
The Defaults Don't Work - moultano
https://moultano.wordpress.com/2020/06/21/the-defaults-dont-work/
======
mwcampbell
> We pretend that children don’t need to see their parents working to learn
> what the real world looks like. That age-segregated schools full of hyper-
> local and transient cultural pathologies are a sufficient role model. Our
> children enter the world having barely observed what the work of being an
> adult actually is, and then understandably struggle to reproduce it. Their
> entire lifetime of exposure to the economy and what it makes consists mainly
> of the media they consume, and so their conception of fulfilling careers is
> dominated by making video games and being in bands.

Any ideas on how to solve this problem without going back to the world as it
used to be (which is probably impossible anyway)?

~~~
jariel
I personally don't quite agree with the thesis of the essay, but it is good,
and this point is really insightful.

Children have no idea what 'work' is, or why it's done, or even why they are
obtaining and education - in my own experience I feel as though it took 20
years of 'actual work and deprogramming' for me to finally 'get it'.

I think that kids having real jobs from an early age is a really good start -
doesn't matter what. Sweeping up, flipping burgers, the 'sandwich cart
guy/girl at the golf club'. This is a good start.

There's a young kid at my local Chinese Food shop who's maybe 8 years old, and
he works there, it's a 'family business' it seems absolutely and perfectly
normal, 'healthy' in fact (without knowing all the details). I'm inclined to
think this kid will be a little more mature for his age than otherwise.

U Waterloo has 5 year Eng programs that focus on internships, only in
hindsight to I realize how infinitely valuable internships are. I think these
could be made much more open.

~~~
jaclaz
Personally I have been very lucky, my father built architectural models, my
mother ran a small (artisan) shirts/nightgowns factory, both my father's
workshop and my mother's small factory were situated less than 1 km from home.

As a kid, in the afternoon, after school and homework, I would go to either
and learn something and try and help (doing something easy that I could do).

As an example at my mother's there were some kind of dressing gowns that used
buttons covered with the same fabric that were to be assembled with a small
press. (think today of allowing a 10 year old kid to operate a small manual
press) or at my father's there was sometimes the need to make trees (in scale)
with some wire, glue and cotton or to sand down a piece of plyboard before
painting it.

I learned that work was something needed and that if you love your work (as my
parents did) it is rarely heavy or tiring, that if there is a deadline, it
must be met, that you need to talk to both customers and suppliers, that there
are rules and bureaucarcy and you have to deal with them.

I can see the difference in mentality against that of some of my cousins whose
parents had (possibly "better") office jobs, their parents basically left in
the morning and were not seen again till almost dinner time.

They had no idea what their parents did, which kind of problems they had to
deal with every day, they knew vaguely that they worked in a bank or in an
office, that was all.

~~~
jariel
So this is a great example - I'm not sure if what you witnesses was so much
'work' in the 'the assuming responsibility for society' kind of thing, however
the 'artisinal craft' aspect is just as priceless: the breadth and depth of
knowledge, skills, planning, problem solving, the diligence. And yes, you're
right, I think kids could be naturally more involved in something that
'doesn't feel like work'.

But 'office jobs' are important too!

------
Wowfunhappy
I like this essay but I'm going to disagree hard on one point:

> To accommodate our education and to achieve financial security we delay
> commitment and childbirth to the edge of biological feasibility. Even when
> finally successful, after miscarriages and struggles to conceive (and
> increasingly, after IVF) we find that the exhaustions of raising young
> children hit us in middle age instead of in our prime. When I was a
> teenager, I would stay up all night for the hell of it. As a 35 year old, a
> few hours of missing sleep set me back for the next few days. When the time
> finally comes to raise children, we deal with the 1AM nursing and night
> terrors with the body we have left. In two generations of delayed
> childbearing the toll of time compounds, and leaves us as grandparents
> physically unable to provide the depth of support that a young family needs.

Most 20-year-olds are still finding out who they are and don't really know
what they want--in a partner, in a child, in life in general. There are real,
if unfortunate, biological issues with waiting too long, but also healthy
societal advantages.

(Me saying this as a 26-year-old doesn't quite feel right, but I still think
I'm correct. _I_ certainly don't feel ready for a child yet, and not merely
because of economics.)

~~~
war1025
> Me saying this as a 26-year-old doesn't quite feel right, but I still think
> I'm correct. I certainly don't feel ready for a child yet

Our first kid was born a week after I turned 27. We got married at 23. If you
had asked me at 25 whether I was ready for a kid I would have said no.

That summer my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. That put things into
much sharper focus, and it turned into a question of "if not now, when?". So
then we decided to go for it.

My dad got to meet his first grandchild. Three weeks later his cancer started
growing again. Three months later he was dead.

In my opinion, the greatest disservice we do to the young is shielding them
from the reality that life comes to an end and it's going to pass by whether
you are ready for it or not.

Adulthood is basically accepting that there are things you want / need to do,
even though you are afraid or uncertain how they will turn out.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
>Adulthood is basically accepting that there are things you want / need to do,
even though you are afraid or uncertain how they will turn out.

This seems to imply people should have kids before they are ready or know its
what they want. Consider the fact that for you it might have worked out but
for many they are left with children they are unable to support or do not have
any feelings for. Having children is not an essential end goal for life and
not having them is just as valid of a choice.

~~~
war1025
I can see how you would read it that way, but when I wrote it, I meant it more
as a tie-in to the sentence before it:

> In my opinion, the greatest disservice we do to the young is shielding them
> from the reality that life comes to an end and it's going to pass by whether
> you are ready for it or not.

> Adulthood is basically accepting that there are things you want / need to
> do, even though you are afraid or uncertain how they will turn out.

I think no matter what your goals in life, there is a need to actually get
around to them rather than waiting for "someday." For me, it was having
children. For others, maybe it's something else.

> Having children is not an essential end goal for life

Having children _is_ actually an essential end goal of life. Without children
there is no life. That doesn't mean _everyone_ needs to make that choice
though.

------
notdonspaulding
This is a great essay, and worth the read. The first part is _descriptive_ in
nature, and I highly recommend reading that at least through the "Parenthood"
section.

The article is short on _prescriptive_ advice, however, and it really loses
some of its steam because of it. This is partly due to the authors frank,
humble admission of ignorance about how to build a culture that honestly
evaluates itself, an admission which is admirable.

But the prescriptive section also seems weakened because it is devoid of any
consideration of religion and spirituality on culture. Both in history as well
as the present, one of the "experiments" the author could refer to is the
removal of religion from all aspects of public life.

Still, this essay does much to point out the impropriety of our Current
Culture emperor running around in the nude, and for that, it's worth the read.

------
eitland
Towards the end there's this:

> So I’m going to be more experimental, and more generous towards other
> people’s experiments. I’m going to pay more attention. And I’m going to look
> with the clearest eyes I can at the world as it is, instead of the world as
> it was or as I wish it to be.

That is my takeaway from the article, but reading the whole thing to see how
the author arrives there was also very interesting.

------
lucio
"Christmas is a celebration of the triumph of humanity over winter"

For half of the world, Christmas is in the middle of the summer

~~~
couchand
Go ahead and read the rest of the article, please.

