Probably the former. I got that there's other ideas in there, but the writing was too clever and self-important for me to take seriously.
Re:Immortality Begins at Forty
by marssaxman on Monday May 02, 2016 @12:58PM
(#11613177)
What I got from the post was mostly that the author thinks very highly of their own cleverness. The actual point was not really clear.
>What I got from the post was mostly that the author thinks very highly of their own cleverness.
Well, this is Hacker News. Ever read a PG essay? Besides, 90% of us think very highly of our own cleverness anyway.
The author just doesn't assume readers need his post feed to them, and goes on as if talking to his peers.
>The actual point was not really clear.
Don't know, it was quite clear to me -- even though it's the first time I've chanced on the guy, and he seems to have a specific set of references, inside jokes and prior posts on similar issues...
Re:Immortality Begins at Forty
by marssaxman on Monday May 02, 2016 @09:43PM
(#11617227)
Well, perhaps you share his cultural context, then; I clearly do not, since he begins with statements which simply are not compatible with my experience of life and builds on them in ways which do not make any sense from my perspective on the world. I gave up halfway in, because he had gone so far off into his own self-referential argument that I could no longer even parse what he was trying to say.
For one, whether "you give a fuck for what society thinks of [you]" or not, what society thinks of you has implications for you and your role in life. To put it jokingly, "it's not all about you".
Not to mention that far from "narrow-minded pop-culturist bullshit" the whole post drives endlessly the inverse notion.
"what society thinks of you" is what (according to the post) ends at forty: society doesn't think anything of you, -- it could not give less fucks, to use your wording. And part of the idea is that you should care even less, and instead (cynically or not) become a culture-maker yourself, selling truth to the younger generations.
It doesn't apply to everybody. In fact people content with work, family life, and 3 hours of TV/browsing everyday until they die at 80 won't even understand the thing.