Ah yes, one more thing to have existential dread about.
Spend your time how you want. Time is never wasted. If you don't want to do something, and you have no good reason to do it (friends, family, etc.), don't.
As the article states, you only have so much time. Stop trying to figure out how to optimize it, and live it.
I like to use this phrase: it is okay to just enjoy existing.
You don't have to hike up a mountain, see the world, turn off that TV show you like, or even skip out on unhealthy stuff like going to the bar or eating that piece of cake you shouldn't have (in moderation) to live an enjoyable, fulfilling life.
If what you're doing right now is enjoyable, that's enough.
Yeah, we're not here for any purpose, so just do what makes you and those around you happy. Combine that with a reasonable amount of what'll keep you around longer so you can continue to enjoy things and you're doing just fine.
Of course I don't know that with 100% certainty, but because I have no evidence of any purpose and I assume that things aren't true until proven otherwise.
At best said purpose is optional or it would require equal opportunity to come upon the explanation from every person who has and who will be in existence. If said purpose is hidden without even a hint that you're supposed to find it I consider that malicious obfuscation.
When I have two options that either something exists or something doesn't and I have no strong evidence I assume it doesn't. Do you have evidence? If you have faith or belief that's fine, but I need a reason to change mine from the default option.
> something exists or something doesn't and I have no strong evidence I assume it doesn't
Sure, and Louis Pasteur was initially a crank for claiming that invisible micro-organisms were causing infection and disease. Absence of perception does not rationally conclude something is therefore absent.
> I need a reason to change mine from the default option.
The default option is faith/belief. You don't have "strong evidence" each day that the sky will be the same color, the sun will come up, your dining room chair will still hold your weight, your best friend still loves and cares for you, and that your car will likely start.
A large majority of your life behavior cruises along quite happily on faith/belief. Or do you start every day re-checking all the proofs of the physical world before you can do anything?
> Sure, and Louis Pasteur was a crank for claiming that invisible micro-organisms were causing infection and disease. Your absence of perception does not mean the evidence is absent.
I don't understand your example. Louis Pasteur determined germ theory by observations of natural phenomena - he observed evidence, experimented, and found an explanation for said evidence. In this case I'd need to see direct evidence of a purpose and a means by which I could observe or experiment with said purpose.
> The default option is faith/belief.
You need to provide some reasoning behind that. And which faith? Some belief? Some god? Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis?
> You don't have "strong evidence" each day that the sky will be the same color, the sun will come up, your dining room chair will still hold your weight, your best friend still loves and cares for you, and that your car will likely start at the crank of the key.
You're not understanding - I'd need to have some form of reason to believe that the sky would change, or that the dining room chair's properties would change. I'm saying that my understanding of the world is based upon observations. I observed the sun comes up every day so I assume that it will tomorrow. Unless something acts on it it will continue to do so I have no reason to not assume that. For it to not come up the next day without any reason to would in fact be a supernatural phenomena.
> I'm saying that my understanding of the world is based upon observations
> Your absence of perception does not mean the evidence is absent.
And what I'm saying is that the absence of a "thing observed" can have multiple reasons for "not being observed" - 1) it really doesn't exist or 2) you lack the ability to observe it.
If you don't have a microscope it's hard to confirm the existence of cells, and if your life has been lived in a way that you lack the "spiritual scope" and ways of thinking to perceive purpose then of course you will not observe it.
What "spiritual scope"? There are many and involve different things. No way does a Christian Monk, a Greek Oracle, a Buddhist monk, a viking warrior, and a caveman have the same spiritual scope. How many are denied enlightenment?
This has become a secret thing that you should discover and know and most won't know which tells me it's not actually important or required to know.
> Spend your time how you want. Time is never wasted.
What about time spent on social media like hacker news that I subjectively feel was wasted?
Usually thanks to a combination of being tired and feeling like I can’t muster anything else. But literally staring at a blank wall for 5 minutes would be more restful (some call that meditation)
It is very easy these days to be always busy without making progress towards anything other than keeping busy. And just like junk food, it rarely feels like the best choice in retrospect. Very easy to make in the moment without even enjoying it all that much while it’s happening
Why do you feel like you have to progress towards something? You enjoy time on HN yet comes this guilt telling you it was wasted - because a certain school of thought regards anything not "progressing" as waste. Some say that started with capitalism, others say it started from the protestants, but you're definitely not the first or only one living with this guilt of "wasting". Because any pleasure is waste, according to that school of thought.
I feel like time on hn is actually less wasted than time on other social media platforms. TikTok being the big one. Time flies and suddenly it's late and there are a dozen 10s song clips stuck in my head. oof.
That’s what I was trying to convey. I don’t enjoy time on HN as much as I would enjoy other activities that happen to have a slightly higher activation energy.
For example: I would almost certainly enjoy grabbing dinner with a friend more than I enjoy HN. But opening HN is waaaaay easier than calling up a friend. So that’s what happens instead.
I really like the idea of optimistic nihilism in regards to mortality and how we should spent our time while we are here. I can highly recommend reading about it:
> Spend your time how you want. Time is never wasted. If you don't want to do something, and you have no good reason to do it (friends, family, etc.), don't.
Yes! I try to optimize for doing as little things I don't enjoy as possible. If I feel like spending 10 hours watching some Netflix show all weekend, I consider that a perfectly good use of my time. On the other hand, things like cleaning/cooking/shopping, I consider them a waste of time and try to spend as little time doing them as humanly possible.
> Stop trying to figure out how to optimize it, and live it.
Argument could then be made that we are living it regardless of what we do. Including optimizing.
I take the point about being stuck in analysis-mode and self-doubt, though I think the fear it addresses is less-so FOMO and more-so living with or without needless suffering or drudgery. Paradoxically I think a bit of suffering is part of living well, e.g. suffering for a passion-project, or cause.
A certain strange book that deals with desire had made waves this past year in navel-gaze-y rationalist-adjacent circles, I think this overlaps. The author posits that we don't have real desires. Instead we make up surrogate reasons and social permission structures to get things done. And if we have desires, they're surrogate desires anyway. It's called "Sadly, Porn" - with the allusion being we're living a pornographic life. Personally I think it's fun and interesting, but I've seen reactions ranging between "banal", "amazing", "disturbing", "pomo nonsense"
I think this is why habit-creation is so powerful. We all have habits, whether they are good or bad - they lower cognitive overload so you can act without rationalizing everything. The way a habit can relate to desire can be completely abstract, but if we follow through they can be fruitful.
Middle ground approach: doing a little is better than doing nothing. Instead of focusing on being a perfect manager of time, ask yourself "is there one little thing I can do to use my time more effectively?"
Spending just 100 words writing a novel might be for you. You might even leave behind something.
Betteridge's Law Of Headlines would say this article probably comes down on "no". Neither of my attempts to get past the paywall worked so I'm just gonna assume that holds true.
I probably make less money than the median HN commenter but "keeping up with my bills by spending 2-3h a day drawing things for Patreon and commissioners while biking around a tourist destination's parks and cafes" sure feels like using my time right. I could probably stand to be dancing to a lot more live music though.
Have a demerit in return for not realizing that if I am sitting here browsing HN, I am already being super lazy and maybe don't care enough about this article to bother looking further than the first two paywall bypass methods that come to mind
Paywalled so I can't read the article but I'll throw in some related thoughts.
I recall listening to the radio and hearing about the ways in which we view time can sometimes alter how we use it. A man was asked how many years he thinks he has left to spend with his parents and he said something along the lines of 10 years. He was then asked how many times a year he spends with his parents and I think he said around 3-4 or so get-togethers.
So at that rate, you only have 30-40 get-togethers left with your family. Which really changed the man's perspective on how much time he really had left based on how he was using it. Just some food for thought on how we use time with others.
Personal opinion and I realize that there would be absolute opposite school of thought as reflected in the article, nevertheless..
This obsession and tension about the time 'left' I don't get it. As an example, sometimes I'm worried about very long life ahead for which I don't have enough savings to navigate in old age. When in misery (ex. out of job, out of long relationship, lonely.. etc) time stretches really long. But when ecstatic and happy, the past (unhappy) time doesn't really matter how much ever long it was.
True faith is quite common among humanity. Removing existential dread is one of the core benefits that led to the adoption of this "religion" technology all over the world.
You can argue it's cope but for many people it's as real as gravity.
Maybe, maybe not, but I'd question some blanket assertion being made without evidence that deeply religious people experience less existential dread. It's going to depend on plenty of other cultural specifics, of course, but not all religions involve an afterlife and some involve the possibility of an afterlife that is much worse than simply running out of time.
There is also the issue that common western manifestations of existential dread, i.e. the Nietzshe eternal return, Sartre's dilemma of having no choice but to make a choice but all of them are bad, even up to the contemporary worries about near-infinite compounding of sub-optimal ethics in far-future focused EA circles and AI-risk circles, are not in any way mitigated by the possibility of an afterlife. All the trillions of future people you cause suffering to will still suffer even if you end up in heaven.
Maybe more averse to it than other cultures. But godlessness might not be the cause. (There are many Westerners that are godfull and yet this is a general Western thing.)
God-fearing Westerners are still afraid of death, that's why they turn to religion in the first place.
One thing I notice about strongly Abrahamic religious people is that they are okay with eschewing the pleasures of life because they believe that heaven is their next step, and the only way to get there is to abstain from things they enjoy, are "tempted" by, and/or would otherwise be ambitious toward.
They'll give up things like sex before marriage, education, household autonomy, careers, foods, non-heterosexual partnerships (suppressing their own attraction preferences), coffee, alcohol, being in the presence of the opposite sex...almost anything you can name will be something that someone religious will just give up because they think it will grant them favor by God.
Religions that believe in things like faith healing will even give up medical care because they believe God will heal them. I know someone who is doing exactly this and is nearly immobile out of pure stubbornness. A quick and simple procedure could save them a whole bunch of pain and suffering and give them their abilities back.
In contrast, I find some of the ideas of "pleasure activism" to be very interesting. We've been taught to avoid pleasure, that it's "sinful," that it's "embarrassing" (especially for women). But why? Why is it bad? Here's an example article: https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/18/gender-studies-professo...
Watch a televangelist like Sid Roth and you'll see that a large swath of Christianity revolves around sitting around and praying for good things to happen rather than making them happen through action. It's an incredibly selfish and futile form of Christianity.
> almost anything you can name will be something that someone religious will just give up because they think it will grant them favor by God.
This is what the Pharisees were doing. Christ clearly refuted this kind of religious attitude. See Matthew 23.
A couple of the things you listed are genuinely sinful. On the other hand, careers, food, alcohol etc. can be sinful, but are not always. See e.g. Judges 9:13 and many other verses.
I don't believe anything I listed is genuinely sinful. I don't believe Abrahamic God exists.
I'm not really concerned what a certain popular novel on the subject thinks about sin, especially one as heavily edited and manipulated as the Bible. [1]
As long as I'm not harming others, I wouldn't say that anything I do is sinful.
I might even argue that sin doesn't exist. Transgressing against divine law is something you can't really do if you don't believe divine law is real.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
I can't take the opinion of anyone who continues to use social media in 2022 seriously. You are either deluded or naive, and I have no interest in hearing from either.
>Is this comment section not a social medium? Or are you saying you don't take your own opinions seriously?
Directly engaging with people on a forum is not even remotely the same thing. The danger is in the algorithmic mind control that social media employs. It is subtle, dangerous, and highly effective at providing alternate realities tailored to the individual. Allowing your mind to be exposed to that is fatally naive, and has lead to the nightmare world of manufactured outrage that we now live in.
I share the same distrust for social media, but the dismissive view of everyone who uses it is way too reductive. A very large portion of the population uses social media, including you on this site.
“Part of it is, my body is working right now and who knows if it will be in a year or two,” he says. “I’m more deliberate and determined when it comes to things like that.”
I'm at that age where I know things are getting more brittle. Trying to care of things a bit more so I can still do things like walk and ride my bike.
"Right" implies there is some objective authority who could tell you whether you are using your time the correct way or not. Thinking about spending time this way leads me to feel guilty (I'm not spending it the right way!).
The question I ask myself is "what do I want?". It is a tough question. I consider my present and future needs, as well as how I feel. When I have thought about my answer, then it becomes clearer how I want to spend my time.
To everyone who feels pressured after reading that headline, I strongly recommend reading the book "Four Thousand Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman. For me, personally, it's the single most important book that I have ever read, by far. It has immediately improved my quality of life, simply by changing perspectives.
I used to agonize over the best use of my time to the degree that I ended up doing nothing. Now, it is all ugly first drafts as fast as I can churn them out and then double down on the good ones.
true but the after effects of your drive to seek 'happiness' would still be around. for instance if we trash the planet looking for that last bit of dopamine hit and kill off all biodiversity because of industrial farming then sure they wont know YOU personally but they know you as a society and generation. Does not means one should not seek happiness but just within the bounds of whats supportable by the biosphere.
This seems like the proper place to plug my dumb little side project, an actuarial table calculator that I put together with Alpine.js and a lot of poorly written JS. It's my first "app" though, and I'm happy to share it here if anyone else can use it:
I keep it in a pinned tab to help me recontextualize things when I'm stuck in a poorly functioning dopamine loop. If I'm doing something for leisure, I want to really like doing it, not do it as a holding pattern.
I know it's just meant to be a bit of fun and a gentle reminder but life expectancy varies quite a lot depending on where one was born, grew up, what education and employment one had, even on where one lives now.
Yes, also I have yet to find a node module for accurately predicting when people will die. Well, that's not entirely true. I found one but npm keeps failing to pull it.
It's the SSA's actuarial table, there are enormously important factors outside of that to think about.
I mostly wanted a reference point and a countdown timer with an impossibly large number, but to be able to see it steadily decreasing. That's been somewhat psychologically impactful for myself, but YMMV.
When I feel like sleeping, I sleep. When I feel like walking in the park, I walk. When I feel like eating Stilton cheese with some barbunya pilaki and a nice burgundy, I eat and drink. When I feel like logging into HN to upvote various posts, I log in.
You get the idea. Nothing small like this basically matters. I'm well into my seventh decade and enjoying the ride, doing what I can to improve the situation but not getting too attached to stuff.
I am half your age but I feel the same way. The sun is going to blow up one day anyway and no one really knows why we’re here in the first place. So, I’m going to enjoy my small slice of time any way I can.
What we feel like, in the short-run / immediate sense, can be hijacked. Or come from discord.
I can feel like never getting out of bed, getting a heroin fix, eating a pizza to myself with a case of beer, and repeating. I would also feel like shit, but those aren't mutually exclusive. I could also feel like hitting refresh on social media clients that make me anxious several times a day.
I think that intuitive compass generally works, as you allude to, but not always. But as time passes, I don't think I "feel like" doing anything specific - what I feel like is getting a dopamine spike, blood flowing, social validation, feeling good. All of what we choose is just a vehicle.
Part of the reason you can do that, though, is that based on your age, you spent most of your life living in a way where you were naturally active, just to get through the day. You likely did not grow up eating food that was manufactured to addict you to it. And you did not grow up on platforms that have scores of PHds trying to figure out how to get you, individually, addicted to their platform.
IOW, your natural instincts largely worked because your environment supported a fairly high quality lifestyle.
This is not close to true anymore. Our natural instincts and daily lives have been hijacked beyond recognition.
With WFH, for example, people may go days without having walked beyond the distance it takes to go from their bed to their desk, or if they're lucky, from their bedroom to the home office.
>When I feel like sleeping, I sleep. When I feel like walking in the park, I walk. When I feel like eating Stilton cheese with some barbunya pilaki and a nice burgundy, I eat and drink. When I feel like logging into HN to upvote various posts, I log in. You get the idea.
Yeah, we get it: you're independently wealthy and doesn't need to work, nor have timelines imposed on your days.
Or, you don't really do all those things "when you feel like it" (and the above is what you'd like to do).
Or, you do them "when you feel like to", but this surprisingly coincides with your free time and holidays...
not OP but I've always lived pretty much the same way without being wealthy, walk in the park costs nothing and even a nice bottle of wine isn't really expensive.
The high stress lifestyle is definitely a choice. Fancy car, fancy house, posh neighborhood etc aren't necessary. If you live modestly you have plenty of time and leisure. I spent some time living in a Kibbutz in my 20s and while you have to work it never felt stressful or like a chore or as if you're defined by it.
These days as a dev in particular, you can take on a half-day job move to a cheap place in the country with a nice community, you have as much control over your time as you want.
Couldn't agree more. I once read that, before colonialism came along, 'uncivilized' (hah) natives in most of the world spent 2 or 3 hours a day on food, shelter, clothing, defense. Plenty of time then to enjoy the world, find rocks and plants, make tools, do creative stuff, tell kids stories. (Didn't need dentists either.)
Did you miss the part where he said he was in his 60s? You make it sound like he’s a trust fund kid, when it’s likely that he just worked his whole life and is now retired.
"you're independently wealthy and doesn't need to work"
Not independently wealthy except in the sense that I belong just above Branko Milanovic's 85th percentile of wealth. I have a small fixed retirement income derived from wealth accumulated over a 40 year working life. I have the good fortune to live in a country with a stable financial system and institutions that maintain continuity over time.
Taking your wider point, yes, perhaps my behaviour is shaped by the practicalities of my circumstances. But that shaping is largely unconscious so I don't have a sense of constraint.
I think oftentimes we get ourselves worked up about if we are using our time correctly. And there seems to be this shift where working too much is a bad thing. I kind of resent this a bit, because I constantly feel guilty for working too much. However, I am a young person in my twenties and I love my work -- at what other time am I going have the energy and time to devote to my craft and learning?
Of course as you age, you have to adjust. However, I think worrying less about time left and time in general and focusing instead on what your priorities are is more important.
This is the time for you to work and setup your life. A few right moves now can set you up on a much easier path for the rest of your life and give you more freedom to take time off later. Freedom you might not have later if you don’t get things in order.
That being said, don’t completely ignore other areas of life.
I’m reminded of a Steve Jobs quote I found buried deep in some notes I was cleaning out.
> Steve Jobs : "When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.""
This was from the commencement speech he gave at Sanford (starts at about 9:10). Not originally his quite, he was paraphrasing something he heard. Great speech, very worth watching for those who haven’t seen it.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadSpend your time how you want. Time is never wasted. If you don't want to do something, and you have no good reason to do it (friends, family, etc.), don't.
As the article states, you only have so much time. Stop trying to figure out how to optimize it, and live it.
You don't have to hike up a mountain, see the world, turn off that TV show you like, or even skip out on unhealthy stuff like going to the bar or eating that piece of cake you shouldn't have (in moderation) to live an enjoyable, fulfilling life.
If what you're doing right now is enjoyable, that's enough.
We're not? How'd you figure that one out with 100% certainty?
At best said purpose is optional or it would require equal opportunity to come upon the explanation from every person who has and who will be in existence. If said purpose is hidden without even a hint that you're supposed to find it I consider that malicious obfuscation.
Except for your own statements of fact, of course.
Sure, and Louis Pasteur was initially a crank for claiming that invisible micro-organisms were causing infection and disease. Absence of perception does not rationally conclude something is therefore absent.
> I need a reason to change mine from the default option.
The default option is faith/belief. You don't have "strong evidence" each day that the sky will be the same color, the sun will come up, your dining room chair will still hold your weight, your best friend still loves and cares for you, and that your car will likely start.
A large majority of your life behavior cruises along quite happily on faith/belief. Or do you start every day re-checking all the proofs of the physical world before you can do anything?
I don't understand your example. Louis Pasteur determined germ theory by observations of natural phenomena - he observed evidence, experimented, and found an explanation for said evidence. In this case I'd need to see direct evidence of a purpose and a means by which I could observe or experiment with said purpose.
> The default option is faith/belief.
You need to provide some reasoning behind that. And which faith? Some belief? Some god? Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness monster, and the theory of Atlantis?
> You don't have "strong evidence" each day that the sky will be the same color, the sun will come up, your dining room chair will still hold your weight, your best friend still loves and cares for you, and that your car will likely start at the crank of the key.
You're not understanding - I'd need to have some form of reason to believe that the sky would change, or that the dining room chair's properties would change. I'm saying that my understanding of the world is based upon observations. I observed the sun comes up every day so I assume that it will tomorrow. Unless something acts on it it will continue to do so I have no reason to not assume that. For it to not come up the next day without any reason to would in fact be a supernatural phenomena.
> Your absence of perception does not mean the evidence is absent.
And what I'm saying is that the absence of a "thing observed" can have multiple reasons for "not being observed" - 1) it really doesn't exist or 2) you lack the ability to observe it.
If you don't have a microscope it's hard to confirm the existence of cells, and if your life has been lived in a way that you lack the "spiritual scope" and ways of thinking to perceive purpose then of course you will not observe it.
This has become a secret thing that you should discover and know and most won't know which tells me it's not actually important or required to know.
What about time spent on social media like hacker news that I subjectively feel was wasted?
Usually thanks to a combination of being tired and feeling like I can’t muster anything else. But literally staring at a blank wall for 5 minutes would be more restful (some call that meditation)
It is very easy these days to be always busy without making progress towards anything other than keeping busy. And just like junk food, it rarely feels like the best choice in retrospect. Very easy to make in the moment without even enjoying it all that much while it’s happening
That’s what I was trying to convey. I don’t enjoy time on HN as much as I would enjoy other activities that happen to have a slightly higher activation energy.
For example: I would almost certainly enjoy grabbing dinner with a friend more than I enjoy HN. But opening HN is waaaaay easier than calling up a friend. So that’s what happens instead.
https://you.com/search?q=optimistic+nihilism
Yes! I try to optimize for doing as little things I don't enjoy as possible. If I feel like spending 10 hours watching some Netflix show all weekend, I consider that a perfectly good use of my time. On the other hand, things like cleaning/cooking/shopping, I consider them a waste of time and try to spend as little time doing them as humanly possible.
Argument could then be made that we are living it regardless of what we do. Including optimizing.
I take the point about being stuck in analysis-mode and self-doubt, though I think the fear it addresses is less-so FOMO and more-so living with or without needless suffering or drudgery. Paradoxically I think a bit of suffering is part of living well, e.g. suffering for a passion-project, or cause.
A certain strange book that deals with desire had made waves this past year in navel-gaze-y rationalist-adjacent circles, I think this overlaps. The author posits that we don't have real desires. Instead we make up surrogate reasons and social permission structures to get things done. And if we have desires, they're surrogate desires anyway. It's called "Sadly, Porn" - with the allusion being we're living a pornographic life. Personally I think it's fun and interesting, but I've seen reactions ranging between "banal", "amazing", "disturbing", "pomo nonsense"
I think this is why habit-creation is so powerful. We all have habits, whether they are good or bad - they lower cognitive overload so you can act without rationalizing everything. The way a habit can relate to desire can be completely abstract, but if we follow through they can be fruitful.
Spending just 100 words writing a novel might be for you. You might even leave behind something.
I probably make less money than the median HN commenter but "keeping up with my bills by spending 2-3h a day drawing things for Patreon and commissioners while biking around a tourist destination's parks and cafes" sure feels like using my time right. I could probably stand to be dancing to a lot more live music though.
Literally just google "bypass paywalls," the first result works like a charm.
I recall listening to the radio and hearing about the ways in which we view time can sometimes alter how we use it. A man was asked how many years he thinks he has left to spend with his parents and he said something along the lines of 10 years. He was then asked how many times a year he spends with his parents and I think he said around 3-4 or so get-togethers.
So at that rate, you only have 30-40 get-togethers left with your family. Which really changed the man's perspective on how much time he really had left based on how he was using it. Just some food for thought on how we use time with others.
This obsession and tension about the time 'left' I don't get it. As an example, sometimes I'm worried about very long life ahead for which I don't have enough savings to navigate in old age. When in misery (ex. out of job, out of long relationship, lonely.. etc) time stretches really long. But when ecstatic and happy, the past (unhappy) time doesn't really matter how much ever long it was.
Time really does not matter.
You can argue it's cope but for many people it's as real as gravity.
There is also the issue that common western manifestations of existential dread, i.e. the Nietzshe eternal return, Sartre's dilemma of having no choice but to make a choice but all of them are bad, even up to the contemporary worries about near-infinite compounding of sub-optimal ethics in far-future focused EA circles and AI-risk circles, are not in any way mitigated by the possibility of an afterlife. All the trillions of future people you cause suffering to will still suffer even if you end up in heaven.
Yes, of course. God will forgive you though if you are penitent. Existential dread resolved.
At least that's the Christian answer. Another wildly successful social technology.
That would speak to those people's lack of understanding of gravity more than anything else in my view
As per Stephen Covey, only some things are in my circle of influence, so I don't bother with what's outside.
One thing I notice about strongly Abrahamic religious people is that they are okay with eschewing the pleasures of life because they believe that heaven is their next step, and the only way to get there is to abstain from things they enjoy, are "tempted" by, and/or would otherwise be ambitious toward.
They'll give up things like sex before marriage, education, household autonomy, careers, foods, non-heterosexual partnerships (suppressing their own attraction preferences), coffee, alcohol, being in the presence of the opposite sex...almost anything you can name will be something that someone religious will just give up because they think it will grant them favor by God.
Religions that believe in things like faith healing will even give up medical care because they believe God will heal them. I know someone who is doing exactly this and is nearly immobile out of pure stubbornness. A quick and simple procedure could save them a whole bunch of pain and suffering and give them their abilities back.
In contrast, I find some of the ideas of "pleasure activism" to be very interesting. We've been taught to avoid pleasure, that it's "sinful," that it's "embarrassing" (especially for women). But why? Why is it bad? Here's an example article: https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/18/gender-studies-professo...
Watch a televangelist like Sid Roth and you'll see that a large swath of Christianity revolves around sitting around and praying for good things to happen rather than making them happen through action. It's an incredibly selfish and futile form of Christianity.
This is what the Pharisees were doing. Christ clearly refuted this kind of religious attitude. See Matthew 23.
A couple of the things you listed are genuinely sinful. On the other hand, careers, food, alcohol etc. can be sinful, but are not always. See e.g. Judges 9:13 and many other verses.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=judges+9:13&ver...
Also see 1 Timothy 4:4.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+timothy+4:4&v...
I'm not really concerned what a certain popular novel on the subject thinks about sin, especially one as heavily edited and manipulated as the Bible. [1]
As long as I'm not harming others, I wouldn't say that anything I do is sinful.
I might even argue that sin doesn't exist. Transgressing against divine law is something you can't really do if you don't believe divine law is real.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
.
Directly engaging with people on a forum is not even remotely the same thing. The danger is in the algorithmic mind control that social media employs. It is subtle, dangerous, and highly effective at providing alternate realities tailored to the individual. Allowing your mind to be exposed to that is fatally naive, and has lead to the nightmare world of manufactured outrage that we now live in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfBZXIn_Zrw
Your adventure is your own.
No.
Time is illusion; nobody can take you or give you time.
“Part of it is, my body is working right now and who knows if it will be in a year or two,” he says. “I’m more deliberate and determined when it comes to things like that.”
I'm at that age where I know things are getting more brittle. Trying to care of things a bit more so I can still do things like walk and ride my bike.
The question I ask myself is "what do I want?". It is a tough question. I consider my present and future needs, as well as how I feel. When I have thought about my answer, then it becomes clearer how I want to spend my time.
https://timelefton.earth/
I keep it in a pinned tab to help me recontextualize things when I'm stuck in a poorly functioning dopamine loop. If I'm doing something for leisure, I want to really like doing it, not do it as a holding pattern.
I mostly wanted a reference point and a countdown timer with an impossibly large number, but to be able to see it steadily decreasing. That's been somewhat psychologically impactful for myself, but YMMV.
Live long and prosper :)
You get the idea. Nothing small like this basically matters. I'm well into my seventh decade and enjoying the ride, doing what I can to improve the situation but not getting too attached to stuff.
I can feel like never getting out of bed, getting a heroin fix, eating a pizza to myself with a case of beer, and repeating. I would also feel like shit, but those aren't mutually exclusive. I could also feel like hitting refresh on social media clients that make me anxious several times a day.
I think that intuitive compass generally works, as you allude to, but not always. But as time passes, I don't think I "feel like" doing anything specific - what I feel like is getting a dopamine spike, blood flowing, social validation, feeling good. All of what we choose is just a vehicle.
IOW, your natural instincts largely worked because your environment supported a fairly high quality lifestyle.
This is not close to true anymore. Our natural instincts and daily lives have been hijacked beyond recognition.
With WFH, for example, people may go days without having walked beyond the distance it takes to go from their bed to their desk, or if they're lucky, from their bedroom to the home office.
Yeah, we get it: you're independently wealthy and doesn't need to work, nor have timelines imposed on your days.
Or, you don't really do all those things "when you feel like it" (and the above is what you'd like to do).
Or, you do them "when you feel like to", but this surprisingly coincides with your free time and holidays...
No fourth option, iirc
The high stress lifestyle is definitely a choice. Fancy car, fancy house, posh neighborhood etc aren't necessary. If you live modestly you have plenty of time and leisure. I spent some time living in a Kibbutz in my 20s and while you have to work it never felt stressful or like a chore or as if you're defined by it.
These days as a dev in particular, you can take on a half-day job move to a cheap place in the country with a nice community, you have as much control over your time as you want.
Big secret: The rest IS entirely arbitrary.
Not independently wealthy except in the sense that I belong just above Branko Milanovic's 85th percentile of wealth. I have a small fixed retirement income derived from wealth accumulated over a 40 year working life. I have the good fortune to live in a country with a stable financial system and institutions that maintain continuity over time.
Taking your wider point, yes, perhaps my behaviour is shaped by the practicalities of my circumstances. But that shaping is largely unconscious so I don't have a sense of constraint.
Of course as you age, you have to adjust. However, I think worrying less about time left and time in general and focusing instead on what your priorities are is more important.
That being said, don’t completely ignore other areas of life.
> Steve Jobs : "When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.""
https://youtu.be/UF8uR6Z6KLc
Reading that book is just so calming - as Vonnegut said “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”