alt Hacker NewsThe given definition of vain is "if they don’t lead to something more important (e.g. profit)". I don't directly profit from reading the news, it's true. I'd have to make quite hand-wavy arguments about why it's beneficial. We can also list activities such as friendship, dreams, appreciating beauty, and feeling excited as non-profitable. Then there's having aspirations: what do we gain from that? Without goals, we could save a great deal of time and effort. Striving for profit, then, is a vain and non-profitable activity because of the unnecessariness of everything.
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yeah that's just a bad definition. nobody would describe painting for fun as "vanity". vanity metrics make sense because in business the goal is to make money. in life that is not the goal.
I like your comment.
I'm confused by how differently some otherwise smart people view the world than I do. My wife and family, by some definitions, are worthless. They have no economic value. But I look at them and feel that we lead lives of meaning and purpose every day. We know why we are alive and we are living up to it. If that's unproductive, then productivity itself is, I declare, vanity.