[HN Gopher] Life Is So Terrible and Beautiful at the Same Time
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Life Is So Terrible and Beautiful at the Same Time
Author : vitabenes
Score : 130 points
Date : 2023-06-12 10:37 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (johnpweiss.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (johnpweiss.com)
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| I think it's fair to say most things are not black and white, or
| gray. They're some kind of high dimensional noise function with
| clusters and gradients of every possible shade.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| lordleft wrote:
| Something about this essay reminds me of a line from Stanley
| Lombardo's translation of the Iliad:
|
| "It was glorious to see--if your heart were iron, And you could
| keep from grieving at all the pain."
| [deleted]
| aantix wrote:
| > Social boundaries trumped my compassionate instinct.
|
| I think he should have at least asked if she needed a hug.
|
| Feels like that would have been a nice way to honor his instinct
| and her boundaries at the same time.
|
| She may have at least appreciated the sentiment. Or she would
| have take him up on that offer and embraced his embrace. Either
| way, it seems like a positive.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| It is weird when people let go of themselves when asked this
| question. I was in line for a TSA check. Latin woman in front
| of me had a hard mobile call (I don't speak Spanish, but I got
| the gist). I asked her is she was ok. 5 minutes of crying and
| Spanish. I gave her little side hugs and listened with
| compassion. It was a rather odd experience.
| Solvency wrote:
| The inability to be present has more to do with this artificially
| complex modern life we've engineered ourselves into, more than
| the trappings of our intellect.
|
| Life was far more assuring, rewarding, bountiful, and meaningful
| if you were living in a small Native American community in the
| year 1400 and millions of bison roamed the plains, and the soil
| was the most fertile in the world, and you had a direct, non-
| abstracted, immediate relationship with every person in the
| community around you. All of your inputs lead to physically
| direct outputs.
|
| And all of your biological wetware and quirks were designed and
| evolved to operate in this context. Hunting, foraging, moving
| your own body around, sleeping and waking with the sun, having
| non-digital relationships, eating whole foods from the earth.
|
| And it's not to say life never had its struggles. But it was
| certainly more biologically consistent and natural than what
| we've turned it into.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This reads like the usual "appeal to nature" fallacy.
|
| If you're going to focus on things like the soil being fertile
| and being directly involved with your neighbors, you kinda also
| have to consider the complete inability to cope with storms and
| disease and all the social ills that were reinforced because of
| that tight knit community.
|
| We like to think of past life as having been the benefits of
| all our modern moral leanings and all our "invisible"
| technologies combined with idealized visions of farming fertile
| lands and hunting among herds of animals, but any history book
| makes it obvious why our ancestors struggled so hard for us to
| live differently.
|
| Ignoring that many of the anecdotes presented in the linked
| article are mostly the author projecting despair onto others,
| those fundamental issues of disease, old age and death, were
| even worse when we lived "naturally" and had stronger ties to
| the people we lived around.
| fasterik wrote:
| Yep. Also known as the golden age fallacy. It's nostalgia for
| a past that never existed.
|
| Some people can't accept the fact that human life has always
| been terrible, and it's better today than it ever has been.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| the notion that quality of life could be boiled down to a
| number, to be put in some ranking for comparison across
| eras, is ludicrous
| toolz wrote:
| This is your opinion and I would suggest not a very
| popular opinion at that. I imagine the vast majority of
| the world can look at the number of violent crimes
| trending down over time and use that as a data point to
| rank eras. Similarly extreme poverty rate since the
| industrial revolution has drastically fallen. Another
| metric that I imagine the extreme vast majority of the
| world would find a useful metric in ranking eras. There
| are plenty of other metrics to rank eras that make plenty
| of sense if you look for them, and why shouldn't we?
|
| Is it even possible to make progress if we're not
| defining what progress looks like? Is progress such a
| ludicrous goal for the human race? If progress is a
| reasonable goal and you can't make progress without
| defining what progress looks like then it's necessary for
| progress to have metrics that can be used to rank eras.
| fasterik wrote:
| What I said doesn't depend on that assumption. I can make
| the claim that life is qualitatively better while being
| agnostic about whether we can attach a number to it.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| We don't need to rank eras and it doesn't hurt to make
| some comparisons or think about how life used to be. The
| main issue is people comparing while omitting large
| issues, not people claiming specific eras are better than
| others.
| digging wrote:
| Largely agreed. A total regression view is inaccurate and
| foolish. Plenty of people had shit lives before
| industrialization and plenty of good lives were cut short.
|
| We can't just assume "the past is better." That's wrong in
| many ways. However, when we look at our lives today, we can
| see things that are not good, and we can find ways that those
| things could be good. Many solutions can come from the past.
| Connection to our communities and investment in our
| environment seem to have real benefits for us an individuals,
| besides the systemic benefits.
| nradov wrote:
| How can solutions come from the past when we don't even
| have reliable information about what the past was like?
| Archaeological data on the lives of pre-Columbian
| indigenous New World peoples is extremely limited. Even
| much of what we think we know is probably mistaken, or at
| least badly distorted by modern biases.
| digging wrote:
| Simple: we don't replicate the lives of past peoples. We
| take ideas from [our ideas of] the past and find out if
| they work for us. And... it doesn't need to be from
| indigenous New World people.
| nradov wrote:
| Hardly simple. You are talking about running huge social
| experiments based on guesses about what might work
| better. It would be interesting to see the results of
| such experiments, but extremely difficult to convince
| people to participate.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Unless you had a Crow/Sioux type situation where your tribe was
| being eradicated by a neighboring tribe and you had been
| captured and enslaved, or your clan lacked power/influence due
| to a low number of strong males. But sure, if you were in the
| top it might have been like you describe.
| mahathu wrote:
| Enjoy working 12 hour days every day and eating potatoes 365
| days of the year?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Open literally any history book and be amazed at how far you
| are from reality. For the extreme vast majority of history we
| worked way less to sustain ourselves, certainly not the
| current 8 hours per day + average 100 minutes commute. The
| current 8 hours a day only sounds good because we had a short
| period of 10-12+ hours a day in mines and factories
|
| It's funny how people are so confidently incorrect and so
| happy to be slave to their work, almost bragging about it. I
| can't even wrap my head around that, some form of Stockholm
| syndrome perhaps
|
| https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_.
| ..
|
| https://medium.com/world-issues-politics-economics-and-
| more/...
|
| https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/for-95-percent-of-
| human...
| ericmcer wrote:
| Have fun with that.
|
| I much prefer having modern medicine, grocery stores, modern
| entertainment etc.
|
| Just yesterday I picked up a bunch of tacos and sat down to
| watch the movie Renfield with the family and I had a brief
| moment of awe about all the resources that are at our
| fingertips. I am not rich by any means but can watch one of the
| greatest actors in history performing on a 72inch 4k screen in
| my living room whenever I want. It is amazing.
|
| If you were a Native American in the 1400s you were pretty much
| guaranteed to die young and in a painful fashion after a very
| hard life.
| steve_g wrote:
| I agree with you 100%. The average person now lives better
| than the richest kings a few hundred years ago.
|
| But I think it's funny that you use Nick Cage as an example.
| Not to be mean - I like him too. But it's still funny.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Oh yeah I was hoping someone would notice the Nick Cage
| greatest actor bit haha
| glitchc wrote:
| > greatest actor
|
| Surely you don't mean Nicholas Cage! That title clearly
| belongs to John Cena.
| swader999 wrote:
| Disease, weather, conflicts with other warring tribes. Fitting
| into the hierarchy, the ever present threat of banishment.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Ignorance is bliss? Is it better to believe in gods that will
| reincarnate you as a bear if you die in battle? Or is it better
| to have access to knowledge?
|
| Also, bad weather and praying to gods wasnt exactly
| input/output.
| swader999 wrote:
| I could go another round as a bear. Bears are awesome.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| No, you don't get to be a bear at all. That was the
| mysticism the clan leader tricked you into dying for him
| for.
| anthlax wrote:
| How do you know?
| iand675 wrote:
| I lost my 3 1/2 year old daughter to sudden illness several
| months ago. So many dreams left our family that day. Now it is up
| to those of us left behind to pick up the pieces.
| glitchc wrote:
| So sorry for your loss... I cannot imagine your pain.
| nico wrote:
| Lots of love and a big hug to you
|
| I have two kids around that age. Have had some bad scares and
| it's been devastating emotionally for me
|
| Hope you get lots of support
|
| Feel free to reach out (checkout my profile), if you ever want
| to talk, about anything really, doesn't have to be the kids
| iamcasen wrote:
| Good lord, I'm so sorry. My heart goes out to you and your
| family.
| swader999 wrote:
| So sorry, the only thing that helps is to love those left with
| all you have.
| RigelKentaurus wrote:
| I'm extremely sorry for your loss. I do hope that you are able
| to pick up the pieces and somehow create a meaningful life with
| them.
| zztop44 wrote:
| I'm so sorry for your loss.
| braymundo wrote:
| I am sorry for your loss and I hope you find the strength and
| meaning to carry on.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Losing one of my children would be the end of me, just thinking
| of what you are going through brings a tear to my eye. I really
| hope you can pick up the pieces and enjoy what life still has
| to offer you.
| aeontech wrote:
| I'm so sorry...
| rullelito wrote:
| I believe the net, pleasure minus pain, on earth is hugely
| negative.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| The author views life through the lens of a hedonist, and finds
| that stoicism is better to deal with the tough times. They don't
| use any of these terms, which makes me think they are
| independently coming to the same conclusion as the Stoics. Seems
| pretty basic.
|
| Did I miss the point?
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| Maybe so if you missed the author and his experience in the
| hurry to summarize his concepts?
| npinsker wrote:
| No; that's exactly how I read it
| haswell wrote:
| Life's lessons can be learned in a myriad of ways. Stoicism
| resonates with many people because they find it applicable to
| what they're experiencing in life, but that brings the
| implication with it that many people are bound to discover the
| same insights. This has happened since time immemorial, and
| ideas are reborn, repackaged, re-contextualized for a new era.
|
| Stoicism also comes loaded with shoulds and shouldn'ts as they
| pertain to living a "virtuous life", and for many people, this
| is too close to religious dogma for comfort. Put another way,
| there are many people who might benefit from the ideas but
| would bristle at the thought of turning to something that
| resembles religion.
|
| But the underlying philosophical insights that can be found in
| stoicism can be also found across many other contemplative
| traditions.
|
| When reading a piece like this, I don't find it particularly
| interesting to try to reduce the author's personal discoveries
| to "oh that's just <philosophy>". Many people find the stories
| of others helpful because they're less abstract and heady than
| a series of intellectually sound ideas that might not feel very
| helpful when someone is going through the shit.
|
| I'd argue that you missed the point of the piece. Knowing that
| stoicism (or Buddhism, etc...) exist doesn't seem to have any
| bearing on the recollection of one's personal journey. Some
| people are looking for a philosophy of life. Some people are
| just looking for comfort in knowing that others have
| experienced something that validates their own pain. And some
| people share their own journeys to make/find meaning in the
| pain, and it is this sharing that is more interesting than its
| resemblance to famous ideas.
| mahathu wrote:
| [flagged]
| ramoz wrote:
| someone not victimizing themself means they have a
| personality disorder?
| monero-xmr wrote:
| > _There's an elderly gentleman who works at the local pharmacy
| store._
|
| > _He's bent over and moves slowly. His hair is uncombed and a
| dull vacancy lurks in his eyes. He's always there so he must need
| the money._
|
| > _His sadness is contagious._
|
| This drives me crazy. You don't know anything about this guy. One
| time I took an airport shuttle and the driver was ancient, the
| bus was empty and we started chatting. He loves driving the bus,
| he does this to stay busy, he's retired but enjoys having a
| purpose and talking to people (such as myself). He told me all
| about his kids and their careers.
|
| My point is you have absolutely no idea why anyone does anything,
| unless you ask them. Projecting sadness onto strangers says more
| about yourself than the subject.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _This drives me crazy. You don 't know anything about this
| guy._
|
| Doesn't have to. With some empathy you can often tell. Also
| don't need to know anything to know that 70+ year olds don't
| work at some menial service industry job in countries where
| they can afford to retire.
|
| > _He loves driving the bus, he does this to stay busy, he 's
| retired but enjoys having a purpose and talking to people (such
| as myself). My point is you have absolutely no idea why anyone
| does anything, unless you ask them._
|
| That would tell you even less in many cases. I wouldn't
| necessarily believe the story a stranger would present for
| their circumstances either. Part of it will probably be saving
| safe, or making himself look better than "70-something that
| can't afford to retire and is forced to drive around".
|
| The fact is, loving it or not, he probably works because he
| 100% needs the money. So a health incident, or some emergency
| (like his house needing repairs, or a rent hike) could wipe him
| out.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| Wow what an incredibly smug and presumptuous comment. You are
| so sure your assumption is right that you dismiss information
| directly from the person himself. This is some Reddit-tier
| shit right here.
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, because people never lie. Or save safe. Or tell a
| happier or sadder story than is the case.
| googlryas wrote:
| > With some empathy you can often tell.
|
| This doesn't sound like empathy - it sounds like
| stereotyping. Instead of getting to know someone and finding
| out about them, or accepting that you just don't know details
| about their life, you develop a story of their life in head
| based on nothing but your gut feeling.
|
| > Also don't need to know anything to know that 70+ year olds
| don't work at some menial service industry job in countries
| where they can afford to retire.
|
| Is Sweden one of those countries where people can afford to
| retire? Because they have about the same rate of 75+ year
| olds working as the US.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/02/22/the-rise-of-
| elderly...
|
| https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/slideshows/states-
| wi...
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Is Sweden one of those countries where people can afford
| to retire? Because they have about the same rate of 75+
| year olds working as the US._
|
| From the very link you provided, regarding Sweden: "a
| succession of policy choices have pushed older people into
| work".
|
| And from the report they link to:
|
| "The latest pension reform (a defined contribution scheme)
| has increased the economic incentives to work longer.
| Parallel, it has become more difficult to get a disability
| pension even for only medical reasons. (...) Several
| political decisions were also taken from the early 1990s on
| to counteract early retirement and increase the actual
| retirement age. (...) There is a clear socio-economic
| gradient in the age of retirement. Low-skilled jobs have
| lower wages and worse working conditions, work environment
| and occupational protection. The difference in "lost
| years", i.e. the number of years that people exit from the
| labour market before reaching age 65, between early and
| late exit jobs amounts to 4.82 years for men ("Other sales
| and services elementary occupations" compared to "College,
| university and higher education teaching professionals").
| For women, the difference is 5.55 years."
|
| Rather than some socialist paradise, as is the stereotype
| of Sweden in the US (well, though compared to which, it
| might very well be), the political establishment there has
| been increasingly pushing neoliberal reforms for decades
| now.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| We were hitch-hiking from Vancouver to Whitehorse in 2001 and
| ended up being stranded somewhere in redneck territory -
| imagine a bunch of guys in a pickup truck driving past while
| hollering "hey buddy grow some tits and we'll give you a ride"
| - when we finally got a ride on a big rig. The driver was 72
| years old, name of Ken, callsign "Big D" on CB. He took us all
| the way to Whitehorse since he was running a load of condensate
| to the north of Alaska anyway and it was on the route (which is
| understandable given that there is only one Alaska Highway).
| Being in the truck with him for 11/2 days we got to talk -
| which is why he took hitch-hikers along in the first place -
| and touched the subject of him driving that truck while he
| could have been enjoying his pension. 'I tried it, being
| pensioned, but did not like it' he said so he just took right
| off where he left. As long as his body and mind held out he
| wanted to keep on doing this work 'cause sitting at home was
| boring.
|
| Having left Whitehorse in a canoe on our way to the Bering
| strait we met another 72 years old man, this one named Tom. Tom
| was also paddling the Yukon, or maybe I should say he was
| enjoying the current taking him downstream. His plan was to
| paddle the whole river like we were doing but he was doing it
| in stages where he would take to the river for a few days, then
| find his way back to his truck somehow to get his canoe. Tom
| was a pensioned school teacher, he lived on his own in a cabin
| and quite liked being pensioned but not hanging around in his
| cabin all the time so he sometimes took to the river.
|
| When I reach that age I suspect I'll do something similar
| seeing how as I think I'd be bored by the "normal" life of a
| pensioner.
| Veen wrote:
| It's not a documentary purporting to be a factual examination
| of multiple people's life stories or an analysis of social
| attitudes to the elderly.
|
| It's a touching essay detailing one man's thoughts and
| experiences as he moves through life, presented with the
| intention of eliciting certain feelings and thoughts in the
| reader. And that's all it needs to be.
|
| Here's an alternative perspective about getting old. Maybe
| you'll enjoy it more:
|
| https://allpoetry.com/The-Old-Fools
| monero-xmr wrote:
| And my counterpoint is that "old men working" is not the same
| as "society has failed these dull, vacant-eyed poors". I'm
| arguing for dignity
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| Dignity being manifested through work is more of a Western
| illness, informed by Protestant Ideology and all of its
| accompanying baggage. Many other societies have roles for
| the elderly that do not require them to be service workers
| and all the corresponding degradation and abuse that comes
| along with it. And I say this as someone who spent many
| years in these kinds of jobs and found them in no way to be
| wholesome, engaging, or dignified.
|
| At least in the American context, people are remarkably
| rude and demanding to those who they deem beneath them,
| which is most often determined by the jobs they perform,
| how much money they have, etc. Assuming someone is
| miserable in these jobs may not always be correct, but it's
| also not in anyway improbable. I and all my coworkers
| certainly were.
| mlhpdx wrote:
| People are awful to each other everywhere - there is
| nothing exceptional about America there. I agree with you
| that dignity requires fundamental (not judgemental)
| respect, and that is sorely lacking in the world (even in
| your response).
| rcme wrote:
| Ok, but plenty of old people do work menial jobs out of
| necessity. This particular old man can be a symbol of that
| to the author regardless of the specific circumstances
| regarding the old man's employment.
| weard_beard wrote:
| If the old man told Weiss what he was feeling we wouldn't
| get the artistry of his rumination.
|
| It's like the student who hates the exercise of inferring
| authorial intent and ascribing situations and plots as
| metaphors in high school English. The point isn't to KNOW
| the authors intent. The point is to understand what it
| means to YOU!
|
| You're both right. This piece was about a sad old man. This
| piece makes us ponder our unknowable connections and the
| loss of dignity in suffering and old age.
|
| This piece can mean many things to many people. That's what
| makes it good.
| [deleted]
| soneca wrote:
| > _"I try to say something kind or friendly to encourage him.
| Sometimes he perks up momentarily, offering a half smile and
| faint twinkle in his eye"_
|
| I bet that was the old guy disguising the annoyance of having a
| patronizing customer.
| olalonde wrote:
| I have an independently wealthy friend that regularly operates
| a small food truck at the beach because he likes cooking and
| meeting people. His food is priced at cost so he doesn't make
| money from it. I wonder how many people pity him.
| inamorty wrote:
| I would imagine his demeanor would influence how he is
| perceived.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| My dad took a terrible accounting/logistics job for $15 an hour
| last year.Like the whole business was completely F'd, they no
| longer exist today.
|
| My dad, who did programming his whole life, didn't care. He was
| retired, he enjoyed the interactions with humans and the
| problems he was solving. He probably was providing $60+/hr of
| value since he would automate it.
|
| If you saw a grey'd dude that is absurdly skinny drag himself
| into an office(He hated the commute, he always hates driving),
| you'd think he was miserable. No, he was happy to be there, he
| just doesnt like driving.
| jansan wrote:
| Talking to those people is always great. It either gives them a
| way to share their problems with somebody, or you find someone
| who has a really interesting past and you can learn a lot. Best
| thing that ever happened to us was meeting a retired space
| engineer who worked on the Hubble telescope. My son was wearing
| a NASA sweater with an explosion drawing of the Hubble, and the
| old man explained on his shirt how the Hubble works and on what
| parts he had worked. I still regret that on another occation I
| did not talk to a man sitting next to me on a station platform.
| He looked exactly like a bum who had spent the previous night
| sleeping on the sidewalk in his own piss, but at second sight I
| noticed that his clothes were not only clean, but quite
| expensive (still looking shabby from distance), and he had a
| brand new expensive Rimowa suitcase. I would have loved to hear
| his story, but I had to catch my train.
| yboris wrote:
| For the Russian speakers:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9IqT6O_qvE
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