from Hacker News

Born in a bomb shelter

by eightturn on 11/2/23, 10:49 AM with 55 comments

  • by karamanolev on 11/3/23, 11:02 AM

    The topic of one's own hardships vs other people's hardships is frequently on my mind. My stance is that "your biggest problems are your biggest problems". For most people, there will always be someone else with bigger problems and that's not a good reason to invalidate yours or to somehow expect you to feel better about it.

      I think of them when it feels like times are tough. The pandemic. The cost of living crisis. Job loss.
  It's tough.
  But it's nothing.
  Not really.
  Not in comparison to the circumstances some people find themselves in.
  Not in comparison to the circumstances other people make it through.
  Imagine being born in a bomb shelter.
  Imagine giving birth in a bomb shelter."
    As tragic as it is, yes, there's probably someone worse off than that. Does that make this tragedy any smaller? I don't think so. Especially the part "But it's nothing" is so dismissive, I can't really get behind it.

  • by callumpbirch on 11/3/23, 1:18 PM

    OP here. Thanks everyone for your reflections on this. I must admit, I'm not sure whether the point I made was a good one. I wanted to write what I know of my grandads story but didn't plan a specific point - this just came out. So probably a reflection of how I was feeling at the time and something deeper. But whatever the case, I'm pleased it led to some healthy debate, and I'm going to reflect on what I can really draw from his story. Thanks again.

  • by avgcorrection on 11/3/23, 11:42 AM

    The first thing/person I thought of was Peter Daou.

    > He had an incredibly tough start.

    But at 6'4" he had a leg up.

  • by egeozcan on 11/3/23, 1:49 PM

    You and your partner might find yourselves giving birth in a bomb shelter. We tread on thin ice daily, an ice sheet formed atop the worst of human experiences—brutality, war, and disaster.

    Daily, we witness how this fragile ice could crack at any moment. The war in Ukraine saw potentially 75,000 lives lost in Mariupol alone. The Palestine-Israel conflict escalates with over 1,500 civilian fatalities. Turkey's earthquake claimed 50,000 lives, upending millions more.

    Here I am in central Germany, grumbling about waiting an hour for a doctor when my son had a fever. I won't stop complaining—that's not the point.

    The point is to recognize the fragility of our peace and figure out how to reinforce it. What are we doing to prevent these tragedies? And if they do happen, how do we lessen their blow?

    Let's approach it like Silicon Valley would with a datacenter outage: You don't just thank your stars it didn't blow up. You dissect the issue and outline measures to prevent a recurrence.