There is something to be said about being obliviously spoiled, privileged or entitled, and also trying not being this way when you come into money.
When I joined my second job in tech, it was a massive bump in almost every way, and immediately I noticed the people around me were drastically different than the colleagues I had in the previous place, a frivolous tiny start up. The new people had almost no appreciation for money; they moved about like nothing could really go wrong; and while they weren't mean, they were somewhat spoiled and detached from reality.
I remember thinking to myself that no matter how much I make, I don't want to be like them in terms of character.
I know people who were born into wealthy families and hearing their silly complaints about how some miniature detail is not 100% in their otherwise perfect and seemingly challenge-free lives was almost physically painful.
However, it made me realize something too. Being happy and having substance does not directly correlate to how much money you have. Evidently, a lot of very rich people aren't particularly happy, and in this article, the author also found no meaning anywhere until they lost their job.
It's the ability to appreciate whatever you have, your assets, your health, and strive to be a better person, have some goals to aspire to. When I catch myself getting upset about something completely meaningless, I try to remember this.
> Being happy and having substance does not directly correlate to how much money you have.
There is a correlation. There's an ideal income level that correlates with increased overall happiness. Less than that, or more than that, and people will be less happy.
But I agree with your larger point. I've lived destitute, among others who were in grinding poverty, and I've lived privileged, among others with plenty of available money.
I've never noticed that one group is really any happier than the other. Some of the happiest people I've met lived lives that most would think would be miserable, and some of the most miserable people I've met lived lives that most would consider golden.
Happiness is about what's going on inside your mind, not so much about what's going on outside of it.
I am not able to read the article (blocked for newly registered domain at work) but I think you took an incomplete understanding of humanity from your story. It's not that the rich guys had silly things they were unhappy about, it's that the nature of human unhappiness is fractal across many domains, including wealth. You think the things they were unhappy about were silly because they solved all the problems you ascribe value to (because you experience(d) them directly at your wealth level), probably by throwing money at it and they have found new things at their higher wealth level to repeat the pattern of human unhappiness. I do agree that your last paragraph is the antidote to this fractal pattern of unhappiness though.
> some miniature detail is not 100% in their otherwise perfect and seemingly challenge-free lives
You could look at this as spoiled, or you could see it as someone who has an eye for detail. I don't know the tone they used, but I can imagine this was more like a Seinfeldesque observation of life thana legitimate gripe.
People with money can definitely live fulfilling and challenging lives. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said that he works out in part because a tremendous physique cannot be bought, you must work for it every day, so it's a sign of character. You could say the same about musical or sports skill, handcrafted items, or the love of your friends and family.
> You could look at this as spoiled, or you could see it as someone who has an eye for detail. I don't know the tone they used, but I can imagine this was more like a Seinfeldesque observation of life thana legitimate gripe.
I tend to look at it like this: humans have a certain base capacity for worrying - for noticing and suffering problems - that's independent of their situations and the nature of problems themselves. Solving problems and improving our lives doesn't reduce worrying, as much as changes the nature of it.
The poor person sees the rich person complaining, and thinks to themselves those are all "first world problems", really nothing to be worked up about. But should said poor person work their way up and become wealthy, they may discover they're suddenly preoccupied by those same problems they used to dismiss as irrelevant.
There's also something to be said for being in vs. out of a certain situations. As a young adult, there ware many weird things I saw older adults worry about - or perhaps make choices based on (what I thought were) weird ethical priorities. Couple years later, with a spouse and two small kids, I find myself worrying about those same weird things, and making similar ethical choices, which suddenly feel entirely justified once you're responsible for and worrying about the physical and mental well-being of a small human under your care.
But yes, on top of that, there's also "having an eye for detail", varying degree of tolerance for minor annoyances, etc. - whole range, up to and including OCD.
> I tend to look at it like this: humans have a certain base capacity for worrying
I heard someone say it this way once: everyone has a problem bucket. With some people, it holds a pint. With others, it holds a gallon. But whatever its size, it's always full.
Humans may have some minimum preoccupation with things that could be better. What makes it harder for those at the bottom is they have so few options or ways to resolve those things, and the challenges they face of often objectively much more serious. So a rich person can consider poorer perspectives and be thankful or even motivated to help others. A poor person looking up often cannot help even if they could sympathize.
> Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said that he works out in part because a tremendous physique cannot be bought, you must work for it every day, so it's a sign of character.
It is kind of a half-truth.
A physique can definitely be bought with steroid therapy, free time to exercise as much as you want, great nutrition and being born to parents with good genetics who are loving and caring (height and good body proportions are a proxy for strength)
But compared to say, buying a fancy car or house (other status items), a physique will require comparatively more effort.
Money can make anything easier and more possible, but I doubt even steroids will give you a tremendous physique without a ton of hard work. I don't know enough about steroids to be sure, so I'd be interested to be corrected.
Company/personal values that don't involve a trade-off are not values
Strategies that don't involve a trade-off are not strategies
A good test is to ask yourself - if this statement was inverted, would it still be plausible?
For example, "hire the best" doesn't make much sense as a value, because it doesn't describe a trade off and the opposite doesn't make sense as a value. Move fast and break things is a reasonable value. Just as move slow and aim for perfection is a reasonable value.
And "build great products by spending more time on R&D than everyone else" is closer to a reasonable strategy, because it can be semi-inverted ("build great products by spending minimal time on R&D but launching as many as possible to see what works") and because it involves a trade-off.
I'm sure I've heard this idea labelled as "anti-values" before but I can't find the post now.
At any rate, I strongly agree with the idea. Values and strategies that don't have a trade-off are not really picking a side and therefore can't help us in times of indecision.
I don't think compromise itself is a reaffirmation of our values. Compromise often erodes values. Disagreement prioritizes values.
I think generally we have the same values. Honesty, transparency, integrity, expediency, travel, etc. However what we don't share is priority of them. To the author's point, do you value having pets more than you value freedom to travel? Reasonable people could disagree. And there is compromise to be had, but if you're not careful you can get the worst of both worlds by trying to split the difference.
There are different meanings of the word "compromise."
Integrity can be "compromised", be it physical integrity (the structural support of the building was compromised and so it collapsed) or moral integrity (their values were compromised and they did a bad thing).
But compromise can also be a concession in pursuit of a value. My wife and I want to go see a movie. I want to see a horror and she wants to see a romcom. So we compromise and see something that was not a first choice for either of us but that we're both happy with since the superior value being sought was spending time together. The specific movie was a secondary value.
In this second context case I disagree that compromise CREATES value, but after I read the blog I realized that the author didn't even mean what the title literally says. The author is saying that it is difficult for someone to have NO values (in a literal sense this would have to be a very depressed individual who is contemplating suicide since they do not even value their own life). But that some people move through life mindlessly and aimlessly, oblivious to what they value. So much so that they do not consciously value anything. And so once such an individual is "forced" to make compromises then the recognition of values is then forced. I suppose the author's thesis is that forcing a recognition of values could lead to the adoption of values previously unconsidered.
I think the author's point is that reality has limits. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too, but often, a person must choose only one of many things they value. I believe the author's point is that the necessity of choice demonstrates what they really value.
Utopia is no place. Reality is limited. Choose wisely.
Totally, but the bad compromise that I think many people find themselves in is regretting having pets because they can't travel, and regretting not traveling because they have pets. Whereas good compromise could be deciding not to have pets but volunteering at the local animal shelter (for example).
Is is customary to comment on a submission without upvoting it?
That's how I feel about this one...
No disrespect and no offence meant, but I'll never understand all these privileged people who have a lot of money, and subsequently free time, and still feel this way about their lives.
How come it's always poor, lower/mid class people who don't have enough money that always complain about not being able to do things (hobbies, interests, desires...) and always the rich, upper class people who complain that they don't have an interest in anything since they can have everything :-/
People, progressive especially, tend to believe that opportunity allows a pre-existing will to flourish. Progressives tend to believe the will to use opportunity is innate.
As a social conservative, I disagree with this. Opportunity and will to make use of opportunity are two separate things and usually originate separately. Our will to make use of opportunity may come from necessity, social obligation, or some other developed desire. But this will is NOT innate.
I believe this reality is one reason that diminishing social obligation, to both learn and to teach, to apprentice then master, is important to maintain. I believe this reality is why many progressive policies fall flat.
> As a social conservative, I disagree with this. Opportunity and will to make use of opportunity are two separate things and usually originate separately. But this will is NOT innate.
I'd go further and say that the reason any aristocracy has ever survived for more than a generation is because at the core of all its elaborate culture is a machine built to aggressively indoctrinate its next generation to be extremely moderate and conscious of its use of privileges.
There is a progressive ideological strain that banks its legitimacy on the belief that poverty can be one day eliminated, while traditional varieties of aristocrats believe that concentrated privileged is an inherent part of nature that needs to be managed. A "pure" progressive ideology would rise or fall with its apparent success -- it's also possible to imagine also an impure progressive ideology is a barbershop pole of which the real aristocrats are the ones working to maintain the illusion, stringing everyone else along.
That's how I see it anyway, not that I know what's really going on.
I think we are using the same word "progressive", but have a different definition. When I say "progressive", I mean someone who believes history marches forward to a destination. "God" to such a progressive could be "The Eyes of History", that is, an imagined future where people look back and judge them, to see if they were on "the right side of history". Such progressives believe they have Gnosis, some type of knowledge that grants them insight into how the world should be, and that the world should be transformed to match this vision, not incrementally changed to what is good.
The "progressive" label stems from the vision that they have foreknown vision of what the world should look like and they want to transform the world to look like that.
This type of progressive isn't held back from apparent failures. The response to a failure by a progressive, is "It failed because you weren't doing it right" (that wasn't real communism) or "It failed because you weren't doing enough of it" (you only spent 2% of revenue on DEI training, we need to commit more to the goal of equity, an administered council dedicated to force equal outcomes).
All I'm trying to say is that you have a very special definition of progressive and you're going to talk past everyone if you're only equipped with that.
As a progressive, I don't disagree that the will to use opportunity may not be universal; or at least that it may be scaled down a lot in some people in absence of compulsion. I think it's obvious that if you remove the necessity 'stick' of eviction, starvation, loss of a vehicle/internet access/autonomy/independence, etc that forces people to pursue 'opportunity' in the form of an otherwise unfulfilling and uncomfortable career, they won't show up to that hateful job anymore. I know some of my fellow progressives believe that we can offer UBI sufficient for basic necessities and people will still choose to show up and stock shelves, scrub plates, plunge toilets, or trowel concrete for $10/hr of 'fun money' opportunity, I think those people have probably never worked those fields in their life and have an insufficient imagination to predict how the people who currently do those things relate to their jobs.
Where I disagree with you is that I don't think this maintenance of a will to use opportunity and social obligation is worth more than the suffering of the people who are coerced by our maintenance of this necessity, or who fail to meet the demands placed on them and experience the consequences of that failure.
Yes, were we stranded together from Shackleton's Endurance hauling sledges, or adrift at sea rowing a lifeboat, or subsistence farming to eke out survival on a desert island, and everyone had to pull their weight or we'd all die, I'd pull my fair weight and I'd advocate for the expulsion of anyone who didn't pull theirs and in so doing imperil the entire group.
No, we are not stranded together in this way on Spaceship Earth. We have enormously greater wealth and resources than we require to sustain our existence. No longer does 90% of society need to devote themselves to farming wheat at 7 bushels per acre to provide bread for a himself and a small fraction in excess that with 40 of his neighbors' farms can support handful of non-farmers for his community like a blacksmith, a miller, a tailor, and a feudal lord. A single tractor can seed, fertilize, or harvest dozens of acres per hour, and achieve yields exceeding 70 bushels per acre. We merely have to distribute the value more equitably, even if the amount of that value is halved, quartered, or decimated by people opting out of the will to work.
> I know some of my fellow progressives believe that we can offer UBI sufficient for basic necessities and people will still choose to show up and stock shelves, scrub plates, plunge toilets, or trowel concrete for $10/hr of 'fun money' opportunity
This is a strawman.
No one expects people to still do that for $10 an hour, that's not a lack of thought from people promoting UBI, that's the feature they want delivered.
The idea behind UBI (or another scheme that would actually work, anyway), would be that 1) you plunge your own toilets or 2) if you want someone else to do it, you pay them accordingly.
In such a society, your farmers, builders, utility providers, tradespeople and so on would likely earn more, and educated white-collar jobs would likely earn less relatively. This is already what happens in more limited subsets: devs that want jobs in an interesting sector like the games industry typically earn less than devs taking soulless corporate jobs like banking or ad-tech. Lawyers that work for NGOs typically earn less than lawyers that work for the above soulless corporations.
Farming, building tractors, maintaining them, working long days in the sun, distributing food, building and maintaining the trucks to distribute the food, building the refrigeration units to keep the food safe, preparing the food, medical professionals to see sick workers, laboratories to process sample to support medical professionals...
But it's okay for some people to just opt-out of work. Everyone else will want to do this work because they have an innate passion for it. (sarcasm)
> I believe this reality is one reason that diminishing social obligation, to both learn and to teach, to apprentice then master, is important to maintain. I believe this reality is why many progressive policies fall flat.
I'm not sure why you believe progressives think otherwise.
The thing is, progressives believe that the people at the bottom of the society have circumstances so restricting that they are shoved to harmful choices, while people at the top of the society have, essentially, no constraint.
If you believe in challenges that nudge everyone to participate in a healthy way in the society, then, certainly, you also must want these issues to be fixed?
It is weird that I believe that the will to use opportunity is not innate? Or weird that I see something in people who identify themselves as progressive that I, as a social conservative, is false?
That is what is like with all life situations. They are mystery until they happen to you. You don't know what cancer is like or the death of a loved one is like until those things happen to you, and you don't know what the boredom of abundance is like until you have it either.
On the latter, the important thing to get is that much more of what motivates us survival driven than most people realize. When survival is sort of guaranteed, a lot of motivation can dry up along with a lot of the juice of life.
That's very well put and I fully agree with what you describe on the majority of the situations (i.e birth of a child, loss of a pet, other important thing in life...), but I'm a bit confused on how this nicely written "boredom of abundance" can create problems on people.
Oh well, that's probably because I don't have enough money (and time) to do all the things I want to do :-)
A silly example: when I was young I loved the game civ. In some games I would occasionally actually succeed at defeating all competition. But the game wouldn’t end cause you could try to go to another solar system or something still. But it was much less fun once the competition was over.
You're seriously comparing a cancer diagnosis with being bored while reveling in nigh-infinite opportunity?
There is a simple and obvious solution to this "abundance boredom": remove the abundance. There. Done. Put all your money in charity or, if that's too altruistic of you, lock it away in investments where you can't get at it easily and force yourself to live off of the national median income (~$38k individual, $70k household in the us).
The thing about being poorer is that you can't do the opposite, so it is quite understandable that no one in a poorer position has any sympathy.
> How come it's always poor, lower/mid class people who don't have enough money that always complain about not being able to do things (hobbies, interests, desires...) and always the rich, upper class people who complain that they don't have an interest in anything since they can have everything :-/
I used to be poor and then I stopped being poor. Long story. Not rich rich, but honestly wilder than any realistic expectations back home.
Here’s what I noticed happens somewhere around the 180k to 250k salary range – you lose the fire in your belly. All the important things are taken care of, you’re easily saving enough money to retire early, nothing really presents a challenge. Oh you wanna go on vacation? Yeah just go. The money will sort itself out. Oh you want to buy a thing you like? Yeah, just buy it. There is no anticipation and excitement about the things that used to be a big treat yo self moment. It’s just easy.
Sure you’re not buying fancy cars and big houses or whatever … but do you really even want to? Really? Those things add nothing substantial to your life. The hedonic treadmill is no lasting fun. Everything you actually need is trivial to obtain.
So for those of us who learned that life is a grind from a young age, life loses some of the luster when the grind becomes unnecessary. Time to look elsewhere for fulfillment.
> So for those of us who learned that life is a grind from a young age, life loses some of the luster when the grind becomes unnecessary. Time to look elsewhere for fulfillment.
Fascinating. That may explain why my privileged-from-birth coworkers feel so differently about things than I do.
I also find life without the grind to be dull. It's like an MMO with a finished economy, no leveling up process, everyone just sitting around chatting? LOL. Take me to the new server, plz
And the thing that links those two groups of people is their desire for things. Never was religious, but this core point of Buddhism (from an ELI5, admittedly) really resonated with me. Wanting fewer things indeed seems to makes you happier.
It's funny how much weight people put on money. And how they think abundance of money means solving all of their problems and removes all challenge from life. You are decaying organic matter soon to be corpse trying to interact with similar doomed entities who constantly mess up their lives just like you do yours. And you think money solves anything but the most rudimentary crap? Your parents are still gonna die, somebody will still get cancer.
Even if you have all the money you wish you still have the same crap jelly in the box on top of your neck that will make you suffer and same ugly mug in front of it that will make people run away. You barely solved anything.
Not to mention you might want at some point to co-live with some other unfortunate soul and finding a lasting match is a challenge that rarely ever anyone succeeds at and money there can be as much of an obstacle as it is an asset.
I have 6 dogs and also have to leave the country every 3 months to keep my tourist visa current. Having a really good (and, fortunately, affordable) dog boarder is the answer to this.
Not sure that really changes his point; only that sometimes there is a C when you are looking at choices A & B.
There's a simple algorithm, based on this idea, for eliciting your hierarchy of values. IIRC it goes something like this:
- - - -
Imagine a mundane task of medium importance, e.g. brushing your teeth or doing the dishes.
Now imagine something comes up that interrupts that task, and it's important enough to make you stop doing the previous task and attend to the new thing.
Repeat previous step.
- - - -
I'm skipping over all the details, of course, but the point is that if you do it right you wind up with a ranked or graded list of values, motives for action.
Nothing short of a threat to my life, the life of my kid, or my partner (or another person) would make me stop brushing my teeth. Maybe someone offering me a million dollars to stop right there and then. Certainly no mundane event. Brushing teeth is important.
[EDIT]: Ok, the exercise is working now. I take it back.
> Compromises (and limited-choice situations) test our values.
Testing values strengthens them. People dig into their positions when they are challenged. That's why it's so hard to convince anybody to anything. When values are not challenged they fade.
Most people, even smart people, live a life devoid of self reflection.
You don't have values if you don't live intentionally, and the majority of people make decisions on a very short timescale, and without truly considering opportunity costs.
Even among those that live within an adopted moral framwork (e.g. religion, stoicism, etc), I haven't found people to be particularly well thought out.
Q: 'Does the idea that "given that all decisions are a form of action, and that votes, when made conscientiously, represent our values, then every choice is a reaffirmation of our values" sound nothing like existentialism?'
A: 'The idea that you proposed does indeed align with some aspects of existentialist philosophy, which emphasizes the individual, the subjective, and the importance of personal freedom and choice.
Existentialism posits that life has no inherent meaning, and it's up to each individual to create their own purpose or essence. This philosophy emphasizes the act of decision-making and the consequences that come with it. In this light, your statement that "all decisions are a form of action" and that these choices reflect our values is consistent with the existentialist view that we create meaning through our actions and choices.
Moreover, the existentialist emphasis on authenticity—living in accordance with one's true self and values—also resonates with the idea that conscientious voting is a reaffirmation of our values.'
In philosophy everything can be anything else if you muddy the waters enough.
Concept of choices as actions reaffirming values doesn't sound like existentialism, if only because it's simple and clearly stated while existentialism has things like that to say about choices: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/#AnxiChoi
When I joined my second job in tech, it was a massive bump in almost every way, and immediately I noticed the people around me were drastically different than the colleagues I had in the previous place, a frivolous tiny start up. The new people had almost no appreciation for money; they moved about like nothing could really go wrong; and while they weren't mean, they were somewhat spoiled and detached from reality.
I remember thinking to myself that no matter how much I make, I don't want to be like them in terms of character.
I know people who were born into wealthy families and hearing their silly complaints about how some miniature detail is not 100% in their otherwise perfect and seemingly challenge-free lives was almost physically painful.
However, it made me realize something too. Being happy and having substance does not directly correlate to how much money you have. Evidently, a lot of very rich people aren't particularly happy, and in this article, the author also found no meaning anywhere until they lost their job.
It's the ability to appreciate whatever you have, your assets, your health, and strive to be a better person, have some goals to aspire to. When I catch myself getting upset about something completely meaningless, I try to remember this.