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We have a tension between the best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves. When someone chooses to focus on the worst of ourselves, their pessimistic perspecti
by heimatau 6y ago
We have a tension between the best of ourselves and the worst of ourselves. When someone chooses to focus on the worst of ourselves, their pessimistic perspective, generally speaking, doesn't bring out the best in ourselves.
I do appreciate how they concluded:
> When given the choice, we optimize.
>
> Then we work.
Yes. Please focus on this. Our humanity is mostly best suited to receive positivity. Accept the negativity (read: unideal outcomes) but move forward with the positivity on building a better world. On building a world that understands more. On building a world that expresses abundance and joy.
The author seems to equate that work is somehow inherently evil. I'd say this is only true if it's a zero sum game but if it's an infinitely unbounded game then I'd say it's profitable to everyone.
- mementomori 6y agoThis is the core of my own development: seeing the world and life in this world (or even beyond) as an unbounded game rather than a zero-sum game. A lot of times it's the perspective that matters. Maybe at times when we are overly focused on the "how" of optimization and lose sight of the "why," the human mind/body/soul becomes unable to metabolize it, and flips out.
- heimatau 6y ago>when we are overly focused on the "how" of optimization and lose sight of the "why," I have full agreement with you except the quoted statement above. I would actually rephrase this to say: when we are overly focused on our own solution then we lose sight of other coherent variables/solutions that we didn't take into account. Some call this myopic, among many other terms. All our decisions don't exist in a vacuum, no matter how convincingly the perspective is.