Comment by Amorymeltzer
10 hours ago
>become a good person
>become a good citizen
>make the world better
That's basically the whole game right there. Or as Hillel might say, the rest is commentary.
10 hours ago
>become a good person
>become a good citizen
>make the world better
That's basically the whole game right there. Or as Hillel might say, the rest is commentary.
How do you make the world better without any useful skills?
Being nice is nice, but it doesn't cure cancer
Who said don’t have any skills? There are different ways to make the world better, and certainly each takes a different set of skills. If your way of helping the world is advancing biomedical research, you will need those skills. It’s downstream of the top-level prerogative, if you wanna put it that way.
>become a good person
>become a good citizen
these are skills.
these are what you teach your children.
The sort of slop they tell children. Adult world is far more complicated than that.
Hard isn’t inherently complicated and simple isn’t inherently easy. A commitment to those ideals is wildly complicated. To pick a child-rearing-relevant example, saying sorry and taking responsibility is simple and easy, but such a difficult thing to achieve, even for adults, and is rife with complicated and complicating emotions and relationships.
The adult world doesn't have to be far more complicated than that.
>good person >good citizen >make the world better
Could essentially be saying, obey and work. A lot of people won't agree that is the ideal life. If that's not how you interpreted it then you have my point.
1 reply →
Well it’s just under specified.
The dissonance is deafening. Especially since the most successful people in our society are not doing any of those 3 things.
In fact, most extremely successful people are doing the opposite of those three things and directly deriving their success from it.
If I could stomach being an "Optimal Machiavellian Dad" I would tell my kid:
1. Use people to get what you want.
2. Always take more than you give.
3. You're the only one who matters. Don't empathize with others.
That's the mentality that is consistently rewarded in society today.
4 replies →
It entirely depends what success means to you! Don't let society or even your perception of society define that.
In all fairness, I know that you meant "wealthy and/or influential people". But it bodes ill at every level that your tacit belief about success is widely known and widely accepted (though certainly not universally).
Postman's book is exactly against that definition of success, though he readily points it out. He describes it in the "Gods that Fail" section of the book.
But then are they truly successful?
That you believe those people with all the money are "successful" is actually the entire problem.
Yeah, I'm not stupid rich, but the evidence is that I'm far better put together than Elon Musk emotionally, and even happier in regular day to day life. Which is hilarious because I just had my entire life upended.
But I've never felt a compulsion to pretend to be good at a video game to impress strangers on the internet because I have responded to difficulties and personal failings by bettering myself. I embrace recognizing my faults, fixing them, and knowing that I am human.
Do you want a child like me or a child like musk?