>American greatness has produced a society whose members know not what to do with the freedom and abundance that earlier generations secured.
There have been several posts on HN about this. I have commented every time I have seen one because I think the above quote is true. I also think it is one, of several, reasons things are going the way they are.
Many of my friends, coworkers, and relatives have fallen into the trap of being bored to death. They fill up their time with worthless empty "calories" of media consumption, ethanol, and doom scrolling. Almost all of them are unhappy. I think it is widespread to be like this.
But the problem is solvable.
There is no person, no person too busy, too tired, too poor, too disabled, too shy, too anything, who cannot find the time to do something that provides value to their life. They just have to, and this is the part that makes people mad, put down their phone and turn off the TV.
In every zip code in the entire United States of America, there is some group of people, somewhere, that is looking for someone to join them-- unless it is an isolated patch of remote wilderness where food and fuel need to be airlifted in or a remote island separated from the mainland by thousands of miles of sea there IS something.
You just have to get out, find them, and join them.
The last time something like this popped up I do what I usually do and listed non-work, non-social media things to do within an hour of my deceased grandparents' farm in central Southern Indiana. That's my benchmark-- if there are things to do here there are things to do everywhere because it is about as far from "the big city" you can get absent stretches of western desert or alaskan tundra.
Some quick searches found rod and gun clubs, knitting circles, small rural libraries with 3d printers going idle and anime clubs, three (yes, three) astronomy clubs, amateur radio clubs, gardening clubs, volunteer fire companies (who always, everywhere, need members), civic societies, book clubs, and even a small community performing arts center with a banging schedule of shows whose website was practically begging for people to come join them to be stage crew, performers, and set builders. Rural, barely-covered-by-a-cell-signal, southern Indiana, and those are just the things I found with online calendars full of events.
Being active in one's community outside of work, and deriving meaning not from work but your personal accomplishments and activities is a skill-- but it is a learnable skill.
I think it's certainly true that as an individual there are things you can do to be more actively socializing. But the fact that we are seeing such absolutely widespread changes in the populations behavior means it's not just some people being lazy, but that we have actually changed the environment for the worse.
Much of the world is currently looking at banning social media for kids. But I'm staring to feel it's almost just as bad for adults as well.
Well said. Even just getting a book and taking it to a beach or park or library or coffee shop is so much more fulfilling than doomscrolling or watching YouTube or whatever. Getting out of the house is the first and most crucial step to living a more interesting life.
How do you square your belief in the opening premise with the results of your research into clubs and "things to do" that seems to completely contradict it?
The varieties of person are as varied as the total number of people so there will always be those who seek those things out, but if you look at the trends for clubs and organizations you will often see that participation and membership is declining.
My local beach volleyball club called parks and rec and asked for a net on the beach and parks said “sure no problem, then promptly provided it” then also provided a rake and bucket to clean the courts and a key to a nearby storage locker. It’s not hard at all. You just have to stop lying to yourself.
Congratulations on being lucky enough to not be afflicted by a bad enough mental health disorder! All you have to do is to "get out there and do stuff" to achieve fulfillment.
Maybe you'll consider not projecting your experience onto the many others who are literally unable, even though they are equipped with the same number of functioning hands and feet as you do, and don't seem disabled by mere appearance.
> They fill up their time with worthless empty "calories" of media consumption, ethanol, and doom scrolling.
You might consider extending this empathy by also not blaming the otherwise healthy people falling into these dopamine traps that are designed by professionals to entrap, designed carefully over many thousands of man-years to maximize ad revenue.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you for the most part. Yet I'm struck by the complete omission of the robber from the story, and the focus on the robbed houseowner's weakly built front door, when it was already made of steel. And of course, the non-negligible fraction of the population whose front doors are made of weaker material through no fault of their own.
> Almost all of them are unhappy.
Then surely they would climb out of their dopamine gravity-wells in the first chance and pursue happier, more real lives, right, if they could?
I kindly ask you to reconsider your beliefs regarding "willpower".
> Congratulations on being lucky enough to not be afflicted by a bad enough mental health disorder! All you have to do is to "get out there and do stuff" to achieve fulfillment.
It’s true that mentally ill folk (including yours truly) fall prey to these dopamine sinks more easily as an escape or coping mechanism — and they’re even more vulnerable to the predation of marketers and UX engineers trying to maximize ad-views. It is important to have these talks about society and social structures. But ultimately, on an individual level, it very literally is about just “getting out there and doing stuff.” That isn’t dismissive or discounting hardships, that’s just how it is.
Getting out there and doing things is the answer, for those with mental illnesses and those without. Upping your willpower and your ability to cope is paramount. How you do it differs from person to person: It might be tweaks to routine, taking medication, or getting therapy. But this is a universal human thing. The goal is the same, the steps is the same — but some of us have more intermediate steps than others.
You know, I'm looking at this conversation, and it reminds me a lot of the challenges of starting a physical health kick.
The answer to how to get into better shape isn't a mystery: eat well, work out. The environmental forces against you are not a mystery. But DOING this is really hard, and these habits involve skills, which have to be developed from zero over time. Your first cardio is going to suck. If you are a beginner cook, I've got all sorts of ideas on what to make and how, you need some direction.
The worst thing to do is nothing. The best thing to do is learn to cook one thing and start going for long walks. You iterate on the practice them there.
So what's the equivalent Step 1 for the doomscroller?
Because I agree with you, "delete all the apps and go be social" isn't going to cut it. For a lot of people, starting with basics "go see a band play, shut off your phone for the evening" or "instead of getting carryout, take a book to a restaurant and sit at the bar" (traveler's hack: you can do anything alone if you bring a book).
What an insane article. It's almost like he hasn't read Eric Hoffer.
Mass movements arise when populations, that had had large increases in living standards, find their living standards are no longer rising. Hoffer cites something like 30% of the country is now 'middle class' and then depressions etc. set in.
Take the quote, "A society so thoroughly steeped in the work ethic and committed to the pursuit of individual achievement cannot but fail to prepare its members for any other kinds of lives."
The reality is the opposite. When work doesn't pay (i.e. when hard work can't lead to buying a condo/house and starting a family) the original premise of "work hard to get ahead" breaks. And here we are.
Any civilization where two 30 year old elementry school teachers can't buy a 1,200 sq-ft 3bdr/2bath condo for less than 30% of their income - is morally bankrupt. Aka 99% of the bay area, or DC, NYC. So people tern to idleness without the ability for work to result in personal progress.
The solutions are simple: make it easy to build housing. If you're bored, deadlift. Spend time outside. And, most of all, change our national household economics to allow ownership and family formation.
Rumors of the death of civilization have been greatly exaggerated. While it's true that failed progressive policies have ruined housing affordability in a handful of coastal metropolitan areas, it's still possible for elementary school teachers to own their own home in many other parts of the country. Try other states like Utah, Idaho, or Michigan.
I think the issue is that elementary school teachers, like nurses and doctors, are a core job of any city or town. So it should be affordable for them to live in the town they work in.
The other solution is for the elementary school teachers in your example to move elsewhere in the country.
There’s plenty of space in America. Plenty of schools all over the country where two elementary school teachers could work and have the home you mentioned.
Your comment is based on the strange assumption that the Bay Area, DC, NYC, and other high cost of living metropolitan areas places are all that exist in America.
> The other solution is for the elementary school teachers in your example to move elsewhere in the country.
Unless no children are intended to exist in the expensive areas these elementary school teachers are moving from, shouldn’t all regions, expensive or not, be able to support teachers?
Yes all regions should be able to support teachers.
But the original comment wasn’t about supporting teachers. It was about buying a house.
My comment in reply was saying that if buying a house is so important to these teachers there are many places in the USA they can live to do that.
You can still live in nyc or the other places as two elementary school teachers in an apartment. There’s no human right that says a house (compared to an apartment) is a required part of life.
We already know: no exercise and a life targeting instant gratification does bad things to brain chemistry.
We need physical toil to stay fit and mental toil to stay sane. Together they won't guarantee a happy life, but without you'll never have the foundation for one.
We find this hard in the modern era because it's so very easy to sell dopamine hits. We are our own worst enemy and companies are only too willing to exploit us.
The article dribbles around these ideas, without actually connecting cause and effect. The lazy attack on STEM is bizarre. Learning to code isn't a problem because LLMs can code, it's a problem if we don't use it. An argument to instead study the Humanities rather undercuts itself if it means we all write like Stuart Whatley here. It's the toil, the engagement, the creativity we need, not specific knowledge.
I dealt with a little bit of what the article describes, the burden of too much leisure. I ended up getting a masters part time and another certification that ate up much of my 20s. But after that I still felt anxiety growing older. It was all just so meaningless. And every year I was less likely to ever have my career really take off so what the hell was the point? I'll be working until my 60s or moving to some random cheap country I have no connection to to live out the rest of my days.
This all changed once I had children. I'm surprised the article doesn't mention children at all. But I was in a kind of prolonged adolescence. You see this among many people without children. Just obsession about "addictive, sensationalist, forgettable entertainment and media", Disney World for adults, collectibles, anime, video games, all distractions.
Obviously children are not for everyone and I can only speak from personal experience. But having kids just cured that anxiety almost immediately. Not that I was not bored, but I kind of flipped things where time was on my side. Prior to kids, I felt anxiety growing older because I was just that much less likely to have some big breakthrough. And every year we get a little slower and less interested in things. Now every year my kids grow a bit and I know they got their best years ahead of them. And I get to experience all of that, win back some hard earned free time for personal interests, and overall have more interesting dinner conversations. But probably most importantly, you get to see what kind of people they're going to grow up to be.
This is just me of course. Some people might have the opposite experience, where they feel children are a prison. And plenty of people blow their lives up and abandon their families. But for me I couldn't imagine where I'd be without them.
My wife and I are unable to have children due to health reasons, and we decided not to adopt after years of hardship. Now, we’re in a better place, and I’m nearing my 40s. My brother has 2 young kids, and my parents help take care of the kids during the week. They are literal neighbors and walk back and forth between their houses.
Meanwhile, my wife and I have moved from our hometown, lived in SF for a while (focusing on career), sold normal possessions to live and travel in an RV for a year, and now we live on a gulf coast island. It’s been a great adventure these past years, but there is a deep feeling that there isn’t much of a purpose in what we do.
Raising kids seems to answer this for some, but other parents seem to become genuinely disgusted with it over time (unfortunately for the kids). From an evolutionary perspective, a feeling of purpose from raising children makes total sense. But, that doesn’t mean I must lean into all evolutionarily baked-in tendencies as a form of true meaning.
I think the hard truth is that if we want meaning, we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life. That also goes counter to the idea that we are individually special or have a destiny, which is also a hard pill to swallow for many (particularly in the Western world). However, it does open up our lives as a canvas on which we can paint our own vision of meaning and purpose.
> I think the hard truth is that if we want meaning, we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life.
I agree, but children are one possible source of meaning in life. I haven't found a compelling one for me personally besides that. I guess for some people it could be discovery. If you're on the frontier of some field or science that could have a big impact, perhaps that can give you meaning. Perhaps Nikola Tesla never felt the urge to marry or have children. But for us mere mortals that becomes harder. And today's map doesn't have many unchartered areas. Nearly every problem accessible to us is impossible or trivial.
I hope you find meaning and purpose in your life without kids. But you're also relatively young. I feel like my passion and interests wane over time. This holds for most people I know as well. And other fun things like adventure and living out of an RV becomes harder as well.
> we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life
Think about what you would like to remain in the world after you are gone. Then think how you can connect with and advance those things, and act accordingly in your life. To me this has been a reliable way to find meaning in life. But obviously I don’t claim this is unquestionable or works for everyone.
I totally agree - having kids gave my life a meaning that I didn’t know I was missing until I experienced it. I’ve experienced higher emotional highs (and lower lows) than I think I would ever have any other way.
More broadly, I think western culture has abandoned the old trifecta of “God, family, country” (and I would add a fourth of career) that gave life meaning. All of those pillars have their problems but our culture did not replace them with anything expect a vague “do what makes you happy” sentiment that doesn’t seem to be working for a lot of people.
This. As unfashionable as it might be the truth is that children are the reason, for everything. Ultimately you will get bored of living just for yourself.
> Just a few short years ago, everyone was advised to “learn to code”, regardless of where their real interests might lie. Yet now, we are told, this is one area where large language models already excel. Will some share of the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into Stem be reallocated toward rescuing the humanities – the one set of disciplines whose value does not depend entirely on unforeseeable macroeconomic contingencies? We shouldn’t hold our breath.
This is an odd statement, and probably reflects the authors own anxieties.
30 years ago being a couch potato who watched tv all day was stigmatized. These people were wasting their lives. But at least they weren’t hurting others.
Nowadays these bored coach potato aren’t watching COPS and Judge Judy all day. They’re posting angry stuff online and radicalizing themselves and others. Which makes the world worse for everyone else.
(For what it’s worth I personally happen to be a big fan of COPS and Judge Judy. And I also post stuff online as evidenced by this very same Hacker News comment. But sometimes what you post matters)
Same. For years now I've vaguely bucketed leisure activities into "empty" and "wholesome" in the same vein as caloric intake. Empty: mindlessly following a YouTube/Instagram/Tiktok algorithmic feed, modern games that are more slot machines than games, drinking alone. Wholesome variants: intentionally reading/watching high quality content, playing offline or 2-4 player coop games, socializing with friends in person.
Knowing is just the first part of the war though. If you don't constantly stay mindful of what kind leisure is taking up your time, the vastly more addictive nature of empty calorie leisure will win. And how many people even bother trying to resist, let alone win most of their battles?
This is one reason I find myself so often thinking about drugs. The cartel let us down, there should be a version of heroin without the downsides, by now.
And build toxic, explosive factories and petrochem facilities in residential areas also in flood zones. cough Houston cough
Residentially, Texas has crap tons of HOAs that forbid even minor changes, so permits don't matter. Texas is also pretty boring, spread out, and requires a lot of driving to do anything. Business-wise, tiny industrial-centric cities would be happy to permit an asbestos factory and an oil refinery beside a nursery school and farmland, and all in a known flood zone. Ask me how I know.
The mid 20th century existentialists came to the conclusion that while life may not have an intrinsic meaning that it doesn't stop people from having a subjective, personal, and self-created meaning.
A bit earlier, Nietzsche, in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra conceived as Life as a work of art - the conscious and deliberate shaping of one's life with creativity, style, and intention.
Surely there are other ways of grappling with the loss of meaning, but we aren't completely on our own. Even if we have to make our own meaning, believing that's an option is often the most difficult step.
Of course, no one has to make their life meaningful, but that takes us back to the beginning. No one else is going to do it for us. Without meaning, all we have left is despair.
>American greatness has produced a society whose members know not what to do with the freedom and abundance that earlier generations secured.
There have been several posts on HN about this. I have commented every time I have seen one because I think the above quote is true. I also think it is one, of several, reasons things are going the way they are.
Many of my friends, coworkers, and relatives have fallen into the trap of being bored to death. They fill up their time with worthless empty "calories" of media consumption, ethanol, and doom scrolling. Almost all of them are unhappy. I think it is widespread to be like this.
But the problem is solvable.
There is no person, no person too busy, too tired, too poor, too disabled, too shy, too anything, who cannot find the time to do something that provides value to their life. They just have to, and this is the part that makes people mad, put down their phone and turn off the TV.
In every zip code in the entire United States of America, there is some group of people, somewhere, that is looking for someone to join them-- unless it is an isolated patch of remote wilderness where food and fuel need to be airlifted in or a remote island separated from the mainland by thousands of miles of sea there IS something.
You just have to get out, find them, and join them.
The last time something like this popped up I do what I usually do and listed non-work, non-social media things to do within an hour of my deceased grandparents' farm in central Southern Indiana. That's my benchmark-- if there are things to do here there are things to do everywhere because it is about as far from "the big city" you can get absent stretches of western desert or alaskan tundra.
Some quick searches found rod and gun clubs, knitting circles, small rural libraries with 3d printers going idle and anime clubs, three (yes, three) astronomy clubs, amateur radio clubs, gardening clubs, volunteer fire companies (who always, everywhere, need members), civic societies, book clubs, and even a small community performing arts center with a banging schedule of shows whose website was practically begging for people to come join them to be stage crew, performers, and set builders. Rural, barely-covered-by-a-cell-signal, southern Indiana, and those are just the things I found with online calendars full of events.
Being active in one's community outside of work, and deriving meaning not from work but your personal accomplishments and activities is a skill-- but it is a learnable skill.
I think it's certainly true that as an individual there are things you can do to be more actively socializing. But the fact that we are seeing such absolutely widespread changes in the populations behavior means it's not just some people being lazy, but that we have actually changed the environment for the worse.
Much of the world is currently looking at banning social media for kids. But I'm staring to feel it's almost just as bad for adults as well.
Well said. Even just getting a book and taking it to a beach or park or library or coffee shop is so much more fulfilling than doomscrolling or watching YouTube or whatever. Getting out of the house is the first and most crucial step to living a more interesting life.
How do you square your belief in the opening premise with the results of your research into clubs and "things to do" that seems to completely contradict it?
The varieties of person are as varied as the total number of people so there will always be those who seek those things out, but if you look at the trends for clubs and organizations you will often see that participation and membership is declining.
Which is kind of the point of the article.
Funny you mentioned anime clubs, the medium has been under bad vibes for the last decade or so
How so?
[flagged]
Genuinely curious what experience you had that led you to this belief?
My local beach volleyball club called parks and rec and asked for a net on the beach and parks said “sure no problem, then promptly provided it” then also provided a rake and bucket to clean the courts and a key to a nearby storage locker. It’s not hard at all. You just have to stop lying to yourself.
Congratulations on being lucky enough to not be afflicted by a bad enough mental health disorder! All you have to do is to "get out there and do stuff" to achieve fulfillment.
Maybe you'll consider not projecting your experience onto the many others who are literally unable, even though they are equipped with the same number of functioning hands and feet as you do, and don't seem disabled by mere appearance.
> They fill up their time with worthless empty "calories" of media consumption, ethanol, and doom scrolling.
You might consider extending this empathy by also not blaming the otherwise healthy people falling into these dopamine traps that are designed by professionals to entrap, designed carefully over many thousands of man-years to maximize ad revenue.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you for the most part. Yet I'm struck by the complete omission of the robber from the story, and the focus on the robbed houseowner's weakly built front door, when it was already made of steel. And of course, the non-negligible fraction of the population whose front doors are made of weaker material through no fault of their own.
> Almost all of them are unhappy.
Then surely they would climb out of their dopamine gravity-wells in the first chance and pursue happier, more real lives, right, if they could?
I kindly ask you to reconsider your beliefs regarding "willpower".
> Congratulations on being lucky enough to not be afflicted by a bad enough mental health disorder! All you have to do is to "get out there and do stuff" to achieve fulfillment.
It’s true that mentally ill folk (including yours truly) fall prey to these dopamine sinks more easily as an escape or coping mechanism — and they’re even more vulnerable to the predation of marketers and UX engineers trying to maximize ad-views. It is important to have these talks about society and social structures. But ultimately, on an individual level, it very literally is about just “getting out there and doing stuff.” That isn’t dismissive or discounting hardships, that’s just how it is.
Getting out there and doing things is the answer, for those with mental illnesses and those without. Upping your willpower and your ability to cope is paramount. How you do it differs from person to person: It might be tweaks to routine, taking medication, or getting therapy. But this is a universal human thing. The goal is the same, the steps is the same — but some of us have more intermediate steps than others.
You know, I'm looking at this conversation, and it reminds me a lot of the challenges of starting a physical health kick.
The answer to how to get into better shape isn't a mystery: eat well, work out. The environmental forces against you are not a mystery. But DOING this is really hard, and these habits involve skills, which have to be developed from zero over time. Your first cardio is going to suck. If you are a beginner cook, I've got all sorts of ideas on what to make and how, you need some direction.
The worst thing to do is nothing. The best thing to do is learn to cook one thing and start going for long walks. You iterate on the practice them there.
So what's the equivalent Step 1 for the doomscroller?
Because I agree with you, "delete all the apps and go be social" isn't going to cut it. For a lot of people, starting with basics "go see a band play, shut off your phone for the evening" or "instead of getting carryout, take a book to a restaurant and sit at the bar" (traveler's hack: you can do anything alone if you bring a book).
If you try hard enough you can always find reasons to justify failure and explain why no improvement is ever possible.
Lazy gunna laze.
What an insane article. It's almost like he hasn't read Eric Hoffer.
Mass movements arise when populations, that had had large increases in living standards, find their living standards are no longer rising. Hoffer cites something like 30% of the country is now 'middle class' and then depressions etc. set in.
Take the quote, "A society so thoroughly steeped in the work ethic and committed to the pursuit of individual achievement cannot but fail to prepare its members for any other kinds of lives."
The reality is the opposite. When work doesn't pay (i.e. when hard work can't lead to buying a condo/house and starting a family) the original premise of "work hard to get ahead" breaks. And here we are.
Any civilization where two 30 year old elementry school teachers can't buy a 1,200 sq-ft 3bdr/2bath condo for less than 30% of their income - is morally bankrupt. Aka 99% of the bay area, or DC, NYC. So people tern to idleness without the ability for work to result in personal progress.
The solutions are simple: make it easy to build housing. If you're bored, deadlift. Spend time outside. And, most of all, change our national household economics to allow ownership and family formation.
Rumors of the death of civilization have been greatly exaggerated. While it's true that failed progressive policies have ruined housing affordability in a handful of coastal metropolitan areas, it's still possible for elementary school teachers to own their own home in many other parts of the country. Try other states like Utah, Idaho, or Michigan.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Abundance/Ezra-Klein/...
I think the issue is that elementary school teachers, like nurses and doctors, are a core job of any city or town. So it should be affordable for them to live in the town they work in.
Then you'd have to live in Utah, Idaho, or Michigan. There are good reasons those houses are cheap.
I don't understand your comment. What's wrong with living in those states?
The other solution is for the elementary school teachers in your example to move elsewhere in the country.
There’s plenty of space in America. Plenty of schools all over the country where two elementary school teachers could work and have the home you mentioned.
Your comment is based on the strange assumption that the Bay Area, DC, NYC, and other high cost of living metropolitan areas places are all that exist in America.
> The other solution is for the elementary school teachers in your example to move elsewhere in the country.
Unless no children are intended to exist in the expensive areas these elementary school teachers are moving from, shouldn’t all regions, expensive or not, be able to support teachers?
Yes all regions should be able to support teachers.
But the original comment wasn’t about supporting teachers. It was about buying a house.
My comment in reply was saying that if buying a house is so important to these teachers there are many places in the USA they can live to do that.
You can still live in nyc or the other places as two elementary school teachers in an apartment. There’s no human right that says a house (compared to an apartment) is a required part of life.
We already know: no exercise and a life targeting instant gratification does bad things to brain chemistry.
We need physical toil to stay fit and mental toil to stay sane. Together they won't guarantee a happy life, but without you'll never have the foundation for one.
We find this hard in the modern era because it's so very easy to sell dopamine hits. We are our own worst enemy and companies are only too willing to exploit us.
The article dribbles around these ideas, without actually connecting cause and effect. The lazy attack on STEM is bizarre. Learning to code isn't a problem because LLMs can code, it's a problem if we don't use it. An argument to instead study the Humanities rather undercuts itself if it means we all write like Stuart Whatley here. It's the toil, the engagement, the creativity we need, not specific knowledge.
I dealt with a little bit of what the article describes, the burden of too much leisure. I ended up getting a masters part time and another certification that ate up much of my 20s. But after that I still felt anxiety growing older. It was all just so meaningless. And every year I was less likely to ever have my career really take off so what the hell was the point? I'll be working until my 60s or moving to some random cheap country I have no connection to to live out the rest of my days.
This all changed once I had children. I'm surprised the article doesn't mention children at all. But I was in a kind of prolonged adolescence. You see this among many people without children. Just obsession about "addictive, sensationalist, forgettable entertainment and media", Disney World for adults, collectibles, anime, video games, all distractions.
Obviously children are not for everyone and I can only speak from personal experience. But having kids just cured that anxiety almost immediately. Not that I was not bored, but I kind of flipped things where time was on my side. Prior to kids, I felt anxiety growing older because I was just that much less likely to have some big breakthrough. And every year we get a little slower and less interested in things. Now every year my kids grow a bit and I know they got their best years ahead of them. And I get to experience all of that, win back some hard earned free time for personal interests, and overall have more interesting dinner conversations. But probably most importantly, you get to see what kind of people they're going to grow up to be.
This is just me of course. Some people might have the opposite experience, where they feel children are a prison. And plenty of people blow their lives up and abandon their families. But for me I couldn't imagine where I'd be without them.
My wife and I are unable to have children due to health reasons, and we decided not to adopt after years of hardship. Now, we’re in a better place, and I’m nearing my 40s. My brother has 2 young kids, and my parents help take care of the kids during the week. They are literal neighbors and walk back and forth between their houses.
Meanwhile, my wife and I have moved from our hometown, lived in SF for a while (focusing on career), sold normal possessions to live and travel in an RV for a year, and now we live on a gulf coast island. It’s been a great adventure these past years, but there is a deep feeling that there isn’t much of a purpose in what we do.
Raising kids seems to answer this for some, but other parents seem to become genuinely disgusted with it over time (unfortunately for the kids). From an evolutionary perspective, a feeling of purpose from raising children makes total sense. But, that doesn’t mean I must lean into all evolutionarily baked-in tendencies as a form of true meaning.
I think the hard truth is that if we want meaning, we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life. That also goes counter to the idea that we are individually special or have a destiny, which is also a hard pill to swallow for many (particularly in the Western world). However, it does open up our lives as a canvas on which we can paint our own vision of meaning and purpose.
> I think the hard truth is that if we want meaning, we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life.
I agree, but children are one possible source of meaning in life. I haven't found a compelling one for me personally besides that. I guess for some people it could be discovery. If you're on the frontier of some field or science that could have a big impact, perhaps that can give you meaning. Perhaps Nikola Tesla never felt the urge to marry or have children. But for us mere mortals that becomes harder. And today's map doesn't have many unchartered areas. Nearly every problem accessible to us is impossible or trivial.
I hope you find meaning and purpose in your life without kids. But you're also relatively young. I feel like my passion and interests wane over time. This holds for most people I know as well. And other fun things like adventure and living out of an RV becomes harder as well.
> we have to be honest that there is no unquestionable source of meaning in life
Think about what you would like to remain in the world after you are gone. Then think how you can connect with and advance those things, and act accordingly in your life. To me this has been a reliable way to find meaning in life. But obviously I don’t claim this is unquestionable or works for everyone.
"Never Grow Up: 42 Percent of People Who Waited in Line To Meet Characters at Disney Parks Last Year Were Childless Adults"
https://www.barstoolsports.com/blog/3550984/never-grow-up-42...
I totally agree - having kids gave my life a meaning that I didn’t know I was missing until I experienced it. I’ve experienced higher emotional highs (and lower lows) than I think I would ever have any other way.
More broadly, I think western culture has abandoned the old trifecta of “God, family, country” (and I would add a fourth of career) that gave life meaning. All of those pillars have their problems but our culture did not replace them with anything expect a vague “do what makes you happy” sentiment that doesn’t seem to be working for a lot of people.
I didn't read the article past the first paragraph. Was expecting it to be about children.
This. As unfashionable as it might be the truth is that children are the reason, for everything. Ultimately you will get bored of living just for yourself.
> Just a few short years ago, everyone was advised to “learn to code”, regardless of where their real interests might lie. Yet now, we are told, this is one area where large language models already excel. Will some share of the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested into Stem be reallocated toward rescuing the humanities – the one set of disciplines whose value does not depend entirely on unforeseeable macroeconomic contingencies? We shouldn’t hold our breath.
This is an odd statement, and probably reflects the authors own anxieties.
Boredom isn’t the worst thing.
30 years ago being a couch potato who watched tv all day was stigmatized. These people were wasting their lives. But at least they weren’t hurting others.
Nowadays these bored coach potato aren’t watching COPS and Judge Judy all day. They’re posting angry stuff online and radicalizing themselves and others. Which makes the world worse for everyone else.
(For what it’s worth I personally happen to be a big fan of COPS and Judge Judy. And I also post stuff online as evidenced by this very same Hacker News comment. But sometimes what you post matters)
I enjoyed this article and it is giving me ideas on how to improve the quality of my own leisure time.
Same. For years now I've vaguely bucketed leisure activities into "empty" and "wholesome" in the same vein as caloric intake. Empty: mindlessly following a YouTube/Instagram/Tiktok algorithmic feed, modern games that are more slot machines than games, drinking alone. Wholesome variants: intentionally reading/watching high quality content, playing offline or 2-4 player coop games, socializing with friends in person.
Knowing is just the first part of the war though. If you don't constantly stay mindful of what kind leisure is taking up your time, the vastly more addictive nature of empty calorie leisure will win. And how many people even bother trying to resist, let alone win most of their battles?
This is a sign of a society going downward.
I can see how an entire population doesn't find thing to create motivation or inspiration.
I would be pretty worried.
We tend to ignore politics because politics are quarantined, we can ignore it, but the political climate is also a reflection of that same boredom.
This is one reason I find myself so often thinking about drugs. The cartel let us down, there should be a version of heroin without the downsides, by now.
There is dukkha
This
Blame the government. They have strangled the hell out of productive Americans. Try to get a building permit to build something, anything.
Insane amounts of taxes, being wasted.
Failure to raise the minimum wage.
"The government" isn't a monolithic entity. Some state governments such as Texas make it fairly cheap and easy to get a building permit.
And build toxic, explosive factories and petrochem facilities in residential areas also in flood zones. cough Houston cough
Residentially, Texas has crap tons of HOAs that forbid even minor changes, so permits don't matter. Texas is also pretty boring, spread out, and requires a lot of driving to do anything. Business-wise, tiny industrial-centric cities would be happy to permit an asbestos factory and an oil refinery beside a nursery school and farmland, and all in a known flood zone. Ask me how I know.
Well there's no pleasing you is there. But if you don't like Texas, it's also easy to build in other states like North Dakota.
The hard truth seems to be there is no meaning and we as a species are discovering that fact.
Worrying.
Finally the stench of God's corpse has reached everyone, only took about 200 years
What will happen next?
Deaths of despair?
The mid 20th century existentialists came to the conclusion that while life may not have an intrinsic meaning that it doesn't stop people from having a subjective, personal, and self-created meaning.
A bit earlier, Nietzsche, in The Gay Science and Thus Spoke Zarathustra conceived as Life as a work of art - the conscious and deliberate shaping of one's life with creativity, style, and intention.
Surely there are other ways of grappling with the loss of meaning, but we aren't completely on our own. Even if we have to make our own meaning, believing that's an option is often the most difficult step.
Of course, no one has to make their life meaningful, but that takes us back to the beginning. No one else is going to do it for us. Without meaning, all we have left is despair.
[dead]