Are there outside places to hike outside? That might be a healthy and safe. Frankly it doesn’t sound healthy to not leave home but you aren’t the only one who’s been shut in for a year. Millions of people.
Dilution is generally the point when a specific threshold must be breached to succumb to infection. You can always where a mask, like a serious gas mask. People wi think you're weird, but fuck them.
Have you given any thought on how you plan on reintegrating into society, and the negative health effects of this type of isolation? I’m curious what the balance is between covid risk and isolation risk.
Social isolation is, on a population level, associated with poor health outcomes. The data shows this most strongly in the elderly, but it’s true at all ages.
Of course, certain individuals may enjoy and thrive in isolated environments.
I was saying that there are people who live long lives in relative isolation. People in rural parts of the US and places like Alaska.
Frankly, I believe those types of studies rreally about happiness with ones social life, not about ones social life relative to others. But that's just my take.
Are there studies that actually show that? It seem to me that lower life expectancy might be true in some cases but not all. I think it's mostly tied to ones enjoyment of being alone (more relative than absolute). Sure some people would not fare well, bit I fo believe other can be truly happy and do fair well. I know a guy in his 70s that lives pretty remotely in Alaska (and have you ever read one man's wilderness). I'm not saying it's for everyone. I am saying that it's essentially stereotyping to say it not for anyone.
>I'm not saying it's for everyone. I am saying that it's essentially stereotyping to say it not for anyone.
Well, someone can smoke for 60 years, from 20 year old onwards, and never get cancer either. Actually, tons do just that. But lung cancer from smoking is not "stereotyping", it's a causual mechanism and a statistical reality.
It's not like that you mechanically and deterministically die or your health becomes predictably worse at the individual level.
Not to mention there's also the psychological health and the developmental effect.
It would be interesting to hear if this desire for isolation goes away as you start spending more time around people (which, if I’m reading your comment correctly, it seems you will do). Wish you all the best, either way.
“ easiest way to not die” are you super high risk? B/c you’ve already likely deceased your chance of dying by just not driving compared to Covid. But if you’re over 65 or have other major health issues then makes some semblance of sense.
Where do you live? I live in Portland, Oregon. I haven't left the home except to go on walks around the neighborhood and to pick up groceries from the store (I order them online and they bring them out to my car) since last March. I'm seriously dreading the end of the pandemic. I love never having plans to go anywhere.
You’re (likely) seriously overreacting. I’ve lived in Portland. Live in Midwest now. I would’ve been hiking non stop in pandemic times should I be in PDX area.
Where do you live where you _have_ been leaving your home for non-essential reasons? I recognize that different countries have had differing levels of effect from COVID, but I'm not aware of any that hasn't had at least _some_ impact.
Im in the southeastern United States, we never really totally shut down. We had a few weeks but then yea it pretty much ramped back up to near normal-ish levels.
The US. While many businesses (especially restaurants) shuttered in 2020, most retail businesses reopened rather quickly though usually with a limited capacity (Home Depot, a massive store, was permitting something crazy small like 200 people in at a time here last spring and early summer).
Hiking trails and state parks in CO opened up by late spring or summer 2020. Restaurants and bars were really the places most impacted from what I saw of last year in the US as they went a much longer stretch without allowing indoor dining.
Many schools in the US also went remote. I think indoor dining/bars and schools are the things that were significantly restricted more than a few weeks in the US.
(work from home isn't really comparable to those I think; I worked from home for months and liked it, and I think for people that don't like it, it still isn't as impactful as the restrictions for restaurants and schools)
True. I have a blind spot around the schools situation since I don't have kids of my own. I tend to forget the full extent of it as it didn't impact me or my immediate friends much (school closures) as I have few friends with school aged kids anymore (they're all infant to toddler or college aged or older).
Restaurants, bars, and schools were the things most consistently closed. Around here, they opened up for this current (now finishing) school year but had frequent closures based on COVID cases amongst the students/staff with an option to stay home the whole time if desired.
I live in the US too. I wasn't asking "where wasn't shut-down?", I was asking "where was it _safe and responsible_ to leave your home for non-essential reasons?". Just because a facility has opened, does not magically make it safe to attend.
I live in a small city in Vietnam. There have been about four weeks of lockdown in the past year, besides that my life has been pretty much normal, dinner parties, festivals, hiking, island hopping. I've traveled a lot around Vietnam over the past year, there's so much to see here.
The only thing that's really changed is that there are no foreign tourists, but the local tourists seem to be making up for it.
Midwest US. Restaurants and "non essential" businesses were closed here for a little while but everything reopened (with some capacity limitations) by about June 2020. Supermarkets, department stores such as Target, Walmart, never closed.
I've been working from home but going shopping, going to the gym, etc. as normal since the reopening last June. I never was much for eating at restaurants but they have been open also.
Other places in the US were far more locked down. I'm glad I don't live there.
I live in Charleston, South Carolina. Moved here in September because LA was so locked down. I go out pretty much anywhere I want here all the time, and nothing is locked down whatsoever. Could not have been happier to move to somewhere where they don't chain up the swings and let nobody into the parks except the homeless.
I'm a little sad that it's removed. Votes on HN are a fickle beast, a popularity contest. IMO, it's usually worth saying what you really think even if it might not be received too well. Especially if it's a unique and genuine perspective, rather than spam or mindless snark. IMO, if you've never been downvoted to -4, you've probably never said anything really interesting either.
This guy is a saint. To have that kind of contentment and peace is the goal of most religions. Honestly I'd like to hear more of his life, would love to talk to him.
I feel like my could hear that kind of contentment. But of course there are property taxes and the like. It's easy to lose what you have and what makes you happy. I want land, but will never get it.
Probably being a shepherd has something to do with that. It is interesting to note that all the prophets of Abrahamic religions have been a shepherd at one point in their life, for examples the most popular ones namely Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were all once shepherds.
Come and visit Wales, specifically Mid-Wales, like say Lampeter, or Newcastle Emlyn. Go to a pub in the evening and have a chat to some of the local farmers, if you buy the beer, they'll be chatty enough.
I respect people who've tried something and decided it's not for them. But to never even try a different kind of food? I suspect it's less that he's found what he likes and more that he's scared he'd find out he actually liked something else better, and has wasted those 10 years.
Fiber seems to be the main thing he's missing (typical for a British diet). Other than that, he's eating a pretty well balanced meal. Between the fish, bread, and fruit, you end up with most nutrients you need.
Have you considered that people have different tastes? Personally, I hate eating; if I could take a pill to replace all my nutrition needs, I would in a heartbeat, even if it costs more than my current dietary expenses.
> Have you considered that people have different tastes?
Yes. If he'd tried eating a variety of foods and hated it, I'd say fair enough. But how can you possibly know something like that without having tried it? To just dismiss so much of human experience without even considering it is honestly tragic.
As Proust put it in his somewhat overused but in this case relevant quote "The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes". Understanding the human experience is first and foremost learning introspection, not tasting thousands of different fruits. Everything you can learn about the human experience is probably somewhere in that little valley where the man lives already.
I think it's in reference to the rationalizations made in the article. It's perfectly sufficient to have preferences. But the author makes irrational projections about what change might be like to justify his choice.
I think "stick with what you know" can be a sound strategy if you are loss-averse and generally content.
The Welsh live a different way of life. This guy's attitude is far from unique. A bunch of people live in the same town, with the same job their great great great grandparents worked, that rarely travel more than 10 miles away.
Don't knock it, though, there's something to be said about this level of extreme stability. It simplifies a lot of life's worries.
It's something I never understood until I moved to Wales, and now I do understand, and I think it's one of the most admirable characteristics of the people here.
You can go out in the valleys right now and ask someone, ~40 years after the mines were shut, whether they'd want the mines back. And a significant proportion would say yes without pausing.
I went to university with a guy who turned around to me one day and said "I never want to leave the Rhondda". Not sure what he does with his design degree up that way but I'm sure he's happy.
There's a great tie to family and friends and where you live, here, which has somewhat died out in the south of England. I hope it survives even as more travel to experience things elsewhere. Of course the south of Wales does have one advantage that was taken from elsewhere, and that's that it's possible to live cheaply in the valleys and commute into the cities by train for work, so it's possible to do both here. I feel like England lost this somewhat with the Beeching report ripping half the rural railways out.
I don't think that many people want the mines back tbh. Easy to get and simple jobs maybe, but I don't know anyone who'd want the mines back. Anecdata I know. Wife's family is a mining family and I've lived and worked in South Wales for a while now.
Yeah I think it's less the mines themselves and more having guaranteed employment, and the camaraderie of working together in such a way. There aren't many professions that employ entire towns. You are right though, in that the attitude has changed - I think those who were alive at the time of the mine closures likely see it differently from those who have never known it. In that aspect it has changed since I first moved here, as that generation who grew up with the mines open has aged or passed away.
That sounds about right. My wifes side is a mining family and several of the men died young, not from accidents, but from lung issues so that potentially colours it a bit. On the tech side of things, I do see a lot of people who want 'better' jobs and there's often a lot of frustration in start-up folks I know that the Senydd just want call center or manufacturing jobs.
Yeah it's a bit of a shame that there's not more investment into tech startups here. Bristol seems to attract much more of that scene. Swansea seems to have more than Cardiff, possibly because it's slightly further from Bristol. I think there's pretty good support for starting your own small business here, but there's a bit of a gap after that which I imagine restricts the opportunities somewhat.
I'm Welsh myself, I grew up in a farming village, I'm quite aware. I think knocking it is absolutely warranted. I've got some respect for those who tried a different way of life and decided this was what they preferred, but not for those who picked stasis without even examining the alternatives.
There is value in finding your place in life and being content with it. Yes, you might be able to change it, perhaps to conform to more traditional standards of 'success', but why bother if you're happy as you are?
If we humans optimize by happiness, then we should have nothing but envy for a life like Wilf Davies leads.
I agree. If you don't want or like this person's life, more power to you. But here is someone who works hard and finds satisfaction and enjoyment in what they do. I hope we can all be so lucky.
I came to this realization in university - I love software, I love writing programs and solving problems, but I really don't love office work or the idea of sitting at a desk all day. I dropped out of a software engineering program to work on a factory floor, a decision I haven't regret once in five years (even if my parents would consider me a failure). The hours are good, the wage is good, benefits are good, I get to come in stress-free and leave 8 hours later in the same cheery mood. I tried stints in "more successful" fields like in-house software or sales teams, but there was just something about it I loathed. To the outside world I'm just some deadbeat small-town factory worker, but I don't think I could make my life any happier or more enjoyable if I tried.
My happiest period with relation to work was similar, laborious but satisfying because I got something done every day and didn't have to think about it after work. When you're writing software, it's hard to turn off the switch (I think especially if you find software development itself to be an interesting subject) when you leave the office. It's hard to not think about the design, the thing you'll do tomorrow, continue pondering that failed test case or new bug report into the evening. I only really got past that myself by introducing a significant break between work and the rest of my day with exercise in the 1-3 hours after work. But that's a rather high cost for anyone with a family.
Same here. I love software but also hate it. Too many decisions.
During lockdown I relish the opportunity to clean the house and cook because they are straightforward tasks where there are clear goals and I always achieve success.
Software for me these days involves too much despair and worry over whether things are done the right way.
You'll never find the right way. But there are lot's of ways that are good enough - you can learn to get satisfaction in a good enough solution and move on.
And if you got it wrong, and it wasn't good enough, you can take another stab at it later with the wisdom gained meanwhile.
Working for a big software company (thousands of software engineers under one roof) will make that off switch work again. You'll leave the office and instantly not care or think about anything you do until you cross the threshold the next morning.
This is the positive side (along with the salary) of being a tiny cog with no power to influence broader design decisions.
Worked at Microsoft and now I’m at one of the big AAA game companies (working on their online services side, not games directly) and both were/are very stressful. High expectations of commitment and personal investment in what I do.
I can relate a little bit; early on I worked a job where I basically just wiped computers and confirmed they were working, then loaded them on pallets. It was purely physical work (lift a computer, take it to a desk, connect it, power it on, boot to a CD, confirm HD was wiping, go to one that had finished, pop out CD, shut down, disconnect, carry to pallet), in a hot warehouse, but the whole time I did it I felt good.
It is not always possible, but as a senior software developer, I try to keep the feeling of 'finished' in my team. It is, by far, the most important piece in keeping a team happy, productive, cooperating and improving.
Definition of done, demo's, releaseparties, well-defined delivery requirements, chopping up tasks, user stories, etc. All help a lot here. But all require effort to maintain, establish and improve. Continously and significant effort.
The curse is that upper management perceives this effort but doesn't perceive its effect. Even from the common fundamental perspective (the enterprise has to optimize, to dissipate as few resources as possible in order to reach the more financially beneficial and durable state) this effort is justified, however as they don't know its real impact...
True. Though, if that management is measuring the right things, they will perceive it. But "the right things" is very broad and hard to define; and probably dynamic over the years event.
So I've actually never cared much for release parties. I think because by that point the work is 'done', and I'm ready to move on. Plus, if upper management is involved, it feels very parasitical ("let me attach myself to this launch"), and if they aren't it feels unnecessary (we know we did a good job). And the timing is always problematic; if it's literally as we release it feels disingenuous just knowing that if anything goes wrong the team has to step away from any sort of party (but not upper management, or others who glommed on), and if it's after the fact I've mentally moved on.
That said, all the other things are must haves, not just because of morale but because of effectiveness. Things don't get done without definitions of done, things don't get proper feedback and iteration without demos, etc.
From your story, you seem to have very different "release parties" than what I have encountered.
The ones I'm talking about are ranging from "buy some nice beers and munchies and drink one in the office" to "hire a boat, bring a radio" to "have dinner together". Basically a friendly, shoulderpatting event amongst peers.
*Edit: obviously all pre-covid lockdowns and work-from-home.
So that just sounds like a team event, which I try to do once a month just to help keep the team connected.
I think the difference is internal vs external release then. Our internal releases were generally "nice job" and the like, as we completed sprints. It was still a clear recognition of something being completed. The actual external facing launch that the company cared about, the 'go live', was more what I was referring to, and which never really meant much, to me at least.
That is all good and well, but nowadays not everyone can get a decent factory job.
When I didn't have my CS degree finished and no IT experience, I've applied to thousands of factory and warehouse jobs and got nowhere. I only got a curier job through a family connection.
I wish I had made that decision when I could. I'm over 20 years into software development and every few years I try to get out of it, but most places won't hire someone with professional experience because they're scared you'll quit, and that problem just compounds itself over time. Instead I now work software for a few years on, then take a year off. During the working years life is a real stress, constantly thinking about work stuff, even on my off-hours. I can only dream of having a job that I could just switch off at the end of the day. Or - better yet - a guaranteed basic income so I didn't have to work doing something that exhausts me so thoroughly.
You still can! You just need to find someone willing to give you a shot. If you're financially able to, definitely tell them your story and offer to work at a reduced "probationary pay" for some months to show you're dead serious.
I don't see a reason why any time is too late to get out. I was in software development and sysadmin field for about 15 years. Then started hand engraving (got quite good at it) and now I'm a full time CNC machine shop and growing steadily. Loving (almost) every day of it. Also went to college to study mechanical engineering. Of course being your own boss usually doesn't let you switch off at the end of the day, but that was just the choice I made for myself.
I believe I could get back to IT if I really wanted to, or needed to. Would need few months of getting up to date with all latest developments and living in the "land of the unicorns" I don't think getting well paying job would be a problem.
Look for work in an industry with demand. In US that would be electricians and plumbers. If you take the time to get certified, no one will doubt your sincere interest. I don't think anyway.
I respect your choice tremendously. On the other hand, on plan on retiring in 2-4 more years and devoting myself to dangerous and obviously excellent adventures which will likely have me dead by 50!
I'm rationalizing my decision to stick it out just a bit longer, but I have zero fucks left. I'd rather dig ditches than write software for one of the big companies at this point, but I'm not digging ditches.
I mostly work at desk. I feel really good whole day if I had sweat in the morning even while working with PHP (cycling for a couple of hours). I was wondering if sweating at the job has something to do with the satisfaction.
A friend of my parents was a professor, lecturer and author in biology. One day, he was fed up and became a Tram Driver.
I'll never forget how he explained the bliss of coming home, dropping your company-bag in the hallway only to pick it up next day before going to work. How he never had to read up on recent insights in the field of driving a tram on weekends. How he was finding joy in reading biology-books in the evenings, free of any pressure, again.
(If this sounds denigrating to a tram driver, it is not meant as such, at all)
Good to read this. I'm a software developer working on my own projects, and to still have some income in the first years I decided to work as a garbage man. It's so wonderful. Meeting different kinds of people all the time, doing physical work (more flirting with women during my workday haha), and when I get home I'm physically tired but mentally prepared to write another software module. Perfect fit, this mix of mentally/creative work and physical/'stupid' work. Indeed, for the outside world I'm also a deadbeat (although they never say out loud). But my real smile makes them doubt their selves, makes them even envious sometimes. Such is the power of making choices for yourself.
> Indeed, for the outside world I'm also a deadbeat (although they never say out loud).
I don't know what the slang term "deadbeat" means in your culture, but in mine, it would not be applied to someone because they worked as a garbage man.
People use the same word "team" to describe both hypercompetitive groups of mutual enemies playing a zero sum game, and happy groups of cooperating people striving for a common goal.
Usually the first group is seen as more socially acceptable and usually makes more money, but the second group almost always has a superior quality of life.
Coworkers and the relationship with them matter. Its almost never talked about.
When we bought a home, mowing the lawn became my responsibility. I knew I could look at it as a chore that needs to be done but eventually a task that annoys me and could make me bitter about the whole thing.
So I decided to learn all I could about lawn maintenance, which tools I need, and how to use them. And it became a point of pride for me and a challenge rather than a chore.
So mowing the lawn, the very act of it, is now a joy and something I look forward to. All my work (de-thatching, aerating, seeding, fertilizing, watering, pH balancing, edging, etc) pays off when I mow the lawn now and it makes mowing something I look forward to and never have to be bothered to do.
It was a shabby lawn when I took it over and now it’s a thick, lush carpet that I enjoy very much.
Taking an hour once/week over the summer to do the yard is actually very relaxing. Put a podcast on or music and shut out the world for awhile. When done, it's a great physical reward of a completed job.
That is according to your definition of "living life and being happy".
The person in the article is clearly happy and has found his place in the world that he's happy with. For that, he has found the thing most people miss out on or just don't get. Leaving home just for the sake of it, more so if you're just happy wherever you are is just wasting time.
I would like to travel the world because that would give me the happiness this person has found just by staying where he is. That doesn't mean he should change his way because my definition of being happy is different that his.
I know of people who do not eat veggies an have lived into their 70s before they have a stroke. The are also people who have strokes or other problems before 70 even if they eat their veggies. I fully expect that my high stress and sedentary life of a software developer will kill me long before 70. Such are the trade offs of a well paying profession.
You must be young if you think that dying in your 60's is a long, well lived life. The retirement age is around 65 (depending on where you live and work).
Surely you want some time to live life without the obligations of work? Otherwise what is it all for?
As I have gotten older and felt the speed-up in the passage of time, I realize a few years one way or the other won't matter. You'll reach the end of your time before you know it either way. The key is to be satisified with your life now, not waiting for some "later" that will be over and done with far too quickly.
I can definitely feel when I break out of the routine once in a while. A weekend feels like an entire week. Now with corona and winter I can barely recall what I’ve done for the last 6 months, if not just work.
>I fully expect that my high stress and sedentary life of a software developer will kill me long before 70.
You may need to negotiate better terms for yourself if you work in the most financially rewarding field of work in the world, maybe the history of the world, and you can't find the time to exercise or de stress.
Vegetables lowers the chance of stroke. They are not supposed to completely prevent it. There are many more factors that go into whether you get stroke. But, vegetable intake makes yours blood pressure go down somewhat and make you less likely to have stroke.
Yeah, onions count but I guess I was thinking a variety of veggies. When I eat some onion I don’t feel the sense of hey i think it would be awesome to eat a whole onion every day but everyone has different preferences and I try not to judge people for their tastes.
So I guess I was thinking more like a variety of veggies that presumably as a farmer he could grow if he enjoyed veggies. This guy had a clear idea of what he liked and went with it.
I did the same thing when I was an amateur weightlifter. Granted, I only did it for about 2 years, but the level of peace it brought was real, especially since it made it way easier to keep track of calorie and macronutrient intake, which is important in weightlifting.
Working in tech it’s very hard not to get lost in rat race and always go for more money, more knowledge, more everything. I’m actively trying to avoid it, but it gets to me as well. And most of my friends think I’m weird that I don’t want to get one more promotion or why I don’t want to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I’m fine where I am.
Yes, that can happen, but it entirely depends on where you work. Some employers are fine with letting people stay at a level if that's what they want. Of course their salary tends to stay pretty constant too in that case, you'll basically just get COL raises.
I was basically doing that in tech: working for food and a place to be. It was like living in a VM. After 2020 and 14 months of isolation, I'm retiring. Need to find a real place.
Here's an interesting thought experiment – would you (and everyone else here) have the same reaction to this article if it was written by a North Korean farmer who was perfectly happy with life being in the exact same situation as this Welsh one?
Would he still be "enlightened" and "content" or brainwashed, oppressed and a victim of propaganda?
You mean if there was a strong implication that there wasn't a genuine choice, but an adaptation to hardship brought on by human rights abuses and an authoritarian government? Call me hypocritical, but no. I don't think I'd have the same reaction.
You can’t just boil an entire life down to a single metric like being happy/content. Many things (like freedom) may even decrease “happiness” yet also have deeper value.
People have a range of “happiness” - in other words they can look at X and say “I think I could be happy doing that” and hold that the person truly is happy.
But if it is outside their range they will adamantly refuse to believe the person could truly be happy.
Well, my reaction to this one is suspicion that it sounds a little too perfect and either the farmer is idealizing his life or the journalist has taken editorial liberties.. so, maybe?
Journalists love to craft articles around some narrative theme.
Edit: I’m talking about consistency within the article and a “focus on the subject” stance. If the author wants to present the farmers happiness, that’s what they’re going to frame the whole piece on.
Not editorialized, but likely transcribed from one or more interviews and the interviewee and interviewer edit lightly.
There are people who couldn't write something like that given weeks but get them to start talking and they do a marvelous job. Drawing that out of people is one of the things that marks good interviewers.
I don't know that a journalist was involved in this. An editor may have been but this just appears to be a letter-to-the-editor or commentary submission
It seems weirder to me that someone in a country like the UK would do this then someone in a country with less availability of foods but I don't see that as an issue of enlightenment or brainwashing.
I've seen people have the exact opposite reaction to this same article. ("If this was a foreigner from a poor country, would you still think he was boring and sad?") So much of our lives are just the stories we choose to tell about them.
North Korea is a brutal dictatorship. What are you trying to imply with the question? That brutal dictatorships are not so bad an we've been lied to? Do you live or have you ever spent some time in one? Cause I do and I think people defending dictatorships deserve a swift kick in the nuts.
I would believe a North Korean farmer even more, that he was content with this life. A North Korean farmer who has eaten the same dinner every day for the last ten years is doing pretty well - it would mean they have avoided many of the North Korean famines and prison camps.
Given my own take[1], I was confused as you explained your thought experiment because I think I’d trust its sincerity more from a North Korean farmer.
Edit to clarify: not because I’m dismissing the oppressive dictatorship but because I think it’s more likely a rando person farming in North Korea likely has less exposure to a larger world that might make them happy, and less motivation to justify their self-isolation with denial.
I remember traveling around some islands with a new acquaintance on his own journey. I remember him saying, "It's amazing and romantic. Most of the folks here have never left. All they need is right here."
Fast forward a day.
"Americans are idiots because they never leave America. Most of them don't even have a passport."
I have been listening to an audio book, Man’s Search for Meaning, written by Viktor E. Frankl a neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor.
Like many books written of experiences involving extreme suffering and trauma it’s extremely powerful and I tend to have to stop just to contemplate and dwell on certain passages or just sentences. I like your “thought experiment” as it’s not unlike how I go about reflecting on these kinds of books.
Frankl talks about being on a train being moved from one camp to another, and upon seeing there were no chimneys at this new camp there was a silent celebration among the prisoners. For whatever inhumane reason, that night the newly arrived prisoners were made to stand (I believe naked) throughout the whole night in the freezing cold. Yet they were all still greatful not to be at Auschwitz or another camp with chimneys. There is a separate passage where he describes the types of prisoners, the last he describes are those who had lost all meaning, spirit and would walk up to and grab the electric fence.
I can’t tell you how much heart it gives me to think of the human spirit in these conditions that can’t be broken. It’s very similar to some of the slave narratives I read, and on occasion coming across passages with descriptions of slaves on a plantation celebrating the opportunity to sing and dance together around a fire at night. I have shared with others I wish if push came to shove I’d have that type of spirit, to your point about brainwashing, I’ve received similar responses that I am romanticizing it and even that my mental impressions reflect racism, but The reality is I could have pointed to many other counter examples from my readings like the prisoners that lost meaning and grabbed the fence, but for better or worse that doesn’t lift my spirits and it’s not the examples I tend to pass on.
I often ask myself what I think I would do in a camp or on a plantation, what actions would make me the most proud and if I would have the courage and spirit to make them, but I never pretend to know what I would actually do and I’d never once judged the actions of any of them...even the most deplorable acts, like the prisoners that worked on behalf of the guards for the slightest of comforts. Even more challenging is trying to put myself in the shoes of some young German or Southerner born into and inheriting the evils of these situations, it’s a lot easier to say what I hope I would do, but just the same I have to admit no one knows what they would do, after all how many people do you really encounter that are willing to go against the grain rather than fall in line much less when it means death?
> two pieces of fish, one big onion, an egg, baked beans and a few biscuits at the end. For lunch I have a pear, an orange and four sandwiches with paste. But I allow myself a bit more variety; I’ll sometimes have soup if it’s cold.
This would be a great meal for a North Korean farmer. If I read this same article by a North Korean farmer, it would either involve a different food listed, or they'd probably be lying about being a North Korean farmer.
> A UN assessment found North Koreans had been surviving on just 300g (10.5 oz) of food a day so far this year.
It definitely isn't a term for 'spread'. It specifically refers to meat or fish paste sandwiches. The paste comes in little tins. Meat is most common, but when I was a kid I loved crab paste.
No, I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole. But I do remember my grandparents eating such things in the early 1960s. And British cuisine (?) has a long (centuries) history of potted meats and shrimps, which I guess these are trying to emulate. A bit like the French and pate.
Here (in the UK at least) you can buy little jars of paste, often made from some kind of meat or seafood. It seems the intended use case is to spread it on bread. I personally have never tried it nor plan to but see for yourself via James May: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdodVA3qTk
Liverpaste is popular in Scandinavia. It's great on dark rye pumpernickel. It's really quite tasty especially topped with some sliced cucumber and fried onions.
True true but we also have things similar to these pastes but they come in tubes and often have mayonnaise. Don't you think that's kind of the same idea?
Paste is basically pate, long life, in little jars, with the exception of (confusingly) "sandwich spread" which many would say would be a paste but it's more like chopped pickle salad.
This is similar to Sven Yrvind's philosophy on eating at sea.
>I will eat twice a day, breakfast and lunch four hours later.
>...
>I say, “Cows only eat grass and wolfs only eat meat”
>Modern society is so boring and there is so much food that we have to be stimulated by spices and chefs and different foods to eat. At sea in a small boat its different. Life itself out there is so interesting that I do not need stimulants.
>My breakfast consists of one can of sardines, one slice of dense dark rye bread and muesli.
>...
>My lunch is the same as breakfast but no sardines.
I agree the food itself is pretty bleak. But this resonates with me because I have a fond memory of a rushed meal after a surf with my father.
We were on a camping trip so all we had in the car was two small cans of tuna and some multigrain bread. After getting out of the water and feeling completely exhausted, there was something satisfying about slapping the contents of the can onto a slice of bread and biting into the most basic meal imaginable.
Don't sleep on the canned sardines. They never stop being good imo. Their high protein and fat content makes them really satiating. I think they're the ultimate food if you're dieting.
Since gyms were closed, I cut for about 4-5mo at the start of lockdown. Everyday for those 5 months: sardines. Never got tied of 'em or felt like I was on horrific starvation rations.
Be careful eating tinned fish that much. My cousin became very ill in university - losing hair, losing weight, sleepy all the time. They tested her for everything. Eventually they realized she had high levels of mercury from eating a tin of tuna daily. Sardines might be okay because they are smaller, so they bioaggregate less.
Sardines are small short-lived fish. They don't accumulate mercury the way that larger predatory fish such as tuna do. Sardines present a much lower mercury risk.
It's an inspiring article, but it left me wondering what is his exit plan. He's got nobody to pass the farm on to, and his sister is dependent upon his care. At 72 and with his medical history, he will not be able to continue much longer.
This is in the UK where there exists something of a social safety net. For example, I very much doubt he pays for his sister's carers (speaking from experience), and he will have healthcare available for himself if he needs it. So he may not feel the need to consider an exit plan.
> She has two carers who come in four times a day, and they are wonderful.
My dad arranged something similar for my mom in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. It is nearly impossible in the US, I don’t even know if you can still do it without being wealthy. It required long term care insurance prepaid for years, and it was still a nightmare of weekly paperwork to manage all the claims. The care for his sister, and treatment and recovery for multiple strokes - out of reach for many farmers around the world. This man is very lucky indeed.
Even small European communities have adult day programs for people with Alzheimer's etc. The idea of old folks homes is foreign in places where people aren't wealthy to begin with. Interesting how a market appears to extract wealth when it exists.
This is pretty common on the NHS. Also, as Wales is a devolved nation, we can plough more money into the NHS than happesn in England. Also less privatisation.
I wonder about the two strokes. Him and his sister. Probably genetic or is it a result of the same diet they both share? Is eating an egg a day really bad for you. Science has gone back and forth on this. He would get plenty of exercise what could have caused the strokes?
Strokes can be caused by a variety of factors and are increasingly common as people age regardless of physical fitness and diet.
An injury or illness leading to bed rest can cause clots to form. Clots can just form anyways. High blood pressure. Which, again, becomes increasingly common as people age regardless of fitness level and diet.
Then again, vegetable intake lowers chance of stroke too.
The guy lives wholesome lifestyle, but that lifestyle is not that terribly healthy as people want it to be. Simple lifestyles are not always the most healthy thing you can do. His diet is limited by habit/routine, but also possibly by cost and additional effort it would take to cook more healthier. He already works a lot and healthier food woold require more effort.
The beauty of a simple life. Away from noise, stress and all things that make one miserable. Being content with simple things in life is nothing more than a beautiful life for you and your family.
That was a publicity campaign by Facebook. It never would have grown organically from the open source community because it solves a problem only a handful of companies on the planet have - to offload processing power to the client.
Sounds like the kind of person who doesn't have wifi. My dad died at about his age, never had the slightest interest in the internet, and he was a career scientist and did a lot of computer programming (mostly FORTRAN). He main interest outside of work was gardening.
So I’m the only person who’s reading this as a parody? I’m trying not to dismiss it, I understand this might be a real person’s honest thoughts and experiences. But it has a cadence, repetition, provocation and smart innocence that could be an Onion article if penned by Douglas Adams.
I recognize a lot of myself and several of my family members in the letter, but I think they’d take it the same way.
I've found a lot of freedom in similar decisions. Not sure I could take it to the same level, but even just having a small set of meals to eat every week makes shopping, cooking and planning around expiry dates so much easier. Clothes can be similarly hacked such that everything goes together and every combination is something you are comfortable wearing, leaving you never needing to consider what to wear. I've optimised these to the point that they take up nearly zero mental space and generate no stress. In my case, I use pre-prepared frozen meal delivery service, but I know some meal preppers who find similar freedom that way. Don't cook or order anything you won't eat at any arbitrary time, and you'll never be stuck with wasted food or indecision. And for clothes I found a small set that works for me and can be worn in any given situation (except formal, though that doesn't impact me in any way).
I see a lot of comments that seem to see all the things you miss out on in this situation. But in my mind, it frees up a lot of mental effort, time and stress. If I ever get bored I can go to a restaurant and eat something wild and it will be all the more exciting given I don't optimize for excitement or luxury in my everyday steady-state.
When Soylent came out I was super excited about this idea. Don't think about three meals a day that you normally fuss over, and instead have two predictable, quick meals and optimize to make the third one amazing. Soylent was OK, and DIY soylent offered some hope too. The third meal WAS always amazing, in a relative sense, and tasted better somehow than when I had the same thing before this diet. Unfortunately liquid diets are just not satisfying to me and so frozen meals won out.
I'd love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or similar automated financial services. Doing these things manually offers no excitement and no added value beyond the transitively provided service so I don't think they should take up my life.
The amount of time wasted across the whole human population on things like preparing meals, choosing outfits and managing everyday responsibilities must be huge and that is all time that could be spent doing other exciting or valuable things.
I recommend decreasing your gadgets to just a phone (for when you go out) and a tablet or laptop for home. That is, no TV, no stereo, no games console. Assuming you live on your own, you can do all the same things you did before, just move your laptop screen to a comfortable distance. I suppose you could buy headphones if you also want loud audio, but personally I prefer to go out to a bar or nightclub or movie theater to get that experience.
You can also optimize most of the furniture away. The last few places I lived I just had a mattress in the main/living room and cooking supplies in the kitchen. Not only is the up-front cost less, but you can live in a much smaller apartment, cleaning the whole place is much faster, moving house is easy. Personally I like to work lying on my stomach, so I don't need a desk, but I suppose you could get a small table and chair if your body isn't comfortable lying down or sitting on the floor for a lot of the day. More available floor space means it's easier to pace or work out too.
Other recommendations... Best to live somewhere without carpet, so you can clean it with a broom - saves buying a vacuum cleaner. You can use toilet paper for the bathroom and also in the kitchen and also to blow your nose. You can use shampoo for everything in the bathroom, including washing your hair, hands, body and clothes (if your house doesn't have a washing machine). You can use dishwashing liquid to clean most surfaces in the house, as well as your dishes. You can avoid using lights for most of the day/night by keeping windows uncovered and using the ambient light from outside.
The upsides are exactly as you say - since you're not spending as much time and money maintaining your house, you have more time to go out and visit interesting places, and you can spend more money at nice restaurants or splurge for a comfortable hotel if you want to enjoy some luxury every now and then. But I find I don't really want to. Life is a lot more enjoyable, in my opinion. Way less stress than cleaning and maintaining a bunch of stuff.
That's certainly one kind of minimalism, but I think it goes well beyond what GP intended. While your comment and lifestyle seems earnest, it's a bit too far for most given the GP context, in the sense that rather than minimizing the time taken to do routine things, it optimizes many of them out entirely to the point that it does not appear practicable for most (ex. mattress being the only furniture). Such things can certainly be taken to even further extremes: why buy a mattress? A sleeping bag might do fine and might well be good for your back. Everybody draws a line, and for even relatively extreme folks, that line is certainly shaped by social norms.
I'd wager there's a rather large number of folks like GP intending to minimize the effort required to do drone-ish tasks rather than eliminate them. I don't deny that it's only a logical next step to eliminate them entirely, but that seems a step too far for social conventions. After all, culture defies logic rather often.
I tried living without a mattress for a while. It wasn't super comfortable but it wasn't really a major problem till winter, at which point I realized I would need some more insulation, and a mattress seemed like the best bang for the buck. I might be able to make do without if I lived in a warmer place. Right now, though, the place I'm renting came furnished, so it's not an issue.
(Bonus with a furnished place - I don't need to worry about the kinds of bills that the OC was talking about because one flat monthly payment covers rent, water, electric and internet. My only other bills are phone and media/content subscription services, all of which are also flat rates, set up once and paid automatically.)
For me simplifying my life doesn't mean living with nothing at all, it just means living without unnecessarily complicated or laborious things. Clearly different people will draw a line at different places.
The point of my previous comment was more that it doesn't hurt to try eliminate things from your life, if it seems they're just a hassle. Who cares about the social conventions? I think a lot of people find themselves caught up in the rat race and take part without really thinking about why they're doing it, or whether it actually is worth all the effort. It turns out you can forego a lot of things and, actually, life isn't all that bad. That's especially the case if you are earning a decent salary, so you afford to can go out and treat yourself whenever you feel the urge. I think now is probably a better time than ever before to live simply, because we have immediate access to all the world's knowledge and art from a tiny computer in our pockets.
That's pretty much the exact philosophy I live by. I've definitely found no bed frame to be a hard-sell to family and friends, and it's hard to see why once you've tried all the options. A mattress makes a lot of sense, but a bed frame adds little value unless you are short on storage and one has storage built in, or you aren't mobile enough to get to the ground. But maybe I'm missing some utility that others have found in their bedframes!
Living in Japan now, I had a few months with a padded mat + quilt on the floor as is tradition (and a damn cheap one), but upgraded to a mattress on the floor because the floor was too cold in winter as you mentioned.
There's as much to be gained from taking stuff away that isn't useful, as there is from adding useful stuff to your life.
If you only have a mattress, you can still move to a different apartment on your own. If you have a bedframe, you will need help. I never want to help anyone else move, so I try to keep my belongings small enough to move myself.
When I lived in China I found it a lot easier to live this way because the apartments are smaller and there seems to be more of a culture of going into the community to eat at local restaurants or finding entertainment in public spaces.
Now I am back in the North America I think it's harder, because people build houses much bigger, and seem to associate not having much stuff with being unhappy or underprivileged instead of well-optimized and free.
I've found a bit more in common with the rubber tramp and liveaboard communities in this part of the world. They are very mindful about everything they buy because space is limited, so trying to find things that are multifunctional is a high priority. A lot of those things work in houses too.
On the other hand, I don't think their lives are as low stress as I would like, because they end up needing maintain an entire vehicle as well as the stuff in it.
Two other hacks, for women at least, is to quit makeup and shaving. I quit makeup about 5 years ago by accident forgetting to put it on one morning, and then I realized no one at work noticed anyways. Quitting shaving has been more of a corona era thing. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it over the summer, but I've been out a few times in shorts and it seemed nobody much cared. That cuts a bunch of unnecessary maintenance time out of my life, which I can now use for other things.
Sorry if you saw my original comment, I misread this as a dismissal through exaggeration, but after double checking my comprehension I realise I was both wrong and missing the fact that I can relate to most of this.
I've tried many of the things you mention, and while I don't do all of those things still, many of them do make my life easier and more stress free. It's interesting how many of the things I've just stopped thinking about as I tried them and subsequently rid my conscious mind of other more time consuming or stressful options.
There are so many better things to spend time on than the mundane parts of life.
> I'd love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or similar automated financial services.
You’re probably familiar with auto bill pay (I think most services have it, and many banks offer it as well), and index fund investing with automatic transfers, so I’m guessing those don’t solve the problems you’re talking about. I’m interested what you mean then.
Yeah absolutely, that's kind of what I'm talking about. Though even then, managing different contract durations across many different companies for many different bills each month is annoying, and there are companies that can do that part for you as well. Haven't ever tried it, nor checked the cost, but it sounds like something that might be beneficial to not worry about. They can send me a summary each month to make sure I'm not spending too much.
The index fund investing with scheduled transfers is exactly what I meant by automated financial services. I probably micro-manage it a little too much right now for no real benefit.
> I probably micro-manage it a little too much right now for no real benefit.
I do my best not to even log in to my account. One could go so far as to change one’s password to something impossible to remember, then delete it, so that signing in becomes a huge hassle of password recovery and identification verification at a banking institute (one of Dante’s levels of hell iirc)
Cooking is enjoyable and you can get the same flow state cooking that you can coding. And it’s where you can let your mind wander and come up with sparks of new ideas/approaches.
I also find cooking enjoyable, but I would hate it if it just became an extension of work! One of the reasons why I continue to cook dinner every night despite having a fairly minimal life in other aspects is because it's a set of physical actions that helps to get my brain out of work mode. This is especially important during pandemic/work-from-home era because there is no commute (I used to cycle).
But this experience of finding value in cooking is not really universal. I have some friends who legitimately, actively dislike the process. It's not that they're bad at it, they just consider it a waste of time. For them Soylent, or a food delivery service might be just fine.
I think the key is to aggressively optimize out the things in your life that aren't working for you. We shouldn't feel like we "need" to do things just to have a "normal" life, I think that's one of the causes of stress and unhappiness for a lot of people.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 330 ms ] threadPlease do not beat the post's corpse any further :) Thank you.]
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Of course, certain individuals may enjoy and thrive in isolated environments.
https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-older...
Frankly, I believe those types of studies rreally about happiness with ones social life, not about ones social life relative to others. But that's just my take.
There are however negative health effects, and have been studied quite well.
Well, someone can smoke for 60 years, from 20 year old onwards, and never get cancer either. Actually, tons do just that. But lung cancer from smoking is not "stereotyping", it's a causual mechanism and a statistical reality.
It's not like that you mechanically and deterministically die or your health becomes predictably worse at the individual level.
Not to mention there's also the psychological health and the developmental effect.
Please do not beat the post's corpse any further :) Thank you! :)]
It would be interesting to hear if this desire for isolation goes away as you start spending more time around people (which, if I’m reading your comment correctly, it seems you will do). Wish you all the best, either way.
Hiking trails and state parks in CO opened up by late spring or summer 2020. Restaurants and bars were really the places most impacted from what I saw of last year in the US as they went a much longer stretch without allowing indoor dining.
(work from home isn't really comparable to those I think; I worked from home for months and liked it, and I think for people that don't like it, it still isn't as impactful as the restrictions for restaurants and schools)
Restaurants, bars, and schools were the things most consistently closed. Around here, they opened up for this current (now finishing) school year but had frequent closures based on COVID cases amongst the students/staff with an option to stay home the whole time if desired.
The only thing that's really changed is that there are no foreign tourists, but the local tourists seem to be making up for it.
I've been working from home but going shopping, going to the gym, etc. as normal since the reopening last June. I never was much for eating at restaurants but they have been open also.
Other places in the US were far more locked down. I'm glad I don't live there.
(Of course, it's also possible that that was just an autocorrection failure)
Thanks for catching that.
I respect people who've tried something and decided it's not for them. But to never even try a different kind of food? I suspect it's less that he's found what he likes and more that he's scared he'd find out he actually liked something else better, and has wasted those 10 years.
How incredibly patronizing.
Have you considered that people have different tastes? Personally, I hate eating; if I could take a pill to replace all my nutrition needs, I would in a heartbeat, even if it costs more than my current dietary expenses.
Yes. If he'd tried eating a variety of foods and hated it, I'd say fair enough. But how can you possibly know something like that without having tried it? To just dismiss so much of human experience without even considering it is honestly tragic.
I think "stick with what you know" can be a sound strategy if you are loss-averse and generally content.
Don't knock it, though, there's something to be said about this level of extreme stability. It simplifies a lot of life's worries.
You can go out in the valleys right now and ask someone, ~40 years after the mines were shut, whether they'd want the mines back. And a significant proportion would say yes without pausing.
I went to university with a guy who turned around to me one day and said "I never want to leave the Rhondda". Not sure what he does with his design degree up that way but I'm sure he's happy.
There's a great tie to family and friends and where you live, here, which has somewhat died out in the south of England. I hope it survives even as more travel to experience things elsewhere. Of course the south of Wales does have one advantage that was taken from elsewhere, and that's that it's possible to live cheaply in the valleys and commute into the cities by train for work, so it's possible to do both here. I feel like England lost this somewhat with the Beeching report ripping half the rural railways out.
If we humans optimize by happiness, then we should have nothing but envy for a life like Wilf Davies leads.
During lockdown I relish the opportunity to clean the house and cook because they are straightforward tasks where there are clear goals and I always achieve success.
Software for me these days involves too much despair and worry over whether things are done the right way.
And if you got it wrong, and it wasn't good enough, you can take another stab at it later with the wisdom gained meanwhile.
This is the positive side (along with the salary) of being a tiny cog with no power to influence broader design decisions.
Worked at Microsoft and now I’m at one of the big AAA game companies (working on their online services side, not games directly) and both were/are very stressful. High expectations of commitment and personal investment in what I do.
In most occupations we are a cog in some huge machine working in a way forbidding us to enjoy this feeling.
Definition of done, demo's, releaseparties, well-defined delivery requirements, chopping up tasks, user stories, etc. All help a lot here. But all require effort to maintain, establish and improve. Continously and significant effort.
That said, all the other things are must haves, not just because of morale but because of effectiveness. Things don't get done without definitions of done, things don't get proper feedback and iteration without demos, etc.
The ones I'm talking about are ranging from "buy some nice beers and munchies and drink one in the office" to "hire a boat, bring a radio" to "have dinner together". Basically a friendly, shoulderpatting event amongst peers.
*Edit: obviously all pre-covid lockdowns and work-from-home.
I think the difference is internal vs external release then. Our internal releases were generally "nice job" and the like, as we completed sprints. It was still a clear recognition of something being completed. The actual external facing launch that the company cared about, the 'go live', was more what I was referring to, and which never really meant much, to me at least.
When I didn't have my CS degree finished and no IT experience, I've applied to thousands of factory and warehouse jobs and got nowhere. I only got a curier job through a family connection.
I believe I could get back to IT if I really wanted to, or needed to. Would need few months of getting up to date with all latest developments and living in the "land of the unicorns" I don't think getting well paying job would be a problem.
You could always start your own business too.
I'm rationalizing my decision to stick it out just a bit longer, but I have zero fucks left. I'd rather dig ditches than write software for one of the big companies at this point, but I'm not digging ditches.
I'll never forget how he explained the bliss of coming home, dropping your company-bag in the hallway only to pick it up next day before going to work. How he never had to read up on recent insights in the field of driving a tram on weekends. How he was finding joy in reading biology-books in the evenings, free of any pressure, again.
(If this sounds denigrating to a tram driver, it is not meant as such, at all)
I don't know what the slang term "deadbeat" means in your culture, but in mine, it would not be applied to someone because they worked as a garbage man.
Usually the first group is seen as more socially acceptable and usually makes more money, but the second group almost always has a superior quality of life.
Coworkers and the relationship with them matter. Its almost never talked about.
So I decided to learn all I could about lawn maintenance, which tools I need, and how to use them. And it became a point of pride for me and a challenge rather than a chore.
So mowing the lawn, the very act of it, is now a joy and something I look forward to. All my work (de-thatching, aerating, seeding, fertilizing, watering, pH balancing, edging, etc) pays off when I mow the lawn now and it makes mowing something I look forward to and never have to be bothered to do.
It was a shabby lawn when I took it over and now it’s a thick, lush carpet that I enjoy very much.
You know that you have reached a level of understanding that if you ever did get the boulder to the top, you'd push it back down.
I would like to travel the world because that would give me the happiness this person has found just by staying where he is. That doesn't mean he should change his way because my definition of being happy is different that his.
I’m surprised the guy in the article could go decades without eating any veggies but his diet has clearly worked for him.
The strokes could just be genetics and/or old age catching up.
Is it clear, given the multiple strokes? We don't know with certainty whether the diet was a significant factor, but it's possible.
Surely you want some time to live life without the obligations of work? Otherwise what is it all for?
All I said was that I don't expect to get very old with the high stress, sedentary job.
You may need to negotiate better terms for yourself if you work in the most financially rewarding field of work in the world, maybe the history of the world, and you can't find the time to exercise or de stress.
He might have had a genetic predisposition for high blood pressure or other contributing factors that can lead to strokes.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-2-million-years-humans-ate...
Doesn't he eat a whole onion every night? Onions are vegetables right?
I would agree it sounds like a lack of green veggies, though, if that's what you meant.
So I guess I was thinking more like a variety of veggies that presumably as a farmer he could grow if he enjoyed veggies. This guy had a clear idea of what he liked and went with it.
Working in tech it’s very hard not to get lost in rat race and always go for more money, more knowledge, more everything. I’m actively trying to avoid it, but it gets to me as well. And most of my friends think I’m weird that I don’t want to get one more promotion or why I don’t want to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I’m fine where I am.
Just don't know what to do instead.
Would he still be "enlightened" and "content" or brainwashed, oppressed and a victim of propaganda?
- You are living a certain life and don't have the means nor the inclination to change it
- You are living a certain life, can probably strive for something more, but choose not to
Can people be equally happy/content in all these situations?
But if it is outside their range they will adamantly refuse to believe the person could truly be happy.
Edit: I’m talking about consistency within the article and a “focus on the subject” stance. If the author wants to present the farmers happiness, that’s what they’re going to frame the whole piece on.
> [Our writers] tend to interview the subject and then work with them to tell their story in their own words.
via https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2021/feb/15/experienc...
Hmmm... Suspicioun that this is heavily editorialized intensifies.
Not editorialized, but likely transcribed from one or more interviews and the interviewee and interviewer edit lightly.
There are people who couldn't write something like that given weeks but get them to start talking and they do a marvelous job. Drawing that out of people is one of the things that marks good interviewers.
> To present an opinion in the guise of an objective report.
As in, I'm suspicious that the words the farmer spoke were heavily edited by the journalist before being published to better fit the narrative.
https://storyterrace.com/kiran-sidhu/
North Korea is a brutal dictatorship. What are you trying to imply with the question? That brutal dictatorships are not so bad an we've been lied to? Do you live or have you ever spent some time in one? Cause I do and I think people defending dictatorships deserve a swift kick in the nuts.
Edit to clarify: not because I’m dismissing the oppressive dictatorship but because I think it’s more likely a rando person farming in North Korea likely has less exposure to a larger world that might make them happy, and less motivation to justify their self-isolation with denial.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27083285
Fast forward a day.
"Americans are idiots because they never leave America. Most of them don't even have a passport."
Okay.
Like many books written of experiences involving extreme suffering and trauma it’s extremely powerful and I tend to have to stop just to contemplate and dwell on certain passages or just sentences. I like your “thought experiment” as it’s not unlike how I go about reflecting on these kinds of books.
Frankl talks about being on a train being moved from one camp to another, and upon seeing there were no chimneys at this new camp there was a silent celebration among the prisoners. For whatever inhumane reason, that night the newly arrived prisoners were made to stand (I believe naked) throughout the whole night in the freezing cold. Yet they were all still greatful not to be at Auschwitz or another camp with chimneys. There is a separate passage where he describes the types of prisoners, the last he describes are those who had lost all meaning, spirit and would walk up to and grab the electric fence.
I can’t tell you how much heart it gives me to think of the human spirit in these conditions that can’t be broken. It’s very similar to some of the slave narratives I read, and on occasion coming across passages with descriptions of slaves on a plantation celebrating the opportunity to sing and dance together around a fire at night. I have shared with others I wish if push came to shove I’d have that type of spirit, to your point about brainwashing, I’ve received similar responses that I am romanticizing it and even that my mental impressions reflect racism, but The reality is I could have pointed to many other counter examples from my readings like the prisoners that lost meaning and grabbed the fence, but for better or worse that doesn’t lift my spirits and it’s not the examples I tend to pass on.
I often ask myself what I think I would do in a camp or on a plantation, what actions would make me the most proud and if I would have the courage and spirit to make them, but I never pretend to know what I would actually do and I’d never once judged the actions of any of them...even the most deplorable acts, like the prisoners that worked on behalf of the guards for the slightest of comforts. Even more challenging is trying to put myself in the shoes of some young German or Southerner born into and inheriting the evils of these situations, it’s a lot easier to say what I hope I would do, but just the same I have to admit no one knows what they would do, after all how many people do you really encounter that are willing to go against the grain rather than fall in line much less when it means death?
This would be a great meal for a North Korean farmer. If I read this same article by a North Korean farmer, it would either involve a different food listed, or they'd probably be lying about being a North Korean farmer.
> A UN assessment found North Koreans had been surviving on just 300g (10.5 oz) of food a day so far this year.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48150205
Princes Beef Paste 75G, description: "Beef Paste with Minced Chicken". Price: £0.50 (≈ $0.70)
Good for him that he enjoys his four(!) "sandwiches with paste" for lunch, but this doesn't sound particularly appetizing.
>I will eat twice a day, breakfast and lunch four hours later.
>...
>I say, “Cows only eat grass and wolfs only eat meat”
>Modern society is so boring and there is so much food that we have to be stimulated by spices and chefs and different foods to eat. At sea in a small boat its different. Life itself out there is so interesting that I do not need stimulants.
>My breakfast consists of one can of sardines, one slice of dense dark rye bread and muesli.
>...
>My lunch is the same as breakfast but no sardines.
https://www.yrvind.com/provisioning/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sven_Yrvind
We were on a camping trip so all we had in the car was two small cans of tuna and some multigrain bread. After getting out of the water and feeling completely exhausted, there was something satisfying about slapping the contents of the can onto a slice of bread and biting into the most basic meal imaginable.
Since gyms were closed, I cut for about 4-5mo at the start of lockdown. Everyday for those 5 months: sardines. Never got tied of 'em or felt like I was on horrific starvation rations.
And vice versa, wolves also eat plants sometimes https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/feed-your-dog-like-a-w....
My dad arranged something similar for my mom in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. It is nearly impossible in the US, I don’t even know if you can still do it without being wealthy. It required long term care insurance prepaid for years, and it was still a nightmare of weekly paperwork to manage all the claims. The care for his sister, and treatment and recovery for multiple strokes - out of reach for many farmers around the world. This man is very lucky indeed.
An injury or illness leading to bed rest can cause clots to form. Clots can just form anyways. High blood pressure. Which, again, becomes increasingly common as people age regardless of fitness level and diet.
The guy lives wholesome lifestyle, but that lifestyle is not that terribly healthy as people want it to be. Simple lifestyles are not always the most healthy thing you can do. His diet is limited by habit/routine, but also possibly by cost and additional effort it would take to cook more healthier. He already works a lot and healthier food woold require more effort.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV9spqCzSkQ or https://joythebaker.com/2015/01/whole-roasted-onions/
Garlic can be roasted in similar manner.
Also there may be some wheat in those few biscuits.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I recognize a lot of myself and several of my family members in the letter, but I think they’d take it the same way.
I see a lot of comments that seem to see all the things you miss out on in this situation. But in my mind, it frees up a lot of mental effort, time and stress. If I ever get bored I can go to a restaurant and eat something wild and it will be all the more exciting given I don't optimize for excitement or luxury in my everyday steady-state.
When Soylent came out I was super excited about this idea. Don't think about three meals a day that you normally fuss over, and instead have two predictable, quick meals and optimize to make the third one amazing. Soylent was OK, and DIY soylent offered some hope too. The third meal WAS always amazing, in a relative sense, and tasted better somehow than when I had the same thing before this diet. Unfortunately liquid diets are just not satisfying to me and so frozen meals won out.
I'd love to find other areas of my life that can be similarly optimized. I have hope for bill management services to take the annoyance out of juggling payments etc., and roboinvestors or similar automated financial services. Doing these things manually offers no excitement and no added value beyond the transitively provided service so I don't think they should take up my life.
The amount of time wasted across the whole human population on things like preparing meals, choosing outfits and managing everyday responsibilities must be huge and that is all time that could be spent doing other exciting or valuable things.
I recommend decreasing your gadgets to just a phone (for when you go out) and a tablet or laptop for home. That is, no TV, no stereo, no games console. Assuming you live on your own, you can do all the same things you did before, just move your laptop screen to a comfortable distance. I suppose you could buy headphones if you also want loud audio, but personally I prefer to go out to a bar or nightclub or movie theater to get that experience.
You can also optimize most of the furniture away. The last few places I lived I just had a mattress in the main/living room and cooking supplies in the kitchen. Not only is the up-front cost less, but you can live in a much smaller apartment, cleaning the whole place is much faster, moving house is easy. Personally I like to work lying on my stomach, so I don't need a desk, but I suppose you could get a small table and chair if your body isn't comfortable lying down or sitting on the floor for a lot of the day. More available floor space means it's easier to pace or work out too.
Other recommendations... Best to live somewhere without carpet, so you can clean it with a broom - saves buying a vacuum cleaner. You can use toilet paper for the bathroom and also in the kitchen and also to blow your nose. You can use shampoo for everything in the bathroom, including washing your hair, hands, body and clothes (if your house doesn't have a washing machine). You can use dishwashing liquid to clean most surfaces in the house, as well as your dishes. You can avoid using lights for most of the day/night by keeping windows uncovered and using the ambient light from outside.
The upsides are exactly as you say - since you're not spending as much time and money maintaining your house, you have more time to go out and visit interesting places, and you can spend more money at nice restaurants or splurge for a comfortable hotel if you want to enjoy some luxury every now and then. But I find I don't really want to. Life is a lot more enjoyable, in my opinion. Way less stress than cleaning and maintaining a bunch of stuff.
I'd wager there's a rather large number of folks like GP intending to minimize the effort required to do drone-ish tasks rather than eliminate them. I don't deny that it's only a logical next step to eliminate them entirely, but that seems a step too far for social conventions. After all, culture defies logic rather often.
(Bonus with a furnished place - I don't need to worry about the kinds of bills that the OC was talking about because one flat monthly payment covers rent, water, electric and internet. My only other bills are phone and media/content subscription services, all of which are also flat rates, set up once and paid automatically.)
For me simplifying my life doesn't mean living with nothing at all, it just means living without unnecessarily complicated or laborious things. Clearly different people will draw a line at different places.
The point of my previous comment was more that it doesn't hurt to try eliminate things from your life, if it seems they're just a hassle. Who cares about the social conventions? I think a lot of people find themselves caught up in the rat race and take part without really thinking about why they're doing it, or whether it actually is worth all the effort. It turns out you can forego a lot of things and, actually, life isn't all that bad. That's especially the case if you are earning a decent salary, so you afford to can go out and treat yourself whenever you feel the urge. I think now is probably a better time than ever before to live simply, because we have immediate access to all the world's knowledge and art from a tiny computer in our pockets.
Living in Japan now, I had a few months with a padded mat + quilt on the floor as is tradition (and a damn cheap one), but upgraded to a mattress on the floor because the floor was too cold in winter as you mentioned.
There's as much to be gained from taking stuff away that isn't useful, as there is from adding useful stuff to your life.
But if you prefer the independence of minimal living, that's also advantageous.
Now I am back in the North America I think it's harder, because people build houses much bigger, and seem to associate not having much stuff with being unhappy or underprivileged instead of well-optimized and free.
I've found a bit more in common with the rubber tramp and liveaboard communities in this part of the world. They are very mindful about everything they buy because space is limited, so trying to find things that are multifunctional is a high priority. A lot of those things work in houses too.
On the other hand, I don't think their lives are as low stress as I would like, because they end up needing maintain an entire vehicle as well as the stuff in it.
Two other hacks, for women at least, is to quit makeup and shaving. I quit makeup about 5 years ago by accident forgetting to put it on one morning, and then I realized no one at work noticed anyways. Quitting shaving has been more of a corona era thing. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it over the summer, but I've been out a few times in shorts and it seemed nobody much cared. That cuts a bunch of unnecessary maintenance time out of my life, which I can now use for other things.
There are so many better things to spend time on than the mundane parts of life.
You’re probably familiar with auto bill pay (I think most services have it, and many banks offer it as well), and index fund investing with automatic transfers, so I’m guessing those don’t solve the problems you’re talking about. I’m interested what you mean then.
The index fund investing with scheduled transfers is exactly what I meant by automated financial services. I probably micro-manage it a little too much right now for no real benefit.
I do my best not to even log in to my account. One could go so far as to change one’s password to something impossible to remember, then delete it, so that signing in becomes a huge hassle of password recovery and identification verification at a banking institute (one of Dante’s levels of hell iirc)
Soylent is terrible for your insides.
But this experience of finding value in cooking is not really universal. I have some friends who legitimately, actively dislike the process. It's not that they're bad at it, they just consider it a waste of time. For them Soylent, or a food delivery service might be just fine.
I think the key is to aggressively optimize out the things in your life that aren't working for you. We shouldn't feel like we "need" to do things just to have a "normal" life, I think that's one of the causes of stress and unhappiness for a lot of people.