How did you know that's what you wanted? What gives you the authority to say that's the best path for everyone?
Consider an analogy for me - you mentioned travel. Have you ever driven through the mountains? Hiked up a few? Even from the road, it's easy to look up and see spectacular peaks calling out your name, begging to be climbed.
And coming from a flat, midwestern state, you may need to recalibrate your eyeballs for distance: You can't park the car for lunch and walk up most of them if you start in the afternoon...it's likely to take most of a vacation to hike in and up one or two peaks, so you need to plan your route before you arrive at the park.
The tragedy of the story is that there's no better viewpoint from which to gaze at a distant mountain and imagine a climb up it than from the path up the adjacent one you're climbing up.
I'm not yet thirty and have a family, a home, savings, a degree, and a career. I've got life-long commitments and am building solid roots like I thought I should, but now that I've got that all checked off it's not what I thought it would be. I've just got to continue trudging up this mountain I picked as a 17-year-old applying for college and dating one of the girls from high school. It's time to work my 40 hours, enjoy a few weeks vacation every year, and wait for retirement until eventually dying. It's quickly starting to feel unfulfilling and stifling.
The author of the article has spent her twenties and thirties bouldering up dozens of smaller cliffs and clambering over foothills all over the place. You denigrate them as "hobo adventures" but it sounds magnificent to me. I won't get to spend my thirties adventuring like that because I have a wife and a kid and a trade and a home, and it's just not all it's cracked up to be.
Sounds like your perspective involves an omniscient ideal that does not and can not exist. Tradition exists for this very reason. We pass on what works, we do what works, and we don't presume to know what is better. That is what makes human beings so good at learning - we have the ability to hyper imitate one another. I see you doing something successfully, I don't need to know the actual process behind it, I just need to do it the way you do it.
Gratitude for what you have is a critical component of the formula. You seem to lack that. I hope you find it. You won't last long without it.
I recommend church. It helps. You evolved to do that too.
What you've written (own a home, have job, make kids, go to church) really only applies to american's, who make up ~300m out of 7b people currently inhabiting our planet.
That definition of what we're evolved to do, is incredibly myopic; more so if you consider that definition of middle class has really only been around since the mid 1900's?
Home ownership is very much ingrained in American culture because of it's ties to the US economy (for those who own homes, it's typically they're only investment).
FWIW, I think it's great that you and your spouse have found meaning in your lives.
You're 100% correct, but I'm posting this to the audience of Hacker News. I highly doubt we have too many representatives from the true lower classes here.
And to be clear, I don't mean "own a home" when I say "build a home." A home is composed of the people you are committed to and the people you love. I don't mean buy a house or buy anything, actually. I mean building an identity for yourself that includes the notion of "home."
> What you've written (own a home, have job, make kids, go to church) really only applies to american's, who make up ~300m out of 7b people currently inhabiting our planet.
No... This is true for middle middle class and richer people almost everywhere in the world.
I'm not sure what you think religion is if not an evolved social construct. Do you actually think religion, with all its ritual and structure and beauty exists because cave men tried to explain away the things that scared them? It is the foundation of broader social order. It makes you feel part of something bigger than yourself. It makes it possible for you to relate positively with human beings outside the 300-400 or so that you are capable of remembering and caring about at once.
> ...an evolved social construct. Do you actually think religion, with all its ritual and structure and beauty exists because cave men tried to explain away the things that scared them?
Is that not what "an evolved social construct" means? Some cave man's explanation was a social construct happened to have good characteristics in favor of its survival in the environment of human society. Like the process of evolution in biology, it contained traits that were useful for its preservation and propagation. It possibly (but not necessarily) included utility for its adherents, and it possibly formed an effective foundation of social order.
You're right, that's exactly what I think religion is. This stands in stark contrast to where most religious people think their religion comes from: not from some cave-man's misguided guess but from the genuine revelation from God to people.
I do not want to feel like part of something bigger than myself if it consists of mutually pretending that something false (or at least uncertain) is certain. If it is untrue, I do not wish to believe it, regardless of its utility.
I don't disagree, I just found it funny because I live in the Bible belt and you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who both recommends church and believes science. I go to church, but would recommend therapy over church for personal issues.
You got lost in the meta. There's a difference between someone's beliefs about evolution, which might be true, false, or nonexistent; versus evolution itself, which is a force that will act on us regardless of what we believe.
Are we evolved to have religion? Maybe, but the answer to that has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether or not evolution itself is true.
This is hilarious anti-religion rhetoric, complete unwillingness to have evolution and religion in the same sentence. Twisting from how religion historically promotes community into the content of the religion itself. The content is irrelevant, what is important is the sense of community and bonding that religion has offered people for forever.
> what is important is the sense of community and bonding that religion has offered people for forever.
Religion doesn't have anything unique to create community and bonding, other than large numbers. It's not any better at fostering that things over any other shared interest, and at it's worst causes significantly more damage to communities.
Right, it's a baby step to science: actually explaining how the world works. It's a powerful meme that tends to run away with itself once the scientific method is stumbled upon in society.
You are conflating communities formed around religions with explanations that religions have about the world. Religions provide many different things, one being community and sense of belonging, another being a sense of understanding of the world. You can be part of the former without necessarily beleiving the latter.
> I recommend church. It helps. You evolved to do that too.
We may evolved to follow each other but just because one person wrote a hit sermon doesn't mean we evolved to mindlessly church it out every week. Religion is really just something we do on the side that usually doesn't get in the way of evolution (unless it involves sacrifices or suicide).
Thank you for sharing the other perspective. I am a sophomore in university and there is a lot to choose. Reading posts like yours make me even more confused. I just assumed that people generally have stuff figured out in their 20's. I don't have student loans to pay-off, no debts and can get placed in a big tech company (pursuing a CS degree at a top 10 college in my country) with relative ease. But for what? To optimize ads? Starting to think that I should join an NGO or use my technical skills to help humanity somehow.
The work you do is unlikely to provide you with that much meaning. The position I have does a lot of actual, tangible good in the world. After a while, even that carries diminishing returns. The truth is that even though I am doing good, if I was not here, someone else would be here doing the same work. This doesn't provide meaning for me being me, it just doesn't feel meaningless. The sort of sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging that comes with building a family and putting down roots is a sort of meaning that requires you for you. If you weren't there, it wouldn't be the way it is. That's different and special. I recommend you give it a shot before you move into the "career will bring me meaning" camp and realize it is too late to ever feel irreplaceable.
Sounds like I am in a similar boat, 28 here... I feel some similar feelings now after having a kid, i dont want to work all week I want to do stuff with my family. It's possible to retire earlier but requires sacrifice now. Stash as much $$$ as you can away.
Also i think i'm just lucky but my software job has been pretty smooth sailing i got very lucky with my company. The weeks are going by so fast now, i just cruise thru the workday and cant wait to go home and see my little baby!
Neither is right, neither is wrong it just is. You're still in your 20s with a solid foundation and assuming you maintain your health you will see your child graduate leaving you with plenty of time and money to use as you see fit. Use your time and money wisely now and make your life goal to retire early so you can travel and have "hobo adventures."
I traded my 20s for "hobo adventures" and I hope to have another round of them.
How did you know that's what you wanted? What gives you the authority to say that's the best path for everyone?
Consider an analogy for me - you mentioned travel. Have you ever driven through the mountains? Hiked up a few? Even from the road, it's easy to look up and see spectacular peaks calling out your name, begging to be climbed.
And coming from a flat, midwestern state, you may need to recalibrate your eyeballs for distance: You can't park the car for lunch and walk up most of them if you start in the afternoon...it's likely to take most of a vacation to hike in and up one or two peaks, so you need to plan your route before you arrive at the park.
The tragedy of the story is that there's no better viewpoint from which to gaze at a distant mountain and imagine a climb up it than from the path up the adjacent one you're climbing up.
I'm not yet thirty and have a family, a home, savings, a degree, and a career. I've got life-long commitments and am building solid roots like I thought I should, but now that I've got that all checked off it's not what I thought it would be. I've just got to continue trudging up this mountain I picked as a 17-year-old applying for college and dating one of the girls from high school. It's time to work my 40 hours, enjoy a few weeks vacation every year, and wait for retirement until eventually dying. It's quickly starting to feel unfulfilling and stifling.
The author of the article has spent her twenties and thirties bouldering up dozens of smaller cliffs and clambering over foothills all over the place. You denigrate them as "hobo adventures" but it sounds magnificent to me. I won't get to spend my thirties adventuring like that because I have a wife and a kid and a trade and a home, and it's just not all it's cracked up to be.