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From Bukowski's Factotum... "If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and mayb

From Bukowski's Factotum... "If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

ta1234567890 7y ago
Thank you, that was a wonderful and inspiring read :)
esotericn 7y ago
I need this right now. I've read it before, but thank you.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I must be too cynical for this. Seems like the sort of slogan MLM people could have.
- toxik 7y ago
  I like to imagine a tribal villages before civilization went into overdrive. That’s the lifestyle humans originally adapted to. I imagine that in the village, there are niched personalities. One guy is way spiritual and offers guidance and spiritual support. Another is a warrior spirit, always eager to conquer and to gain more resources for his village. A third is the carpenter. Society today must accommodate these same people types, or they’ll feel out of place. It’s okay if you (like me) don’t respond to the Don Quixote type narrative; I think it sounds naive, but it’s always easy to be a critic.
  - goldfeld 7y ago
    Tribal villages like constant strife and either going all-in Spartan with daily military drill or else getting swallowed and seeing all you love die and get savagely raped? The ancients had it hard and we have it really, really easy with our peaceful freedoms.
    - chillwaves 7y ago
      Is this comment historically accurate? How often are lands conquered? I think not, to what you say. Also, this only accomodates the last ~3000 years of human history. Before the agricultural revolution, humans lived a very different life as apex predators. It was not until we can grow and store crops that armies could exist.
      - messick 7y ago
        It’s not. Even in their own time, the Spartan bullshit was a myth pushed by themselves. Some civilizations such as the Chumash in what is now Los Angeles worked as little as 8 hours per week in order to survive.
        rumanator 7y ago
        > Some civilizations such as the Chumash in what is now Los Angeles worked as little as 8 hours per week in order to survive. What was their life expectancy?
        fwsgonzo 7y ago
        It makes more sense to me to calculate how much total free time they had compared to now. So even if they lived to be only 40-50 years old they would still have more freedom in hours/days than the modern worker. I worked remotely for a whole year and it was 100x better than working in an office. I can only imagine what only working 8 hours a week is like.
        7y ago
- coldtea 7y ago
  Or not sufficiently cynical. What you describe sounds run of the mill caution
  - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
    It’s the old spiritual argument repackaged. Go in the woods for years and you will emerge an enlightened man. But if you want to remain sane and participate in society, this type of philosophy is incompatible. I agree with the sentiment, though. If you want to become “financially independent”, might as well directly give away all your belongings and lounge around near Santa Monica pier. Instead of slaving away for years as a wagecuck, and then trying to enjoy life when you can no longer maintain an erection.
    - chillwaves 7y ago
      Is this a serious comment? Wagecuck? Really? What is your criticism? Working for someone else? Not everyone can own a business. A person who makes a good wage and carves out a life for themselves is successful by any metric. As far as erections, I hope when you reach the twilight years you will have more on your mind than getting hard.
      - coldtea 7y ago
        >A person who makes a good wage and carves out a life for themselves is successful by any metric. Just not by the metrics discussed in TFA, which is the whole point. It's not like everybody agrees that "a good wage" is success.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      Some suggested edits to your comment: wagecuck -> working stiff when you can no longer maintain an erection -> when you are past the prime of your life With these simple substitutions you can once again sound like a reasonable human being who is not overly fixated on unnecessary crude sexual imagery.
      - 7y ago
- new2628 7y ago
  "too cynical for Bukowski", that's a good motto :)
appstorelottery 7y ago
"If you're going to try, go all the way." This is beautiful. This is my experience as a 30 year serial start-up man. When I say to myself - "I will do whatever it takes to make this work" vs. "We'll see what happens" these have always been two distinct universes in terms of the journey. "Whatever it takes" is always a nightmare filled with anxiety and stress, but the second attitude - I've rarely experienced any kind of real success with. Both journeys are pain. The first is racked with anxiety and obsession the second is mostly fear and indecision. The end state of both is relief. But "We'll see what happens" most always ends with some form of regret - perhaps I didn't do something I could have. Woulda coulda shoulda. And then it's over. "I'll do whatever it takes" is always a crazy ride towards an unknown destination, has cost me far more than I anticipated, and the rewards are never what I predicted to begin with. But it's this universe I rarely regret (and reportedly those that were along for the ride with me). So yeah, "If you're going to try, go all the way" resonates strongly with me.
- quickpost 7y ago
  Beautifully put, thanks for taking the time to write it. It's also a perfect summary of why I'm struggling mightily with working a predictable job (that anyone should love) vs working on my next business or other volatile pursuit. I need to get Go All The Way tattooed on my forehead. I hope it's a mindset I have the courage to maintain for the rest of my life.
- beautifulfreak 7y ago
  So what does your user name mean? Was it still a lottery and not the result of going all out?
Balgair 7y ago
Man, I wish any of that were true. It seems that life is just too random to have that end up being true. Too many things happen that you can't control that then come along and wreck it all. My SO achieved so much, had it all, got through grad school great, was going to teach at a University I know you have heard of, do amazing research all over the world, help out humanity in a very real way, all that jazz. Then, bam, the pain started up and has never left. The chonic pain disorder my SO has is a real sumbitch. I love my SO, terribly so. But all that my SO had just evaporated into the pain. Just one bad infection, like about 2% of the US gets, and there it all went. No amount of drive is going to fix it. No amount of work. My SO can't work through the pain as it exacerbates the condition. Lord knows my SO spent months and years just trying to ignore it, making it worse the whole while. That pain just winds you, for days at a time. Takes it all. And the shame that my SO feels just kills me. All the desires, all that motivation and drive that my SO had, it's all still there, clawing at my SO's mind, telling itself that my SO is 'just not good enough'. That person is still there, just enveloped with pain, trying to break out and work again. What gave my SO everything, all that honor and accomplishment, is not tearing into my SO and making it all worse. Bukowski isn't wrong, per se, but he is not right either. That fire is dangerous in the wrong circumstances and it's very difficult to tell when you are in the wrong place. One quote that has really changed as it has aged is that Bourdain quote: > “I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.” Yet Anthony died by his own hand. That drive, that spark and thumos, it was his undoing as much as it was his making. Would he have been as a sucess if not for that drive? The only person that could tell you is dead. So, sure, sleep on the benches for it, go to jail for it, but remember, there are worse things than just temporary discomforts, mockery, and dishonor waiting in the weeds along that path.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bisRepetita 7y ago
  Thanks for writing this.
- marktangotango 7y ago
jtms 7y ago
A friend of mine is currently going all the way when it comes to animation. He produced 52 animated shorts in 1 year (one per week). One of them features this exact quote! https://vimeo.com/303537395 https://vimeo.com/303537395
deleted 7y ago
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JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Screenshotted and saved for inspiration, thank you for sharing. I’m starting my own business right now and everything keeps telling me just lay off the accelerator. My natural mode is complete obsession.
nine_k 7y ago
Reads like an ad for a potent drug, written by an addict. Add survivorship bias to a good measure.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  How does survivorship bias apply here? He’s practically laying out a tautology: if you are willing to sacrifice everything for a goal, you’ll beat out everyone else purely due to attrition. You’re saying that only seems true because people who succeed repeat it? I feel like survivorship bias is more about obscure tricks that happen to work well for a random group of people who happened to succeed. No?
  - dclowd9901 7y ago
    > How does survivorship bias apply here? Because he got lucky. No, sacrificing everything for the goal does not always get you the goal. There's 1,000 Bukowskis out there, many better, and we'll never hear of them. Sometimes you waste it all, and then you're supposed to look back and say, "Well, at least I gave it my all, and I just had bad luck." Yeah, that's really fucking comforting.
    - badpun 7y ago
      > Sometimes you waste it all, and then you're supposed to look back and say, "Well, at least I gave it my all, and I just had bad luck." Yeah, that's really fucking comforting. It's about intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. For him, writing poetry was a reward in itself, and he didn't see himself joining the standard nine-to-five society anyway. So, even if he had failed after 40 years of writing during evenings and weekends, he wouldn't have any regrets. Of course, if someone does say startups just to get rich, and hates every minute of it, then it, if the spoils never materialize in the end, it will lead to bitterness.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      > There's 1,000 Bukowskis out there, many better What does being better have to do with it? Are you arguing against the idea that the best people always succeed? I don’t think I said that.
codeulike 7y ago
This is the "never give up" fallacy, a sort of magical thinking in our times. But sometimes giving up is the smart thing to do. You rarely hear anyone emphasise that though, due to survivor bias.
- WA 7y ago
  And more: people who write stuff like this (from experience) are usually the lucky ones with hindsight bias.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- tagirb 7y ago
  For me this "never give up" does not mean fighting through this life, it means "never give up on yourself", on that sparkle in your eyes, on your inner smile, on the light inside you, call it however you want. Go all the way with it, don't trade yourself for whatever "benefits" offered to you, well, by your own mind, first of all. Once you're out of _that_ slavery, then you're truly free wherever you are and whatever you do.
- slx26 7y ago
  I agree with tagirb that Bukowski was talking about a different thing. But I wanted to expand on the "never give up" issue, even if it might be slightly out of topic. Giving up doesn't sound sexy. It's definitely something everyone should learn, but hey, maybe we aren't "selling" the concept well enough. In my experience, in most cases where you have to give up, what you really have to do is to stop trying to achieve a certain abstract goal through a certain specific method. Not renounce to the goal, the drive, the passion itself, but renounce to the methods, the rigid views you might hold. Maybe you want to write great songs, but you are failing because you are just trying to repeat something similar to what your favourite artist already did. Maybe you want to get better grades, but are just re-reading the lessons, expecting something to stick, when you are not even focusing on it or trying to understand the previous lessons that lead to the current one. Maybe you want to jump a 2 meter fence, but you are just running against it, without ever having tried with smaller ones first. It's never so simple, but this is the main point. Sometimes we have to face reality. In many cases, the only thing we need to give up is our naive views and past mistakes. Some people will repeat the same mistake over and over and call that "trying really hard". Sorry, but no. Trying really hard is not that. Trying really hard is being able to let go your naivety, to keep exploring alternatives, to keep learning, and learning, and failing, and going back and retry in a different way. [and this is still not what you were talking about]
shadowprofile77 7y ago
I believe most of you are missing the point. Bukowski was arguing this in favor of doing something you truly feel passionate about regardless of whether it succeeds or not. The philosophy doesn't work well for highly specific, practical-minded goals of an emotionally ambiguous nature: If you really want to be an artist that gets his paintings on display in the met, but see that you're not getting anywhere with it, you can easily let go and move onto something else. The important thing however is that if you have a wider, more fundamental dream (say to simply live for your art and experiment with it as long as you have the faculties to do so) for which you can spend your life struggling and be happy with the process itself, despite frustrations, then you can try different practical paths to success, experiment flexibly with them as needed but take sheer pleasure in knowing that the all-in journey was worth it even if some specific ideal destination wasn't reached. Considering it this way takes survivorship bias, luck and low probabilities into consideration but with an awareness that even if they might sideline you, the overall effort was simply how you wanted to spend your life.
- tagirb 7y ago
  Whatever dream or wish you have, sooner or later, whether "successful" or "failed" by whatever measure, you realize that you've reached its bounds. Please don't reduce his words to pursuing something material, because it's much more than that, as hinted by: > You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    If you say I reduced his words to pursuing something material than you've misunderstood my point. In the most basic sense of us all having to make use of a material world to achieve anything over the course of a lifetime, then yes, all pursuits are material in some way. Beyond that however I was simply using a specific example to explain that a more fundamental understanding of what Bukowski was saying can take into account things like survivorship bias and the danger of completely impractical dreams being pursued too far while still being coherent advice about how one should live their life. This is to pursue a larger meta-dream through practical, flexible steps and never give up because the meta-dream you've chosen fulfills you spiritually in the simple pursuit. It thus does this regardless of success or failure and specific hardships. You ride life to perfect laughter because you've chosen your fundamental calling knowing its cost and sacrifices.
DoreenMichele 7y ago
"Burn the boats." If there is no way to successfully retreat until you've won, then you win or die. Great way to focus the mind on winning (success) once casual retreat is no longer an option.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  And it leaves only those who survive to extol the virtues - the countless legions of failures are dead.
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies…true, but the life that’s left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. - Achilles, the Iliad IX, 500-506
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      Ah, so people have delusions of grandeur and think they stand with demigods of ages past? That's neat.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        I'm not a big believer in time travel, but I like watching/reading time travel stories. To my mind, it's a way to try to envision the two different futures that grow out of a single decision point. You don't really get to A/B test your own life. You don't really get to know for absolute certainty where the road not taken would have taken you had you turned left instead of right at that moment on that day in that place with those people. What you can do is develop mental models and compare against first-hand experience. Most actual choices in life don't literally involve life and death, at least not in an immediate sense. Some can be life-or-death decisions -- casually sleep with the wrong person without protection, die of AIDS some years down the road -- but if you run around telling other people that every little thing you do in your life is life or death, they will soon decide you are a lunatic. So taking a reference to "burn the boats" too literally and acting like I'm the drama queen is really you being dramatic. In practical terms, "burn the boats" is shorthand for "Make an actual decision and then commit to it. The longer you spend trying to leave your options open, the more time you waste." If you stand at the cross roads forever trying to make it possible to choose to go either left or right, you stand there going nowhere at all. Just pick one, start walking and don't spend a lot of time looking back, walking back to the crossroads over and over, wondering if you should go the other way instead.
kerkeslager 7y ago
Bukowski may have said, "If you're going to try, go all the way," but Bukowski's tombstone reads, "Don't try." Bukowski spent most of his life as non-functioning alcoholic, a lifestyle which is unenviable even in the slightly-romanticized form he presents in his writings. If you ever want to watch something truly unpleasant, pull up YouTube and watch him berate his wife on public television (possibly drunk). Bukowski was insightful on a lot of things, but his life doesn't look like a happy one to me, and I'd be cautious about taking life advice from him.
- kissgyorgy 7y ago
  I did and gosh, my life is not where it should be, but I don't want to learn from this guy: https://youtu.be/EJmQHT_HLOo https://youtu.be/EJmQHT_HLOo
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    That link isn't to the interview where he yells at his future[1] wife. However, I think if you linked the actual interview, it would be inappropriate according to HN's content standards: Bukowski uses some very colorful language. [1] I was slightly incorrect in my previous post, she wasn't his wife yet at the time of the interview.
- 8bitsrule 7y ago
  I'm pretty damned sure that the tombstone advice means "Don't try ... do!" (As I recall, that was a line in a popular movie. Taking poets literally is risky.) IOW, 'go all the way' is not like a new-year's resolution. Bukowski spent most of his life being Bukowski. Better results than the post-office position. Beats the great, grey middle all to hell.
  - kerkeslager 7y ago
    > Bukowski spent most of his life being Bukowski. Better results than the post-office position. Beats the great, grey middle all to hell. For us it's great, we get Bukowski. For Bukowski, it seems less enjoyable.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
Wow, I'm kind of surprised at all the "Woah, so inspiring!" comments. This is the kind of cultish "advice" that results in boatloads of jaded, isolated folks. It's shitty advice for 2 reasons: 1. First, most people who follow the "only follow your passion" advice WILL fail, so not only will they have lost their "girlfriends, wives, relatives", etc., but they'll feel the dejection of it not being successful. 2. More importantly, and this is really my main point, but I think most people who follow this advice and succeed will find it is a pyrrhic victory. When you've reached what you thought was they pinnacle of your success, but you look around and you see you've burned most of your bridges to get there, it turns out to be a very lonely place. I think the vast majority of people will find that if they give appropriate attention to their self care and their relationships, it will make achieving their goals easier, not the other way around.
- bytematic 7y ago
  I don't think he means that you have to follow your "passion" per se, but just to put effort into whatever you're doing, make big leaps, compromise yourself, and fail a lot.
croo 7y ago
The writing is great but the message is bullshit. It's easy to focus on one thing and let yourself devoured by it, to drop every responsibility while fighting your challenge. What's hard is to juggle everything while trying. On a tangent Yoda in Star Wars is also bullshit. You should always try.
- rewgs 7y ago
  You’re misunderstanding the Yoda quote. He means that trying simply doesn’t exist — you either do the thing, or you don’t do it. Aim to do the thing, don’t aim to “try.”

ta1234567890 7y ago

Thank you, that was a wonderful and inspiring read :)

esotericn 7y ago

I need this right now. I've read it before, but thank you.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

I must be too cynical for this. Seems like the sort of slogan MLM people could have.

toxik 7y ago
I like to imagine a tribal villages before civilization went into overdrive. That’s the lifestyle humans originally adapted to. I imagine that in the village, there are niched personalities. One guy is way spiritual and offers guidance and spiritual support. Another is a warrior spirit, always eager to conquer and to gain more resources for his village. A third is the carpenter. Society today must accommodate these same people types, or they’ll feel out of place. It’s okay if you (like me) don’t respond to the Don Quixote type narrative; I think it sounds naive, but it’s always easy to be a critic.
- goldfeld 7y ago
  Tribal villages like constant strife and either going all-in Spartan with daily military drill or else getting swallowed and seeing all you love die and get savagely raped? The ancients had it hard and we have it really, really easy with our peaceful freedoms.
  - chillwaves 7y ago
    Is this comment historically accurate? How often are lands conquered? I think not, to what you say. Also, this only accomodates the last ~3000 years of human history. Before the agricultural revolution, humans lived a very different life as apex predators. It was not until we can grow and store crops that armies could exist.
    - messick 7y ago
      It’s not. Even in their own time, the Spartan bullshit was a myth pushed by themselves. Some civilizations such as the Chumash in what is now Los Angeles worked as little as 8 hours per week in order to survive.
      - rumanator 7y ago
        > Some civilizations such as the Chumash in what is now Los Angeles worked as little as 8 hours per week in order to survive. What was their life expectancy?
        fwsgonzo 7y ago
        It makes more sense to me to calculate how much total free time they had compared to now. So even if they lived to be only 40-50 years old they would still have more freedom in hours/days than the modern worker. I worked remotely for a whole year and it was 100x better than working in an office. I can only imagine what only working 8 hours a week is like.
        7y ago
coldtea 7y ago
Or not sufficiently cynical. What you describe sounds run of the mill caution
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  It’s the old spiritual argument repackaged. Go in the woods for years and you will emerge an enlightened man. But if you want to remain sane and participate in society, this type of philosophy is incompatible. I agree with the sentiment, though. If you want to become “financially independent”, might as well directly give away all your belongings and lounge around near Santa Monica pier. Instead of slaving away for years as a wagecuck, and then trying to enjoy life when you can no longer maintain an erection.
  - chillwaves 7y ago
    Is this a serious comment? Wagecuck? Really? What is your criticism? Working for someone else? Not everyone can own a business. A person who makes a good wage and carves out a life for themselves is successful by any metric. As far as erections, I hope when you reach the twilight years you will have more on your mind than getting hard.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >A person who makes a good wage and carves out a life for themselves is successful by any metric. Just not by the metrics discussed in TFA, which is the whole point. It's not like everybody agrees that "a good wage" is success.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Some suggested edits to your comment: wagecuck -> working stiff when you can no longer maintain an erection -> when you are past the prime of your life With these simple substitutions you can once again sound like a reasonable human being who is not overly fixated on unnecessary crude sexual imagery.
    - 7y ago
new2628 7y ago
"too cynical for Bukowski", that's a good motto :)

appstorelottery 7y ago

"If you're going to try, go all the way." This is beautiful. This is my experience as a 30 year serial start-up man. When I say to myself - "I will do whatever it takes to make this work" vs. "We'll see what happens" these have always been two distinct universes in terms of the journey. "Whatever it takes" is always a nightmare filled with anxiety and stress, but the second attitude - I've rarely experienced any kind of real success with. Both journeys are pain. The first is racked with anxiety and obsession the second is mostly fear and indecision. The end state of both is relief. But "We'll see what happens" most always ends with some form of regret - perhaps I didn't do something I could have. Woulda coulda shoulda. And then it's over. "I'll do whatever it takes" is always a crazy ride towards an unknown destination, has cost me far more than I anticipated, and the rewards are never what I predicted to begin with. But it's this universe I rarely regret (and reportedly those that were along for the ride with me). So yeah, "If you're going to try, go all the way" resonates strongly with me.

quickpost 7y ago
Beautifully put, thanks for taking the time to write it. It's also a perfect summary of why I'm struggling mightily with working a predictable job (that anyone should love) vs working on my next business or other volatile pursuit. I need to get Go All The Way tattooed on my forehead. I hope it's a mindset I have the courage to maintain for the rest of my life.
beautifulfreak 7y ago
So what does your user name mean? Was it still a lottery and not the result of going all out?

Balgair 7y ago

Man, I wish any of that were true. It seems that life is just too random to have that end up being true. Too many things happen that you can't control that then come along and wreck it all. My SO achieved so much, had it all, got through grad school great, was going to teach at a University I know you have heard of, do amazing research all over the world, help out humanity in a very real way, all that jazz. Then, bam, the pain started up and has never left. The chonic pain disorder my SO has is a real sumbitch. I love my SO, terribly so. But all that my SO had just evaporated into the pain. Just one bad infection, like about 2% of the US gets, and there it all went. No amount of drive is going to fix it. No amount of work. My SO can't work through the pain as it exacerbates the condition. Lord knows my SO spent months and years just trying to ignore it, making it worse the whole while. That pain just winds you, for days at a time. Takes it all. And the shame that my SO feels just kills me. All the desires, all that motivation and drive that my SO had, it's all still there, clawing at my SO's mind, telling itself that my SO is 'just not good enough'. That person is still there, just enveloped with pain, trying to break out and work again. What gave my SO everything, all that honor and accomplishment, is not tearing into my SO and making it all worse. Bukowski isn't wrong, per se, but he is not right either. That fire is dangerous in the wrong circumstances and it's very difficult to tell when you are in the wrong place. One quote that has really changed as it has aged is that Bourdain quote: > “I understand there’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.” Yet Anthony died by his own hand. That drive, that spark and thumos, it was his undoing as much as it was his making. Would he have been as a sucess if not for that drive? The only person that could tell you is dead. So, sure, sleep on the benches for it, go to jail for it, but remember, there are worse things than just temporary discomforts, mockery, and dishonor waiting in the weeds along that path.

deleted 7y ago
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bisRepetita 7y ago
Thanks for writing this.
marktangotango 7y ago

jtms 7y ago

A friend of mine is currently going all the way when it comes to animation. He produced 52 animated shorts in 1 year (one per week). One of them features this exact quote! https://vimeo.com/303537395 https://vimeo.com/303537395

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JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

Screenshotted and saved for inspiration, thank you for sharing. I’m starting my own business right now and everything keeps telling me just lay off the accelerator. My natural mode is complete obsession.

nine_k 7y ago

Reads like an ad for a potent drug, written by an addict. Add survivorship bias to a good measure.

erikpukinskis 7y ago
How does survivorship bias apply here? He’s practically laying out a tautology: if you are willing to sacrifice everything for a goal, you’ll beat out everyone else purely due to attrition. You’re saying that only seems true because people who succeed repeat it? I feel like survivorship bias is more about obscure tricks that happen to work well for a random group of people who happened to succeed. No?
- dclowd9901 7y ago
  > How does survivorship bias apply here? Because he got lucky. No, sacrificing everything for the goal does not always get you the goal. There's 1,000 Bukowskis out there, many better, and we'll never hear of them. Sometimes you waste it all, and then you're supposed to look back and say, "Well, at least I gave it my all, and I just had bad luck." Yeah, that's really fucking comforting.
  - badpun 7y ago
    > Sometimes you waste it all, and then you're supposed to look back and say, "Well, at least I gave it my all, and I just had bad luck." Yeah, that's really fucking comforting. It's about intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards. For him, writing poetry was a reward in itself, and he didn't see himself joining the standard nine-to-five society anyway. So, even if he had failed after 40 years of writing during evenings and weekends, he wouldn't have any regrets. Of course, if someone does say startups just to get rich, and hates every minute of it, then it, if the spoils never materialize in the end, it will lead to bitterness.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    > There's 1,000 Bukowskis out there, many better What does being better have to do with it? Are you arguing against the idea that the best people always succeed? I don’t think I said that.

codeulike 7y ago

This is the "never give up" fallacy, a sort of magical thinking in our times. But sometimes giving up is the smart thing to do. You rarely hear anyone emphasise that though, due to survivor bias.

WA 7y ago
And more: people who write stuff like this (from experience) are usually the lucky ones with hindsight bias.
- deleted 7y ago
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tagirb 7y ago
For me this "never give up" does not mean fighting through this life, it means "never give up on yourself", on that sparkle in your eyes, on your inner smile, on the light inside you, call it however you want. Go all the way with it, don't trade yourself for whatever "benefits" offered to you, well, by your own mind, first of all. Once you're out of _that_ slavery, then you're truly free wherever you are and whatever you do.
slx26 7y ago
I agree with tagirb that Bukowski was talking about a different thing. But I wanted to expand on the "never give up" issue, even if it might be slightly out of topic. Giving up doesn't sound sexy. It's definitely something everyone should learn, but hey, maybe we aren't "selling" the concept well enough. In my experience, in most cases where you have to give up, what you really have to do is to stop trying to achieve a certain abstract goal through a certain specific method. Not renounce to the goal, the drive, the passion itself, but renounce to the methods, the rigid views you might hold. Maybe you want to write great songs, but you are failing because you are just trying to repeat something similar to what your favourite artist already did. Maybe you want to get better grades, but are just re-reading the lessons, expecting something to stick, when you are not even focusing on it or trying to understand the previous lessons that lead to the current one. Maybe you want to jump a 2 meter fence, but you are just running against it, without ever having tried with smaller ones first. It's never so simple, but this is the main point. Sometimes we have to face reality. In many cases, the only thing we need to give up is our naive views and past mistakes. Some people will repeat the same mistake over and over and call that "trying really hard". Sorry, but no. Trying really hard is not that. Trying really hard is being able to let go your naivety, to keep exploring alternatives, to keep learning, and learning, and failing, and going back and retry in a different way. [and this is still not what you were talking about]

shadowprofile77 7y ago

I believe most of you are missing the point. Bukowski was arguing this in favor of doing something you truly feel passionate about regardless of whether it succeeds or not. The philosophy doesn't work well for highly specific, practical-minded goals of an emotionally ambiguous nature: If you really want to be an artist that gets his paintings on display in the met, but see that you're not getting anywhere with it, you can easily let go and move onto something else. The important thing however is that if you have a wider, more fundamental dream (say to simply live for your art and experiment with it as long as you have the faculties to do so) for which you can spend your life struggling and be happy with the process itself, despite frustrations, then you can try different practical paths to success, experiment flexibly with them as needed but take sheer pleasure in knowing that the all-in journey was worth it even if some specific ideal destination wasn't reached. Considering it this way takes survivorship bias, luck and low probabilities into consideration but with an awareness that even if they might sideline you, the overall effort was simply how you wanted to spend your life.

tagirb 7y ago
Whatever dream or wish you have, sooner or later, whether "successful" or "failed" by whatever measure, you realize that you've reached its bounds. Please don't reduce his words to pursuing something material, because it's much more than that, as hinted by: > You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter.
- shadowprofile77 7y ago
  If you say I reduced his words to pursuing something material than you've misunderstood my point. In the most basic sense of us all having to make use of a material world to achieve anything over the course of a lifetime, then yes, all pursuits are material in some way. Beyond that however I was simply using a specific example to explain that a more fundamental understanding of what Bukowski was saying can take into account things like survivorship bias and the danger of completely impractical dreams being pursued too far while still being coherent advice about how one should live their life. This is to pursue a larger meta-dream through practical, flexible steps and never give up because the meta-dream you've chosen fulfills you spiritually in the simple pursuit. It thus does this regardless of success or failure and specific hardships. You ride life to perfect laughter because you've chosen your fundamental calling knowing its cost and sacrifices.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

"Burn the boats." If there is no way to successfully retreat until you've won, then you win or die. Great way to focus the mind on winning (success) once casual retreat is no longer an option.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
And it leaves only those who survive to extol the virtues - the countless legions of failures are dead.
- keiferski 7y ago
  Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here and lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies…true, but the life that’s left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly. - Achilles, the Iliad IX, 500-506
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Ah, so people have delusions of grandeur and think they stand with demigods of ages past? That's neat.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I'm not a big believer in time travel, but I like watching/reading time travel stories. To my mind, it's a way to try to envision the two different futures that grow out of a single decision point. You don't really get to A/B test your own life. You don't really get to know for absolute certainty where the road not taken would have taken you had you turned left instead of right at that moment on that day in that place with those people. What you can do is develop mental models and compare against first-hand experience. Most actual choices in life don't literally involve life and death, at least not in an immediate sense. Some can be life-or-death decisions -- casually sleep with the wrong person without protection, die of AIDS some years down the road -- but if you run around telling other people that every little thing you do in your life is life or death, they will soon decide you are a lunatic. So taking a reference to "burn the boats" too literally and acting like I'm the drama queen is really you being dramatic. In practical terms, "burn the boats" is shorthand for "Make an actual decision and then commit to it. The longer you spend trying to leave your options open, the more time you waste." If you stand at the cross roads forever trying to make it possible to choose to go either left or right, you stand there going nowhere at all. Just pick one, start walking and don't spend a lot of time looking back, walking back to the crossroads over and over, wondering if you should go the other way instead.

kerkeslager 7y ago

Bukowski may have said, "If you're going to try, go all the way," but Bukowski's tombstone reads, "Don't try." Bukowski spent most of his life as non-functioning alcoholic, a lifestyle which is unenviable even in the slightly-romanticized form he presents in his writings. If you ever want to watch something truly unpleasant, pull up YouTube and watch him berate his wife on public television (possibly drunk). Bukowski was insightful on a lot of things, but his life doesn't look like a happy one to me, and I'd be cautious about taking life advice from him.

kissgyorgy 7y ago
I did and gosh, my life is not where it should be, but I don't want to learn from this guy: https://youtu.be/EJmQHT_HLOo https://youtu.be/EJmQHT_HLOo
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  That link isn't to the interview where he yells at his future[1] wife. However, I think if you linked the actual interview, it would be inappropriate according to HN's content standards: Bukowski uses some very colorful language. [1] I was slightly incorrect in my previous post, she wasn't his wife yet at the time of the interview.
8bitsrule 7y ago
I'm pretty damned sure that the tombstone advice means "Don't try ... do!" (As I recall, that was a line in a popular movie. Taking poets literally is risky.) IOW, 'go all the way' is not like a new-year's resolution. Bukowski spent most of his life being Bukowski. Better results than the post-office position. Beats the great, grey middle all to hell.
- kerkeslager 7y ago
  > Bukowski spent most of his life being Bukowski. Better results than the post-office position. Beats the great, grey middle all to hell. For us it's great, we get Bukowski. For Bukowski, it seems less enjoyable.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

Wow, I'm kind of surprised at all the "Woah, so inspiring!" comments. This is the kind of cultish "advice" that results in boatloads of jaded, isolated folks. It's shitty advice for 2 reasons: 1. First, most people who follow the "only follow your passion" advice WILL fail, so not only will they have lost their "girlfriends, wives, relatives", etc., but they'll feel the dejection of it not being successful. 2. More importantly, and this is really my main point, but I think most people who follow this advice and succeed will find it is a pyrrhic victory. When you've reached what you thought was they pinnacle of your success, but you look around and you see you've burned most of your bridges to get there, it turns out to be a very lonely place. I think the vast majority of people will find that if they give appropriate attention to their self care and their relationships, it will make achieving their goals easier, not the other way around.

bytematic 7y ago
I don't think he means that you have to follow your "passion" per se, but just to put effort into whatever you're doing, make big leaps, compromise yourself, and fail a lot.

croo 7y ago

The writing is great but the message is bullshit. It's easy to focus on one thing and let yourself devoured by it, to drop every responsibility while fighting your challenge. What's hard is to juggle everything while trying. On a tangent Yoda in Star Wars is also bullshit. You should always try.

rewgs 7y ago
You’re misunderstanding the Yoda quote. He means that trying simply doesn’t exist — you either do the thing, or you don’t do it. Aim to do the thing, don’t aim to “try.”