I think there is a fine line you need to tread. I agree with what paul has to say but sometimes what we care about is what drives us.
For the longest time i worked as a consultant but i never cared. When someone said to me so what do you do, i just said i work with computers, my rank didnt matter to me, my role , my status nothing. I wouldn't come to work in a suite or tie or even a shirt (i came in just a t-shirt and jeans) and it was very weird to many who were watching. I guess cause they cared and wondered why i didnt ...
They would say , "your a consultant, for a big4 how can you wear those clothes, cause i personally cant".
I would respond by saying, well i dont care , just wanna make sure customer is happy regardless of what my official role is, that way i could do my work , not have to redo things and then go home. Also one of the important things i think is i detached myself from being a consultant, i was nothing, not a manager, a consultant, a senior consultant , who has certain things attached to them so i felt free and just wore what i wanted with the one rule that the customer needs to be happy.
When i found out that i could get away with that i experimented with a few other things too, like if i was tired during lunch i would sleep on the park bench if it was a nice sunny day. I stopped thinking hey im a professional and cant be seen sleeping on a park bench cause thats what bums do and once i got over it and i thought , hey who cares, it was easy and i would come back to the office invigorated cause of a 20-30 minute quick nap :)
However the caveat is when you CARE enough about say programming . If you start to tell yourself you dont care anymore you loose a certain desire which if you care about it, isnt very good. if you keep telling yourself hey i am a programmer then that comes with certain things such as , writing code, being half decent at math, being logical etc etc and being good at those things isnt a bad thing.
So i think i get what paul is saying when he says "i am nothing" but i think you cant apply that to things you care about cause it will cause you to not care. But applying that way of thinking to things what you might care about but deep down know its just for perception or is kinda silly or even not really important has some surprisingly good results :)
I think even thinking about drive is a misnomer. Personal growth is more like the unfolding of a flower, it's not something that you (or anyone else) can will yourself to do. It just happens gradually given the right conditions.
Great essay, but like the grandparent I'm confused how it allows for any sort of drive. How can you have goals without identifying with them, or at least their purpose? It seems great and healthy to stop identifying as a failed attempt at reaching certain labels, but I struggle to imagine a singular goal not attached to a label.
I think the essay is great but i think it applies more when you are already in a happy place where your happiness is confirmed by your own view of yourself.
Its a way to stay happy once your happy. For example, lets say your a poor entrepreneur, you tell yourself, if i can flip for 5m+ ill be happy cause i will never have to work again, i can help my parents i can do so and so. Your dream comes true and your startup gets acquired and you have that 5m+ in your bank account.
You now have a label, people expect certain things from you. Your happy but because of your new found label and because of peoples expectations of what that label means "in this cause a successful startup founder acquired by XXXX" it forces you to try and comply with that label which could possibly making you unhappy again. (maybe you dont like doing talks, maybe you dont like giving advice, maybe you dont like being criticised ... whatever it may be)
However if you dont care and dont classify yourself as "successful startup founder acquired by XXXX" then there is no reason to comply with what that means and because you achieved your personal goal of getting acquired for 5m+ ... you stay happy.
I think for people that are not there yet, its still kinda hard to apply "I am Nothing" to things you are still striving for or care about.
If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.
And IMO isn't nearly as good as the earlier one. "I Am Nothing" has a self-help tone that puts me off, and the number of sentences per substance is too low for my liking.
Paul Graham did end up with a similar conclusion, but on the process of leading to it, he kept exploring possibilities. What social behaviors could be objectively explained by the excess of identity? Although he did end up telling his readers what to do, that was just a coincidence. He looked out for the truths and they happen to lead to something that could be applied in real life.
But it all comes down to a matter of taste, and I do greatly admire Paul Buchheit as a person.
Sorry, but here you just klll in the egg your interesting point above. If you think pg's article is better than pb's, why hide your opinion, which I happen to share, behind this pudic relativist curtain?
It's like doing a solid dissertation on why Python is more x and x and x than, say, Java, and then, in the conclusion, retract every statement behind a shy "matter of taste".
You caught me. In the past, I used to express my opinions, which are often strong and controversial, aggressively, but over time, I learnt that it's in my interest to make a consolation point toward people with opposite opinions in public places. "So this is my opinion and that is yours. We differ a bit but we are still friends, right?" I don't do that in my own writings, however.
> I learnt that it's in my interest to make a consolation point toward people with opposite opinions in public places
Well, you've just been shown the opposite. By dismissing your own argument - by claiming it is just a matter of random, arbitrary preference - you kind of write yourself out of the conversation. I guess you are less likely to offend, but you're less likely for anyone to listen at all. You may as well have not spoken in the first place.
Interestingly, PG thanks Paul Buchheit for reading drafts of his Identity piece.
I like both essays, though. It's hard to describe why, but they each affected me in different ways. PG's is more a detached observation about how he thinks things are, while "I am nothing" has a sort of visceral quality that appeals to me.
Reminded me a little of this quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray:
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman -- always a rash thing to do -- he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"
Reminds me of a lecture given on Beginner's Mind that emphasizes the pitfalls of intellectualism:
'Can we look at our lives in such a way? Can we look at all of the aspects of our lives with this mind, just open to see what there is to see? I don't know about you, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a lot of habits of mind—I think most of us do. Children begin to lose that innocent quality after a while, and soon they want to be "the one who knows." We all want to be the one who knows. But if we decide we "know" something, we are not open to other possibilities anymore. And that's a shame. We lose something very vital in our life when it's more important to us to be "one who knows" than it is to be awake to what's happening. We get disappointed because we expect one thing, and it doesn't happen quite like that. Or we think something ought to be like this, and it turns out different. Instead of saying, "Oh, isn't that interesting," we say, "Yuck, not what I thought it would be." Pity. The very nature of beginner's mind is not knowing in a certain way, not being an expert. As Suzuki Roshi said in the prologue to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few." As an expert, you've already got it figured out, so you don't need to pay attention to what's happening. Pity.'
"Not necessarily a pity. You have to be an expert at some things in order to become a beginner at others."
True, but I don't think that's the point of the passage. Rather, the idea is not to seal one's mind off at the "expert" level in any field of endeavor. At that point, we replace questions with assumptions. Those assumptions might be based on knowledge, and they might be right (for now). But who's to say that they're going to be right tomorrow? Or the next day? Or that a better way won't emerge? (It definitely will not emerge from the one who assumes he's mastered it, because he won't question what he assumes he's mastered).
I can relate. I too am trying to abandon my self and my "brand" because it's spiritually suffocating. I don't want to care what - oh, someone just voted up my last comment!
I am a husband. I am a father. I am a child of God.
There is a fine line between putting yourself in a box that you (or others) create for you and knowing who you are. The classifications that Paul lists in his post are of the first kind. The second kind, you can't really change.
I absolutely agree with this sentiment. This is the "box" that I was referring to above. It represents the limit of that which you are willing to believe, in many cases because you believe that you have already reached some level of understanding which cannot possibly be eclipsed by further investigation.
I also believe that it is at least as important to recognize that there are certain characteristics (for lack of a better word) that each of us possess which are an integral part of who we are.
Your claim that we are nothing presents a serious ethical dilemma, and one which I believe if not understood correctly can have disastrous consequences. Allow me to explain.
Each of the characteristics that I mentioned above directly ties me to a responsibility that I have to some "other". With regards to this other, I am something. It is the very essence of existence. The mere fact that I exist means that I will always have an effect on some other, whether good or bad. Without an other, I do not exist.
To choose to ignore the responsibility I have towards an other is an action. It may have a good or bad consequence, but it is still an action. I cannot avoid acting, as inaction itself is an action with regard to the other.
For example, I mentioned above that I am a father. Now, I could of course choose (as many men do for one reason or another) to simply walk away from my responsibilities as a father. I could decide essentially that I am not a father. But that doesn't change the fact that I have fathered children and that abandoning that responsibility will have some consequence on them. To them, I am something. I am their father, and I can't change that.
To pretend that I'm not a father is simply lying to myself. It's also being very selfish. That's why I say that this belief system can have disastrous consequences when applied broadly. Because if you're not careful it can lead to very selfish behavior.
Totally agree. However interesting and inspiring these posts and toughs might be, the ideas can be really applied verbatim only by people in their 20's - no family, no commitments, and so on.
Similarly to @mjijackson I'm a husband and a father. If I made a decision to become 'nothing' I might benefit myself, but that would be a disaster to others that depend on me.
Somehow I find most of these Zen-like thoughts quite selfish, but I'm open to suggestions, perhaps I'm missing an important point here...
suffering = your self image vs perception of reality self
The argument goes that man is a prisoner of his self image. This self image is a mixture of his desires, wants, tastes, hopes, fears.... This can be seen as a self image that arises out of conditioning by the society and self. You are like a frog in the well and imagine the well to be the universe. You are limited and shaped by the well. How can one know of what the possibilities are unless they ascend from their own intellectual/egotistical/scoietal wells or the well of self image?
On the other hand, I have noticed that rejection of natural tendencies leads to suffering as well. No matter how hard we try the self will never be a blank tape. When you reject the self image your self image becomes "Im he/she who rejects self image imposed on me". So now you are straight back where you started with a brand new self image, only this time you are more observant of your flaws(tendencies of self). So there is still suffering here.
Let me oversimplify again
the frog = Neo in the matrix,
Ignorance is bliss = Cipher in the matrix
It's about riding your life man. Not worrying about all the little details you just brought up. Letting go and seeing what happens. Personally, I don't think someone will acheive this by academic pursuit. You have to follow your heart to it.
We all think we are something. We an image of ourselves. When something happens that supports this image we are usually happy, otherwise we're unhappy.
The truth is that we are nothing in particular.
There is pain, there is hunger, there is thirst, etc.
The interesting part is: When does it become your pain, your hunger, etc?
I'm also reminded of Daniel Dennett's secret to happiness: find something bigger than yourself and devote your life to it. That too allows you to drop your baggage and become 'nothing'. And it's a great way to leave a lasting impact on the world too.
It seems a little ironic that he would copy the standard religious formulation. The problem with this approach is that you may devote your life to the wrong bigger thing and then end up in the middle of a "religious" war.
From what i've seen, we all have something we worship, God or not. This entity is perceived by us to be greater and may or may not benefit us. It's like we're wired to worship, only we have different opinions on the deity.
The only thing is life I worship are my kids. They are, consequently, both greater than I and the direct benefit has already been apparent. With continued effort, it is also likely to grow.
This is a major component of Christianity. (I'm not preaching here) I thought it was interesting that the non religious world is figuring out things that have been core teachings for the last 2800 years.
In the christian world, it is called "taking yourself off the throne and putting another entity on it". The entity that gets put on it is variable, but the constant is that you are not on it.
Agreed. I was born and raised in a Christian family, attended church every week until I was about 18 years old (and after my parents sent me off to a private Christian school, where I was fined $20 for skipping chapel amongst other things like wearing shorts before 5 PM), but Christianity comes with a wide variety of strong predispositions and beliefs. I don't like to debate theology in general, but it goes farther than just "worshipping a king," there are a lot of ideologies that get tossed in with it and there's a strong social pressure to unquestionably believe all of them or you risk being ostracized. You better not bring up abortion for example, even if you've admired the statistics in Freakonomics.
Before we get too caught up in "what Christians believe" let's point out that it is a big tent religion and the story is much more complicated.
Perhaps, as Chesterton said, GP is being "as narrow as the universe".
When I read your essay I immediately thought of the negative way, which is the strain of Christian philosophy that denies affirmative statements about God, and denies to some extent settled knowledge.
There is also an equal and opposite affirmative way that takes God as knowable not literally, but by analogy.
And this to me is the missing element in the essay. This egoless vehicle that we are cleaning so carefully, where are we to drive it? What shall we use to measure improvement? How will we understand progress?
I'm not Christian, but I am familiar with the concept you describe, and it seems very different to me.
Paul is I think advocating people to mentally distance their selves from roles or identity-classes, like straight, Christian, or atheist. The Christian throne metaphor advocates for centering or focusing on something other than the self, while entirely allowing for roles or identity classes.
A recurring theme from great thinkers (perhaps mainly more in the East, though) over the ages. Glad to see it finding an audience on HN.
This excerpt from Rumi seems apt:
"Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything."
My take on this line of thought is that as long as you consider yourself as being a "someone" or "having a self" you are always in conflict with other selves and only if you become nothing you remove the inherent conflict.
On the one hand, he says, "if we aren't changing for the better, then we are just slowly decaying," suggesting that there is such a thing as "better."
On the other hand, he talks about "returning to zero expectations" and being "nothing."
I conclude that Paul wants to be a better nothing. Or possibly that he is slowly decaying. I'm not sure you can be nothing and also have a standard for getting better.
I'm thinking about "perspective" -- the word suggests a relationship to something bigger. For example, when an artist draws with perspective, there is a point on the horizon toward which lines extend. Removing constraints may be a useful exercise, but removing all constraints would, in a sense, remove all perspective as well. So I think I'm looking for a perspective that's constrained by what's true, rather than one that's unconstrained.
I guess this is what I find inconsistent. There's this idea: "Until we let go of our mental images of who we are or who we should be, our vision remains clouded by expectation." But in the same paragraph, there's a notion of "self improvement." If I remove all expectations of who I should be, how can I measure my self improvement (assuming I intend to improve myself in the first place)?
There's the potential here to replace stressing out over a question like "am I a good father?" with stressing over things like "am I nothing? Am I improving? Am I myself yet?" Might this be just another "path to insanity?" Just a thought.
I adopted the metaphor which works for me here from Ken Wilber, though I'm sure that the idea appears in the works of other writers, and much earlier: hierarchies of growth vs hierarchies of domination. The former (your "one hand") are nested hierarchies (inclusive); the latter (your "other hand") are conventional hierarchies (exclusive). The way I understand this is that "I am nothing" puts the "I" - whatever it is - at a leaf node if the reference is an exclusive hierarchy (a "hierarchy of domination"), whereas if the reference is an inclusive hierarchy (a "hierarchy of growth"), "I am nothing" appears at the root node.
Having a realistic sense of self is great; diminishing your self into a nothingness (i.e. totally altruistic) is not something to be admired. Then again, maybe I've read too much Ayn Rand.
True, I re-read the article and see it now, and agree 100%. However, I still think "I am nothing" is a poor turn of phrase for it. I would prefer "I cannot be labeled" or "I am none of the above".
This isn't relevant to the actual message of the post, but something that caught my eye was in the paragraph about thinking you are "too X to be Y". Most of them make sense, and I can understand people thinking the Y because of feeling the X. Except these two:
too effeminate to be straight
too smart to be kind
Am I being foolish or do those two not fit? I can imagine someone thinking "I'm too sensitive, that's not how a man should be", I can't imagine someone thinking "I'm effeminate, I guess I can't be straight after all".
They are all false. The point is that people hide parts of themselves so that they can more cleanly fit into whatever categories they identify with. How many straight men act macho out of fear of seeming gay?
Ah, I mis-understood your premise for that paragraph then - sorry!
On another offtopic note, I think the whole having to be macho thing is changing pretty fast though - not yet disappeared, but on its way. One of the biggest things I've noticed (in England) is that it's very common to see boys, aged 7-16 wearing pink tshirts. Even in my childhood ~10 years ago I don't think I remember any friends or anyone my age wearing pink for it being too feminine a colour. And that's just one random thing, but that trend seems to hold true in my experience in adults too, and not just in clothing.
...you shouldn't compare yourself with others -- you didn't start in the same place or with the same challenges...
Reminds me of this:
Reb Zusha was laying on his deathbed surrounded by his disciples. He was crying and no one could comfort him. One student asked his Rebbe, "Why do you cry? You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham." Reb Zusha answered, "When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham,' rather, they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?' Why didn't I fulfill my potential, why didn't I follow the path that could have been mine."
This "I am nothing" mantra reminded me of Bushidō, which revolves around the awareness and acceptance of death, at which point one can possibly realise its true self.
A similar thought was formulated by Morihei Ueshiba: "There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within."
What a wonderfully thought-provoking and inspiring piece. Thanks, Paul, for sharing it.
In a similar vein, from David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College:
"If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.... Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on."
This is why I like to do science. I feel like I am constantly learning. I know that I know nothing and I can only know a little bit more by science. When I acknowledged my limitations and just sat down and calculated then I performed better. Sort of a zen like way of thinking. I know that I know nothing and instead I must just calculate and manipulate symbols.
Conversely, this is why I like reading things in the realm of philosophy and political science. As an engineer by trade, I feel there's a more freeform in those areas and I tend to read philosophy and political science to escape and relax. Perhaps I became an engineer out of expectation and my true nature would have led me to the liberal arts. There's nothing wrong with either science or liberal arts, as long as one is nothing and knows who they are and studies what interest them.
If you like this idea but want to work more on truly internalizing it, I highly recommend reading 'A New Earth' by Eckart Tolle. I read it twice (on my iPhone on the subway to work) and it made a big difference in terms of becoming happier and more effective in business and with friends and family.
133 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadFor the longest time i worked as a consultant but i never cared. When someone said to me so what do you do, i just said i work with computers, my rank didnt matter to me, my role , my status nothing. I wouldn't come to work in a suite or tie or even a shirt (i came in just a t-shirt and jeans) and it was very weird to many who were watching. I guess cause they cared and wondered why i didnt ...
They would say , "your a consultant, for a big4 how can you wear those clothes, cause i personally cant".
I would respond by saying, well i dont care , just wanna make sure customer is happy regardless of what my official role is, that way i could do my work , not have to redo things and then go home. Also one of the important things i think is i detached myself from being a consultant, i was nothing, not a manager, a consultant, a senior consultant , who has certain things attached to them so i felt free and just wore what i wanted with the one rule that the customer needs to be happy.
When i found out that i could get away with that i experimented with a few other things too, like if i was tired during lunch i would sleep on the park bench if it was a nice sunny day. I stopped thinking hey im a professional and cant be seen sleeping on a park bench cause thats what bums do and once i got over it and i thought , hey who cares, it was easy and i would come back to the office invigorated cause of a 20-30 minute quick nap :)
However the caveat is when you CARE enough about say programming . If you start to tell yourself you dont care anymore you loose a certain desire which if you care about it, isnt very good. if you keep telling yourself hey i am a programmer then that comes with certain things such as , writing code, being half decent at math, being logical etc etc and being good at those things isnt a bad thing.
So i think i get what paul is saying when he says "i am nothing" but i think you cant apply that to things you care about cause it will cause you to not care. But applying that way of thinking to things what you might care about but deep down know its just for perception or is kinda silly or even not really important has some surprisingly good results :)
Its a way to stay happy once your happy. For example, lets say your a poor entrepreneur, you tell yourself, if i can flip for 5m+ ill be happy cause i will never have to work again, i can help my parents i can do so and so. Your dream comes true and your startup gets acquired and you have that 5m+ in your bank account.
You now have a label, people expect certain things from you. Your happy but because of your new found label and because of peoples expectations of what that label means "in this cause a successful startup founder acquired by XXXX" it forces you to try and comply with that label which could possibly making you unhappy again. (maybe you dont like doing talks, maybe you dont like giving advice, maybe you dont like being criticised ... whatever it may be)
However if you dont care and dont classify yourself as "successful startup founder acquired by XXXX" then there is no reason to comply with what that means and because you achieved your personal goal of getting acquired for 5m+ ... you stay happy.
I think for people that are not there yet, its still kinda hard to apply "I am Nothing" to things you are still striving for or care about.
Well this is my interpretation of the essay .. :)
If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
Paul Graham did end up with a similar conclusion, but on the process of leading to it, he kept exploring possibilities. What social behaviors could be objectively explained by the excess of identity? Although he did end up telling his readers what to do, that was just a coincidence. He looked out for the truths and they happen to lead to something that could be applied in real life.
But it all comes down to a matter of taste, and I do greatly admire Paul Buchheit as a person.
Sorry, but here you just klll in the egg your interesting point above. If you think pg's article is better than pb's, why hide your opinion, which I happen to share, behind this pudic relativist curtain?
It's like doing a solid dissertation on why Python is more x and x and x than, say, Java, and then, in the conclusion, retract every statement behind a shy "matter of taste".
Well, you've just been shown the opposite. By dismissing your own argument - by claiming it is just a matter of random, arbitrary preference - you kind of write yourself out of the conversation. I guess you are less likely to offend, but you're less likely for anyone to listen at all. You may as well have not spoken in the first place.
I like both essays, though. It's hard to describe why, but they each affected me in different ways. PG's is more a detached observation about how he thinks things are, while "I am nothing" has a sort of visceral quality that appeals to me.
Lord Henry stroked his pointed brown beard and tapped the toe of his patent-leather boot with a tasselled ebony cane. "How English you are Basil! That is the second time you have made that observation. If one puts forward an idea to a true Englishman -- always a rash thing to do -- he never dreams of considering whether the idea is right or wrong. The only thing he considers of any importance is whether one believes it oneself. Now, the value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be coloured by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices. However, I don't propose to discuss politics, sociology, or metaphysics with you. I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Tell me more about Mr. Dorian Gray. How often do you see him?"
Here is something Wilde really wrote: "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
http://books.google.com/books?id=xZlRfVy0LbcC&lpg=PA1002...
'Can we look at our lives in such a way? Can we look at all of the aspects of our lives with this mind, just open to see what there is to see? I don't know about you, but I have a hard time doing that. I have a lot of habits of mind—I think most of us do. Children begin to lose that innocent quality after a while, and soon they want to be "the one who knows." We all want to be the one who knows. But if we decide we "know" something, we are not open to other possibilities anymore. And that's a shame. We lose something very vital in our life when it's more important to us to be "one who knows" than it is to be awake to what's happening. We get disappointed because we expect one thing, and it doesn't happen quite like that. Or we think something ought to be like this, and it turns out different. Instead of saying, "Oh, isn't that interesting," we say, "Yuck, not what I thought it would be." Pity. The very nature of beginner's mind is not knowing in a certain way, not being an expert. As Suzuki Roshi said in the prologue to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's there are few." As an expert, you've already got it figured out, so you don't need to pay attention to what's happening. Pity.'
Not necessarily a pity. You have to be an expert at some things in order to become a beginner at others.
True, but I don't think that's the point of the passage. Rather, the idea is not to seal one's mind off at the "expert" level in any field of endeavor. At that point, we replace questions with assumptions. Those assumptions might be based on knowledge, and they might be right (for now). But who's to say that they're going to be right tomorrow? Or the next day? Or that a better way won't emerge? (It definitely will not emerge from the one who assumes he's mastered it, because he won't question what he assumes he's mastered).
It's on the todo list anyway.
There is a fine line between putting yourself in a box that you (or others) create for you and knowing who you are. The classifications that Paul lists in his post are of the first kind. The second kind, you can't really change.
I also believe that it is at least as important to recognize that there are certain characteristics (for lack of a better word) that each of us possess which are an integral part of who we are.
Your claim that we are nothing presents a serious ethical dilemma, and one which I believe if not understood correctly can have disastrous consequences. Allow me to explain.
Each of the characteristics that I mentioned above directly ties me to a responsibility that I have to some "other". With regards to this other, I am something. It is the very essence of existence. The mere fact that I exist means that I will always have an effect on some other, whether good or bad. Without an other, I do not exist.
To choose to ignore the responsibility I have towards an other is an action. It may have a good or bad consequence, but it is still an action. I cannot avoid acting, as inaction itself is an action with regard to the other.
For example, I mentioned above that I am a father. Now, I could of course choose (as many men do for one reason or another) to simply walk away from my responsibilities as a father. I could decide essentially that I am not a father. But that doesn't change the fact that I have fathered children and that abandoning that responsibility will have some consequence on them. To them, I am something. I am their father, and I can't change that.
To pretend that I'm not a father is simply lying to myself. It's also being very selfish. That's why I say that this belief system can have disastrous consequences when applied broadly. Because if you're not careful it can lead to very selfish behavior.
Similarly to @mjijackson I'm a husband and a father. If I made a decision to become 'nothing' I might benefit myself, but that would be a disaster to others that depend on me.
Somehow I find most of these Zen-like thoughts quite selfish, but I'm open to suggestions, perhaps I'm missing an important point here...
suffering = your self image vs perception of reality self
The argument goes that man is a prisoner of his self image. This self image is a mixture of his desires, wants, tastes, hopes, fears.... This can be seen as a self image that arises out of conditioning by the society and self. You are like a frog in the well and imagine the well to be the universe. You are limited and shaped by the well. How can one know of what the possibilities are unless they ascend from their own intellectual/egotistical/scoietal wells or the well of self image?
On the other hand, I have noticed that rejection of natural tendencies leads to suffering as well. No matter how hard we try the self will never be a blank tape. When you reject the self image your self image becomes "Im he/she who rejects self image imposed on me". So now you are straight back where you started with a brand new self image, only this time you are more observant of your flaws(tendencies of self). So there is still suffering here.
Let me oversimplify again the frog = Neo in the matrix, Ignorance is bliss = Cipher in the matrix
The truth is that we are nothing in particular.
There is pain, there is hunger, there is thirst, etc.
The interesting part is: When does it become your pain, your hunger, etc?
:)
In the christian world, it is called "taking yourself off the throne and putting another entity on it". The entity that gets put on it is variable, but the constant is that you are not on it.
Perhaps, as Chesterton said, GP is being "as narrow as the universe".
When I read your essay I immediately thought of the negative way, which is the strain of Christian philosophy that denies affirmative statements about God, and denies to some extent settled knowledge.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
There is also an equal and opposite affirmative way that takes God as knowable not literally, but by analogy.
And this to me is the missing element in the essay. This egoless vehicle that we are cleaning so carefully, where are we to drive it? What shall we use to measure improvement? How will we understand progress?
Paul is I think advocating people to mentally distance their selves from roles or identity-classes, like straight, Christian, or atheist. The Christian throne metaphor advocates for centering or focusing on something other than the self, while entirely allowing for roles or identity classes.
This excerpt from Rumi seems apt:
My take on this line of thought is that as long as you consider yourself as being a "someone" or "having a self" you are always in conflict with other selves and only if you become nothing you remove the inherent conflict.On the other hand, he talks about "returning to zero expectations" and being "nothing."
I conclude that Paul wants to be a better nothing. Or possibly that he is slowly decaying. I'm not sure you can be nothing and also have a standard for getting better.
I'm thinking about "perspective" -- the word suggests a relationship to something bigger. For example, when an artist draws with perspective, there is a point on the horizon toward which lines extend. Removing constraints may be a useful exercise, but removing all constraints would, in a sense, remove all perspective as well. So I think I'm looking for a perspective that's constrained by what's true, rather than one that's unconstrained.
I guess this is what I find inconsistent. There's this idea: "Until we let go of our mental images of who we are or who we should be, our vision remains clouded by expectation." But in the same paragraph, there's a notion of "self improvement." If I remove all expectations of who I should be, how can I measure my self improvement (assuming I intend to improve myself in the first place)?
There's the potential here to replace stressing out over a question like "am I a good father?" with stressing over things like "am I nothing? Am I improving? Am I myself yet?" Might this be just another "path to insanity?" Just a thought.
Edit: typos.
On another offtopic note, I think the whole having to be macho thing is changing pretty fast though - not yet disappeared, but on its way. One of the biggest things I've noticed (in England) is that it's very common to see boys, aged 7-16 wearing pink tshirts. Even in my childhood ~10 years ago I don't think I remember any friends or anyone my age wearing pink for it being too feminine a colour. And that's just one random thing, but that trend seems to hold true in my experience in adults too, and not just in clothing.
Δεν ελπίζω τίποτε. Δεν φοβούμαι τίποτε. Είμαι λεύτερος.
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.
That said, awesome post.
Reminds me of this:
Reb Zusha was laying on his deathbed surrounded by his disciples. He was crying and no one could comfort him. One student asked his Rebbe, "Why do you cry? You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham." Reb Zusha answered, "When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham,' rather, they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you Zusha?' Why didn't I fulfill my potential, why didn't I follow the path that could have been mine."
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Full text on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata#Full_text
A similar thought was formulated by Morihei Ueshiba: "There are no contests in the Art of Peace. A true warrior is invincible because he or she contests with nothing. Defeat means to defeat the mind of contention that we harbor within."
(i hope it's not "if we can be happy with who we are, then we will not mind using fixed identities"...)
In a similar vein, from David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College:
"If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.... Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html
I understood the core message to be we shouldn't let labels that define some aspects of who we are constrain us.
Or, in programming terms: mixins not class hierarchies :)
Favourite quote: "True self improvement requires becoming a better version of our selves, not a lesser version of someone else."