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Comment by jchallis | Hacker News Reader

Atheist fan speaking up for Benedict and his rule. My education was entirely organized by Benedictine nuns who internalized this rule and lived it daily. The focus on the importance of daily discipline made a big impression on me. Like the military, see an organization make short term sacrifices for longer term objectives made a big impression on me and how I spend my time.

Ora et labora.

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Yeah the benedictine life is cool with me. I consider my self as non-religious and I follow some aspects of Asceticism like abstaining from eating meat and just content with simple pleasures like playing the guitar and doing arts. I also removed my self from social media. I always work and don't take holidays. I'm done with life based on consumerism

> removed my self from social media

I would have said that HN is social media; in your view, is the distinction that you don't post things to a personal timeline here? (Certainly even seeing HN as social media I wouldn't mind treating it as a special case)

not OP, but I would think that a core aspect of it is having a social graph, i.e. being able to follow specific people, and having other people follow you.

This is true for twitter/facebook/friendster, but not for hn/reddit/slashdot.

Some of the negative effects of online communities are shared by both kind of things, but not all.

True. I made it an exception because I consider checking HN as part of my work. I still need to be well informed with the trends and current technology events because it's part of my job.

Commenting and reading here, especially under this article, is not needed for your job. As it usually happens with strictly enforced ways of life, people skip the rules because strict rules enforced all the time, are really difficult to actually obey. And that's good, it's part of the fun of being human. But at the same time it's why I don't like at all those lifestyles.

While it's not for everyone, I do believe everyone should be in an environment for an X amount of time in their life to learn basic discipline, ideally having to do with taking care of themselves and their environment. Things like food / cooking, regularity, hygiene, tidiness, and just getting on with things.

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