One simple rule for living an awesome life (Witnessing)

Great Debates
41

msmith, I agree with you. “One simple rules” that involve quitting your job and depending on others financially are not simple.

I suppose happiness (or contentment) is what we are all striving for, in one way shape or form. But I’m scratching my head, trying to figure out how most of us AREN’T making the world a better place, in our own little ways. The obvious heros of our society–the fire fighters, the teachers, nurses, social workers, the police officers–wouldn’t be able to do what they do without the janitors, accountants, baristas, electricians, computer technicians, and administrative assistants who back them up. Aren’t they, and the people backing them up, making the world a better place too?

I’m not building houses for the poor with my bare hands, but I pay my taxes dutifully so that the poor will have a safety net. I’m not standing on a highway overpass dropping buckets of cash down onto traffic. But I do buy things from local merchants to support the local economy. I volunteer my time to fundraise for charity. I engage people with my creative works and try to be kind and compassionate in all of my interactions. No, I’m not nursing crack babies from my own bosom and preaching salvation to the homeless. But those aren’t the only ways to serve humanity.

I do think there is a place for a utilitarian approach when it comes to valuing one’s behaviors and actions. But I think it’s risky to the ego to define one’s life purpose in this way. Many people live their lives for other people, and all of them know that such selflessness doesn’t come cheap. There are plenty of burn-outs in the social welfare sector, as well as plenty of depressed, resentful caretakers and house-spouses. If the OP’s “one simple rule” were true, these people would be the happiest in our society. Which means that there’s something other than “making the world a better place” that needs to go into the equation.

42

To a degree, but my impression is a small number of people do the most to contribute to the world. The wealthy who invest and donate, the politically powerful, the famous activists, the innovative, they are the ones who do a lot of what makes the world a better place. I think most of us are just pulling our own weight the best we can.

43

Someone once said that the only two activities worth a damn are the creation of beauty (art) and the discovery of truth (science.) But I say that the rest of us, building roads, selling hamburgers, and repairing sewing machines, are also providing the valuable purpose of supporting the civilization that makes the first two activities possible.

John W. Gardner said it best: “The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

44

It could be like the tooth to tail ratio in the military, for every one person who fights there are 3-7 people who are offering support of various forms to keep that infantry fighter equipped and ready.

You can argue we are all important, but I personally don’t agree with it. A small minority of people (maybe 5% or less) do a lot of the innovation and development, and an even smaller percent probably do a reasonably large amount of it. They are the reason we aren’t still living in the dark ages.

45

Wesley Clark: I’m confused. Are you saying that support personnel aren’t vital to the function of a military? Are you saying that schlubs like me – people in non-creative support jobs – aren’t vital to an advanced civilization?

Yes, definitely, only a small number of people are truly and vitally creative, in a civilization-advancing way. A great many more are creative at a lower, personal level: scrapbooking, painting amateur watercolors, quilting, writing songs for a local band, etc. But, sure, probably the majority don’t really engage in the arts in any meaningful way. And as for the sciences, never mind!

But what the rest of us do is still important, and worthwhile, and admirable. Heck, what would the arts be without paying customers!

46

Support personnel are easier to replace, much easier to replace than truly talented people (since the vast majority of us, myself included, do not have the talent, work ethic or cultural situation to be truly innovative to the human race). Considering that a good entrepreneur, or a wealthy person or a very innovative person needs to eat, that doesn’t mean that everyone who provides food is equal. There are hundreds of restaurants, as well as thousands of foods at dozens of supermarkets within driving distance for most of us. People needed and provided food in the middle ages too, back before we had germ theory, internal combustion engines, vaccines, the internet, etc. For the most part most of us are just along for the ride while the truly powerful and talented change the world (hopefully for the good, but that seems to be the general trajectory of the world. People are mostly good most of the time).

I’m more referring to social, political, scientific, medical and cultural advances. With social and political, you need a mass mobilization to get things moving. But with scientific or medical advances you really just need brilliant people and rich people to fund them, then invest to bring their advances to the mainstream.

http://freakangels.com/whitechapel/comments.php?DiscussionID=217&page=4

“Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have only been a few thousand real men. And the rest of us – what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated.”
-Aldus Huxley

There have been more than a few thousand, but its mostly true. The rest of us are at best cogs, learning to use the ideas and creations others have developed and brought into society in a positive fashion. But without that 1-5% of truly innovative people, we’d still be living in the dark ages. I can use the innovations and inventions of others, but I can’t create them myself.

And I’m not trying to denigrate people. I’m saying it probably follows a distribution curve. Maybe 0.01% of the world is truly productive in making the human race better. Another 0.1% is very productive. Then 1% is fairly good, then 10% are doing more good than bad, etc. But for the most part, most of us are just living day by day, trying to be good people. We aren’t making the world better in any meaningful way because we really can’t outside of being smart, good people to those we meet each day. We don’t have the intelligence, innovativeness, influence, power or financial capital to have that kind of impact.

47

I see what you mean, sort of. But I can’t quite bring myself to agree. If all I do is repair the phone lines that are used by the team who discover the cure for cancer – then I have meaningfully helped bring about the cure for cancer. If all I do is mop out their toilets, I’m still doing something that they, now, don’t have to do themselves, giving them more time to do that research.

(This is part of why I wish research scientists were paid more. They’d have more time to do their research – and that benefits us all.)

Even if I am just a “trainable animal,” I’m a useful animal. I pulled the carriage that brought Jonas Salk to and from his research lab. If he’d had to walk, Polio might have remained a scourge for another few years.

48

There are no geniuses who were born with their knowledge. They all had teachers.

I don’t know who taught Einstien mathematics. You probably don’t either. But someone did. Imagine how different our society would be if this hadn’t happened.

I feel pretty damn invisible. I do my little office job everyday and try my best, but I know I’m completely disposable and insignificant.

But despite having no delusions about my place in the world, I still feel like even though I’m just a cog, I’m a useful cog. I have a sphere of influence. A very tiny one, but a real one.

The other day, a guy covered in tattoos and piercings bought one of my pieces. He and his dog spent a long time browsing–so I quietly studied him for just as long. Punks make the best customers, IMHO. They are always looking for something for their girlfriends. Something cute and cheap but original.

Maybe he gave his girlfriend the pot he took from my table.

Maybe his girlfriend was feeling ambivalent about him on that day. But receiving such an unusual, thoughtful present immediately squashes her worries, allowing love to flow into her heart.

This love and appreciation leads to sex. And now she’s carrying their baby. Who will grow up to be the guy who rescues humanity from the evil robot alien invasion.

Or maybe none of those things will happen. It’s just a stupid daydream after all.

For you, maybe one day you will mentor a little kid who’s going through some hard times. You will tell him or her a compelling story about your life and inspire him to not give up. Maybe they will grow up to discover the cure for cancer instead of killing themselves, which they would have done if you hadn’t encouraged them. Or they will be the great-great grandparent of the person who rescues us from the evil robot alien invasion, part II.

Or maybe none of those things will happen.

It’s a cliche, but true. We are all interconnected.

49

MONSTRO, that strikes me as a very healthy outlook.

50

This! This is much more how I think the world should be viewed.

There’s a story from WWI. A guy was walking along in London, and somebody asked why he wasn’t fighting in the trenches. He said, “I am the civilization which they are fighting to protect.”

We, you and I, the cogs, are the civilization that Einstein and Salk and Gandhi strove and struggled to serve. It’s mutually beneficial: they draw complicated chalk diagrams on their blackboards. We mine the chalk. Where the hell would they be without us?

51

Update:

The 15:th to 17:th of june were the happiest days of my life. The experience is usually religious but was for me and my wife an intellectual “revelation” described as a feeling of connectivity to the universe and understanding both of ourselves, the universe, our role in it and how to improve it.

At noon the 17:th I leave the apartment for a minute as part of an intellectual game we were playing. Once in the elevator I get “stuck” in my own mind interpreting and analysing all the symbols and their different meanings. I wake up from my state when the elevator starts moving and start panicking. From then on my mind is a blank.

In the meantime my wife has decided to decorate and hang flowers on our 5:th floor balcony. She lost her balance, fell, and died immediatly on impact.

My first memory after panicking in the elevator is lying on the floor in the hallway, being beaten and maced by a group of police officers while trying with all my strength to break free from the handcuffs and people beating me to reach my wife. At fist only my face head and eyes were on fire, but the fire spread to my whole body at an intensity that I remember thinking the apartment will be set on fire or maybe the heat will be able to melt the handcuffs.

Somehow I think the information got through my psychotic state that she was dead and I gave up on life. At this point I felt myself finally starting to die and finally draw my last breath. Only to have a small spark move on and wake up to the inferno, then die again. This process repeated for what felt like an eternity, like every person I had ever been died one after the other. I started screaming for the police to kill me.

My next memory is lying restrained on a rubber floor in a moving vehicle with a bag over my head and someone pouring water over my head. My first thopught was that I was being waterboarded. In hindsight I assume this was the police trying to wash off the mace.

My next memory is waking up restrained in a white room with a doctor forcibly injecting me with something and refusing to explain to me what is happening, then I lose consiousness again.

When I wake up again I am in a small isolation cell with a permanent light on and no possessions. I finally found a button to press in order to contact a guard. He tells me I’m suspected of murdering my wife.

After that follows two weeks in “forced care” which is honestly worse than the isolation cell in prison. After two weeks of appeals I am now free again. although in need of both medication and professional care to be able to handle the effects of the trauma.

I am an imaginative person but can frankly not come up with a better definition if hell than what I went through. My comfort is that my wife (and I) was at the happiest points of our lives when hers suddenly ended, and that my last words to her before I left the apartment was “I love you more than anything. You are an angel and we will live together forever”. If I had a lifetime to come up with the words to say to the human I loved more than life itself and who taught me how to live and love I wouldn’t have chosen any other words. She died having experienced the happiest days of her life, doing domething she loved, knowing that her soulmate and life partner loved her above else. Her last view was a beautiful panorama on a sunny summerday and she didn’t suffer.

This does not mean that I have given up on my mission to make the world a better place. The ideas and visions we created together the last three days still hold true and I attempt to spend the rest of my life, however long or short it is, trying to achieve them. And even though my sould, body and mind is consumed by grief I know I will come out of this a stronger, healthier and more complete human being.

For a religious person this is easy to understand. God gave me his daughter to open my eyes and my heart and showed me heaven on earth, Then he showed me his “face” in the elevator, which paralyzed me, while he took back his daughter. Then he showed me hell on earth. Both I am my wife were active atheists for our whole life, but I can no longer apply that label after the three last days we spent together. I no longer know what to label myself and will accept any label people want to put on me from atheist, christian, buddhist or just psychotic. I’ve never felt more vulnerable and powerless than I do right now, but I’ve also found a tranquility and capacity for love and compassion that I never thought was possible.

Putting this in writing is part of a process of grief for me, but will also hopefully serve as an inspiration, I never thought I could experience this much pain on both a physical and mental level or survive this amount of torture, but I did. Hopefully others who are in simmilar situations can get some comfort from that. And if anyone reading this need someone to talk to about their own problems or suffering I will do what I can to listen and comfort you.

52

Obviously this wasn’t from Cracked.com or the number one regret would be not making enough penis jokes.

53

Yes, if only the world had more Jews.

I’m glad to hear you’re happy, I suppose, and I can’t fault the idea of making the world a better place. But I don’t envy your wife. I don’t know how she’s taking it, but you remind me of my former flat mate when he decided he was the reincarnation of John Lennon (as well as his still-living killer, Mark David Chapman) and made some incredibly insane-sounding statements about how he had discovered the universe works (in summary: love), with a view to teaching the world about his discoveries and making people happy. I believe he also decided the Jews were the “best” race. Anyway, I hope your wife is able to deal with it better than I was, because it was most uncomfortable period in my life.

Having written all this, I see that you claim your wife is now dead.

Is this the SDMB version of those teenage girls who tell everyone on the internet of their imaginary abuse, pregnancies and suicide attempts? I see you’ve been here for 10 years, so I’m a little confused of what to make of this, except that I believe very little.

54

I’m currently putting most of my efforts into being able to cope with the funeral on monday so I don’t want to expand to much on it, other than that I will do whatever I can to realise the ideas and visions we created together. Whether you believe me or not is of course up to you, but consider the options:

  1. I am one “of those teenage girls who tell everyone on the internet of their imaginary abuse, pregnancies and suicide attempts”

  2. I am trying to communicate my ideas and feelings about it in as open a fashion as I can.

I do not belive your intent is to be hurtful and I understand your disbelief and confusion. As you point out I’ve been active on the forum for 10 years so you could check my previous posts and see which option you find most likely. If you believe I’m some sort of jerk, imposter, lunatic or manipulator you are of course free to treat me as such, but as a general rule I find in these cases it is best to first ensure to do no harm.

55

I’m not sure what’s all so difficult about it, other than the hard part about giving yourself permission to do so. (Had a bit of an early midlife crisis in my late 20s about that part.) It doesn’t take financial resources or intellectual capital, IMHO, though it will take a bit of courage from time to time.

Financial resources, job prospects, obligations to spouse and children, and all that are constraints, just like the law of gravity is a constraint. The goal is to be as true to yourself as you can, within those constraints.

That still gives a fair amount of play in choosing both what you do, and how you do what you do.

56

This thread is bizarre.

57

For what it’s worth, his wife did actually fall from a balcony and die; it’s been in the news. But at least some witnesses have a rather different view of the preceding events: machine translated article.

58

Closing this thread for reasons of taste and because I think there’s very little chance any kind of reasonable conversation is going to come out of this right now.