Comment by savolai
9 hours ago
Not sure at all you actually read the piece. Your responses about having a job or inconvenience or expectation seem entirely unrelated.
The text does not, for instance, encourage not having a job. It also does not encourage being nothing at all. Being nothing special is quite different.
Recommended movie: perfect days https://youtu.be/wqUT9hQd1XM?is=v1x85FdKOK_zfu60
I often ask myself if i can go to a small town and live an anonymous life. Its my scoring system for personal pride/ego. Does such an anonymous life stop me from inventing things or think about stuff deeply. I don't think so,..
If you want to live anonymously you wouldn't want to be in a small town.
Thanks for the movie suggestion, looks very interesting, will check it out. Also, the Pixar movie Soul has a similar message.
Another cultural reference to this idea is the song Heaven by Talking Heads. Nothing ever happens.
Annoyed that npc is not defined in the post. Non-playing character.
I feel it necessary to make a slight pedantic correction here, since we're officially defining it. It's Non-Player Character.
> do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff. Our bodies are always aiming to relax, because conserving calories is an extremely effective survival method. We are hardwired to do nothing, in order to escape the burden of instead doing something.
> Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff.
This word keeps coming up, coupled with things unrelated.
The OP isn't saying "do nothing". He's saying "do what you want to do". If he wants to study mathematics, that's neither escapism nor "doing nothing".
The extreme majority of people don’t have some secret massive project they want to do and are weirdly choosing not to. There’s only one way to interpret this.
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> You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff.
Gregor: It would be nice to do something.
Sam: We are doing something. We're sitting here, waiting.
"Ronin", 1998
Sitting sometimes is good, sitting always is not.
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Your body is, maybe, but we're not all the same. Making my body sit still and do nothing requires sustained, focused attention; action is the comfort state, and idleness the burden.
Meanwhile, my idleness is so ingrained that sometimes I can't even make myself do the things I WANT to do, like load up a game that I've been wanting to play.
And I'm just tired...all the time. I do nothing and still I'm exhausted.
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Call that conserving energy. Contrary to commonly-held belief, calories are a very ambiguous concept.
tell that to someone with an eating disorder.
Or maybe people like to stare at the clouds while herding sheep. This is just bro-science half-baked evolutionary psychology bullshit.
Personally I enjoy listening to the birds with a book in my hands.
>Being nothing special is quite different.
Related, I would also recommend the book "The courage to be disliked"
> Not sure at all you actually read the piece.
On my HN!? Surprised pikachu
Don't be patronising. I am pretty sure he has read the article because I agree with him, and I have read the article as well.
Surprised pikachu :OOOO
You agree with him? Even the boomer coded armchair psychology? My comment isn’t even in the same realm of patronizing as that.
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