[HN Gopher] A life of splendid uselessness is a life well lived
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A life of splendid uselessness is a life well lived
Author : indigodaddy
Score : 101 points
Date : 2023-04-11 14:43 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (psyche.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (psyche.co)
| jiriknesl wrote:
| Thomas Alva Edison, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang
| Mozart and Leonardo da Vinci would disagree.
|
| Live well lived is a life where you aren't ever completely happy
| and always strive for more. It's a life where your skills are
| subjected to resistance, and you constantly face obstacles. This
| makes your life an adventure.
|
| Everyone's life should be an adventure.
| another_story wrote:
| How is the end result different if you're happy and curious and
| motivated? Needing to have some level of unhappiness and
| constant striving against resistance seems unnecessary. Kids,
| when discovering the world, aren't unhappy.
| tqi wrote:
| I'm a bit confused by this article. On the one hand, it seems to
| advocate for thinking beyond "instrumentality" and being solely
| "oriented around the practical principles of utility,
| effectiveness and impact". On the other hand the two examples
| highlighted are "some of the greatest nature writing ever set to
| paper" and "the greatest punk rock bands in history", which seems
| pretty squarely oriented around utility, effectiveness and
| impact...
|
| If the point is that doing "useless things" can also lead to
| greatness, I would say it's also possible to complete a marathon
| by walking on your hands, but it sure as shit easier to just run.
| If the point is that "impact" is not the be all/end all, I would
| whole heartedly agree but argue that the first step is to
| reorient ourselves away from celebrating just the extra ordinary
| outcomes.
| methehack wrote:
| Maybe the idea is that from the first person perspective,
| neither pursuit (EDIT) felt like doing anything useful... and
| yet...
| jjulius wrote:
| tl;dr - personal hobbies are good.
| grrdotcloud wrote:
| Thank you. Hobbies are a wonderful expression of wealth, time
| management, and initiative.
|
| As a parent the time for hobbies has morphed into intentional
| activities that help my children and when possible that I also
| enjoy.
| johnbellone wrote:
| > As a parent the time for hobbies has morphed into
| intentional activities that help my children and when
| possible that I also enjoy.
|
| Nobody really understands that until they have children of
| their own. I sure didn't, but lately I've found a lot of joy
| in watching my kid discover virtual reality games. Much more
| than I actually enjoy them myself.
| spinach wrote:
| The author seems to undermine their own point by saying it's only
| certain types of uselessness that are good. That uselessness is
| actually useful for certain things and thus, are like those
| things he mentioned which have a use and end goal. Do useless
| things, but only if they are useful.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| I love the stories here, but this article seems so "duh, of
| course" to me that I wonder, is there really a target audience
| who doesn't think "splendid useless" (I would use the term
| "beautiful") things are a huge part of the life well lived?
|
| Maybe I don't know enough hustlers?
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| People are free to agree on what they and their group or culture
| generally consider to be a life well lived, but there will never
| be an objectively defensible answer, it's ontologically
| impossible.
| rini17 wrote:
| Subjectively defensible answer is enough. But very hard.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Yeah, a life of hedonism is not providing value to society.
|
| Even the epicurean subreddit agreed when this was brought up.
| ambientenv wrote:
| "is not providing value to society" ... are we talking only
| the core values today of profit and growth?
| birdyrooster wrote:
| What a strange inversion of reasoning. *
|
| Hedonism is an example of society being so capable of
| providing that it has largess. Any society without hedonists
| would be cautionary. Hedonists test the limits of what
| society has achieved on behalf of the individual and is in my
| belief the entire point of society.
|
| Society should elevate the individual be it hedonism or
| otherwise.
|
| * this is a quote and I am being a bit facetious here, I
| agree with other commenters that it's impossible to draw a
| line on this balance
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| You could make the exact same argument about people with
| clinical psychopathy, and it would be just as valid.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Well said, yes it's very much relative to other humans
| around.
| fortissimohn wrote:
| In order for someone's existence to be acceptable, they
| should provide value? Monetary value? Or does human life
| intrinsically have value, making this a tautology...?
| [deleted]
| lisper wrote:
| Eh, no. Just because you aren't getting paid doesn't mean that
| what you're doing is useless. "Useless" is a word the writer
| chose deliberately to be provocative and thus get attention, but
| it's wrong.
|
| To be fair though, "a life doing useful things you aren't getting
| paid for" doesn't roll so trippingly off the keyboard.
| dazzawazza wrote:
| To be fair, many people would describe many of those activities
| as "useless". But I think you make a good point.
| lisper wrote:
| If they call everything that one don't get paid for "useless"
| then they are using the wrong word.
|
| In fact, the examples that the author cites were manifestly
| not useless at all even on the criterion that money is the
| ultimate measure of utility. In the one case, the work
| produced a book which, one presumes, some people bought, and
| in the other case, art (music) that people at the very least
| went out of their way to listen to, and possibly even paid
| for. (I've never been to a punk rock concert, but I presume
| that at least some of them had cover charges.)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| "Not all need be monetized."
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| In my experience, it's easy to get paid doing useless things
| just because someone believes they may turn out useful anyway;
| and for some kinds of actually useful things it's pretty hard
| to get paid for doing them at all.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes. "Useful" is only loosely correlated with "income-
| producing".
| rmk wrote:
| There is some truth to this. Having children and raising them
| is an unquestionably useful activity but most societies,
| particularly the industrialized ones such as the US, Japan, and
| Korea, do not 'pay' for. Many mothers are paid indirectly by
| their husbands (housewives), but there are many single mothers
| or fathers who do unpaid work as parents.
|
| Interestingly, caring for one's parents used to be an unpaid
| activity, and still is in non-industrialized countries. But
| there has been a successful transition to paid (albeit poorly)
| work as far as older parents are concerned, in industrialized
| countries such as the US and the UK (I do not think this is a
| popular phenomenon in Japan and Korea AFAIK).
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Tldr: uselessness is useful when we narrow the definition of
| uselessness to be meaningless.
|
| "But truly splendid uselessness nourishes and elevates us
| spiritually, rather than simply providing a rush of mental or
| bodily pleasure. The output is always more than the input"
|
| Not all forms of uselessness are praise-worthy, only those that
| are ... useful.
| zwieback wrote:
| I think it's a life well lived if you have the personality for
| it. I know a lot of people agonizing over "making a difference"
| or the "meaning of life". At times I feel vaguely guilty for not
| feeling those feelings or having those thoughts but then I get
| distracted by the next interesting endeavour.
| fogzen wrote:
| "The biggest success of my entire life was the fact that I
| managed to stay entirely unemployed." -- Emil Cioran
|
| "I do not particularly like the word 'work.' Human beings are the
| only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most
| ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings
| by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to
| in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the
| challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good
| to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable
| life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live
| in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to
| see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the
| afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of
| such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce
| directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work
| as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to
| be done." - Masanobu Fukuoka
| senko wrote:
| This is not about hedonism or doing nothing. Money quote:
|
| > Of course, not all useless activity is actually good. [...] But
| truly splendid uselessness nourishes and elevates us spiritually,
| rather than simply providing a rush of mental or bodily pleasure.
| The output is always more than the input: [...] rich and
| ennobling activities that, while also being pleasurable, reward
| the intellect and the soul.
| munnyduddy wrote:
| I have a saying:
|
| > It is useful to appear useless in the eyes of those who intend
| to misuse us.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| E.g., the entire web development industry :D
| ldd wrote:
| I really like your saying.
|
| For whatever reason this reminded me of something attributed to
| Groucho Marx:
|
| > I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a
| member
| BigCryo wrote:
| If there were no such thing as cryonics I would travel to Brazil
| and go to the Amazon River and build a raft on it and live aboard
| it and fish and pick fruit and stare up in the sky and ponder The
| mystery of Life until it all ends.. why bother with this rat race
| and children and the worries of life when it's really just
| nothing ...has no meaning etc
| zdragnar wrote:
| You may be interested in reading
| https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/
| timacles wrote:
| Meaning is whatever you give it.
|
| If you truly care about nothing then sure it's all pointless.
| But I'm sure you have interests, desires, passions. The meaning
| is then how you spend your time relative to those
| BigCryo wrote:
| Huh?
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| For me, because life is really cool and interesting, and I love
| the fact that more people than have ever lived so far will
| probably live after I'm dead, and I'm happy they'll see and
| enjoy things I probably can't imagine. I want those future
| people, and the present people who are not me, to do well. I
| care about my life, and I'm sad it'll end, but that's just one
| drop of tragedy in the ocean of comedy. c:
|
| I think that emotional investment in others is crucial to
| overcoming death anxiety, at least for me (as a hardcore based
| fedora atheist). If your outlook is confined to your ego,
| everything seems pretty bleak and hopeless since your existence
| (which is the only thing you're emotionally invested in) is
| doomed to end, probably sorta miserably.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| when capitalism sublimates everything into commodity form, it's
| important to be reminded of the water we fish swim in.
|
| Fun or Play can be considered useless if not being commoditized
| or sold, but of course they are essential. Byung-Chul Han has
| some nice books about this.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >Fun or Play can be considered useless if not being
| commoditized or sold, but of course they are essential.
|
| No they aren't.
|
| Stoicism will tell you that happiness can come from virtue.
|
| We are living in an age that marketing companies push hedonism
| because they can sell it. Much harder to sell virtue in a 5
| second youtube ad.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| virtue is neither Real nor transcendent.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jjk166 wrote:
| Most people have happiness as a goal. Doing what you enjoy
| accomplishes that goal. Doing things that accomplish your goals
| is, by definition, not useless.
|
| I don't think anyone genuinely holds the belief that economic
| productivity should be even the primary, nonetheless exclusive,
| goal for a person's life.
| nluken wrote:
| Plenty of others in this thread have expressed the mistake of
| calling these sorts of activities "useless" but I can relate to
| the splendidness of self-expression for fun. I've recently
| started writing music and might record some songs soon after
| years of religious listening. Over that time I heard many amazing
| artists across all sorts genres, some with jaw-dropping
| virtuosity or unbelievable originality. And yet it took someone
| doing really lo-fi DIY recording over some simple songs to get me
| off my ass and learn to play. Even though they hadn't reached the
| heights of some of the other groups I'd heard, I could hear them
| having fun with their music in the recording, and that was enough
| to convince me I should give it a try.
| kyoob wrote:
| Not every day you click a link on HN and see Minutemen in the
| header image on the article. Chalking that up as a win and a sign
| to go do something splendidly useless with the rest of my day.
| zwieback wrote:
| Queued up some Minutemen on Spotify. I'd heard of the band but
| never really listened before.
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