[HN Gopher] Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in...
___________________________________________________________________
Cultural anorexia: The pursuit of thicker desires in a thinning
world
Author : vitabenes
Score : 68 points
Date : 2022-04-15 08:15 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (read.lukeburgis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (read.lukeburgis.com)
| throwaway-m3232 wrote:
| When I see someone mention human nature in some blog, I stop
| reading...
|
| Human nature is our species ability to transform nature. A cat,
| for example, is only doing hunting for immediate consumption. A
| pet cat is even more limited, just a furrring biological shell,
| he does not hunt.
|
| So when a human is limited in all his potentials, thinking,
| planning, building, etc to something like a tool on the market,
| optimized for some task, when human relations limited to objects
| of consumption... this will reduce human to just one sided being.
|
| May be this optimization was once necessary some time ago, since
| labor productivity was low and this high division of labor
| allowed optimized production, to feed everyone.
|
| At the moment, the labor productivity is so high, that only
| 10-20% working on something necessary for living. But all work is
| still done as this optimized instrumental labor, as life depends
| on it. This is not required anymore.
|
| The solution is obvious.. build more not as an optimized one
| sided "worker", but as an universal human being, as a free time
| activity.
|
| Which politically means that the work day should be reduced.. and
| this is not easy to implement. But if you really want a social
| change, this is the way to go.
| refurb wrote:
| You can reduce work right now if you'd like. Live like the
| 1920's. No access to modern medicine, no automobile, no
| internet, no antibiotics. Grow your own food.
| captainbland wrote:
| Only if you already own your own housing or live somewhere
| where that is already covered for you. Even then it's not
| like the job market is bursting with opportunities where you
| can take a decent FT position and earn the same pro-rata at
| lower hours.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| A small percentage of today's work goes towards these things
| (except the Internet, which is an endless sinkhole of mostly
| pointless labour).
| refurb wrote:
| The OECD average GDP spent on healthcare is 9.9% (US spends
| 17%). That mean 1 out of every 10 dollars of economic
| activity go to healthcare alone.
|
| So you could your 40 hour work week back to 4 hours, that
| would _just_ pay for healthcare, and healthcare only.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| Cash spent on an activity does not reflect the time that
| it takes, doubly so if you were able to reduce the
| administrative layers involved in eg health insurance.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Considering health is quite literally the most important
| thing in your life (can't spend it when you're dead
| anyway unlike the Egyptian pharaohs) I do not understand
| why so many complain about the cost of healthcare.
| brimble wrote:
| If healthcare cost 80% of GDP, would you still not
| understand?
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > So you could your 40 hour work week back to 4 hours,
| that would just pay for healthcare, and healthcare only.
|
| Sure! I like modern healthcare!
|
| And then 4 more hours to pay for the rest of a 1920
| standard of living.
|
| And 4 more for extra disposable income.
|
| Let's say that's two days a week for 6 hours each. Sounds
| pretty good.
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| Except that's the healthcare industry including large
| swathes of money going to parasites like student loan
| providers and opiate pushers as a whole, not 'modern
| medicine' or 'antibiotics'.
|
| Cuba's standard of healthcare is a reasonable compromise,
| and their total spending per capita is 2% of the USA's
| gdp per capita.
|
| The internet as a tool for sharing information rather
| than an endless red queen's race of scammers is similarly
| cheap.
|
| And yes please, let's get rid of the private automobile.
| Without it we can build dense enough that walking (or
| transit or bikes) will get you where you are going far
| faster than driving 5x as far at an average of 30km/h
| does now.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| lettergram wrote:
| Interesting perspective. Mines a bit different..
|
| I agree specialization has allowed the expansion to other
| fields. Fields like microcontrollers, biological development,
| energy research, etc.
|
| This is why we see an exponential growth in development of new
| products and new science. If those same people were required to
| work in the fields to eat, we wouldn't see the expansion.
|
| ... now ... how does this work In practice? How do we get these
| efficiency gains in agriculture and other necessary parts of
| life?
|
| Cheap and transportable energy. Fuel, gas, etc. if we want to
| reduce the work week we need exponentially cheaper energy OR
| research into new forms of energy production. The later is
| currently happening and needs to continue to happen. In the
| mean time, we also need cheap and transportable energy.
|
| For reference, I own a farm. I code professionally and as a
| hobby raise cattle and food. I can do that only because I have
| the fuel to run a tractor and the wireless internet provided
| from the satellites. To your point, in a 50-60 hour work week I
| can produce enough food for 20-30 families for the year AND be
| a highly skilled tech worker AND raise a family. All because of
| fuel.
|
| Now to my point, in my opinion, specialization has less to do
| with it. Cheap energy is what allows it. Anyone could raise
| cattle or grow food with minimal training. But without fuel you
| can't produce food for more than a few families per year.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Indeed. A rather curious difference between the Anglo-Saxon and
| Latin work ethic (and of course I'm painting a picture here,
| this blunt generalisation is meant only to propose an
| argument), is that: For the former, your job is who you are -
| the second question out of anyone's mouth in the UK is 'what do
| you do?'. Whereas, for the latter, who you are in society
| determines your job.
|
| Hopefully we can reach beyond both these erroneous
| socialisations.
| headsoup wrote:
| Does that mean when I read 'human nature is' as the very next
| words you write I should stop reading your comment?
|
| Or are you saying you already understand it better than anyone
| else writing about it?
| samtimalsina wrote:
| I stopped reading as soon as I read 'I stopped reading'
| because generally that means that person has a strong
| opinion. Oh wait..
| JackFr wrote:
| I stopped.
| ivoras wrote:
| I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity. Look
| at music for example - to achieve global success, bands all over
| the world need to start using western rhytms and melodies, losing
| the very things that made them unique.
|
| Not that there's no innovation in niches, but those never reach
| the highlight. A friend of mine is a musician, and was fairly
| popular in his circles, but has almost a decade ago renounced all
| pandering to the audience, started playing incredibly complex
| music, polyrhythms, fractal melodies, uniquely tuned instruments
| - and has since lost almost all of his audience and the income
| which came from music. But - and this is important - he's never
| been both happier and more virtuosic as a musician, it fulfills
| him like more popular music never did.
|
| Unfortunately, he'll probably never be as appreciated as before
| and must have other sources of income.
|
| Edit: this is him and a single, weirdly tuned guitar:
| https://nikopotocnjak.bandcamp.com/
| uuyi wrote:
| That's pretty standard across everything.
|
| The moment you do stuff because you enjoy it and not to get
| paid or satisfy other people then your quality of life goes up.
|
| This is why I get paid to do something I hate (software eng)
| and live a quiet existence doing what I love. Which I'm not
| even going to mention on here. Not even my family knows what I
| love.
| catchclose8919 wrote:
| > Not even my family knows what I love.
|
| ...at least write a nice novel/biography/whatever to be found
| together with the bodies decades later :) Create some
| enjoyment opportunity for others too, don't keep it all to
| yourself :P
| tough wrote:
| Damnt what a cliffhanger, kudos to finding your passion
| though and no need to share what it is as long as it keeps
| you fulfilled!
| recuter wrote:
| I think the issue is more about the lack of true diversity.
| Look at music for example - to achieve global success, bands
| all over the world need to start using western rhytms and
| melodies, losing the very things that made them unique.
|
| Yes, sure, everything is about a lack of diversity. You might
| want to look some more into musical theory and where those
| twelves notes, rhythms and melodies originate from in the first
| place. Not that there's no innovation in
| niches, but those never reach the highlight.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_music
|
| Starting with the 60s hippies who need a haircut got rather
| into Indian stuff. In the 80s you had an African wave with the
| likes of Paul Simon. Peter Gabriel was all over the map. Hardly
| niche. All of this comes and goes, and comes round again. A lot
| of the biggest stars at the moment are not from the US/West.
| has almost a decade ago renounced all pandering to the
| audience, started playing incredibly complex music,
| polyrhythms, fractal melodies, uniquely tuned instruments - and
| has since lost almost all of his audience and the income which
| came from music
|
| Jacob Collier seems to be thriving:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meha_FCcHbo
|
| Now whether or not there is money in it is altogether a
| different question. Music has been devalued. You/Friend might
| enjoy Rick Beato ranting about this subject on Youtube.
|
| This isn't a new thing, if he wants to make money he needs to
| look cute, even the Beatles started by getting a makeover and
| going the boy band route. Such is life.
| bavell wrote:
| +1 for Rick Beato, excellent resource and cool dude!
| elsherbini wrote:
| Off topic, but you seem like someone who might like these
| less popular music theory channels I really enjoy (all to do
| with harmony mostly)
|
| Metaharmony - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNKBF8Phj3M
|
| The Labyrinth of Limitations -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XSsHlJSrc
|
| Synthase / Midnight Oil Collective -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gWMW1Hkdik
| recuter wrote:
| Not off topic at all and very cool. Labyrinth dude seems
| legit to me, thanks for these.
|
| If you haven't seen this Victor Wooten clip you should give
| it a glance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLCOwgbEO4o
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, then I'm glad that there are plenty of bands that _don
| 't_ want to achieve global success and are perfectly content to
| continue doing their thing. I'd much rather listen to those
| bands (old and new) than the ones striving for global success.
| clejack wrote:
| We communicate with the most detail using words, but body
| language, facial expressions, touch and other scrubs act as
| girls of communication as well. All of these things have a
| common foundation in pattern.
|
| What we call art is the manipulation of these common patterns.
| When it's most successful, it often regurgitates patterns that
| have proven successful. When it's most meaningful it modifies
| the old pattern to make new patterns that people can
| appreciate.
|
| The question then becomes, how much modification can you engage
| in before your work because meaningless to everyone but
| yourself.
|
| Imagine if your friend was a writer who got tired of the spoken
| languages and began writing novels in his own custom language.
| Would you lament the fact that no one reads his books?
|
| Btw, I took a (very) brief listen to your friends music and it
| seemed kinda interesting, but I can certainly see why he lost
| all of his followers.
| teekert wrote:
| "to achieve global success", it's unfortunate that that is
| often the goal indeed.
|
| Globalization kills a lot, look at Khao San Road in Bangkok, in
| 20 years it changed from small street stalls to big global
| chains. And the great homogenization will continue. In the
| first Ringworld, this process is also described, transport
| booths (in a flash you walk to any destination on earth) made
| every city the same. The internet and cheap flights have
| already started this process.
|
| Edit I also remember this being posted here once: "The same
| damn avocado toast" or something (can't find it anymore), about
| a traveler that got the same damn avocado toast everywhere he
| went.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Reminds me of this article:
| https://nymag.com/urbanist/article/the-unbearable-
| sameness-o....
|
| Also this one: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive
| /2020/08/why-e....
|
| This phenomenon is why I ended up moving back to my hometown
| of ~100k after living in a couple of different countries +
| several different regions of the US/different big cities.
| They're all the same after a while. I missed a place that was
| unabashedly itself.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| It reminds of the common advice you often read (also in HN): Go
| on follow your passion but secure it with a job which provides
| for you (and your family).
|
| In the case of a musician one such way (besides teaching) is
| playing in "cover bands" ("playing everything": Top40, Classics
| etc.) which paid astonishingly well on a gig to gig basis (from
| weddings to little local fests) once you are a bit established
| and known (even locally).
|
| I was very young (17) when I started to do that (as a drummer)
| mostly because I "needed" some money for "better" equipment ;)
| At first I hated it but after a while I appreciated the actual
| discipline it required and it taught me practical musical
| communication skills through my time playing with a lot of
| different musicians. So, that it in a unexpected way did not
| only helped me out financially but also in becoming a more
| well-rounded musician (i.e. "paradoxically" recognizing my own
| style/preferences/tastes/musicality in a more nuanced way in
| all that noise of hypes, genres and sub-genres ...).
|
| So, yeah the best case scenario is doing what one loves and
| getting paid for it but it isn't black and white either, I
| definitely at some point could have "sold my soul to the devil"
| to make more money (professionalize it) but I was actually
| quite satisfied with just not being constantly broke :D Once I
| met my basic needs (after establishing what they actually are:
| e.g. _not_ more and better equipment) everything beyond I tried
| to consider a luxury, a bonus which worked out well for me
| (still enjoying doing music and the community that this brought
| with it) in that turbulent time of youth /early adulthood.
|
| Edit: What a lot of people don't recognize: a handful of the
| musicians I met, later went on to become "successful". Well, in
| hindsight they struck me as highly obsessive and obviously for
| everyone around them fighting with some serious inner demons
| (addiction, depression, childhood traumas ...). For them to
| finally "made it" can only worsen their situation. Imagine
| having achieved what you wanted all along, being financially
| independent, you now literally have no (outside) reason anymore
| to be unhappy this can just only further estrange you from your
| environment. I think we are all familiar with the excesses of
| fame. "To be not successful" is way easier to handle for some
| highly vulnerable artists (doing great music) because they at
| least have a better chance to stay "grounded". I mean those
| driven personalities by exploring boundaries become really
| fluid, that's what also attracts a lot of audience,
| unfortunately: We marvel at the sight of the end result:
| "pearl" (which got produced by an extraordinarly amount of
| stress).
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Don't you think the issue begins with wanting to achieve global
| success? It seems like a Catch-22: To achieve professional
| success, one needs to be popular enough to capture a
| sufficiently large, paying audience while simultaneously be
| unique enough to push against the boundaries of mainstream
| taste. Few people listen to music to be "challenged" unless
| they're musicians. If anything, I'd say there's more diversity
| in music then there's ever been. So much so, that we develop
| complicated tools to find such music.
| ehnto wrote:
| Perhaps the problem is that the trend of exceptionalism and the
| platforms that enable it, is driving everyone to want to be
| global successes. We should be perfectly content being
| successful in our communities, and with the freedom that this
| brings us. Our community may be our local area, or it may be
| our musical niche, or other niche community related to what it
| is you're doing. But if everyone is chasing #1, and #1 is
| defined by a popular vote, then you're going to eventually
| conform to the the lowest common denominator.
|
| This is probably more related to chasing fortune and fame,
| rather than objective exceptionalism in skill building that you
| see online.
| headsoup wrote:
| Or as simple as the promotion of the 'self' as the greatest
| social unit, rather than the community or other larger unit.
| And that self is not focused on healthiness and contentness,
| but desire fulfilled, the narcissist reigns.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << I often wonder what value there is in attending these things,
| and then I remember that red meat, properly cooked (medium rare)
| tastes really good. And that's the strongest case for veganism
| I've ever heard.
|
| I chuckled. Then I hesitated. Is the author suggesting cultural
| veganism?
| tdehnel wrote:
| For me, the article cast doubt on my day to day work and desires.
| That's a good thing since it will help me examine and critique my
| life, which is the only way to make progress.
|
| If this article made you feel bad, perhaps you could examine why
| it makes you feel that way.
|
| Instead of thin criticism (e.g. grammar issues, non-obvious
| definition of thick/thin) maybe try going a little thicker.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a class thing isn't it?
|
| Today poor people are fat but kids in rich families get anorexic
| because it is a way they can control the agenda. (Being 'thin'
| looks like it is mirroring the high-achieving attitude of the
| parents which makes them unresponsive for the children, but it
| ultimately creates a crisis which forces attention to be given.)
| Tade0 wrote:
| The author strikes me as someone not really in touch with popular
| culture or even global politics.
|
| > NATO is an institution that does not, for instance, seem able
| to withstand the thick desires of Vladimir Putin because it
| scarcely recognizes that he has any.
|
| As a Polish citizen I have to say that the initial reaction to
| Putin's invasion, aside from shock, was a feeling that this could
| have been us hadn't we joined NATO over 20 years ago.
|
| Still no guarantee that he won't do it(there was a major scare in
| 2014), but it's obvious that he's picking non-NATO members first.
|
| ----
|
| On to another topic: Sex. That paragraph is the most out of touch
| in my view, because it's deeply rooted in the "war on drugs"
| mentality. I was of the impression that nowadays vices are seen
| as more of a symptom of a deeper problem than the problem itself.
| Or is it just my bubble?
|
| Also pornography is not any more the pinnacle of degeneracy the
| author thinks it to be[0]. With the advent of curated content,
| platforms with safe, functional payments and performers
| increasingly securing their rights - especially to privacy, it
| has become somewhat of a mainstream thing. Case in point:
| OnlyFans is essentially a household name now.
|
| [0] I suppose the author only wrote this because he's unaware of
| the existence of the furry fandom or anime waifus. Those two
| phenomenons went where traditional pornography can't and won't
| go.
|
| ----
|
| As for art: most of modern art doesn't happen in galleries or
| closed meetings with expensive wine and other cartoonishly
| stereotypical attributes.
|
| Modern art is chiefly memes produced and shared by the public for
| the public - anonymously at that. It even went through a series
| of trends, each spanning a few years, like the enigmatic, surreal
| "E" memes, with their characteristic "deep fried" art style. To
| this day it isn't clear how did this achieve mainstream adoption,
| what were they actually expressing and for what purpose. There
| probably wasn't any and people just collectively decided to make
| it so, which makes this the purest manifestation of art possible.
| neuroma wrote:
| Anorexia means without appetite. We are demonstrably full of
| hunger for culture. But the quality and nature of that culture is
| changing rapidly with modern tech.
|
| I think the author's metaphor is better framed around nutritional
| value. Modern culture is rich in and dominated by junk. Consuming
| it builds junk values and junk ideas.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Yes it's hard to know what is appetitive and what is rejecting
| in culture right now. It is really self-devouring in some ways.
|
| What the author (Luke Burgis) refers to as "thick" desires are,
| to me, simply the age old depth of human values - messy,
| complex, emotional. And he paints the countervailing ethos as
| "thin" - one dimensional man (to use Herbert Marcuse's term).
|
| But I am not sure his food metaphor works as vibrantly as he
| would like, to describe culture, and in some places I think he
| gets it backwards. Also, one should more sensitive throwing
| around words like "anorexic" without thinking what that
| condition entails.
|
| When I wrote Digital Vegan, it's original title was going to be
| something like "Digital self-defence" [1]. But I wanted to
| avoid too strong a combatative metaphor for that book. The Cody
| Brown quote that is the final title came late, in recognition
| of the hostility towards those wanting more control over their
| diet, whether digital or culinary, and the courage needed to
| take a principled stance.
|
| But control, or the lack of it, and compensatory behaviours is
| at the heart of many problems. I had been reading Susie
| Albach's _Bodies_ about dysmorphia, abuse and self-perception.
| The relation of these to technology had a big influence on me.
| However, reading about teen suicides, now linked to social
| media and having in some ways supplanted eating disorders in
| focus, led me to add this to the preface:
|
| " Throughout this book I use the metaphor of food and
| consumption to talk about technology. In no way do I mean
| disrespect or to trivialise the serious conditions of anorexia,
| bulimia, avoidant eating, or obesity. Indeed, I believe that
| many forms of technological and material abuse share the same
| root causes. "
|
| Whether we build ourselves and our culture "thin" or "thick"
| revolves around our ability to control what we take in, our
| knowledge of how it affects us, and our own extant self-image
| in relation to what we seek out.
|
| [1] Thats phrase has been knocking around the cryptoparty scene
| since 2010, and Snowden uses it in "Permanent Record".
| prewett wrote:
| I was hoping to find out what he thought "thick" and "thin"
| desires were, but he never bothers defining them. Maybe he talks
| about them in another essay? But without definitions, this piece
| is just a catalogue of all the ills of society, justified by some
| unseen value system. And the title is just wrong, it's not about
| the pursuit of thicket desires (whatever those are), it's about
| cataloguing society's pursuit of thin desire (whatever those
| are). And an advertisement at the end.
| karaterobot wrote:
| About that ending:
|
| At first I thought the article was merely vague and
| perfunctory, but the advertisement for his $1500 course at the
| end recast him in the light of a self-help guru. The thing is,
| he made what I feel could be some good points, but now I wonder
| whether it's just so non-specific that I'm reading my own
| anxieties and hopes for meaning into them, like a classic rube.
| The implication that I need to pay him money to really
| understand what the hell he's saying makes me wonder if his
| philosophy might be a little "thin".
| automatoney wrote:
| The piece overly relies on the metaphor to the point of almost
| being incomprehensible. From the title and opening example I
| assumed it had something to do with literal human bodies. But
| then the definition of a thick desire is vague to the point of
| uselessness - "enduring, sustainable, and ultimately fulfilling
| desires", especially because it calls Putin's desires thick - as
| if megalomania is sustainable and fulfilling? This largely seems
| like an overly broad fluff piece, rather than rigorous and well
| thought out writing.
| trailmonster wrote:
| hnhg wrote:
| Agreed. It seems the author is selling training courses, and
| perhaps this article and its vague style are part of a
| sales/marketing approach for its target audience.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I think he's trying to differentiate between intrinsic desires
| (creativity, passions) and compulsive desires (spiritual junk
| food of various flavours). I do think he goes too deep into
| purple prose though, forgetting that poetic language in
| philosophy is usually either referential or narrative, but this
| article is using purple prose in an explanatory fashion which
| often reads badly imo.
| jmeister wrote:
| Putin's desire, whatever you may think of it, is glory and a
| place in the history books, a hallowed, "thick" desire covered
| in the greatest oldest epics. Just read his recent, infamous
| essay on "unity".
| mihaic wrote:
| I remember reading Girard's "Things hidden since the
| foundation..." and feeling the way it's used now to reason around
| human desires to be incomplete.
|
| Looking back at my grandfather's living as a simple peasant, he
| did many things mimetically, yet there were long periods of
| nothingness where his internal desires sprung forth: one day I
| remember he just weaved basked because he wanted new baskets.
| There was no need for them, there was nobody among our neighbors
| that was doing this, he was free and decided to make some
| baskets.
|
| That's why I'd relabel desires as internal or external
| originating instead of thick and thin. True internal desires come
| out best when there aren't any externally generated desires, and
| modern life seems to overload our capacity for generating
| internal originated desires. Internal desires now only seem to
| show up in times of crisis, and then we've got a much harder time
| to actually work with them.
| john-titor wrote:
| this reads to me as a rant of someone who just finished their
| undergrad degree in sociology and wants to show it. some
| specifics aside, the same article might as well been a topic some
| 10, 30, 60 years ago. re-packaging an old opinion that our
| society is degenerating for whatever contemporary reasons without
| actually providing any constructive solutions does not feel very
| productive to me. ironic that the not very fitting metaphor of
| anorexia is used here.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I don't think that the author has fully outlined the case for
| cultural anorexia.
|
| If I was going to try and prove the premise: that people are now
| shedding a wide cultural "diet" for one consisting of a few mass
| produced, single sourced things.
|
| But I don't see evidence of that. If anything its the reverse.
|
| What I will concede is that locality of the cultural "sources"
| have gone. You're not going to find your next life changing art
| exhibit at the local gallery, you'll find it online, and then
| seek it out in person.
| paulcole wrote:
| > You're not going to find your next life changing art exhibit
| at the local gallery, you'll find it online, and then seek it
| out in person.
|
| But in the past the only reason you ever found your next life
| changing art exhibit at the local gallery was because the local
| gallery was your only option.
| lkrubner wrote:
| "for one consisting of a few mass produced, single sourced
| things."
|
| Clay Shirky made the point that something like the Internet
| expands the total number of offerings available to one person
| while decreasing the total number of offerings available
| overall. He hints at this in his essay on powerlaws:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20060208093032/http://www.shirky...
|
| He went into greater detail in a later essay, but that later
| essay now seems to be offline.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Internet expands the total number of offerings available to
| one person while decreasing the total number of offerings
| available overall.
|
| This argument makes much more sense to me, and I like that
| the author has actual plotted their idea using some sort of
| data, which is much more convincing than hand waving.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| One of the often missed features of religions is that of cultural
| critic and cultivator. A group of people who find works of art
| that at least don't offend their sensibilities and which align
| with their didactic goals (child rearing, conversion, etc...)
| Having an explicit standard for judging art gives a means of
| determining what is that thick and thin: which pieces of
| entertainment are just that and which are meant to be shared,
| reenjoyed, and such.
|
| Not endorsing a specific religion or philosophy here, but how is
| one to aspire to something more meaningful and deeper when they
| cannot even distinguish what that is?
| Lamad123 wrote:
| Remember, these are just random opinions of some random person..
| Education, institutions, politics, technology, sex, work, art,
| and media. This seems like a very random categorization of
| "things".. Why is food or religion or violence or consumerism
| there?
| jstx1 wrote:
| I don't know if I'm getting cynical or close-minded or just old
| but I'm very quick to roll my eyes at an article like this. I
| don't get the appeal.
| dwighttk wrote:
| I recommend C.S. Lewis' _The Discarded Image_ if this article
| resonates.
| redmen wrote:
| Funny. Maybe the desire for acceptance and popularity on social
| media incentivizes articles that defend social media to be
| written.
|
| I'm not sure how anyone can actually be in denial about how bad
| social media, and constant notifications are for the brain.
| mbawg wrote:
| This article, despite all of its words, says nothing of value.
| ianai wrote:
| "In order to break out of the mimetic cycle were going to need to
| find something worth hoping for. "
|
| See now I think this wasn't proofread.
|
| Not entirely sure this belongs on HN either. Maybe if it was
| written more coherently?
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I have some disagreements with the notion that deep, passionate
| hobbies and interests are increasingly difficult to acquire. If
| anything, they've never been commonly acquired; only the wealthy
| ever had the space for passion in their lives.
|
| Additionally, how do you tell the difference between a hot take
| person on Twitter and someone who is deeply feeding their hobby?
| What if the hobby is spicy Twitter takes, because they are a
| YouTuber and so getting in on the controversy on one social media
| site gets you more audience for your platform on YouTube?
|
| I have some concerns this essay is essentially dismissing other
| people as shallow out of the same influencer style posturing that
| it positions as shallow/thin. Doesn't help that it ends with a
| $1500 thinking package, lol.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > If anything, they've never been commonly acquired; only the
| wealthy ever had the space for passion in their lives.
|
| It is how people look back at the past and think that their
| life would be better in past times. They assume that either the
| lives of the well off were fairly normal or that they would be
| one of the well off.
| MandieD wrote:
| A lot of that might be due to books and other media from or
| set in the past being about (relatively) rich people.
|
| I love reading novels written in the late 18th/early 19th
| century; I give thanks that I was born in the late 20th
| century, because life as a middle class woman with an IT job
| now is far superior to life as a relatively wealthy woman
| then, to say nothing of life as a woman who actually did have
| to work outside her home (those were not fun, personally-
| fulfilling jobs).
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| The target audience for this seems to be people like
| developers who can afford this form of distinction of desire.
| I don't see anyone in retail giving this article much of a
| second thought. We know what we want, and, largely, we can't
| afford it. It all comes down to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
| trailmonster wrote:
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| I'm actually kind of angered that I lost five minutes of my life
| to reading this ironically paper-thin construct.
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