Don't waste your time reading this article - if any of this was true, you could do as much good or evil (or anything you felt like) without repercussion. The reality is that our actions may not have broad global meaning but they can have huge local actions. This reminds me of a story about starfish [0].
This author has some other issues - the "I write to reduce noise" part is nonsense as if you really wanted to reduce the noise, you wouldn't write at all (or talk). And he can't even bother to get his idioms correct (e.g. "modes of dust" should be "motes of dust".)
So ... each of you is in fact special at least in some small way. And you can go out an do some good that at least impacts one person. At least go out today and make a stranger smile - that person might need a bit of cheer.
This whole article sounds like a rehash of Zen Buddhism, or Stoisism. The advise overall is sound, but needs more context and leaves a lot out... which is why it's frustrating that the author didn't say "I stole all this from Zen Buddhism" or something.
He does also miss the point (also made in Zen) that while you are nothing, you are also, in fact, everything. Both facts; that you are the center of experience and also one insignificant part of an enormous objective reality are both true at the same time. As Shunryu Suzuki would say "do you understand". To which I say... uhh... I guess?
I was thinking it was Zen-like as well and agree that it's missing so much. Real Stoicism is about contentment not fatalism so I understand the comparison you're making.
This may be unfair to the author but I'm picturing him making a living by giving new-age style seminars to those who like the touchy-feely sounding words but don't actually require any meaning.
And yet in four billion years when the sun expands and engulfs the inner planets, nothing will matter, nor will have mattered. We ARE a insignificant in the universe; I don't see how that's untrue.
Our experience is that many discoveries have changed the world and created a different future than that which we otherwise might have experienced. They would have had to be inevitable for them not to matter and that's certainly contentious though true in some cases. Given they have made a difference how does an extended time scale necessarily negate their influence?
Your assertion might turn out to be true or not.
Actually any choice we make creates a new unique timeline where different choice(like stepping on butterfly) will make radical changes in the future, diverging from mainstream timeline.
As in Sci-fi time travel which changes the past a little, leading to enormous changes in future: this is the past, and we are shaping the future with our choices.
Would it matter in far future if sun is destroyed, if we choose to invest in space expansion and colonize new systems? The future isn't set in stone, fatalism is just learned helplessness, robbing us of free will and drive to improve our condition.
Matter to whom? Mattering to myself was an important step in my personal growth, and there are other people in my life who think I matter, and people I've never met who simply believe we all matter.
How sad to convince ourselves not to matter to ourselves by saying look, I don't matter to the universe, so how could I possibly matter? Does anything matter to the universe? If not, it's probably not the best entity to look to to figure out what matters. If the universe does care about something, who says it doesn't care about you, just because it's big and you're small in comparison?
It reminds me of self-discovered existential Nihilism. And instead of using the insignificance as a source of justification, it's attempting to use it as motivation. It falls a little short in its discussion of jobs and CEOs, but it's a good attempt.
Ignore the negative words of others, they won't matter in the long run. Don't focus on how to leave a mark on history; the names of both the worst despots and the best humanitarians will be forgotten once day. No matter what scientific advancements are made, you will not live forever (even if biological death is finally conquered, you're still just one bad fall away from death). All that really matters is what you do to maximize your "now", so focus on that.
Sartre has a better explanation of this "nobody purpose" anyway.
Even wikipedia's summary is a better explanation than the author's (emphasis mine):
However, Sartre contends our conscious choices (leading to often unconscious actions) run counter to our intellectual freedom. Yet we are bound to the conditioned and physical world—in which some form of action is always required. This leads to failed dreams of completion, as Sartre described them, because inevitably we are unable to bridge the void between the purity and spontaneity of thought and all-too constraining action; between the being and the nothingness that inherently coincide in our self.
Sartre's recipe for fulfillment is to escape all quests by completing them. This is accomplished by rigorously forcing order onto nothingness, employing the "spirit (or consciousness of mind) of seriousness" and describing the failure to do so in terms such as "bad faith" and "false consciousness". Though Sartre's conclusion seems to be that being diminishes before nothingness since consciousness is probably based more on spontaneity than on stable seriousness, he contends that any person of a serious nature is obliged to continuous struggle between:
a) the conscious desire for peaceful self-fulfillment through physical actions and social roles—as if living within a portrait that one actively paints of oneself.
and
b) the more pure and raging spontaneity of no thing consciousness, of being instantaneously free to overturn one's roles, pull up stakes, and strike out on new paths.
I used to be able to avoid this nonsense by walking past the self help and new age aisles in the bookshop, but now it gets repackaged as clickbait on the front page of HN.
Yes we have all experienced losing ourselves in an overwhelming sense of our finitude compared to the unfathomable megacycles of human civilisation and the universe.
But you can't live like this. It cultivates disconnection from the world. Meditation can give you the same benefits without the mumbo jumbo, and you can develop it into a daily practice.
Read anything by Mouni Sadhu as a good start, avoid anything 'western' like 'meditating to music' etc and all that 'guided meditation' nonsense. The branch of Yoga dealing with the mind is Raja Yoga and I can recommended http://www.yogebooks.com/english/atkinson/1906-09rajayoga.pd... it might take you several lifetimes to get through it all, but it's worth it!
> We’re brought up to think that we’re special, and we like believing it.
It must be an American thing. In my country (Poland), children are usually not brought up this way, and if someone would try it, it might raise some eyebrows as bad parenting.
My last girlfriend was brought up as special. She was also a only child.
She was very pretty through her twenties, and the world was grand.
Now, she's invisible to those she desires, and thought she could fall back on her superior intellect/talents, but there was not much. And she was missing that compassion gene? She's now just bitter. I did try to build up confidence when she was down, but it became a chore.
>If you gain your worth from being a CEO and the fact that you wield a degree of power in the context of a business, rather than, say, from intrinsic values, then you will eventually find yourself in a position of conflict.
As with so many writings with the themes of minimalism / zen / detachment / spiritual enlightenment / etc, the authors have a childish view of CEOs. Yes, there are lumbering corporations with middle managers climbing to CEO to satisfy "vanity". However, for HN audience, I don't think that's the type of CEO that's interesting to us.
>The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can focus on the things we can change. And there’s a lot we can change.
And sometimes to execute those changes, we have to be the CEO instead of being a cog in a wheel (aka "nobody") in somebody else's company. You sometimes have to be the owner/CEO of 10-person startup to be an agent of change.
I don't think the author necessarily means being a CEO is an unworthy line of work. What he wants us to understand from this is that it's futile deriving one's worth from the fact that he's the CEO and that he has the ability to boss other people around, but instead he must seek worthiness from the fact that he has the potential to bring about significant change in this world; more than most people could, because like you said, he is not just some "cog in the wheel", but someone who is in charge of many like-minded people who belive in him.
19 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] threadThis author has some other issues - the "I write to reduce noise" part is nonsense as if you really wanted to reduce the noise, you wouldn't write at all (or talk). And he can't even bother to get his idioms correct (e.g. "modes of dust" should be "motes of dust".)
So ... each of you is in fact special at least in some small way. And you can go out an do some good that at least impacts one person. At least go out today and make a stranger smile - that person might need a bit of cheer.
[0] https://eventsforchange.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/the-starfis...
He does also miss the point (also made in Zen) that while you are nothing, you are also, in fact, everything. Both facts; that you are the center of experience and also one insignificant part of an enormous objective reality are both true at the same time. As Shunryu Suzuki would say "do you understand". To which I say... uhh... I guess?
This may be unfair to the author but I'm picturing him making a living by giving new-age style seminars to those who like the touchy-feely sounding words but don't actually require any meaning.
How sad to convince ourselves not to matter to ourselves by saying look, I don't matter to the universe, so how could I possibly matter? Does anything matter to the universe? If not, it's probably not the best entity to look to to figure out what matters. If the universe does care about something, who says it doesn't care about you, just because it's big and you're small in comparison?
Ignore the negative words of others, they won't matter in the long run. Don't focus on how to leave a mark on history; the names of both the worst despots and the best humanitarians will be forgotten once day. No matter what scientific advancements are made, you will not live forever (even if biological death is finally conquered, you're still just one bad fall away from death). All that really matters is what you do to maximize your "now", so focus on that.
Even wikipedia's summary is a better explanation than the author's (emphasis mine):
However, Sartre contends our conscious choices (leading to often unconscious actions) run counter to our intellectual freedom. Yet we are bound to the conditioned and physical world—in which some form of action is always required. This leads to failed dreams of completion, as Sartre described them, because inevitably we are unable to bridge the void between the purity and spontaneity of thought and all-too constraining action; between the being and the nothingness that inherently coincide in our self. Sartre's recipe for fulfillment is to escape all quests by completing them. This is accomplished by rigorously forcing order onto nothingness, employing the "spirit (or consciousness of mind) of seriousness" and describing the failure to do so in terms such as "bad faith" and "false consciousness". Though Sartre's conclusion seems to be that being diminishes before nothingness since consciousness is probably based more on spontaneity than on stable seriousness, he contends that any person of a serious nature is obliged to continuous struggle between: a) the conscious desire for peaceful self-fulfillment through physical actions and social roles—as if living within a portrait that one actively paints of oneself. and b) the more pure and raging spontaneity of no thing consciousness, of being instantaneously free to overturn one's roles, pull up stakes, and strike out on new paths.
Yes we have all experienced losing ourselves in an overwhelming sense of our finitude compared to the unfathomable megacycles of human civilisation and the universe.
But you can't live like this. It cultivates disconnection from the world. Meditation can give you the same benefits without the mumbo jumbo, and you can develop it into a daily practice.
It must be an American thing. In my country (Poland), children are usually not brought up this way, and if someone would try it, it might raise some eyebrows as bad parenting.
My last girlfriend was brought up as special. She was also a only child.
She was very pretty through her twenties, and the world was grand.
Now, she's invisible to those she desires, and thought she could fall back on her superior intellect/talents, but there was not much. And she was missing that compassion gene? She's now just bitter. I did try to build up confidence when she was down, but it became a chore.
As with so many writings with the themes of minimalism / zen / detachment / spiritual enlightenment / etc, the authors have a childish view of CEOs. Yes, there are lumbering corporations with middle managers climbing to CEO to satisfy "vanity". However, for HN audience, I don't think that's the type of CEO that's interesting to us.
>The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can focus on the things we can change. And there’s a lot we can change.
And sometimes to execute those changes, we have to be the CEO instead of being a cog in a wheel (aka "nobody") in somebody else's company. You sometimes have to be the owner/CEO of 10-person startup to be an agent of change.