The Benefits of a Quiet Ego • Hacker News Board

Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

#111

Post by Retra » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 5:04 AM UTC

realusername wrote: post #36

learning_still wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 2cents: Dale Carnegie's "How to win friends and influence people" will always hold true. Additionally, many books on business relationships. One that comes to mind is, "What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School." Fake it til you make it is a viable self help strategy. But truthfully, I think the best thing to do is to surround yourself with people who represent the values you want to imitate.

I also highly recommand the Dale Carnegie book. People who are reading this, don't dismiss this book based on its quite bad title, the book is actually really good.

I've read it and I think it's awful. Nothing there that isn't obvious; it will say exactly what you expect it to say.

Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

#112

Post by capisce » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 2:14 PM UTC

hosh wrote: post #102

danenania wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another type of depression that comes from always grasping for (money|acceptance|fame|success|whatever) and never fully attaining it. For people stuck on this treadmill, the long perspective can be a good reminder that none of it is really worth getting too bent out of shape about. On a cosmic timescale, all these things we worry about will be gone and forgotten in the blink of an eye. The best antidote to av…

Nihilism is still a form of depression. Things are not permanent, yes. All things arise and pass, including nihilism and depression. The folks I know who are truly in equanimity and live in the present, are present in the moment, are among the most vibrant and real people I know. When they laugh, they laugh, when they grieve, they grieve. They are fearless in their love, even knowing that all things will pass.

It might just be that they are positively biased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism

Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

#113

Post by chadzawistowski » Mon, Oct 05, 2015, 9:03 PM UTC

codeshaman wrote: post #81

icanhackit wrote: post #48

The gold is at the bottom: “The humble person is probably more aware and accepting of the fact that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute.” If there's one thing that will humble you it's trying to fathom the scale of the universe. You think a celebrity matters at these scales? But don't let it make you feel impotent - rejoice at the fact that you're alive, you exist and the world is fu…

"that against a cosmic scale of time and space, every human being is minute" There is a paved road to clinical depression which starts with thoughts like these. I know it because I've taken it. Life stops having meaning if you take this too seriously - I mean, why do anything or achieve anything if we're just specs in time and space destined to die and be forgotten ? Besides, this doesn't necessarily imply humility.…

I think there's only danger in taking the cosmic scale of the universe seriously if you also take your selfhood seriously.

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?” ― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Minuteness is a problem when you feel like an outsider 'brought into' the world to 'confront' it, but is less problematic if you feel like part of a greater whole.

Re: The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

#114

Post by sullyj3 » Sat, Oct 10, 2015, 11:56 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #63

Kenji wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never really understood how the 'the universe is vast' argument is humbling. What does size have to do with importance? That's like saying a bar of gold has less value if you store it in a bigger room. There are many humbling things in the universe, like making an off-by-one error in C++ with more than a decade of programming experience, but the vastness of the universe is not one of those things.

The base of that goes back to a very simple realization: On a cosmic scale nothing that we do is of great importance. This planet likely is not as special as we would like to think it is and we are not as special as we like to think we are. We are to the universe as a single bacterium is to us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 Is a nice recap of just how vast the universe really is and how utterly insignif…

There's no such thing as importance independent of sentient minds. Importance is what we find important; or to put it another way, whatever we find important - is.