[fizzledbits]

To my mind that isn’t a meaningful distinction. If an artist is doing no harm, and is meanwhile enthralled by his work and his individual notions of beauty or truth or excellence, then I admire his vitality. I don’t know what OP does, but I similarly appreciate his passion.

I do believe that much of the heat he’s taking is from people projecting their own insecurity and lack of fulfillment, or some other form of jealousy. I suspect that, because I used to be ashamed to feel that sickly, condescending impulse in myself, before I had found a purpose (I.e. a domain of application) for my engineering work that I believe in. I used to have the usual bifurcation of work versus life, and y’know what? Turns out it can get a lot fking better! If OP isn’t hurting anyone, more power to him.

[tarsinge]

> I do believe that much of the heat he’s taking is from people projecting their own insecurity and lack of fulfillment, or some other form of jealousy.

Are you new here? A lot of us in this community have found fulfillment and happiness through the opposite mindset of OP. Compounded by his tone it’s not a surprise he’s taking heat.

> If OP isn’t hurting anyone, more power to him.

OP wants to “win”, which is usually a way to say he wants to be above others.

[fizzledbits]

When athletes speak in a competitive tone and express a desire to win, does it offend you?

[tarsinge]

First I'm not offended. This is of course not comparable with athletes because athletes compete in a game with a clear defined goal. In real life there is no goal to win. And if you set your own personal goal to maximize your own wealth (which I have no problem with btw), then at least it's basic economy understanding that it's not a zero sum game, you don't win at the expense of others, that any trade is for the mutual benefit of the parties, and that your wealth also depend on the wealth of the society as a whole (otherwise obviously your money would just be a piece of paper). You earn money because you provide value to people.

But I can understand how working as a derivative trader with one big number to increase like in a video game can narrow your perspectives, to the point of having the pretention of being a winner on top of that.

[fizzledbits]

I still don’t understand the derision. An athlete is indeed a useful analog. They speak of ‘winning,’ but we tend to assume they mean ‘be the best at the sport,’ not ‘be the most valuable human being’ or ‘dominate other people’, a sentiment I didn’t automatically project onto OP. Even in a real life arena where wealth isn’t conserved, you can still ‘win’ in the sense of increasing it faster than anyone else, and I didn’t automatically assume OP meant otherwise. Finally, I don’t understand why it’s wrong let alone distasteful for OP to form a psychological relationship to his labor similar to an athlete’s, even if his work isn’t a game, if that works for him; how is he beholden to anyone else’s idea of what ought to make him happy? Your point of view appears to me to boil down to “I specifically don’t like derivatives traders,” or some other gut-level attitude, which would be fair enough on its own and might find easy agreement with me were it not being rationalized in this way.

[lagg]

Well I'll say one thing about the "heat", I didn't expect this thread to get so noisy and thought my post was going to defuse it so now I regret that. I thought I was being nice.

Anyway, speaking of projection. I'm not the one that said a single thing about domain or work-life balance. You're making up stuff in your brain based on your just-stated tendency towards a false sense of superiority. Which is funny given the point of my damned original post.

Whatever. I give up. I'm only here because the site for and by hackers doesn't have an account delete button.

[fizzledbits]

> “I think the downvotes (that's what gray means right?) are people's way of saying that the personal narrative that defines your life is so boring that your job is the only place you can achieve feelings like that. I feel bad for you so won't downvote.“

Okay... Maybe it came out not as intended, or maybe I misinterpreted it, but this statement shocked me with its (in my interpretation) condescension. “So boring”, ”I feel bad for you,” being I suppose the key phrases. What I had recalled was my own former inferiority complex, of which I believed I saw an echo in your post and many others’ responses. It no longer occurs to me to feel offense (as in many other comments) or pity (as in yours) when someone else speaks in a competitive tone of a singleminded desire to “win,” whatever winning happens to mean to them, and I now regard such reactions as irrational and egocentric, whatever internal mechanism they arise from. To illustrate, I’d predict many of the commenters would to varying degrees celebrate an athlete expressing himself in a similar manner (the most famous example I guess being Muhammad Ali, but there are many other such personalities in individual and team sports), and I believe that is primarily because athletes are in a profession they don’t identify with and therefore cannot locate any basis on which to feel either psychologically threatened or in any other way contrast with their own choices. But I may still be missing nuance in your individual comment.

Both the OC and your assumption that he is “handing [his] life over to the guy [he] works for” seem to me to be speaking pretty squarely of the popular notion of work-life balance. Perhaps I’m again missing some nuance there.

Anyhow, it’s not important. Hope you have a nice week.