Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only one thriving in this environment or something?

Some nights I play Bioshock. Some nights I work on my (hopefully innovative) Haskell project. Some nights I watch a movie and some nights I write for my blog. Sometimes at work I listen to music and sometimes I just buckle down and code. I've been fighting with distraction lately, but with some success.

I like my life much better now than 20 years ago, when I was in (very easy) school, had tons of free time, and hardly anything to do with it but read books and play video games because even my local library had hardly any resources that would teach me how to do anything. (Oh, if only I had found a primer on writing assembler for my computer...)

I will say, though, that getting off the marketing treadmill is very important. I just canceled my cable in favor of an electronic video approach with a special emphasis on not getting advertised at anymore (in particular I just had a son, and I want him to grow up in an environment not shared with whatever multi-billion dollar company buys its way into my house), and while I don't run adblock in my browser, NoScript comes close enough for practical purposes. I now pay only minimal attention to things like gaming news, because it's way better to find out something cool came out a year ago ($15) then to anxiously await something coming out in six months ($60). The only reason I pay any attention at all is my taste for games that are only on the shelves for a week (thanks, Atlus).

But with that proviso, what we have here is an abundance of wealth, and I for one prefer the problems of wealth to the problems of poverty. If you have a problem, deal with it. No, seriously, deal with it, whatever it takes. Because it's not likely to get much better, barring total social collapse. Even the recession/depression at most will slow down the production of new distractions.

> Oh, if only I had found a primer on writing assembler for > my computer...

This is a regret of my childhood. So much time, and if only I'd had a good mentor for programming or music I'd have moved much further forward by now (and probably missed the angry young man stage as well).

Startup idea: simple mentoring site that aims to connect mentors in any topic with students in any topic. Can be free or commercial, can be regional or local, it's expected that both the student and mentor will need to pass some sort of test to be accepted. Students and mentors are reviewed.

Agreed. Many of us that are children of the 80's are obviously and woefully self-bootstrapped into the compsci and compeng industry. It really shows, compared to a lot of kids who are up-and-coming stars who already have mastery in subjects I haven't even had time to diversify into.

I had a philosophy professor my sophomore year that was so against consumerism, marketing, advertising, corporations, etc. that he wouldn't even wear branded clothing. He made a point during class to explain how he never watched commercials on TV to avoid being brainwashed by the evil corporations.

This professor was too naive to realize that these evil corporations he so despised were the ones paying his salary, giving him the opportunity to sit around and read philosophy all day.

All the students just thought he was weird and pretentious.

Instead of sheltering your kid, why don't you teach him how the world works instead? Educate him to make his own judgments when it comes to marketing and advertising.

I don't think he was naive. Philosophers think quite a bit about what it means to create for yourself a bubble of X in a larger sphere of anti-X: living a meaningful life when life is finite and all memory of you will be eventually erased, for example. Just because death allowed for the natural selection that evolved humanity doesn't mean that you can't be against it. Just because corporations created the opportunity for him to thrive, doesn't mean he can't speak out against them.

For another example, just because the GPL is a work of copyright law doesn't mean its goal is not to abolish copyright law. The professor knows that the more students he influences toward anti-consumerism, the closer he'll get to living in a socialist world where he can sit around and read philosophy all day. Or maybe he won't need to; philosophers are really only needed to answer existential questions and problems--if they managed somehow to perfect the world, their job would be "done", similar to a doctor in a world where no one falls ill.

Note that this has nothing to do with my own opinions. I like advertisements, strangely enough; I find they make television and radio feel "connected" to reality, in a temporal sense, in a way that just downloading old TV series and podcasts don't. It's the difference between an airlock and an open window; I feel "stuffy"--out of sync with the world--when I don't hear anyone telling me what brand of laundry detergent I should be robotically consuming.

But there is so much more to do than consume media. The world needs more people who can, or rather, will (there are plenty who can, few who do) solve problems from the local to the global. They don't disappear when we disappear into our games, movies, music, and books.

Indulging in these things every once in a while is fine, but the cultural status quo is to let it consume all our time barring work and family responsibilities.

Did you read what I said, or just assume I was disagreeing?

Part of my point is that mere abundance doesn't imply a need to do nothing but consume, and I don't. Blaming the abundance is blaming the wrong thing, and wishing for poverty because you can't handle wealth is really shortsighted. The correct solution is to learn to deal with it. On the grand scale of problems, this hardly rates a kvetching.

And I posted my contrary post because everybody seems to be just smiling and nodding... "yup, cultural wealth, sure does suck..." I don't care how fashionable that attitude is, it's stupid. Along with the wealth of conumption opportunities are opportunities to produce, and a programming website of all places to not make that connection is just lame. How many of us would still be programming if cost-of-entry was $100,000?

I may not have read it as carefully as I should have. But I insist that there is more to life than both consumption and production. There is civic engagement. There is activism, no matter what your political philosophy.

To change the subject, the real problem with the abundance of wealth is the abundance of debt that accompanies it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com