[HN Gopher] Staring into the abyss as a core life skill
___________________________________________________________________
Staring into the abyss as a core life skill
Author : troydavis
Score : 188 points
Date : 2022-12-22 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.benkuhn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.benkuhn.net)
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Journaling without any goal besides understanding myself better,
| particularly my beliefs, had a similarly transformative effect on
| me. I stopped feeling angry and entitled to things I didn't have,
| and I became extremely positive in my social interactions and in
| my head.
|
| For a long time I credited knowledge graph technology for the
| change, but now I think it was more likely just the practice of
| committed, written introspection. (The graphs definitely helped
| me navigate my notes faster and with less redundancy, though,
| which mattered because there were a lot of them.)
| samsquire wrote:
| The world is filled with much good, but if you're looking at what
| is false, not good or rejecting what is good you shall find it
| hard to notice.
|
| If you look for the good and aim toward it then you get more of
| it.
|
| If you aim to look for bad and search for it you shall get more
| of it.
|
| Everyone eventually reaps what they sow. And you can judge a tree
| by its fruit.
|
| Rather than focus on the badness of the bad situation or stare
| into the abyss. Pick good responses that are independent of bad.
|
| In other words, two wrongs don't mean right.
| JadeNB wrote:
| This post seems almost comically like a collection of self-help
| slogans, and not far off from blaming people who are in a dark
| place for getting themselves there. (I also don't understand
| how "two wrongs don't mean right" connects to the rest of it.
| Is the idea that one is doing wrong by thinking bad things of
| wrong that has already been done?)
|
| Also, if this is meant as a corrective to the article (as
| suggested by "Rather than focus on the badness of the bad
| situation or stare into the abyss. Pick good responses that are
| independent of bad"), then it seems that it is a response to
| the title, not the content. The very beginning of the article
| emphasises that the point is not to dwell on the bad in order
| to foster despair, but rather to acknowledge the existence of
| the bad in order to be able to move from it towards a remedy.
| If you can't even acknowledge that a bad situation exists, then
| you can't make a good response to it.
| samsquire wrote:
| Thank you for your reply.
|
| What I was trying to put across was that we get the results
| what we cause. I always bear the outcome of what I did. Can
| you think of an escape from the effects of what we do? (I
| deliberately ignore the other side of this, I'm not talking
| about effects we did not cause, such as trouble others cause
| for others)
|
| If you pick good, right, proper, meant to be, what should be,
| what is righteous, what is true, honest, genuine, with
| integrity actions, then you ought to bear fruit that is
| caused by that. I think that this produces better outcomes
| than picking bad, not good, wrong, untrue, false, not honest,
| not genuine actions/thoughts/speech.
|
| In hindsight we can determine what actions were not right,
| since they didn't produce the right, good results.
|
| So if we seek after good, shouldn't we get the effects of
| good back because we surround ourselves with it?
|
| This is separate independent reasoning from when bad things
| befall people who do all things right. I haven't thought much
| about that.
|
| Do we bear the effects of what other's cause?
|
| The two wrongs don't create a right refers to the idea of
| avoid basing my reasoning on doing something on something bad
| and calling it good. I should keep my reasoning of my
| reaction to bad things purely based on goodness and not based
| on the bad thing itself. I never want to say I did something
| purely due to a bad thing. I think you could call it
| motivation. I want to keep good and bad independent and not
| merge them into one. Can something bad cause something good
| in other words? Or did the good that it is a reaction to
| cause itself?
| layer8 wrote:
| The article argues for not ignoring the parts of reality
| you're uncomfortable with. Good or bad is neither here nor
| there. The point is to not be constrained by having a
| skewed view of reality or by avoidant behavior.
| derivagral wrote:
| >In hindsight we can determine what actions were not right,
| since they didn't produce the right, good results.
|
| Disagree, to the extent that you need to discount results
| against available information, processing ability, and
| alternatives at the time of the decision. Also, not all
| good or bad decisions have similar outcomes, the world is
| not just. Personally, I've found more use out of refining
| my decision process and what goes into it than focusing on
| results. Not to say results aren't a useful signal, but
| they're hardly the only or even the most important signal.
|
| I agree with you that the EV of trying to be "good"
| generally outweighs the other path. However, not getting
| discouraged by the marketing of "bad with no consequences"
| is difficult in today's world!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| syzarian wrote:
| Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are notable examples of people
| who have not reaped what they sowed.
| Atreiden wrote:
| "If you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you
| look for the dark, that is all you will ever see."
|
| - Iroh
| eggsmediumrare wrote:
| Quality of fruit is the product of soil and climactic
| conditions, not the tree itself.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Nah. I know some real garbage people who seem to be immune to
| Karma. No bad ever comes their way.
|
| And some wonderful people who seem to attract all the Karma
| which slid right off the garbage people.
|
| The world is unfair, and the universe doesn't care. Morality is
| emergent from consciousness; in a time before our big thinky
| brains had evolved, there was no such thing as bad and good.
|
| Evidence: How many, many animals live and thrive is deeply
| immoral by human standards. With few exceptions, pick just
| about any horror movie and I can show you an animal who
| exhibits those behaviors in its normal life.
| jondeval wrote:
| > Evidence: How many, many animals live and thrive is deeply
| immoral by human standards.
|
| The fact that non-human animals live an existence of violent
| survival does not seem to be prima facie evidence for the
| nonexistence or incoherence of human morality.
|
| Human beings are _rational_ animals. The term _rational_ here
| is being used in a specific and technical sense. Non-human
| animals are subject to the laws of nature in a manner that
| acts more directly on their passions. Human beings are also
| subject to the laws of nature, but the forces of nature are
| mediated by our rationality.
|
| Animal Act: (1) Offspring are hungry (2) brings food to
| offspring
|
| Human Act: (1) Offspring are hungry (2) Reflects and Decides
| to provide food (3) brings food to offspring
|
| An act is deemed immoral if it is a misuse of the rational
| faculty for ends that are not in conformity with the laws of
| nature.
|
| Human Act (immoral): (1) Offspring are hungry (2) Reflects
| and Decides not to provide food for selfish reasons (3)
| offspring go hungry
|
| Animals suffer but they are not moral agents like human
| beings since there is no mediating rationality that can be
| misused for ends that are not in conformity with nature's
| laws. The phrase _Nature 's Laws_ is being used broadly to
| include physical, biological or evolved social laws
| intertwined with the essential characteristics of the
| species.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > The fact that non-human animals live an existence of
| violent survival does not seem to be prima facie evidence
| for the nonexistence or incoherence of human morality.
|
| You missed the point. Morality is a human invention, much
| like computers are (albeit philosophical, not physical in
| nature).
|
| Like computers, it didn't exist before consciousness
| evolved.
|
| Talking about morality as a universal truth, and there
| being some invisible scales of justice which will
| eventually even out is thusly irrational.
| jondeval wrote:
| Apologies if I'm missing the main point. I certainly
| agree that consciousness + rational choosing must be a
| prerequisite for moral acts.
|
| But I wouldn't concede that morality is a human invention
| like the computer. That would imply that it's
| _accidental_ and not grounded in anything fundamental to
| our species or nature 's laws.
|
| Do you believe that choosing to feed your kids, or
| choosing to not kill someone are simply created
| constructs like the computer or the airplane?
|
| Also, I think these two statements can be true at the
| same time: (1) The Moral Law is real and exists outside
| of our subjective experience and historical cultural
| evolution and (2) concepts like Karma are without
| evidence.
| RajT88 wrote:
| > Do you believe that choosing to feed your kids, or
| choosing to not kill someone are simply created
| constructs like the computer or the airplane?
|
| The actions exist obviously.
|
| My point is that in the absence of consciousness there is
| no positive or negative value ascribed to them.
|
| Let's take the example of feeding your children, but use
| the opposite extreme. What you see plenty of in nature is
| a mother eating her children. Sometimes for no reason at
| all (Octopus, Guppies, rodents).
|
| Are there certain species that are fundamentally immoral?
| Maybe so, from our perspective. But without our
| perspective _no_ value is assigned. It is just another
| thing animals do without any moral weight.
| jondeval wrote:
| I don't think the concept is morality is relevant in
| those extreme cases. It looks like we are more or less
| saying the same thing.
| prox wrote:
| While the universe might not care, people can. Will you?
|
| In many situations you have the choice to help or to be the
| one that choses selfishness. To bridge a divide or not.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I can, and do, and people should. You have missed the point
| of my post if you're replying like this.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Yes the majority of animals die a violent death. If they
| manage to survive long enough, they get too old to escape a
| predator.
| flashgordon wrote:
| I agree with karma and deservedness not being aligned but I
| am pretty sure an animal doing what it is doing is limited by
| the need to hunt and feed rather than to subjugate and be
| sadistic?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Not for more intelligent animals. Consider the footage of
| killer whales "playing with their food" from Blue Planet.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Clearly you do not own cats.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Are you talking those cute furry four legged sadistic
| serial killers?
| flashgordon wrote:
| Hot damn I don't. I always thought I'd be a cat person
| but sounds like I need to revisit my choices!
| nradov wrote:
| I have seen California sea lions killing ocean sunfish
| (mola molas) in a way that appears to be sadistic, or at
| least just for sport. The sea lions bite the fishes' fins
| off without eating them, then play with the crippled bodies
| like living frisbees. After a while the sea lions get bored
| and let the fish sink to the seafloor where they're eaten
| alive by crabs.
|
| Nature, red in tooth and claw.
| maria2 wrote:
| Is that a form of sadism? Perhaps the sea lion is unable
| to conceive of the suffering of the fish. To the sea
| lion, the fish is merely an object. Playing with the fish
| is no different than playing with a rock to the sea lion.
| layer8 wrote:
| Sounds very similar to a psychopath incapable of empathy.
| fluoridation wrote:
| Lack of empathy is the norm in nature, not the exception.
| A species of predator that could empathize with its prey
| would starve to death.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| Does that matter for the fish?
| vlunkr wrote:
| No, but that's not the question being discussed.
| unity1001 wrote:
| > With few exceptions, pick just about any horror movie and I
| can show you an animal who exhibits those behaviors in its
| normal life.
|
| But in the end, the animals that thrive end up being the ones
| that cooperate both within their species and with other
| species. From humans to symbiotic bacteria and jellyfish...
| paulpauper wrote:
| Karma is just confirmation bias
| anonporridge wrote:
| Karma is a psyop perpetuated by people with power to keep
| that masses passive, because they think the universe will
| do the job of dealing out justice for them.
|
| Ditto belief in a god that judges and punishes the wicked
| in the afterlife.
| rektide wrote:
| I love this post. Support for seeing the harder toil of life
| without necessarily being overcome is, in my view, one of the
| things I've seen least well done least performed least
| demonstrated for developing youth.
|
| Semi related, been re-reading Ministry for the Future, and we
| just had a blurb on the Availability Hueristic, the preference
| for relying on what you know & is familiar.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
|
| A main character is trying to face the larger world of issues, to
| see other things, & not let avoidance take over. This empathy
| for, willingness to tangle in more tham you know & more than
| what's familiar often involves looking into the fear-spots, in
| recognizing bigger scarrier parts of the world. It's a huge skill
| that, for me, growing up & as an adult, has been such a reliable
| mark of character & interestingness, was the boundary between a
| maturing engaged useful person & a scary ineard facing existence
| that lacks a empathy, a willingness to see beyond themself.
| Seeing beyond yourself, overcoming the Availability Hueristic,
| Seeing into the Abyss seem all related & high value, define a
| higher order humanness that I wish to see spread & grow through
| humanity, that we need to work on.
|
| But which are vastly underdescribed, under emphasized, under-
| spoken. Glad to have this post.
| roughly wrote:
| I was told once that by the time you're genuinely considering a
| big change - by the time you're aware there's an abyss - the
| answer is probably "do it." There are things that are normal
| fears - "I have a serious medical condition and can't risk being
| without health insurance," that kind of thing - but "abyss"
| questions tend to be the sorts of things where you can't really
| articulate what your concerns are, or they're more about status
| or perception or just a general risk aversion ("what if I never
| find a job again?" "do I really want to be a divorcee?" "will my
| peers think I'm a failure?"), and the reason you're really even
| considering it is because you're currently miserable. People tend
| to stay at jobs longer than they should, in relationships longer
| than they should, and in misery longer than they should.
| curation wrote:
| Subjectivity is an abyss. The Real is the tension between
| symbolizer and symbolized as we try and fail to fill reality,
| which is unfinished. Theories of Everything do not come from
| science but from philosophy. Plato, Hegel, Lacan, McGowan, Dolar,
| Zizek, Freud, Fanon.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Do you know anyone who made the leap and regretted it? I'm not
| thinking of any, but my memory isn't great. Also I think people
| don't typically share their self-doubts, even ones that happened
| years ago, very frankly.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I made the leap into a weird industry (biotech) as a
| designer/engineer, and though I don't "fully regret it" I still
| see friends/peers build up a lot of wealth that's simply not
| possible in this space.
|
| Yes, life's been more meaningful; we've treated patients and
| sent them home and that's a great feeling, but always with the
| question, "at what personal cost?"
| physicles wrote:
| A bit over 10 years ago I was still an evangelical Christian. I
| decided to ask myself, "What's the most logical way to live in
| light of your religious beliefs? Why aren't you living that way?"
|
| That line of questioning was scary, but also invigorating. Scary,
| because it probably meant leaving behind a cushy tech job.
| Invigorating, because I imagined I'd end up as a missionary
| somewhere, which is a pretty amazing life if you really believe
| that Christianity is true.
|
| After 18 months of staring into the abyss, I wasn't a Christian
| anymore. It was the hardest and most important thing I've ever
| done.
|
| Two things made the journey possible:
|
| 1. I made it impossible to stop. I'd decided that I wanted to
| live as consistently as possible with my beliefs, so I couldn't
| stop until I knew what those beliefs were. The only possible
| outcomes were a) missionary, or b) non-Christian.
|
| 2. I found others who went through the same thing. A few were
| friends, but most were authors or random people online who wrote
| about their experience, like lukeprog on lesswrong.com.
| prewett wrote:
| > The only possible outcomes were a) missionary, or b) non-
| Christian.
|
| That seems like an unnecessarily tiny set of possibilities, and
| pretty much guaranteed from the beginning you were going to
| choose (b), since "non-Christian" allows a huge flexibility of
| options, while "missionary" is one specific vocation and chosen
| only by a small subset of Christians. It's sort of like a
| person saying he will only stay an American if he's going to be
| a federal judge otherwise he'll emigrate.
|
| Now, Evangelical thought lends itself to the sort of conclusion
| you came to: it really only values spiritual activities, so
| there is not any value for daily life in and of itself. I've
| heard pastors say "the reason why God doesn't take us to heaven
| immediately when we're saved is so that we can bring others to
| Christ" and "there is nothing for you in this world [because
| the Bible says 'the world is evil']". Which I'm coming to
| regard as functionally heretical, since there is no balance at
| all, certainly no celebration that the world God made is good
| and very good, and functionally limits you to careers of
| evangelist or pastor.
|
| The larger history of Christian thought is more robust, though.
| Consider Paul: "make it your _ambition_ to lead a _quiet life_
| : you should mind your own business and work with your hands"
| (1 Thess 4:11, emphasis added) Or Tim Keller on work: your work
| is your gift to the people around you; by extension, your work
| is bringing God's gift to the people you interact with. ("Gift"
| here not meaning you don't get paid; there was a great barbecue
| place where I lived, and it was a gift to me to have fantastic
| barbecue, but I can assure you that it was not cheap)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| It's like the Evangelicals forgot Luther's doctrine of
| vocation.
|
| https://credomag.com/article/martin-luther-and-the-
| doctrine-...
| physicles wrote:
| For me, the truth of Christianity always rested on its
| objective historical truth claims, especially the
| resurrection. And for many years I believed these truth
| claims had sufficient evidence going for them.
|
| But then I was hoping to find evidence that would convince a
| rational non-believer, so I looked closer. I found out that
| Adam and Eve didn't exist, the flood didn't happen, the
| exodus didn't happen, Daniel was written much later than it
| claims to be, the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew
| didn't happen, and the founding miracles of Christianity
| aren't that different from other religions of that time and
| place. I started giving the benefit of the doubt to skeptics
| instead of Christian apologists. It became impossible to make
| the leap that, despite all these issues, the bodily
| resurrection of Jesus was nevertheless historical.
|
| I never wanted to lose my faith, but once I saw that its
| historical truth claims didn't hold up to scrutiny, it just
| kind of crumbled.
|
| I understand that others have a different standard of proof
| for these miracles than I do. Plenty of people I've talked to
| over the years have said that looking for evidence is
| foolish, but I find that ridiculous: if Christianity doesn't
| have enough of a foothold in reality that we can find
| evidence for its unique claims, then why should we think it's
| true? If I should "just have faith", why is it Christianity
| that I should just have faith in?
|
| I also understand that there are other ways of being
| Christian that don't depend on any of the miracles in the
| Bible being historical. But that never made any sense to me
| either: if we're dismissing huge swaths of the Bible because
| "we know better," how is what's left not just the religion
| we've made up? What would be the point of that?
| jondeval wrote:
| What were the reasons that made you embrace that change?
| Consistency is certainly admirable, but you can consistently
| embrace incorrect world views.
| physicles wrote:
| As I wrote in a sibling comment, my faith always rested on
| Christianity's historical truth claims. So once I reached the
| conclusion that they weren't true, there was no way I could
| continue to embrace Christianity. I had to rethink everything
| from the ground up.
| 2devnull wrote:
| "And I knew I had to finally update. To actually change what I
| planned to do, to change what I was doing now, to do something
| different instead."
|
| Reminds me of the famous Rilke poem:
|
| "Otherwise this stone would seem defaced beneath the translucent
| cascade of the shoulders and would not glisten like a wild
| beast's fur:
|
| would not, from all the borders of itself, burst like a star: for
| here there is no place that does not see you. You must change
| your life."
|
| And pivot he did.
| civopsec wrote:
| Interesting! I wonder what kind of philosophy this author has and
| their outlook on life is. How could it be good to stare into the
| abyss? Won't it drive you mad? This must be an interesting read.
|
| > I'm probably not using "stare into the abyss" in the exact same
| sense Nietzche intended, since I wouldn't really describe what
| I'm talking about as "fighting with a monster" or like it has the
| potential to turn you into a monster. [...] as did Elon Musk when
| he said that
|
| > [...] Staring into the abyss means thinking reasonably about
| things that are uncomfortable to contemplate, like arguments
| against your religious beliefs, or in favor of breaking up with
| your partner.
|
| > [...] The first time I learned what really exceptional abyss-
| staring looks like, it was by watching Drew, the CEO of Wave.
| Starting a company requires a lot of staring into the abyss,
| because it involves making lots of serious mistakes (building the
| wrong thing, hiring the wrong person, etc.)
|
| _groans_
| vlunkr wrote:
| In general I agree with this, though it seems to be mostly about
| startup founders pivoting.
|
| I do take issue with this suggested exercise:
|
| > What bad things are you afraid of happening? Imagine in detail
| what it would be like if they happened.
|
| I know people that do this regularly, I would consider it
| indicative of an anxiety disorder, not a healthy behavior.
| dnissley wrote:
| I think it depends on your reaction to those imaginings. I do a
| decent amount of "staring into the abyss." It's actually a way
| for me to calm my anxiety. Because once I walk through the
| worst case scenarios in detail, I can always say: I will make
| it, I will be fine, I can be happy even in those situations. If
| I don't explicitly walk through the scenarios in detail, I tend
| to catastrophize them in a vague way -- "It'll be terrible",
| "no good", "so unhappy". There's something about doing this
| detailed walkthrough that requires me to state my previously
| unstated assumptions that are often very wrong.
| keeptrying wrote:
| Salaries/Trustfunds are the main reason that people lose this
| skill of staring into the abyss and or never gain it in the first
| place.
|
| You literally can't build this skill without taking your own
| decisions and bearing the consequences of the same (without your
| boss shielding you).
| [deleted]
| andrewfromx wrote:
| "Nature loves courage. Throw yourself into the abyss and discover
| it's actually a feather bed."
| sharadov wrote:
| Honestly I was not sure about tech when I made a choice to get an
| electrical engg degree, a few years down the road I thought of an
| MBA, but then went and co-founded a startup while holding a full
| time job. I could afford it, was still in my early 30s and didn't
| have kids. Although the startup did not succeed, that experience
| taught me a lot( I called it my alternative to going to business
| school). But overall, when I look back, tech was a great choice,
| I always have had enough time for family and hobbies (my average
| work week has always been 40 hrs). Maybe because I was fortunate
| to pivot into Data when it was not a "sexy" field that it has
| come to be.
|
| Some paths are just "luck". But tech beats a lot of fields (
| medicine, law) for the compensation against hours worked and
| flexibility.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Has anyone done a survey of founders, age of start, their number
| of companies until success, age at success, their income, and
| their familial net worth? Because it's a lot easier to "stare
| into the abyss" when failure has survivable outcomes.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| As bk mentions in his footnote, this googlebombs "staring into
| the abyss".
|
| "Courage to tackle the unpleasant" doesn't have the same ring,
| however.
| alan-crowe wrote:
| To my ears "Courage to tackle the unpleasant" has the ring of
| bounds known ahead of time. Chore X will be unpleasant. How
| unpleasant? Between 4 Ughs and 7 Ughs. Maybe 8 Ughs.
|
| So I know why I'm procrastinating, I don't want to tackle a 4
| Ugh chore right now. But I can plan. Tomorrow morning I'll be
| up for tackling a 10 Ugh chore, I can plan to do it then.
|
| Sometimes we don't know the upper bound. The article mentions
| religious doubts, which can escalate to nihilism and despair.
| One cannot plan for that. No-one says: I'm too tired for
| nihilism and despair this evening, I'll do it tomorrow morning.
|
| Abyss? The examples in the article have a feel of a scarily
| large upper bound, which we are putting off estimating. But we
| could estimate it, realize that we are not at the abyss, we are
| just facing a tough choice, and get on with it.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _Gee, Schopenhauer. What are we going to do tonight?_
|
| > _The same thing we do every night, Kierkegaard. Nihilism
| and despair._
| ssivark wrote:
| "Staring into the abyss" is only half the challenge; the other
| half is knowing what (values) you can hold on to while the abyss
| stares back at you.
|
| The latter is what stops people from looking too closely, or
| asking hard questions -- because they fear that they might not
| have a strong enough framework in which to answer them. And so
| they look only as close as they can handle while they slowly work
| up the strength and the courage.
|
| Another kind of person happens to be very comfortable staring
| into the abyss, interpreting with Procrustean simplifications,
| and reacting to what they see -- without necessarily the strong
| values in place to ground them; they are a loose canon,
| especially if they are a high-agency person biased for action.
|
| When the gentle equilibrium has been upset by an unexpected
| outcome, the high-agency person has the fortitude to iterate the
| cycle of staring into the abyss (still a loose cannon, if they're
| not well grounded).
|
| However, the median person might not -- and can end up doing an
| incredible amount of collateral damage (to their own lives, and
| the lives of people around them) if they do this with
| insufficient skills or commitment. I wouldn't be surprised if a
| fear of the abyss is an evolutionary/cultural survival mechanism
| to protect them from themselves.
|
| Very few people have the nous to carry out the whole iterated
| process _well_.
| TedShiller wrote:
| > thinking reasonably about things that are uncomfortable to
| contemplate, like arguments against your religious beliefs
|
| Good exercise for democrats: acknowledge that the Hunter Biden
| laptop was not fake, that negative news about the government are
| being actively, illegally, and covertly suppressed by social
| media companies.
|
| It changes everything.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Staring into the abyss means thinking reasonably about things
| that are uncomfortable to contemplate, like arguments against
| your religious beliefs, or in favor of breaking up with your
| partner."
|
| These might be difficult to discuss. But is there really anything
| uncomfortable to contemplate?
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Anything that consciously or subconsciously reminds someone's
| mind or body of their trauma?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Hmm, if you count anger, I suppose so.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Anger is for sure a sign of something going unaddressed, as
| humans can learn to enjoy and accept anything.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| I think you're missing what is perhaps the most well known quote
| about this topic:
|
| If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
| fedeb95 wrote:
| I know I missed the footnote; still, the quote meaning is sill
| missing in the article meaning.
| pavlov wrote:
| It's in the footnote.
| forbiddenlake wrote:
| That is actually in article in the footnote.
| shudza wrote:
| A footnote is nice, but you can't really take a well known
| phrase and just redefine it according to your needs, while
| clickbaiting a bunch of people.
| twelve40 wrote:
| I don't think it was malicious, I think the author was
| trying to be creative in a clumsy way.
| [deleted]
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Hunh. I think some people call this "testing their priors." In
| _Pi_ (1998), there 's a lot of "... restate my assumptions: One
| ..." as the narrator strives to correct his thought processes. I
| recollect a short horror story in which a man becomes obsessed
| with "doing away" with more and more of his life he deems truly
| unneeded (it may have been named "To the Bone," it has been a few
| decades). In the harder sciences, whatever is accepted as the
| "the truth" is only a working model, hopefully to be replaced by
| something better when experiments point toward some flaw.
|
| It involves a lot of the ability to confront the Sunk Cost
| Fallacy and a bit of whatever it is where you see people
| unwilling to let go of something which inadvertently traps them.
|
| I try to do this, frequently, as a kind of back-tracking when I
| am stuck, or simply when I suspect it. However, I think it's
| probably a bit dangerous to get into a habit of it, or to apply
| it very broadly. The dead and the unborn need nothing, and one is
| ever in a state of moving from the latter to the former, without
| a way to take anything with you when the journey is done. Perhaps
| an addendum to "nothing is true; all is permitted" might be
| another semicolon and "everything is unnecessary."
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Sometimes. A lot of people have pretty well-defined values,
| though, and stay in iffy situations out of uncertainty and loss
| aversion. Even if the expected value of a radical uprooting and
| redo is positive, the potencial downside -- alienation?
| depression? loss of function? -- can be extreme.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| Here's an abyss to stare into:
|
| Humans generally don't have an idea of what their needs are.
|
| Challenge: list all of your needs for surviving and thriving from
| memory and also give a definition of each that's clear and not
| simply some desire/want or societally created artificial
| construct (computers and money are not needs).
|
| Also, Maslow's hierarchy is too individualistic, so cheating with
| it automatically loses. And another hint: excess and deprivation
| of needs is a need in order to learn what the individual body's
| needs for moderating each need is.
| crawfordcomeaux wrote:
| This is an important abyss to stare into because a sustainable
| moneyless society that can effectively meet everyone's needs is
| almost impossible to conceive of without being aware of all the
| needs.
| throwaway123989 wrote:
| Ben Horowitz in THE HARD THING ABOUT HARD THINGS mentioned
| similar thing:
|
| How to lead even when you don't know where you are going: The
| fine line between fear and courage
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| This sounds more like "playing devil's advocate" or taking a
| contrarian view, or questioning one's assumptions or decisions.
| Whatever you call it, the author is right about it being a useful
| skill.
|
| If you want to talk about "staring into the abyss" though... to
| me that phrase evokes the casting of all reality into doubt. It
| means to grapple with the Munchhausen trilemma, or to perceive
| the limitless and arbitrary space of metaphysics, or to
| acknowledge the oblivion of meaning that the shadow of death
| casts over us. Either way, the abyss really is an abyss. I don't
| know whether it's useful to stare into it.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| I second this as a classic example of _advocatus diaboli_ [0]
| in order to find a hole/weakness/wrongness in one own's initial
| argument/assumptions.
|
| Taking the Nietzsche quote[1] into the context of his work: "
| _Jenseits von Gut und Bose_ (Viertes Hauptstuck; Spruche und
| Zwischenspiele, 146) " [ _Beyond Good and Evil_ ; Fourth main
| part; Proverbs and interludes; 146]] your interpretation seems
| more in line with the book.
|
| The inevitability of birthing/becoming a Monster oneself by
| fighting a Monster for too long is akin to staring into the
| abyss long enough until the abyss is staring into you. Melting
| away of cause and effect, the blurring, the reversing and
| finally the interchangeability/permeability - in this case - of
| the line between the object and observer (objectivism).
|
| Nihilism (dissolution of all values, meaningless-ism) as a
| standpoint devours its subject who in the beginning is looking
| at the outside world all around - from the inside out in the
| end.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_advocate
|
| [1]http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Jense
| ...
|
| _146 Wer mit Ungeheuern kampft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht
| dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund
| blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein._
| Rimintil wrote:
| > casting of all reality into doubt
|
| Throwing one's reality into 'doubt' can cause you to
| significantly change your behavior, thoughts, ideas, etc. If
| those are largely negative to begin with and 'casting reality
| into doubt' (which is certainly one piece, if not the major
| piece of disassociation) in a safe place can improve and change
| your behavior for the better, it seems like a great idea to me.
|
| https://psyche.co/ideas/when-reality-slips-through-your-fing...
| kdmccormick wrote:
| I take what the author describes as "staring into the abyss" as
| a special case of playing devil's advocate: one where the
| contrarian view has significant and emotionally difficult
| consequences, and you're actually letting yourself feel the
| emotional weight of potentially choosing it instead of just
| playing with the idea.
|
| For example: Imagine you go to an engineering college, and you
| start feeling like you might not like the idea of an
| engineering career. You could play devil's advocate by chatting
| with your engineering-enthralled friends about how fun it'd be
| to drop out of college and go to culinary school instead, but
| that's just talk. Staring into the abyss would be actually
| thinking through the financial, social, and personal
| implications of that choice, looking into culinary schools, and
| letting that dread and anxiety and excitement wash over you
| while you genuinely contemplate making the switch.
|
| > If you want to talk about "staring into the abyss" though...
| to me that phrase evokes the casting of all reality into doubt.
|
| In a more literal sense, yeah, I agree, that's what staring
| into the abyss is. I think here the author uses it as an
| effective way of saying "question the assumptions of _your
| immediate_ reality ".
| bee_rider wrote:
| It must be an indictment of _something_ that "introspection,
| long term planning, thorough consideration of the idea of
| changing career paths away from STEM" can be with a straight
| face described as "staring into the abyss."
| Swizec wrote:
| I mentor an engineer for whom staring into the abyss
| involved walking away from a decade long culinary career
| and learning to code.
|
| Changing your life is hard. It challenges your whole
| identity. What you're switching from and too is irrelevant.
| noduerme wrote:
| > letting that dread and anxiety and excitement wash over you
| while you genuinely contemplate making the switch.
|
| But life also happens anyways. For me, a lot of what
| constitutes "staring into the abyss" is accepting that
| neither the original plan nor my alternate wish worked out as
| expected - despite the best laid plans - because almost
| nothing ever does. It's not just considering all the
| implications of a decision but accepting that things just
| work out differently than you hoped.
|
| [edit] I guess I mean that accepting the _inevitability_ of
| previous disappointments is as much or more a part of
| grappling with the abyss as is considering the future.
| lazide wrote:
| Many folks refuse to accept or do either of these things.
| If you aren't that person, then congrats! Well, maybe. It
| has pros and cons either way.
| riversflow wrote:
| I can honestly say I'm pretty good at this and feel like
| its more of a burden to me in my life so far. I no longer
| know anyone who shares this trait, and most people find
| even hearing me talk about it uncomfortable.
|
| Perhaps I will get the opportunity to use it someday, but
| as of now it is really just emotionally taxing to have
| many uncomfortable thoughts that I have to bottle up.
| baby wrote:
| I would have been interested in reading such a blogpost yeah, I
| feel like I got catfished :)
| leashless wrote:
| Staring into the abyss of your own death is a core spiritual
| practice in many of the worlds spiritual traditions.
|
| It's the important part of meditation.
| stared wrote:
| I like the idea of contemplating uncomfortable ideas, but I hate
| the phrasing.
|
| The abyss is void, nothingness. It is not a challenge; it is not
| something to be studied or resolved. It has no structure and
| offers no insight. "Staring in the abyss" is a suitable phrase
| for existential dread, cosmic despair, and metaphysical visions
| of hell. So, it is a good phrase for the worst of the worst parts
| of depression rather than good advice.
| w0hnen wrote:
| interesting that you describe void as nothingness and then
| immediately assign a negative value to it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9A%C5%ABnyat%C4%81
| stared wrote:
| The name can mean a few different concepts.
|
| The concept I described is purely negative. If you ever
| experienced even a glimpse of it, I doubt you would classify
| it otherwise. For some references, I recommend classification
| of mystical vision (psychedelic-assisted or not).
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| I thought it was a well-established figure of speech meaning to
| consider something terrifying. But I admit that I'm not finding
| that definition quickly online.
| iskander wrote:
| This feels like a very superficial and somewhat silly
| redefinition of "staring into the abyss".
| [deleted]
| hkon wrote:
| Wow, the abyss was a lot shallower than I had imagined.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Many of these students ultimately end up going into finance or
| consulting, not because they were particularly excited about that
| as a career path but because it's the easiest high-status next
| step from their in-retrospect-poorly-chosen major. Unfortunately,
| those are also career paths that require long hours and where the
| work is often meaningless. While I'm sure that finance and
| consulting are the right career choice for some elite college
| graduates, I'd be surprised if it was the best choice for nearly
| 50% of them._
|
| But the pay is so much more too. This means you can retire sooner
| and then use the free time to find meaning. It also means you
| have more money to fund your hobbies and interests, and also just
| having a nice standard of living is good too, and not having to
| worry so much about unpaid bills, medical costs, etc. . People
| who have crappy jobs also work long hours too and find the work
| meaningless.
| quartesixte wrote:
| By the way, I find it confusing that the article states that
| finance and consulting is the result of poorly chosen majors.
| That's the kind of thinking you apply to kids who picked Jazz
| Theory and then realized that La La Land is nearly pure
| Hollywood fantasy (the ending anyways).
|
| Those business/biz-econ/business admin/econ classrooms are
| filled with kids who have no delusion about what they're
| getting themselves into it. They're in it for the money and a
| shot at being hired by the big shot names on Wall Street.
| They're either passionate about the money, or they just want a
| stable life with money.
|
| And the entire undergrad experience of those two fields of
| study do a pretty swell job of weeding kids out. Business
| Frats, Clubs, Societies -- the emphasis on networking and
| internships. Like, the classroom experience might be less
| rigorous compared to your average pre-med student but make no
| mistake getting a job on Wall Street requires a lot of work.
| Just a very different kind of work.
|
| It is also the only high status step outside of medicine and
| law. Or claiming fame via Hollywood (in which nepotism runs
| rampant) or Athletics (in which your ability to gain status is
| almost entirely decided by whether or not you were born a
| genetic outlier). The first two require a lot more schooling
| and particular academic talent. The last two are basically
| moonshots and the road to fame littered with failed attempts.
|
| So finance it is.
| hammock wrote:
| Are finance and consulting really high status beyond the pay?
| Why? In theory it seems like they might be, but most of my
| peers in these fields are pretty uninspiring
| patja wrote:
| They are extremely high status among friends and family who
| do not work in tech or IT, or among recent graduate peers who
| are struggling to get a white collar career going and stuck
| in service jobs or other jobs that will never break 100k/yr.
| For a lot of those folks, just hearing about the types of
| lunch and travel expenses enjoyed by consultants can imbue
| the job with high status.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| Which gets at the uninspiring bit. Having experienced fancy
| lunches and travel, it ain't all it's made out to be and I
| doubt that anyone higher status than me whom I would
| actually aspire to, would give two hoots about it the way
| the people you describe do
| BlargMcLarg wrote:
| Can't speak for the US but here, "suit" jobs are generally
| held to higher regard even if the job no longer requires a
| suit. Fancy names and a history of good pay definitely help.
|
| If anything, IT is the outlier in "well-paid office jobs
| which garner lots of respect".
| robocat wrote:
| > IT is the outlier in "well-paid office jobs which garner
| lots of respect"
|
| That is a relatively modern thing - I thought IT was
| relatively unrespected even 20 years ago, although I am not
| in the US, so maybe different there. I suspect the change
| was occurring about when Zuckerberg became wealthy, maybe
| late 00's?
|
| It is fucking bizarre to me seeing "geek" go mainstream
| (although commercialised geek is definitely different from
| traditional geek - maybe even incompatibly so?).
| switchbak wrote:
| Suit jobs are only highly regarded amongst a subset of the
| population. I think the more you understand the realities
| of those jobs, the less appeal they have. There's also
| certain personality types drawn to those roles which isn't
| attractive for everyone.
|
| I used to look at engineers and think I missed out by not
| going down that road. Fast forward a few years and it turns
| out most engineers I talk to see the tech industry as being
| a much better draw (higher salaries, more jobs, etc).
| giantg2 wrote:
| I work for a financial company. The closer you get to the
| money, the more status you're expected to _display_. They
| expect you to have a BMW, Tesla, or similar. They expect you
| to hire a guy to perform any manual labor. They expect that
| you have a nice house in a nice area.
|
| If you don't have these things, you're looked down on and
| people assume you aren't successful/skilled. Just projecting
| the image is enough to push some people into a promotion.
| robocat wrote:
| What are the options to avoid the status treadmill?
|
| Faking displays seems hard (status markers are chosen for
| their difficulty to fake, presumably the easy faking is
| done by everyone, and I guess high cost if busted and
| competition to catch others out?)
|
| Can you be so competent that you can ignore the status
| rules? Presumably difficult, because competence is hard to
| measure, and competitively it is hard to achieve a
| significantly higher level of competence than others? A
| status player can have mistakes forgiven, but betting on
| competence requires you never make a misstep?
|
| Or do you just optimise for a level of acceptable status,
| and maximise savings?
|
| What happens to those that bug out?
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| I think the 'need to impress people' is often used as an
| excuse to splurge. Maybe it's more expected for salesmen
| like financial advisors, or small business attorneys that
| are dealing with retail clients.
|
| I'm a fairly senior investment banker (Managing Director,
| group head), and I drive a 14 year old Honda. None of my
| co-workers or clients have ever seen my car or been to my
| house. I don't wear a watch.
|
| Some of my co-workers will wear bespoke clothes and flashy
| jewelry, but it's not required, and mid-tier conservative
| suits and shoes are fine.
| quartesixte wrote:
| We live in a world where high pay = status. Not ideal if you
| aspire the world to be more Meaningful or Spiritual or what
| have you, but this is reality.
|
| And when in the United States alone the average salary hovers
| around $75K/yr, a 24 year old being able to command a near
| $150K base-salary (excluding bonuses) is in the eyes of many
| absolutely flying high.
|
| Add to that Finance/Consulting/Professional Services
| eats/live/travels/dresses in a manner that is high status in
| our society and the jobs quickly becomes a status symbol and
| attracts those who are willing to sacrifice some amount of
| passion for status or material wealth.
|
| It also is a field where it confers that wealth and status
| without Having to Know Someone or Be A Genetic Outlier In
| Physical Performance/Appearance.
|
| Lastly, survive long enough and climb the ladder high enough
| and you start gaining Power. That wealth no longer buys you
| things but rather connections, access, and influence. Finance
| sits in close proximity to many powerful people in the world,
| and thus by proxy also gains status.
|
| SWE/IT offers similar levels of wealth but unfortunately
| lacks that proximity to power (yet) and as a class of
| professionals seems to espouse cultural values that go
| against the ostentatious displays of wealth that the average
| person associates with high status. At the very least, no one
| is showing up to morning standups in a custom tailored suit.
|
| Source: my social circle growing up mostly consisted of
| working class immigrant families. Getting into a T20
| University and breaking into Wall Street was the very
| definition of Making It.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Some people in finance and consulting think we live in a
| world where money=status or to be honest the students
| aspiring to career in finance and consulting tend to think
| that - people in the trench get pretty jaded. Thankfully
| this is a microcosm and there is a world beyond that.
| hammock wrote:
| You are onto something with the proximity to power thing. A
| lot of understanding of the world unlocked for me once I
| started peeling apart wealth & power, how wealth /= power,
| and how power is the more important end (vs wealth). For
| example, if anything, someone with a lot of wealth has
| likely been selling away a lot of power in order to acquire
| the wealth.
|
| >It also is a field where it confers that wealth and status
| without Having to Know Someone
|
| I wouldn't have thought this. What in your view are those
| fields?
| quartesixte wrote:
| Hollywood is a prime example of this. Music industry is
| another. Book publishing is also rife with nepotism but
| in a non-familial way. Anything media related in general.
| Even journalism -- Anderson Cooper is a Vanderbilt. Chris
| Cuomo's father and brother both high ranking politicians.
| quartesixte wrote:
| >For example, if anything, someone with a lot of wealth
| has likely been selling away a lot of power in order to
| acquire the wealth.
|
| O, to the contrary, my dear friend. Someone with a lot of
| wealth has gained by exploiting their wealth to gain more
| power -- which results in them gaining more wealth.
|
| I would say that the correct equation is Riches!=Power.
| One can have a vast treasury that, incorrectly deployed,
| does not gain them power.
| patja wrote:
| Consulting is also great on the job training in how the real
| world of commerce and business operate, with the bonus that
| after a year or two you probably have personal knowledge of how
| a handful of major corporations operate, including which
| corporate cultures are healthy/positive and which are not. The
| types of lessons you never learn in a classroom.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| The gap between what consulting companies like students to
| think they will learn and what they actually learn is very
| significant.
| runlaszlorun wrote:
| Ha, that's true. But at least you get to see how
| dysfunctional nearly any corporation is pretty quickly.
| [deleted]
| voisin wrote:
| > It also means you have more money to fund your hobbies and
| interests
|
| Except investment banking and consulting both have notoriously
| long (100+ hr/wk) work weeks leaving very little time for other
| interests and hobbies. These careers effectively force you to
| adopt the career as the core of your personality.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Consulting covers a lot of different companies with different
| requirements. You very much can find one where you work a
| large but acceptable number of hours outside of the
| occasional crunch (50-ish is easy to find).
|
| Also no one does 100+h/wk. That's not even physically
| possible. Even juniors in IB which is notorious for being
| gruelling are actually not doing much during the day. The
| main issue is that work really starts when your partner
| finishes their day of meetings and things have to be ready
| for the next morning.
| voisin wrote:
| I agree that no one is working 100+ hr/wk but you still
| have to be in the office that long. I.e. you don't have
| time away from the office to partake in hobbies and other
| interests.
|
| Any management consultant (McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc) not
| travelling at least 4 full days and in the office 2 of the
| other 3 isn't making enough money to be relevant to this
| conversation. Again, it is time being sucked away from
| other aspects of your life, regardless of whether you're
| working or not.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > Any management consultant (McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc)
| not travelling at least 4 full days and in the office 2
| of the other 3 isn't making enough money to be relevant
| to this conversation.
|
| That's ridiculous.
|
| There is a world outside of the top 3 strategy consulting
| companies where people do make good money. What you just
| did is akin to limiting IT to Google, Apple and Meta.
|
| Plus even there, assignments don't always have you
| travelling for days especially if you work from a capital
| as your clients are likely to be there too. You don't
| work 6 days a week every week and the hours get a lot
| more reasonable as you climb the ladder.
|
| And I say that while not even thinking it's a good job. I
| have been in and out of consulting (yes you can go back)
| during the past decade and think this stint will be my
| last. When it's nice, it can be very nice but when it
| sucks, it sucks a lot. Also at some point you actually
| forget if you really do interesting things or just get
| really good at selling what you do.
| bedhead wrote:
| True but it still might be better than the alternative of
| working just enough (~40 hours/week) to still make it hard to
| spend a lot of time on outside interests while not living
| very comfortably, financially speaking.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| My 2-cents seeing friends and a sibling go through the IB
| track.
|
| You have 100+ hr/wk for a few years in your 20s, when you're
| young and can sort of handle it. But by the time you're
| having a family you work more normal hours and make absolute
| FU money (e.g my younger brother makes over 10x/yr what I do
| at only 31 years old). It's not about the salary and hours
| when you start at 22, its about the salary and hours when
| you're 32 and 42.
|
| I compare this to my friends who became physicians or
| accountants, and I think the IB folks have a waaaay better
| work-to-pay ratio long-term. I'm on the fence about
| consulting because the pay ceiling seems lower and I don't
| personally know enough of them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You have much more flexibility of where to live as a
| physician. Remote software developer is probably the best
| pay to quality of life at work ratio, and probably even
| higher pay outright if you were at a high flying tech
| company for some portion of the last 15 years.
| galdosdi wrote:
| > You have much more flexibility of where to live as a
| physician.
|
| Ludicrously false. In the long run, sure. But your youth
| will be spent in whatever random town the residency match
| takes you to, and that's after having to go wherever
| there's a med school that'll take you. The flexibility
| comes much later and by then you may have settled down
| accidentally somewhere you randomly got placed.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Also true that one has to give up their 20s and possibly
| low 30s somewhere they do not want to be, but in general,
| a doctor can pick up and go anytime after that compared
| to someone in finance who generally has to stick around
| the finance hubs.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I've tried doing my passion by doing two startups and also
| going into finance and since hindsight is 20/20 a good reason
| why I think I should have actually went into finance first and
| or even going into consulting as a technical person in a large
| Fortune 500 is that budgeting of projects and planning of
| software to meet budgets is much clearer to me now and
| management of time to find a solution would have informed me
| much better than doing the startups first.
|
| Also I could have started saving money for another startup
| instead of incurring credit card debt.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| It's the journey, not the destination.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Life before Death
|
| Strength before Weakness
|
| Journey before Destination
| greggman3 wrote:
| The typical response is being in these jobs changes you so that
| when you have the money you no longer have any meaning. You
| have a passion, you put it on hold for 10-20yrs for $$$, you
| come out the other end having lost your passion
|
| Further, that assumes you make it out the other end. Almost no
| one saves the money and retires early. Instead they get some
| money, they get a nicer apartment, nicer car, start eating out
| at fancier restaurants, shopping at higher end places, buying
| fashion brands etc...
| giantg2 wrote:
| "you put it on hold for 10-20yrs for $$$, you come out the
| other end having lost your passion"
|
| People change for a lot of reasons. I gave up some hobbies
| when I had a kid and I'm pretty sure I won't pick them back
| up when I retire. People's passions change, or they realize
| certain things are unobtainable. That's just life.
| ip26 wrote:
| It's become clear some hobbies are essentially status-
| seeking among young adults and/or showing off to potential
| partners. They simply don't make much sense anymore for
| someone married with kids.
| hinkley wrote:
| > And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will
| gaze back into you.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| +1 The project outline vs the actual shipped product
| [deleted]
| wwweston wrote:
| This is a fair illustration of some failure modes for that
| choice.
|
| I took the other road: during my 20s and early 30s I spent a
| lot of time chasing meaning while minimizing expenses and the
| time I put into jobs and other explicitly career-focused
| choices (although tech-related stuff turned out to be one of
| my forms of play & exploration, and I did do the startup
| thing a time or two). Can't say I outright _regret_ this
| because I do think I exercised a lot of important personal
| capacities and gained some insights, but at one point I did
| look around and realize my place in society was effectively
| "economically marginalized software developer" and that was a
| weird and probably not optimal tradeoff from both a practical
| or meaningful standpoint, especially considering I had still
| had a lot of open questions and anxieties about meaning.
|
| So, this path has potential failure modes too.
|
| At that point I made a pretty deliberate choice to more or
| less "sell out." Years later the upsides appear to have
| outweighed the down, and I find myself with the suspicion
| that meaning is found/made wherever you meet life
| thoughtfully and intentionally, and that if I'd chosen
| finance in my 20s (or more comp-rewarding tech roles) I'd
| have had opportunities that were _different_ but not without
| their own affordances for meaning (and probably a higher net
| worth).
|
| Still, I like my work and hobbies, and I never feel there's a
| shortage of interesting and engaging things to pay attention
| to in the world. I could continue like this for decades if
| I'm lucky enough to; my most substantial worries are staving
| off/prepping for whatever decline in health we all eventually
| face, and with it capacity to engage the world robustly.
| Perhaps I didn't do so badly after all.
| alar44 wrote:
| I did the exact same thing. Chased my passion through 30,
| burnt out, sold out, and am now burnt out on the other side
| 10 years later. Might sell all my shit and become a
| carpenter or a framer.
| lazide wrote:
| Be aware, burn out is often as much or more about self
| regulation than it is any specific activity. Being able
| and willing to say no to mind one's boundaries being a
| key skill.
|
| Changing careers can help (the novelty provides rewards),
| but rarely does whatever underlying thing causing the
| issue disappear.
| alar44 wrote:
| I've been thinking about that. The IT industry doesn't
| lend itself to boundaries very well so I think I'd like a
| career where work stays at work.
| Icathian wrote:
| I suspect that no job lends itself to boundaries well,
| and that a healthy willingness to enforce them is going
| to be necessary regardless.
| tdrgabi wrote:
| Your comment made me think and see the usual "high paid,
| sell out" - "low paid, high meaning" dichotomy in a
| different light. I'll ponder it a bit more.
|
| Thank you and Merry Xmas.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Not everything has to have meaning. In fact, nothing has
| to have meaning for life to be worth living. It is a
| delusion we tell ourselves that something must have
| meaning to be worthwhile.
|
| Having said that, I find value in relationships, not jobs
| or hobbies or things. Meaning? There is no meaning.
| Things are as they are. And it's beautiful.
| lazide wrote:
| Merely being good at what one does, when that is useful
| to others, is often a good definition for meaning.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I would define that as "helpful" or "useful to society",
| not meaningful.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| You don't feel being useful to society had meaning? I
| think you might be putting meaning on quite a pedestal.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| You can assign meaning to anything. You can assign
| meaning to a bird passing over your head as you propose
| to your girlfriend: "it was meant to be."
|
| So sure, there can be meaning in being useful to society.
| But that's not really my point. My point is that meaning
| does not need to be a goal. If you hang your life's worth
| on the meaning you find, I am betting you're going to be
| disappointed a lot of the time. It doesn't need to be
| that way. Look beyond meaning for worth and value.
| lazide wrote:
| Is not being useful to others worthwhile and valuable?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Indeed, it is!
| shanebellone wrote:
| "Look beyond meaning for worth and value."
|
| Well said.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, "worthwhile" is not a natural state to crave
| (animals in nature just are, they're not concerned with
| "worthwhile" or "joy in little pleasures" and so on).
|
| So, if you still want life to be "worthwhile", you might
| as well ask it to be meaningful, it's pretty much the
| same thing. Meaningless is just another way of saying
| "not worth it".
| saiya-jin wrote:
| That's all nice theory on paper, but you sure have no clue
| about reality of most folks you write about...
|
| Life is too short, and damn too short to make huge mistakes
| like this, for something so meaningless as just money. I am not
| saying cash is completely meaningless, we don't live in utopia,
| but the more you have them less meaning/significance they have.
|
| Any white collar folk who ain't completely useless can earn
| enough to have a decent life and realize (as quickly as
| possible) that true meaning in life, and long term happiness
| are in completely different direction than piles of cash. At
| one point you start paying heavily with former to get latter.
| twelve40 wrote:
| this is stated rather categorically for a subjective opinion
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| >But the pay is so much more too. This means you can retire
| sooner and then use the free time to find meaning.
|
| The type of person that goes into Finance/Consulting is
| certainly not the type of person that will want to retire
| early.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Those are good reasons, I'm not going to deny that but there's
| something to be said for enjoying life while you're young
| enough to take full advantage of it. Being poor(ish) when
| you're young isn't the worst thing in the world, when you have
| no real responsibilities. Grinding to make money in your
| thirties and beyond, when those real responsibilities hit
| always made more sense to me... but I may have done all of it
| wrong. I don't know.
| aiwv wrote:
| > Grinding to make money in your thirties and beyond
|
| I sort of think grinding is generally wrong at any age. If
| you feel like you're grinding, perhaps it's time to take
| stock and consider what you could be doing differently so
| that you don't have to keep grinding to both meet your
| responsibilities and enjoy life. Of course some might find
| themselves with enough exigencies they have almost no choice
| but to grind, but I doubt too many people on HN are really in
| that boat.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Right, if you're not doing it for the journey, maybe you
| need to find another destination or a better route or
| something.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Maybe there's no right answer and everybody meanders through
| life goals at their own pace, or not at all.
|
| The requirement to make enough money to survive is
| unignorable. Anything beyond that is just making up
| goalposts. There's always another goalpost you could strive
| to reach.
| cung wrote:
| I keep hearing that consulting and finance are terrible
| uninspiring careers, but as a consultant I honestly have no
| idea what else I could do that would be more inspiring. I would
| love to know though.
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| There are no other better choices available, unless one is
| born into wealth. That's why whoever talks about passion,
| inspiration, etc, is just talking throgh his/her hat. For 95
| percent of the world population, some job is better than not
| having a job.
| [deleted]
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| There are plenty of things which are more interesting than
| consulting which is why most consultants actually use the
| career as a stepping stone to go do what their clients were
| doing.
| anon7725 wrote:
| If you are happy with your own life, you can CTRL+W on this
| and all other navel-gazing internet fare.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "This means you can retire sooner and then use the free time to
| find meaning."
|
| Why does anyone have to find meaning?
| tantalor wrote:
| _The multiple views provide too much information! It 's
| impossible to move! Calvin quickly tries to eliminate all but one
| perspective!_
|
| https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1990/06/17
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Ha! Thanks for this gem. Love it.
| Henhound wrote:
| Seem to be a lesswrong entrepreneur take on the question: Should
| you orient yourself by pursuing what you want or by avoiding what
| you don't want?
| hinkley wrote:
| Humans can juggle more than one responsibility. If the thing
| you don't want is insidious, you better be doing both.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-22 23:00 UTC)