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Self-help gets philosophical

thedriftmag.com

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Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#11

Post by MangoToupe »

rayiner wrote: post #5
cantor_S_drug wrote: post #2

> When those expectations include owning a vacation home or winning a Nobel Prize, letting go might be healthy — but doing so is tragic when they include stopping a genocide or ending homelessness. I don't understand such analysis when there are opposing "blob" forces trying to push the world into worse state. Forget about people dying in earthquakes, consider current wars, we are using resources (human, capital, tec…

That’s backwards. Our fight isn’t against “blob forces, but instead against human nature and regression to the mean. My dad’s village in Bangladesh is the default state of humanity. The life you have in San Francisco or wherever is a bubble of order and flourishing in a hostile world, like the inside of a single cell organism.

What's the difference? Surely this is worth fighting in both instances.

Also I struggle to see San Francisco as "flourishing" so much as "the very hostility choking the world out for no particular reason".

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#12

Post by uvaursi »

maCDzP wrote: post #10

I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.

Yes but the psyop was a stalwart success and continues to be. This is just the latest revision.

Imagine how you’ll feel about things tomorrow.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#13

Post by astrange »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #7
astrange wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noone made any money or got any oil from the Iraq War. The US is an oil exporter and doesn't have any oil contracts in Iraq. In fact, no one makes money from any wars, and defense contractors profit less during wartime than peacetime. One universal principle about US politics is that many people try to sound savvy by claiming X thing is obviously about the money, or that some secret evil competent person did somethin…

Yes, Erik Prince famously donated his company's time during that era.

No, we didn't do a war so that Blackwater could secretly profit from it. We did it because Cheney felt like doing one for emotional and ideological reasons.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#14

Post by robot-wrangler »

> the idea that nothing matters has gained significant purchase

An example of an increasingly popular trend that conflates what I'd call "value nihilism" with "action/effort nihilism". There's a huge difference. Value-nihilism is kind of soul-sickness that's probably super rare in the general population and usually comorbid with stuff like dark triad or clinical depression. Action/effort nihilism, or the POV that nothing can be done to improve things, is just realism or pragmatism in a party mask.

Value-nihilism cannot be disproved or even argued with, because there's no place to stand. On the bright side(?), action/effort nihilism is a pretty simple thing to cure if you're in a leadership position. Reward effort, intentions, results, and keep the promises you make so that people can plan for their future and have agency. Stop playing corrupt and counterproductive games with politics, optics, nepotism

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#15

Post by embedding-shape »

maCDzP wrote: post #10

I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.

What about "no single mindset works all the time" instead? Sometimes you need to bite the bullet and just learn to live with something, sometimes you need not to, and instead fight until you can't, to get out of the situation. Different moments call for different ways of seeing situations, and maybe learning to identify what moment calls for what mindset is something we need to focus on more, rather than digging into one position that should always work.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#16

Post by kamranjon »

astrange wrote: post #4
iJohnDoe wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bush/Cheney wars were peak evil of modern times of sending our children off to die just to make Cheney’s cronies at Halliburton rich. Bush and Cheney should be considered mass murders. Not to mention your point about all the funds that could have been spent elsewhere.

Noone made any money or got any oil from the Iraq War. The US is an oil exporter and doesn't have any oil contracts in Iraq. In fact, no one makes money from any wars, and defense contractors profit less during wartime than peacetime. One universal principle about US politics is that many people try to sound savvy by claiming X thing is obviously about the money, or that some secret evil competent person did somethin…

“Noone made any money or got any oil from the Iraq War.”

This seems wrong?

Halliburton secured a 7billion dollar contract where they were the only allowed bidders, their subsidiary Kellog Brown & Root (KBR) was estimated to receive at least 39.5billion dollars in federal contracts.

Halliburton experienced a 80% increase in revenue by the first quarter of 2004…

Most of these contracts were “cost-plus” which meant they were guaranteed reimbursement for their costs + a guaranteed profit on top of that.

As a result of the war many oil companies including BP were awarded access and development contracts to the oil fields, with BP extracting well over 15billion dollars worth of oil.

Over 150billion dollars in oil money apparently just went missing or was “stolen”.

Also the US has maintained control over Iraqi oil revenue since the beginning of the war in 2003.

It would seem to be almost rewriting history to make such a statement…

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#17

Post by renewiltord »

Life’s pretty good, guys. It’s been good when I was a little child playing in the mud. It was good when I was on my one hour ride to school. It was good when I first cut my flesh to the bone and watched my dad sew it up. It was good when a girl I had a crush on didn’t feel that way about me.

It was good when I nearly failed Algebraic Geometry because I didn’t have what it took. It was good when I almost didn’t get an internship out of uni because I procrastinated till Jan of the year. It was good when I moved to SF with $25 in my bank account.

It was good when I lived on a couch off Air Bed And Breakfast. It was good when a car hit me on my motorcycle. It was good when I was robbed.

Life is just good. Because the alternative is oblivion.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#18

Post by digianarchist »

I have a particular disdain for the profanity-laden slop that is works penned by Mark Manson. He's not alone as most "self-help" books are trash reads that only serve as some form of cathartic release to their readers.

That's not to say all books in the genre are useless. I have recommended Cal Newport's works before but they very much suffer from "this 300 page book could have been a blog post" levels of verbosity.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#19

Post by pluto_modadic »

IIRC stoicism was written by rich people (and advisors to rich people) who didn't focus at all on improving the system. It's on-brand for the self-help influencer phenomena where you disregard disadvantages to others and systemic problems.

Re: Self-help gets philosophical

#20

Post by FredPret »

maCDzP wrote: post #10

I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.

I always thought that instead of learning to meditate in the snow and brave the cold, or learning to be zen despite a punishing heatwave, is helpful but still greatly inferior to inventing fur jackets, insulation, heating, and air conditioning.

One needs mental toughness. However it's better to solve problems for good and then have a higher technology base for the next generation to build on.

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