As a gay person that will probably not end up having a traditional 'family unit' in my lifetime, I question whether or not the family is enough to stave off lonliness. I see a lot of nuclear families that spend what I think is a toxic amount of time with each other. To be able to thrive we need to be a part of a larger community, not just codependent on a spouse. Even worse is when I see people hanging all of their hopes and happiness on a child. When a mother says that their child is their best friend, I don't know if I should worry more for the mother or the child.
I spend so much of my time intentionally trying to cultivate community. In some respects, it is the over-arching theme of my adult life. I find community is very hard to come by so if I have to be the one to make it, so be it. I pay a pretty penny to be a member of a coworking space so I don't spend my workday alone. Three times per week I go to regularly-scheduled events (a game night, running club, and roller-skating night). I'm every week I try to coordinate events between friends that I have made through these groups. I've learned to be an even planner, match maker, (second rate) therapist, baby sitter, and referee. I definitely spend more mental cycles on my friends than I do on work.
The amount of work that I needed to put in was enormous. It was hard and scary at first. I was a wall-flower. Inviting people I don't know well to do something fun is not a skill that I was born with (quite the opposite). But with all this effort put in, I am finding that after multiple years of effort the value is starting to really pay dividends.
I guess the over-all point that I am making is that the American Dream is that you can live how you want, so if you want community, make that your Dream and go do it. Looking back, I really feel like I am an entrepreneur of friendship, and I think that at the end of my life I am not going to regret it.
Greatest decision I ever made was getting a remote gig, leaving the big city, and moving to a small town. There is enough going on here to keep busy, and everyone knows eachother.
Would never dream of raising my kids somewhere like SF. If you want community, go somewhere it's valued. Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.
I live in a mid-sized US city and it’s hell. Seven years in, my friend group is small - but present - and there are very few activities I enjoy. It is a sleepy kind of place. Community here forms in small pockets of people who have known each other their entire lives and are not welcoming to newcomers. I have eyed a move to SF and when I last traveled there my Airbnb host commented, “this is where you come to find community.”
If a smaller town works for you then great, but for most people it’s quite the opposite, or people would not have consistently migrated to cities over the last century. There are real drawbacks to the population density but it affords so many more opportunities for…everything.
The biggest issue is that community doesn’t always find you wherever you are. You can be outgoing, well liked, and so forth but sometimes wherever you live just isn’t going to work. We have a finite lifespan - so we can’t try every sized city and multiples of each.
My experience of living in small towns (100-20,000) was miserable. Extremely racist, homophobic, xenophobic, conservative, and so forth. Could I find a small town where that’s not an issue? Maybe but they tend to be this way. If you’re already someone who doesn’t fit into most crowds - you’re not always gonna find a welcoming scene in a small town.
My experience of big cities has also not been perfect either and I’ve lived in a few. (500k-8m) But the drawbacks of small towns are mostly gone. They’re replaced with other issues like insane competition on every front. (You’re always competing for someone’s attention and time - regardless of who they are) Cities segregate heavily even if they act like melting pots. The truth is - very little intermixing happens relative to how it should theoretically be. The upside of cities though is that there are likely more pockets of people to find a community to belong to. The downside is that it brings a lot of tribalism and exclusionary behavior. (Thus the segregation)
Overall, the USA sucks. It lacks community because we’ve decided to embrace late stage capitalism and the American identity is centered around getting fucked by the feds and capitalists. It’s no surprise that rich slave owners were writing the original rules the country would be founded on - when viewing how things are now.
Cities have traditionally been about two things: opportunities and freedom. For many the freedom is more important of the two. It means the freedom to be anonymous, the freedom to choose your own community, and the freedom to live your own life.
Small towns come with a default community, because everyone knows everyone. It's great if you fit in, and terrible if you don't. Many people move to cities primarily to escape that community.
And to some extent that freedom and opportunity scales with the size of the city.
I don't think I've ever felt as liberated as I did while living in Tokyo, where everybody is a number and if you want to check out for a bit and steer clear of your usual circles, it's easy to do so. At the same time though, for practically anything I could possibly imagine wanting to do, there were people I could seek out to do it with.
This works unless you can't find a large enough group of people that share your goals, values, etc. Those are the people that end up staying in cities regardless, and there are plenty of active communities for those folks.
Experiences certainly differ! My family recently moved away from a small town, back to the heart of a big coastal city, in part because we were all lonely there; everyone in town may know each other, but the culture there was uncomfortably different from ours, and it was difficult to make friends. We fit in much better in a big cosmopolitan city, and there's so much more to do here - both for us and for our eleven-year old - that it's easier to find ways of spending time with people.
Counterpoint: grew up in a small town and now have kids in SF. Moved to the small town before kindergarten and always felt like an outsider there - other kids knew each other because their parents went to school together and my parents invested 0 in socializing me when I was little.
In SF, if you seek it there is a strong parent community that feels like the other side of the fence to me - welcoming and inclusive. Everyone has different styles of parenting but we converge on keeping kids safe and supporting their play. The groups are far more diverse ethnically, economically and even politically here and I think that is healthy exposure for kids.
Yes, a few families move out each year but my son has a group of kids he has hung out with since he was 3 (8 now). The kids all go to different schools but as I have learned from people who grew up in SF, kids tend to make cross school connections and friendships pollinate across schools so high school parties can turn into big group hangs.
All this may be easier and more stable in the burbs, but the community/village mindset does exist in SF if you seek it. It's not that there isn't crime and some troubled kids here, but there are some incredible benefits to the city as well.
This may be specific to SF as we have an insanely low kid % in SF (like 5% vs. 14% most other cities).
> Everyone in the big city is a transient, only there to make money and find love before it's time to head for the suburbs.
I might be taking this bit of hyperbole(?) too literally, but while this might be a common trajectory for young professionals, it obviously doesn't cover everyone.
I think this is a brilliant and healthy way to look at how to build meaning in modern American life. I came to a similar conclusion a few years back - it’s hard work, but so is everything else worth doing. I’m not particularly good at it though, but hey, always good to have some areas of self-improvement.
Love your response to this :) came to the same conclusion. I do think friendships are getting "faster" and community "easier" to build - hopefully the next wave of friendships can be made faster & with fewer mental cycles.
This comment reminded me of how quickly children can become friends. It's funny what we can do when we come to the table without any expectation of one another.
Its not just children. If you travel by yourself you often make friends who 7 days later are your "best friends", just like children.
We just need a way to foster those situations in real life.
The biggest issue I find with things like meetup.com initially there can be alot of talk about meetup, oh how often do you do this, bit weird isn't it, bonding over the mild awkwardness of the situation.
After that you form genuine friendships but then can't be bothered with those conversations anymore and either duck out of the group with your friends or become cliquey within the group.
The people who are always there and enthusiastically meeting new people every single week for years I always find a little odd and struggle to form a genuine deep connection with, because they're doing the surface level stuff on auto pilot and you have to regularly do it too if you're going to spend alot of time with them (because they're doing it with others even if not you).
It's an interesting situation to navigate and I understand why some struggle or don't bother.
Do you ever struggle with giving more time to specific friendships/relationships you want to cultivate more, at the expense of others?
I find when I focus on a group, usually it also comes at the expense of focus on the individuals, and the people feel less close. Unless I put a lot of focus on the group over time, then I usually get to know the individuals depthful enough, but not as deep if I had spent that time with just two or three of them instead.
The best part about introducing your friends to each other is that then they can hang out with each other without you having to do anything at all! I definitely have some close friends I expect to see multiple times per week. Others I'm perfectly happy to see once per month. Others who have moved away and I won't see until I visit their city.
Friends and community are not a zero-sum game. The more interconnected and inter-dependent people are, the more likely that everyone is going to have deep and meaningful relationships.
I used to feel much more like you when I was regularly hanging out with friends almost exclusively 1:1. I thought I was doing that because I was introverted, but realistically I was doing it because I had social anxiety. Looking back, hanging mostly 1:1 made me feel like my friends were more distant because there were so many people I didn't see for months that I always felt like I didn't really know my friends.
Interesting, I can see how interconnectedness could make everything feel deeper. Experiences would be a shorter distance for everyone in the community. It echos something I've discussed with my therapist I think as well.
I feel similarly though. Social anxiety (though I understand it more now) and hanging out exclusively 1:1. Part of it is maybe I don't put a lot of time towards friends (my best friend I see once a month, the most I will see someone is maybe twice a week) and code a lot instead. Part of it is my friends just end up pretty far flung (one online, the others in person but in a 2 hour radius). I do feel like I know most of my friends well though, even when I don't talk for months. Catching up is fun.
Sometimes I'm happy with it, other times I wish to make more friends but realize it would end up destabilizing what I already have to some extent. Communities feel nice because the don't feel like a particularly "sticky" investment, and the ratio of people to time is greater, but I get less satisfaction from it initially and it takes time to build (I think, hypothesis not well tested).
Kudos to you for doing it - it's all the more important now that so many of us are WFH.
I took my past social life for granted - one that was built for over a decade and when going into office was normal.
It's been hard to make new friends - after moving to a new city and remote working.
I have not tried as hard as you did, but I am inspired by your post!
This felt like reading my own words. It has been and continues to be an enormous amount of effort to try to foster that sort of community, but truly nothing else I have invested into in my life- save my relationship with my partner- has been worth even a _fraction_ of what my community building efforts have been worth.
You’re not alone so hang in there cause I feel like there’s a wave of others coming!
We need a way to coordinate local mutual aid groups that isn’t just some backwater forum but doesnt just default to a corporate slack or something. I guess Mastodon would be good here?
That is a self-reinforcing cycle. There have been long and successful campaigns by car companies and other self-interested entities in the US to associate public transportation with being poor. Just like how a city street is safer per-capita if there are more people on it, public transit is safer if it is more well-used.
I see this in seattle. When I am commuting in the morning or in the evening my bus is full of yuppies and working class people getting to their job. But if I take the bus on the weekend or during the off hours when well-adjusted people are not on it, the bus is a much less inviting place.
I don't know how to solve the problem other than to believe in the system and hope that other people do as well.
While I'm with you on fare enforcement, there are costs associated with fare collection. Usually it takes passengers time to pull out change and they can be confused about how and where to pay, adding to delays. Building the infrastructure for fare payment at gates is expensive and requires security to maintain and dissuade vandals.
Boudin's recall in SF also shows that there's certainly support for a tougher on crime stance, whether or not you agree with it.
In 2023, any transit system that requires more than quickly tapping your phone, wallet, watch, etc to the the turnstile is decades behind the world technologically and the inconvenience of looking for change is a problem because of the city council or state not investing in public transit. The vast majority of mass transit riders are not tourists from the suburbs using the system as a novelty that would be confused anyway.
I am personally not a fan of NFC becoming the standard in the US, since it requires strategically placing credit cards in your wallet instead of using a card specifically made for transit fare, but it does make it so large swathes of the population never even have to think about going to a fare machine.
A system that relies on turnstiles is decades behind as well. Best practices in much of Europe use proof of payment and cheap monthly passes relative to single tickets, so most users have monthly passes.
This cuts down on access time, infrastructure cost, fare collection cost, and minimizes marginal cost per trip for users (i.e. zero).
In Germany, they just introduced a monthly 49€ ticket that covers transit (and regional trains) for the whole country.
I usually compare how far behind the US is to Japan. How does a system without turnstiles work in Europe? In Japan, the shinkansen can still actually be used with their cards and tapping pass the turnstile, but nearly everyone besides business passengers buys a ticket for the one off far trips. I can't even imagine short trip subways not having a turnstile.
Even in the US, monthly swipe passes have been a thing in even the systems that used tokens.
But monthly passes, for example in NYC, are expensive relative to single tickets, so adoption is relatively low.
If everyone has a monthly pass, fare evasion is less of an issue even in an open system. Fares are checked on a sampling basis with fines for not having a ticket.
Last time I took an U-Bahn in Berlin, a guy was urinating in front of me.
I have not seen such sociopathic behaviour in public transport in Tokyo, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing. All are turnstile based. I feel that they are strictly better in almost all dimensions than e.g. Berlin's public transport. In all you pay with some variant of NFC tech, e.g. your phone. Zero effort.
Fine-grained access control also allows for better understanding of train usage, and capacity planning.
Asian cities are very different from the West, so not sure lessons apply. Although Berlin is probably more affordable in PPP terms, and relative to population has more rapid transit than those asian cities (500km for 4.6Mio ppl).
In virtually all dimensions, Berlin transit is better than every US system, Except NYC. Which is ironically the only place Ive ever seen anybody pee in the subway, and that one is supposedly “protected” by turnstiles.
The US has a homelessness epidemic, Berlin has some problems in this area as well. This is a problem thats orthogonal to the transit system, and has to be solved by society at large. Turnstiles don’t solve homelessness.
I did not bring up US public transport as an example of "best practises". I agree that Berlin has a extensive and well-developed public transport, and that is commendable.
> Turnstiles don’t solve homelessness.
Nobody claims they do. My anecdote illustrated the opposite direction: barriers remove one related cluster of reasons, related to personal safety, why some avoid public transport and prefer to drive by car, namely the fear to be accosted by vagrants, pickpockets, and other forms of sociopathy.
Do you think this has something to do with the fact that turnstile jumping has been effectively legalised (in the sense of not being prosecuted) in NY?
Question for you: can you quantify, what fraction of crime and other forms of sociopathy in the NY public transport system you estimate to be committed by passengers who paid their fare? (My estimation: less than 1 percent.)
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that a simple metal gate alone can completely solve complex social dysfunction, a simple metal gate can however help, and, when we refer to turnstile access being desirable, we implicitly assume that we can reasonably expect turnstile use being adhered to, and violations punished with at least moderately high probability.
Exactly this. I take a low level of SSRIs because I am an otherwise highly functioning person who has a tendency to get into severe anxious spirals that can last days on end and induce vomiting. I do all the things that a person should do to mitigate, including meditating, exercising, lots of friends, etc etc.
I know that my medication dulls my most intense emotions, but that is the point. It is slightly sad knowing that I don't experience the highest highs that I used to, but it is completely worth it to stop experiencing the lowest lows that were completely debilitating. I would stop taking them immediately if I could be assured that I wouldn't fall back into physically debilitating anxiety.
When I have had conversations with my philosophically oriented friends, I like to talk about what it be like to be a starfish--to experience the whole world in 5-way symmetry.
The way you put it makes it sound almost like bat sonar is some kind of Fourier transform of vision. Like solving a physics problem by transforming the position space into momentum space. Cool stuff :)
As a non-religious gay I probably wasn't invited anyway. But this kind of thinking is what leads conservatives to so much repression and hate. The idea that the wants and needs of your body are something which the mind must actively fight. That the scratchy, ill-fitting wool sweater of your culture is something that you must keep on at all costs. And it leads to resentment of people who are not under such self-imposed restrictions.
There is a reason in queer culture that 'shadiness' is a bigger sin than anger. Shadiness is what happens when someone represses their true feelings. Those feelings don't go away though, they just resurface in other unexpected and non-adaptive ways.
That sounds like you're coming at this from a similar standpoint to one of the other major religions which I would rather not mention as I don't want to start a religious war here.
In Islam you're not hated or judged for what you call your true feelings. You are however instructed to gain mastery over those feelings and make them subordinate to you rather than the other way around. Fasting is one of the things that can help with that. As for feeling invited, honestly I get why you may think that (because a lot of Muslims do a frankly terrible job of marketing) but that's not how Islam looks at people, it doesn't look at people as unchanging monoliths, instead you are seen as a blank slate and whatever actions you do impact your life here and the life hereafter. Basically your inner reality is between you and God. Islam fully understands people have all sorts of desires, lusts, etc, the thing is in Islam you aren't cursed for having those desires, but for acting upon them rather than gaining control over them. HTH.
> you aren't cursed for having those desires, but for acting upon them
That sounds exactly as repressive and hateful that other major religion, as well as historical laws which punished homosexual acts in many western countries. You have highlighted the difference between our desires and our behavior, but you seem to deliberately avoid acknowledging that straight people are permitted an institution in which their desires can be met within constraints, but gay people are not.
"You're invited to participate in our faith so long as you scrupulously act like someone else for your whole life" sounds a lot like an unvitation.
Islam pretty much is a framework for how you deal with God and for how your life here and hereafter will be according to that relationship. That's all it is.
You also acknowledge that even straight people have constraints in Islam, i.e. no sleeping around etc, why not also argue that it's somehow terrible that straight people have to repress their desire to fornicate?
"You're invited to participate in our faith so long as you turn your focus away from your base desires and towards God and the hereafter"
You're insinuating that you're being targeted or singled out whereas Islam "blanket-bans" entire categories of what are considered regressive behaviours such as overeating, you're not being targeted here, so can you stop with the victim complex please? Islam is as against environmental destruction, abuse of animals or overeating as much as it is against what it sees as wrongful sexual desire. What I feel like is being missed for the trees here is that the "holisticness" of Islam. It's against what it sees as destructive behavior, without prejudicing or singling out any specific group. Look at the higher purpose here.
You've buried the lede that the core framework does see homosexual behavior as "wrongful sexual desire", "regressive behaviour".
You can accept that or not, but it's disingenuous to equate asking gays never to have sexual or romantic relationships, to asking non-gay people just to curb excess.
That's not an equal imposition, it feels like self-equivocating ad-hominem to read "you're not being targeted here, so can you stop with the victim complex please?"
If you agree that it's better for gay people to never experience intimacy, please just say so, without labelling the concern (that gay people may feel less invited) as ridiculous
Someone who has a thirst for illicit relationship with women must also refrain from doing so.
Forbidding a person from lusting anyone other than spouse whether they like it or not is no different than forbidding a person from having gay desires. And no amount of self identification can label that inhumane.
Under your axioms, it may be equivalent, but I think they're mistaken.
Orientation is not a choice, and is orthogonal to identification.
I believe that same-sex relationships can be as profoundly fulfilling, enriching, and pro-social as heterosexual relationships.
That marrying a straight woman with a gay man is profoundly unfulfilling for both.
And that denying a class of people something so profound, freely enjoyed by everyone else, and which does not harm anyone else, can indeed be seen as inhumane.
You say orientation isn't a choice even though bisexuals at least establish it as their free choice for relationship. Fine. Even if you correctly claim that some people may have an immutable orientation, why would you in your brilliant and far reaching wisdom think it would be inhumane for the same person to be celibate from that orientation? And further think it is inhumane for the person to engage in a relationship of another orientation?
I don't believe for a second any person has this immutable orientation, straight or gay. And likewise, I don't believe it is inhumane for a person to avoid a relationship that is illegitimate. Trying to argue otherwise is like arguing the color blue can also be seen as red.
If you tried to feel attraction but could not, you might need help on understanding what attraction is. Until you do, you won't know what love and harm is.
I've said your description sounds "exactly as repressive and hateful" as another major religion and the laws of many western states until relatively recently. You're insinuating that Islam is being targeted or singled out whereas I will blanket label as homophobic any regime which masquerades as being even-handed because they generously permit queer people to pretend to be straight, so can you stop with the victim complex please?
Liberal humanism is against what it sees as destructive and oppressive behavior, without prejudicing or singling out any specific group. Look at the higher purpose here.
> In Islam you're not hated or judged for what you call your true feelings. You are however instructed to gain mastery over those feelings and make them subordinate to you rather than the other way around
To me, that sounds like a very fancy way of saying : repress your feelings and who you are to conform to an arbitrary set of rules written by one dude hundreds years ago.
Enlighten me on how are you supposed to act/feel to “gain mastery over your feeling” when said feeling is “as a male; I want to spend the rest of my life sharing experiences with this other male, intimate and not intimate, without endangering anyone else” ?
Repress your feelings of desire for your neighbor’s wife. Do not act on those feelings. Stay away from anything that could even slightly make you sinful or think of sinful desires.
This is a form of discipline and mastery of desires. Enlighten me how this is not what a faith built on God’s word should be commanding on any individual?
> Repress your feelings of desire for your neighbor’s wife. Do not act on those feelings. Stay away from anything that could even slightly make you sinful or think of sinful desires.
Why should you repress those feelings ? Unless they don't hurt you or hurt others; I see absolutely no reason to hide them or not act on them. What makes them "sinful" is you deciding they are sinful according to some made up rules you read in a book.
> Enlighten me how this is not what a faith built on God’s word should be commanding on any individual?
- Rule nb 1: Avoid harming yourself as much as you can.
- Rule nb 2: Avoid harming others as much as you can.
No I didn't say that at all, and that's a petulant response honestly. Re-read my comment. I said Islam instructs people to make their feelings subordinate to them rather than the other way around. The other replies to the GP were not so different from what I'm saying. You're hardly required to state your sexual orientation each time you pray, if that's the sort of line of reasoning you're taking here.
Lol, Blank slate does not mean for others to write on you. Blank slate means for you to be free of your own tendencies and not be beholden to your desires. And able to write your own Character.
(in reply to the post you just sent)
I can't actually reply to comments that far down, I guess that's a HN quirk I didn't notice all this time until just now but yeah I also just covered that in a reply to someone else
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35657964
To me, this is just another angle of what the parent comment was talking about.
We are not blank slates. We have millions of years of evolutionary instinct and genetics/epigenetics built into us AND we have everything we are fed (literally and figuratively) affecting us before we even get a chance to start thinking about 'who' or 'what' we are.
The blank slate line of thinking is what conservatives in the US implicitly (or explicitly) use to make the claim that being gay is a choice. It seems that it's just another way to justify punishing people for things that may be beyond their control, because if we are blank slates, then everything about you is your own fault.
Obviously there are aspects about ourselves that we can change, but the blank slate ideal is a dangerous slope to slide down.
>You are however instructed to gain mastery over those feelings and make them subordinate to you rather than the other way around
Genuine question: How is this different from saying "it's not bad to be gay, it's just bad to not repress your feelings and never act on them", as is a common (paraphrased) refrain among those who are anti-lgbt?
> Genuine question: How is this different from saying "it's not bad to be gay, it's just bad to not repress your feelings and never act on them", as is a common (paraphrased) refrain among those who are anti-lgbt
I'll admit it's probably not hugely different though to my understanding Islam's purpose is more about guiding a person to have a relationship with God rather than being anti-anything, and about doing what is within one's ability to move towards that goal. Like I said in a different reply it's not like you are being singled out for hatred or anything like that, the purpose is for everyone to get themselves right with God.
To clarify, a blank state in your relationship with God. Like, you aren't judged for being a certain sexual way until you actually act on it (or choose to not act on it).
As a non-religious gay, I fully agree that continually denying yourself something that makes you happy isn't a virtue.
However, raiding the cabinet of historically religious practices and stripping god out of them can be helpful. A lot of things we do on impulse don't actually make us happy, and cutting them out for a bit can be a good way to examine whether they've become unhelpful/unskillful habits. I don't think drinking is inherently bad, but "dry January" can be a nice way to check that I'm not developing a dependency. I'm glad I have a smartphone but I do find that periodically being completely away from screens is a good check. Sex, food, other substances, media, can all be good but can also become parts of habits that don't actually lead to happiness. Temporary self-denial can be a useful tool in reworking one's relationship to these, even if you're definitely going to keep them in your life in some form.
Yea and as a Muslim - I view it more as practicing discipline rather than suppressing desires. Like one the other posts said, you can't be blamed or sinned for having desires or whatever thoughts you have in your head. If we were, then basically no one is getting into heaven. And for some desires, Islam offers ways to fulfill them in a way that it views as permissiable. Whether or not you buy that ultimately comes down to faith but that's a separate topic.
Notice how imams are not celibate like Catholic priests. In fact celibacy isn't even a thing in Islam. You're actively encouraged to get into a relationship and get married so you can fulfill your sexual desires. There's even a prophetic quote that says getting married is half of your religion. It's that important. Of course some things like drinking is not allowed even if you desire it and that's just something you have to deal with. But even if you cave it's not the end of the world because the grading system is heavily curved in your favor.
Having desires is natural and human and it's even ok to indulge in them every once in a while in a healthy way.
The Islamic term for this is nafs which means "self" or sometimes "ego". So fulfilling human desires is filling your nafs. But just like overfilling your stomach can be bad, overfilling your nafs is also bad so you need to practice discipline in not getting carried away.
> I fully agree that continually denying yourself something that makes you happy isn't a virtue.
Murder? Mayhem? Destruction? Greed?
I agree homosexuality is a fine thing, but your comment is altogether far tooo broad.
Societal morals are often about denying ourselves things we want to do: often because our actions affect others or offend others, but also often for no strong reason at all. Virtue is almost defined by holding ourselves back from unvirtuous actions: can virtue exist in the world if we can all do whatever we will?
As a vegetarian for ethical reasons who grew up enjoying eating dead animals, I think we're on the same page actually. But strictly speaking, the virtue (perhaps a loaded word) I think you're alluding to is a willingness to pursue policies which maximize utility function which sums over agents other than oneself, not self-denial per se. Greed is perhaps the most illustrative "vice" on your list; satisfying one's personal greed only sometimes will cause any harm to others, and sometimes will be appropriate to pursue.
A dangerous sociopath with functioning moral compass? That sounds like an oxymoron, don't you think?
And no, fulfilling the very bare minimum is not virtuous. When virtuous person stops being virtuous, they fall to "average", not to the lowest possible.
freedom in the matter of choosing your own actions is definitely a nice tool to have when planning your week or day, or or responding to stressful suprises.
You got to live and let live, otherwise you are acting no different than them. Greta Thunberg chooses to repress her desires to eat meat or travel and see the world for something she sees as greater good. When she gets older, she may well decide against having children to keep human footprint on the planet smaller. I am not doing any such things myself and I don't accept rewilding as an intrinsic goal of environmentalism. I believe that humans are the apex species on the planet and, like all such species, are primarily concerned with our own thriving - which may involve conservation but not self denial.
But, I am not going to try to stop her or make her life difficult with constant needling. Just like you shouldn't stop those who are willing to constrain their own sexuality for the sake of avoiding what they perceive as spiritual pollution, just like Greta is willing to constrain herself to avoid environmental pollution. To each their own, and for some living up according to their idea of honor is a greater comfort than more direct gratification. In time, we all learn something valuable even from those we don't agree with.
Can we however agree that America and other countries that embraced Western culture are great because you can live your life as you want and observant Muslims can live their lives as they want?
not religious either – but the notion that your feelings are "true" and ideals or aspirations that run counter to your feelings are "false" is a very one-sided way to look at this.
If you ask a heroin addict what their true feelings are, the wants and needs of their bodies, it's probably just "get high".
If you ask a 16 year old kid with a porn addiction, it's probably just "get off".
There is no shortage of maladaptive desires in the world, and no shortage of ways to fulfill them. I think you can trace probably half the world's problems to one word: "addiction". The motivation system of the brain gone wrong.
I think what you're trying to point to here is the other half of the world's problems, which is effectively: "acceptance", or rather, the lack thereof. The empathetic system of the brain gone wrong.
I'm non religious too and I take your point, but to play devil's advocate -- Most of civilization and the ability for humans to live and cooperate together in large groups, requires us to move past our base wants, desires and the actions they would create.
Even if you want to burn down my house and murder me because I wronged you or slighted your family, that's not morally correct. We have secular law to codify what we see as morally right and I think it makes sense that before states really existed or unified people through national myths, that function was served by Gods
Repressing my desire to eat every bit of food in front of me helps me on the scale.
Repressing desires to stay on the couch and going for a run instead gives me freedom to experience the world without being out of breath or stopping halfway on the hike.
Repressing desires to keep all of my money for myself leads me to be more charitable, which is better for others.
So yeah, self-control is a great thing to cultivate because the presence of a desire does not mean that the desire is good. And even if it's not bad, then it's something that can hinder a greater good.
It's more subtle than this. Your brain can tell you to do stupid things. Not all desires are good. I can over eat, over spend, over work or procrastinate. And that's not even going into deeper brain reflex or addiction. And then you have actual neurology.
I'm not a religious person, but I believe (sic) that behind fasting periods, there's a training around the theme of balance.
You've completely missed the mark. Life is full of contradictory desires. I would love to have a lean, muscular body. I also love pizza.
Fasting is a practice of discipline; consciously choosing to forgo one thing to focus on another. You don't not eat because God or Allah or Buddha or whomever actually care that you didn't eat. You don't eat to focus on mastering your own desires such that you can better your own mindfulness of adherence to the other strictures of your faith during your daily life, even when you are not fasting.
The reason many religions focus on fasting is that it is a common and simple way to be aware of a temptation and choose to not give into it.
Edit: I should add, in case my point wasn't obvious, that none of the above has to do with you or anyone else. It is purely a personal thing.
Anyone who brags about how much religious fasting they are doing are just showing that they have been wasting their time and have gotten nothing from it.
You could say the same thing about extreme endurance sports. It’s not about looking down on other people. It’s about appreciating what you have and for one month putting yourself in the shoes of those for whom even one meal a day isn’t something they can take for granted.
Hate is natural, just look at history. Practicing restraint from natural feelings like hate is a purpose of fasting. Do note, it has been an organized practice in western civilization centuries longer than even Islam has existed.
The ability to repress desires to focus on long term goals or to develop appreciate for the satiating of those desires is a good long term skill to have.
Slightly non-sequitur. The best thing that I ever did for my body wrt/ having a desk job is making sure that wherever I am my monitor is at eye level and at least 2ft away from my face. I always found that at the end of the work day I had so much tightness in my neck and temples, but once I started using a portable laptop stand [1] that all went away.
Should be titled, "consider the cost of compliance tooling when picking a DB". Strange article, I'm not sure what the point is.
Lunch isn't everything. Even though many people eat lunch, lunch isn't the only thing you should consider when eating. For instance, there is also dinner, and dinner has a different set of characteristics than lunch. When deciding what to eat today, remember to consider both lunch and dinner. There may be other considerations as well, such as breakfast, that are not discussed here.
The short story "The Great Silence" by Ted Chaing feels very relevant here.
> The humans use Arecibo to look for extraterrestrial intelligence. Their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe. But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices? We’re a nonhuman species capable of communicating with them. Aren’t we exactly what humans are looking for?
I think the dark forest theory rings very true here. The risk/reward equation for communication is skewed so far towards the risk end that, as the joke goes, maybe the surest sign that there’s intelligent life is that none of it has contacted us.
Or Peter Watts’ much more succinct take: if they do exist, they’ll be mean.
