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"I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want." Yeah, Mao wrote about that too. You can't get being a decent person that way though.

shantanubala 14y ago
Revising it to "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my existing system of values to get what I want" makes it less pithy.
- neumann_alfred 14y ago
  I mean this tongue-in-cheek, but.. that is still compatible with Mao: I am everything. Everything exists for me. I have only an obligation towards myself, not towards others. I am only responsible for my own reality, not for past or future. I am only responsible for that which I know. I have my needs and I follow them. This is the way great heroes live. -- Mao Tse Tung in an essay he wrote as student (describing his system of values I guess) I don't mean to say everybody who wants something is evil. But I think by definition we always think what we want is justified, that the wanting itself is justification enough. Therefore I want to know why I want things, and what to want, if anything.. I am willing to think 24/7 to achieve that. Beyond that, it depends.. Some of the things in life I wanted the most I'm now really really glad I didn't get. Growth is a slow process that never ends, and even at age 90 I might want things that might seem bad 20 years later. So yeah, go for it, but take it with a grain of salt as you do.. winners never quit; but only a rock never changes or expands goals, and that ain't quitting. Sometimes you can achieve 100% success by not wanting something anymore and actually be better off for it.
  - Volpe 14y ago
    Wait... Are you saying Mao is evil? Are you summing up all his actions, and written works with one quote from one essay... He wrote when he was young? And some how it's evil?
    - neumann_alfred 14y ago
      Evil being subjective, my answer is "fuck yeah". Stalin and him were full of it.
      - pretoriusB 14y ago
        Evil is a BS theological notion. I wish people would stop perpetuating it. People act. Sometimes they do things that hurt other people. But they are not "evil". Including serial killers: they can be mentally ill (physiologically), or have severe psychological problems because of childhood abuse and such. Hitler, for example, was the elected leader of a huge country, with a grassroots following for years. Millions of people agreed with his actions, and thousands in upper echelons helped him execute his ideas. From the persecution of the Jews to the invasion to other countries, all of those ideas were quite popular in German thinking and public dialogue for decades before Hitler. It's not as if he was some evil creature emerged from nowhere and fooled everybody. More to the point, nobody calls the leaders of the allies evil, despite they having done equally abominable actions, like killing 250.000 civillians (men, women, elderly, children, babies, kittens et al) with two nuclear bombs, or bombing hundreds of thousands of civillians in Dresden to shreds. But they are not called "evil", because they were on "our" side, and because they won and so official history (never far away from state sponsoring) accepted their justifications. How about the bloodshed that was the colonial era? European powers killed, enslaved and exploited a BILLION people, in their countries that they invaded and conquerer. Were they "evil"? That would make every leader of those countries at the time to be equal to Hitler * 10. Not to mention socially established wrong-doing, like people in the South having millions of blacks as slaves, abducted from their villages in Africa. Were the thousands of South slave owners "evil"? Stalin and Mao are another kind of thing. Their rule led to millions of deaths, but it's not like they enjoyed killing people (as is probably the understanding of naive people calling them 'evil'). Part of the massacres were result of the inevitable power plays in huge countries with hundreds of millions population under a revolution (or regime change) -- the same way that 50.000 people were executed in the French Revolution.
        Dylan16807 14y ago
  - shantanubala 14y ago
    Agreed. My main point was just that "doing whatever it takes" in this context does not mean sacrificing your values, because your values are definitely part of your original goals to begin with. If you value being flexible or adaptable, then you will certainly expand your goals and change things along the way. But the one thing that should never change is the vigor with which you pursue your goals (you should take breaks, rest, etc., but breaks and rest are arguably also just ways to optimize the pursuit of a goal). And I agree with you, Mao was quite evil, and it would require a very twisted set of goals to lead to the death toll of his regime.
  - dullcrisp 14y ago
    "I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want" sounds more like a slogan for cultivating motivation. It doesn't say "I am unwilling to reflect on or revise what it is that I want," just that one is willing to work as hard as it takes to achieve one's goals.
- pretoriusB 14y ago
  "within my existing system of values"? Yes, that would also work well for Charles Manson... I'd rather hear it like: "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my society's system of values to live a good life, help people, and get some of the things I want".
wisty 14y ago
You mean, the guy who raised life expectancies in his country from ~35 (and stagnent for about 100 years) to ~65? Real asshole.
- miked 14y ago
  Yes, he means the guy who starved 39 million people to death during his reign of terror. Yes, he means the guy who made my wife spend three years of her childhood in constant hunger. Yes, the guy who sent my father in law to a labor camp for ten years for making a joke about him. At least, that's what his best friend told them when they were torturing him. Yes, * that * Mao. Still, I'd like to thank him for inventing all those antibiotics and modern surgical techniques. By the way, who's the source of your "65" number? Oh wait, I think I know.
  - neumann_alfred 14y ago
    Exactly. Hitler built up Germany (well, before he smashed it, but there's always scapegoats for that) and made the Autobahn we Germans still love so dearly, and there's people still arguing with a straight face Hitler was a great man. Industry is overrated - it's just food, peace and shelter that aren't. Human progress is inevitable, speeding it up while fortifying ruling classes does not impress me, ever. edit: to be fair, however: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Legacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Legacy Mobo Gao in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits Mao for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions" Still, bleh. My point was that he might as well have done ONLY evil; with the kind of attitude displayed in the essay he wrote as student (it's not like he lived the rest of his live differently) it would have taken a bullet to stop him. Reflection did not enter into it. That's my point.
  - SiVal 14y ago
    Wow, miked, I'm with you more than you know. We now have at least two of us here on HN whose fathers-in-law were sent to labor camps by Mao. I guess it stands to reason that with Mao's victims as numberless as the stars, there would be victims' relatives everywhere.

shantanubala 14y ago

Revising it to "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my existing system of values to get what I want" makes it less pithy.

neumann_alfred 14y ago
I mean this tongue-in-cheek, but.. that is still compatible with Mao: I am everything. Everything exists for me. I have only an obligation towards myself, not towards others. I am only responsible for my own reality, not for past or future. I am only responsible for that which I know. I have my needs and I follow them. This is the way great heroes live. -- Mao Tse Tung in an essay he wrote as student (describing his system of values I guess) I don't mean to say everybody who wants something is evil. But I think by definition we always think what we want is justified, that the wanting itself is justification enough. Therefore I want to know why I want things, and what to want, if anything.. I am willing to think 24/7 to achieve that. Beyond that, it depends.. Some of the things in life I wanted the most I'm now really really glad I didn't get. Growth is a slow process that never ends, and even at age 90 I might want things that might seem bad 20 years later. So yeah, go for it, but take it with a grain of salt as you do.. winners never quit; but only a rock never changes or expands goals, and that ain't quitting. Sometimes you can achieve 100% success by not wanting something anymore and actually be better off for it.
- Volpe 14y ago
  Wait... Are you saying Mao is evil? Are you summing up all his actions, and written works with one quote from one essay... He wrote when he was young? And some how it's evil?
  - neumann_alfred 14y ago
    Evil being subjective, my answer is "fuck yeah". Stalin and him were full of it.
    - pretoriusB 14y ago
      Evil is a BS theological notion. I wish people would stop perpetuating it. People act. Sometimes they do things that hurt other people. But they are not "evil". Including serial killers: they can be mentally ill (physiologically), or have severe psychological problems because of childhood abuse and such. Hitler, for example, was the elected leader of a huge country, with a grassroots following for years. Millions of people agreed with his actions, and thousands in upper echelons helped him execute his ideas. From the persecution of the Jews to the invasion to other countries, all of those ideas were quite popular in German thinking and public dialogue for decades before Hitler. It's not as if he was some evil creature emerged from nowhere and fooled everybody. More to the point, nobody calls the leaders of the allies evil, despite they having done equally abominable actions, like killing 250.000 civillians (men, women, elderly, children, babies, kittens et al) with two nuclear bombs, or bombing hundreds of thousands of civillians in Dresden to shreds. But they are not called "evil", because they were on "our" side, and because they won and so official history (never far away from state sponsoring) accepted their justifications. How about the bloodshed that was the colonial era? European powers killed, enslaved and exploited a BILLION people, in their countries that they invaded and conquerer. Were they "evil"? That would make every leader of those countries at the time to be equal to Hitler * 10. Not to mention socially established wrong-doing, like people in the South having millions of blacks as slaves, abducted from their villages in Africa. Were the thousands of South slave owners "evil"? Stalin and Mao are another kind of thing. Their rule led to millions of deaths, but it's not like they enjoyed killing people (as is probably the understanding of naive people calling them 'evil'). Part of the massacres were result of the inevitable power plays in huge countries with hundreds of millions population under a revolution (or regime change) -- the same way that 50.000 people were executed in the French Revolution.
      - Dylan16807 14y ago
- shantanubala 14y ago
  Agreed. My main point was just that "doing whatever it takes" in this context does not mean sacrificing your values, because your values are definitely part of your original goals to begin with. If you value being flexible or adaptable, then you will certainly expand your goals and change things along the way. But the one thing that should never change is the vigor with which you pursue your goals (you should take breaks, rest, etc., but breaks and rest are arguably also just ways to optimize the pursuit of a goal). And I agree with you, Mao was quite evil, and it would require a very twisted set of goals to lead to the death toll of his regime.
- dullcrisp 14y ago
  "I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want" sounds more like a slogan for cultivating motivation. It doesn't say "I am unwilling to reflect on or revise what it is that I want," just that one is willing to work as hard as it takes to achieve one's goals.
pretoriusB 14y ago
"within my existing system of values"? Yes, that would also work well for Charles Manson... I'd rather hear it like: "I am willing to do whatever it takes within my society's system of values to live a good life, help people, and get some of the things I want".

wisty 14y ago

You mean, the guy who raised life expectancies in his country from ~35 (and stagnent for about 100 years) to ~65? Real asshole.

miked 14y ago
Yes, he means the guy who starved 39 million people to death during his reign of terror. Yes, he means the guy who made my wife spend three years of her childhood in constant hunger. Yes, the guy who sent my father in law to a labor camp for ten years for making a joke about him. At least, that's what his best friend told them when they were torturing him. Yes, * that * Mao. Still, I'd like to thank him for inventing all those antibiotics and modern surgical techniques. By the way, who's the source of your "65" number? Oh wait, I think I know.
- neumann_alfred 14y ago
  Exactly. Hitler built up Germany (well, before he smashed it, but there's always scapegoats for that) and made the Autobahn we Germans still love so dearly, and there's people still arguing with a straight face Hitler was a great man. Industry is overrated - it's just food, peace and shelter that aren't. Human progress is inevitable, speeding it up while fortifying ruling classes does not impress me, ever. edit: to be fair, however: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Legacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Legacy Mobo Gao in his 2008 book The Battle for China's Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution, credits Mao for raising the average life expectancy from 35 in 1949 to 63 by 1975, bringing "unity and stability to a country that had been plagued by civil wars and foreign invasions" Still, bleh. My point was that he might as well have done ONLY evil; with the kind of attitude displayed in the essay he wrote as student (it's not like he lived the rest of his live differently) it would have taken a bullet to stop him. Reflection did not enter into it. That's my point.
- SiVal 14y ago
  Wow, miked, I'm with you more than you know. We now have at least two of us here on HN whose fathers-in-law were sent to labor camps by Mao. I guess it stands to reason that with Mao's victims as numberless as the stars, there would be victims' relatives everywhere.