11 ms·

Living a Meaningful Life

146 points by bootload 10y ago

vog 10y ago
This article silently assumes that a "meaningful life" means: - making good choices of the projects you work on - making those projects succeed, or at least ensure pushing them forward So it reduces this broad topic "meaningful life" to the aspects of personal time management, project management and motivation management. In short, the article appears to be very work-centric (but including paid work as well as volunteer work). Within this work-centric view, the article is great. But given the article's title, I would have expected a broader treatment of the whole topic.
- jchrisa 10y ago
  If anyone is looking for a work antidote, here is some philosophy http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_bifo5.htm http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_bifo5.htm
- ourmandave 10y ago
  Does it even matter? Ozymandias worked in upper management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias #Eeyore
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  Not so surprising, since most people enjoy the satisfaction of having their plans work out, achieving goals and so on - and consumerism, the dominant 'philosophy' of western liberalism, is all about the accumulation of satisfying experiences. Of course, this doesn't sound all that great when it's reduced to its bare bones. That's why extremist ideologues often find great political success by promoting a stark message: a life filled with suffering and struggle offers more meaning then one where there's never any danger or anxiety. Hitler told the German people quite frankly that they'd have to go through fire to realize his vision, and that sounded good to enough people that he was able to make good on the promise. Likewise, millions of Slavs were willing to sacrifice themselves against hopeless odds (as it seemed at the time) to repel the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Indeed, once a country goes to war there invariably seems to be a great outpouring of enthusiasm because the inherently pointless quotidian struggles of work, survival, acquisition and consumption are replaced with the much more exciting and arousing struggles for life and death, for which economic competition is only the proxy. I believe there are two basic reasons for this. One, most people don't enjoy thinking for its own sake all that much, but when you're in a survival situation you can dispense with all that tedious mentation and really live in the moment. For people who have lived a qualitatively meaningless life up to that point, this is tremendously liberating. The other reason is that life is never sweeter than when death is close, and danger is highly correlated with sexual arousal for evolutionary reasons - hence the epidemic of rape during wartime. When time horizons are short, prohibited actions are no longer consequential, and the normal moral calculus is abandoned, then expression triumphs over repression. In sum, we're not really cut out for long-term thinking and abstract mentation for its own sake appeals to only a tiny minority. There is great value to living in the moment but most people don't know how to do it, and so their frustration builds up, to the detriment of the social body which must eventually express the excess -much as a boil is tolerable until it becomes a cyst and needs to be lanced. This is the reason that attempts to create a totally safe society are doomed - the safer you make it, the more of a prison it becomes. I'd rather not write an essay about this, but there's a reason that aristocratic societies allowed and created formal rules for dueling.
  - mmirate 10y ago
    > we're not really cut out for long-term thinking and abstract mentation for its own sake appeals to only a tiny minority. There is great value to living in the moment but most people don't know how to do it That's the most convincing argument in favor of eugenics that I've ever heard. It's a shame that we can't easily test for affinity for long-term, abstract thinking; nor for ability to live in the moment.
    - qntty 10y ago
      Well that's reassuring since it doesn't appear to be an argument for eugenics at all.
      - mmirate 10y ago
        It is. If I read the great-grandparent correctly, violence is only needed as an outlet because the majority of humans don't have a particular combination of attributes; therefore, one solution to that brand of inevitable violence, is to artificially select for precisely those attributes.
        festivusr 10y ago
        What is wrong with you?
        konschubert 10y ago
        You seem to forget that the act of selecting is an act of violence by itself.
        mmirate 10y ago
        Hence my particular turn-of-phrase: "that brand of inevitable violence [described by anigbrowl]". Yes, I probably should have included that bracketed clause. (aside: AFAICT, needing violence to remove violence is as much an inevitability as needing guns to remove guns.)
        10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
saiya-jin 10y ago
1) Imagine yourself on dying bed - what would you regret/be proud of in your past life? Strive to go that way. 2) Bring good to humanity, and don't do evil. If nothing else, if raising kids, be a good parent and role model - don't bring more unbalanced, fucked up, childhood-issue-riddled people into this world. Too many of those around already.
- barronli 10y ago
  3) Think over again the meaning of life, knowing it ends one day for everyone.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Spend time with people you love and care about. Work on something that matters to you. But not too much. No one lays on their death bed wishing they had committed another line of code. Maximize for happiness while causing the least amount of harm.
- dominotw 10y ago
  > Imagine yourself on dying bed Do people really do retrospectives of their lives on their death beds? Seems like a really odd thing to do during final hours of life. I am sure everyone no matter how meaningful their lives are, is going to have regrets. I just hope I am mentally well enough during my final days to enjoy it, not do an inventory of regrets vs accomplishments.
  - midgetjones 10y ago
    And physically well enough to exact revenge on those that wronged me. Edit: That came out much darker than I meant it to.
    - aswanson 10y ago
      Was it meant to be humorous? Because I got a chuckle out of it...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Sindrome 10y ago
"extravert" - lol!
- appdeco 10y ago
  Did you read the link? apparently it's the technically correct spelling. Never knew about this, always see it with an 'O'
crispinb 10y ago
Given a certain background of assumptions about meaningfulness, the article offers up some sufficiently plausible tactics. The assumptions though lean heavily on values unique to this particular civilisation. With its value-free description of merely individual pet 'projects', I suspect (but can't of course know) that it would be incomprehensible to the vast majority of humans that have ever lived. Given how rapidly our planet's ecosystems are collapsing under that same civilisation's depredations, this might be an unwise hostage to fortune.
culturestate 10y ago
If anyone's interested, there's a great book called Designing Your Life [1] which delves more deeply into the basic concept from this piece (identify what's most important to you and measure your progress toward those goals). It's based on a Stanford course of a similar name, and is an excellent read. 1. https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321/ https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyf...

146 points by bootload 10y ago

vog 10y ago

This article silently assumes that a "meaningful life" means: - making good choices of the projects you work on - making those projects succeed, or at least ensure pushing them forward So it reduces this broad topic "meaningful life" to the aspects of personal time management, project management and motivation management. In short, the article appears to be very work-centric (but including paid work as well as volunteer work). Within this work-centric view, the article is great. But given the article's title, I would have expected a broader treatment of the whole topic.

jchrisa 10y ago
If anyone is looking for a work antidote, here is some philosophy http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_bifo5.htm http://www.generation-online.org/p/fp_bifo5.htm
ourmandave 10y ago
Does it even matter? Ozymandias worked in upper management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias #Eeyore
anigbrowl 10y ago
Not so surprising, since most people enjoy the satisfaction of having their plans work out, achieving goals and so on - and consumerism, the dominant 'philosophy' of western liberalism, is all about the accumulation of satisfying experiences. Of course, this doesn't sound all that great when it's reduced to its bare bones. That's why extremist ideologues often find great political success by promoting a stark message: a life filled with suffering and struggle offers more meaning then one where there's never any danger or anxiety. Hitler told the German people quite frankly that they'd have to go through fire to realize his vision, and that sounded good to enough people that he was able to make good on the promise. Likewise, millions of Slavs were willing to sacrifice themselves against hopeless odds (as it seemed at the time) to repel the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Indeed, once a country goes to war there invariably seems to be a great outpouring of enthusiasm because the inherently pointless quotidian struggles of work, survival, acquisition and consumption are replaced with the much more exciting and arousing struggles for life and death, for which economic competition is only the proxy. I believe there are two basic reasons for this. One, most people don't enjoy thinking for its own sake all that much, but when you're in a survival situation you can dispense with all that tedious mentation and really live in the moment. For people who have lived a qualitatively meaningless life up to that point, this is tremendously liberating. The other reason is that life is never sweeter than when death is close, and danger is highly correlated with sexual arousal for evolutionary reasons - hence the epidemic of rape during wartime. When time horizons are short, prohibited actions are no longer consequential, and the normal moral calculus is abandoned, then expression triumphs over repression. In sum, we're not really cut out for long-term thinking and abstract mentation for its own sake appeals to only a tiny minority. There is great value to living in the moment but most people don't know how to do it, and so their frustration builds up, to the detriment of the social body which must eventually express the excess -much as a boil is tolerable until it becomes a cyst and needs to be lanced. This is the reason that attempts to create a totally safe society are doomed - the safer you make it, the more of a prison it becomes. I'd rather not write an essay about this, but there's a reason that aristocratic societies allowed and created formal rules for dueling.
- mmirate 10y ago
  > we're not really cut out for long-term thinking and abstract mentation for its own sake appeals to only a tiny minority. There is great value to living in the moment but most people don't know how to do it That's the most convincing argument in favor of eugenics that I've ever heard. It's a shame that we can't easily test for affinity for long-term, abstract thinking; nor for ability to live in the moment.
  - qntty 10y ago
    Well that's reassuring since it doesn't appear to be an argument for eugenics at all.
    - mmirate 10y ago
      It is. If I read the great-grandparent correctly, violence is only needed as an outlet because the majority of humans don't have a particular combination of attributes; therefore, one solution to that brand of inevitable violence, is to artificially select for precisely those attributes.
      - festivusr 10y ago
        What is wrong with you?
      - konschubert 10y ago
        You seem to forget that the act of selecting is an act of violence by itself.
        mmirate 10y ago
        Hence my particular turn-of-phrase: "that brand of inevitable violence [described by anigbrowl]". Yes, I probably should have included that bracketed clause. (aside: AFAICT, needing violence to remove violence is as much an inevitability as needing guns to remove guns.)
      - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

saiya-jin 10y ago

1) Imagine yourself on dying bed - what would you regret/be proud of in your past life? Strive to go that way. 2) Bring good to humanity, and don't do evil. If nothing else, if raising kids, be a good parent and role model - don't bring more unbalanced, fucked up, childhood-issue-riddled people into this world. Too many of those around already.

barronli 10y ago
3) Think over again the meaning of life, knowing it ends one day for everyone.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Spend time with people you love and care about. Work on something that matters to you. But not too much. No one lays on their death bed wishing they had committed another line of code. Maximize for happiness while causing the least amount of harm.
dominotw 10y ago
> Imagine yourself on dying bed Do people really do retrospectives of their lives on their death beds? Seems like a really odd thing to do during final hours of life. I am sure everyone no matter how meaningful their lives are, is going to have regrets. I just hope I am mentally well enough during my final days to enjoy it, not do an inventory of regrets vs accomplishments.
- midgetjones 10y ago
  And physically well enough to exact revenge on those that wronged me. Edit: That came out much darker than I meant it to.
  - aswanson 10y ago
    Was it meant to be humorous? Because I got a chuckle out of it...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Sindrome 10y ago

"extravert" - lol!

appdeco 10y ago
Did you read the link? apparently it's the technically correct spelling. Never knew about this, always see it with an 'O'

crispinb 10y ago

Given a certain background of assumptions about meaningfulness, the article offers up some sufficiently plausible tactics. The assumptions though lean heavily on values unique to this particular civilisation. With its value-free description of merely individual pet 'projects', I suspect (but can't of course know) that it would be incomprehensible to the vast majority of humans that have ever lived. Given how rapidly our planet's ecosystems are collapsing under that same civilisation's depredations, this might be an unwise hostage to fortune.

culturestate 10y ago

If anyone's interested, there's a great book called Designing Your Life [1] which delves more deeply into the basic concept from this piece (identify what's most important to you and measure your progress toward those goals). It's based on a Stanford course of a similar name, and is an excellent read. 1. https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyful/dp/1101875321/ https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Your-Life-Well-Lived-Joyf...