> Being part of bigger things makes us feel valued. Find communities and projects to be part of. Start your own. It could be online or in the real world.
Make sure the groups don't get politically active one way or the other. Today's social landscape is made significantly worse by political polarization dragged to the extreme - fuelled by short form content silos and bubbles. (Tiktok, Instagram, etc.)
Ban politics strictly in the spaces you create, and don't be part of the ones that lean one way or the other - unless you are actively looking to take part in politics.
This was not the case even ten years ago. But now, is.
Example: is a trans person in your community political for using their preferred pronouns? Going to their preferred bathroom? Is a gay person political for mentioning their same sex spouse? Is an immigrant political for discussing their immigration process (“sorry can’t make it I have an apt with the embassy”)? Is tits or gtfo political?
I’m not trying to be contrarian this is simply my experiences running like a board game group or something. It’s easy to say no politics but then someone’s normal (eg. My name is Helen, where’s the woman’s restroom?) can cause someone to refuse (“that is clearly a man”!) and now you have a mess on your hands as an organizer.
Maybe other people should avoid commenting on peoples life / choices / specifics / struggles, and the atmosphere may stay nice.
I am convinced it is those in power not wanting an informed populace.
We are not in uninteresting times. People need to be engaging in world around them, not ignoring it.
A: "My neighbors are scared"
B: "Don't talk about that, we might get testy because I think your neighbors should be scared."
The issue isn't so much that groups become "political" (which is a hard standard to define) as much as they lost focus on a goal (like being a book club) and morph into an in-group, an out-group and a set of memes used to identify the in-groupers and ostracise the out-groupers.
The point of most political memes is to identify a small group who are coordinating to try and control a larger mass of people. When the local book club becomes a conduit for them that is obviously toxic for a general member joining because of the joy of reading. A book club community should prioritise books and including people if and when they enjoy books.
I have been part of groups with vile internal power struggles, politics. I never ever took part. Was okay. Maybe there is a threshold somewhere that I have not found yet.
I wish more people would take his ideas seriously, especially his "Collective Code Construction Contract".
> "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
The steps towards happiness basically require accepting the world as is and appreciating it as is. Does that mean happy people are reasonable? And if they are, does that mean that happy people do not drive progress? Are there happy AND unreasonable people?
In Europe for sure and possibly many parts of Asia like Japan or bigger metropolises in China etc. most people will commute by public transport.
You can read. Whenever I had a job where I commuted at least an hour a day, the number of books I read, per month, went from 2–3 to 10 or more.
When I still had to work from the office, I was fortunate enough to be able to move my hours earlier so I could avoid morning rush hour and could, indeed, read in the morning. Afternoons I couldn't, more often than not.
It was just wasted time. I can also read on my couch before I start working from home. I've read many more books since I was able to WFH on most days.
I don't know how I feel about this. I know when I can manage to accept things I feel better overall, but there is real joy in getting what you wanted - in doing something you enjoy, and realising that you're enjoying it while you're doing it, and rejoicing in that
Detachment is all very well, but attachment brings higher highs as well as lower lows
Me
This doesn't really relate to psychopaths but I just wanted to say I've been a follower of yours for years since I discovered your state machine language, multi-threaded kernel and web server back in the 90's. The AMQP / ZMQ work you've done is inspiring. How do you do it?
Pieterh
Well, thank you! :)
I don't know how my brain works, but it likes to take huge, complex situations, learn them inside and out, and then and find simple paths through them. I've always done this since I was young. In software, that means writing simple things that solve large problems, well. In writing, this means explaining mind-boggling things in simple words.
It does take time.
Mentioning these things in a comment is neither accepting of how it is nor changing it. You can't change the site - the author died. You can change your browser or reading mode or whatever. Or you can just accept it is the way it is.
That is deeply compatible with using your energy to create a better world for yourself and others.
Yup. But also - no shame and guilt for experiencing them.
And, your expectations of happiness. Something I’m recently internalizing more than I did in the past: happiness is not a constant state. There are happy moments and unhappy moments in life.
I think the search for a constant happiness is what drives feeling unhappy. It’s this blob-like goal.
For me, working on recognizing and being ok with the ups and downs has produced the happiest state of my life.
The Price of Happiness (62 points, 32 comments)
I think this should be coupled with: know when to quit. I've persisted with some things I'm bad at out of stubbornness but have never improved and it's just burned me out.
(Needs a 2016 in the title)
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Wise wisdoms overall, to have this particular advise from someone who has passed away just hit a different notes.
There's an old Chinese proverbs on being happy:
"If you want to be happy for an hour, take a nap. If you want to be happy for a day, go fishing. If you want to be happy for a year, inherit a fortune. If you want to be happy for a lifetime, help someone else".
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Let yourself say goodbye to luxury enjoyment and be more sensitive to daily unexpected incidents. You will find that happiness is just close at hand.
Stopped reading here. I know plenty of people who would not be made happy by that. They'd be made ill.
2. Happiness is only ever available now.
3. You were never broken; that was a thought.
4. Your gut is a lifetime of data arriving before the argument.
5. Say no to almost everything; freedom lives in the unscheduled hour.
6. If your peace requires the world’s cooperation, you don’t have peace.
7. Alone time is where the self returns to itself.
8. The news is a slot machine for outrage. Unplug it.
9. Compare yourself to no one; envy is drinking poison and waiting.
10. Money won’t make you happy, but it retires the problems that made you miserable.
Also…
1. A man with no wants is already dead. He just hasn’t noticed.
2. Everything valuable in life compounds; the present is just where you make deposits.
3. Settling for yourself is the most polite form of giving up.
4. Feelings are evolution’s suggestions, not commands.
5. You can’t meditate your way out of a life that needs fixing.
6. Say yes until you’re interesting. No one regrets the adventures.
7. A brilliant life with no witnesses is a rough draft no one reads.
8. Ignorance isn’t peace, it’s just peace on credit.
9. Rivals are free personal trainers for the soul.
10. Every hour sold for money is bought from a life you don’t get back.
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Thats what I mean when i think “no politics” gets weirdly messy. Like to me it’s not political to let Helen use the female bathroom, but that’s not a given. I’ve also seen situations like, is it political if David brings his boyfriend to the DnD group and they role play a gay couple? What about if Emily, an IRL conservative, says she’s not being political when her lawful good paladin tries to break up the gay couple in the game, because being gay is evil in her DnD religion?
Also, Helen still wants to be called Helen and still wants to be referred to as a she. By this logic, everyone must go by they/them? Or what?
Nobody is calling for unisex bathrooms as far as I know, so it can't really be called a political choice. It is just practical - there isn't a consensus about who should get a special bathroom. How can there be a special bathroom if we don't know who is supposed to be using it?
> Also, Helen still wants to be called Helen and still wants to be referred to as a she. By this logic, everyone must go by they/them? Or what?
I don't see how to get away from that one, there is a fundamental rift between the people who think individuals control their identity and the people who think that identity is constructed by someone's peers (see also, shaking off an unwelcome nickname).
But that is an inescapable problem that has dogged humanity since before we were a species so good luck excluding it from any space. If it flares up and diplomacy can't smooth it out then some organiser is just going to have to make a call.
It is also super normal for couples to roleplay being couples, gay or not. What do you call civil here, to let a (in the mind of an Anti-homosexual conservative) illegitimate couple pretend as if it’s on the level of a legitimate one? Or it’s maybe uncivil for the illegitimate gay guy to come in and force the rest of the group to sit in discomfort with his sexuality?
In my opinion “maintain civility” is equally as fraught as “no politics” because different people have radically different opinions of what these mean. Often times when it comes to “identity politics” it’s mutually exclusive.
Someone made this into an issue, and politics. And things have got much worse, during all this.
You can't define it but you know it when you see it
Having an appointment with the embassy is not political. Saying the government shouldn’t force people to go to the embassy is.
Re your colleague: I wouldn’t want to talk about it other than showing empathy for the person. At your workplace… outside of work you can talk whatever you want.
Ok
> sorry, wont make it. Stupid appointment.
Banned!
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They weren’t informed citizens, they were just regurgitating whatever they happened to read in their newspaper that day.
If you pushed them on anything they said they didn’t really have any understanding beneath the headlines they had read.
It would be better for them if they could disengage from it but they don’t seem to want to.
There is nothing good coming out from their engagement.
No single raindrop believes it to be blamed for the flood.
An actual productive political discussion where someone changes their mind afterwards is very rare.
It requires a bilateral respect for difference of opinion, a willingness to introspect and challenge one's own positions, and the emotional maturity not to take disagreement personally.
There are some people with whom you'll just never get this. If those people are your family or close friends, a mutual understanding of "we both know we disagree on this topic, so let's avoid it" can be the best you will get.
I’m glad it worked for you but in my case it didn’t.
Ultimately people who continually drag the conversation around to politics just aren’t very nice to be around.
Like what do you do if every source that contradicts them about any aspect of the world is considered a lie controlled by <insert boogeyman> (billionaires, liberals, the Jews, whatever)?
I’ve found the majority of people who are really in to regurgitating politics have no interest in actually understanding reality or making political decisions or even political arguments. They are playing a tribal sport and showing the allegiance and righteousness with words. It’s closer to “my sports team is better than your sports team”. In this situation, there is no string of conversation that can convince them otherwise or land real information. The best thing to do is maintain the relationship, let them know your basic positions, and model “people who disagree with you are very normal and won’t mock you if you change your mind.”
Jamming it into conversations with strong moral judgement attached to the opinion will make people dislike you, and it will not influence people who disagree with you. It will make them harden in their existing views because the emotional awfulness of what you are saying (implicitly accusing them of being bad people, or making them feel under threat) reinforces how correct they have been to have held those views.
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Since we don't have direct access to happiness dial, every advice for increasing happiness is going to be like that.
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I did use the Xitami webserver in anger or years back in the early 2000s though, and that very much was Pieter's work! It was amazing!
In a meta-sense, I don't think G.B. Shaw intended this quote to be taken as an absolute truth by the audience.
And, even taking the quote itself at face value (pretending the fictional character who wrote it was a real person), I think it's referring mostly to political progress. Indeed, most times that political institutions have been upended, it was by people who were not happy with the status quo. But I think that's a different sort of unhappiness from the unhappiness of not being satisfied with your life.
Temper it all with Desiderata[0], since we’re being philosophical.
Funnily enough I also know some happy people who adhere to none of these points.
Somebody forgot to tell this[0] guy.
It is a thing with humans. We :
1. overestimate how much we can do in a short amount of time.
2. underestimate how much we can do incrementally over a long amount of time.
But then what you put effort in will resonate with you and not be the same as what you would do when trying to chase something to impress someone outside.
There is this strange paradox of accepting a situation enables changing it. I hope others who read this who understand it better will share their more lucid insights.
Obviously it is unreasonable to continue walking with a stone in your boot because you want to adapt to it; equally obviously it is unreasonable to expect your boots to last forever without repair.
Not 1 and 0, but infinity.
You matter more than you think.
Very good book:
Because in a literal meaning, that basically puts both John Carmack and Adolf Hitler in the same "unreasonable men" bucket. Both had ideas for the "world" and adapted it to themselves.
But I don't think we should read it that way. Also you should never take one philosopher's idea and only follow it in isolation. Every great thinker has massive blind spots and it's always better to think for yourself and read opinions that may counter each other.
Also I don't think its as simple as to be happy you must accept the world and be a passive host and make no changes. In fact, many would argue you get real happiness when you pursue something bigger than yourself and in those pursuits, we usually make progress.
More so, do you think Hitler was unhappy? Are you saying every unreasonable person that makes progress is unhappy? That clearly cannot be true.
In fact, your question should be answered by what is happiness rather than how to be happy. And the answer can be complciated. No 10 list guide can truly help you unravel the actual human pysche and what makes you you but it can act as markers and make you think if done properly.
Yes, he killed himself in the end. If the question is whether he was always unhappy, well, I'm sure there were happy points in his life.
Commuting is one of the worst aspects of the Western world. The fact that hundreds of millions of people have to sit in their cars, for hours every day, to get to work/play/live, is just a tragedy. I truly hope the next hundred years proves much, much more fruitful for those of us who are willing to change lifestyles to avoid the commute. Its a huge drag.
My experience is that for people with kids, this benefit basically disappears and they want every spare second they can get
You can cover a lot of ground while listening to podcasts. And diversity in podcasts is huge.
I mean I still want to apply to the job to see if they offer me a significant step up in terms of wages (doubtful), but I'd rather have something closer to home.
I see you noticing a thing, with your senses. Sincerely:
A (used) folding phone offers 66% body content, 33% sidebar. Is a noticeable improvement.
I don't want large phone though. I'd prefer to have a less appealling small phone that encourages me to spend more time off it.
I'm willing to switch between Chrome and Firefox. On Chrome I get 66% body content I can't read. It's one of the reasons I stopped using Chrome.
This is a part of why people are hopeful that they can keep spaces focused. Many of the popular "political issues" are more theatre around identity than any real substance.
Yeah, its a meaningless term. The people calling for it are clearly being inarticulately and are trying to say something else.
But the trans bathroom thing has an obvious resolution. The people fighting over it are more about wanting to pick a fight than that there is an actual issue; if the people around me wanted me to use the female bathroom or the male bathroom either is cool. It's a bathroom. They meet a unisex need. If segregation is an issue in the abstract then stop doing that until there is an objective standard to use instead of a subjective one.
And no. I don’t have any friends not even at work.
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