bernardino
Joined 10 years ago
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333
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123
Member since
Aug 10
Recent submissions
Comment · 8 years ago
I egotistically struggle with this, particularly because I'm an undergraduate. I can either be academically-oriented (engulfed in the courses I'm taking, partaking in TA-ing, clubs, etc), career-oriented (engulfed in building side-projects, prepping for interviews, networking, etc), or hobby-oriented (engulfed in things like reading about eastern religions, playing with generative art, playing video games, playing sports, etc). I suppose you have to find a balance and alternate the balance depending on what is most critical. Above all, what is more important, I think, is to take a step back from all that throughout the day - go for a walk during lunch, savor the food you are eating, watch the evening sky, etc - in other words, not becoming too caught up in those things (because then you are more prone to becoming anxious and stressed) and knowing in the back of your mind that in the grand scheme of things it's all play, as cliche as that may sound.
Comment · 8 years ago
I wonder how startups like Sofi (https://www.sofi.com) and Sixup (https://sixup.com) play into this. Are they better options than what the school offers in terms of loans, etc?
Comment · 8 years ago
I think it's okay for people to go into certain fields primarily for money. I also think they will end up as well as everyone else. I have friends who majored in a field they were eager about but ended up realizing there was no high demand in that field. Some went on to do technological (data science, web development, etc) bootcamps and most of them like what they are doing now. Most of them, on their free time, even still partake in that thing they majored in.
Comment · 8 years ago
> There is a high school class dedicated to applying to college, with the “final project” being that you applied somewhere?
For my particular high school, the class was called Avid (https://www.avid.org). It's a college-preparatory class you may take all four years, with junior year being the year the class focuses on, amongst other things, studying for the SAT/ACT, applying to colleges, etc. My high school's Avid program mostly consisted of low-income, first-generation Hispanic students.
Going on a tangent, it's interesting to think about. Today, I came across an old friend from the same high school, same graduation, and from that same program working at Target full-time. He's Hispanic, low-income, and first-generation. He mentioned school ended not working out for him. I have another old but closer friend from the same high school and same graduation year but not from that program - he's American, middle-class, and not a first-generation student. He graduated from UC Berkeley last December and just started working at a finance company in San Francisco making roughly 85k/year. It's interesting in a way where I'm thinking about what heavily affected their lives to lead to both their different outcomes and the possible ways there are to bridge that gap, at least from the perspective of the old friend working at Target.
The program's site states the success rate of the program itself is high but from mere observation of old friends from that program, I unfortunately don't think that's the case. But above all, it reminds of this note written by and from Jordan Peterson's new book where he talks about lobsters in the first chapter: "to those who have everything more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken away." It seems to me then that if one wants to get out of, say of a generational low-income family, that person must be do something drastic: deliberate practice, a shift in perspective, etc. But first, they must be aware of this and that's the tough part, I think.
Comment · 8 years ago
No, I have not. But that's definitely something to think about. It would certainly be nice. You ever hear about how it's better to study at a library rather than at home? That's certainly a good case with work but may also be a good case with using the internet - you know, do everything we have to do internet-related elsewhere (like at a dedicated WeWork desk). Then our home is more like an actual home, I think. If that's what you were trying to get at. Otherwise, I would definitely love to hear why you have been thinking about doing so.
Comment · 8 years ago
No, I definitely resort back to entertainment every once in a while. I wouldn't go as far to call it a problem though. I suppose entertainment in low doses is fine but entertainment as the main staple of our diet is no good. In terms of deep work, I think it's important to see the side of spectrum of how entertainment only exists to stimulate a neurological response. For instance, think about always refreshing a site we are particularly fond of when we know implicitly that we should not be doing that and we should be doing something else. But hey, it's increasingly hard do so, especially now when technology is growing exponentially. There's no doubt it's difficult, we know that. It takes real mental fortitude. But this is where doing away with the nonessentials comes into play - when you do so, what's left is us, face to face with what we have to do. If anything above makes sense.
All this talk about entertainment reminds me of David Foster Wallace on Entertainment Culture: https://tonyreinke.com/2018/03/05/david-foster-wallace-on-en...
A few good bits:
> "It just, I guess my point is, right now and I think the next 15 or 20 years are going to be a very scary and sort of very exciting time when we have to sort of reevaluate our relationship to fun and pleasure and entertainment because it’s going to get so good, and so high pressure, that we’re going to have to forge some kind of attitude toward it that lets us live."
> "what it’s going to be like and what sort of resources we’re going to have to cultivate in ourselves and in our citizenry to keep from sort of dying on couches. I mean, maybe that sounds silly, but the stuff’s going to get better and better and better and better and it’s not clear to me that we, as a culture, are teaching ourselves or our children what we’re going to say “yes” and “no” to."
Comment · 8 years ago
What helped me get down to deep work was doing away with the nonessentials, i.e. a lot of physical material things, all forms of entertainment, the internet especially, inner clutter like comparing myself to others, etc. Seneca once noted in his Moral letters to Lucilius, “Until we have begun to go without them, we fail to realize how unnecessary many things are. We’ve been using them not because we needed them but because we had them.” I found this was applicable to nearly everything: my digital life (think Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism), my physical life (think Henry David Thoreau's Walden), my inner life (think Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet), etc. In short: Getting down to my bare self, helped me get down to deep work.
Comment · 8 years ago
Reminds me of this note by Osho: The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.
Comment · 8 years ago
The only recollection I have on the Amish is from Family Guy - I'm not close to that. On a serious note, what I was trying to argue, in short, was: 1. Anything in excess is not good. 2. Try to think and be aware of the effects of things like the internet have on you, people, culture, etc.
Comment · 8 years ago
Definitely a tool or at least, mostly a tool - I continue to learn a lot from the site, largely from the comments but also from the links to articles, etc. I suppose it's important to define tool and entertainment. As I see it: A tool is something that helps you grow, create, learn, etc. Entertainment, on the other hand, is something with no intention of helping you, it's only for gratification purposes.
For instance, I think, mindlessly scrolling through reddit.com is a form of entertainment. But if you are subscribed to only certain particular subs in order, for example, to become a better writer, that would be a tool. This is a shaky example though.
Comment · 8 years ago
You are definitely onto something. I'm going to skew this comment towards something similar. As an early twenty-something, I'm urging more friends and family to stop using the internet loosely - meaning, use the medium as a tool but not as a form of entertainment. Extensively, use it as little as possible.
I'm not saying reject the medium but rather try to be acutely aware of how it affects things: perception, mind, body, people, culture, etc. Especially, and this doesn't have to do solely with the internet, try to take an objective view of yourself and your life. In my teens, I used to play a lot of video games and surf the internet for 2/3rds of the day, every day. One late evening, I had to take out the trash to my backyard where the trash-bin was. I'm not sure if anyone has noticed but late evenings are one of the greatest times of the day - it's just honeyed indolence. Well, from outside in my backyard, I noticed my room, I saw all the light coming from my television and my computer. It was sad. That was most of my life. That room. Since then, I try to use technology less and try to be outside as much as I can. But to the point, please take notice of things.
Alas, further reading: Don DeLillo's White Noise.
Comment · 8 years ago
For what two countries are you a dual citizen? Which one isn't worth the effort to keep up to date?
I'm a dual citizen for the United States and Mexico, and it's fairly easy to update my Mexican passport here in the United States - not sure if that's the case inversely.
Comment · 8 years ago
> In the US, kids are seen at worst a nuisance and at best a personal luxury.
Please, if you may, explain why you think this is so.
Comment · 8 years ago
I usually say, if you have social media, follow people who create stuff and who create stuff just for the sole purpose of creating something. People who aren't interested in being richer. People who don't even have the slightest interest in their own ego. Why? One: Because they are capital-t true artists. And, if we are on social media, we should be interested in people who create for a living. People who, for heaven's sake, aren't spending their day consuming away. Two: Because we have a tendency to unconsciously consume things every day. What we unconsciously consume day in and day out has a significant impact on how we view the world and ourselves. And the way we think about ourselves and the world, that is what indicates and determines our fate. So steer away from the news, corporations, etc, and follow people, individuals or small companies, who create stuff. I.e. Vimeo is a cool platform of cool people creating stuff.