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Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

The "why" we do what we do is mostly governed by circumstance. And in modern times (the past 5000 or so years), circumstance is almost completely governed by money and politics. The meritocratic ideal is what keeps our minds enslaved.

When you have enough security that you have no worries for the medium term, you gain the luxury of time and brain energy to contemplate these things rather than having to focus your thoughts on such base things as eating, shelter, health, and maintaining your position.

The majority of us focus on our jobs, buy gadgets and take vacations because we don't have the luxuries of time and peace of mind (since our focus is by necessity on the near term), but we'd like to have them. And even a short-term feeling of luxury is better than none.

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> The majority of us focus on our jobs, buy gadgets and take vacations because we don't have the luxuries of time and peace of mind (since our focus is by necessity on the near term), but we'd like to have them. And even a short-term feeling of luxury is better than none.

Apparently you’ve never been truly poor.

You've caught me out! I've never come home exhausted from deracking frozen coho salmon for 12 hours. I've never gone without food for days to ensure that I could make rent at the end of the month. I've never agonized over 20 cents. I've never taken 3 hour bus rides to work.

Oh no, wait. The opposite.

The poor live in a completely different world from the middle class, who live in a completely different world from the rich. And the philosophers generally live in the world of the rich, to preach to the world of the middle class. For the poor, there's only religion.

An old man once told me that an educated person can suffer shortages but will never be poor. He meant educated in the broadest sense of the word, including what de Botton is talking about. I don't mean to take your suffering away from you, but just to point out that focusing on material things even in the near term is a choice. It doesn't cost anything to build relationships and invest in your mental health. It doesn't even take much time. It just requires conscious effort.

And here's an old man telling you that you absolutely CAN be poor. Poverty is a trap that's very difficult to escape because it saps all of your mental energy [1]. The mental exhaustion just from dealing with the day-to-day on the edge completely stunts your mental and emotional growth and severely limits your ability to respond to opportunities, which makes it even harder to escape. While the rich are learning how to trade in real estate and money markets, and the middle class are learning tricks to make the most of their 401k, the poor are looking for ways to save a few cents on carrots and bread.

Top that all off with the constant victim blaming (I know you don't mean to, but that's basically what you're doing) and complete lack of empathy, and you have a vicious cycle that only the very lucky escape.

I know that HN is big on the fable of the meritocracy, but that's mainly because a not-insignificant chunk of HNers are in the ruling class, and most of the rest are hopeful to enter someday, somehow.

[1] https://phys.org/news/2012-11-poverty-people-focus-short-ter...

I hope you some day will be free of needing to win arguments with strangers on the internet. Peace.

I hope that some day people are actually able to understand the perspective of others instead of just viewing it as a battle to be won or lost

I'm not saying it's nice to be poor, I'm saying it's a matter of perspective. I've met plenty of "poor" people, especially in developing countries who have been way happier (self reported and viewed through my white privilege perspective obviously) than most of my middle class friends. It's not a matter of blaming anybody, but rather an honest attempt to help. Bitterness feeds on itself.

Also, the article is interesting because the underlying assumption here is that long term planning is a good thing. Meanwhile everybody who isn't poor is constantly talking about being more present and living in the "now". Again, I'm not defending this system or proposing any other system, but I'm trying to give another perspective on the issue.

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