Some might think that this is new. People who self-identify as makers. It’s not really new to me at all.[1]
- Why play music infront of anyone? People have Spotify. It will take me a ton of effort to learn one song. Meanwhile I will burden the others with having to politely listen and give feedback.
- Why keep learning instruments? There will be hundreds who are better than me at them at the “touch of a button”. Recurring joke: Y has inspired millions to pick up X and other millions to give up X.
- Why learn an intellectual field? There are hundreds of experts at the “touch of a button”. It would be better to defer to them. Let’s not “Dunning Kruger” myself.
- Why write? Look at the mountain of writings out there. What can I add to that? Rehashes of rehashes? A twentieth explanation on topic X?
- Why do anything that is not about improving or maintaining myself or my family? I can exercise, YouTube can’t do that for me. But what can I do for other people? Probably nothing, there are so many others out there and it will be impossible to “compete”.
- Why read about politics? See previous point. Experts.
- Why get involved in politics? See previous point. And I hear that democratic participation just ends up being populism.
I have read this sentiment before. And a counter-argument to that thinking. One article. One single article. I don’t find it in any mainstream space. You would probably find it in a certain academic corner.
There is no mainstream intellectual investigation of this that I know of. Because it’s by design. People are supposed to be passive, unfulfilled, narrowly focused (on their work and their immediate self and family) and dependent.
The antidote is a realization. One part is the realization that there is a rich inner life that is possible. Which is only possible by applying yourself. Like in writing, for example. Because you can write for yourself. Yes, you might say that we are just back to being narrowly focused on yourself and your family. But this realization might just be a start. Because you can start imagining the untapped potential of the inner mind. What if you journaled for a few weeks. If you just stopped taking in some of the inputs you habitually do. Then you see dormant inner resources coming back. Resources that were dormant because you thought you yourself and your abilities that were not narrowly about doing your professional job and your duties were... they were just not good enough to be cultivated.
But I think they are.
Then you realize that existence is not just about doing your job and doing your duties and in between that being a passive consumer or lackey, deferring everything else to the cream who has floated to the top. Every able-bodied moment can be imbued with meaningful action and movement, because you have innate abilities that are more than good enough to propel yourself forward, and in ninety-nine point nine percent of the cases it is irrelevant that you are not world-class or even county-class at any of it.
[1] But I haven’t really been bit by the AI thing to the point of not programming or thinking anymore. I will only let AI do things like write utility functions and things which I don’t have the brain capacity for, like parsing options in shell scrips.
Maybe because I don’t feel the need to be maximally productive—I was never productive to begin with.