> Strangers will live in our homes we fought so hard to build, and they will own everything we have today.
Some of us are rejecting the boomer bounce the check for the funeral ethos in favor of passing something on. Much as the overwhelming majority of our ancestors did, we have a very real hope that it will be our descendants who live in our houses and benefit from what we built during our lives.
The related concept of the Buxton Index (BI) is worth pondering. In short, it’s your planning horizon. So a frontend dev might have a BI of 1-2 sprints, a US president might have one of 4-8 years, and so on. Needless to say all of the wealthiest families have an intergenerational time scale BI, and so do the upper middle class ones that have persisted.
After all the simple fact is some tasks can’t be completed in a single lifetime.
Tbh I'm not seeing anything in the delivery here to quality it for being sneered at, or compared to Musk.
Perhaps it's easier for some to mock a reminder like this, than to reflect on it. This is one of those truths that's worth remembering, and deeper than it might seem.
"All conditioned things are impermanent — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering." - Some 14yo I guess, idk
I mean, Buddha was a spoiled princelet who had an overreaction to discovering that not everyone shared his privilege. In many ways he’s the archetype of I’m 14 and this is deep.
"Enlightenment" is a word you've been programmed to respond to in a certain way, but it doesn't represent anything particularly meaningful. It's a religious concept like "clear" in Scientology. It's used as a carrot for gullible religious folk.
If it's all going to shit anyway, how are "real" things better than glitzy consumerism? Those kisses from children will be gone just the same as the expensive watches. Actually, vintage watches have a thriving second hand market.
I mean, I don't disagree with the conclusion, but the argument ain't great.
Probably depends on your perspective on life, if having and looking at expensive watches gives you more satisfaction than being hugged and spending time with your friends, your counterargument probably makes sense.
I don't think it makes sense to think entirely black/white here, everyone has different things they enjoy in life.
That’s… an odd argument to make. Do you really think that the vast majority of people derive more happiness from having things than experiences/memories with loved ones?
I think a popular sentiment near the end of life for most is that they wish they’d adventured more and spent additional time with family & friends, not acquiring material goods or more wealth.
> Do you really think that the vast majority of people derive more happiness from having things than experiences/memories with loved ones?
No, but that's not the argument OP makes. They say, we will all be dead and our possession gone so they have no value. Meanwhile, time with loved ones... Well it will be gone too! But somehow that's fine.
That one is better than another is not an argument OP makes.
Sure there's truth in some of what he's saying, but I think the fact that we and all of our stuff will be gone is great. I'm here to enjoy the ride! I'm gonna go fast in my fancy car - zoom zoom see ya later.
I interpret it as though he has a family, and struggles to prioritize them over the rat race. That's what I struggle with, and when I sit back and consider the impermanence of it all, it makes me want to spend more time with my family and close friends, and less time trying to get wealthy. Maybe I'm just getting old, but this has become so much clearer to me in recent years.
Maybe he is depressed, or in the process of trying to get over depression. At some point, most people have this epiphany. His may be now. If so, I'm happy for him.
There's a part of me that wouldn't understand the gravity of this post because I never had an unhealthy obsession with stuff in the first place. I grew up with stuff and never had to go without. I enjoy hitting the sport button in my car and going zoom zoom.
Sometimes that obsession really messes people up and they truly suffer from it. They're not always as happy-go-lucky as you or I. Maybe it's harder for them to just get by.
I know enough people who didn't grow up with running water and went hungry as a kid to know that some people's attachment to stuff and financial security is a lot more profound and rooted in something much deeper. It's a lot harder for them to just enjoy the ride because a lot of that ride has been a real struggle.
I don't know this person's story, but I hope he finds peace and balance.
As others have mentioned, this post gives off strong "I’m 14 and this is deep" vibes.
I think you're projecting your own experience onto a post that is low quality and not that interesting. Judging by the fact that it's flagged, I think others agree.
I understood the vibes it was giving off. Initially, it wasn't very interesting to me because I didn't relate to it.
But then, I remembered I have friends and family who've shared this epiphany well into their adulthood, some in their 70s and 80s.
The epiphany itself isn't very interesting, but exploring the different reasons why it takes some people so much longer than others to experience this epiphany takes one down some interesting paths. That was my point.
I'm not trying to proselytize here, just merely pointing out that the sentiment is thousands of years old:
Akabyah ben Mahalalel said: mark well three things and you will not come into the power of sin: know from where you come, and where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning. From where do you come? From a putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, of worm and of maggot. Before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning? Before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.
This was neither the point of the PP, nor is the OP "materialistic" in nature. (Did you mean secular?)
Both are questioning how you should invest your time, and what really matters in your life. Yes, sure, PP is anchored in religion, but the sentiment is the same.
The point doesn't have to do with religion. Rather that people (many of whom were religious thinkers) have been thinking along these lines for thousands of years.
This is why stupidity like Scrum should be abolished in every software shop worldwide. It just wastes time. It is just busy work and busy meetings for nothing and it is one of the most time consuming aspects of a dev job.
Someone is going to come along and tell you this has nothing to do with the article but I see you and I’m giving you a quiet nod while sipping ma drink.
Not believing in it does not make it false. We are all made of earth and after death we go back in earth and then born again. So in a sense reincarnation happens but without the memory.
It doesn't really apply in things such as what happens after death, because such a thing is essentially by definition immeasurable and unfalsifiable. So any view largely becomes an opinion. There is no factual basis for anything.
For myself, I think what little evidence we have to form an opinion would based around the absurdity of existence itself. If you really think about the fact that we actually and undoubtedly exist it's really quite terrifying. The argument that the initial big bang could have been driven by quantum fluctuations is meaningless as you always end up with the question of what created the laws enabling such fluctuations, the 'void' in which it happens, or or even quantum mechanics itself. Of course if one takes a deistic point of view you end up with the exact same issue. If God created everything, then what created God?
It's years of pondering this that led from atheism to agnosticism. Even intellectually appealing "answers" like the simulation hypothesis offer no real answer. Imagine you 'die', 'wake up', and pat yourself on the back upon finding out it was indeed a simulation. Well you still have no answer whatsoever because the question of creation now emerges once again in your new reality. Turtles all the way down, simulations all the way up?
Every man dies twice. The first time is at their funeral where they are buried in the ground surrounded by people who knew them. The second time is when the last person at the funeral passes and all memory of them is lost.
I actually think the opposite is true, most people would slow down and be less greedy and intolerant if they were immortal, and didn't have to worry about getting old and dying. The pressure of knowing you'll be dead soon is what makes a lot of people feel that "what’s really valuable in this life" is a waste of precious time.
I’ve been thinking something similar to this as I lost one of the closest people in my life a few weeks ago.
People have been living and dying on this rock for thousands of generations and no-one alive today remembers any of them. Even the most immensely successful people to have lived just a short while ago - all of the John Rockefellers and the Andrew Carnegies of the world - are remembered only insofar as their names adorn buildings today. I don’t think it would matter at all if my name was on a library after I’m gone. I’m not sure how it could.
I’m trying to prioritise more (and better) time with my kids as it really is going by in a blink and while I’ve always understood this logically it’s really hit me like a freight train lately how none of it’s guaranteed.
To be cheesy and quote Tony Stark: “No amount of money ever bought a second of time”.
Organic oatmeal costs $1 a pound. Add dirt cheap in bulk organic raisins, flax, walnuts, almonds, cinnamon, banana's and you have 1 meal, 2 of your fruit/veggie servings, tons of oils for like $1. Takes 3.5 minutes to make.
Fishing/hunting is the cost of a license. You can fill your freezer in 1 trip.
I eat healthy organic/gluten free for $25 a week and am overweight not starving.
One of these days will be the last time you pick your kids up in your arms, ever. And you won't know it when the event happens, only realize it has passed later.
I'm glad someone here is grokking the message. Sorry for your loss.
There's a lot of people here dismissing [caricatures of] the idea... But it's a vital truth. It has been expressed for thousands of years, by the world's greatest thinkers.
And fwiw, Rockefeller and Carnegie can suck rocks. A little philanthropy doesn't outweigh decades of robber barony.
I was unemployed for a good stretch last summer/fall and would go hiking, backpacking or camping in the Sierra Nevadas almost every week.
After the third trip in a month, walking among granite cliffs and alpine lakes I realized that I wasn't feeling much awe. To have those profound breathtaking moments in nature you need the contrast of months in civilization sitting on a computer. Same thing with special moments with loved ones, or anything that seems profound and makes you think "I should be doing this all the time".
Exactly my thoughts. Participating in the rat race is a choice. All these things described can be experience in our world today. If you choose to do so. I would recommend it.
A charitable reading of the text would be that the argument isn't to exclusively do these things. Just that one should make more time for them. If that call does not apply to you it does not apply to you. It's not a particularly deep or novel thought any way.
I was expecting this to be about AI timelines or something. This is not very novel or interesting to me. Besides, it's not as if there's no plausible way to extend lifespans enough that I could live until 2123.
Ignoring all of the other issues with senescence on a long enough timeline cancer is guaranteed, so you are in effect stating a belief that we will comprehensively cure cancer in your lifetime. Big if true.
Disease isn't even the half of it. As you age your body simply wears out. Your muscles begin to wear out and break down, eventually including critical ones such as your heart, your bones become frail to the point that even slight fall becomes potentially lethal, and of course as I assume you were alluding to - your mind also begins to give way such that even if you might still have a heart beat, you're hardly alive. Imagining all of this will suddenly be overcome is neither rational nor in any way supported.
Individuals like Ray Kurzweil intentionally lied to themselves. His argument was that human life expectancy has been increasing rapidly over the past 'xx' years, and eventually it will accelerate to a rate such that life expectancy will increase by more than a year, per year - immortality. But it's just complete and utter nonsense. Life expectancy increased largely because of reductions in infant mortality - not people living longer. And he certainly knows that. Individuals like Hippocrates (of the Hippocratic Oath) lived to their 90s 2,400 years ago. The peaks of human longevity aren't changing much at all. The only thing that's changing is that more people are able to get to them.
Kind of painting a bad picture on getting lost in the journey of dreams IMO. The relaxing, enjoying small moments is just getting lost in that. It's probably closer to a balance and just living committed to your decisions, no ragrets. If I went fully one way or the other I probably would be wishing I attempted the other a bit more.
However, each of us is at the center of our own universe, and from that context, a variety of things are important or unimportant. From the context of self, we derive importance.
That universe exists only as long as the self exists. In that context, what you deem important is important. What you deem unimportant is unimportant. And those states shift over time.
I'm not well read in philosophy. I imagine what I've written above is probably a pretty commonplace observation, so I'm sure someone has written more on the subject.
Nihilism is a bit of a hole that is hard to dig out of, because you've, by definition, had all the rungs of the ladder back to society fall apart. Combine that with the Backwards law of Alan Watts [1], and you're left wondering if you even should try to dig yourself out, isn't that just making things worse?
[1] The backwards law suggests that if you are pursuing happiness, it makes you unhappy. If you just relax, happiness is more likely to come.
The last time I saw my grandfather he had advanced cancer and knew he'd be dying soon. He was a little shy of 80.
We had a good conversation, the kind I wish we'd had more of, and part of what he said was basically "I just finally started to understand life, and now I'm dying."
The post may express this stuff a bit clumsily but I think it has a kernel of truth. We fill our days with a lot of shit that doesn't matter. You can argue nothing matters because we're all going to die. But during our brief go-around on the planet there are things that are meaningful and things that aren't.
Trying to focus more on the things that have meaning and less on things that aren't (or, worse, hurt others and make their lives worse) is a good idea. It's a pity we can't collectively get it together and agree that, for example, we could be focusing less on work and more on things that bring us joy. We could arrange society a lot differently but choose not to. And we're not better for it.
Reminded me of the epilogue to Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, which read:
It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.
We all share a common destination. It makes me wonder why there's so much fuss about what happens on the in-between.
I often see articles like this, and they seem to think the message people takeaway from nihilistic meanderings like this is "nothing is forever therefore your toils are folly". The author failing to see the time you spend together with your family will also fade to nothing.
The solution is a balanced life, realizing that only examples of things that resonated beyond their time are the toils, both failed and otherwise, of humans. And there is no meaning of life other than to experience life. So toil away; and spend time enjoying your family & friends.
75 comments
[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadSome of us are rejecting the boomer bounce the check for the funeral ethos in favor of passing something on. Much as the overwhelming majority of our ancestors did, we have a very real hope that it will be our descendants who live in our houses and benefit from what we built during our lives.
The related concept of the Buxton Index (BI) is worth pondering. In short, it’s your planning horizon. So a frontend dev might have a BI of 1-2 sprints, a US president might have one of 4-8 years, and so on. Needless to say all of the wealthiest families have an intergenerational time scale BI, and so do the upper middle class ones that have persisted.
After all the simple fact is some tasks can’t be completed in a single lifetime.
Perhaps it's easier for some to mock a reminder like this, than to reflect on it. This is one of those truths that's worth remembering, and deeper than it might seem.
"All conditioned things are impermanent — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering." - Some 14yo I guess, idk
> In many ways he’s the archetype of I’m 14 and this is deep.
He was 29 when he set off on his quest, and in his mid 30s when he attained enlightenment.
Enlightenment, btw, is just about the polar opposite of fake or performatory 'depth'.
> He was 29
You're being very literal-minded.
I mean, I don't disagree with the conclusion, but the argument ain't great.
I don't think it makes sense to think entirely black/white here, everyone has different things they enjoy in life.
I think a popular sentiment near the end of life for most is that they wish they’d adventured more and spent additional time with family & friends, not acquiring material goods or more wealth.
No, but that's not the argument OP makes. They say, we will all be dead and our possession gone so they have no value. Meanwhile, time with loved ones... Well it will be gone too! But somehow that's fine.
That one is better than another is not an argument OP makes.
https://youtu.be/iL117MO4pbo?si=T1Zw1NIME4ptIqLB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETIwqbcl1qY
Sure there's truth in some of what he's saying, but I think the fact that we and all of our stuff will be gone is great. I'm here to enjoy the ride! I'm gonna go fast in my fancy car - zoom zoom see ya later.
Maybe he is depressed, or in the process of trying to get over depression. At some point, most people have this epiphany. His may be now. If so, I'm happy for him.
There's a part of me that wouldn't understand the gravity of this post because I never had an unhealthy obsession with stuff in the first place. I grew up with stuff and never had to go without. I enjoy hitting the sport button in my car and going zoom zoom.
Sometimes that obsession really messes people up and they truly suffer from it. They're not always as happy-go-lucky as you or I. Maybe it's harder for them to just get by.
I know enough people who didn't grow up with running water and went hungry as a kid to know that some people's attachment to stuff and financial security is a lot more profound and rooted in something much deeper. It's a lot harder for them to just enjoy the ride because a lot of that ride has been a real struggle.
I don't know this person's story, but I hope he finds peace and balance.
I think you're projecting your own experience onto a post that is low quality and not that interesting. Judging by the fact that it's flagged, I think others agree.
But then, I remembered I have friends and family who've shared this epiphany well into their adulthood, some in their 70s and 80s.
The epiphany itself isn't very interesting, but exploring the different reasons why it takes some people so much longer than others to experience this epiphany takes one down some interesting paths. That was my point.
Akabyah ben Mahalalel said: mark well three things and you will not come into the power of sin: know from where you come, and where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning. From where do you come? From a putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, of worm and of maggot. Before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning? Before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.
-Pirkeh Avot 3:1 (Written sometime before 200 CE)
Both are questioning how you should invest your time, and what really matters in your life. Yes, sure, PP is anchored in religion, but the sentiment is the same.
The point doesn't have to do with religion. Rather that people (many of whom were religious thinkers) have been thinking along these lines for thousands of years.
*<:o)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot
For myself, I think what little evidence we have to form an opinion would based around the absurdity of existence itself. If you really think about the fact that we actually and undoubtedly exist it's really quite terrifying. The argument that the initial big bang could have been driven by quantum fluctuations is meaningless as you always end up with the question of what created the laws enabling such fluctuations, the 'void' in which it happens, or or even quantum mechanics itself. Of course if one takes a deistic point of view you end up with the exact same issue. If God created everything, then what created God?
It's years of pondering this that led from atheism to agnosticism. Even intellectually appealing "answers" like the simulation hypothesis offer no real answer. Imagine you 'die', 'wake up', and pat yourself on the back upon finding out it was indeed a simulation. Well you still have no answer whatsoever because the question of creation now emerges once again in your new reality. Turtles all the way down, simulations all the way up?
Oh boy, nobody tell them about Nihilism.
Is it really greed though? Or just the struggle to make ends meat?
I feel such concerns about one's legacy are quite the first world problem.
But it's still a great post.
People have been living and dying on this rock for thousands of generations and no-one alive today remembers any of them. Even the most immensely successful people to have lived just a short while ago - all of the John Rockefellers and the Andrew Carnegies of the world - are remembered only insofar as their names adorn buildings today. I don’t think it would matter at all if my name was on a library after I’m gone. I’m not sure how it could.
I’m trying to prioritise more (and better) time with my kids as it really is going by in a blink and while I’ve always understood this logically it’s really hit me like a freight train lately how none of it’s guaranteed.
To be cheesy and quote Tony Stark: “No amount of money ever bought a second of time”.
I am inclined to agree - with money you can afford healthier food which in theory should make your life longer
Fishing/hunting is the cost of a license. You can fill your freezer in 1 trip.
I eat healthy organic/gluten free for $25 a week and am overweight not starving.
There's a lot of people here dismissing [caricatures of] the idea... But it's a vital truth. It has been expressed for thousands of years, by the world's greatest thinkers.
And fwiw, Rockefeller and Carnegie can suck rocks. A little philanthropy doesn't outweigh decades of robber barony.
After the third trip in a month, walking among granite cliffs and alpine lakes I realized that I wasn't feeling much awe. To have those profound breathtaking moments in nature you need the contrast of months in civilization sitting on a computer. Same thing with special moments with loved ones, or anything that seems profound and makes you think "I should be doing this all the time".
Individuals like Ray Kurzweil intentionally lied to themselves. His argument was that human life expectancy has been increasing rapidly over the past 'xx' years, and eventually it will accelerate to a rate such that life expectancy will increase by more than a year, per year - immortality. But it's just complete and utter nonsense. Life expectancy increased largely because of reductions in infant mortality - not people living longer. And he certainly knows that. Individuals like Hippocrates (of the Hippocratic Oath) lived to their 90s 2,400 years ago. The peaks of human longevity aren't changing much at all. The only thing that's changing is that more people are able to get to them.
However, each of us is at the center of our own universe, and from that context, a variety of things are important or unimportant. From the context of self, we derive importance.
That universe exists only as long as the self exists. In that context, what you deem important is important. What you deem unimportant is unimportant. And those states shift over time.
I'm not well read in philosophy. I imagine what I've written above is probably a pretty commonplace observation, so I'm sure someone has written more on the subject.
This is true of course, however I can't imagine living thinking that and not getting depressed/insane.
I don't understand it, but that doesn't stop me from trying to.
[1] The backwards law suggests that if you are pursuing happiness, it makes you unhappy. If you just relax, happiness is more likely to come.
We had a good conversation, the kind I wish we'd had more of, and part of what he said was basically "I just finally started to understand life, and now I'm dying."
The post may express this stuff a bit clumsily but I think it has a kernel of truth. We fill our days with a lot of shit that doesn't matter. You can argue nothing matters because we're all going to die. But during our brief go-around on the planet there are things that are meaningful and things that aren't.
Trying to focus more on the things that have meaning and less on things that aren't (or, worse, hurt others and make their lives worse) is a good idea. It's a pity we can't collectively get it together and agree that, for example, we could be focusing less on work and more on things that bring us joy. We could arrange society a lot differently but choose not to. And we're not better for it.
It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.
We all share a common destination. It makes me wonder why there's so much fuss about what happens on the in-between.
The solution is a balanced life, realizing that only examples of things that resonated beyond their time are the toils, both failed and otherwise, of humans. And there is no meaning of life other than to experience life. So toil away; and spend time enjoying your family & friends.