What if you were no longer useful tomorrow? \ stacker news ~AskSN

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What if you were no longer useful tomorrow?

259 sats \ 13 comments \ @Akg10s3 14 Nov AskSN

Perhaps there's something even sadder: We value ourselves based on what we produce. We feel guilty for resting, we feel useless for not progressing or for needing more time to do so, we're ashamed if we fail… We've internalized the narrative that we're valued for what we produce, not for who we are. Do you have an opinion?

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12 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 14 Nov

Klara teaches us that our identity is not our own. Our identity also exists in the minds and hearts of others. Even if there was nothing inherent in us that couldn't be imitated, we still couldn't be replaced because our identity rests outside ourselves. By that same token, we can't simply will a change in our identity—it belongs to others as much as to ourselves. In a culture that says identity belongs to the self, this is a lesson worth heeding.

My existence will never not be useful because it will always matter to someone else.

#1221253

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @Akg10s3 OP 14 Nov

Very good answer... and that post #1221253 perfectly matches the question.

14 sats \ 3 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 15 Nov

What does USA produce now? Mostly financial derivatives and military hardware. Debt and Death.

A major part of our place in the world is what we contribute. People like/need to feel important and producing things others want is a natural way to achieve that sense of worth and importance.

Do we have intrinsic value no matter what we can or cannot produce for others - I believe so but in our materialistic world it is often not the narrative that is promoted.

Do and be what you want to be but also recognise we are to a large extent social animals and that humans can usually achieve the most wealth, security and knowledge by working together.

12 sats \ 0 replies \ @Akg10s3 OP 15 Nov

Thanks for sharing 👌

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @adlai 15 Nov

how do you characterise the possible differences between production and contribution?

by my naive appreciation of "voluntaryism"¹, the acts themselves that get variously considered by society as contributions, productions, creations, works, etc are not significantly altered by whether someone labels them as production or contribution. noise contributed is still noise produced, regardless of the musician's motivation.

I don't go much further than window-shopping the abstracts of all these dogmatic arguments about different flavors of even-more-explainable-altruism; if ethical questions have some possible attack that is compatible with one's intuitive morality and effectable actions, then the idea of action probably arises without slogging through any stuffy old philosophy's prosaganda, however eloquent the fans might consider it. ↩

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 23h

Production might relate more to physical goods produced, whereas contributions might refer more to services.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Scoresby 14 Nov

i got kids: have no choice but to be useful to them.

102 sats \ 0 replies \ @adlai 15 Nov

tellem about the Pak Protectors, maybe, someday

you don't need to like science fiction, care who wrote any of it, or even read the book itself; wikipedia explains the gist and has more than enough loose ends for folks who actually wanna chase the plot

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 14 Nov

All traps of the mind.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @adlai 15 Nov

yeah uhh

I don't like "what if"s

one friend¹ got real worried when I voluntarily spontaneously confessed frustration at people, the actual "irl" community of people who leave phone numbers all over the world like they're good for anything, then ignore some bright young idiot's request to get his affairs in order before an oops

I guess the real busy accountants prefer hearing of the clients before from, and the real good lawyers understand that the document is a waste of money

real people; ghosted. one by one, they ghost. I care, and quietly rename them in the contacts list, usually towards some adjectives that discourage bothering them unsolicited; things like "probably lawyer secretary" and "bureaucrat office line", descriptors of the phone number that could be cried away or blissfully ignored by the guilty ghosters.

friend got worried. I don't know if he was personally pissed at me for triggering even a single notification in any channel for any reason whatsoever without some established order targeted for disruption, or at least a link to notes about the next zero-knowledge wisdom dispensary cliffnotes for dummies.

why am I telling you this, rather than bothering my friend again?

because you wanted my opinion. I'm already useless; in life, preparation for death; after death, a life spent, one way or another, in search of the test case's purpose.

I like worrying about what the survivors will do with my leftovers. They're still my leftovers! I'm not done preaching to the hungry yet, although I'm not much good yet, either.

After I'm food and dead, my best guess is that my writings will be considered worth more than the headache of figuring out wtf to do with old computers and stuff, because writings show up after authors die and folks get news, while stuff rots while old computers bloom.

I like dust. I like words. I don't like getting called a Clanker.

let's not disambiguate between the true blue blooded believers and the serial disruption addicts who for some blessed reason can't get their dopamine fix from blinking red and green pixels ↩

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