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0 pointsjimmywanger10y ago0 comments

The article doesn't even mention personal responsibility until roughly halfway through it.

And you comment about "born to be lazy" holds no water. If you want to be lazy, you have to accept that you won't have opportunities non-lazy people will have.

If you're "born to be lazy", that's fine unless you want to be somewhere that non-lazy people are. If you're sitting on your butt cause the inspiration for your novel hasn't come along because it isn't time yet, you're not working hard enough.

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nnq10y ago

> If you're sitting on your butt cause the inspiration for your novel hasn't come along because it isn't time yet

I'm not a writer, but I assume that a writer can simply go on with his life, doing other useful things, and postpone writing that novel until true/natural inspiration comes to him/her. I've read enough crappy writings imbibed with the stench of "synthetic/forced-through-work inspiration" that the only advice I could give to writers is: wait until you have something to truly write about, and wait until you actually get the right perspective of things, and the "inspiration", and only then go and work hard to inflict your literary masterpiece upon the world.

The world is full of "forced art", "forced architecture" and "forced industrial design" made through "working hard enough" instead of actually exploring around until you bump into a "good perspective".

And about:

> If you want to be lazy, you have to accept that you won't have opportunities non-lazy people will have

In the real world things don't work like this at all. Maybe all I want is to sit around in my hut in the rainforest... maybe I'm even content and at peace with the fact the only one of my two children is statistically likely to reach adulthood because malaria or whatever... and being ok with this I just do the bare minimum hunting and enjoy living in nature... until some "hard workers" show up with chainsaws or mining equipment. I'm not a lazy person, but I sympathize with the people that just want to "live their life in their own natural rhythm", but end up being forced out of it by some who worked hard enough to buy the property of the land underneath them, or worked hard enough to make the money to fully "buy off" the government of their peaceful tropical country and then start exploiting it.

As an engineer I love hard work. But when it comes to art or politics I think we need less of it. Less bad art and literature. Less dehumanizing enterprises.

jimmywangerOP10y ago

I think you're inferring something different from what I'm saying.

If you're a writer and you're not inspired to write, you're not going to write your magnum opus. However, you still have to write something or another - spend 3 hours writing uninspired writing just to practice your skills. If you're a musician and you're not inspired to compose, you'll still have to practice your scales and do little throwaway compositions to get better at it. Thinking that inspiration can flourish when you don't have practice with structure, realistic dialog is unrealistic. In fact, the more you force yourself to write the more easily you can recognize when real inspiration comes along, and the more you won't waste it.

As for your second example, we're seeing it all over the place in San Francico right now. A lot of people didn't optimize their financial situation, working as artists or painters and social workers, and now are being forced out by people who did optimize their financial situation, the programmers. Is that right? That is personal opinion, but the fact of the matter is had you been prepared with more money from savings or a more lucrative job or a cheap home somewhere else that you bought, you have options that you currently don't have.

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