4 ms·

I completely agree that wanting to make a positive impact on the world is important, although, and I don't want to sound too nihilistic here, the actual magnitu

I completely agree that wanting to make a positive impact on the world is important, although, and I don't want to sound too nihilistic here, the actual magnitude of that will probably be small for most people, therefore I think that personal satisfaction in life should be important and isn't meaningless, which was what OP claimed and the reason why I asked that question.

robryan 8y ago
Yeah small and quickly diminishing over time, outside of very close friends and direct descendants. For example how many fought in WW2? How many were in high level roles and instrumental to the conflict? How many would be thinking they were making a lasting impact on the world? And of those what small portion have pretty much a permanent place in the history books? Even to pick a small part of it, 130,000 people worked on the Manhattan Project but a history of it that the average person would consume might name 10 key figures.
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  The long-term impact of any human activity is so much more than what is written in a history book somewhere. A history book is an enormously compressed, somewhat distorted depiction of human experience. Only a very small sliver of the actual fiber of human culture, achievement, and experience across time is recorded in this way. Yet all of these things are still happening, and they form the substrate upon which the events that are actually written down can take place. To use your example of the Manhattan project: only 10 people may be remembered in books, but they certainly would have never completed the project by themselves. The contributions of those other thousands of individuals was vital to the project's success. If they didn't exist, it's not a guarantee that you could have replaced all of them -- the project may have simply failed.

4 ms·

I completely agree that wanting to make a positive impact on the world is important, although, and I don't want to sound too nihilistic here, the actual magnitu

by FiberBundle 8y ago

robryan 8y ago
Yeah small and quickly diminishing over time, outside of very close friends and direct descendants. For example how many fought in WW2? How many were in high level roles and instrumental to the conflict? How many would be thinking they were making a lasting impact on the world? And of those what small portion have pretty much a permanent place in the history books? Even to pick a small part of it, 130,000 people worked on the Manhattan Project but a history of it that the average person would consume might name 10 key figures.
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  The long-term impact of any human activity is so much more than what is written in a history book somewhere. A history book is an enormously compressed, somewhat distorted depiction of human experience. Only a very small sliver of the actual fiber of human culture, achievement, and experience across time is recorded in this way. Yet all of these things are still happening, and they form the substrate upon which the events that are actually written down can take place. To use your example of the Manhattan project: only 10 people may be remembered in books, but they certainly would have never completed the project by themselves. The contributions of those other thousands of individuals was vital to the project's success. If they didn't exist, it's not a guarantee that you could have replaced all of them -- the project may have simply failed.