1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they started to create things at a very early stage of their life (but not consuming things as they advocate, think about celebrities, entrepreneurs etc), so they are able to practice and perfect the value creating skills to the extreme.
2) I start to realize that the world is binary in nature : I create to sell, I buy to consume. I either at the buyer side, or at the seller side. And in this current society, there is a huge buyer side trap, the whole idea of consumerism and social media is to trap you inside the buyer side, so you keep buying, you keep consuming. I really need to break free from this trap.
This blog post was written before COVID-19, but the idea feels even fresher during this pandemic era
I don't agree with the overall take that the world is binary in that way at all..
You create to sell? No, I think a fundamental part, for example of art, is that it can be created for no reason whatsoever. To give a personal example, I really enjoy music production and playing piano.. but I do it only for myself and have fun doing so.. i don't even share it with anyone. Does that mean I am creating but not selling? And does that mean it is wrong and a waste of my time and I should stop doing it? No, I'm just creating for the sake of creating.
Another thing I don't understand, is your end goal in life to get rich? And do you equal being rich with being happy?
That's not my worldview at all. I mainly care about three things, curiosity, ethics and empathy. But definitely curiosity, being able to learn everyday is what makes me happy. But that doesn't fit into what your explaining, I don't have to create and sell anything with what I've learned because the act of learning already gives me happiness.
Maybe I'm the weird one but I truly find that a life with the sole goal of selling and accruing wealth seems boring.
Yeah, I agree with all of this. A lot of these types of posts and responses give me strange vibes, like people going through life trying to minmax everything and 'win' it as if it was a game.
It's an attitude I encounter frequently in tech circles, but it never stops feeling very weird to me.
You are not weird at all. I feel the same. Being rich is not a goal in itself. It is just a tool that you might use to solve your real goal. However if you don’t think deeply enough to realise what your real goal is then you might not realise that most goals can be achieved without becoming rich.
One can argue that you are buying an experience with your time and services in this framework rather than money. Kinda just shortcutting the wealth transfer bit. Not that I agree with the framework at all. (It narrows down to Objectivism really and makes no real sense in long-form concepts. In what part of this framework does a mother jumping in front of a bus to save her child does this fit?)
> Another thing I don't understand, is your end goal in life to get rich? And do you equal being rich with being happy?
Here's the deal: in a capitalist system, being rich may not equal being happy, but it certainly does equal being secure. The average worker is a lot less secure now that the days of "a job for life" are gone, and prices for housing, education, and health care have gone through the roof.
So your real goal is not to become rich but to become secure. Being rich doesn’t make you secure. You still have to worry about loosing your wealth, people trying to take advantage of you, raising your kids to be mentally happy/stable without just living off your wealth, not knowing if people are truly your friends etc. etc.
Okay, I get that. But in that case, wouldn't you say that the system itself is flawed/unjust and that you should rather put your efforts into changing that system?
Because if you focus on you making money to make your situation more secure, you're only solving the problem for yourself... which seems selfish and a bit unethical to me.
But I understand, we all have to live in a system and under circumstances we didn't choose and I guess we have to make the best of it.
>I realized that reading a book was really just like reading Reddit—both were consumptive activitives.
I disagree on this but I love and agree with the premise of the blog post. Comparing reddit to Moby Dick could not be further off. reddit (or any similar site) is a shill/bad actor/agitator/troll cesspool full of memes and clickbait.
It is important to learn to tell good shit from bad shit. Consume things produced by masters of their craft. Try not to settle for less, you have limited time here. Use this to create more.
The quality of consumption is different for sure, but I would argue that certain areas of reddit are of high value to my job, hobbies, etc. and Moby Dick is of little value those areas and quality of life in general. You could perhaps make arguments about historical value, context, or benefits to reading comprehension, but at the end of the day, reading anything is about only as good as the information you're taking in.
I would argue that reading Moby Dick is of value to your quality of life in general. Good fiction speaks to the human condition and can help us live our lives more fully.
And it makes things richer just in your daily life to have some familiarity with history and the literary canon instead of being deaf to its influence all around you.
I will respectfully disagree that it leads to a more 'full life' for everyone. People have different perspectives, values, etc. and that type of experience is purely subjective. I personally think it's of some value, but not as much as some other content.
While I do agree with your first point, I think it's a bit .. obvious. Of course you need to create value in order to be great (or get rich).
Regarding the article, it doesn't match my experience. All the prolific creators I know (about) are prolific consumers as well. Writers are known to read a lot. The girl the author saw sketching on the bus probably loves looking at and reading about art and does it often as well as actually creating art.
The other issue is the amount of creative effort you can spend. For example, software engineering is a very creative job and often at the end of the day I just have no energy left to create more.
I think those of us with leisure time or "bullshit" work struggle with these questions, but I find that the consumption/creation dichotomy is the wrong approach. Arguably almost everything is consumptive in some capacity, from creating art (which is indulgent and pleasurable) to unnecessary programs (they're all unnecessary) or any other passtime. I would further reduce the problem to one of stimulus and desire. Execution and completion of tasks is in itself cognitively satisfying, that's in part why smartphone games can be so addictive, you can "fake" the experience in rapid fashion. The mechanism behind the dopamine release etc doesn't care about the context behind it, that is an existential problem. We like the flow experience. That can be "deep" work, or not.
The question of meaning behind our actions is one divorced from this, and obviously not so easily determined as whether or not an action is creative. Some of the most effective altruistic actions are boring. I'm of the type that has short bouts of investigative interest in certain topics, and that wanes, so I can't count on merely my "mood" to finish projects. I had read anecdotally that authors in particular seem to derive satisfaction from having completed a work, and find that driving themselves to finish it can be torturous. I feel that way about my projects.
Personally, it's a good day if I've "executed" and completed a lot at work. There is no objective reason why this ought to be better than those days where I struggle to finish a single assignment, but that is human nature. You can satisfy such a creature with social validation and the feedback of completing tasks, until maybe you broach the problem of meaning. I wonder how many of us in the future will spend most of our time dwelling in virtual worlds where nothing is real. If we do, then meaning is cheap.
> And in this current society, there is a huge buyer side trap, the whole idea of consumerism and social media is to trap you inside the buyer side, so you keep buying, you keep consuming.
Aside from bankruptcy, buying and selling are actually completely balanced in a modern market economy. Even “saving” money is actually best considered as selling it. Earning money is obviously selling your time and bodily energy (those are the only finite things you have that are inputs into the system).
Borrowing is selling your future money to someone who wants to take on the risk.
Wow, really great article. I think there is nuance to consumption as others have pointed out. Regardless, this article really resonated with me and I appreciate you bringing it into my perspective.
I think I've been adjusting my life style to that idea for a couple months now. Being alone without friends for a few years makes working much more fun then I remember. Great article.
I don't understand this worldview. I guess appreciating art or music, or bullshitting with friends, or just enjoying some time off with a beer and a movie is lumped into the evils of consumption?
And by replacing all of this filthy filthy idleness with endless creation just to be creating, we... achieve enlightenment?
I guess it seems like this author is driving himself to write and write not so much because he loves it or loves books or anything, but more out of a drive to discipline himself into working constantly
You're looking at it way too absolutely. The author's point wasn't to say you need to spend every waking minute creating and all other time is wasted. They/we should consider the ratio of time spent creating(and doing -- not all doing is creating), vs passively consuming. In the modern technological world, there are more ways to fill your entire existence with consumption than ever before. The point was to be conscious of that and achieve a balance, because creation/doing tends to have more lasting personal value.
The title is literally "Consume less, create more," not "Consume none, create always".
This is a fantastic article. While I agree with the author for the most part, its a fine line between not reading anything at all and only creating. After all the author has a signup page to receive more of his content. I don't think the author meant that you should not read anything at all. The takeaway for me is:-
1. Be conscious of what you are reading.
2. Realize the opportunity cost of what you are reading/watching.
3. Always be creating something.
If you keep reading murakami and Dan brown, sure you’re just juggling words for no real benefit. But if you’re gonna read the making of the atomic bomb, or team of teams, then maybe it’s not a wasteful exercise. Definitely better than writing if you ask me.
Disagree on this. I used to only read non-fiction, but these days, I feel like reading fiction (especially literary fiction) and having different experiences and empathizing with characters is more beneficial and relevant to my life in _general_ (obviously not always the case). Plus there are no limits to the realities that can be created in fiction, so there are some creative (and escapist) benefits there as well.
I'm not saying fiction is objectively more "beneficial" than non-fiction, I'm just saying the opposite isn't necessarily true either.
It’s as beneficial as listening to music or watching tv is. It’s not inherently more beneficial just because it involves books. No one said tv or music is bad for you and neither is fiction. Just remember it’s entertainment for the most part. Im yet to see someone become wiser because they consume a ton of fiction.
I agree on that, I would like to add that for some of the time, consuming helps us create better. Different kind of consuming activities actually have different leverage on creating value
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.
Something I think about is the desire to share especially when it's not done yet (ego satisfaction). I got into that cycle, sharing things that were like dreams before they even existed/noteworthy. "wouldn't it be cool if..."
Why do you want to become rich? Honest question. What problems are you trying to solve by becoming rich? And are there other ways to solve those problems?
You are in fact very right, but there is one critical issue here. If we are talking about marriage. Culturally there is a "lifespan" of value to both genders. A Man's valuable lifespan can be well over 20 years, from age 20 all the way to age 40.While a woman's valuable lifespan maybe only less than 10 years, from 20 to 30.
This is because of the "stake" people are seeking when looking for a marriage between genders. Women are seeking wealth, social status, personality and whatever it may take to maintain a stable marriage ( family).
While men, in most cases, are looking for prettiness, good-looking or whatever superficial. This kind of value lifespan and marriage purpose mismatch is the whole problem of marriage issues in China.
A divorced, less pretty (compare to those in 20s), mid-aged woman is very hard to find another marriage. Even if they did not even marry before, it is still hard for them.
A lot of women in China who are well-educated, well-paid, in their 30s still have problems in finding partners (This is what Chinese society called sheng nu, or "women that left behind":https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheng_nu).
Statistically speaking, women are indeed more than men, but the mating process is not statistic.
>Statistically speaking, women are indeed more than men, but the mating process is not statistic.
Now it would be fascinating if people could generate probability distributions that accurately describe social-economic systems/relationships like what I would say that you accurately describe quantitatively.
I doubt that this will ever work in countries other than China because women (and marriage) in other countries are mostly protected by law, while in china, women are not so well protected. Also, culturally speaking, a divorced woman is very hard to get marriage in China. While a divorced man is easy. In society, People think that "divorce" somehow depreciated the value of a woman, while "divorce" means nothing (sometimes positive thing) for a man. Also, after marriage, Chinese woman will not focus mostly on work or career promotion but rather on family, so in the long term, they are
1) financially attached to the husband
2) emotionally attached to the husband.
This makes them want to "fix" the marriage rather than abandon it, even if the fix is superficial and (maybe) temporary.
But as more and more young women (born after 80s and 90s) are married, this kind of issue may be mitigating. Because young women tend to be much well-educated and wealthy
All things being equal, yes women would have the upper hand.
But cultural norms warp things a little more. The cultural tendency is for a man to marry down, and a women marry up in social level terms.
Which means there's a layer of women near the top who can't find a husband. Particularly in professional careers. And the lowest social rung of men have no women to marry down.
This asymmetry means there's a band of powerful and successful women who don't normally find husbands. They become China's "leftover women", who have basically given up on the idea of marriage beyond the age of 27. One recent solution here is these women look abroad for suitable husbands. Despite being negged annually, the social stigma of not marrying up takes many options away from women.
I always find it strange how we make it seem like mate criteria is sacrosanct and beyond critique.
I get that norms are strong. But in tech, we are constantly asked to question norms all the time and at times, deliberately counterbalance them. Surely we should also question social norms that inform our thinking in finding a mate? Especially if the person is having trouble finding someone suitable.
If I were to say to you I had trouble finding a woman, I don't think people here would say, "hey you should look at dating someone overseas." I think people might suggest opening my scope to other ethnicities/body types/meeting opportunities.
China's "leftover women: [the phrase] is part of an orchestrated state campaign to push “high-quality” women into marriage and having children. The phenomenon of “leftover women” was actually created by the Chinese government through a “very aggressive state media campaign.”
The problem has been named and created, whereas the initial reality was different.
No, because even though there may be fewer young, attractive women due to the policy there are still hardly any wealthy, single men, comparatively speaking.
Did you read the article? Men in China institute the vast majority of divorces, and they usually keep the house (even if the women helped pay for it), the children, the money, and the higher earning potential. This isn't women unfairly taking all of men's resources, this is women being left homeless when their husbands find another partner.
In contrast, men in the US get custody as much as women when they pursue it. And while I won't argue about the exact proportion of money that is kept by the man and the woman, neither party is left homeless and jobless.
So your comment seems like a false equivalence to me. Furthermore, even if the Western situation is biased against men, that doesn't make China's system any more acceptable. Two wrongs don't make a right, after all.
The divorce rate in the USA is nowhere near that high. It peaked at around 60% in the 80s and has fallen to below 50% since then.
There is a reason many woman want the apartment in their name as a co owner before they get married: otherwise they'll have no recourse on divorce. Even if they helped pay for it, they need their name there or they have no rights. This is how it is in China, relatively simple. As for parental rights, lots of moms never see their kids again as they go to live with the husband's family, same problems, different victims!
> The divorce rate in the USA is nowhere near that high. It peaked at around 60% in the 80s and has fallen to below 50% since then.
I should have stated that better. Historically, in America, from the late 19th Century until the present, women have filed the majority of divorces; approximately two thirds, regardless of prevalent economic circumstances.
This is a big one, a lot of Amazon is designed around making it really easy to make impulsive purchases. One-click purchases? One-day/same-day delivery? The myriad of suggested/related items on every page between search and checkout? I can see where there'd be a big drop of orders that would never be placed again.
Out of all the criticisms of Singapore, the most mentioned is the lack of free speech/media.
But if you have lived in Singapore for a while you will probably find that this is not the case.
It does not even affect most people's life in a tiny bit (unless you are into politics). And certainly Singapore is not 1984 stuff. People are really happy here.
Besides that, some of the "free speech" online are actually either falsified or in very explicit languages specifically targeted at raising culture hatred, and hatred towards foreign immigrants. They are not targeted at solving problems
Somehow, the reason that keeps people leaving Singapore is not the lack of free speech, but something else. Most of my foreign friends from University had left Singapore, either to US or China. For them, the biggest problem seems to be high living cost, no space for personal development and no job satisfaction. How to retain these talents may be a bigger issue here
I have nothing against Singapore, but that's kind of the whole point of free speech -- the ability to discuss all ideas that can alter society.
I suppose a society where those in charge are all benevolent could get by without it for a long time, but eventually I would expect a disconnect between the perceptions of the government and the needs of the people that can scarcely be solved with free speech, but almost certainly not without it.
Since I'm just reasoning aboit generalizations, I'll ask, how does Singapore work around this problem?
I was in Singapore in 2015 and stumbled upon a gay pride rally. IIRC it was a group called _The Pink Dot_ and they had a park filled with hundreds of people wearing pink shirts. The pamphlets said this was legal for Singaporeans (non-residents could watch but were technically banned from participation :-P)
Things are changing there slowly. They do technically censor their Internet (it's illegal to view porn, but if you stumble on it without downloading it, that's legal...or something). I think they gave up on their porn filter years ago. Their level of censorship is way below the level of the UK!
With all that said, the nation is highly progressive in other areas. All the trains are fully automated, no drivers. They can run 24/7. Cars are exceedingly expensive. A permit for buying a car is done on a bidding system and the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) can run between $50k ~ $70k (that's not including the cost of the car or registration). This keeps pollution, smog and emissions down to a minimum. (The COEs are only good for 10 years. A used 5 year extension costs the same as a new car COE, so most ditch their cars after 10 years. It does create an insane amount of consumerism/waste though .. Singapore is the largest car exporter in the world).
I suggest visiting and spending two weeks there. The Adler Lunary Hostel is reall nice and central. It's a really interesting place.
I am not sure also. Singapore is not old enough currently to see any discontinuity between government's percetion and people's true needs. But I think "lack of free speech" is not the same as dictatorship. Singapore still allows multiple political party, and democratic elections. It is just that the PAP is too strong that no other party has the equaling power to win people's votes
This definitely makes sense. My dad worked in Singapore for a couple of years two decades ago, and he said back then "there just wasn't that much there" even though it was already an economic powerhouse. I had a great time there as a tourist during a one-day layover but I got the same impression, and I don't think I would have enjoyed more than a couple of days.
I'm having a hard time articulating my point but I think what I mean is that even as a megacity Singapore can feel somewhat small or shallow, compared to a city like Hong Kong for instance.
> Singapore is not 1984 stuff. People are really happy here.
In "Nineteen-Eightyfour", there are very few discontents. Everybody else is thrilled by chocolate rations being increased or foaming at the mouth during the hate sessions. The whole point of impoverishing language and thought after all is to make people unable to even see the condition they're in, which comes after they ceased to be able to talk about it.
Since totalitarianism is about the extinguishing of humans as humans (beings that act and are unpredictable, instead of mere cogs which react predictably), there is really nothing to write about the core of it, which is basically necrotic tissue. The only remaining thoughts and actions (that deserve those titles) occur outside or at the fringe of it. Which is why the book is about the exception, people who are still persons, and their process of getting broken. Everybody else either got already broken, or was born broken. They don't need to be killed because they don't live to begin with.
This is not directed at you or Singapore, if anything I feel it applies more to the West, but just as a general thought: Just because you feel happy and safe doesn't have to mean you don't live in a dystopia, it might just mean you're not enough of a threat to it to have it uncloak for you, or that you are even are aligned with it's pathology, either by chance or by having been groomed. We should judge societies and people by how they treat the vulnerable and innocent, not how they treat us, is what I'm trying to say. Again, this is a general thought, I don't know jack about Singapore.
One of the things I've noticed are the various tiers in how people migrate (those with the wherewithal to do so).
Village -> Urban location -> Metropolitan City.
Those unhappy in well developed Metropolitan cities are usually due to government policies, political trends, CoL, etc. They are likely to move across the country or to an entirely different developed nation (US, EU, etc).
Some return on seeing how policies are stacked against migrants, many endure to see the same cycle go on – They move for better education, kids move out for college, etc.
Humans are inherently migratory, meaningless borders keep us stuck at a particular place.
This article inspired me on two things :
1) Lots of the things I do in everyday life is just to consume: buying, watching, following, etc. These things either consume my money, or my time. These things make me feel good, but it does not generate real value. In order to get rich, I need to create things. I also start to realize that great people are great because they started to create things at a very early stage of their life (but not consuming things as they advocate, think about celebrities, entrepreneurs etc), so they are able to practice and perfect the value creating skills to the extreme.
2) I start to realize that the world is binary in nature : I create to sell, I buy to consume. I either at the buyer side, or at the seller side. And in this current society, there is a huge buyer side trap, the whole idea of consumerism and social media is to trap you inside the buyer side, so you keep buying, you keep consuming. I really need to break free from this trap.
This blog post was written before COVID-19, but the idea feels even fresher during this pandemic era