Less flippantly, I'd say it's a path to self-disappointment to be constantly measuring your current state against where you might be were you somehow granted the unfettered ability to focus on self-improvement. You never will be. Calling it socialisation is, in a way, passing it on to someone else. That you're having these thoughts at all means you could break from the habits if you wanted to. But it's a paradox: if you never will break from the lethargy, should you be spending so long thinking about it? Isn't that an indulgence of equal measure?
Sadly, and to the torment of many minds both great and small, most of us will never be great, will never be a shining example of the majesty or heroism potential in the human mind and form. There are six billion of us, and it takes a great degree of talent, drive, and (perhaps most importantly!) blind luck to become even one in a million, let alone stand out in history forever.
Trust me when I say I feel that burn every bit as much as you do. But also, a question: how many of those supposed great minds you mention became what they are solely through the heat of that fire? How many more were as much a creation of circumstance, with the fortune to say the right thing at the right time? They were human, not creatures out of myth, and their lives were shaped by the same forces as yours and mine, as the checkout assistant or the boy at the bus stop.
It’s an obvious fallacy to equate being famous with being a good example of human potential. But this is rarely applied to the kind of names you mention; their myth has outgrown the truth of the fallacy. Here’s another fallacy: ruling a country or discovering a fundamental mechanism of the Universe is of much greater import to six billion people than, say, bringing joy, wisdom, support, or whatever else you can bring to the people you hold dear.
I'm being hypocritical, in that I do little of the whole "bringing what you can bring" thing by my nature, and I spend as much time wrapped up in What I Could Be as you likely do. But I'm reducing your argument from clockwork to springs just to show you that you're not discussing truths so much as your own perception of How To Be A Great Human. It's a commendable perception; it's majestic and mythic and fundamentally Right in the sense of Right as the word is most often encountered in myth, but it's also self-indulgent, and perhaps against the tenets of that other all-caps phrase: All The Other Things About Being A Human.
I'm not saying ambition and drive are fruitless, but they may be less integral to the world and to yourself (personal happiness included) than you realise. And your thinking about them may be detrimental to smaller things that are no lesser simply by virtue of being smaller.
After all, we 're human. In a way, that’s the opposite of myth.
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Still, BioWare makes some cool games.
ReplyDeleteLess flippantly, I'd say it's a path to self-disappointment to be constantly measuring your current state against where you might be were you somehow granted the unfettered ability to focus on self-improvement. You never will be. Calling it socialisation is, in a way, passing it on to someone else. That you're having these thoughts at all means you could break from the habits if you wanted to. But it's a paradox: if you never will break from the lethargy, should you be spending so long thinking about it? Isn't that an indulgence of equal measure?
Sadly, and to the torment of many minds both great and small, most of us will never be great, will never be a shining example of the majesty or heroism potential in the human mind and form. There are six billion of us, and it takes a great degree of talent, drive, and (perhaps most importantly!) blind luck to become even one in a million, let alone stand out in history forever.
It’s a cliché that intelligent minds are the most preoccupied with their own potential, but it’s also a deception.
Trust me when I say I feel that burn every bit as much as you do. But also, a question: how many of those supposed great minds you mention became what they are solely through the heat of that fire? How many more were as much a creation of circumstance, with the fortune to say the right thing at the right time? They were human, not creatures out of myth, and their lives were shaped by the same forces as yours and mine, as the checkout assistant or the boy at the bus stop.
It’s an obvious fallacy to equate being famous with being a good example of human potential. But this is rarely applied to the kind of names you mention; their myth has outgrown the truth of the fallacy. Here’s another fallacy: ruling a country or discovering a fundamental mechanism of the Universe is of much greater import to six billion people than, say, bringing joy, wisdom, support, or whatever else you can bring to the people you hold dear.
I'm being hypocritical, in that I do little of the whole "bringing what you can bring" thing by my nature, and I spend as much time wrapped up in What I Could Be as you likely do. But I'm reducing your argument from clockwork to springs just to show you that you're not discussing truths so much as your own perception of How To Be A Great Human. It's a commendable perception; it's majestic and mythic and fundamentally Right in the sense of Right as the word is most often encountered in myth, but it's also self-indulgent, and perhaps against the tenets of that other all-caps phrase: All The Other Things About Being A Human.
I'm not saying ambition and drive are fruitless, but they may be less integral to the world and to yourself (personal happiness included) than you realise. And your thinking about them may be detrimental to smaller things that are no lesser simply by virtue of being smaller.
After all, we 're human. In a way, that’s the opposite of myth.
-D.M.