[Nition]

> From a spiritual perspective, there are only two career paths one can take: farmer or artisan. Anything else unavoidably involves doing evil or is essentially meaningless.

I thought this was a beautiful statement; something to really help us think about what we're trying to do here on Earth. But personally I would add Artist to this. Painter, sculptor, musician, writer, poet, and so on. We need those too.

Edit: As others have reminded me below, service work like doctor, firefighter, teacher must qualify as well.

[NoBeardMarch]

I disagree, it is not significant at all if you think about the implications here for more than a couple of seconds.

A poet needs his pen and paper. Someone needs to man the paper-mills and ink-factories, someone needs to work on logistics and planning issues related to that, infrastructure etc.

It's a completely meaningless statement.

[anonymous908213]

Now, now, there's some meaning to it. The meaning is that stating it allows the author to feel morally superior to the rest of us "liars, thieves, fornicators, murderers, and cheats".

[DrewADesign]

Yes, I’m so glad this incredible philosopher’s months-long thought experiment let him discover that becoming a gentleman farmer elevated him above the petty moral hazards and trite meaningless existences of fucking doctors, nurses, firefighters, pilots, social workers, journalists, artists, EMTs, school teachers, engineers, scientists, monks, academics, etc. etc. etc.

Bet you ten bucks he spent a few solid months playing Stardew Valley before this grand moral awakening.

[wolvesechoes]

> A poet needs his pen and paper

They doesn't. People did poetry for a long time.

[NoBeardMarch]

A pedantic point. Even in a non-industrialized tribal society an oral poet needs a mud house, sandals and various tools. Someone needs to make those, probably the poet themselves.

[wolvesechoes]

> Someone needs to make those, probably the poet themselves.

In that case the whole labor division and economic incentives kinda disappear, right?

[Peroni]

Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Fire fighters... I can think of an endless list of service based career paths that involve no evil, and are immensely meaningful.

[theragra]

Weird how different people can look at things. For me, since my teenage years, statements like this feel fake and almost evil.

Why I feel this? Because it is a way for people to convince themselves they are pure and kind. People reason that the big bad evil world with evil things and professions can go to hell, and "I won't participate in this". Nice way to lie to yourself.

If you think deeper, you inevitably get a conclusion that if you have talents, you can do real good at a scale. It might be not as fulfilling, and it includes compromises, but amount of good you can do is tenfold or even several orders of magnitude.

In our modern complex world, you can try and see far consequences of your actions or inaction. For example, you can earn western SDE salary, and donate 80% to good causes. It might not be as nice as quiet country life, but it would help a lot of people or animals. That's what my friend is doing. He overdid it, sure, and burned out, but you can always find a balance.

What bothers me is that thing people who downshift into some traditional lifestyle easily do. They somehow feel like 8 billion people can live like that or close to it.

But that will cause insane downgrade of quality of life where it does matter. I'm not talking about consumerism or even experiental consumerism like travel.

Healthcare, child mortality ratez, food safety, and personal safety will be in a downfall without modern institutions, hierarchies and professions. It might be hard and often not fulfilling to be a doctor, or even a programmer. But even programmer can help create things that allow others to connect one with other (internet and phone networks), to get entertainment where options are very limited (games, movies for old people or people with disabilities). For example, my mom uses her smart speaker to provide her music and really enjoys it.

Without it, she barely used CDs because of the friction of buying, storing and inserting it. Same with movies, she now gets to the point where she watches movies on a streaming platform. She eat he'd nothing except TV when we had VCR and DVDs because of the friction of using it.

All this is possible because of some programmers and other IT people. She also enjoys social networks to some extent, and reads stuff in web. Sure, books also do, but she is limited be ause she lives in an area with not many books available in her native language.

Modern civilization has many issues, but still a lot of benefits that are not possible if everybody would be a farmer or an artisan. Also, artisan stuff is too expensive. And same for eco farming.

[n4r9]

It strikes me as an over-simplification. What about doctors, therapists, firefighters, teachers, bricklayers, scientists etc... ?

[thinkingemote]

We do need art but do people need to choose that as their career path? Traditionally perhaps, was an artist part time, was art made communally as leisure?

Some had rich patrons and there were travelling bands of entertainers...

[Nition]

True, I'm thinking of it more like, these are some things that are positive and will benefit yourself and the world. Certainly you can mix multiple.

[exitb]

What about the people that developed and maintained the tech needed to deliver this message?

[apsurd]

i take artisan to mean the same as your meaning

[Nition]

I wondered that, but many definitions of Artisan have a utilitarian slant.

[6LLvveMx2koXfwn]

indeed, an artist is just a middle class artisan!