4 ms·
Mediocrity is a worthwhile tactic if you're not optimizing for money or status, but, say, happiness. Ambition can cause a lot of pain, particularly in feelings
by gintas 17y ago
Mediocrity is a worthwhile tactic if you're not optimizing for money or status, but, say, happiness. Ambition can cause a lot of pain, particularly in feelings that you have not lived up to your potential (I've seen plenty of that happening).
YC readers are understandably strongly biased against such values of take-it-easy life. I don't subscribe to such values either, but they can not be straightforwardly discounted as inferior just like that. I would argue that understanding your limitations is just as important as developing your abilities.
- theblackbox 17y agoThe point is not about money or status, or pain and joy, but about the willingness to confidently feel into[1] these things. Mediocrity robs you of your passion. The point is not that failure teaches, or that children should not be built up by an overbearing, over-parental, society, but that all beings should seek to FEEL. It's a curious state that foreshadows knowing, and to be content with mediocrity would greatly reduce the variety of sensations that a moral, considered life can hope to expect in this world. It's existential suicide. And it grieves me dearly, so I get all righteous and pontificate. [1:Einfuhlung, Johann Gottfried Herder, Isaiah Berlin]