journalist was involved in this. An
| editor may have been but this just appears to be a letter-to-
| the-editor or commentary submission
| greshario wrote:
| It's written by this woman, who calls herself a "pop
| philosopher". Her name is at the bottom of the article:
|
| https://storyterrace.com/kiran-sidhu/
| nkozyra wrote:
| "As told to" typically means she simply compiled what he
| told her. The byline is his.
| alex_g wrote:
| No because he can leave if he wanted to. He stresses that- if
| someone gave him $2 million he would stay.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| It seems weirder to me that someone in a country like the UK
| would do this then someone in a country with less availability
| of foods but I don't see that as an issue of enlightenment or
| brainwashing.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Given my own take[1], I was confused as you explained your
| thought experiment because I think I'd trust its sincerity
| _more_ from a North Korean farmer.
|
| Edit to clarify: not because I'm dismissing the oppressive
| dictatorship but because I think it's more likely a rando
| person farming in North Korea likely has less exposure to a
| larger world that might make them happy, and less motivation to
| justify their self-isolation with denial.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27083285
| oconnor663 wrote:
| I've seen people have the exact opposite reaction to this same
| article. ("If this was a foreigner from a poor country, would
| you still think he was boring and sad?") So much of our lives
| are just the stories we choose to tell about them.
| bourgwaletariat wrote:
| I remember traveling around some islands with a new
| acquaintance on his own journey. I remember him saying, "It's
| amazing and romantic. Most of the folks here have never left.
| All they need is right here."
|
| Fast forward a day.
|
| "Americans are idiots because they never leave America. Most of
| them don't even have a passport."
|
| Okay.
| throwaway_kufu wrote:
| I have been listening to an audio book, Man's Search for
| Meaning, written by Viktor E. Frankl a neurologist,
| psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.
|
| Like many books written of experiences involving extreme
| suffering and trauma it's extremely powerful and I tend to have
| to stop just to contemplate and dwell on certain passages or
| just sentences. I like your "thought experiment" as it's not
| unlike how I go about reflecting on these kinds of books.
|
| Frankl talks about being on a train being moved from one camp
| to another, and upon seeing there were no chimneys at this new
| camp there was a silent celebration among the prisoners. For
| whatever inhumane reason, that night the newly arrived
| prisoners were made to stand (I believe naked) throughout the
| whole night in the freezing cold. Yet they were all still
| greatful not to be at Auschwitz or another camp with chimneys.
| There is a separate passage where he describes the types of
| prisoners, the last he describes are those who had lost all
| meaning, spirit and would walk up to and grab the electric
| fence.
|
| I can't tell you how much heart it gives me to think of the
| human spirit in these conditions that can't be broken. It's
| very similar to some of the slave narratives I read, and on
| occasion coming across passages with descriptions of slaves on
| a plantation celebrating the opportunity to sing and dance
| together around a fire at night. I have shared with others I
| wish if push came to shove I'd have that type of spirit, to
| your point about brainwashing, I've received similar responses
| that I am romanticizing it and even that my mental impressions
| reflect racism, but The reality is I could have pointed to many
| other counter examples from my readings like the prisoners that
| lost meaning and grabbed the fence, but for better or worse
| that doesn't lift my spirits and it's not the examples I tend
| to pass on.
|
| I often ask myself what I think I would do in a camp or on a
| plantation, what actions would make me the most proud and if I
| would have the courage and spirit to make them, but I never
| pretend to know what I would actually do and I'd never once
| judged the actions of any of them...even the most deplorable
| acts, like the prisoners that worked on behalf of the guards
| for the slightest of comforts. Even more challenging is trying
| to put myself in the shoes of some young German or Southerner
| born into and inheriting the evils of these situations, it's a
| lot easier to say what I hope I would do, but just the same I
| have to admit no one knows what they would do, after all how
| many people do you really encounter that are willing to go
| against the grain rather than fall in line much less when it
| means death?
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a
| few biscuits at the end. For lunch I have a pear, an orange and
| four sandwiches with paste. But I allow myself a bit more
| variety; I'll sometimes have soup if it's cold.
|
| This would be a great meal for a North Korean farmer. If I read
| this same article by a North Korean farmer, it would either
| involve a different food listed, or they'd probably be lying
| about being a North Korean farmer.
|
| > A UN assessment found North Koreans had been surviving on
| just 300g (10.5 oz) of food a day so far this year.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48150205
| cptaj wrote:
| Of course I wouldn't have the same reaction.
|
| North Korea is a brutal dictatorship. What are you trying to
| imply with the question? That brutal dictatorships are not so
| bad an we've been lied to? Do you live or have you ever spent
| some time in one? Cause I do and I think people defending
| dictatorships deserve a swift kick in the nuts.
| lacker wrote:
| I would believe a North Korean farmer even more, that he was
| content with this life. A North Korean farmer who has eaten the
| same dinner every day for the last ten years is doing pretty
| well - it would mean they have avoided many of the North Korean
| famines and prison camps.
| fridif wrote:
| > even on Christmas Day: two pieces of fish, one big onion, an
| egg, baked beans and a few biscuits at the end
|
| > I've had several strokes
| alashley wrote:
| I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem like any of that meal in
| moderation could predispose someone to a stroke?
| fridif wrote:
| I think you missed the part where he said he eats nothing
| else except some fruit and sandwiches for lunch?
| kwdc wrote:
| A lot of his other food isn't mentioned. The weight around
| his neck shows his exercise has definitely slowed down. Lack
| of exercise is a factor for stroke. That is a long term trend
| for him. He's definitely slowed down over the years and
| likely hasn't adjusted his diet. I'd guess he's consuming
| more bread/sugar than that regular supper implies. Likely
| some long term dietary deficiencies as well.
|
| At 72(?), though, he's still doing better than plenty of
| others. Full of flaws and imperfections like everyone else
| but he's doing his thing and apparently enjoying it, so good
| for him.
| FredPret wrote:
| This is the kind of person who has a wifi password like
| welcome2007
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Sounds like the kind of person who doesn't have wifi. My dad
| died at about his age, never had the slightest interest in the
| internet, and he was a career scientist and did a lot of
| computer programming (mostly FORTRAN). He main interest outside
| of work was gardening.
| sg47 wrote:
| He's probably happier than your arrogant little self
| dang wrote:
| Hey, please don't respond to a bad comment with a worse one.
| I get why you didn't like it but escalating just makes things
| worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| diehunde wrote:
| Trying to eat something different everyday is an American
| obsession that I'll never understand. It's just so stressful and
| inconvenient. I grew up in a small town where eating the same for
| dinner everyday was extremely common. Tea or coffee and bread.
| The only variable would be what you put in your bread. Some days
| it would be butter, some days it would jam. Some days it would be
| honey, some days it would be avocado.
| jldugger wrote:
| > Trying to eat something different everyday is an American
| obsession that I'll never understand. It's just so stressful
| and inconvenient.
|
| It's not like we do this to because variety is intrinsically
| good and we have to force ourselves. It's more like we're
| addicted to variety; the more often you have the same meal the
| less appetizing it becomes.
| aniforprez wrote:
| Eating something different every day is not "an American
| obsession". Heck most people I know would want change and
| something different in their routine of food. I personally have
| 10-12 breakfast recipes that I cycle through and regularly try
| stuff I find online
| geocrasher wrote:
| I'm American, and I have to disagree. I have the same thing
| for breakfast every day, and I love it. I usually have the
| same thing for lunch, too. It's convenient and I change it up
| just a little now and then. For dinner, my daughter and I do
| different things. I think that embracing this is a good
| thing. It's comfortable. It's safe, and I am content. On the
| weekends I do change it up too, but during the week, I find
| my favorite foods to be part of my daily routine. I like it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I tried eating a particular dish every day for a while. (To
| the exclusion of other foods.) I didn't get tired of it --
| I loved it and still do. But I had to stop because, after a
| while of this, I would still be hungry after eating a large
| meal. My stomach would be physically full, but I'd be
| hungry anyway.
|
| I'm still not sure what the problem was. It was a dish
| basically consisting of lentils, onions, and shredded
| chicken, spiced heavily; I'd eat it spread over bread.
| slim wrote:
| Your body was probably carving some nutrient not found in
| your dish
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Yes, I agree, but I'd like to know what it was. Best
| guess so far is fat.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Easy enough to add a little fat into that meal with a bit
| of full-fat yogurt! Although there's already some fat
| from the chicken, no?
|
| I admit, that sounds like a great meal to me!
| aappleby wrote:
| "If there are enough rabbits, the people eat till their
| stomachs are distended; but no matter how much they eat
| they feel unsatisfied."
| afterburner wrote:
| Or some mineral or vitamin?
| loopz wrote:
| Try milk, cheese, grains, egg, muesli, stew, varied
| foods, get recepees known to work like ayurvedic ones or
| good veg recipes. Avoid too much bread, good rice
| (basmati) can be filling. Organic ecological foods also.
|
| If you only eat one dish, it better have everything
| needed and even then it can be lacking. No need to
| torment oneself.
| nottorp wrote:
| I could eat the same thing every day, as in I don't really
| care what I eat.
|
| However it doesnt feel like a good idea for nutrition
| reasons. So I try to eat as different as possible with
| minimal effort instead. Like getting the dishes I've never
| heard of when eating out.
| granshaw wrote:
| Yeah I grew up in Southeast Asia and it's no different.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| > The only variable would be what you put in your bread.
|
| Would it be less stressful and inconvenient if you could put
| the same thing in your bread every day?
|
| Do you imagine that would make you more happy or less happy?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My parents come from a place that is the polar opposite of
| America, and eating the same thing repeatedly would get you
| sent to a mental asylum, based on how my family life revolves
| around food.
|
| The idea of not using an innumerable number of fruits,
| vegetables, meats, and spices available is crazy to me. We're
| even excited to go back to the city try at various times of the
| year because different seasons bring different foods.
| brokencode wrote:
| I think eating the same thing every day is fine, though you
| need to make sure to have a balanced diet with good nutrition.
| The author mentioned his uncle who just ate bread, butter, and
| cheese for every meal, and I'm not sure how you can even
| survive off of that. Surely it's lacking something important
| with no fruit or vegetables.
|
| I've heard that humans had a long period of time after we
| became sedentary and started relying on agriculture that the
| average height decreased significantly, and it was only in
| recent centuries that it has gotten back to normal due to more
| varied nutrition. So even if you can technically survive on a
| very limited diet, it can still have negative effects.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I had the same thought. And yet he seems to be doing at least
| okay... I would assume that as a farmer he gets plenty of
| physical activity.
|
| Perhaps diet has much less to do with health compared to
| physical activity than Americans tend to act as if.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| > you need to make sure to have a balanced diet with good
| nutrition
|
| You know, you are going to die. They're going to lower you
| into a hole in the ground. The worms will have you for
| dinner. That's it.
|
| Right before you die, are you going to say to yourself, "boy,
| I'm sure glad I made sure to have a balanced diet with good
| nutrition" ? Will you say, "I'm glad I didn't enjoy cheese
| and bread with butter every single day" ?
|
| 70 years of pure joy, of every moment counting, of getting
| just what you want, is worth a million years of trying to
| extend your life and health. Don't live the life you think
| you're supposed to, and don't live for the future. Whatever
| you like, do it now.
| driverdan wrote:
| This is a terrible approach. If you die 15 years earlier
| and suffer with many health problems later in life you'll
| wish you had eaten better.
|
| Living in the moment doesn't mean ignoring the future
| consequences of your actions.
| chillwaves wrote:
| Of course we are aware we are going to die. Can you make
| your point without talking down to people?
| brokencode wrote:
| What an insightful point! Maybe I should eat nothing but
| candy, smoke cigarettes, and go into bright sunlight with
| no sunscreen everyday. Who cares if I get diabetes or
| mouth, lung, or skin cancer!
|
| Or maybe I can just take basic precautions like eating more
| than three different foods? You make it sound like that is
| such a burden, but it really isn't. It's possible to enjoy
| your life even while taking care of yourself.
|
| In fact, I have a much easier time being happy when my
| health is good than when I am sick, so I'd say these
| precautions are important for a good life.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| My thought exactly. I'm fine with a repetitive diet but some
| fiber would be welcome.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| > I've heard that humans had a long period of time after we
| became sedentary and started relying on agriculture that the
| average height decreased significantly, and it was only in
| recent centuries that it has gotten back to normal due to
| more varied nutrition. So even if you can technically survive
| on a very limited diet, it can still have negative effects.
|
| It's not the variety of the diet but the quality of the food
| itself. Bread is good for energy, but if all you're eating is
| bread, you're not getting complete proteins, omega 3s, and
| other nutrients. It's fine, however, to eat nothing but meat
| and many societies did this for hundreds of thousands of
| years.
|
| Farming is anything but sedentary, especially in the 19th
| century and prior. People's height was stunted because food
| was not abundant enough. Agricultural societies tended to
| grow faster than farming productivity could keep up with. A
| lot of people were simply malnourished and therefore never
| reached their natural height capacity.
|
| But as you say, the hunter / gatherers such as the native
| Americans were taller on average than the first European
| settlers to arrive in America. This is not due to a
| particularly diverse diet. Most cultures subsisted on meat
| from hunting (largest source of nutrition) and a select few
| vegetables. The difference is that hunter / gatherer
| societies tended to self regulate their population according
| to available resources.
| hzay wrote:
| > It's fine, however, to eat nothing but meat and many
| societies did this for hundreds of thousands of years.
|
| Other than those who live in the arctic, which societies
| did this? You have sources? Thanks!
| chrisco255 wrote:
| https://israelheadlinenews.com/for-2-million-years-
| humans-at...
|
| Also the Maasai tribe in Africa:
| https://www.wired.com/2012/09/milk-meat-and-blood-how-
| diet-d...
|
| The Sami in Scandinavia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_people
|
| So really all societies did this until the advent of
| agriculture ~10K years ago. And even then, the
| agricultural revolution was not evenly distributed and
| hunting or fishing as a primary source of nutrition was
| common even just 150 years ago.
| pnt12 wrote:
| I think it's false. Hunter gatherer communities (no
| societies back there) lived by what they could find -
| either hunt animals or look for fruits, plants and
| mushrooms.
|
| Then there was a shift towards agricultural societies,
| where people relied on their plantations and domesticated
| cattle. I don't think the cattle meat would be enough for
| most of their meals, probably the most of them would be
| bread and soup.
|
| This is just a vague recollection from A Brief History of
| Humanity, but it makes sense to me. Eating just meat
| sounds terribly "costly", you have to actively ignore all
| other sources of food around you.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Even ancient hunter gatherers probably ate a diet of more
| (wild) plant than meat. Catching animals is hard work,
| with the technology of the time.
|
| But in general, I think we know a lot less about the
| lives of people so long ago than many people (including
| academics) like to think. Research methods are often
| based on either assuming modern people's lifestyles are
| "just like" ancient people, or big leaps from extremely
| limited archeological evidence.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No, of course they didn't. They lived in the Ice Age.
| Edible veggies and nutrients were extremely sparse and
| hard to come by for 1M years. Also wild plants prior to
| cultivation were not these big beautiful tomatoes,
| apples, bananas, and cucumbers we see in the grocery
| stores today. Those plants were selectively bred for
| thousands of years to produce what you see today.
|
| Grass-eating bison, aurochs, horses, goats, sheep, etc
| were our primary source of nutrition in the ice age, not
| to mention mammoths (as well as fish).
|
| And this is evidenced by ancient cave paintings tens of
| thousands of years old depicting hunts as well as the
| bone remnants in the caves and homes of ancient humans.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The "of course" common sense is a pretty poor research
| method.
|
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/2115127-ancient-
| leftove...
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-
| ancest...
|
| But mostly what the conflicting theories with consensus
| that changes from generation to generation tells me is
| that it's very hard to know for sure how people 15K+
| years ago lived.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The author mentioned his uncle who just ate bread, butter,
| and cheese for every meal, and I'm not sure how you can even
| survive off of that. Surely it's lacking something important
| with no fruit or vegetables.
|
| The only thing you're really missing there is dietary fiber,
| which -- being indigestible -- doesn't have nutritional
| value. However, it does interact with your intestines as it
| passes through them in a manner which tends to promote their
| health.
|
| So no, survival is not even a question that should come up.
| watwut wrote:
| > The only thing you're really missing there is dietary
| fiber
|
| It misses iron, so it puts him at risk of anemia. Which is
| very real thing.
|
| Scurvy and other vitamins deficience diseases are very real
| thing too.
|
| So yes, if that food was literally all he eate long term,
| the question of survival makes perfect sense.
| brokencode wrote:
| "Not even a question that should come up" is a pretty sour
| attitude to take in general, and I don't even think you're
| right.
|
| Fiber does have a health impact as you say, and having good
| health is one of the main ways known to delay death. And
| what is survival but the delay of death?
|
| My point is that by eating a larger variety of nutritious
| food, you are less likely to suffer from poor health due to
| a lack of something you need.
| WA wrote:
| You sound like this was a certain thing, whereas
| nutritional science is very complex.
| kitbrennan wrote:
| There are a long list of illnesses caused by vitamin
| deficiencies, including Scurvy, Rickets, magnesium
| deficiencies and iron deficiencies (as well as others).
| These can be life threatening too, so survival is very much
| a question that should come up.
| kitbrennan wrote:
| > The author mentioned his uncle who just ate bread, butter,
| and cheese for every meal, and I'm not sure how you can even
| survive off of that. Surely it's lacking something important
| with no fruit or vegetables.
|
| Exactly, wouldn't you end up with scurvy from the lack of
| vitamin C?
| raverbashing wrote:
| If he had some jam or some fruit sometimes no
|
| Your "not get scurvy" not levels of Vit C are really small.
| As in months on the sea small (or maybe college freshman
| small)
| chubbyish wrote:
| How is the author overweight eating what he eats, and walking
| around outside. That makes no sense.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| Is the author overweight? Over weight for what? For living
| a life of hard manual labor? Well in his 70s and still
| mobile and able to run a farm seems like he's doing fine.
| Besides ... he may have gained weight after his stroke;
| used to eating a farmer's meal but not moving about much.
|
| Besides ... you've heard of studies that have shown that
| the calorie expenditure of hunter-gatherers, walking around
| all day, is about the same as couch potato Americans
| sitting around all day... here's the link: https://www.npr.
| org/sections/13.7/2013/06/13/191036200/what-...
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| He says he has biscuits at the end of every meal - he
| doesn't say how many!
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| He looks similar in size to plenty of Welsh farmers that
| I know. I suspect that eating a tin of beans every day
| isn't the best.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| My thoughts exactly. He gets plenty of fresh air and
| exercise, and his meals don't sound too unhealthy, but he's
| had 2 strokes?
|
| Could be genetics I suppose?
|
| Glad he's found happiness though.
| watwut wrote:
| Reading about what he eats, I am not sure why you would
| expect him to be thin.
|
| Both his food and shape are pretty much the normal shape
| for people living in villages doing small farming.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > It's just so stressful and inconvenient.
|
| So is tending to a farm.
|
| We need some amount of stressors in our lives to keep from
| feeling bored and stagnant. Exercise is literally an imposition
| of stress, but increases our well-being. Really a matter of
| picking your poison.
|
| Farming might be samey, but if something is hard work it's also
| stressful.
| throwagrayson wrote:
| Coincidentally, anorexia started in the US. Maybe we're just
| really hungry
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| An American obsession? I think that is a gross over-
| generalization. I am American, by birth, and am happy eating
| mostly the same thing day after day. My spouse is from Poland,
| and she is not satisfied by that approach to food. Not by a
| long shot.
| diehunde wrote:
| I haven't yet met an American that won't give me a weird look
| when I say I eat the same for dinner every day, tea and
| bread.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| But tea and bread would be considered unusual dinner food.
| Maybe that's it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I feel you. I eat the same thing for weeks or months at time
| until I get tired of it. Unfortunately it's not just an
| American thing though. I've experienced the same in Spain,
| Denmark, Sweden and to a lot lesser degree in Portugal...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| As an irishman, i can so relate to the comment on the jam :)
|
| "My uncle, a bachelor and farmer like me, had the same food for
| every meal. He had bread, butter, cheese and tea for breakfast,
| lunch and dinner (although he would bring out the jam for
| visitors)."
| zebnyc wrote:
| This is not that hard to do and can happen naturally without
| overthinking it. I used to do a variation of this when I was
| single. I used to eat the eat the same breakfast (blended
| milkshakes with fruits/green veggies) and the same dinner
| (salmon/slice of bread with tomato and walnuts). The key was
|
| a) Eat to live instead of living to eat
|
| b) Being too lazy to commit more than 5-10 minutes for food
| preparation.
|
| c) Being single where I could own my decisions and "weirdness".
| davchana wrote:
| Exactly. My breakfast consist of Buns, cheese slice, cream &
| coffee. Easy, repetitive routine, nothing to spend brain
| energy. Same with lunch, fruits.
| ozim wrote:
| Just take a mental note while reading this article, those people
| that moved out, probably had to move out because there was no
| place/work for them there.
|
| He is a wealthy man that owns a farm. Same story about someone
| who would be a bartender in a local pub, where he was just an
| employee serving local drunks, would be much sadder one.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >He is a wealthy man that owns a farm.
|
| He's got 70 sheep mate. In Romania (IIRC) they'll unironically
| gift you farms like this because there's nobody else there to
| maintain them and you basically get some land for free. As the
| man himself points out it's a very simple life that involves a
| lot of hard work during all seasons, he's not privileged. Most
| people move out because life even in the service industry is
| easier.
| berkut wrote:
| What makes you say he's wealthy?
| robotmay wrote:
| His land is probably somewhat valuable compared to the local
| area, but West Wales is rural and the land is steep and hilly -
| it is really only good for raising sheep. And he's had it his
| whole life, so that value is meaningless to him.
|
| However yes, you are right that many local people will have had
| to move away for work. Aside from Aberystwyth there's not a
| huge amount of work out that way. Lots of them will come down
| south to Cardiff and Swansea.
| dannyw wrote:
| I don't know, big difference between running a farm and working
| as a bartender.
| thomble wrote:
| I like this dude.
| dinamic wrote:
| My great-grandfather was traveling to USA for work back in 1912.
| He came back after 6 years and settled in his village becoming
| its head. Almost everybody in my family knows this story and it's
| indeed fascinating, because at that time people rarely moved
| anywhere.
|
| And now we are fascinated by a man living in the same place all
| his life. It's funny how the concept of norm changes in 100
| years.
| aeternum wrote:
| A man living in the same place all his life has no basis for
| comparison. I would be more convinced that your great-
| grandfather's village is something special since he experienced
| elsewhere yet still returned.
| dinamic wrote:
| In fact, it wasn't. Just a regular distant village in
| Carpathians. I guess the main motivation to return was that
| his wife and kids stayed there.
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| This is exactly the way of thinking lying at the base of
| unhappiness. Thinking you have to see everything to make a
| choice.
|
| Spoiler alert: with that attitude you'll never make a choice
| and always search.
| aeternum wrote:
| I prefer the mathematical option: spend about 1/3 of your
| total available time exploring and then 2/3rds at the place
| that made you happiest.
|
| Statistically it's pretty much the best you can do.
| elgfare wrote:
| There is no need for comparison when there is no need for
| improvement. He is content, he doesn't need anything else. I
| wish I was that content.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| > has no basis for comparison
|
| I have lived in the same place only once in my life for 7
| years and it was an exception because we raised kids, even
| then we ripped our kids out of school to move them to a
| different country just for the sake of "experience" and so we
| wouldn't get bored and comfy (as parents).
|
| In my whole life (close to 50 now) my average years in 1
| place was 3-5. I could numerate _all_ the countries I lived
| in but it would look ridiculous and make boring reading (but
| it includes some crazy places one seriously wonders what
| could bring one from A->B).
|
| Only last night I sat on the terrace of my an old friend from
| childhood. We downed a few Guinness (imported and considered
| a novelty where we are). It led us to exactly this
| conversation because he doesn't like anything "fancy" or
| imported but makes an exception knowing I love it and knowing
| I'd come he bought it. He is the exact opposite of me and
| I've always looked up to him because he got the roots (and
| everything that comes with it discussed here) that I lack.
| I'd love to have roots and in my most romantic day-dreams
| wonder what it would be like having never left and still
| among the same people. (and with my siblings not spread
| around the globe but in the same town)
|
| He has also often wondered what it would be like living like
| me, hearing about adventures from Asia, sometimes war zones,
| or more recently South Eastern Europe, always "trying to make
| it in a different way", sometimes thriving but quite often
| literally just surviving.
|
| Despite knowing another quite well, we're only able to look
| at each others reality in a romanticized / idealized way
| because we have no idea.
|
| "The grass is always greener ...." most importantly I totally
| lack the basis for comparison to _his_ life as much as he
| does to mine, because I've been wired and set up to be me
| very early in my childhood (and so are my kids who also had
| no choice but had to endure going through the experience of
| getting ripped out of school and moved to a new place every
| couple of years).
|
| I think we are creatures of habit. And braking them is very
| hard regardless if the habit is to never make any changes, or
| must shake things up every few years to avoid going nuts.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| For me this has always been the struggle. Only one life to
| live, so many lives that could have been lived.
| sverhagen wrote:
| Don't most migrants have nostalgia for their country of
| origin? Where their roots are, no matter how much of a
| globetrotter they were. Sure, if the country you grew up in a
| beleaguered place, you wouldn't think of going back. But I've
| heard so many migrants say things along lines of: "oh, man,
| once I'm retired... <fill in blanks>".
|
| "Disclaimer": migrant myself. Not necessarily my dream to go
| back "once retired". But my wife yearns for her motherland.
| And so do many.
| jawns wrote:
| My father grew up on a rural Irish farm, then came to
| America as a young adult. At age 78, he hatched a plan to
| move back to his family home, where his brother and a
| nephew still lived. After three years there, he came back
| to the US, complaining that it wasn't the Ireland he
| remembered.
| znpy wrote:
| I moved within my country but besides sharing the same
| language, it mostly feels like living in a different
| country (for good).
|
| Sometimes I feel a bit of nostalgia, but along life I've
| learned that you tend to remember the good things and the
| bad things get opaqued by time.
|
| So when I feel a bit nostalgic I have learned to get a bit
| rational and think back to when I was there, and to the
| times I've come back to visit parent and relatives
| (holidays etc).
|
| I then rationally remember all the reasons why I left and
| all the reasons why I decided to stay where I am. And
| nostalgia vanishes, almost immediately.
| tshanmu wrote:
| What I found that is as migrants we have an idealistic
| nostalgic image of the homeland in our minds but in reality
| our homeland also changes quite fast so much that one is
| left with disappointment mostly....
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah, it's funny how that feeling happens even if you're
| not coming from an "idyllic village"
|
| Though not necessarily yearning, but more like "yes this
| was part of my history and you have a feeling of nostalgia"
| lostlogin wrote:
| > now we are fascinated by a man living in the same place all
| his life. It's funny how the concept of norm changes in 100
| years.
|
| And then most people spent a year at home. Strange times.
| sateesh wrote:
| We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all
| our exploring Will be to arrive where we started
| And know the place for the first time. -- T.S.Eliot
| dfboyd wrote:
| Die Ball ist rund. Der Spiel dauert 90 Minuten. So ist alles
| klar. Alles anderes ist Theorie. -- Sepp Herberger
| pixxel wrote:
| DeepL translation: The ball is round. The game lasts 90
| minutes. So everything is clear. Everything else is theory.
|
| https://www.deepl.com/en/translator#de/en/Die%20Ball%20ist%
| 2....
| 74d-fe6-2c6 wrote:
| Those are the facts ... here comes the manual:
|
| Das Runde muss ins Eckige.
| pixxel wrote:
| DeepL translation: The round must go into the square
|
| https://www.deepl.com/en/translator#de/en/Das%20Runde%20m
| uss...
| voidfunc wrote:
| Im nowhere near the extreme of this guy but I cook a vegetable
| soup and eat it 4-6 days a week every week for dinner. I save the
| calories and good (edit: interesting) cooking for restaurants.
|
| I mess around with the soup occasionally trying new flavoring or
| techniques but its the same damn soup and I like it. Its easy to
| make, keeps well, costs nothing relative to output, and leaves me
| time to think about other things other than food. Also its very
| healthy.
|
| At this point its just a habit. Sunday or Monday evening is soup
| making time. Two hours nets me two weeks of food.
| mongol wrote:
| Do you eat something together with the soup?
| voidfunc wrote:
| No, not really. I usually eat a pear or apple afterwards
| depending on season. And then a granola bar for dessert.
| kwdc wrote:
| This kind of thing is an old tradition and common. Good way to
| use up leftovers as well.
| sethjgore wrote:
| and whats the recipe?
| busymom0 wrote:
| Here's another similar recipe:
|
| https://youtu.be/3DxS-CIJFj8
| voidfunc wrote:
| 1 onion 2-3 carrots 2 potatoes 2-3 celery sticks 1 fennel
| heart 1 red pepper 1-2 tomatoes (optional) Canillini beans
|
| 2 bayleaves salt and pepper suit to taste. 2qt water
| cook/simmer for 1-2hr
|
| I muck around with it sometimes... thrown siracha, hot
| peppers, sausage in it to varying degrees of tastiness.
|
| I generally saute the onions, celery and fennel together then
| add the rest. It can all be done in one pot for convenience.
| busymom0 wrote:
| It reminds me of this recipe:
|
| https://youtu.be/3DxS-CIJFj8
| pelario wrote:
| Do you just keep it on the refrigerator for the whole week
| or do you freeze it ?
| voidfunc wrote:
| It keeps fine in the fridge for two weeks.
| zo1 wrote:
| Why freeze it if you keep it in the fridge for just one
| week? Depending on what it is, but generally most things
| last just fine for a week or more in the fridge.
| ckdarby wrote:
| They're probably asking because it depends on the
| quantity they're making.
|
| I had a friend who asked me if he could freeze the soup
| recipe I sent him and while confused I told him it
| shouldn't be an issue.
|
| Later on I'm visiting and he tells me he's making that
| soup. I walk into the kitchen to see a 40qt/37L pot being
| cooked. No wonder why he was asking if he could freeze it
| because the poor fella would have needed to eat 3L of
| soup a day to finish before it went bad if he didn't
| freeze it.
| Havoc wrote:
| Get a pressure cooker and cut it down to 30 mins...with
| bonus that you don't need to watch it because it switches
| to keep warm after timer
| prawn wrote:
| You could easily tweak this to be similar to something I
| grew up with, from Slovenia:
| https://www.tasteatlas.com/manestra Maybe cook longer and
| blend some of it to thicken it up.
|
| Ours typically had pork and Polish sausage added, plus this
| type of pasta: https://www.google.com/search?q=Ditalini&saf
| e=off&source=lnm...
|
| It's similar to what Italians would know of as Pasta e
| fagioli (pasta and beans) but obviously varies by region,
| even village by village.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Very familiar with pasta fagioli (Italian heritage). Ill
| check this out tho, thanks!
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| If you cook the pasta in the soup, it will significantly
| shorten its shelf life.
|
| Better cook it separately and add it to the current
| portion you are eating.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Pasta e fagioli, o coi fagioli
|
| If it's about heritage get it right, it's worth it.
| federiconafria wrote:
| The funny thing is that we call that minestra in Italy. I
| keep being pleasantly surprised by how food is just
| different shades when you move from country to country...
| highhedgehog wrote:
| I'm italian and thank you for reminding me that we have
| that deliciousness. I don't know why I don't make it more
| often.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I also eat the same dinner ~6 days of the week, largely for the
| same reasons of practicality. Being able to prepare dinner on
| Sunday saves loads of time during the week.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Before I had a family, I did this too. You really grow to
| appreciate food more by keeping it low key so often. And I
| agree, it's relatively healthy. You kind of eat well on
| autopilot.
|
| Then when you have something different and special, it really
| is special.
|
| My family loves to have something great for every single meal.
| It's very excessive and unnecessary - but I keep it to myself
| and let them enjoy it. It's not a bad or destructive habit at
| all, I just wonder often if they value or appreciate it as much
| as they could.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Totally understand this would be hard to pull off with a
| family. My friends think Im a bit weird (I probably am), and
| im totally capable of cooking more interesting things, but
| its a lot of effort for very little personal satisfaction.
|
| Plus theres so much excellent food out there, created by
| culinary experts, that I love to try. I save the fun for the
| pros :3
| [deleted]
| max_ wrote:
| What most people don't realize is that farmers have alot of free
| time.
|
| Most work of the day concentrates between early hours of the
| morning and lates hours of the afternoon.
|
| Most of your day is usually free-time. Better than a 9-5 IMHO
| forsakenkraken wrote:
| At the same time you basically never have holidays, unless you
| have family who can look after the farm for a week. Or you say
| farm chickens, then it's not hard to arrange a few weeks
| between raising a batch.
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