Coronavirus, Capitalism, and the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

Content warning: this post gets a little dark by moments, so if you're not in the right frame of mind, maybe read it later, or don't read it at all.

The pandemic crisis is prompting a lot of reflection about the dysfunctions of a capitalist system, which I guess is a good thing, though I'm pessimistic about much in the way of positive change. The richer classes are finally like -- "wait -- my food and well-being depends on these people! Are they OK? What if something happens to them?!"

Often when I think about the dysfunction of capitalism, I think about the short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," by Ursula Le Guin. The story describes a beautiful well-functioning town in which almost everyone is well and happy, but in which all the good things depend on the utter misery of one small child -- a child who is forever locked in small basement room in squalid conditions and constant suffering.

People talk about the various justifications and injustices of capitalism in many ways, but one common one has to do with overall prosperity: more wealth is created by capitalism than in alternative systems, it is argued, and this wealth improves people's lives. Here the details get a little fuzzy, about whether that wealth has to improve everyone's lives or what exactly.

From a practical point of view, I think it's fair to say that if actual contemporary western capitalism creates wealth, it is doing so in a system that relies on horrible and exploitative conditions for many. It's never been a secret that agricultural workers, people who work elsewhere in the food supply chain, cleaners, gig economy workers, and others work long, long hours in sometimes brutal conditions for little pay -- often working multiple jobs. One of the wake-up calls of the pandemic has been that carers in nursing homes are working multiple jobs at various homes, just to make ends meet, thus increasing the likely spread of disease. And we've written on this blog of the way that modern electronics production relies on getting minerals in exploitative and violent conditions.

How the denizens of modern capitalism frame their faith in overall prosperity with the existence of this suffering and violation of rights has always interested me. The situation is obviously complex, but I think one possibility has to do with the ways that various values create small shifting zones of coherence and acceptability. Inside these little zones things seem to work OK, which makes us forget that things are really not OK at a deeper level.

For example, with respect to the social contract in modern capitalism, I expect that many people who believe in the importance of prosperity/overall GDP/economic growth also endorse some informal version of the following: those who work hard at a full-time job should be able to support themselves or maybe even a family; those at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder should be able to improve their situation with care and hard work; wages should reflect a fair wage for the work involved. Put more abstractly: people care not only about prosperity but also about fairness, equality, and expressions of mutual respect.

One thing that happens in everyday capitalism, I think, is that in certain small zones and in the experience of certain people, the system seems to make these values come together. If your parent came to the US from a life of poverty in Europe in the early 20th century and worked hard to send you to good schools, and you prospered from the contingencies of the 1950s to rise up to the middle-class, then from one perspective it looks like it all comes together: the society's prosperity goes along with the opportunities that the individual takes advantage of; rewards follow.

As is often discussed, this little zone of coherence is just that -- a little zone. For many people, it doesn't work this way at all. They work harder and harder and wages drop; ill health brings catastrophe despite best efforts; racism and discrimination radically diminish options and possibilities.

In this sense, the middle class and those who are even more well-off are somewhat like the denizens of Omelas: we're in a good situation made possible by someone else's horrible situation. Some defenders of capitalism are even kind of explicit about it, arguing against universal basic income on grounds that poor people will then be less motivated to do the crappy jobs that society needs someone to do.

When I talk about capitalism being morally dysfunctional in this way, sometimes my interlocutors are shocked, and they point out to me the horrors of alternative systems. But I think the one doesn't exclude the other. Even if capitalism is the best system out there, it can still be radically unethical. Sometimes in life you have no good options. And even if it is the case that other systems are worse -- then it's even more important for us to talk about the wrongnesses of our system so we can at least try to mitigate them or something.

In the Le Guin story, the residents all learn about the existence of the child in misery during their adolescence, and some go to see the child in person. Most weep and rage but realize they can't do anything about it and go back to normal life. Others, though, do not go back to normal life. What they do is walk away. Le Guin says, "The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas."

Like Le Guin, I can't imagine what it would mean to walk away from modern capitalism. In most basic literal terms, an alternative physical space would either be engaging in more capitalism, by buying up land, or infringing on the rights of other people whose land it is. In my darker moments, I fear that to walk away from Omelas would require ending my existence altogether.

But I try to remind myself: we're not in a fictional story land where the fates have decreed that our well-being and our failings are locked together forever, with our happiness inherently resting on others' suffering. We're in the real world, where things are complicated and confusing and can often be changed.

As the pandemic forces people to confront the situation of essential and vulnerable workers, let's remember that there are a lot of people for whom capitalism leads not to opportunity but to misery. Let's keep in mind that caring about overall economic growth and prosperity means facing up to this fact rather than getting to ignore it.

I fear that keeping these things in mind is going to get harder and not easier in the near future, as economies contract, business close, and times get tough. But we have to do it -- because unlike the people in the story, we don't have the option of walking away.

What Happened To Our Work-Free Utopia?

Happy Arcadia, by Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky, via Wikimedia Commons

Remember the idea that technology was going to lead us to a work-free utopia?  What happened?

The idea sounded good.  With machines more and more able to do crap like washing clothes and planting food and whatever, we'd all be able to sit back and relax. I guess everyone has a different mental picture of what "sit back and relax" means, but whatever:  you could pretty much do what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it -- whether that would be lazing around, participating in Mixed Martial Arts, making art, or reading Proust.

It's not a crazy thought.  I mean, it has logic.  If work is doing boring repetitive stuff, and technology does that stuff for you, why can't you spend the technology dividend however you like?

But obviously, it isn't happening.  People are working and working and working and working.  So, WTF? 

Complex problem, obvs.  Here are a few guesses.

1.  The work-free utopia idea seriously underestimates what it takes for people to be satisfied. 

It's easy to think there's some finite bit of stuff that has to get done for your "needs" to be satisfied and then after that you're basically good to go.  In my experience, though, that's not what people are like at all.  Their dissatisfactions are endless.  If you think once they have three nutritious meals and a nice room they're going to sit quietly, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.

2.  The work-free utopia idea seriously underestimates people's needs. 

It's not just that people have an infinite capacity for dissatisfaction.  If that were all, presumably we could find some way of altering ourselves, some SOMA-like drug that would make us more able to enjoy a quiet evening of wholesome activities.  But in fact, just treating illness and injury so that everyone can live to a reasonable age has turned out to be fantastically expensive. 

Often you read about a new drug that helps with some terrible illness and costs an unbelievable sum.  It's nice to think that if could just quiet the dissatisfactions, then in the utopia you'd just need some robust crops to be able to get along.  But no:  the preventable deaths of young people are among the worst things going.  They can't be part of any utopia.  And yet, preventing those deaths requires massive investment.

3.  "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

That's a quote from Pascal, who knew what he was talking about.  It's an uncomfortable thought, but maybe we like this absurd way of life and even being forced into it.  I remember reading once a book for new parents --  I've never had kids myself, so I was reading as an outsider -- and being quite surprised by the passion with which some parents described intentionally staying late at work, taking the long way home, and dawdling in the car, all to delay the time at which they would arrive home. 

Even if working isn't utopia, maybe not working isn't utopia either.

The Earthling Experience: Can I Get A Refund?

If you watched Star Trek TNG, you know that superhuman Q also regarded the human condition as an outrage.

Life is not what I wanted it to be.  I don't mean my life:  my life is almost perfect, given the parameters of human existence.  It's the parameters of human existence I'd like to lodge a complaint about.

I was hoping for something like The Sonny and Cher Show on LSD and meth.  What we've got is like The Biggest Loser hosted by Dr. Phil.  Dear Sirs, Can I get a refund on The Earthling Experience?

Just as a start, the physical apparatus is incredibly crude.  Not only are we absurdly fragile, needy, and physically weak, but even the most basic elements of the design frequently malfunction. 

You ever go to the physical therapist and have them haul out that fake skeleton to explain why your shoulder/back/elbow is bothering you?  I imagine your first thought is not "Gee, how could that get screwed up??"  It's more like "Wait, that's how it's supposed to work?"  I always end up leaving grateful and surprised that the rest of my body has functioned so relatively well for so long.

Then the whole pain thing is so stupid.  Are you telling me there's no way to motivate us to avoid things that would be better than this moronic yes-no system, a system that uses no thought, and that requires actual suffering?  What are we, animals? 

The pleasure idea is OK in principle, I guess.  But why is it implemented so stingily?  The hedonic treadmill ensures that even if you like something -- even if you like something AND it's good for you -- the pleasure you get from it will dwindle and fade. 

And the pleasures of life are so much paler and more fleeting than they have to be.  Evidence for this comes from first-person reports of drug users, who pretty much universally report pleasure that is way more intense and way sturdier than any sober pleasures.

Why so fucking stingy with the pleasures, Earthling Experience?

Arching over all of these is the Great Boredom Dilemma.  If you don't have what you need and want, you're dissatisfied.  But if you do have what you need and want, you're bored.  I remember as a kid being really confused by the idea of any kind of utopia.  I saw early that many of my most pleasant moments involved trying to do things and learning to do things.  But in a utopia, wouldn't you be able to do all the things you wanted to do?  Would utopia be a place in which I was trying to learn how to play the piano and frustrated by my failures?  Or would it be a place in which I could play effortlessly just as I wanted to, with no struggle at all?  Neither seemed to me particularly utopian.  The problems just seem inherent in being human.

OK, now these are my views.  And I am aware that there are people who do not share them.  They do not feel this way about human existence.  Sure, they hate pain and suffering as much as the next person.  But as long as their basic needs are being met, they find in human existence a source of contentment and happiness.  They bask in their pleasures, fret mildly about their frustrations, and don't worry about things that drive me crazy, like the ridiculous finitude of life.

These people do not want a refund on the The Earthling Experience.  Sometimes, when I'm in a difficult mood, I find myself wondering:  should I be more like these people?  To put it less contentiously, would it be better if the world were more full of people like these people and less filled with people like me?  I mean, if the earth can only support life for such-and-so many people, doesn't it make sense to ensure that the ones who arrive and the ones who are likely to have a satisfying experience?  To put it more contentiously, should there be people like me?

It's interesting to me how little philosophical attention there's been to the question of what we humans should be like (notable exception here).  I mean, there's a lot of answers to the more limited question, Given that we are human and thus have such-and-so qualities, what are the virtues we ought to foster and promote or the rules we ought to follow or the aims we ought to have or whatever.  But there are larger and more destabilizing questions lurking nearby.  What should we aim to be?  Should we even aim to be human?

I don't have a full answer, but obviously, I think there should be people like me:  people who don't have the serenity to accept the things they cannot change, and who frankly, wouldn't want such a thing; people who have complaints about the human set up; people who cannot accept the Positive Thinking Party Line. 

For one thing, maybe we're right:  maybe things suck and the rest of you are brainwashed.  For another, wouldn't earth be boring if we weren't around?

The Harmony Myth Of Human Nature

I took this a couple of years ago at a bookstore near my home.

Sometimes it happens when you're watching Oprah at the gym or reading some advice columnist while surfing the net.  Sometimes it happens when you're just trying to mind your own business but someone starts talking to you and you can't run away.

It starts when a person is talking about how it's "OK" that their dog died or that yours did or that their sister got sick or that they lost their job.  And they'll say that it's OK because, really, at the end of the day "everything happens for a reason."

And you'll be like, "Wait. What?"

I was going to say that this is a version of the "just-world fallacy," which is "a cognitive bias in which people believe that the world they live in is one in which actions have appropriate and predictable consequences" (thank you, Wikipedia).

But if you think about it, it's not so much a "just world" fallacy as a "utopian world" fallacy.  Because when people say that everything happens for a reason, they usually don't mean that bad stuff happened because a person deserved something bad to happen.  They mean the much more radical idea that what seems like "bad" stuff is actually good, and will reveal itself to be so in some unspecified "long run."

It's easy to make fun of the utopian world fallacy.  But I think it has a close cousin belief that is harder to ferret out -- and even more widespread.  This is what I call the "harmony myth" of human nature. This is the idea that that there is some naturally coherent way to put your life together so that all the pieces will fall into place.

If you can just get things properly organized and get yourself free of weird addictions and neurotic attitudes, so the thinking goes, there'll be no more cravings for doughnuts and quarter-pounders and no more lolling around the internet, looking for the latest Snooki news.  Instead, you'll be dying for organic carrot juice and spending all your free time taking free online physics courses or informing yourself about the history of the Balkans.

I might notice the harmony myth more than other people, because it is contrary to one of my most deeply held convictions about the good life:  that it is, at bottom, a series of trade-offs.

The reason to eat more carrots and fewer doughnuts isn't that carrots are inherently good and doughnuts inherently bad; it's just that there are other things you want, like health, that happen to be hampered by too many doughnuts.  If you're just waiting for things in your life to get organized so that the doughnut desires go away, trust me:  you'll be dead before that happens.

I was so pleased recently to hear Peter Sagal say on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell! me a couple of weeks ago that the one lesson kids would learn from having apples as a compulsory half of the french fry portion of a Happy Meal was how much better french fries are than apples.  Because that is true.  But it doesn't matter.  It's only if you're in the grip of the harmony myth that you'd think that nutritiousness and tastiness have to be tightly correlated.

Two manifestations of the harmony myth particularly drive me nuts.  One is in education.  I often hear parents telling me how important it is that learning in school be "fun" and what a failure it is when it's not.  And I tell them:  sure, it should sometimes be fun.  But it isn't always going to be fun.  And isn't that an important part of what kids are learning in school?  That you can do things you don't particularly feel like doing, in order to reap some longer term reward?  Isn't that lesson the foundation of achieving stuff?

The other is in the whole "cook fresh meals at home" movement.  I have no quibble with the idea that it is good to cook fresh meals at home.  It is.  But why on earth this massive pretense that cooking at home is actually more fun and pleasant than going out or getting take-out?  I'm sure there are exceptions, but for many people, cooking is boring, repetitive, and kind of stressful.  And when you're done, there are pots and pans and dishes to clean.

Why not call a spade a spade, and say, Fun, Maybe Not, but Worth Doing, Obviously.

Once you get rid of the utopian myth you realize that coherence in life isn't about magical harmony, but rather about making sensible tradeoffs and compromises.  Cake for breakfast on Christmas:  fine. Cake for breakfast everyday:  insanity.

It's tempting to do a little armchair psychology about why people fall into the harmony myth trap. But I'll limit myself to just one comment.  As the end product of millions of years of evolution that proceeded by survival of random mutations, how could we fail to be anything but a patchwork of varying drives, tastes, needs, and appetites? 

It just wouldn't make any sense that we'd be anything else.

Are There Babes In A Feminist Utopia?

Short answer:  I hope so.

I took a flight on Porter Airlines yesterday.  Maybe you know, Porter is all about the style.  They got the elegant and comfy waiting area.  They got the free espresso, snacks, and bottled water.  They got the cute raccoon character in their ads:

And they have the most amazing flight attendants:

I love this sort of thing.  Elegance and beauty transforms my mood and the whole way I feel about human existence.

Actually I was reflecting on this the other day when I read the New Yorker story about Steve Jobs, and how he was kind of an asshole.  One of the items described how he obsessed over the fonts in the headings area of the Mac user experience, making his staff redo them like 17 times. 

This really resonated with me, because when I'm using my Mac I often look at things like fonts and think to myself, "Ah, now isn't that lovely."  I'm like the perfect consumer for this kind of mania.  Just the other day the latest OS update radically improved the way the Times New Roman font looks in the "Pages" software.  The update gave me a couple of glitches, but did I mind?  No.  I'm like, "People, would you look at that font?"  

So yesterday I was there, sipping my espresso out of a lovely ceramic cup and I started reflecting on those flight attendants.  Because these women -- they look amazing.  And I have to say, it's a real pleasure to me to see them.

Philosophers are trained and socialized to ask annoying questions, even of themselves, and so found myself wondering, So, is that a guilty pleasure?

Because obviously there's a certain connection between these elegant uniforms and anti-feminism.  These women are on display, being valued for their physical attributes and ability to wear certain kinds of clothes, even while they're doing the ultra serious work of keeping passengers safe.  Isn't that just what feminism tries to eliminate? 

Just so, yes.  But there's a difference between being valued only, or primarily, for your appearance and being valued for your appearance along with lots of other things.  And there's a difference between being able to decide, for real, to participate in something like this in a way that makes it fun, and having it forced down your throat.  And there's a difference between a world that values only women's appearances and not men's.

So let me float this idea -- an idea that sometimes comes up in feminist scholarship.  There's nothing inherently wrong with the female beauty on display thing, even when it's being used, like this, in a commercial setting.  What makes it wrong, when it is, is that it plays into certain extremely common stereotypes, forms of discrimination and control, and occasions for inequality. 

If this is right, the male version of babes on display wouldn't raise many difficulties -- assuming, of course, the men aren't being exploited because of race or class or whatever.  And you know, I think this is right.  I live in a gay neighborhood, and the men who live around me seem to love to go out looking good, to love to look great while they're on the job, to love being a kind of a babe. 

If you could have a world free of sexism, of all the -isms -- a feminist utopia, indeed -- we could all be free to enjoy beauty, style, and spectacle without having to feel like we're letting down the side.  So, yeah, there would be babes in a feminist utopia.  Female, male, intersex, trans ... babes of all kinds.

After I thought all this, I was checked in for my flight by a Porter airlines guy.  And you know, he was just as elegant and beautiful as the women.

The only thing that gives me pause about this is, Does it suck to have to dress up for work in this particular way?  I hope not.  But you'd have to get that information from the horse's mouth.

Sex In The House Of Holes: Cute Or Sad?

I just finished reading Nicholson Baker's House of Holes.  Maybe you know, it's a novel about a sexual theme park.  Not just dildos and 360 porn movies, but rather a place you can go and exchange genitalia in a "crotchal transfer," or trade your arm for a larger dick, or have sex with just the arm the guy forfeited in the exchange. 

I like Nicholson Baker's work a lot.  He wrote the highly amusing U and I, which chronicles his obsession with John Updike; Vox, which is the transcript of a very long phone sex conversation between a nice guy and a nice girl; and The Fermata, which is about a guy who learns how to stop time for everyone else but do as he pleases while no one knows.

Many images from The Fermata have stuck with me for years.  Especially vivid is a scene in which Our Hero talks to a taxi driver, who says that if he could stop time, he would force a woman down, lubricate her with black grease from NAPA auto parts, and have his way with her.  Our Hero is appalled.  In addition to being appalled, though, he's disappointed by the fact of how little he and the taxi driver have in common.  We want, he says, to think other people are like us.  I think that is true.

In The Fermata and Vox, the characters have a distinctly Bakerian style.  The guys are Good Guys with Large Libidos and a Wholesome Attitude Toward Life.  They want to have a good time; they want their partners to have a good time, too; and even when they have kinks and obsessions they are good-natured and cheerful about them.  The Bakerian women are GGG for sure, but they're also not shy about saying No, Sorry, That's Not For Me.

So that's  . . .  nice. 

To some extent the same nice atmosphere pervades House of Holes.  But when you think "sexual theme park" -- well, when I think "sexual theme park" -- you tend to think not just adventure but also something utopian.  Like, if it's a theme park, you can get right to the really good things without any anxieties, fears, or whatever getting in the way.

And it is like that, in some ways.  There's lots of funny, good-natured sex.  The woman who has sex with the forfeited arm is very satisfied, and eventually gets to meet the owner and return the arm.  That's cute.  There are lots of funny puns and names, like when a guy calls his dick his "Malcolm Gladwell."  Also, cute.

But for a theme park, there are some surprises.  Most surprising to me was the the fact that it's expensive.  Men have to pay.  A lot.  And if they can't cough up the cash, they have to perform some service.  Like the man with a nice body and ugly face: he has to do time as a headless man -- desired, of course, by the women who want to have hot sex with a guy without being sized up, criticized, found to be too fat, whatever.  With no head, the guy can't even see you.

Expensive? A theme park?  What is up with that?

I was also surprised by the rules and punishments.  One man isn't supposed to put his finger  -- well, never mind.  But he does.  And I don't remember, but I think he gets his dick taken away or something.  This, mind you, not because the woman in question didn't want, but somehow just because it was some rule about how his involvement was supposed to be structured.

Maybe there is some deep point lurking here about sex, cost, and inevitable sacrifice.  I'm not sure.  In any case, it's a little sad. 

Also, surprisingly heterosexual, the House of Holes.  This is also a little sad.

My favorite thing in the book is the "Deprivos," who haven't been allowed to see nude breasts for three full weeks.  After doing their time, they line up in the places that naked women are likely to be, dying for a glimpse.  After a ride on the "pussyboard" on the White Lake -- known for its magic rejuvenating powers of clitoral healing -- some women feels so good they want sex immediately. Fortunately, there's a line of Deprivos, at the edge of the lake, just waiting.

A group of people, in a highly appreciative and uncritical mood, eagerly awaiting your appearance, anticipating your arrival, and really happy to see you.  It's a pleasant thought.

The Five Stages Of Nitrous Oxide

Mondrian was a great utopian.  This is his Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow, 1930.

I had nitrous at the dentist the other day.  For me, nitrous mostly changes a frightening and painful experience into a fun opportunity to take legal drugs.

But then it always leaves me wondering:  why isn't more of life like being high?  And why do drugs have to leave you feeling so crappy afterward?

It's kind an emotional roller coaster.  So here are The Five Stages of Nitrous, According To Me.

1.  Joy.  The initial feeling is joy.  The world is funny, pretty, interesting.  Even the crappy pop music on the sound system seems somehow cute and lively.  Amused wonder, switched on.  Critical negativity, switched off.  Glimpse of utopia.

2.  Conviviality.  It's not surprising.  With all those positive feelings coursing through you your next thought is, "I gotta tell someone about this."  I always have the impulse to make a joke, try to fell a funny story.  I have to remind myself:  not only are you in no state for being witty, you're at the dentist.  It's not a party.  Dentist and Assistant are working hard, don't want to hear your senile reminiscences.

3.  Existential Crisis.  As I settle in, I start thinking.  Why isn't more of life like this?  Why is ordinary life so sucky in comparison?  I mean, how many opportunities do you have to feel a combination of total Well Being and total Non-Boredom?  In ordinary life, things are always harassing or dull.  But not so on nitrous.  You're feeling no pain, and with your critical faculties fogged, the most banal observations and thoughts are totally engaging.

This past visit, I found myself thinking about religious people and how they must feel in this situation.  I mean, I'm an atheist, but if I were a believer I think I'd start having some seriously profane reflections at this stage.  If God loves you, why isn't there be more of this awesomeness in ordinary life?   I think he's hiding something.

4.  Paranoid Fog.  This might be just a dentist phase and not inherent in the experience.  But when I've been under a while, and the dentist is asking me things, like "how does that bite feel, OK?" I get a little freaked about trying to seem "normal" when really I'm so f-ed up.  I know it sort of doesn't matter.   But I also know that if I were to do or say something incredibly goofy under the influence, I'd never hear the end of it. "Good-natured teasing," and all that.  So I try to be cool. 

It always makes me laugh how much this is like trying to be cool in other, non-dental circumstances.

5.  Crash landing.  Eventually it's over.  They shut down the gas and pump you full of mind-clearing oxygen.  And you realize you're starving, because you're not allowed to eat beforehand, and you're cold, because the nitrous does that to you somehow, and your head aches.  Crash-landing, back to reality. 

The Andy Rooney Hour, Platitudes Edition

You know what I hate?  Platitudes about how to live your life.  I especially hate it when people spout platitudes that they obviously don't even really believe in. 

Some platitudes are kind of OK because they function as a kind of anaesthetic when bad things happen.  When people say, "Well, really it's for the best," it's often not true, but I'm willing to cut them a little slack, because what they really saying is "there's no use getting all upset about it now" -- something that is true but can sound so cold when you come right out and say it.

No, the platitudes that piss me off are ones like "Live every day as if it's your last" or "Follow your bliss" or "Live in the present."  Because here's the thing.  The people who really do those things and don't worry about how it turns out -- they're a real problem.  It's only the people who do those things and make it work that we admire.  It's just a lot of hypocrisy.

Think about it.  The people who really follow their bliss and don't worry about where it ends up are the ones who never help clean up, who insist on the most impractical ways of doing things, who don't cooperate or take other people's feelings into account.  They're the ones that when you call them because you need a ride home, they're busy at Pilates and can't help you out.

But when people imagine following their bliss, they don't imagine being a jerk, or "just a child" like Harold Skimpole.  What they imagine is more along the lines of an opera diva.  You know, someone who does what they love all day, and, because they're successful at it, can pay others to take care of the practical side of life.  Because they're successful, you don't notice how unhelpful they are.  But without success, they'd just be annoying self-centered jerks.

Now, now, lest you think me overly dark and cynical, of course it's nice to do something in life that makes you happy.  But as I've gone on about before, there is more to life than happiness.  Many things we value, like caring for children, are proven to make us less happy.  So can't we have a little moderation?  The platitudes are always expressed as if, you know, the more the better.  Gee, if a little doing what you like is good, then more of doing what you like must be better!

Obviously doesn't follow.  And interestingly, the fact that it doesn't is borne out in another platitude:  the importance of work-life balance.  The same people who tell you to find a job that follows your bliss are the ones that will tell you how important it is to have work life balance.  It doesn't make any sense.  If the work is the bliss, why would you want to balance it with something else?

The answer of course is that the work isn't bliss, at least for the vast majority of us.  Some work has fun aspects but most jobs are things you get paid for because they have aspects that are annoying and difficult.  If they didn't have annoying difficult aspects people would just do them for free and for fun. 

I'd go on about "Live every day as if it's your last" but isn't that a little like shooting fish in a barrel?  "As if it's my last, you say?  Bartender! Martinis for everyone, on me!"

I don't hate all platitudes.  Almost once a week I say to myself, "First world problems, I have them."  Great platitude.  Reminds me that as crisis inducing it may feel when the internet doesn't work, the bus is late, or my favorite sweater is at the cleaners -- really, these are the problems of an almost utopian existence.

The Times Discovers Virtual Worlds Are Not For Everyone

Quote of the day:

“It’s hard to say what, if anything, Linden Lab can do to make Second Life appeal to a general audience,” wrote Eric Krangel, who used to report on Second Life as Eric Reuters. “The very things that most appeal to Second Life’s hardcore enthusiasts are either boring or creepy for most people” (from Google Unplugs Lively as Hype Fades Over Virtual Worlds).

Well. I have no doubt that Second Life can be boring and creepy for most people. Among SL's dull activities, Mr. Krangel lists "trying to sell virtual clothes, experimenting with new genders or species and chatting with strangers."

OK. Fine.

On the other hand, what's so great about real life? You're going to put "experimenting with new genders or species" in SL next to "drinking coffee" and "going for a walk" in RL and find RL more interesting?

Since SL involves interacting with and talking to actual other people, this has gotta be read as major evidence for the inherent interestingness of the material world. Like, the sheer fact of something having material existence makes it more interesting somehow.

I don't know what this means for the concept of "heaven," but it's clearly nothing good.