[HN Gopher] The cult of doing business
___________________________________________________________________
The cult of doing business
Author : Caiero
Score : 131 points
Date : 2025-05-10 12:39 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.commonwealmagazine.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.commonwealmagazine.org)
| bix6 wrote:
| Good read. I wish there was a bit more advice than the final
| sentence offers though.
| pas wrote:
| Zizek has a few pretty good tips!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLkweSiuG2E
| know-how wrote:
| Only an academic could write something like this;
|
| "But it's even better to treat love itself as the most important
| work."
|
| Your mortgage servicer doesn't accept love as payment.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| The comment below yours mentions suicide. Your brain doesn't
| accept mortgage servicing as a reason to continue living. So I
| think the idea is that priorities should flow from
| fundamentals.
| dade_ wrote:
| Or the Protestant work ethic? I didn't think this needed a new
| explanation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic
| graemep wrote:
| I think there are several weakneses in the Protestant work
| ethic as an explanation.
|
| 1. why is it directed at making money rather serving society?
| 2. Why does it glorify the rich rather than the "lowly workman"
| mentioned in the intro to your wikipedia link? 3. lots of
| evidence against it
|
| The first two of these are even less convincing given that
| background of a religion that condemns the accumulation of
| wealth ("eye of a needle" etc.) and literally worships a "lowly
| workman".
|
| As for evidence, this section of the wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic#Criticis...
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| > why is it directed at making money rather serving society
|
| i think this particular phenomenon is rooted in calvinism,
| particularly in North America, and calvinists hated humanity.
| It also wouldn't surprise me if the protestants coming over
| here normally prone to social responsibility (eg some
| lutherans) were less willing to show up for their community
| than those in the old world.
| valiant55 wrote:
| As a former Christian coming of age in the early 2000s there
| was a popular IP called "Left Behind" about the Rapture. I
| always thought the concept of the anti-christ was
| ridiculously absurd. That someone could convince Christ's
| followers to basically believe the opposite of the Gospel.
| After witnessing the rise of 45/7 and the complete
| bamboozling of my deeply Christian extended family I no
| longer consider it ridiculous.
|
| All that to say I'm not sure it really matters what exactly
| was written in the Bible because clearly a lot of the
| supposed followers of Christ never read it.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| What is 45/7 ?
|
| By the way, I highly recommend all of nonstampcollector's
| videos! https://youtu.be/7gvv_UM7CYg?si=Yer3KeaJZs7FQ03s
| dundarious wrote:
| US President number 45 and 47, i.e., Trump.
| graemep wrote:
| What is an IP?
|
| Also, I think its clear that some of this predates modern
| American evangelical Christianity, and some lies in secular
| values.
|
| > That someone could convince Christ's followers to
| basically believe the opposite of the Gospel.
|
| There are a number of historical examples. Most recently
| prosperity gospel and Positive Christianity?
|
| > All that to say I'm not sure it really matters what
| exactly was written in the Bible because clearly a lot of
| the supposed followers of Christ never read it.
|
| Often the ones who place the most importance on the Bible
| alone, and the most likely to be literalists! I think that
| is the root of it, because read as a "book" rather than a
| collection of documents, that exists in multiple versions,
| subject to disputes about wording and translation, each
| document written within a cultural (sometimes even
| personal) context, you can make it mean whatever you want
| to.
| valiant55 wrote:
| Intellectual Property, I believe it started as a book
| series but had movies, shows and I'm sure other media as
| well.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Intellectual property. Here referencing the body of work
| starting with books, falling with a TV series and movies.
| Referring to it as the "IP" abstracts across those forms.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > All that to say I'm not sure it really matters what
| exactly was written in the Bible because clearly a lot of
| the supposed followers of Christ never read it.
|
| It'd be wild if they had. It's a harder read than lots of
| books that the median reader struggles to understand, let
| alone enjoy enough to actually make it through. Most folks
| lack basically all historical context for the tales in it,
| and the book itself, so it reads as this unmoored set of
| confusingly-arranged-and-selected stories that have no hope
| of really making sense to them without a pile of reference
| books open alongside (what proportion of people are
| comfortable with and willing to engage in _that_ style of
| reading?)
|
| On the other hand, it's also wild that more haven't--one
| would think it'd be _way_ up their list of life priorities.
| I take it as a sign they're not really, under the veneer
| and trappings, convinced about the _eternal_ (!!!)
| ramifications of the whole deal. "Well sure my eternal soul
| is on the line and I 'believe' I'm holding the literal word
| of _the creator of the universe_ ... but it's haaaard and
| boring." LOL.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > It's a harder read than lots of books that the median
| reader struggles to understand, let alone enjoy enough to
| actually make it through. [...] Most folks lack basically
| all historical context for the tales in it, and the book
| itself
|
| This is why the Catholic Church speaks of both tradition
| and scripture. You need the lens of unbroken tradition to
| interpret scripture, as tradition is the cumulative
| knowledge over millennia (including period context) that
| allows for the possibility for grounded interpretation
| (never mind interpreting from bad translations). Indeed,
| tradition precedes canonical scripture historically:
| consider that the biblical canon was only established at
| the Council of Rome in 382, which means Christians had
| existed without a biblical canon for three centuries.
|
| Compare this with _sola scriptura_ which leads to either
| incoherence or the demotion of biblical scripture to the
| level of some stuff some guys wrote that you can read
| however you want [0]. The tacit doctrine at play is often
| that of perspicuity, which, given the endless
| proliferation of Protestant sects, would seems at the
| very least highly suspect.
|
| [0] https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-
| edition/logic-and-pr...
| foobarbecue wrote:
| right, a.k.a "European Miracle" . I had classes about this
| (racist and largely debunked) concept in undergraduate
| Geography. But the link above is a review of a book that
| presumably aims to take existing research further.
| Hilift wrote:
| > Weber also argued that the Protestant work ethic influenced
| the creation of capitalism
|
| An alternative explanation is for the first 140 years of the
| US, "Protestants" were the "people that did the work".
| Catholicism was illegal until the states re-wrote their
| constitutions/laws after the revolution (or ratification of the
| First Amendment, which ever came first).
|
| Also, there wasn't anything to do but work. If you wanted a
| house, you cleared land and built it. 50% of early European
| settlers were indentured servants.
|
| Oh and there wasn't any money or banks. Tobacco was the
| currency (in Maryland/Virginia). The only business partner was
| the UK, that managed the colonies as businesses. The
| entrepreneurial part was the Crown getting shareholders to foot
| the bill for provisions for the colonies. Shares in Virginia
| were sold on the London Stock Exchange. Maryland had a sole
| proprietor that funded the infrastructure build out.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Its more protestant/catholic structures create legal
| structures/institues that then form into a modern state and
| accidentally support the mechanisms that secularize society
| and themselves. The main component is driving sexual others
| into social service contract cults while severing ties to
| clan/family.
|
| Source:
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The main component is driving sexual others into social
| service contract cults while severing ties to clan/family.
|
| The implication being homo- and asexuals join the clergy
| because it obviates the expectation that they will marry?
| How does this lead to secularization?
|
| Protestantism lacks a clerical tradition (reverends and
| ministers can still get married, and there are no
| monasteries to join), so how does your theory apply there?
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| It produces church bureaucracy which becomes state
| bureaucracy , the judge looks like a priest for a reason.
| lurk2 wrote:
| That's what I suspected you meant, but it doesn't address
| my two other questions. What does this have to do with
| sexual others? How does it track with the Protestant
| tradition?
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Protestant tradition was to declare sinful almost every
| expression of sexuality. Leading to a ton of supressed
| non normative sexuality.
|
| Whose owners then migrated into state bureaucracy and
| public services . From prussia to the pentagon, the
| smithers clichee is very much alive and a byproduct of
| that culture.
|
| And rules based and hierarchy based as such systems are,
| they develop a live of their own. Until a monarch as pope
| competitor appears, takes over or copies the machinery
| for the catholics, or a protestant develops rigor by
| internalizing the inquisition and deciding to dedicate
| his life to paperwork for jesuses justice and to escape
| temptation .
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| For me, an American, the work ethic comes from reading Benjamin
| Franklin's Autobiography after being inspired by a passage
| found in an American Literature textbook in 10th grade. [0]
|
| edit: Of all the different philosophies a young person can
| subscribe to, entering in the middle of my life, I'm lucky to
| have chosen one of the better ones. I remember at the time
| really wanted to embrace an identity of being American and here
| is a founding father who helped draft the Declaration of
| Independence and signed the Constitution who was born and
| raised with the institution of slavery owning slaves himself
| and evolving into an outspoken anti-slavery advocate working to
| abolish the practice. That is what it means to be an American,
| to grow, change, and become better, just.
|
| [0] https://fs.blog/the-thirteen-virtues/
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Nice. On the virtue of silence: "in conversation [knowledge
| is] obtain'd rather by the use of the ears than of the
| tongue, ..."
| dataviz1000 wrote:
| > My list of virtues contain'd at first but twelve; but a
| Quaker friend having kindly informed me that I was
| generally thought proud; that my pride show'd itself
| frequently in conversation; that I was not content with
| being in the right when discussing any point, but was
| overbearing, and rather insolent, of which he convinc'd me
| by mentioning several instances; I determined endeavouring
| to cure myself, if I could, of this vice or folly among the
| rest, and I added Humility to my list, giving an extensive
| meaning to the word.
|
| > I cannot boast of much success in acquiring the reality
| of this virtue, but I had a good deal with regard to the
| appearance of it.
|
| (I alway laugh at this because to be truly humble a person
| can not boast of being virtuous therefore can't boast of
| being humble which creates a paradox.)
| sseagull wrote:
| As a high school teacher would say:
|
| "The good Lord gave you two eyes, two ears, but only one
| mouth"
| thimkerbell wrote:
| ("nice" in the good sense, I mean)
| carlosjobim wrote:
| [flagged]
| pas wrote:
| > There's a fundamental spiritual divide between people. One
| side hates being alive from the moment they are born, so
| everything is suffering, especially work. The other side loves
| life and loves doing things.
|
| [citation needed]
|
| :)
|
| So even if people end up in these very black-and-white groups
| it's doubtful that they are predetermined. But it's more like
| it's a spectrum, and some people start from a very good place
| some from a very hard one. And there are many important and
| distinct factors affecting one's relationship with work,
| success, motivation, diligence. Not to mention that luckily
| people's life (and relationship with work) can get better.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| You just cited it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It is a spectrum for a while, until people generally fall
| into one of the poles. And starting in a hard place or an
| easy place has no influence to this attitude, in my
| experience.
| pirgidb wrote:
| That's a story you tell yourself about the internal lives
| of others, but it is not knowledge. You don't actually know
| what's inside other people's minds. All we ever catch are
| glimpses of each other.
|
| It's tempting to make sweeping generalizations about others
| to explain the ways they confound and frustrate us. But
| it's essential to hew to the truth and accept that life is
| ambiguous, people are baffling, and simplistic narratives
| do more to give us comfort and reinforce our biases than
| they do explain the world around us.
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| I'm not sure this claim has any more validity than his.
| Calling people unknowable flies in the face of a bunch of
| modern disciplines. We can see people behave very
| predictably with Game Theory, for example.
|
| Still, I respect the view that the individual is private
| unto themselves in a profound way. But I would also say
| people tend to show you what they believe in how they
| act. If you pay attention you will begin to notice when
| someone has put their hopes in power, finances,
| achievement, or ideology, to give a few popular examples.
| And it's not about what people say animates them, or even
| about what they believe about themselves--it's how they
| act.
| pirgidb wrote:
| "People respond to incentives and we can model this with
| game theory" is a model that notably does not assume
| anything about the content of people's character or mind.
| And it frequently fails to explain the behavior of
| individuals, because you may not understand the incentive
| landscape they're in. You may offer to pay someone to do
| something, and it sucks the joy out of it for them, or
| they feel offended by your offer, and they become less
| likely to do it.
|
| There's light-years of difference between observing an
| individual person's actions and drawing conclusions about
| what they believe (this is in line with what I was
| referring to with "catching glimpses") and generalizing
| to conclude that everyone is predestined to be either
| enthusiastic and lively or a miserable wretch. It's far
| more likely you caught someone on a good or bad day, to
| pick just one alternative hypothesis. People contain
| multitudes.
|
| I also pay attention to the difference between what
| people say and what they do, and I agree it is meaningful
| and would even says it's a critical part of being around
| people. But it's easy to get carried away and pretend we
| know more than we really do, simplistic stories that
| explains everyone's behavior is very seductive. A model's
| ability to generalize is inversely proportional to how
| powerful it's predictions are. Stories like this that
| take people and bin them into two groups that control
| their destiny have huge predictive power - and apply to
| almost nobody.
|
| Whereas to return to game theory, assuming people are
| black boxes that optimize some unknown and idiosyncratic
| utility function which we infer based on their revealed
| preferences can apply to nearly everyone and everything.
| But it's predictions are very narrow in scope. You can
| use an A/B test to optimize any change to any UI flow,
| and it'll tell you which one converts better. But it
| won't tell you why.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| The problem is that "everything is suffering, especially
| work" is a mindset at the end of the day. Most of us live in
| free enough countries where we are not assigned a
| class/vocation from birth.
|
| If your job is so unrewarding or unfulfilling, try something
| else! You are not married to a job, you won't be court
| marshaled for leaving, and you likely won't be rewarded for
| trying to keep a "job for life" like our parents generation
| might have been.
|
| Maybe you burned out and simply changing scenery will improve
| your life. Maybe you are in the wrong type of role and trying
| something new helps.
|
| Doing nothing certainly won't help!
| FredPret wrote:
| Some suffer from learned helplessness. This turbocharges
| their resentment towards their boss, their company, and all
| of capitalism.
|
| Appreciating the magic of living in a thriving economy
| (true for most of the world for decades now) is partly
| attitude.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| > Appreciating the magic of living in a thriving economy
| (true for most of the world for decades now) is partly
| attitude.
|
| Yes. Louis CK did a bit ~15 years back about someone
| throwing a tantrum on a plane when the (then brand new
| tech) WiFi broke down.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me4BZBsHwZs
| FredPret wrote:
| Exactly. Each of us is standing on the shoulders of
| giants - technological, scientific, commercial,
| political, and many other kinds of contributions.
|
| Life may not be perfect, but we all live downstream from
| Ugh the Caveman who once held a blunt rock in each hand,
| decided to whack them together, and bootstrapped the
| entire human tech tree, all while facing lions, sabre-
| toothed tigers, mammoths, ice ages, terrible diseases,
| and hunger.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I like the way I've seen the inconveniences of life
| described as a tax one pays. Airplane delays are a tax on
| travel. Coordinating schedules is a tax on hanging out
| with friends. City noise is a tax on living in urban
| areas with vibrant street life.
|
| Framed this way one can be more grateful and recognize
| that life is not frictionless. The more you try to make
| it frictionless the more frivolous your grievances
| become.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yeah I think you've sort of touched on something there.
|
| Many of my hardworking friends also have interesting
| hobbies/interests outside work they pursue and are known for.
| Arts, literary, cuisine, gardening, sports, charity, whatever.
| Generally putting more out into the world in other non-work
| venues.
|
| However practically none of my more "slacker" friends have
| anything to show for their time outside of work. They define
| life more in terms of what they are avoiding. Hobbies are more
| consumptive - watching TV/film, dining out, travel, etc.
|
| Maybe at the end of the day being good at any one thing takes
| some intellectual ability, commitment and effort.. so once
| you've applied that in one area you are likely able to do so
| elsewhere.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| And before I'm accused of moralizing - I'm not.
|
| The older I get the more I look at this bifurcation in terms
| of - wtf am I going to do in retirement.
|
| You read a lot of early retirement experiences and the people
| that "retire to something" (a hobby/volunteer work/etc) do
| much better than those that "retire from something" (can't
| wait to stop working!).
| bradly wrote:
| >I love working (...) it's rewarding and mentally developing
|
| Some work may be these things, but not all work. If your work
| is consistently both then there is a good chance your work
| involves some creation that is satisfying you.
|
| I do agree that taking the morality out of our everyday tasks
| can greatly affect our outlook on life.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| If your work is not mentally developing anymore, it's time to
| look for the next thing to do. You've already conquered it
| completely.
| bradly wrote:
| That is a privilege not all have.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Does your comment have any other purpose than to try to
| shut down a conversation?
| pirgidb wrote:
| If you're not willing to engage with what they have to
| say charitably, maybe you should just leave it. Their
| comment is plainly relevant to yours, and "shutting down
| conversation" is not at all a good faith interpretation.
| It is a huge weakness in your argument that you say
| people should leave jobs that aren't stimulating to them,
| when we live in a world where people have to work to
| survive and frequently cannot make decisions on that
| basis.
|
| Imagine for a moment you are talking to someone who works
| a minimum wage job at McDonald's to provide for their
| children. How do you imagine they would respond to your
| suggestion they abandon their responsibility to their
| children to find a more mentally stimulating job? How
| would that be anything but patently absurd?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > How do you imagine they would respond to your
| suggestion they abandon their responsibility to their
| children to find a more mentally stimulating job?
|
| Did I say that? Also, there's a career ladder at
| McDonalds open for all their employees. Apart from this,
| the skills you learn at McDonalds is transferable to
| other occupations in the same sector or other sectors. I
| should know, I worked those kind of jobs, much worse than
| McDonalds. So it's quite easy for me to imagine what
| that's like.
|
| I'm not going to entertain the idea that somebody is
| locked into their current occupation for life, unless
| they are a literal slave. My suggestions and advice has
| no benefit for people who are enslaved, but does that
| mean that the ideas cannot be discussed at all? Does your
| comment have any benefit for somebody in that situation?
| Maybe we should never discuss exercise and health because
| some people have medical conditions? We shouldn't discuss
| diet and cooking because some people have allergies, and
| so on.
|
| Most of us need to work to survive, so let's make the
| best of it. I also need to sleep to survive, and I do my
| best to enjoy it. The same with eating etc.
|
| The replies to my initial comment demonstrates the
| spiritual divide. Just by me stating that i love working,
| people here get the wildest assumptions into their head,
| because they cannot imagine anybody enjoying work by and
| for itself.
| bradly wrote:
| I appreciate your thoughtful replies. Sorry to have not
| expanded more before.
|
| I think agree with you in spirit but maybe from a
| slightly different perspective. I see people divided
| between whether they spend the time they have control
| over consuming vs creating (content, art, whatever) more-
| so than their "work" but work is a pretty loose term.
|
| I enjoy working on things. I enjoy pulling the weeds in
| my garden and I enjoy the sanding of my woodworking
| pieces. There is no morality in those individual tasks to
| me and I like a nice healthy garden and beautiful
| furniture.
|
| Also, I've yet to have a salaried job where I wanted less
| three day weekends.
|
| You are right that these topics are hard to talk about.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Or maybe some people don't get the chance to work on things
| that are rewarding and mentally developing? Not all work is
| equal.
|
| Maybe have some gratitude that your work has given that to you,
| rather than assuming that other people who are drained by their
| work are somehow spiritually inferior.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Who should I be grateful to?
|
| These people are drained long before they enter the work
| force. And no matter what job they have they will be drained
| by it. You probably saw a good chunk of them in school.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| One of the things that opened up my eyes to how much of
| life is mindset & purpose was, ironically, dealing with
| some of the very wealthy in NYC.
|
| Some of the most anxious, unhappy, complaining people I met
| were the underemployed spouses of the very well off. And
| this isn't a sexist statement because it was both women and
| men. And some good percent of them had no kids either.
| Truly no responsibilities.
|
| The kind of people who I'd bump into at the gym just after
| sunrise on the way to a long day of work, and they lament
| to me how their weekly in-home massage got cancelled due to
| a scheduling conflict, and they just don't know what to do
| with their day. LOL.
|
| One can be happy or unhappy at any objective
| income/wealth/stress level. You'd be very surprised.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Some of the people in this thread have apparently never had
| a truly shitty job.
| betterThanTexas wrote:
| ah, if only the rest of us had the willpower to simply choose
| to not suffer and to enjoy life instead.
|
| Seriously, who do you talk to that enables such viewpoints? I
| suspect not many people want to talk to you after their shift.
|
| Work isn't the problem; it's doing bullshit work that's
| undervalued so that morons who don't work can eat. This has
| held true at every part of the pay scale. It's just the
| compensation on the upper end helps you have hope you may find
| meaningful work that can feed you.
|
| I suspect we all WANT to work. We just need to eat, too.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > ah, if only the rest of us had the willpower to simply
| choose to not suffer and to enjoy life instead.
|
| Exactly! You have to find that path before it's too late.
| Each one of us have only 80 years at most.
|
| > Work isn't the problem; it's doing bullshit work that's
| undervalued so that morons who don't work can eat.
|
| Agree. Doing dishonest or unethical jobs is not real work and
| makes nobody happy.
|
| > I suspect we all WANT to work. We just need to eat, too.
|
| And within those two goals there is a great world of
| opportunities.
| brokegrammer wrote:
| > I love working
|
| What if you needed to work for free?
| DanielVZ wrote:
| I love working but, after two years of not taking vacations -
| due to several reasons that I should've anticipated - oh boy
| how much I'd like to take a rest. I counting the days until I
| can take a few weeks off.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > One side hates being alive
|
| > I love working
|
| You should stop hating being alive. There's so much more in the
| universe than work.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Work is part of the universe, it's not everything, but it is
| a key part.
|
| Exercising is hard work. Who lives life feeling better, the
| person who exercises or the person who just sits all day?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| This is a book review, right?
|
| I'm confused by this pattern of people reading book reviews and
| treating them as if they were the book itself, or an original
| article.
|
| Isn't the purpose to decide whether you want to buy the book?
| wslh wrote:
| If you are interested I always recommend to at least download
| the "sample" from Amazon Kindle before buying it.
| api wrote:
| What's wrong with finding meaning in work?
|
| Of course like all things the entrepreneurial ethos gets very
| silly and begins to incorporate a lot of very silly other ideas
| (think and grow rich!) when you dive deep into it, but as I've
| gotten older I've realized that most movements, philosophies, and
| ideologies get silly if you go deep.
|
| Thinkers, like people on dates, put their best foot forward
| first. As you get to know them is when you find out they never
| wash their underwear.
|
| The alternative, I guess, is finding meaning in things other than
| work, and that's okay too. Or you can do both.
| throwaway9914 wrote:
| Specifically, if your work is a typical job, it makes your
| meaning dependent on a business relationship where one side has
| a lot more power than the other side. Example: an employer may
| end or modify the relationship for factors that are unrelated
| to your goals at any time.
|
| In general, depending on work for one's ultimate meaning is
| dumb because whether or not you worked "hard enough" is judged
| by other people, not the entity responsible for putting humans
| (and therefore you) on the planet in the first place--you're
| already here so you obviously are supposed to be here,
| otherwise you wouldn't be. Good work makes you deserve to be
| among others but it can't make you deserve to exist on the
| planet.
| meesles wrote:
| I think you can tease this out a bunch of ways.
|
| >where one side has a lot more power than the other side
|
| This is life, in its entirety. Even those who feel like they
| live a 'free' life should realize they depend on things like
| national security and access to healthcare, right? So the
| power dynamic there doesn't make sense to me, unless you're
| also constantly in fear of all these other systems falling
| apart. Humans have worked to earn money to live forever.
| There wouldn't be money to give to workers if there wasn't an
| imbalance to begin with. Even farmers sustaining their own
| land have to pay workers to harvest.
|
| > whether or not you worked "hard enough" is judged by other
| people
|
| This IMO is a personal failure. Others don't determine
| whether I'm satisfied with my work, I do. I'm proud of my
| work even if others don't care for it.
|
| > not the entity responsible for putting humans (and
| therefore you) on the planet in the first place--you're
| already here so you obviously are supposed to be here,
| otherwise you wouldn't be
|
| There is no entity responsible, just like there is no reason
| for 'being here'. Your parents are to thank for raising you,
| but it could have just as well been other parents or another
| child! Our lives are a gift we're lucky to experience and we
| should enjoy it to the fullest on our own terms. If work
| fulfills you, great. If it doesn't, then do something else.
|
| I really dislike people putting their value systems on
| others, especially around these kinds of topics. Telling
| people that what they think is valuable is in fact not is
| akin to telling people to believe in your faith, or how to
| raise their kids, etc.
|
| Edit: Also curious why you would create a throwaway for this
| kind of opinion.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > What's wrong with finding meaning in work?
|
| Who told you you did not have meaning?
| djoldman wrote:
| > Employees, no matter what their job, crave recognition,
| autonomy, and a personal connection to work, which is why they
| often contribute more than they're paid for. Baker's point is
| that celebrating workers' "proactivity" disguises an essentially
| exploitative relationship.
|
| The story of the modern Western economy is that all the low-
| hanging fruit has been plucked from the tree of technological and
| productivity improvements (in the context of the regulatory
| environment).
|
| Therefore, the proportion of profit and revenue rooted in
| exploiting human flaws is and will continue to rise.
|
| Examples are:
|
| * Humans engage with drama and negative content (ad supported
| media)
|
| * Humans overindex on a sense of family/belonging/tribe
| (employers as family extract more work for less pay)
|
| * Etc
|
| Perhaps the biggest is regulatory capture and exploitation of
| regulatory loopholes.
| narrator wrote:
| The irony of "higher" standards of living is that meanwhile,
| African countries, and a few strict islamic ones, have much
| less of all this and they're the only places reproducing at
| faster than replacement rate.
| bendigedig wrote:
| Sounds like exactly what happens when an empire is on its way
| to collapse. It eats its young.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm surprised that the author thinks devotion to vocation is
| uniquely American.
|
| The Japanese take their jobs so seriously, that some have
| committed suicide, upon losing their jobs. Some CEOs have
| committed suicide, if their business fails, or there's a big
| scandal (an idea that I sometimes think could be useful on this
| side of the pond).
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| You almost had me agreeing with you, but advocating for someone
| to kill themselves is way out of line.
| geysersam wrote:
| I didn't interpret what they wrote as encouragement to
| suicide.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Suicide? No.
|
| Taking personal Accountability for the corporation under your
| direct management? Yes.
|
| _P. S. I 'll bet that the second one is the scariest one for
| most C-types._
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Listening to Cryptonomican 20 years after reading it. It is a
| curious embodiment of this "cult" but from a deeper, more
| epistemic place. The way Steaphenson treats the world, the way he
| describes it, is frenetic, packed with trivia and connections and
| ADHD deep-dives into related topics...but there is no heart to
| it. It's an empty, mechanistic view of the world, reducing almost
| every person a neat little network of abstractions, and then
| moving on. It is a strange book in that it seems to be a
| promotion of a narrative viewpoint rather than about the plot or
| characters. It is certainly the viewpoint of the "modern" tech
| entrepenuer, circa 1999. Somehow both extremely open minded AND
| judgemental; utterly unsentimental about anything, including the
| self; mere acceptence and wariness about indelible human needs.
| And so on.
|
| Word on the street is that Cryptonomicon was required reading at
| Thiel's early Palantir. I read it now and it definitely hits
| differently. To accept that you must _dwell_ in something in
| order to understand it, and therefore in order to wield power
| over it with any wisdom, is the antithesis of "The Cult of Doing
| Business". The hubris is baked in deep at an epistemic level,
| which is demonstrated to lead to epic moral hazards at an
| epidemic level.
| anon_hn_pltr wrote:
| It definitely wasn't required reading. I have never met anyone
| who's read it or even mentioned it.
| fullshark wrote:
| I heard that anecdote but it was at paypal/x, which makes
| more sense given the book's plot.
| FredPret wrote:
| But Stephenson describes things in this mechanistic, ADHD way.
| It's just his technique - he still paints a picture of people
| with rich inner lives and strong desires. Maybe the characters'
| sentiments (mostly pro-Western tech optimism) don't resonate
| with you, but that hardly means they don't have any.
| fullshark wrote:
| You should read Zero to One if you really want to unlock
| Thiel's thinking re: business. It's both the best business book
| I've ever read and the perfect distillation of the core
| soullessness at the root of the matter. The goal is positive
| cash flows that can't be successfully attacked by competitors.
| That's the game, that's all everyone here is working for.
| tchock23 wrote:
| I will never, ever understand the praise for that book.
|
| It can be summarized in one sentence: 'Get a monopoly if you
| can.' Brilliant insight there - thanks captain obvious!
|
| If the author wasn't famous it wouldn't have even been
| published, and certainly wouldn't have appeared as a 'best
| business book.'
| fullshark wrote:
| Well for myself it broke things down clearly in terms of
| the framework to operate in (zero to one, one to infinity)
| and what types of products you should even strive to build.
| I recall not seeing a lot of the ideas put so down so
| clearly and cleanly before, and as far as I know a lot of
| the book's framing became conventional wisdom in this
| industry after publication, or after many took his course
| at Stanford. So maybe it's nothing new to you because the
| lessons have been internalized already.
| jmogly wrote:
| It's a crisis of faith, caused by a 10,000 year search for
| meaning that isn't there. We had our first surplus as a species
| when we discovered agriculture and husbandry. The human mind has
| wandered since. We've built systems of belief, technological
| systems, political systems, every possible system you can
| imagine. All to deal with the simple fact that our minds feel
| like they should be doing something, but there isn't actually
| anything that needs to be done; surplus.
|
| Since our first surplus all those years ago, we have continued to
| increase our surplus relentlessly. The problem is the more
| surplus we have, the more the mind idles, the more we try to
| invent things for the mind to do.
|
| That is where I see the cult, the cult consists of faithless
| wanderers who have decided that the only valid use of surplus is
| to gain more surplus, whether it's through positive means like
| improving technology or business, or negative means like slavery
| and exploitation. It's a hollow existence. There is a righteous
| path, it's using our surplus to embrace the positive aspects of
| our spirit rather than the negative ones.
| bckr wrote:
| I don't have a lot of surplus. I hope to, I'm working towards
| it. I have the privilege, talent, and positioning. But I can't
| understand how anyone just below me in the hierarchy making
| ends meet.
| jmogly wrote:
| I think that is one of the most interesting take aways from
| this line of thought. It is nearly impossible to reconcile
| the idea that we as a species have unimaginable surplus, but
| nearly all of us feel we are living precariously on the edge
| of ruin, or are living in destitute poverty. There is plenty
| to go around, but because the worst parts of human nature
| have triumphed the good, we are forced to live in an
| incredibly inequitable distribution.
|
| Rather than build a system that works for everyone in an
| altruistic manner, we have a system that funnels surplus to
| our most sycophantic, manipulative, exploitative, brutal
| members. It might just be human nature, our worst instincts
| tend to beat our best instincts.
| brokegrammer wrote:
| Well put. Now that we're trying to replace jobs with AI, just
| like we replaced jobs with software before, it's becoming less
| clear what "purpose" actually means.
|
| Once we have the surplus of resources, but no job, I wonder
| what life would look like.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > caused by a 10,000 year search for meaning that isn't there.
| We had our first surplus as a species when we discovered
| agriculture and husbandry.
|
| Religion predates the emergence of both agriculture and animal
| husbandry. These belief systems didn't emerge as a result of
| surplus.
|
| > There is a righteous path, it's using our surplus to embrace
| the positive aspects of our spirit rather than the negative
| ones.
|
| How do you reconcile this belief with the idea there is no
| meaning, and that "there isn't actually anything that needs to
| be done"?
| jmogly wrote:
| Religion is not my strong suit, but I don't think religion as
| we think of it today was really around like that, it might
| have been but that is not my current understanding. IE There
| probably weren't prehistoric monks and rabbis having
| epistemological debates about the meaning of life or what a
| good life is. Religion was more likely a way of understanding
| the natural world, like death, floods, luck, etc. Not an
| expert again.
|
| On your second point, "there is no meaning", I'm not sure I
| exactly prescribe that. I think there is no universal meaning
| innate to humanity. There are meaningful things, like love,
| friendship, having your basic physical needs met. And when I
| say that "there isn't actually anything that actually needs
| to be done", I mean that if you have a surplus of all your
| needs, say just after harvest, you don't actually need to do
| anything. All of your needs are met, you don't need to go and
| gather or hunt for food every day. Prior to agriculture,
| surpluses were not regular.
|
| Addressing the spirit of your second point though, even today
| there is much to be done. As a group we have and produce more
| surplus than we could ever use, but the distribution is such
| that many people live in abject poverty, or precariously
| close to it.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Religion was more likely a way of understanding the
| natural world, like death, floods, luck, etc.
|
| It's impossible to know because we lack written records
| from the period, but this largely aligns with the earliest
| religious writings; they are mythical stories, often a sort
| of folk physics. The point is that the search for meaning
| is implicit in being able to ask a question. Animals might
| try to discover an algorithm of behavior to obtain a reward
| (e.g. press the button, get a biscuit), but it isn't clear
| that they can even ask questions ("Why does pressing the
| button produce a biscuit?"). The question "Why does it
| rain?" doesn't ask anything philosophical, but it does
| imply "I need to know why it rains."
|
| We could reduce this all to purely evolutionary terms ("I
| need to know why it rains to further propagate my genes"),
| but my hunch is that something deeper is going on.
|
| > I think there is no universal meaning innate to humanity.
| There are meaningful things, like love, friendship, having
| your basic physical needs met.
|
| I appreciate from the tone of your post that this probably
| is not your position, but this line of reasoning is the
| cause of a lot of strife. If there is no universal meaning
| (or no means by which we can ascertain it, e.g. in moral
| skepticism), then we can't really go on to say that there
| is an ethical imperative to fight injustice; we can't even
| really define anything as injustice.
|
| > All of your needs are met, you don't need to go and
| gather or hunt for food every day.
|
| I see what you mean. I had interpreted your comment to be
| in the vein of certain strains of eastern or postmodern
| thought which take that claim rather literally; we don't
| "have" to do anything, and every choice is just as valid as
| every other choice. Whereas what it sounds like you are
| saying is that when our physical needs are met, the mind
| has time to wander, and this leads to the hedonic treadmill
| that motivates adventure, conquest, philosophizing, and
| things like that.
|
| I think there's some merit to this idea; I suspect being
| engaged in satisfying pressing physical needs would
| correlate with lower levels of neuroticism (anxiety,
| depression, etc.), though this is only a hunch. The reason
| I took exception to your comment was that it seemed like it
| was reducing all of those activities to being merely a
| product of a flawed mentality resulting from material
| excess, whereas I would contest that and say that human
| history is in fact a product of something meaningful - not
| just personally meaningful, but ultimately meaningful.
| nine_k wrote:
| I think it's deeper. The mind is an optimization tool. It
| always keeps looking for something better, hence it is always
| not completely happy with the current state of things. The
| first noble truth (aka the principle of dukkha) is at least 25
| centuries old; it says that sentient existence is inseparable
| from discontent, and thus from suffering.
|
| This whole search for a better optimum, like other evolutionary
| mechanisms, results in survival and proliferation, but not
| necessarily in happiness. Proliferation seems to correlate
| positively with happiness, but up to a limit, and the limit is
| all too visible.
|
| On the other hand, reaching the true global optimum does not
| seem too blissful either: any change would be a change to the
| worse, so all development, all motion except basically spinning
| at place would need to stop. This is not very different from
| death. OTOH the human mind, as it is, would still try to keep
| on searching, still feel somehow discontent.
|
| (I agree that the reasonable path is to try to limit the
| suffering of living beings, including but not limited to
| ourselves. It's the least bad option.)
| nradov wrote:
| Optimization seems to be a relatively rare cultural
| phenomenon. We take continuous optimization and innovation
| for granted, but the archaeological record shows that many
| societies went hundreds or even thousands of years with
| essentially zero progress. The very concept of optimization
| seems to be a kind of mental or social "technology" that some
| cultures either never figured out or lost along the way.
| antithesizer wrote:
| It's not "faithless wanderers who have decided that the only
| valid use of surplus is to gain more surplus"
|
| It's "mute compulsion"
| smogcutter wrote:
| Have you read "The Accursed Share"? Batailles argues that
| society is shaped by the ways we squander surplus (eg in war,
| sacrifice, carnival, art, sex, etc)
| jancsika wrote:
| > It's a crisis of faith, caused by a 10,000 year search for
| meaning that isn't there.
|
| The article and the book it reviews isn't really about what
| happened in roughly 9,750 of those years. It's about a narrow
| band of meaning and apologies that happened during the small
| slice of most recent time due the vast majority of people
| falling for Worthington's Law[1].
|
| Coloring the vast majority of the time slice with this
| idiosyncratic problem seems like the kind of notion that would
| be covered in the book. It's also confusing-- from those 10,000
| years there must still be dozens of mainstream, practical
| political ideologies and belief systems based on embracing "the
| positive aspects of our spirit." It seems like you're identify
| this subset as examples of the problem you're discussing, but
| also as a potential solution to the same problem. I don't get
| it.
|
| 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCEFcjT7-I0
| bgnn wrote:
| This isn't uniquely American, but obsession with wealth
| accumulation as an individual is. I don't think this applies to
| all Americans at all, but it is just mire commonly accepted than
| other cultures.
| ativzzz wrote:
| Wealth is freedom. One of the core tenets of Americanism is
| "freedom", in quotes because most of us are far from free, just
| different from "freedom" in monarchical/feudalistic societies.
| We are bound to the accumulation of wealth. However, some of us
| are able to break free. Software engineering for instance is a
| profession that allows this. It doesn't require the full
| commitment of your life to attain wealth, like finance or law
| or medicine for someone who has some intelligence and drive.
| yfw wrote:
| There is no freedom. Everyone lives on earth. Despite all the
| billionaires building bunkers might think otherwise.
| Microplastic pollution and global warming will kill everyone.
| bgnn wrote:
| Wealth providing freedom is not an objective fact. It depends
| on your philosophical standpoint. I know a lot of people who
| would rather live cheap and small and be creative (as in
| arts). What you describe is for them wasting your potential
| to create. In certain cultures a stable job (like being
| government employee) is the ultimate freedom because you know
| how will you live, even in your retirement, no matter what.
| Some cultures like Japan and Korea extended this to private
| sector. But at the end, is it really freedom what people
| seek, or is it stability and safety for future? This is why
| people gave away their freedom in transition to feudalism in
| history. At the end if the day, how free are you if you are
| from one economic downturn or one costly disease away from
| losing it all?
| moshegramovsky wrote:
| I have run into many of these types over the years. It's amazing
| to watch them run up their ladder of manipulative tactics until
| they realize that they aren't going to get what they want. Then
| you see who they really are. The whole problem is that being
| genuine matters.
|
| The best boss I ever had never tried to be charismatic. He was a
| good listener, he was fair, and he took us seriously.
|
| The Naploean Hill/Dale Carnegie types make my skin crawl.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| 21st century version is naval's twitter thread about becoming
| rich and paul graham's blog and tim ferris's 4 hour work week. i
| call it "microfeudalism", a riff on technofedualism and
| microcelebrities
| rubitxxx wrote:
| > But it's even better to treat love itself as the most important
| work.
|
| While Maslow's hierarchy of needs help us understand motivation,
| this is the most true.
| CrulesAll wrote:
| Strip him of his tenure, and let's see if love pays the rent.
| CrulesAll wrote:
| Author is an arts graduate. General Patton warned against such
| historians. It is why he recommended autobiographies rather than
| biographies. The words of Caesar rather than the words written
| about Caesar. You also delegate your agency to critique. Patton
| took the good of Napoleon and savaged the bad. To paraphrase
| Patton, it's a type of tall poppy syndrome. The historian lacks
| the skills, talent, and mindset that causes men and women who
| achieve success in the real world. They resent those who remind
| them of what they lack.
|
| Because of his tenured position, he wants for nothing while,
| outside of STEM, contributes very little. He is wholly reliant on
| the types of men and women he bashes. It's the dilettante who
| mocks the farmer as he eats the farmer's food. Reminds of the
| critique of self righteous pacifists during the World Way
| 2(Godwin violation. Apologies.) "How easy it is to be a pacifist
| safe and secure behind the security of the American Navy's big
| guns." How easy it is to mock entrepreneurs, capitalism, and
| strivers when they permit your standard of living and very
| existence.
| pessimizer wrote:
| _How easy it is to mock Stalin 's USSR from behind the tanks of
| the Red Army,_ I think you mean. The USSR won WWII. So now I
| think you have to become Communist, or at least get a degree in
| Marxist-Leninist political theory, in order to comment on WWII.
| mlsu wrote:
| Keep your own house.
|
| I like working, I'm not quite sure what I would do otherwise. It
| is perfectly acceptable to have genuine relationships with your
| coworkers, employees, and customers, but "genuine" is the key.
| What's bad for you is not work, but lying and trying to pull a
| fast one on everyone around you.
|
| Work, family, and a little leisure. Those are the three pillars.
| This hasn't changed since we grew a brain stem, it comes far
| before language or farming.
| ranprieur wrote:
| This all makes more sense if you go through the article, and
| every time you see the word "work", substitute "work for money".
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Its because buisness escaping control forms a "nature" complete
| with behemoth out crowding the smaller critters, destroying the
| ecosystems that fed them, plagues and forrest fires. The state if
| it exist is a park if its not, its a dark forest. Worshipping
| this is just nature whorship redecorated.
| akomtu wrote:
| > One of the strangest features of American work culture is the
| constant pressure to treat one's job as something more than a
| job: a calling, a means of expressing oneself, a vehicle for
| personal growth. This pressure comes from bosses <...>
|
| The idea behind this - expressing oneself - isn't American. When
| ideas like that come to this world, they come to many nations at
| the same time, the greatest minds pick them up and create their
| own interpretation, based on local culture and their beliefs.
| Some of those great minds see the great ideas well and express
| them cleanly. Others distort the ideas with their egos and
| sometimes even add poison, creating intentionally misleading
| interpretations.
|
| The idea that you need to express yourself, find a calling that's
| bigger than you, is true and spiritual in nature. It draws
| attention to a core aspect of what we are. However some of the
| great minds are also selfish: they are able to see this idea,
| they recognize it as an important and powerful truth, but then
| they find a way to distort it for personal gain. So they create a
| thin lie around this truth: that you need to express yourself
| thru work _for self at the expense of others, because that 's the
| only way to survive and thrive in this world of scarcity_. Most
| people will be fooled because this lie is an artwork of minds far
| greater than them. So the common folk embrace this false
| interpretation and start living according to it.
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