Comment by jamesgill

1 year ago

It's great advice. Reminds me of Steve Jobs' statement:

When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life.

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

I find myself in the former position more than ever. Feeling kinda trapped... it's what my parents and their parents did before me. Not sure how to break out? It becomes much harder to take risks once you have an entire family to take care of.

  • This is going to sound really strange to you and totally glib. Sorry for that, but it'll make sense after.

    Read Plato's "Apology," "Crito," and "Phaedo." Yes, in that order.

    https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html

    https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html

    https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html

    If you know nothing of these dialogs, that's almost better.

    I know that some internet rando telling you to read a bunch of Plato is, like, never going to happen.

    But on the off chance that you do, the less I tell you, the better. And if you do decide to do this, you can cheat and read along with the sparknotes and use an LLM to help read along too. But do try your best to read it first, then use the other resources to guide you. It'll make more sense after you read them. Again sorry, about this being really strange.

    But it is worth your time and effort, I promise you.

  • If you don’t succeed enough, most men experience that the wife drops us.

    You must take those risks. And if you fail, they will be no-one for you. We try to hide this to teens because it’s a raw deal, but generations before us were sent to war without much thought either.

    You must succeed at life above the others, or there will be no family thing. At each generation, 30% of males don’t reproduce at all, and there is no plaque for them, no memorial, people simply won’t talk about you.

    Do a startup and do not fail, you do not have a real choice here.