3 ms·
“The world” is defined by experiences of individuals. By shaping and being an integral part of the world as a single human being experiences it changes the worl
by fnordpiglet 3y ago
“The world” is defined by experiences of individuals. By shaping and being an integral part of the world as a single human being experiences it changes the world - as experienced by someone - dramatically more than building an online dry cleaning service. You shape the nuanced perceptions of everything in that life, you become a primal force that defines every moment of their life, to their last breath. There’s no greater impact to be had on “the world.”
The broader sense of the world is an intellectual exercise. The world is a spinning ball of uncaring rock covered in a crust of self replicating carbon structures. You might slightly perturb the movements of that crust in some remote way, they might even shape some rocks to look like your long gone carbon structure, but you don’t change anything at that scale.
At a certain point your local experience and the present matter more. Particularly the stronger influence you’ve had on the world at large the more empty it feels in the end, because you are still you, you still only live 24 hours a day, there is no score, no game over you won screen, and the impact that matters most to you is the way your children look at you as you take your last breath.
- immibis 3y agoOnline dry-cleaning might impact a single person orders of magnitude less than being their parent, but it impacts many more people, possibly by the same orders of magnitude. Certainly the creation of Hacker News (just the website, not even Y Combinator) has had much more impact on the world than one parent raising any reasonable number of children.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoYes - but the people you impact in having kids is two - you and your child. Your world is your experience. Everyone impacted by online dry cleaning are never a part of your experience beyond an intellectual experience. But your parenthood extends to the entirety of your world, and the world of another. The magnitudes aren’t orders - they’re infinite, as the life of someone in another city is as far as another universe. By all means make the world better for all man. But realize for you it’s nothing, literally. For your own world, there is no greater impact than your child.
- DonHopkins 3y agoTell that to Hattie Louise and Thomas Midgley Sr, whose child had an enormous impact on the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. >His legacy is one of inventing the two chemicals that did the greatest environmental damage. Environmental historian J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." Author Bill Bryson remarked that he possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny." Science writer Fred Pearce described him as a "one-man environmental disaster".
- immibis 3y agoEveryone is someone's child. Attributing all the deeds anyone does to their parent is ridiculously reductive.