[HN Gopher] A monk's guide to office life
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A monk's guide to office life
Author : elorant
Score : 170 points
Date : 2021-09-28 10:50 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| tibbar wrote:
| And the devil is in the details of how you isolate. Seeing
| someone once a day for an hour is profoundly different from
| seeing someone once a week, or (again) from seeing no one for
| several weeks. Isolating with other people is not like isolating
| by yourself. One way you may find refreshing; one way may drive
| you mad. It's a terrible experiment we're performing on
| ourselves.
| gwenbell wrote:
| Read it. Commented on my own site, here:
| http://gwenbell.com/#Cl1yKR9Kh0hI0za8VLmSZZaDY6qtObOJhBgg10X...
|
| Thanks for reading and commenting, if you wish.
| baud147258 wrote:
| > Monks live at work, eat at work, sleep at work, wash at work,
| weekend at work and holiday at work
|
| good thing for the monks that the average monastery is bigger
| than the average US downtown flat
| qwertyuiop_ wrote:
| Economist being paid to astroturf on behalf of corporate control
| freaks and their urban real estate buddies
| weatherlight wrote:
| "Hell is other people" has always been misunderstood. It has been
| thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with
| other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably
| hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally
| different. I mean that if relations with someone else are
| twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why?
| Because ... when we think about ourselves, when we try to know
| ourselves ... we use the knowledge of us which other people
| already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have
| and have given us for judging ourselves."
|
| ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
|
| As you can see, this does not mean other people are the worst and
| you should hide yourself in a dark, lonely room so that you don't
| have to put up with them. It's because of how we are unable to
| escape the watchful gaze of everyone around us, whether you work
| from home or not.
|
| "By there mere appearance of the Other," says Sartre in Being and
| Nothingness, "I am put in the position of passing judgment on
| myself as on an object, for it is as an object that I appear to
| the Other."
|
| Side note, the Economist is a rag.
| BayAreaEscapee wrote:
| > Side note, the Economist is a rag.
|
| Many years ago, before there was so much news on the Internet,
| I used to subscribe to The Economist. It was kind of expensive
| for a magazine: it was about $150 a year if I remember
| correctly. I used to devour it every week, and considered it to
| be a highbrow, accurate and unbiased version of the news from a
| European perspective.
|
| Now, I agree with you that it's just a rag full of drivel.
| Whenever I read The Economist now, I wonder, "did I change, or
| did The Economist change?"
| nineplay wrote:
| The Economist is one of the few places that report
| international news, and specifically international news
| separate from 'here is how other nations are affected by
| US/European policies' which is the only story that tends to
| pop up in other publications
|
| There are still biases of course. Friends from Asia used to
| joke that there are two kinds of news - American news and
| European news.
|
| I'll agree that their headline stories are rarely insightful.
| They cover issues that have been talked about all over other
| media with a kind of snotty, holier-than-though attitude.
|
| They had a recent headline on the 'illiberal left' which was
| the exact same pearl clutching that has appeared in every
| other media source about the intolerant leftist who shut down
| any voice that strays from the 'approved' story points.
|
| I'm not even going to give an opinion on whether they are
| right or wrong, only that it is a tired story at this point.
| We hash it out once a week here on HN. There is nothing more
| to say.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The Economist is one of the few places that report
| international news, and specifically international news
| separate from 'here is how other nations are affected by
| US/European policies' which is the only story that tends to
| pop up in other publications
|
| Pre-www this was a really valuable thing, but international
| outlets are on the internet now. If you read it in the
| Economist, it's because they've got some ideological axe to
| grind.
| nikolaj wrote:
| This is not the normal Economist, but their lifestyle rag
| "1843", which does tend towards more trivial cheeky long form
| articles
| hkmurakami wrote:
| Is the reporting bad or just the columns?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Now, I agree with you that it's just a rag full of drivel.
| Whenever I read The Economist now, I wonder, "did I change,
| or did The Economist change?"
|
| This mirrors my experience with Hacker News. I ask myself
| what changed -- me, or Hacker News? I suspect the former.
| [deleted]
| pmdulaney wrote:
| panta rei - everything flows
| weatherlight wrote:
| The publication epitomizes the interests of those who they
| think are, "High brow." When I read the Economist, I often
| feel that they are citing past me to those who have Capital,
| those who legislate, those who might pull the strings of
| society.
| Asooka wrote:
| That seems like an awfully verbose way of saying "I have social
| anxiety". Seems Sartre had it pretty bad, hence his intended
| meaning of the phrase, but most people don't feel that way, so
| they interpret it a bit differently.
| im3w1l wrote:
| To what extent does he own the quip he coined? I don't find the
| message he intended very compelling. But the "wrong"
| interpretation I do agree with. In fact, I think the saying is
| popular precisely _because_ of the "wrong" interpretation.
|
| Us other people will keep using it however we want thank you.
| That's hell for ya.
| WhereIsSweden wrote:
| Suck. Dick. Idiot.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I mean isn't that kind of the same thing just a little bit more
| specific?
|
| It seems to me that he basically clarifies why other people are
| hellish.
|
| We absorb the critiques and judgements of others into our
| psyche and use them to forge our own identity.
|
| Which by definition is limiting our own self-actualization and
| freedom and torturous if that person we're influenced by is
| dysfunctional.
|
| Then you start to think of this in a modern mass media world
| where the scale of influence is global and things get even more
| insane.
| amouat wrote:
| So I largely agree, but it's not that "other people are
| hellish", it's that they are, in fact, hell.
|
| Satre is using the word hell to mean "the afterlife" i.e. we
| live on in other people's minds and opinions whether we like
| it or not.
|
| Also people don't have to be dysfunctional for it to be a
| form of torture, we are trapped in their minds (gaze?) no
| matter what.
| weatherlight wrote:
| exactly!
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| > "other people are hellish", it's that they are, in fact,
| hell.
|
| I think you may have been distracted by the semantics over
| the ideas. I'm talking about hellish people, not hellish
| relations. Hell is other people. People who are hellish.
| How I'm using hellish is correct.
|
| > we live on in other people's minds and opinions whether
| we like it or not.
|
| I don't think Sartre really cared if we lived on in others
| minds at all. The issue is that the way in which our own
| minds were affected by 'the others' gaze.
|
| The hellish part to Sarte is the affect other have on our
| own psyche.
|
| > Also people don't have to be dysfunctional for it to be a
| form of torture
|
| According to Sarte's clarification it looks like that was
| his intention, however, I still agree with you, just the
| presence of the other can be hell.
|
| From Sartre: "I mean that if relations with someone else
| are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be
| hell."-Sartre
| mistrial9 wrote:
| yea agree, but further:
|
| We absorb _our own interpretation of_ the critiques and
| judgements of others into our psyche because _how can we know
| other than through our own thoughts and feelings_
|
| many inquiries into an "eternal mirror" are possible from
| there..
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Ha yes. That's even crazier. There's another level of
| interpretation to the message.
|
| A person could interpret being called a nerdy programmer in
| a complimentary way, or they could interpret it in an
| insulting way.
|
| That makes one wonder what portion of our interpretations,
| thoughts, and feelings are internal and what portion are
| external.
|
| It is a nature vs nurture discussion at that point.
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| I have no idea what you are talking about The Economist is one
| the last few vestiges of decent journalism.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > Hell is other people
|
| Slide side-track but the older I get the more I realize that (at
| least for me) having to deal with other people is a path to
| "salvation", not "hell."
|
| When I was younger, I found certain types of people and
| interactions difficult and painful. I was very quick to judge
| people who caused me this "pain" as bad people, and so I always
| interpreted the quote that "hell is other people" as a reference
| to that.
|
| But lately I've come to realize that these negative reactions
| have much more to do with me than with the people. I react(ed)
| strongly to certain people and things because of my own emotional
| baggage, etc. and I've come to value these interactions as
| pointers to where I need to work on myself.
|
| So I find that having to deal with people actually forces you (or
| at least, forces me) to confront your own issues, it's a form of
| therapy although obviously painful in the moment. The alternative
| is to avoid all these triggers. For example, someone in my family
| chose to spend much more time with plants than with people in
| order to avoid all these painful triggers, but as a consequence I
| see her "spiraling" more and more into her own emotional dark
| places rather than being forced to stay above water by social
| interactions - by being forced to confront and work through the
| issues.
|
| Maybe this is not universal, maybe it only applies to me, but I
| see that the more work I do on myself, the less I agree with
| "hell is other people" - which means there was never really a big
| problem with them, only with me.
| yeaman1231 wrote:
| I am a 20something who is coming to this realization now and
| wish I knew this earlier.
| repomies69 wrote:
| Dude, many people don't realize this until they're
| approaching their forties. Including me.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| I have always described socializing and being around people as
| akin to exercise.
|
| You generally don't WANT to do it, but you feel better after
| you have, and it's absolutely necessary for maintaining your
| (mental) health.
|
| So whenever I am dreading some social situation I just remember
| it as a form of exercise, something that I don't want to do but
| must do.
| xyzelement wrote:
| > I have always described socializing and being around people
| as akin to exercise.
|
| I am similar to you (I am also the person you're responding
| to). Case in point - the hardest "subject" in business school
| for me was the Happy Hour. But I am glad that through that
| experience, and other experiences like moving away from
| development towards management and even sales, as well as
| having a family, has forced me to develop these muscles.
|
| The one thing I want to point out is that our experience of
| this is _not universal._ For example, my wife is naturally
| oriented towards people: her default is to be with her
| family, friends, helping patients at work, etc. So for her,
| socializing doesn 't feel like exercising - but something
| like quiet solitude and introspection would. Perhaps this is
| obvious but your comment could be read that you think our
| view of socializing is universal and it's not.
| drdebug wrote:
| Quite an interesting point of view on socializing! thanks for
| sharing.
| chasd00 wrote:
| i really like that, "a form of exercise". thanks!
| majormajor wrote:
| Agree completely.
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1296222-individuals-aren-t-...
|
| "Individuals aren't naturally paid-up members of the human
| race, except biologically. They need to be bounced around by
| the Brownian motion of society, which is a mechanism by which
| human beings constantly remind one another that they
| are...well...human beings."
|
| You often hear the weirdest ideas about people from people who
| don't socialize much.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. At the beginning of my adult life,
| someone would say something that annoyed me and I'd start to
| dislike them. Now when someone says something that bothers me,
| I'm more likely to think something like "huh, I wonder why that
| bothers me so much. What they said wasn't _wrong_ , so what
| triggered that reaction in me? Did I feel like they were
| challenging my assertions? Hmm, do I actually have evidence for
| those assertions? Maybe I should prove them wrong by actually,
| you know, finding references that support what I was telling
| them."
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| > Hell is other people
|
| Well, maybe not other people in general, but certainly
| colleagus at work...
| xyzelement wrote:
| I feel like you missed the point of the post :)
| anthropodie wrote:
| It is universal. The process you are going through is called
| individuation. It happens for everyone according to Carl Jung.
| He even wrote something along the lines almost over 50 years
| ago:
|
| > Individuation does not isolate, it connects.
|
| > Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an
| understanding of ourselves.
| xyzelement wrote:
| anthropodie, very interesting connection. I have always been
| superficially interested in Jung but on a brief search, I
| haven't found exactly the literal connection between what I
| wrote and the description of individuation.
|
| If you have a bit, could you point me to something that
| discusses individuation from this angle (versus more general
| things I quickly found?)
| anthropodie wrote:
| What you are doing is not individuation per se but is one
| component of it. By identifying immature psychic traits in
| yourself and how you react to others you are withdrawing
| your own projections.
|
| That is one way of trying to know your own shadow self.
| Knowing and integrating shadow is first step to
| individuation.
|
| Man and his symbols is good introduction to Carl Jung's
| theories if you would like to know more.
| lbriner wrote:
| Thank you. I think something that a lot of the tech world can
| take note of.
|
| I was also terrible at confrontation when I was younger because
| I have affirmation as a love language and confrontation doesn't
| fit too well with that.
|
| In the same way, I had to discover to deal with my baggage so
| that confrontation was not awkward if handled objectively. It
| is possible to critique without criticism and most of all, it
| is entirely possible that other people might be able to teach
| me something ;-)
|
| I still find my self looking-down on people who are often less
| "technical" and who therefore struggle to understand logical
| things but then I struggle to enjoy myself, to throw caution to
| the wind sometimes and to do things that I can look back on and
| say "I'm glad I took that risk".
| xyzelement wrote:
| > I still find my self looking-down on people who are often
| less "technical" and who therefore struggle to understand
| logical things but then I struggle to enjoy myself, to throw
| caution to the wind sometimes and to do things that I can
| look back on and say "I'm glad I took that risk".
|
| Something I always tell my mentees is that your strength and
| weakness are the two faces of the same coin. Your logic and
| rationality very likely enable you to have a great career and
| a stable life that is devoid of stupid risk that other people
| ruin their lives with. Logic is a gift. But at the same time,
| the use of this "tool" is limiting in some other ways, as you
| have outlined.
|
| On the flip side, someone may be very emotional/impulsive and
| enjoy the things you are currently "pining" for but at the
| same time have other parts of their life be a total mess
| because of it.
|
| The answer is to recognize that what we have, even if it
| works very well for us, as a tool. Logic is a tool that
| generally serves you well. But at times, there are places to
| recognize to put that tool down because it's not appropriate
| or necessary for the situation at hand.
|
| The analogy is something like this - let's say you're a sharp
| shooter in the army. You have your career and you make an
| impact because of your knowledge of how to shoot a gun well.
| But you don't want to limit your life experiences to
| situations where using a gun is a solution, nor do you want
| to use the gun inappropriately. The answer is to say: I love
| my sharp-shooting skills but here is a situation where I need
| to put the gun down and just have a coffee with my friend, or
| whatever.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| I have much the same experience as you, but two points:
|
| 1. Those pointers to your issues are only helpful because you
| have the resources to work on them -- dredging up issues when
| you lack those resources often breaks people. Being "forced to
| confront" when you're at risk of being overwhelmed is a genuine
| threat you're pretty cavalier in dismissing. Can that lead to
| negative cycles? Of course -- but most mental illnesses are a
| reasonable defense or reaction applied unreasonably. Unwinding
| that requires understanding the point of the mechanism.
|
| 2. I've found that while this process has made me feel better
| and address my own baggage, I still just don't enjoy most
| people -- and find the whole ritual of dense living exhausting.
| I think you may be conflating unblocking your emotions with the
| outcome of your personality, once unburdened. You felt that
| way, but other people will feel differently.
|
| To me, hell is the constant barrage of other people trying to
| assert themselves in and control my life, when I'm forced to be
| around them -- often, using me as a springboard for their own
| emotional journeys. I don't mind it as a general principal, but
| I do mind being coerced to participate when I'm not feeling it.
| foxyv wrote:
| I think the biggest problem in modern society is car dependent
| infrastructure. Cars are the ultimate form of isolation. They
| isolate us from the intermediate spaces where we interact with
| other people. Parks, paths, stations, cafes, downtowns, and all
| the other free public spaces we used to use to meet with other
| people have been devastated by cars.
|
| I can go a week in my suburban home without ever interacting with
| anyone. Take away the office and the supermarket and you can go
| for years without talking to anyone.
|
| Then I get on my bike, or walk somewhere and suddenly I meet more
| people in 30 minutes than I did in 3 months.
| Zababa wrote:
| I don't think the relationship between car-dependent
| infrastructure and meeting people holds. I live near the center
| of the city, and I take public transportation and walk to go to
| work. In 7 years of subway, I've never had a conversation with
| a stranger. I don't think I've ever seen someone have one
| either. I think I had one or two conversations with strangers
| in 5 years of bus, which is a bit better.
|
| I had more when walking (I'd say one every 6 months), but
| that's only when I'm not constrained on time, so at the end of
| work or on free days/the weekend. 95% of the time it's people
| asking for direction, all of those being something you could
| check on your phone (I know because that's how I'm able to
| answer them). I've never met someone that I talked to again
| this way.
|
| My university had no cars in it, and was wide. It was a great
| place to be, because cars and the infrastructure designed
| around them sucks. But outside of the people in my class
| (basically the equivalent of colleagues), I don't think I met
| anyone.
|
| On the other hand, car-dependent infrastructure strips the joy
| from life, in a way that makes life with them way more
| miserable, even if you don't use them. In my university, I
| could sit on grass, walk around without making sure I won't be
| killed by an incoming vehicle, appreciate the silence when most
| people were in class. Now I have to go through a car-heavy area
| to go to the office. My choice is either the big street with
| lots of cars, or the small streets with cars and a piss smell.
|
| At the university, I didn't mind being alone. In a way, a bit
| like in nature, even if alone you don't feel lonely when there
| are tree, grass and wide spaces around you. Now that I'm mostly
| in car-dominated areas, being alone is slightly more unbearable
| every day.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| I was thinking about this the other day, and it really struck
| me how dehumanizing cars are.
|
| Look at road rage, I have seen some of the kindest people I
| know get absolutely furious at another person's driving.
| However, I don't think they would ever get that angry at
| another person if they were doing something else. They don't
| see a person; they see a car.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't think cars itself is isolating people... I've heard
| passengers used to bring in fresh fruits on long distance
| trains and have nice chats with passengers adjacent, in
| mid-20th century. The plot of Fight Club, later in the century,
| also involves the idea of "single-serve friends" that
| protagonist make on domestic flights, that you make upon
| boarding and have good times over drinks, then part ways
| forever at the gate.
|
| Do people still do that? I bet I'd just be bothering them if I
| try to. You sit quiet and keep swiping, that's the norm,
| especially when you have more strangers around.
| acabal wrote:
| I completely agree, and I rant about this constantly. But in
| America at least, cars have infected society to such a degree
| that for the average person imagining life without them is
| totally impossible--like asking a fish to imagine life without
| water. "How would we get groceries?" they ask, and the thought
| of having a small grocery store within walking distance doesn't
| even occur to them, because walking is something they haven't
| done for their entire lives.
|
| Building a life of total car dependence in the 1940s-60s is
| IMHO one of the two great American mistakes of the 20th
| century, that by destroying local bonds between neighbors and
| strangers has led to America's current sense of deep,
| unspecific anxiety and lassitude on a societal level, and on an
| economic level has set the stage for the destruction of _both_
| small town and urban life that we 've seen in the past 30
| years.
| narrator wrote:
| The reason for a car dependent lifestyle in the U.S is that
| people don't want to live around or take public transit with
| the riffraff. This does not make sense to anyone who lives in
| Europe. Anyone who lives in a high crime city in the U.S who
| actually takes public transit knows what I'm talking about.
|
| Whether it's morally right or wrong, that's the reason
| America is set up the way it is.
| null_object wrote:
| > The reason for a car dependent lifestyle in the U.S is
| that people don't want to live around or take public
| transit with the riffraff. This does not make sense to
| anyone who lives in Europe.
|
| This sort of US vs Europe stuff I read on HN regarding car
| use just isn't binary at all: some countries in Europe are
| very car-dependent, others less so.
|
| Not all of us are like The Netherlands or Denmark,
| unfortunately.
| acabal wrote:
| The reason for our car dependent lifestyle is that America
| was specifically and purposefully engineered that way
| during and after WW2. Pre-war, Americans had a rich urban
| and small town life much like Europe had and still has to
| an extent. The only reason we lost it was due to misguided
| urban planning, encouraged by lobbying from the auto
| industry.
| r00fus wrote:
| _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ essentially narrates this story
| of the demise of the trolley.
| ketzo wrote:
| I mean, that's a chicken-and-egg thing. The more people who
| use public transit, the more resources get devoted to it,
| and the less it feels "trashy" or like a place for
| "riffraff".
|
| Conversely, the fewer people who use transit, the more grim
| it feels for those who do use it.
|
| The existence of public transit does not necessitate crime.
| r00fus wrote:
| This really hit home for me when my sibling and I realized
| our aging mom was unfit to be able to drive. 4 accidents in a
| year meant unreasonable insurance premiums and replacement
| not to mention she was injured.
|
| Going car-free really hit her independence and for 2 years,
| she was aching to buy a car and get more mobile. It hurt me
| to see her like that but I couldn't let her get behind a
| wheel again despite her constant complaints.
|
| Nowadays she's mostly adjusted using Lyft/Uber to go to the
| doctor or visit family but walking to see friends and go
| shopping (walk score for her place is very decent).
|
| The impact to her self-esteem hasn't quite recovered yet.
| Society in general even for an older individual places a LOT
| of worth on us being "drivers" - popular media reinforces it
| (just listen and you'll get tons of car references in pop
| music and movies).
|
| I wish she could move to somewhere like France where this
| isn't the case, but that ship sailed quite a few years ago.
| Noos wrote:
| except that the small grocery stores have poor selection,
| expensive prices, and are more inconvenient since you have to
| spend more time every day to get your things instead of
| shopping for the month. Some of us work long hours and don't
| have a wife who can spend the time to do things like that.
|
| Some of us know about both options, and a car is much better.
| People like cars because they are freedom; you are free to go
| where you want without relying on public transit schedules or
| the realization you have maybe a five mile radius of places
| you can walk to in an hour.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| The city I lived in before this had bodegas that had a
| decent selection, pretty much all the basics, and were not
| expensive. It was nice to be able to walk a couple blocks
| if you just needed a few ingredients. I and many others got
| a lot of the basics - beans, tortillas, potatoes, tomatoes,
| onions, spices - from there.
| asdff wrote:
| People still live car independently but oftentimes its not by
| choice. Commuting on the bus in LA I would see a lot of old
| men and women and immigrants who would come onto the bus with
| groceries or children in tow. That sort of lifestyle is
| already possible, but we only see people with no other choice
| in transportation riding the bus for the most part. If we
| want to convince people to leave the car behind and walk and
| take the bus to the grocery store, we have to improve the
| convenience argument of the bus vs. the car. For instance, my
| trip to costco is an hour on the bus or 20 minutes by car,
| due to having to transfer to another bus line and the bus
| being not very frequent, not to mention stuck in traffic. If
| the bus ran in its own lane and was a lot more frequent,
| travel time to costco would drop dramatically and might even
| beat the car commute if the car lanes are clogged with
| traffic and the bus is moving at full speed without stopping
| at red lights.
|
| It's not even a question of implementing expensive
| infrastructure like boring out a subway line. The bus lines
| in LA at least already go everywhere, but are so slow. Buy a
| few more busses, hire a few more operators, increase
| frequency dramatically to 5 minute headways all day, paint a
| lane and install a curb, set the lights to flick green when
| the bus is coming. Just doing that alone on major bus
| corridors would do so much good for improving quality of life
| in LA and be a model for cities around the world of how to
| incentivize transit in an area dominated by car modal share.
| dandellion wrote:
| I don't think cars are that big of a factor, but rather how
| pretty much everything that could be automated has been. I live
| in a small town in southern Europe, and I rarely need to talk
| to more than four or five people in any normal week, and those
| conversations are usually pretty short. I can work remotely,
| buy necessities and pay for them without talking to anybody, do
| taxes, etc. I sometimes have to talk with the neighbours,
| plumber or my doctor, but those are pretty rare. Considering
| how easy it is to do everything I need with almost no
| interactions, I'm not surprised people are becoming more
| isolated.
| swayvil wrote:
| Vast widescale poverty might cure this social ailment.
| Seriously.
|
| Like the monks say, "my poverty is my shield".
| jkmcf wrote:
| Heck, you don't even see people in the suburbs. People just
| drive right into their garages.
| j7ake wrote:
| There is a short story I recall about aliens describing
| society on Earth and basically they describe a species that
| rolls on wheels and move on intricate highways. They make
| noises by honking, and all yield to flashing cars.
|
| If aliens visited USA they would likely conclude that the
| dominant species were these metal rolling objects moving
| around on paved roads.
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| That sounds like the description of Ford Prefect's arrival
| on earth in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
| r00fus wrote:
| This was the first issue of the _Transformers_ comic
| series.
| anthropodie wrote:
| > We might think we invented WFH, but for the first monks remote
| working was standard. After all, God, much like 4G, is
| omnipresent. Yet the Benedictine guide makes clear that this
| privileged existence is often a struggle. Some early monks wept,
| constantly. Many said it was a sign of their faith - but, having
| experienced several lockdowns, some of us might be more tempted
| to diagnose the depression of enforced isolation and flat days on
| repeat, time without end.
|
| It seems the author does not know anything about monks, people,
| WFH and whole lot of other things.
|
| The title is Hell is other people and yet in article it is said
| that it's better to go to office because experiencing hell
| through other people is better than personal hell.
|
| WFH is not like being a monk for God's sake. In fact, you can
| have very active social life and you get to choose people who you
| spend time with. Unlike in office where you are forced to get
| along with people you know nothing about.
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's surprisingly similar. Source: I lived as a Zen Buddhist
| monk for a time in my life. The article is quite insightful.
| dustintrex wrote:
| As the text you are quoting (!) says, the _first_ monks were
| solo: stylites on pillars, hermits in caves, etc. Communal
| monastic living came later, and brought with it the inevitable
| social tensions you see in any group of people living and
| working together.
| eigengrau5150 wrote:
| anchorites vs cenobites
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Can you though? For most of mass, forced WFH experiment social
| activities were literally forbidden by law. To venture out the
| house after 8pm meant risking arrest or tear gassing by the
| government. In America.
| dorkwood wrote:
| In California there were lots of people walking around
| outside after curfew. And you were always allowed to leave
| your home at any time to exercise. There was often a police
| presence down at the beach, but they didn't enforce anything.
| Not even fines.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| There was an 8pm curfew with emergency alerts broadcast to
| everyone's cellphone. You were only allowed to be out if
| you were heading home. I was out at the time when the alert
| was issued, and got gassed along with hundreds of others.
| There are news articles about this.
| majormajor wrote:
| I think here you are mixing up pandemic-related WFH and
| protest-related curfews from a much shorter period of
| time in 2020 (under a week, where I was). WFH - what the
| article is about - and pandemic restrictions were much
| less aggressively enforced.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Can you share a link. I am sympathetic to the overreach,
| and would like to find out more.
| asdff wrote:
| The cops were only enforcing curfew on protestors and
| that was only like a few blocks of the city. You could
| still drive around town fine in elsewhere LA at least
| during the curfew. Cops don't really pull people over
| here that often to begin with.
| vibrato2 wrote:
| There's a lot of video evidence to the contrary on your
| beach claim.
|
| Personally I was nearly run over by a police suv and
| tackled off my skateboard at noon by an officer in a major
| American city for violating park closure.
| asdff wrote:
| It depends on the city. In LA people still played pickup
| basketball and soccer despite whatever the mayor was
| saying and the police only got serious about the beaches
| a few times. Surfers never stopped going out naturally.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| Examples of people being tear gassed for being out past
| curfew?
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Mostly people peaceably assembling to protest police
| violence. Sometimes they were just having a vigil, not even
| protesting. This was big news all through 2020, so the
| poster probably reasonably assumed it didn't need citation.
|
| Example: that time Capitol police tear gassed protestors so
| Trump could go have a photo op with a bible at a church.
| They weren't even out past curfew, but that was the way the
| police justified it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_photo_op_at_St._
| J...
|
| Even people who usually defend the police were taken aback
| by the relatively tame response by the same police to pro-
| Trump protestors later on before the January 6th coup
| attempt.
| [deleted]
| saalweachter wrote:
| I would also note that, etymology of the term and famous
| examples notwithstanding, the monastic lifestyle is a fraternal
| one, such as rarely exists anymore: you are living and working
| within a community of people doing and living the same way as
| you. "Brother" is even the common title for a monk.
|
| This used to be the most common way to live; a farmer with
| 10-40 acres finds himself in a community of other farmers, but
| there aren't many farmers today and industrialization has
| pushed them far apart.
|
| Aside from the military, most of us just have day jobs, and go
| home to our separate lives at night.
| codyswann wrote:
| Add social media in there, too.
| imgabe wrote:
| Lately I've suspected that monasteries were just Medieval
| frat houses. I mean, come on, they spent all their time
| figuring out how to make better beer.
| vgeek wrote:
| What about Craggy Island?
| thrwyoilarticle wrote:
| They make Buckfast!
| monocasa wrote:
| There were two vague time periods to medieval monastic
| life. By the late middle ages it had transitioned to pretty
| much as you say (although, every monastery was different).
| Centuries of donations of land from nobles had meant that
| they didn't really need to work anymore in order to have an
| extremely upper class life style. And centuries of
| 'donations' of second and third born male offspring (who
| otherwise wouldn't get an inheritance anyway) had eroded
| the spirit of a lot of the piety rules they operated under
| since a lot of these kids never really wanted to be monks
| in the first place.
| trutannus wrote:
| Yeah, _Hell is other people_ does not mean "other people
| suck". It's more that people perceive you one way, that you
| then perceive this perception of you resulting in painful
| dissonance between who you are viewed as, and who you are
| subjectively. To others you're an external object. To
| yourself you're _the_ subject. Your inability to escape this
| dissonance is what the hell here is.
|
| Basically, it would be less confusing if it were phrased
| 'hell it my perception of other people's perceptions of me'.
| neaden wrote:
| Traditional farming in Europe and most of the world wasn't
| even a farmer having their own plot of land. Most farming was
| collaborative, fields were held in common and individuals
| owned certain portions of the fields mixed with others. Much
| of the work of weeding, plowing, etc had to be done as a
| community. 10-40 acres is also far more than someone would be
| capable of farming as an individual household before modern
| technology.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Correct. Most villages had one large field surround a few
| buildings. The split was split up some standard ways. If
| the village was on a road, the divisions usually fanned out
| from the road, making the division map look striped. I'd
| the village sat on a river, often the divisions would
| radiate out making the map look like a corner of a pie with
| many slices.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The farmers still meet in local diners and bitch about people
| shooting their cows. True story.
| watwut wrote:
| The Christian monastic life is _nothing_ like living in
| farming community. The monasteries rules every detail of your
| life. There are rules about what and when you can do, say,
| eat, wear, everything. On the extreme end, you have monks who
| can see other people for like 1 hour a day or did wow of
| silence. Oh, and they dont get to pick person they will be
| with during that 1 hour of socialization. The rest of time is
| in isolation and activities for every minute are prescribed.
|
| And even in more moderate monasteries, you still have whole
| day prescribed. Who you socialize with is controlled too. You
| don't get to voice opinion about rules. You don't get to pick
| up friends you have fun with in the evening.
| Aeolun wrote:
| At the end of the day you choose to be in the monastary and
| adhere to certain rules. It's not a prison, and you can
| leave at any time.
| watwut wrote:
| Does not make it the same is farming community tho.
| saalweachter wrote:
| This has been like, a lovely digression, but the actual
| point I was trying to make was about _the sense of living
| and working in a community_.
|
| The office-, factory-, shop-worker leaves their home each
| day to go to their work, and leaves their work each night
| to return to their home. They live in two worlds that may
| overlap but are frequently quite separate.
|
| A farmer lives in one world, the farm. The work on the
| farm never really ends; you may not be working 16-hour
| days from birth to death, but it isn't contained with a
| 9-5 M-F schedule. You also don't really leave your home
| to go to work. You work with your parents, your children,
| your siblings, and you are always near them. Your
| neighbors are also farmers, and if you don't occasionally
| help each other out, you at least will talk shop with
| them. Your entire life blends into one big sphere rather
| than bouncing between two.
|
| A monk in the monastery leads that same sort of singular
| existence: they are always a monk, and never not a monk.
| They may have an hour here or there between worship or
| material labors to do as they will, but they never clock
| out from being a monk. Meanwhile, while they may have
| left their birth-family, they are always with their
| brothers. They worship with their brothers, eat with
| their brothers, work with their brothers.
|
| Working from home doesn't feel like a unified existence,
| in the same way; it feels like I leave my family for
| approximately 8 hours each day, less lunch, and go
| nowhere. I may be able to _work_ productively enough, but
| it is a third thing, to me, not like being either an
| office-worker moving between two worlds or a farmer
| living in one.
| monocasa wrote:
| For nearly every monastic rule, there's centuries that
| people have spent coming up with ways to perhaps break the
| spirit of, but not the letter. For example, St. Benedict
| says no speaking during meal time? There's a whole sign
| language specific to christian monks during mealtime.
| antongribok wrote:
| I agree with everything you said, except your last
| centence:
|
| "You don't get to pick up friends you have fun with in the
| evening."
|
| At some point in my youth I visited a monastery on
| weekends, because I was friends with some seminarians
| studying there. People knew how to have fun. Perhaps not
| every day, only on some days of the week, but you certainly
| could hang out with friends. There was at least one or two
| people in the group with a car, and there were favorite
| spots people liked to go to.
|
| I'm sure there are a lot stricter places, but for what it's
| worth, I know more than one person from this group (class?)
| that went on to become priests, working at churches today.
| watwut wrote:
| Priest and monk are operate under two massively different
| rule sets. The "you don't get to pick up friends you have
| fun with in the evening" is something I got from reading
| rules of various monasteries (both male and female).
|
| First, having friend, as in favorite person you spend
| more time with and prioritize, was literally against the
| rules. You are not supposed to do that. Second, evening
| was not free recreation time. You eat dinner, you pray,
| you have chores, you study etc.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > something I got from reading rules
|
| You read some books but you want to argue with someone
| who literally socialized with a monk? How about this: I
| _was_ a monk. What you 're saying is wrong. You do get
| evenings off at times. Yes, there are some orders that
| are very strict and isolated, but there are also
| mendicant and missionary orders.
|
| I know it's tempting to feel we are smart thus we can
| speak to things of which we have only read, but (and I'm
| assuming you're in software development because you're
| here) if a consultant with no actual experience came
| along and told you how to do your job because "these are
| best practices", wouldn't you be a bit skeptical?
| watwut wrote:
| I argued with someone who socialized with people in
| seminars. Those are not monks. Priests are not monks
| either. There is also difference between monk and
| brother, nun and sister.
|
| What you are saying is that cloistered somehow don't
| count. Maybe you was in freest order there is, but the
| rest of them count too.
|
| You also argue absurdly aggressive and arrogant way for a
| monk.
|
| You are not the only ex-monk out there and in fact, ex-
| monks or those who gave that up during formation do talk
| about these rules.
| [deleted]
| whatshisface wrote:
| They say they read some rulebooks that sounded extremely
| strict, you say there are some monasteries that are
| extremely strict; you're both agreeing with the language
| of disagreement.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Except that GP asserted that reading the rulebooks was a
| substitute for, you know, _actually having been there_
| and that people who had were wrong.
| omarfarooq wrote:
| I didn't see where they asserted it was a substitute.
| davidw wrote:
| Would be interesting to hear what countries you all are
| talking about. I mean, what "Catholic" means in Italy,
| Ireland, Mexico and the Philippines varies to some
| degree, for instance.
| antongribok wrote:
| In my case, this was in New York.
|
| This was a Christian monastery, but not Catholic.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > There are rules about what and when you can do, say, eat,
| wear, everything.
|
| How long have you been in the workforce and what sort of
| places have your worked? I have personal experience with
| employers that had rules on one or more of these.
|
| Also, I lived in a monastery, as a monk, for a while. Don't
| discount the article. Your whole day is not prescribed, you
| can socialize outside the community, and there are
| discussions around rules. You even get some evenings off to
| go out and about.
| watwut wrote:
| I am well into my career- I am not young. I worked ever
| since I finished college and during summer. I did
| manual/simple jobs (which I fact included uniform and
| employer provided housing) shortly and then white collars
| jobs.
|
| Frankly, you are full of it. Your personal experience
| with employers don't mean much in forum where almost
| everyone is employed. There is nothing special about
| having experience with employers.
|
| Given how you write about being employed, it is safe to
| say you don't mind twisting situation. You also try to
| argue by implying insults, which is not convincing. It
| just seeks emotional response.
| [deleted]
| the-dude wrote:
| It seems to me you are taking the piece a bit too literal.
| [deleted]
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| > After all, God, much like 4G, is omnipresent.
|
| That was funny and I'm pretty sure 100% tongue in cheek.
| high_5 wrote:
| I for one, can't really make anything out of this article. Is
| it a joke or just a poor attempt at comparing monasticism
| with corporate life? Or is it both?
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's not poor. It seems a lot of people on HN are
| dismissing the advice in the story because they have
| mistaken ideas about what monastic life is like and, for
| some reason God only knows, conclude that the author
| doesn't know what she's talking about.
|
| As someone who actually lived as a monastic for a time, I
| can tell you that a. monastic life is not like what HN wags
| think it is and b. the article is insightful
| dustintrex wrote:
| It's both! This is the style of all the pieces in
| Economist's year-end 1843 magazine: thought-provoking, but
| entertaining and not meant to taken terribly seriously.
| stepbeek wrote:
| "The first thing to note when discussing the business secrets of
| the Pharaohs is an acknowledgement that their era was so
| completely different from our own that almost all cultural,
| political and, particularly, business parallels we draw between
| the two eras are bound, by their very nature, to be wrong."
|
| - Marko Corrigan, Business Secrets of the Pharaohs
| cratermoon wrote:
| Except that monasticism and monastics still exist today, and
| they still follow the same Rules that were laid down by the
| early Church (or other faith) founders. There are still
| Benedictines, Trappists, Redemptorists, Jesuits, and so forth
| in Catholicism, as well as extensive communities in Buddhist,
| Hindu, Jain, and other faiths. Many of them have adapted quite
| well to modernity.
| stepbeek wrote:
| My original comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I think the
| underlying sentiment is a reasonable one. Joining a monastery
| - from an outsiders view - is fundamentally a pursuit of a
| higher purpose. Joining a corporation is often anything but.
|
| While there will be crossover in human group dynamics, I'm
| (perhaps naively) viewing corporate life to have a completely
| incompatible incentive structure coupled with a bent towards
| generally self-serving employees. Maybe I have an idealistic
| view of the average monk but I'd be quite sad to learn that
| the pettiness that pervades many corporations is much the
| same.
|
| A great many people work simply to survive: I'm not sure the
| same is true of monks.
| [deleted]
| thedigitalone wrote:
| Cache without paywall https://archive.is/Z9e5R
| episode0x01 wrote:
| > Oh, the temptation to swan into the office wearing sweatpants
| and slippers. Don't do it! The costumes of the corporate world -
| the heels, the pressed trousers - may seem antiquated and absurd.
| They all feel so 2020.
|
| But why? The author just mentions that the monk's robes were
| surely worse. And that might be, but so what?
| navbaker wrote:
| From the next two paragraphs:
|
| "Despite that, there is a power to performance dressing and no
| one knows this better than monastic orders. Many monkish rules
| on dress would not be out of place in a modern company handbook
| <clip> ... <clip> One of the first things a new monk did on
| entering the monastery was to step out of their old clothes at
| the door and into new robes. The two worlds were separate, and
| dressing accordingly helped keep them that way."
| cratermoon wrote:
| Ever watch Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood? Remember how he'd change
| his shoes and sweater in the intro and outro? Transitions like
| that are part of a healthy routine. WFH I've maintained a
| morning "get dressed for work" and evening "change out of my
| work clothes" routine, even though I might just wear shorts and
| a t-shirt for work. The point is to psychologically frame the
| different aspects of our lives
| MichalSternik wrote:
| https://archive.is/Z9e5R
| black_13 wrote:
| Compared to life before this paradise. I dread going back.
| tmnstr85 wrote:
| I struggle with isolation at work. It really escalated during the
| pandemic. I run a small team and we're often isolated from
| everyone else, except the client in front of us at any moment in
| time. Most the work is indirect.
|
| Coming back into the office, its a struggle to integrate back
| into a culture that, for me, appears to no longer exists. I'm
| trying to reconcile if this is my own doing, or if something else
| has changed. I look around and many of the faces in the back
| office are new. There's no love coming from the middle or front
| office or top brass.
|
| To me, at this point in my life, I don't want to be monk. I want
| to feel like I belong, I want to feel like a valued member of a
| community. I've worked in financial technology and back office
| operations most of my career. I doubt I will find any of that in
| any back office these days.
| basisword wrote:
| This makes me curious. With the flexi-work world we now live,
| in are the people who want to work in office just fighting an
| inevitable full remote future?
|
| It sounds from your post like in-office isn't what it was
| before. How long until the people hoping it returns to what it
| was give up and search for alternatives?
|
| I wonder if the kids of the near future pick a job, get a
| budget for a co-working space, and then work alongside their
| actual friends, all doing different jobs.
|
| We might find ourselves for a while in that middle ground that
| doesn't work great for anybody until the next generation comes
| along and completely embraces the future.
| znpy wrote:
| This really sounds like low-key return-to-office propaganda.
|
| > Over the past year many of us have sat at home, confined to the
| same four walls for much of the day, contemplating the same view,
| munching the same lunch and wearing the same clothes (at least
| below waist level).
|
| That really wasn't my experience at all. My city is well
| interspersed with gardens, parks and trees in general and since
| the lockdown was lifted I was able to explore the parks near my
| house by taking walks during lunch break or by going out for
| lunch with my SO from time to time.
|
| My coworkers and me still meet from time to time, when we all
| decide to do a gathering in the office.
|
| So yeah, that's low quality bait.
|
| If my experience sounds extta-terrestrial to you the good news is
| that you can achieve something similar or even better while
| working remotely (since you're not tied to a certain place, city
| or area in the same city).
| Amasuriel wrote:
| I agree with this, my schedule was always more the same working
| from an office than at home: 1) same 5 restaurants to
| reasonably eat at, or packed lunch options that reheat well 2)
| same work location 3) same limited number of places to take
| outdoor breaks (assuming there was any at all).
|
| I find my working hours infinitely more varied from home
| zwirbl wrote:
| https://archive.is/u8CkK
| qx80 wrote:
| Thank you, I hate compensating content creators for their work
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| Thank you
| gtsnexp wrote:
| It is mysterious how paywalled articles find their way to a
| highlighted position on HN.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I went to the office yesterday. It felt ... nostalgic? Everything
| is exactly as we left it in March 2020, except for the sign-in
| system that checks symptoms, the social distancing signs in the
| lobby, inside the office itself it's like we just left yesterday.
| Someone is keeping the place clean, for sure, not a bit of dust
| or anything to indicate how long we've been working remotely.
|
| I almost want to go back. At least occasionally. There are people
| just outside of my team but in the same department that I may
| never see again, and they were nice people. I'll admit we had a
| good work environment and no toxic people, and clearly not
| everyone is so lucky. But it occurs to me that if I leave the
| company soon (and I am planning to), there's a bunch of folks
| I'll probably never see again, without ever having had the
| opportunity to wish them farewell. At least face-to-face :).
|
| Maybe I'm just a softie. Many people seem to have much colder
| relationships with their coworkers.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I think there are a LOT of people, including me, who feel the
| same way. My team was reorg'd last summer, and a number of
| people from my team were reassigned, including my manager; now
| a bunch of them have left the company and moved cross-country,
| and I never got a chance to say goodbye to them in person. It's
| been a hard time.
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