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It's worse than you think

278 points by memorable 4y ago

brabel 4y ago
Further examples of things that are worse than we think: the world ability to handle climate change or any other problem involving worldwide cooperation (including peace keeping), people's discrimination against each other, humans' ability to maintain objective views...
smaudet 4y ago
Only when you truly see how utterly an truly terrible things are, that's when you can step up and do something about it - sounds like a motivational bit but it saves you from despairing more than you need to, ironically.
dimgl 4y ago
Eh, this was a pretty contrived read, and a bad way to think IMO. A healthy dose of pessimism makes sense but I've never believed in futility.
- once_inc 4y ago
  The author explicitly states that this way of thinking isn't an open path to nihilism. It is the opposite; knowing that you can't change certain aspects of life allow you to focus on a response that is more useful than fighting the inevitable and leads to a life with fewer frustrations.
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akersten 4y ago
Any life philosophy that helps one get through the day in a positive way is good. I do have a nit to pick with part of this one. It leans on the idea that "everyone is winging it all the time" and links to a Guardian opinion(?) piece where they pull quote from people who can't read a clock or tie their shoes. I think that's both not the right level of assumed incompetence that the author wanted to convey, but also reinforcement of a comforting excuse for failing to flourish. There is such a thing as expertise, and it (almost) always takes a lot of work to achieve it. So it both denigrates those who have worked hard to be competent in their field and gives aspirationals an out that potentially stunts their growth. I agree that the mantra applies in some circumstances, like casual social interaction (although I'm sure there are subject matter experts in that realm too who could out-chat any of us), but applying it to your career and goals seems self-defeating to me. But again, we are all different and different motivations work on each of us. Just my unsolicited opinion.
- herbertl 4y ago
  Your final sentence really resonates. I think for some people, a note of pessimism is such a relief and freeing (e.g., "Oh thank goodness, I'd never have been able to meet that deadline anyway. Now let me get started on it"), but for others, that same note of pessimism causes inaction ("Why would I bother trying if it's impossible?! Not even worth getting started")
- __t__ 4y ago
  I agree that expertise is a thing, but its my belief that often this expertise is acquired by "winging it" or doing something without really having a clear path of how to do said thing. This is what I got from that line, at least
- deleted 4y ago
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- Ma8ee 4y ago
  Of course there is something like expertise. But the really accomplished experts are winging it most of us all, because they are at the frontiers of human knowledge, trying things that no one has tried before, stepping where no one has stepped before. So what else can they do than wing it. And regarding the possibility that someone becomes an accomplished expert in a field and then never tries anything new? It must be exceedingly rare. If you don't have the temperament to always try new things, you rarely become a true expert. And a true expert that can't try new things rapidly becomes bored to death.
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    And there's no innovation without that ability to push boundaries, feel on the edge, and occasionally screw things up. Who dares, wins. All pioneers are 'imposters', out of time and place, or alone behind enemy lines, until they look back one day and see others following and realise they're a leader.
- hgomersall 4y ago
  To quote Greg LeMond: it never gets easier, you just get faster. As someone who arguably has accumulated expertise, I still feel like I'm winging it a lot. The difference is I'm now winging it at the boundaries of the state of the art. It certainly doesn't feel easier to be here than where I was 20 years ago (though I do feel to be in a better place). There's always much more expertise I need!
urbandw311er 4y ago
It’s a nice suggestion for a way to rationale pessimistic thoughts. But I don’t agree that it’s well captured by the maxim “it’s worse than you think”.
herbertl 4y ago
In spite of the headline that might suggest otherwise, I don't think the author was suggesting inaction through futility and nihilism. Rather, as he mentions in the conclusion, it's about accepting that we don't have as much control over circumstances as we'd like, and to let go of external standards and situations: ...that's precisely when you can throw yourself at life's real hard challenges: the impressive accomplishments, bold life choices, and deeply fulfilling relationships. You get to live more intensely, because you're no longer making your full participation in life dependent on reaching some standard – of productivity, of certainty about the future, of competence, etcetera – that you were never going to reach in the first place.
__t__ 4y ago
I really liked this read. I don't think you have to be a pessimist in order to adopt this mindset, just knowing the pessimist's perspective can be a healthy way of focusing on what matters
- bluetomcat 4y ago
  I think the general conveyed idea is to give up on what you can't realistically change or achieve, focusing on the smaller everyday actions that make your local environment more bearable despite the sorry state of the world. For example, in a bad relationship, assume that you have met not the best person in the world and acknowledge that it is very hard (even impossible) to change them, but take small everyday actions that make the relationship durable despite of that.
brutusborn 4y ago
Beautiful piece. Increases hope and reduces mental suffering. Reminds me of the third noble truth in Buddhism: "dukkha (suffering, incapable of satisfying, painful) can be ended or contained by the renouncement or letting go of taṇhā ("craving, desire or attachment, lit. "thirst")"
kromem 4y ago
The Zen of learned helplessness? Meh. We do ourselves a disservice by teaching an idealized picture of history. The world has been a terrible, awful place for nearly all of its existence. This right now is probably the golden age relative to the rest of it, but we're so caught up in our doom scrolling that it FEELS overwhelmingly bad. Yes, bad things happen to people around the world. But bad things have always been happening to people around the world. The average person just generally wasn't aware unless it was happening to them. We're spoiled with a modernity privilege we can't see and thus can't appreciate. If learned helplessness is the trick that makes life tolerable, by all means go for it. To each their own. But no, it's not worse than we think. It's better than we realize.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  The article is more of a thought experiment technique than a water cooler rant.
- hourago 4y ago
  "In April of 1815, Mount Tambora exploded in a powerful eruption that killed tens of thousands of people on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. The following year became known as the “year without a summer” when unusually cold, wet conditions swept across Europe and North America." Yep. People do not realize how uncertain the world was back then. You may get a year of lack of food without even knowing why. Today we know much more, and that may overwhelm us. But not knowing and not be able to do anything is worse.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > The Zen of learned helplessness? You are very much missing the point. > This right now is probably the golden age relative to the rest of it, but we're so caught up in our doom scrolling that it FEELS overwhelmingly bad. How it feels is what really matters. There's little benefit in having a much better material life than any king from the past if people are unhappy. The developed world is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis especially around depression and anxiety and you cannot handwave it away by calling people "spoiled". The typical HN starry-eyed techno-optimism is not helpful.
vincentmarle 4y ago
Over and over again I'm drawn back to this centuries old Stoic principle: stop worrying about things that you can't control. Because, like this article mentions, most things are outside of your control.
arlcode 4y ago
It's an interesting article and I think the last paragraph is incredibly important. My personal takeaway is to deal with situations as they are, not as you would like them to be. If you are a very optimistic and positive person that could mean to realize the difficulties ahead and if you are inclined to see doom in everything it's realizing that things are not as bleak as you imagination makes them out to be.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  I am a real doomer on a society/political level and I am in the end suprised things didn't get as bad as I thought. E.g. I have thought the economy should collapse every year for 20 years. Not even Venezuela collapsed as bad as I thought it would. On a work basis I am a optimist instead for some reason. It is too daunting to realistically asses the amount of work needed for a project so I just start walking towards the top of the hill.
quickthrower2 4y ago
I will have a go: I can’t get my side project to the point it can replace my job. Its worse than that: all efforts to make money take time, and so have an hourly rate, and so no one escapes working a job. Also when defined in happiness units per hour, there are non raises.
Animats 4y ago
"Birth is pain, life is pain, death is pain" - Chinese proverb. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” - Thoreau This isn't a new observation.
- jstanley 4y ago
  That it's not new does not mean it's not interesting. I enjoyed the post.
- earthboundkid 4y ago
  That doesn’t have the structure of a Chinese proverb. Those are usually 4 character expressions, which work out to something like 4 nouns/verbs in English plus some supporting prepositions and whatnot. The other common thing is highly parallel constructions, but that just repeats the same word three times. I would be very surprised if that were an authentic Chinese saying.
tpoacher 4y ago
“Destiny is a gift. Some go their entire lives, living existences of quiet desperation, never learning the truth that what feels as though a burden pushing down upon their shoulders is really a sense of purpose that lifts us to greater heights. Never forget that fear is but the precursor to valor, that to strive and triumph in the face of fear is what it means to be a hero. Don’t think. Become.” ~ Blinky Galadriel - Trollhunters
- fho 4y ago
  That was a surprisingly good show for something aimed at children.
  - mordae 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro Remember Hellboy having insecurities?
    - fho 4y ago
      Isn't there also a live action troll hunter movie by him that has nothing to do with the Arcadia series?
Notatheist 4y ago
I feel like this stoic approach to dealing with problems is a fear of fear so overwhelming you abandon hope for the sake of comfortable stability. Hell, Seneca explicitly tells you to abandon hope (as does the author of this piece, although he stops short of telling you to commit suicide if life gets too difficult). Instead of just being terrified as the eastern counterparts recommend, you deny it. Constructing a limit-case for every obstacle you face downplays your emotions, making them shrivel away so you can maintain a straight face through extended torture. I've spent the past two years undoing the damage that therapy did to me. Trying to get my ability to suffer back isn't something I ever thought I'd do but here I am. I'll have a brutal, soul-crushing failure turn me into a miserable sobbing pile of person long before I accept only being intellectually aware of all my setbacks without a shred of crippling emotion. If that means I don't have any "impressive accomplishments" because I was sitting in a corner in the fetal position wailing about my dead hamster, so be it.
- meken 4y ago
  I found this comment very striking, and descriptive of my own experience, always trying to keep a straight face.
- jkhdigital 4y ago
  > I've spent the past two years undoing the damage that therapy did to me. I feel like our entire society will be spending decades undoing the damage that the “therapeutic” approach to mental health has wrought.
  - haswell 4y ago
    These are very sweeping statements about therapy without evidence or exposition. As someone who fully believes I'm alive and typing today because of an excellent therapist, I'm curious to understand what you're referring to, and how it differs from my experience. What do you mean by "therapeutic" here?
- tomjakubowski 4y ago
  "cease to hope and you will cease to fear"
cryptica 4y ago
This has been my experience since I started my career. Some things seem feasible, easy even, but behind the scenes, there are social dynamics which make your skills/talent completely redundant. You can do amazing things, 10x better, 100x better than anyone else. It doesn't matter. Nobody will acknowledge it. The same thing may be possible (or trivial) for some people because they are lucky enough to be born in the right place and right time and with the right friends (sometimes it may not seem like it, but one connection can make all the difference), but it's not possible for you. Overcoming adversity and defying all odds achieves nothing. You just don't have the right parents at the end of the day. It's like politicians. When you watch them give a speech in the news, it sounds like they're talking to you (or at least, people like you), but they're not. They're talking to other people who are better connected than you. You're not part of this system. It's an illusion, a big lie.
- 331c8c71 4y ago
  > You can do amazing things, 10x better, 100x better than anyone else. It doesn't matter. Nobody will acknowledge it. Likely someone around will notice and appreciate - but it'd be just a bitter consolation prize. > but one connection can make all the difference... You just don't have the right parents at the end of the day. I think it goes much deeper. It's the mindset that matters, not a single connection. > lucky enough to be born in the right place and right time and with the right friends Pure randomness does play a big role both at macro and micro levels. At micro level (e.g. team, boss, mentors) I have seen how two ex-classmates in very comparable circumstances ended up with unbelievably different careers (a huge success vs layoff and a career shift to an adjacent field). In their case it's impossible that these differences were due to skills or work ethic. The effects of macro shifts (e.g. machine learning / data science boom) are also blatantly obvious to me. Catching a huge wave can be effectively be a massive boost to one's skills (the one that people in a stable or stagnating market/industry don't get). One can of course change fields to get in a wave (and many people do) - but some are just literally taken by it.
noduerme 4y ago
> Getting on top of it all seems like it would be really hard. But it isn't. It's impossible. Or maybe, for any given abstract task, it isn't impossible. Maybe you're just giving up and justifying your withdrawal by saying it's impossible because you're essentially weak and lacking in self-discipline. I don't know, of course. Depends on the task and who's tasked with it. Reminds me of a limerick my father used to say. They said that it couldn't be done / With a smile he got right to it / He tackled the thing that couldn't be done / And he couldn't do it.
- phnofive 4y ago
  Tried to make it a little more conventional and went abstract: they told him it couldn't be done he thought it a challenge but fun and got straight to work just one little quirk no light bulb can outshine the sun
- earthboundkid 4y ago
  You can accomplish many tasks X. The point of the piece is that were you to do X, now Y and Z would be on your plate, and you’d feel behind on those. So you can do difficult tasks, but you can’t resolve the feeling of being behind by doing difficult tasks. You resolve the feeling by being okay with not getting it all done as long as you operate near your steady state optimum.
iamsaitam 4y ago
Isn't this what stoicism is about?
- joelthelion 4y ago
  It's almost exactly the same thing. It doesn't hurt to rephrase the same ideas, though.
bArray 4y ago
Without JS switched on, I can fully appreciate how bad things are - it's unreadable. I think the CSS needs some work.
- perilunar 4y ago
  It's worse than you think: the entire contents of the post is stored in a srcdoc attribute on an iframe with no height specified. The javascript resizes the iframe to match the content. Bloody stupid way to code a webpage.
FrankyHollywood 4y ago
I'd say it is mostly about expectations. There are various kinds of challenges in life. If you approach them with an unrealistic mindset you get disappointed. Some things are easy and you just do it. Then there are the more challenging topics. These can't be overseen from the start, so you just start working on it and hope you reach what you desire in the future. Finally some things are just impossible. Both at work and in personal life it can help a lot to see this distinction.
jkhdigital 4y ago
> Relationship troubles? You might think the problem is that you married the wrong person, or that you need to work on yourself, and these might of course be true. But also, it's worse than you think – because two humans living and growing together is just inevitably a matter of having one's buttons pushed and one's old psychological issues triggered. There was a point in my marriage, about four years (and one child) into it, when I convinced myself that I had married the wrong person and needed out. My feeble attempt to tell this to my wife was the most gut-wrenchingly painful experience of my life. Next year we will be celebrating ten years of marriage. It was worse than I thought: not only was I married to the wrong person, but attempting to leave would saddle me with a lifetime of guilt and regret for choosing to break up a not-unhappy home. My wife may be a poor match for me, but I’m the one who offered her the ring. Of course, the realization that a problem is unsolvable never ceases to be traumatic. But as the author quotes Bruce Tift, it’s reassuring to know that with time one can redefine the problem out of existence and move on with living.
- nly 4y ago
  "Your love is one in a million You couldn't buy it at any price But of the nine-point-nine-nine-nine-hundred-thousand other possible loves Statistically, some of them would be equally nice" -- Tim Minchin, If I Didn't Have You (Someone else would do) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6gV2sdl38&t=80s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6gV2sdl38&t=80s
- q1w2 4y ago
  I've come to terms with the notion that my 10yr marriage is ok. Not perfect, but also not bad. I see it as a partnership - and so does she. But if I ever got to the point where I was unhappy in her company, persistently, I think it would benefit everyone to separate. Maybe temporarily at first to see how it is for us. I don't think anyone, including your wife, would expect you to stay unhappy just because you made that offer to her 10 years ago.
myth_drannon 4y ago
I recommend his book "Four thousand weeks", it's on somewhat similar topics.
pwdisswordfish9 4y ago
I open a page with a single link. I click. > 404! The page you were looking for doesn't exist. Indeed it is.
jrochkind1 4y ago
Reminds me of Pema Chodron on hopelessness: > The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot. > The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This re-dok is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives. > In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”
- ericmcer 4y ago
  It is interesting how nihilism and existentialism rose as Christian faith diminished, and how they have so many parallels to Buddhism. Not sure if they were heavily influenced by it or if those ideas rose inevitably to fill the void that lost faith left behind.
  - endorphine 4y ago
    Yeah. It also seems to me that philosophers never got over nihilism. Nietzsche saw nihilism as the problem of the human condition after "God was dead", as something to be overcomed in order for humanity to reach to the next level. But this never materialized AFAICT, right?
  - jrochkind1 4y ago
    I would like to think it may be a fundamental truth of the human condition, formalized/written in different times and places. The Stoics had it too, and that's pre-Christian. I suspect some Christians during the first two millenia of Christianity had it too, I don't think it's incompatible with Christianity (or "faith"!) of all historical sorts, but don't know enough about the history to say. (Update: Googling, some suggest Jesuit spirituality as being a Christian philosophy focused on non-attachment... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatian_spirituality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatian_spirituality)
NoGravitas 4y ago
This is really just existentialism, but it comes at it from an interesting angle. Could also be related to Nietzche's "heroic nihilism" (as compared to Schopenhauer's pessimistic nihilism).
JohnDeHope 4y ago
This reminds me of Candide. I can't find a quote that perfectly lines up with TFA. But this comes close. Read the book if you're piqued. "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there "ut operaretur eum", that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle." "Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable." The author of the post here is coming at this idea from one specific angle: it's worse than you think. But this is a specific instance of a larger insight. None of it makes any sense, nor has any meaning. He could go one step further with all of this. yes, it's true that your to do list is a complete f-up. No doubt. But it's not just your to do list, or your imposter syndrome, or etc. It's all of everything. The whole of existence. It's all just one complete cosmic joke of a guy slipping on a banana peel joke. I think the Hitchhiker Guide Galaxy books by Douglas Adams captured this. When I was a kid I didn't realize the existential dilemmas that kept cropping up. I just thought it was funny. Now in my mid-40s it's still funny, but it feels a lot more true, too. I'm also getting vibes of this from Jesus. John 18:36 Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place." My angle being, this world is not what's important. Sure it's important because you're here now. There is that. But don't get too caught up in it. It's all going away soon. It doesn't really ultimately matter if you're late to your daughter's orthodontist appointment.
- JohnDeHope 4y ago
  Oh and the Bhagavad Gita hits this too. "Thou hast power only to act, not over the result thereof. Act thou therefore without prospect of the result, and without succumbing to inaction." Really this is a universal that every philosophy has to speak to. It's really interesting.
- oifjsidjf 4y ago
  From what I'm beginning to realize more and more is that the central problem in humans is the mind: the constant intrusions of random thoughts, generating self-conflicts based on past remembrances which are also projected in the future. Your mind is obviously out of control: if you had your mind under full control you would be able to sit for 1 hour in a dark room and had zero intrusive/distracting thoughts. And yet if you try this you might last a few minutes but then you'll start to fantasize and get lost in future/past images and you won't even notice when you got sucked into them, it happens so automatic, without one noticing it. So thus the question becomes: how can one deal with this? What needs to be done/seen for one to overcome these random thoughts? I'm exploring this now through Krishnamurti. There are many Buddhist monks, but how many of them reach enlightment? Practicaly zero, so obviously they are doing something very, very wrong.
barrysteve 4y ago
The "brace position" for a lot of Brits is the Kantian duty ethic and a very visible Standard by which you can compare yourself. That's all gone.. When the thing-in-itself died and we became hyper-conscious instead, the philosophies of the past no longer tread water. It's true the plane has crashed, and that might be the ground-floor reality, but there has to be more.
kinetronic 4y ago
I learned about relaxing when it's hopeless from this passage long ago: Zaphod tried to run in several equally decisive directions simultaneously. "Right!" he said. "Er ... we've got to get manual control of this ship." "Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly. "No, can you?" "No." "Trillian, can you?" "No." "Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together."
perilunar 4y ago
> In a piercing recent essay that's well worth your time, Simon Evans writes about watching his daughter become an adult, and also about the death of a close friend... Yes, definitely worth reading. Better than the original article IMO.

278 points by memorable 4y ago

Further examples of things that are worse than we think: the world ability to handle climate change or any other problem involving worldwide cooperation (including peace keeping), people's discrimination against each other, humans' ability to maintain objective views...

smaudet 4y ago

Only when you truly see how utterly an truly terrible things are, that's when you can step up and do something about it - sounds like a motivational bit but it saves you from despairing more than you need to, ironically.

dimgl 4y ago

Eh, this was a pretty contrived read, and a bad way to think IMO. A healthy dose of pessimism makes sense but I've never believed in futility.

once_inc 4y ago
The author explicitly states that this way of thinking isn't an open path to nihilism. It is the opposite; knowing that you can't change certain aspects of life allow you to focus on a response that is more useful than fighting the inevitable and leads to a life with fewer frustrations.

deleted 4y ago

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akersten 4y ago

Any life philosophy that helps one get through the day in a positive way is good. I do have a nit to pick with part of this one. It leans on the idea that "everyone is winging it all the time" and links to a Guardian opinion(?) piece where they pull quote from people who can't read a clock or tie their shoes. I think that's both not the right level of assumed incompetence that the author wanted to convey, but also reinforcement of a comforting excuse for failing to flourish. There is such a thing as expertise, and it (almost) always takes a lot of work to achieve it. So it both denigrates those who have worked hard to be competent in their field and gives aspirationals an out that potentially stunts their growth. I agree that the mantra applies in some circumstances, like casual social interaction (although I'm sure there are subject matter experts in that realm too who could out-chat any of us), but applying it to your career and goals seems self-defeating to me. But again, we are all different and different motivations work on each of us. Just my unsolicited opinion.

herbertl 4y ago
Your final sentence really resonates. I think for some people, a note of pessimism is such a relief and freeing (e.g., "Oh thank goodness, I'd never have been able to meet that deadline anyway. Now let me get started on it"), but for others, that same note of pessimism causes inaction ("Why would I bother trying if it's impossible?! Not even worth getting started")
__t__ 4y ago
I agree that expertise is a thing, but its my belief that often this expertise is acquired by "winging it" or doing something without really having a clear path of how to do said thing. This is what I got from that line, at least
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Ma8ee 4y ago
Of course there is something like expertise. But the really accomplished experts are winging it most of us all, because they are at the frontiers of human knowledge, trying things that no one has tried before, stepping where no one has stepped before. So what else can they do than wing it. And regarding the possibility that someone becomes an accomplished expert in a field and then never tries anything new? It must be exceedingly rare. If you don't have the temperament to always try new things, you rarely become a true expert. And a true expert that can't try new things rapidly becomes bored to death.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  And there's no innovation without that ability to push boundaries, feel on the edge, and occasionally screw things up. Who dares, wins. All pioneers are 'imposters', out of time and place, or alone behind enemy lines, until they look back one day and see others following and realise they're a leader.
hgomersall 4y ago
To quote Greg LeMond: it never gets easier, you just get faster. As someone who arguably has accumulated expertise, I still feel like I'm winging it a lot. The difference is I'm now winging it at the boundaries of the state of the art. It certainly doesn't feel easier to be here than where I was 20 years ago (though I do feel to be in a better place). There's always much more expertise I need!

urbandw311er 4y ago

It’s a nice suggestion for a way to rationale pessimistic thoughts. But I don’t agree that it’s well captured by the maxim “it’s worse than you think”.

herbertl 4y ago

In spite of the headline that might suggest otherwise, I don't think the author was suggesting inaction through futility and nihilism. Rather, as he mentions in the conclusion, it's about accepting that we don't have as much control over circumstances as we'd like, and to let go of external standards and situations: ...that's precisely when you can throw yourself at life's real hard challenges: the impressive accomplishments, bold life choices, and deeply fulfilling relationships. You get to live more intensely, because you're no longer making your full participation in life dependent on reaching some standard – of productivity, of certainty about the future, of competence, etcetera – that you were never going to reach in the first place.

__t__ 4y ago

I really liked this read. I don't think you have to be a pessimist in order to adopt this mindset, just knowing the pessimist's perspective can be a healthy way of focusing on what matters

bluetomcat 4y ago
I think the general conveyed idea is to give up on what you can't realistically change or achieve, focusing on the smaller everyday actions that make your local environment more bearable despite the sorry state of the world. For example, in a bad relationship, assume that you have met not the best person in the world and acknowledge that it is very hard (even impossible) to change them, but take small everyday actions that make the relationship durable despite of that.

brutusborn 4y ago

Beautiful piece. Increases hope and reduces mental suffering. Reminds me of the third noble truth in Buddhism: "dukkha (suffering, incapable of satisfying, painful) can be ended or contained by the renouncement or letting go of taṇhā ("craving, desire or attachment, lit. "thirst")"

kromem 4y ago

The Zen of learned helplessness? Meh. We do ourselves a disservice by teaching an idealized picture of history. The world has been a terrible, awful place for nearly all of its existence. This right now is probably the golden age relative to the rest of it, but we're so caught up in our doom scrolling that it FEELS overwhelmingly bad. Yes, bad things happen to people around the world. But bad things have always been happening to people around the world. The average person just generally wasn't aware unless it was happening to them. We're spoiled with a modernity privilege we can't see and thus can't appreciate. If learned helplessness is the trick that makes life tolerable, by all means go for it. To each their own. But no, it's not worse than we think. It's better than we realize.

quickthrower2 4y ago
The article is more of a thought experiment technique than a water cooler rant.
hourago 4y ago
"In April of 1815, Mount Tambora exploded in a powerful eruption that killed tens of thousands of people on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. The following year became known as the “year without a summer” when unusually cold, wet conditions swept across Europe and North America." Yep. People do not realize how uncertain the world was back then. You may get a year of lack of food without even knowing why. Today we know much more, and that may overwhelm us. But not knowing and not be able to do anything is worse.
goodpoint 4y ago
> The Zen of learned helplessness? You are very much missing the point. > This right now is probably the golden age relative to the rest of it, but we're so caught up in our doom scrolling that it FEELS overwhelmingly bad. How it feels is what really matters. There's little benefit in having a much better material life than any king from the past if people are unhappy. The developed world is facing an unprecedented mental health crisis especially around depression and anxiety and you cannot handwave it away by calling people "spoiled". The typical HN starry-eyed techno-optimism is not helpful.

vincentmarle 4y ago

Over and over again I'm drawn back to this centuries old Stoic principle: stop worrying about things that you can't control. Because, like this article mentions, most things are outside of your control.

arlcode 4y ago

It's an interesting article and I think the last paragraph is incredibly important. My personal takeaway is to deal with situations as they are, not as you would like them to be. If you are a very optimistic and positive person that could mean to realize the difficulties ahead and if you are inclined to see doom in everything it's realizing that things are not as bleak as you imagination makes them out to be.

rightbyte 4y ago
I am a real doomer on a society/political level and I am in the end suprised things didn't get as bad as I thought. E.g. I have thought the economy should collapse every year for 20 years. Not even Venezuela collapsed as bad as I thought it would. On a work basis I am a optimist instead for some reason. It is too daunting to realistically asses the amount of work needed for a project so I just start walking towards the top of the hill.

quickthrower2 4y ago

I will have a go: I can’t get my side project to the point it can replace my job. Its worse than that: all efforts to make money take time, and so have an hourly rate, and so no one escapes working a job. Also when defined in happiness units per hour, there are non raises.

Animats 4y ago

"Birth is pain, life is pain, death is pain" - Chinese proverb. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” - Thoreau This isn't a new observation.

jstanley 4y ago
That it's not new does not mean it's not interesting. I enjoyed the post.
earthboundkid 4y ago
That doesn’t have the structure of a Chinese proverb. Those are usually 4 character expressions, which work out to something like 4 nouns/verbs in English plus some supporting prepositions and whatnot. The other common thing is highly parallel constructions, but that just repeats the same word three times. I would be very surprised if that were an authentic Chinese saying.

tpoacher 4y ago

“Destiny is a gift. Some go their entire lives, living existences of quiet desperation, never learning the truth that what feels as though a burden pushing down upon their shoulders is really a sense of purpose that lifts us to greater heights. Never forget that fear is but the precursor to valor, that to strive and triumph in the face of fear is what it means to be a hero. Don’t think. Become.” ~ Blinky Galadriel - Trollhunters

fho 4y ago
That was a surprisingly good show for something aimed at children.
- mordae 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_del_Toro Remember Hellboy having insecurities?
  - fho 4y ago
    Isn't there also a live action troll hunter movie by him that has nothing to do with the Arcadia series?

Notatheist 4y ago

I feel like this stoic approach to dealing with problems is a fear of fear so overwhelming you abandon hope for the sake of comfortable stability. Hell, Seneca explicitly tells you to abandon hope (as does the author of this piece, although he stops short of telling you to commit suicide if life gets too difficult). Instead of just being terrified as the eastern counterparts recommend, you deny it. Constructing a limit-case for every obstacle you face downplays your emotions, making them shrivel away so you can maintain a straight face through extended torture. I've spent the past two years undoing the damage that therapy did to me. Trying to get my ability to suffer back isn't something I ever thought I'd do but here I am. I'll have a brutal, soul-crushing failure turn me into a miserable sobbing pile of person long before I accept only being intellectually aware of all my setbacks without a shred of crippling emotion. If that means I don't have any "impressive accomplishments" because I was sitting in a corner in the fetal position wailing about my dead hamster, so be it.

meken 4y ago
I found this comment very striking, and descriptive of my own experience, always trying to keep a straight face.
jkhdigital 4y ago
> I've spent the past two years undoing the damage that therapy did to me. I feel like our entire society will be spending decades undoing the damage that the “therapeutic” approach to mental health has wrought.
- haswell 4y ago
  These are very sweeping statements about therapy without evidence or exposition. As someone who fully believes I'm alive and typing today because of an excellent therapist, I'm curious to understand what you're referring to, and how it differs from my experience. What do you mean by "therapeutic" here?
tomjakubowski 4y ago
"cease to hope and you will cease to fear"

cryptica 4y ago

This has been my experience since I started my career. Some things seem feasible, easy even, but behind the scenes, there are social dynamics which make your skills/talent completely redundant. You can do amazing things, 10x better, 100x better than anyone else. It doesn't matter. Nobody will acknowledge it. The same thing may be possible (or trivial) for some people because they are lucky enough to be born in the right place and right time and with the right friends (sometimes it may not seem like it, but one connection can make all the difference), but it's not possible for you. Overcoming adversity and defying all odds achieves nothing. You just don't have the right parents at the end of the day. It's like politicians. When you watch them give a speech in the news, it sounds like they're talking to you (or at least, people like you), but they're not. They're talking to other people who are better connected than you. You're not part of this system. It's an illusion, a big lie.

331c8c71 4y ago
> You can do amazing things, 10x better, 100x better than anyone else. It doesn't matter. Nobody will acknowledge it. Likely someone around will notice and appreciate - but it'd be just a bitter consolation prize. > but one connection can make all the difference... You just don't have the right parents at the end of the day. I think it goes much deeper. It's the mindset that matters, not a single connection. > lucky enough to be born in the right place and right time and with the right friends Pure randomness does play a big role both at macro and micro levels. At micro level (e.g. team, boss, mentors) I have seen how two ex-classmates in very comparable circumstances ended up with unbelievably different careers (a huge success vs layoff and a career shift to an adjacent field). In their case it's impossible that these differences were due to skills or work ethic. The effects of macro shifts (e.g. machine learning / data science boom) are also blatantly obvious to me. Catching a huge wave can be effectively be a massive boost to one's skills (the one that people in a stable or stagnating market/industry don't get). One can of course change fields to get in a wave (and many people do) - but some are just literally taken by it.

noduerme 4y ago

> Getting on top of it all seems like it would be really hard. But it isn't. It's impossible. Or maybe, for any given abstract task, it isn't impossible. Maybe you're just giving up and justifying your withdrawal by saying it's impossible because you're essentially weak and lacking in self-discipline. I don't know, of course. Depends on the task and who's tasked with it. Reminds me of a limerick my father used to say. They said that it couldn't be done / With a smile he got right to it / He tackled the thing that couldn't be done / And he couldn't do it.

phnofive 4y ago
Tried to make it a little more conventional and went abstract: they told him it couldn't be done he thought it a challenge but fun and got straight to work just one little quirk no light bulb can outshine the sun
earthboundkid 4y ago
You can accomplish many tasks X. The point of the piece is that were you to do X, now Y and Z would be on your plate, and you’d feel behind on those. So you can do difficult tasks, but you can’t resolve the feeling of being behind by doing difficult tasks. You resolve the feeling by being okay with not getting it all done as long as you operate near your steady state optimum.

iamsaitam 4y ago

Isn't this what stoicism is about?

joelthelion 4y ago
It's almost exactly the same thing. It doesn't hurt to rephrase the same ideas, though.

bArray 4y ago

Without JS switched on, I can fully appreciate how bad things are - it's unreadable. I think the CSS needs some work.

perilunar 4y ago
It's worse than you think: the entire contents of the post is stored in a srcdoc attribute on an iframe with no height specified. The javascript resizes the iframe to match the content. Bloody stupid way to code a webpage.

FrankyHollywood 4y ago

I'd say it is mostly about expectations. There are various kinds of challenges in life. If you approach them with an unrealistic mindset you get disappointed. Some things are easy and you just do it. Then there are the more challenging topics. These can't be overseen from the start, so you just start working on it and hope you reach what you desire in the future. Finally some things are just impossible. Both at work and in personal life it can help a lot to see this distinction.

jkhdigital 4y ago

> Relationship troubles? You might think the problem is that you married the wrong person, or that you need to work on yourself, and these might of course be true. But also, it's worse than you think – because two humans living and growing together is just inevitably a matter of having one's buttons pushed and one's old psychological issues triggered. There was a point in my marriage, about four years (and one child) into it, when I convinced myself that I had married the wrong person and needed out. My feeble attempt to tell this to my wife was the most gut-wrenchingly painful experience of my life. Next year we will be celebrating ten years of marriage. It was worse than I thought: not only was I married to the wrong person, but attempting to leave would saddle me with a lifetime of guilt and regret for choosing to break up a not-unhappy home. My wife may be a poor match for me, but I’m the one who offered her the ring. Of course, the realization that a problem is unsolvable never ceases to be traumatic. But as the author quotes Bruce Tift, it’s reassuring to know that with time one can redefine the problem out of existence and move on with living.

nly 4y ago
"Your love is one in a million You couldn't buy it at any price But of the nine-point-nine-nine-nine-hundred-thousand other possible loves Statistically, some of them would be equally nice" -- Tim Minchin, If I Didn't Have You (Someone else would do) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6gV2sdl38&t=80s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6gV2sdl38&t=80s
q1w2 4y ago
I've come to terms with the notion that my 10yr marriage is ok. Not perfect, but also not bad. I see it as a partnership - and so does she. But if I ever got to the point where I was unhappy in her company, persistently, I think it would benefit everyone to separate. Maybe temporarily at first to see how it is for us. I don't think anyone, including your wife, would expect you to stay unhappy just because you made that offer to her 10 years ago.

myth_drannon 4y ago

I recommend his book "Four thousand weeks", it's on somewhat similar topics.

pwdisswordfish9 4y ago

I open a page with a single link. I click. > 404! The page you were looking for doesn't exist. Indeed it is.

jrochkind1 4y ago

Reminds me of Pema Chodron on hopelessness: > The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally somebody told the truth. Suffering is part of life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we personally made the wrong move. In reality, however, when we feel suffering, we think that something is wrong. As long as we’re addicted to hope, we feel that we can tone our experience down or liven it up or change it somehow, and we continue to suffer a lot. > The word in Tibetan for hope is rewa; the word for fear is dokpa. More commonly, the word re-dok is used, which combines the two. Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This re-dok is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives. > In a nontheistic state of mind, abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning. You could even put “Abandon hope” on your refrigerator door instead of more conventional aspirations like “Every day in every way I’m getting better and better.”

ericmcer 4y ago
It is interesting how nihilism and existentialism rose as Christian faith diminished, and how they have so many parallels to Buddhism. Not sure if they were heavily influenced by it or if those ideas rose inevitably to fill the void that lost faith left behind.
- endorphine 4y ago
  Yeah. It also seems to me that philosophers never got over nihilism. Nietzsche saw nihilism as the problem of the human condition after "God was dead", as something to be overcomed in order for humanity to reach to the next level. But this never materialized AFAICT, right?
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  I would like to think it may be a fundamental truth of the human condition, formalized/written in different times and places. The Stoics had it too, and that's pre-Christian. I suspect some Christians during the first two millenia of Christianity had it too, I don't think it's incompatible with Christianity (or "faith"!) of all historical sorts, but don't know enough about the history to say. (Update: Googling, some suggest Jesuit spirituality as being a Christian philosophy focused on non-attachment... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatian_spirituality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignatian_spirituality)

NoGravitas 4y ago

This is really just existentialism, but it comes at it from an interesting angle. Could also be related to Nietzche's "heroic nihilism" (as compared to Schopenhauer's pessimistic nihilism).

JohnDeHope 4y ago

This reminds me of Candide. I can't find a quote that perfectly lines up with TFA. But this comes close. Read the book if you're piqued. "You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there "ut operaretur eum", that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle." "Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable." The author of the post here is coming at this idea from one specific angle: it's worse than you think. But this is a specific instance of a larger insight. None of it makes any sense, nor has any meaning. He could go one step further with all of this. yes, it's true that your to do list is a complete f-up. No doubt. But it's not just your to do list, or your imposter syndrome, or etc. It's all of everything. The whole of existence. It's all just one complete cosmic joke of a guy slipping on a banana peel joke. I think the Hitchhiker Guide Galaxy books by Douglas Adams captured this. When I was a kid I didn't realize the existential dilemmas that kept cropping up. I just thought it was funny. Now in my mid-40s it's still funny, but it feels a lot more true, too. I'm also getting vibes of this from Jesus. John 18:36 Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place." My angle being, this world is not what's important. Sure it's important because you're here now. There is that. But don't get too caught up in it. It's all going away soon. It doesn't really ultimately matter if you're late to your daughter's orthodontist appointment.

JohnDeHope 4y ago
Oh and the Bhagavad Gita hits this too. "Thou hast power only to act, not over the result thereof. Act thou therefore without prospect of the result, and without succumbing to inaction." Really this is a universal that every philosophy has to speak to. It's really interesting.
oifjsidjf 4y ago
From what I'm beginning to realize more and more is that the central problem in humans is the mind: the constant intrusions of random thoughts, generating self-conflicts based on past remembrances which are also projected in the future. Your mind is obviously out of control: if you had your mind under full control you would be able to sit for 1 hour in a dark room and had zero intrusive/distracting thoughts. And yet if you try this you might last a few minutes but then you'll start to fantasize and get lost in future/past images and you won't even notice when you got sucked into them, it happens so automatic, without one noticing it. So thus the question becomes: how can one deal with this? What needs to be done/seen for one to overcome these random thoughts? I'm exploring this now through Krishnamurti. There are many Buddhist monks, but how many of them reach enlightment? Practicaly zero, so obviously they are doing something very, very wrong.

barrysteve 4y ago

The "brace position" for a lot of Brits is the Kantian duty ethic and a very visible Standard by which you can compare yourself. That's all gone.. When the thing-in-itself died and we became hyper-conscious instead, the philosophies of the past no longer tread water. It's true the plane has crashed, and that might be the ground-floor reality, but there has to be more.

kinetronic 4y ago

I learned about relaxing when it's hopeless from this passage long ago: Zaphod tried to run in several equally decisive directions simultaneously. "Right!" he said. "Er ... we've got to get manual control of this ship." "Can you fly her?" asked Ford pleasantly. "No, can you?" "No." "Trillian, can you?" "No." "Fine," said Zaphod, relaxing. "We'll do it together."

perilunar 4y ago

> In a piercing recent essay that's well worth your time, Simon Evans writes about watching his daughter become an adult, and also about the death of a close friend... Yes, definitely worth reading. Better than the original article IMO.