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Yeah, it's a great service they're offering, and I didn't mean to imply it's not. But the author seems to be putting it right up there with fighting for civil

• jaf12duke 14y ago
  I don't think passion is limited to fighting for civil rights. But you're right in that I do talk about startups as a mission. And that's because a startup's default result is failing. It takes extraordinary efforts to avoid that default result and very, very few ever make it. For what it's worth, I worked for 5 years running a non-profit as well. Loved that job too. I don't find passionate work to be limited to either startups or non-profits.
• jimhart3000 14y ago
  This made me think of Bret Victor's talk Inventing on Principle where he encourages the audience to basically do what you're criticizing - sort of developing an activist mentality for the problem you're trying to solve, even if it may seem trivial to some. http://vimeo.com/36579366 http://vimeo.com/36579366
• derefr 14y ago
  > it's also good to have perspective I would argue the opposite: if everyone took a global perspective on everything, nobody would ever do anything except work to extend the human lifespan. For humanity to be worth anything, it needs to strive for "useless" goals--art, humor, making money, etc. And to be motivated to strive for these goals, you need to think what you're doing is the most important thing you could be doing--even if, in a global sense, it's not.