> social media ensures we're constantly exposed to the highlight reel of people's lives and that's leaving some feeling like they're not quite making the most of their time on this mortal coil.
Social media and the internet has made it incredibly easy to see the various people out there who are in the top of their league at any particular hobby, vocation or activity, and made it seem like that's the 'norm'.
If you're an entrepreneur, it can feel like everyone's making millions off their startup ideas and that anyone who isn't is a failure. If you're a web developer, it can seem like the majority of developers are experts in every one of the latest trendy languages and frameworks and that you suck for not being like that. If you're making a game, you might end up judging your worth in comparison to say, the makers of Minecraft or Pokemon GO.
But keep in mind that these are outliers by default. The top percentage of people in a field are overrepresented online and even then, they mostly only post about the things going well in their lives.
Most people are average, and for any one thing you're interested in, there will almost always be many millions of others who are either better or worse than you at it.
And hey, you don't have to be 'great' or even 'good' at something to be successful in it. Many people who were 'average' in a field ended up doing really well in it regardless. Maybe they had a good team, maybe they put in a stupid amount of time, maybe they simply had the right idea at the right point in time. You can just as easily be an expert or prodigy toiling away in obscurity as you can a celebrity with few skills to speak of.
Let's take game development as one example. You can feel mediocre because you wrongfully compare your progress and success against outliers like Minecraft. However I don't think most people who want to be good at game development are ignorant of what an outlier is. It doesn't take much to learn how big the climb is once you start.
The real difficulty is that the tools have been democratized. The market is flooded with games from developers of all skill levels. Even the most niche games have so many options that most games have trouble distinguishing themselves from the competition. It can be disheartening to realize that your most unique and amazing idea is not unique or novel in most respects and that it will be competing in a pool of several thousand games with similar ideas.
The other difficult factor is that the greatest games make the appearance of being simple and effortless. We only see the end result... not the 200 games the developer made before releasing the one we noticed. The myth that genius is a gift you are born with can certainly make most of us feel mediocre.
That's even before we get to fear of failure, social pressure, and market pressure! Many people want to be good game developers but they also want to feed their family and give their kids a good education... so they only have so much time in their lives to dedicate to improving and developing. Even if they are full-time game developers many of the same fears apply.
It's the tyranny of being just smart enough to know how much you don't know. It can also be a comfort though if you're not worried about being the stand-out genius and just like doing good work.
When I was deciding on a career in high school, I liked playing music and programming but wasn't exceptional at either. The world pays mediocre programmers more than it pays mediocre guitarists. I think the same applies to being a game developer. There are a lot more people willing to work for cheap or work crazy long hours. Depends on what you value in life. A perfect work environment or time and money to enjoy things outside of work.
> It can be disheartening to realize that your most unique and amazing idea is not unique or novel in most respects and that it will be competing in a pool of several thousand games with similar ideas
This is why you should only make stuff that you want for yourself. The second you get caught up in making money and comparing yourself its now work and good luck sticking with it.
I always turn this around and think what i don't like about the big successful games. Then once you take out what you don't like it the game no longer seems totally overwhelming with features.
For example,
Uncharted = Press X to climb walls 90% of the game.
Witcher 3 = spend 90% of the game talking to tons of intricately modeled quest characters you have no idea who or what they are doing in the game since nothing makes sense.
This is absolutely not true. See the recent hugely successful release of Stardew Valley for just one example when you take a fairly popular genre (Harvest Moon-likes) that's completely unavailable on PC, and release a well-crafted modern game to serve that niche.
The mobile and PC games markets are flooded with shit and utter mediocrity. You do have to make something good to stand out, but that's far from impossible.
You don't have to look very far to find more under-served niches. What are some of the highest rated games on the 3DS or PS Vita? Fire Emblem, Persona 4. Anything like those titles available on PC? Nope!
What about time and money ? Most people need jobs to pay the rent. But some have cash from a wealthy family. It makes such a big difference but nobody talks about it, which makes those who are trying to do it with no money and on evenings and weekends feel like they're just not trying hard enough.
That's been my situation. Rather than making just another crap platformer for my first game more than two years ago, I started something a little too ambitious for my experience and available time. And although I basically finished the final touches (introductory tutorial) last night, I'm not certain it will become popular enough to warrant additional effort to enable monetizing through in-app purchases. (It's a rather zen game of flow, and ads would be too intrusive)
> social media ensures we're constantly exposed to the highlight reel of people's lives
Perhaps because I don't use FB, IG, YouTube, Twitter, etc... I only see the real-world reflection of social media and it looks miserable.
For example, when I visit Key West people can stand in line for upwards of an hour to take a photo in front of the "Southern Most Point". I mean these people are in paradise and have the look of misery on their face, all just so they can put on a fake smile for a selfie, presumably just so they can post this "highlight" to social media. Instantly when the photo is done the smile disappears and they start swiping thru the results of their photos just hoping they got at least one that conveys whatever image they are hoping to convey (I am good looking, I am happy, I am in front of this famous landmark). This is not to say there are not life experiences worth a wait in line, and may be the juice is worth the squeeze with social media, but the real world counter-part just looks sad.
It's really not all as bad as you perceive. This is more a problem with the mental state of the people in that line. The misery (if you see it as such) of vacation photos predates social media. You can go through some old family photo albums and see that. All social media does is broaden the audience. The pathology of misery might seek out social media, but that doesn't make social media the genesis of all that misery.
Without these photos, whether posted to Facebook, Instagram, or a family photo album, we tend to forget about wonderful experiences over time. A little work in the moment isn't such a high price pay as long as it doesn't consume you.
From the other end it's not all bad either. When I see my friends and family sharing pictures of their vacations, kids, and successes, it makes me genuinely happy for them. That's the only reason that I still check Facebook every few days. We don't all need to make life a contest.
I don't know that all of that is due to social media. It just used to be that people took their photos with Kodaks and forced their friends to watch slideshows of them standing in front of things for which they waited in line.
No, people did not take that many photos, and they especially did not take that many pictures of their own beloved selves. If only because it was much more complicated to frame their own self with a camera than it is now with smartphones. Yes there were family pictures, yes there were friends/party pictures, but that was mostly separated from travel/tourism photos, and if consider the albums browsing and slideshow evenings at relatives and friends, pictures containing their travel partner(s) represented under 5% of the total (and were quickly skipped during browsing because they were generally uninteresting, so people were not wasting film for uninteresting views, a few partner pictures were enough to serve as a testimony purpose).
Today, I was watching a cycling race, and there was a couple, who had been waiting for the racers to arrive for several hours. Did they watch them when they came? Did they encourage them? No, nothing like that. They turned their back on the racers and made a selfie (with a tablet...) with themselves in the foreground and the racers in the background. And they almost caused an accident, as often. And it is like this all the time now.
There was a period when people would not live the event or experience the landscape/architecture and witness it through their own eye because they were too busy photographing or filming it. But now, it has been taken one step further: the event/landscape is only a background decoration for the real important subject: their high self.
And the easiness of taking photos, multiplied by the easiness of taking self pictures is also multiplied by the easiness of spreading them, which means the change in nature is also increased by the change in volume; the result is a fair amount of orders of magnitude higher than in film (or Kodak) time.
Just to add to this, I saw a picture of the parking lot on Clingman's Dome in the Smoky mountains the other day, and thought "Holy shit, that is a lot of people, it wasn't like that when I was frequenting the park". Back then (not even that long ago) I remember the goal was to be on top when no one else was, and I succeed frequently, and have the pictures to show for it.
The population is doubling every 33 years, and that means everything is getting a lot more congested, because new landmarks aren't being created at anything like those rates.
Indeed. I find that the new annoying thing that people do is usually just a variation of the old annoying thing that people used to do. Social media is an enabler perhaps, but annoying people will always find other ways to be just as annoying. It's the people that are fundamentally annoying, the technology is just their weapon of choice in this case.
I wouldn't wait in line for that sort of thing, but how unhappy are they, really? Waiting in line isn't that big a deal these days, since you bring entertainment with you. "Miserable" seems like a stretch.
Right there's my problem. I don't have a Facebook account at all, and my Twitter account has been rotting idle for a few years now. All I really stay active with is LinkedIn, but I've been in the corporate world long enough to not really care where people are on the pyramid any longer. You're telling me I need to make a FB account to feel like shit about myself? :)
IMHO, the hypothesis that 'social media makes you compare yourself to others more', while true, is overblown. I'd hazard that the overreliance on college undergrads as study subjects may have something to do with it.
True. My Facebook feed has a lot of contacts from my high school class and believe me they don't make me feel inadequate. (Nothing against them, their highlights are just regular life) So it's all in who you are comparing to.
I'd even go so far as to say all people are average, in some aspect or another. Nobody is the top of every single aspect. Nobody. Not even Elon Musk :)
>I'd even go so far as to say all people are average, in some aspect or another. Nobody is the top of every single aspect. Nobody. Not even Elon Musk :)
He's not even the top investor, inventor, industrialist or generally the top of anything that is his core competency.
I think sometimes been good at a few things beats been great at one thing, that's the category musk falls into, he reminds me of Thomas Edison far more than Tesla (somewhat ironically considering the name be chose for his car company).
That said I think he is very good at communications, he has managed to carve his own style in that arena.
I don't think I compare myself to peeps on social media so much. Rather I compare to my friends and peers most of whom are not active on social media.
One friend is president of a 200 person top rated game dev company. Another is head of 20+ people on the graphics tech division of one of the top video game series. Another was the lead architect of one of the latest generation game consoles. Two other friends have successful 30+ person game companies. Another 4 have successful 5-10 person indie game companies. Other is now a CTO at a popular international gaming PC company. Another is a famous game professor at a top university.
Of course I'm only listing the standouts. Most friends are living more average lives.
Then theres my failing at relationships where others have lovers and families something I can't seem to manage to find a match for. Of course I don't envy all of them only the ones that seem to be doing well.
None of that has anything to do with social media.
TV has always been around, pre-internet you still saw amazing people on TV, but the difference was that they were on TV, so you and your friends did not compare themselves as much to them, because the perception was "of course they are better than you, they are on tv", there was a barrier, it's like when the circus came to town and you saw the acrobats there, you might have play-pretended to do the things they did, but of course you didn't seriously compare yourselves to them.
The insidiousness of social media is that EVERYBODY is on social media, it's the same medium, there is no difference between a video shared by your friend and a video shared by an olympian or a world class musician or even an adult beginner that due to genetic blessings is learning things way faster than you, this breaks the wall between you and them and as much as it's good in some ways (pre internet you would never be able to have a discussion with a pro musician unless you personally knew them) it is bad in many others, leading people to misjudge what average is
It also does not help that so many people when discussing what they do always say that "if you want it enough and work hard for it you can do everything", which feeds into the "I am not as good as social media person X at doing Y, therefore I must not be working hard enough, what's wrong with me" while in the end to be at the top yes you need to work hard, but you need to be lucky to have the genetics to be there too.
If pre internet you saw 10 of your friends try something, you had a good idea what "average" was, and calibrated your self esteem accordingly: all of you being average, you all had something you were better at than the group, and something to fall back on to feel good about when you didn't do well at something else
Now all you see on social media is either the top of the field being so much better than you at everything that it feels impossible to be able to get from where you are to where they are, or average people made fun of because they "suck" (even if they are just average in the end), this IMHO is what's causing a lot of problems in terms of depression and general lack of happiness
TV has evolved with the times too. Reality TV hints that anyone can be famous without hard work, connections or skills. Children's TV conditions kids to think that they are special. It does all sorts of things, it's not as insidious as social media but it's not benign either.
TV, social media, Netflix, gaming, gambling, drinking and other drugs - it's all consumption and escapism. The best option is to minimise those and focus on creating stuff.
Perhaps people's bank balance should be coupled to their facebook accounts; so that if people go on a holiday and post nice pictures, you can say: "ha, but your balance dropped by $5000".
EDIT: It may sound like a ridiculous idea, but I think it would make for a great social experiment.
Debt would be a better indicator really. A lot of people you think are 'doing well' where I live have 50k in credit card debit and owe 25k on their car.
Just the amount of debt isn't a great indicator, you also have to look at the interest rate. And those are all over the place in today's world.
The European Central Bank's refinancing interest rate is currently a negative -0.4%. If I could have a line of credit at that rate, I would take all I could -- for every million euros I borrow, they would pay me 4000 € / year in interest!
I agree, I'm not talking about mortgages or even reasonable student loans here, there is a good change they will generate value for the borrower. It's more about unsecured and underwater debt, that car that is worth 10k but you owe 25k on for example.
>Social media and the internet has made it incredibly easy to see the various people out there who are in the top of their league at any particular hobby, vocation or activity, and made it seem like that's the 'norm'.
I had to quit social media altogether because it was driving me insane with frustration, anger and envy. I was in a real dark place and it seemed that everyone else around me was living in a completely different world than I was, quitting facebook and the like was the best thing I've ever done for my mental health.
Thankfully things are much better now, unfortunately I had to sacrifice a lot of relationships who relied exclusively on social media as a means of contact.
>In other words, don't worry too much about it.
I will have to disagree on this, at least when it comes to being a developer. I think the bar has been raised so high by the startup culture and the Google's and Amazons of the world that it feels like if you want to get hired nowadays you have to be above average, as a proof look at the current hiring process for developers.Being a mediocre hard worker is not gonna cut it. It seems like EVERYONE wants to hire nothing but the best of the best: you need to be a "Ninja", a "Rockstar", code in your free time, as well as know all kinds of algorithms like the back of your hand....As a mediocre, slow-witted developer I tried really hard to stay afloat even taking on desperate meassures like pumping myself full of adderall in order to study for interviews.Frankly I am now burned out, I find this environment so toxic that I'm seriously considering leaving development once my current contract has finished.
Well, I'm a day late, so no one will ever see this, but I have to disagree with your disagreement.
After reading lots of hacker news and Slashdot, following my friends in the Valley, and getting rejected by Google 3 times, I too thought that I was worthless if not a Ninja or Rockstar who does all those things you mentioned.
But recently I had a recruiter friend pass my resume around and my current office has begun hiring. I've since learned that there is a huge section of established corporations with projects that just need enough 1xers to get the job done. They'll pay competitive rates without even seeing a Github portfolio of outstanding breakthroughs in machine learning.
Anyway, I think you've been focusing on the same small circle of hiring that needs the best of the best to turn their crap idea into the next Google through spectacular algorithm design, or Google themselves, who has so many applicants they have to reject all but the very best just to whittle down the pile of applicants to manageable size, but like everyone else has been discussing, mediocrity is still the norm out there; there's a whole world of mediocre developers making mediocre progress on non-earth-shattering stuff that still needs getting done.
Social media and the internet has made it incredibly easy to see the various people out there who are in the top of their league at any particular hobby, vocation or activity, and made it seem like that's the 'norm'.
Or, because they can curate exactly what you see on Facebook or Instagram, and they make it look like they are at the top of the league.
Keep in mind that Facebook itself also does a ton of curating. Posts that get a lot of likes and replies are much more likely to show up in your news feed.
In my mid-twenties I had this peak of "I'm going to make the next Facebook for cats and it's going to be amazing". After repeatedly trying to have an enjoyable life and make the aforementioned Catbook* I realised that I'm actually pretty OK with not being super duper rich and famous. I quite like being out to chill out and watch some dumb youtube crap. Or actually spend time with my partner. Or put my health (running, sleeping a good amount, not using a computer too much etc) above some violent need to succeed.
In my early thirties I've now taken two pay cuts to move to jobs that I thought would be more enjoyable, as opposed to more important / prestigious / success signifying.
I still tinker around and would like to produce something all on my own, but I don't really care if I don't. What I'm doing now for someone else is important enough.
*Not actually it, obviously I'm not a complete failure
That is harder to achieve that state of mind in the larger more expensive cities. Everything around you always remind you how poor you are. I'm not talking about the luxury thing, but stuff like renting/buying a flat were you have enough space for your hobby while not commuting for crazy hours. Paying for nursery, ... And of course, your monkey brain require constant reminder that you don't actually care about whatever new stuff everything else seems to care about.
Then I have had the opportunity to work for a few months in the middle of nowhere. (i.e. rural Spain) Having a relaxed perspective was way easier without the constant reminder of your financial inadequacy.
Unfortunately, we work in an industry (software development) where the choice is basically between:
* Working from home and being entirely socially isolated from your co-workers
* Live within commuting distance of a major city
If I had been a plumber, I'd be able to work in any town in the US, no matter how small. If I had been an auto mechanic, dentist, accountant, retail manager-- ditto.
But not a software developer. Sigh.
One of the things that makes me most happy is not living in a city, but it's incompatible with the only skill I'm really competent at.
One of the reasons I chose to settle down in Raleigh, NC. Not a large city, but a great tech scene that still pays well, and very reasonable cost of living.
Not as much to do as San Francisco or NYC - but I certainly think it's worth it.
I work in Wichita, KS and could easily get a house in the country with <30 minute commute. Software developer jobs are everywhere. You just have to be willing to trade some job mobility.. I probably wouldn't be able to immediately find another job here working with C++ at the same level of hardware.
For me the issue with bigger cities isn't the financial but the human aspect. I see people all around me with their friends and relationships having a good social time, and it makes me crave interaction and friendship, things that are challenging to just pull out of nowhere, especially in NYC where you're liable to get ignored if you say hello to a stranger on the street. Many people make friends at work, but I find software development an isolating profession, even though the pay is more than sufficient.
In my limited experience, it seems to me that in the countryside, being alone is solitude, but in a city, being alone is lonely...
I've been there. The way out I found was intentionally seeking out connections to existing social networks:
1) identify a place where you can get repeated, informal contact with people. Classes, meetups, volunteer groups are good to start.
2) cycle through those until you find one you like, then persist. Be friendly, make the first move, etc.
3) evaluate the acquaintances from step 2 based on THEIR friends as much as the individuals. Put time and effort into the people that connect you to other good people.
As we type I'm sitting in a cafe in central London. I agree. Was looking for good repairable shoes on the weekend. El. Oh. El. Back to shoes that break every 6 months for me!
It helps that I have a partner who also makes money. If she didn't I wouldn't be here at all.
Repairable shoes are a lot more difficult to find, depending on where you regularly need the repairs and how 'hard' you are on your shoes. I'd suggest 1) Ask about brands or what to look for in a shoe repair shop. This will narrow brands down 2) Buy a brand that lasts longer than others on your actual feet. So long as I have the funds, I tend to buy Dr Martins - even though folks say they have changed over the years, I can get a few years of wear out of them even with regular to daily use. Before this, my feet would eat a pair every 6 months as well.
Why not just get some low mid tier shoes like Clarks? I spent 3 years of high school with one pair of Clarks boots—they died shortly after graduation. Never had them repaired. The second pair lasted about 2 years since I moved to a city where you walked way more. Definitely worth it.
That and moving to cities with concentrations of brainpower; I live near a couple world-class universities and feel real dumb most of the times I meet new people.
I personally don't have ambitions to be famous or even super rich. The only thing I want is "creative freedom". In my career I've had it 3 times (and it was the most enjoyable times i can think of in my career), all three times the project was shut down or some change happened for one reason or another, and I was moved to something where I had basically little or no control of the code I wrote. At first, I questioned my abilities as an engineer, but two of the projects were decently successful by most measures. My drive comes from trying to get that freedom back, and to be in a position where it can't be taken. It's not easy to obtain.
Normally when people ask me why us Danes are considered the happiest people in the world I always answer the same way.
We have no aspirations and are totally fine with living a mediocre life. The entire society is based on that (with the high level of wealth redistribution)
Good enough is almost the definition of Danish working culture.
It's not for everyone (I moved) but it sure is a good quality of life.
"Over there you think of nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. Potentially every man is Presidential timber. Here it's different. Here every man is potentially a zero. If you become something or somebody it is an accident, a miracle."
I really like that. But the thing is, even if we Europeans are still quite protected from the outside world the outside world is still there. And there are always people who try to take what you have. So having some fighting skills is also necessary, I think. Life is not just about finding happiness.
Oh I agree completely. I believe it's a major risk despite Denmark doing quite well on many other areas (design, gastronomy, sports architecture) it's size taken into account.
I also think it's changing quite a lot because the younger generations grew up with social networks and so a certain amount of equalizing between cultures in certain areas is happening.
As an example x-factor the music talent show is still doing well in Denmark. What is interesting is that over the years the quality of the contestants have really improved especially in the young category.
My theory is that this is because the young generation is seeing how good contestants from other countries are and so what's good enough changes.
My luck was that I did an internship when I was really young in the US and learned just how good the good really are.
Their luck is that they are surrounded by talent which pushes everyones understanding of "good enough"
It's absolutely important to your well-being and happyness to understand when something is enough and to be at ease with what you have.
Hedonistic tendancies teaches you to want more and more, you never appreciate what you have because once you have got it you want the next thing. It becomes a zero sum game and you've probably just sacrificed a whole heap of your precious time and health to achieve it.
Many people fall trap to trying to beat others in what they have / what they do.
They see their friend has a bigger house, they want a bigger house.
They see their friend had a big weddding, they want a bigger wedding.
They see their friend earns X a year, they want to earn X + Y a year.
Remember, there are 7 billion people on the planet, you will probably not be the richest ever, so learn to be happy with what you have.
This is not to say do not strive for improvement, just allow yourself to be happy.
Travel to a country where the average monthly salary is what equates to a few US dollars to do some charity/mission/volunteer work. Problem solved, at least for people who have a heart, which is most thankfully. We need to actively seek to humble ourselves. Now what I gave is an extreme example that only few have the heart or time/money to do, but the lesson is the same -- help those out who are less fortunate than you (other than sending money). It really puts things into perspective.
"Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid."- Einstein
"Mediocrity" arises only when compared.
And comparison is plain stupid. My genes are different. The life circumstance through which I have gone through are different. My responses to various stimuli are different. My pleasure points are different. My pain points are different. My memory is different. The things that I consider important in my life are different.Every single thing about me is different from that of anybody else in this world. And yet, if I want to compare myself to some other person on a specific domain, I should be plain stupid.
Instead I would happily compare myself with myself. Am I giving my personal best? Am I getting paid in 'currencies that are important to me'?
Life is not single subject course. It is a multi disciplinary course. One may have ideas about becoming the greatest entrepreneur, the greatest artist or the greatest politician. But not many people talk about being a great child, being a great brother, being a great husband, being a great friend, being a great father or being a great grand father.
You may think that you got an "A' in a particular subject. But you may be a complete failure in other. If you are OK with it, no issues. But make sure that you scored 'A' in subjects that you thought important, and not someone else thought important.
I would love to believe that there is no such thing as 'Mediocrity'. The greatest tragedy is to not have lived the life that you wanted to live.
On Education let me quote a popular writer from my place , Kamala Surayya (Madhavikutty) -
"I feel formal education here makes mediocrity's out of everybody. I don't think any genius can survive caught in the machine of formal education.
It works like a bulldozer with which everybody is brought to a low level. They won't tolerate brilliance, they won't tolerate independent thinking. I don't believe that one can be a pundit, great scholar, by digesting what other scholars have written. I think we must find our own conclusions from our experiences."
On Economics and Industry - It is interesting to look at the fundamental truths on how value get generated and distributed. But it calls for a different write up all together
We all want power. We all want exact same thing, even if we different species. Mediocricity comes from lieing that u dont want power and you are ok be weak unable and powerless.
"We all want exact same thing" - May be, but not every one want that 'same thing' to the same degree. Any commendable achievement in one field is often at the expense of something else.
May be I want to become rich, may be I want to become powerful. But I may also want to watch GOT once again, I may also want to do nothing, I may want to travel the world, I may want to see my children grow, I may also want to be alongside my parents when they need me in their loneliest days.
True, all of us want the exact thing. But the real question is what are the things that are most important. You may have to pick some and ignore some. It is here the difference arise.
And I strongly believe it is foolish to compare my path with that of the other, when their priorities, instincts, skills, context etc are different from that of me.
If there is no comparison, there is no mediocrity.
True I can compare my wealth with that of the other. I can compare my 'power' with that of the other. But how can I compare my happiness with that of the other. How can i compare my content with that of the other. How can I compare my creative satisfaction with that of the other.
When I can compare each and every one of those things against those people around, I may be ready to do that comparison and accept mediocrity.
Dude u use modern medicine, modern computers and other POWER stuff. You are willing sell ur effort for it, U WANT POWER not money, money is opposite of power its to depend on people, u want to fly to cure people and neber die and have food and all always with ease....
Power is only meaningful to the degree that it gives you independence. Power means nothing except as an escape from powerlessness. It's like money: money can't buy you happiness, but poverty can buy you sadness. Power can't make you happy, but being powerless and forced to do spend your life doing things you don't want to do can make you sad.
Mediocrity comes from seeing money and power as ends in themselves, rather than as mere escapes from poverty and powerlessness. Happiness and independence enable personal growth and achievement. Those are the only things that matter, not somebody's ability to make someone else do something that they don't want to do. If all you care about is acquiring the ability to make other people spend their time doing things they don't want to do, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm sorry if you don't think you are capable of creating great things on your own if given the opportunity, but you almost certainly are.
I have no problem in wishing to be rich. I have no problem is wishing to be powerful. I have a problem only when I want to be richer than someone else. Why on earth do I want to define my 'need' looking at someone else.
And if I do not base my needs with that of some one else, why should I even compare myself with others, so as to determine if I am mediocre or not.
May be I am dumb. But I am happy to be dumb. Forrest Gump is my personal hero. LOL!
Teacher -"Do you ever dream, Forrest, about who you're gonna be?"
Gump - "Who I'm gonna be?............. Yeah..................Aren't I going to be me? "
Mediocre, or just average? Mediocre implies something, like you're lazy, not trying your best or otherwise leaving something on the table that you should grab. The outcome is being average, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I have for sure been gunning for the next promotion, but I've started to question my motives there - I'm director level now, and is the personal sacrifice really worth it to keep moving up?
I started to do the math for us. Public school starts in 2 years, there's $1000/mo back in our bank account (private pre-k/preschool now). My federal student loans can "only" go another 18 years max. Mortgage will stick around, but isn't terrible. Cars are paid off. And my wife stays at home, which was a goal for us (she was a director too, that was a fun adjustment financially). Right now I spend every dollar that comes through the door on mostly non-optional things. Some months a little more. But I'm realizing that in terms of financial obligation, I may be at or near my high water mark. I never realized that before. If I never get another promotion, we'd likely be just fine, even improving financially over the next decade or two.
So the question becomes, do I really need to hit VP or whatever other level? It's not to say I don't work hard now, but I mostly leave the office to get home by 5. I take all of my vacation time and wish I had more. Maybe I have the potential to keep moving up, maybe I don't, but the question is really becoming more whether I'm willing to put in more time and energy here, rather than outside of work. I think I'm pretty good at what I do, but does that obligate me to go as hard as I can at that thing I do pretty well, and subjugate everything else just a little more? I don't think it does.
I completely agree with your viewpoint. Sometimes you have to weigh the time commitment required to get more money against the time you currently have.
For me, the more off time I can get, the better. It's not that I'm lazy, but it's just that I'd rather enjoy what life has to offer while I can. But if I feel that I can get more money and satisfaction that's worth it, I'd go for it.
I hear you. I spent some time in big consulting before I became a lawyer (and before I went back to tech), and the number of people that derive their self worth from their work accomplishments was very high. That, in and of itself, isn't surprising, but I theorize that many (most?) weren't always of the live-to-work variety. However, they put in the mega hours in at work early on, kept going, and by age 30 work was all that remained. So it became about work for the sake of work, rather than the life outside. Having been in two of the more soul-crushing industries, I'd rather find a better balance. I also realized in typing this that I was a real glutton for punishment in my 20's.
Seriously, everyone should read The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great[1] (after they turn 18, in hopes it doesn't encourage them to drop out :). I'd recommend getting a used hard copy and placing it on your coffee table. It's a quick and humorous read that helps bring the lighter side of things back into perspective.
It's really irritating when somebody recommends a book that really interests me but I simply can't afford it here in India. My wish list is getting longer and longer with each new book costing more than the cost of a whole weeks worth of meals. Not one to download PDFs illegally or to read them on Kindle, which again is not guaranteed to be within my means, I greatly limited in my accessibility to paperbacks of my liking.
The original Peter Principle book ends with a look at various degrees of dropping out and managing happiness before you reach your own success plateau. The book seems dated, but it's a classic.
It appears folks are in fact purchasing the used copies as the used copy price has risen $4-$5 since I posted the above. There is a kindle version too for $4.99 (no shipping costs and immediately available on kindle cloud reader, but you can't have a physical reminder sitting on your coffee table).
Monthly average salary would be around $1000. I do not own a kindle. I would buy it if it costed $10 or so but due to shipping it would cost me around $50 (old one probably around $30)
There is a serious error in this article: by definition and etymology, "mediocre" means "in the middle, average, ordinary", absolutely not "the worst possible quality".
The "tyranny of excellence" undeservedly pushed "mediocre" meaning for many people down towards "bad", but "mediocre" isn't really bad; it's just barely average.
I think you're missing a subtlety (and the point of the article)
Mediocre continues to have the definition you state, but the article is about how then being mediocre is "a bad thing, to be avoided" in itself. Yes, it's a bit 'meta'.
Being bad at ski jumping or being good at ski jumping is likely to get you recognised; being average is not.
Welcome to the lack lust journalism of the BBC. I would call them mediocre, but that's not the correct way to explain "the worst possible journalistic quality."
The BBC has really gone downhill recently, especially the "magazine" style articles.
A lot of their business and future articles are done by freelancers, and many of them are literally ripper from Quora (albeit with attribution).
Their news coverage is still good though, Lyse Doucet is a great journalist who did some fantastic coverage of the Arab Spring. They also manage to avoid shitting the bed whenever breaking news happens, as CNN in particular tends to do.
About the only thing I'd moan to the BBC about is that they still use flash for the videos on their website.
The rest of the BBC website, Radios 1 - 6 + Asian, TV stations (perhaps some of BBC 3/4 is bottom feeding), weather forecasts, world news, is awesome. That's just all I can think of off the top of my head.
Their articles are still decent enough that they'll make it to the front page of HN.
In specific areas they can be bettered, e.g. I prefer some specific football (soccer) websites, but this isn't a moan just a fact that they have to cover everything. As a general resource certainly for world news I think they're the standard to match.
They only use flash on the desktop site. If you spoof your user agent to that of a mobile device, you get exactly the same site, except with html5 video.
I don't fully understand the reason for not using html5 video when on desktop, it functions perfectly.
I think their problem is that they've become a bit of a content factory, which links back to the whole freelancers thing. They churn out a lot of articles, and some are much better than others. It's the shotgun approach to getting views.
Compared to most US news, the BBC is a shining star. You should watch some 24 hour US news sometime. Fox News, CNN or MSNBC are designed for the lowest common denominator.
Hits home for me. Life expectations people. You're not great, your 35 and your farther is still not driving your Porche as he always wanted. But hey, you have a house, income and food every day. How beautiful is that?
Mediocre or not, my personal view is that everyone should envision themselves as the person they want to be.
Being mediocre may or may not prevent you from achieving your highest goals, but believing in your mediocrity will prevent you from setting out to achieve those goals in the first place.
Tell yourself what a badass you are every day, surround yourself by the kind of people you want to be, and keep persisting until you get what you want or are simply satisfied by the effort you put it.
There are plenty of roadblocks between you and your dreams that are completely out of your control - and the question of whether you believe in yourself doesn't have to be one of them.
>> "believing in your mediocrity will prevent you from setting out to achieve those goals in the first place"
Why is this a problem? I would really like to have a successful business, live in a large house, and not have to worry about money. Achieving that is going to require me to spend the next 20-40 years working extremely hard, I'll be constantly stressed out, and in the end the chance of actually succeeding is quite low. On the other hand I could earn a nice salary, work 9-5 mon-fri, and live comfortably and happy for the rest of my life.
Comfortable and happy is a great place to be - no argument there. It's my personal end goal.
But don't think that your idea indefinite comfort and happiness is everyone's version of mediocrity - to many, it's the definition of wild success.
For the larger world population - not to be cliche - believe in your own ability to achieve what you want. There are too many people (including oneself) who want to tell you what you are and aren't capable of.
The vast majority of people on the planet are mediocre, and many people seem happy about it; or rather, if they're unhappy then they're unhappy about other things rather than their own mediocrity.
But then you've got the interviewee for this article, who is probably not happy with her own mediocrity. You can tell this by how hard she insists that she is. People who are genuinely happy with their mediocrity don't go around blogging about it -- in fact, they don't think about it.
I think you're mistaking someone who's happy but ignorant of their mediocrity, and someone who's aware of their own mediocrity but learned to still enjoy life despite the knowledge of their own condition.
I'd say many people are aware (in some form or another) that they are in the middle of the Gaussian curve, but live perfectly "happy life". If such a thing exists, since I've yet to encounter someone "normal".
>I think you're mistaking someone who's happy but ignorant of their mediocrity, and someone who's aware of their own mediocrity
Not really, I don't think people are unaware of their mediocrity, it's just that it doesn't bother them.
For instance I'm not unaware that I am mediocre at the 100m sprint, it's just that it has never occurred to me to be in the least bit bothered by this fact. There's plenty of people out there who are mediocre at sprinting as well as everything else, and are not bothered by their mediocrity along any of these axes.
Many people come to realize their mediocrity after spending enough time under the sun. Accepting this realization and learning to be happy with it takes time -- especially at the beginning.
>Many people come to realize their mediocrity after spending enough time under the sun. Accepting this realization and learning to be happy with it takes time -- especially at the beginning.
I don't know, I think it only bothers those of us who were brought up being told "oh, you're so special". Those who were never told that in the first place never expected to be special, so it doesn't bother them when they grow up to find that they're not.
Or it's better for the cadence and call to action of the article for her to join in and act as if she is also mediocre and okay about it, so you should too. So she makes the claim, regardless of her actual belief (she might sort of believe it, too).
The dominant ideology of Western aesthetics in life is existentialism: the idea of excelling by your own definition. But in order for this to be meaningful, "your definition" has to be socially informed, and yet by construction, it's not part of the theory. In some sense there's an essential tension between the need to be free and the need to not be insane. Unfortunately, succeeding according to a socially-informed but ill-defined set of criteria basically always reduces to being socially successful in one way or another, and it might be cheeky, but it's true, to point out that this is a perfectly reasonable metric of success... for philosophers. However, the fact is that everyone can't be socially successful, and the result is that many people who are motivated by existentialism in its popular form end up unsuccessful and unhappy.
Note that "social success" does not mean socializing; Paul Dirac was extremely socially successful, yet nearly incapable of socializing. And despite this it strikes me that he would have been less happy if he had not been one of the greatest physicists in history: introversion or even (possibly) autism is no antidote to vanity.
In light of this people point the blame at social media, but don't ideas matter?
The article gets it at the end even if the author doesn't appear to: in order to talk about mediocrity on an absolute scale you have to be thinking of achievement on an absolute scale, and that a flawed approach no matter what percentile you are at. Achievement, and happiness, and other metrics of utilitarian outcomes, should be measured in context, against your inclinations and potential and situation. Trying to grade yourself against an average or aggregate scale will not only be disappointing, it won't even help you accomplish the right things for yourself.
Also, you'd have to be thinking of mediocrity along a single (or very few) dimensions. The more features of a person you look at, the more likely you'll find they're special in some way. I thought we'd established that in [1]. :-)
There has been a scientific study about what makes people "happy" [1]. It's even something we can easily test personally: relationships. No matter what, relationships create that emotional swing that makes our lives interesting (assuming a psychologically "healthy" person, by today's standards).
That said, how many people actively pursue relationships? To me a person who has tons of friends (the kind you spend time with on trips etc. not the kind you text every once in a while to see how they are doing) but works a frustrating 9-5 job at a bank is definitely not someone I'd look up to. On the other hand a person who is extremely successful in his field, wins the most prestigious award in that field, but does not (again, by today's standards) live a healthy life does not set a good example either [2]. So what's the optimal situation?
And appearances don't help. I have no idea whether Elon Musk (since he was mentioned in another comment) is happy. I just know he looks successful. In my mind he's the kind of guy that enters a room and automatically and instantly gets the respect and admiration of the "smart" people in there. Does he even care about that? Am I being tricked into seeing Elon Musk as a status symbol like I'm tricked into seeing the iPhone as one of the best smartphones out there?
Happiness is definitely more complex than accepting what you do as "special". Accepting your current situation is a great way to start clearing up the cloud of things you consider important but if that was really the way to be happy why would we even bother improving ourselves or society? I hate to say this but I almost feel like this is the classic story of the fox and the grapes. When the fox can't reach the grapes says they are not ripe.
What if happiness was about pursuing something, regardless of the end result?
In the ted talk, he doesn't explain why this is not just a correlation. Maybe there is something else that makes you happy and makes one better at having relationships. For exemple, someone who has anxiety disorder will not be good with relationships and most probably will be unhappy. But the root cause of unhappines is anxiety.
>I put it to her that all of that doesn't sound very average to me.
>She pauses and laughs sheepishly. "I guess it just depends on who you're comparing me to."
That's the key thing. If I compare myself to the average person, I'm obviously not "mediocre". However, compared to some people who (I think) have had similar opportunities and potential, I probably am.
I really have to internalize this message. I always feel like I have to be better and smarter than everyone around me just to feel adequate. I guess that's one characteristic of insecurity.
Is this why romantic relationships seem to kill ambition? I've seen this in myself and some of my friends.
Why should romantic relationships kill ambition? In my experience, it's the exact opposite. It is very common that people make their best works when they are in love.
Of course, if ambitions get in the way of the relationship, that is not healthy. But hey, nothing wrong with a bit of competing and trying to prove yourself.
How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay Christensen at TEDxBoston
This is a very inspiring presentation, especially towards the end. The take away is that it's not important how high you went up a certain hierarchy or how much money you have in the bank. The important question is what did you do with your life to make other people's lives better? When you're put in certain situations that touch other people's lives, it's for a reason, and your life will be measured by how you did in those situations.
I think this is getting a little too much into semantics but I see people here using "mediocre" as being synonymous with being "average". What if I'm feeling BELOW average?
Maybe "having a life" could be replaced with "being happy". It's different for each one and in the end it's the actual result of having a life that matters.
Had to be a CEO and rich until I tried being both of those things and realized it wasn't as important as I thought. Pursuit of those things was quite an unhappy pursuit. But I needed to know I had tried before I was comfortable not being those things.
Maybe instead of being average, focus on your average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. :D
Mediocre falls along the "good versus bad" metric, which honestly is not the most valid.
It's true, it's easy to feel like society and capitalism in general are becoming a rat race. Excellency is neither subjective or objective, it's just a made up social norm that people create in their head for competitive purposes.
What do you want millions of dollars for? To travel the world for all the rest of your life? I see so many people fighting during their vacations.
If you're the best at your job, will the world really be improved by your contribution?
Innovator tend to explore beyond what society wants, and when it works, it works great.
"Mediocrity" is such an ill-defined concept. As you advance out of being mediocre, the pool of people you compare yourself to gets smaller, and you still end up feeling mediocre. When you get to Elon Musk levels, I would assume you switch from comparing yourself to those you know and instead compare yourself to historical figures (e.g. Henry Ford) and perhaps still feel mediocre.
Then add in the Dunning-Kruger effect (the real one, not the popular misinterpretation of "you're so dumb that you think you're smart") and judging what exactly mediocre means becomes even more difficult.
But in the end, sure you can convince yourself that the negative feeling of not achieving as much as you might have been able to isn't worth losing sleep over, and you might end up 'happier'. You can also try to leverage the feeling to stop yourself from wasting those 50+ hours rewatching Game of Thrones and instead putting that time into becoming more like someone who you perceive as being less mediocre than yourself.
Mediocrity is an illusion. Elon Musk "level" is an illusion. Musk for example, is a great entrepreneur but just an average (maybe mediocre?) husband: had two wives, divorced three times from the same, is that even possible?
Now do i think he is mediocre? No way! Even as a husband only him can tell that, maybe not even his wives. Nobody know how hard it was for him to be in a marriage, or even get to marriage in the first place.
Take again an small entrepreneur from Brazil, India or Africa in a small village. Are they mediocre? Sure, low money, not visible for the world, no New York Times covers.
But how hard it really is to be a entrepreneur when all the education you had when you was a kid was how to ask for money in the streets?
There's no mediocrity there's just this illusion created by the very riches and powerful to make even more money, to create a crazy game to make us feel bad and always keep charging for the carrot.
In the end of the day, it's your job to respect everyone limitations, including yours, and never judge the guys next to you as mediocre, or yourself. You may not get in the history books, but a lot of people around you that need you and your "mediocrity" wont read then anyway.
There's reality, and there's the interpretation of reality. Reality is the location of atoms. It's the hard cold facts that all observers can agree on. The interpretation of reality, on the other hand, is fickle. If I am sad, I can listen to happy music, and I'm happy again.
I try to affect reality, not the interpretation of reality. I write software and sell to customers. This is reality. My software exists, my customer relationships exist, and the software is solving my customers' problems. There's really no good answer on whether my business is mediocre or not, so I try not to think along those lines.
While this this attempt at objectivity seems laudable, I don't think there is such a thing as objective value. All value is subjective and subject to interpretations. If you create a program that prints "Hello World" over and over again in a loop forever, you have made an objectively real piece of software, but it has no value to anyone. I would say that all actions, at a purely objective level, are completely pointless until we apply a value statement to them. For example, if like many people you believe that humans existing in the universe has value, and that we should try to optimize for humans existing as long and/or as prosperously as possible, then creating products that contribute to the survival and prosperity of human beings makes sense. I think it is useful to understand the basic values we are taking for granted whenever we state something has "objective" purpose, because those values don't always hold.
There's no mediocrity there's just this illusion created by the very riches and powerful to make even more money, to create a crazy game to make us feel bad and always keep charging for the carrot.
Uh, no. There are a lot of medicore people (I'm one of them) and a few winners.
Life is a competition. Never, ever forget that! Those who are the strongest, smartest, richest, best-looking, socially-aware and most driven are the ones who will probably succeed. (There's always luck involved.) They will get the best jobs (or not have to work), the best mating opportunities, the best everything.
Every minute of every day you are not spending on improving yourself and your position in this world is wasted time. If you do not struggle, you will not succeed, period.
Now, having given you a motivational speech that a Chinese "tiger mom" would find barely adequate at best... the question is, what does this have to do with happiness and overall life satisfaction?
Well, almost nothing. Success can provide opportunities for happiness, but that actually has to be pursued on its own. And the things you need to do for happiness are often in opposition to the things you need to do for success.
What I really want people to do is to just be aware of the tradeoffs. If you want to coast through life, that's fine, as long as you have a good understanding of the costs and benefits.
>They will get the best jobs (or not have to work), the best mating opportunities, the best everything.
This is very much impossible. Above average? Probably. But then they become satiated with the above average things that they do have, get bored, adopt a new definition of "average", and wish they had the bank president's salary. The bank president wants to be president of Goldman Sachs. The president of Goldman wishes he had a wife like so-and-so's.
Ambition is fine and all, but once you start measuring your life that way there's nothing but a black hole all the way down.
>If you want to coast through life, that's fine, as long as you have a good understanding of the costs and benefits.
Same thing definitely goes with viewing life as a competition.
Of course competing is part of life. I don't conflate that with it being the existential meaning of my existence. Sneezing is part of life whether you like it or not. Is life just one big sneeze?
Oh young grasshopper! Your analogy is very flawed.
Competition defines your existence. It determines where you live, where you work, and what you eat. It has determined who you are and how you are made, for you are a product of evolution. It is woven deeply into the fabric of your existence, on a daily level as well as on geological timescales. It even determines how you think, according to some theories about how mental processes work.
You don't have to derive your existential meaning from competition, but ignore it completely at your peril.
What is this competition? What are the rules? What if I don't wish to play? When does the competition end? What is the prize when the competition ends and you are the winner?
> In the end of the day, it's your job to respect everyone limitations, including yours, and never judge the guys next to you as mediocre, or yourself. You may not get in the history books, but a lot of people around you that need you and your "mediocrity" wont ready then anyway.
History books are way overrated. I can name like 3 Roman emperors, one of them is famous for being killed. And those dudes are about on top of the world as you can get.
> Musk for example, is a great entrepreneur but just an average (maybe mediocre?) husband: had two wives, divorced three times from the same, is that even possible?
Modern marriage is hugely risky compared to what it used to be. Someone who marries the same person twice must revel in risk.
I can only imagine it's because of the high divorce rate (is it increasing?) and the cost of separation, including court fees and dividing up the assets. Divorce doesn't have the same stigma as it did 100 or even 50 years ago.
To me, to add, a pre-nup sounds like a romance killer. I couldn't imagine serving one to someone I intend to spend the rest of my life with since it amounts to plan B (that and I don't think it's possible in the UK).
The divorce rate increased for the same reason it isn't now, swaths of social pressures that 'forced' people into getting married young, having kids and raising a family are either going away or simply ignored by more and more people. That these pressures are changing and divorce doesn't have the same stigma are good things.
> a pre-nup sounds like a romance killer
A pre-nup is dealing with the parts of marriage that have nothing to do with romance. If you're going into a marriage thinking it's nothing but romance, wine and roses, you may be in for a rude awakening.
My partner and I signed a pre-nup. I'd rate our chances of divorce at like...less than 5%. We've both been through a ton of crap together and we are totally committed to making our relationship last.
The point is, we've both seen couples in our circles go from that to absolutely messy divorces. We simply decided that in the rare chance we don't work out, we'd have laid down the rules of separation while we still loved each other. While it certainly wasn't romantic, it didn't kill the romance.
Working out the pre-nup allowed us to really consider how harmful separation would be for both of us on an emotional level. That led to us trying to make the rules for separation as clear as possible. If anything, it strengthened our relationship.
It helps if neither party is interested in "If he/she/they cheats I get double" sorts of clauses and instead are interested in a clear, fair split regardless of the circumstances.
That is an incredibly interesting perspective - enough to step back and think through my stance.
Perhaps my view of this kind of agreement is tarnished by the stereotypical type (you mention it with "if you cheat then x" or how someone with a lot of wealth would aim to protect that when marrying on short notice).
Thanks for that. Very interesting and indeed a good thing.
A marriage has everything to do with romance in terms of the kind of relationship we're talking about: a romantic relationship.
Personally, I haven't made my perspective clear in my original comment. Me and my partner have lived together for some time, we have kids and our own home. I definitely don't expect a bed of roses after marriage. In fact, after the experience, it would be pretty damn foolish to expect that from a day to remember, a legal document, a few things and nice holiday.
Despite that, I still fail to see how I, myself, could serve my partner with a pre-nup after knowing, by this time, she is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with.
My opinion is perhaps related to your first paragraph in that I have 0 pressure to get married and I have hafthe luxury of giving myself the best part of a decade to make that decision. That is why in my case I wouldn't serve a pre-nup - it would pretty much say "hey were getting married after a decade of commitment and realisation we want to spend our lives together but I still don't fully believe we will so best sign this just in case". That doesn't really show commitment to me.
To conclude, I would absolutely get a pre nup if the relationship was quite new but then again I wouldn't get married like that so hastily.
To me, marriage is the highest honour you can bestow on someone. You are in effect both saying "yes I honour this person so damn much, I want us to join families". That's a major thing and it actually kinda hurts to see some people treat marriage in a way that decreases its great significance.
> A marriage has everything to do with romance in terms of the kind of relationship we're talking about: a romantic relationship.
Not legally it doesn't and that is where a pre-nup is involved. A pre-nup is related to all the contract law around the legal institution of marriage. The law doesn't care about how much you love each other. You could marry someone to set explicit inheritance rights, absolutely hate the other person and it is still a legal marriage.
Except that the point of marriage is closer union with someone you intend to spend the rest of your life with. I am talking specifically about this kind of marriage.
I'm not saying people don't marry for reasons other than lifetime union. I'm pretty certain I would have a prenup drawn up in the situations you give as examples. My point is that I would not treat marriage that way because it is an honour that you bestow only on the person you intend to marry.
Perhaps i'm getting confused too. I'm talking about serving what is in effect a contingency plan wrt division of assets in the event of divorce. If that is the case, I still stand by what I say in that if you feel this is necessary, perhaps you need to give it more time instead of jumping into what is the highest honour two people can bestow on each other.
If you want to regard marrying someone as 'bestowing upon them the highest honour you can' you can feel feel free to be that full of yourself. If you want to pretend there is nothing going on but romance, you can pretend that.
Legally there is no marriage until you sign that contract at which point you are in a partnership that is covered by many, many laws because it is a legal construct, pre-nups being just one. If you can not recognize this and you go into a marriage thinking of nothing but romance, you are going into it blind and delusional.
> Except that the point of marriage is closer union with someone you intend to spend the rest of your life with
That's actually a pretty new development. You married to stop wars, you married to care for your house, you married to have kids and have someone care for them, you married to carry of the family business.
Excuse me but was that called for? Honouring somebody is not being full of yourself. Its exactly that: honouring somebody. How is it not your biggest honour? You essentially say you love soneone that much you want to share the rest of your life with someone in the closest way possible. I think you are being just a little bit offensive and a touch unfair.
I'm sorry but what part of being in a committed relationship for the best part of a decade do you not understand? I am well aware what a marriage is legally. If you want to view marriage purely as a legal instrument, that's fine by me. To me, a marriage is, through means of law, making official a commitment I already experience. It would NOT change my day to day whatsoever and is purely a piece of paper that lays out how my long term relationship currently works anyway.
A marriage is a romantic event. It is not purely a romantic event but it is none the less. I place value in that but I also place value in the legal document that comes from it. By law, that document cements the way we have lived our lives for many years. Im not actually sure where I said it wasn't a legal contract?
As I said, I have been in a committed relationship for a long time. We have lived together and had children together. A marriage would not change that at all. Im not sure why that makes me blind or delusional? It certainly doesn't warrant the insult in any case.
That sounds very upper class and feudal in respect too. I am from a working class background and from peasantry before it. I doubt my ancestors would have been able to stop a war or continue a family business by marriage. Regardless I am not going down that rabbit hole only to be insulted.
I think the whole point here is that marriage today has many aspects, and the legal aspect is completely orthogonal to the romantic aspect. One should be aware of both. If you want to bestow great depths of meaning on it, it's ok - a marriage like you describe is indeed a profound moment for the two people involved. If you consider this as the essence of marriage, fine - but the legal layer exists independently. By law and custom, it's attached to the union of two people. It may not define the interpersonal meaning of marriage, but it defines its meaning for the rest of society. It doesn't diminish anything, and there's no point in ignoring it.
We can't know the divorce rates of the people who get married now, only the people who got married years ago. Since the people who get married now are very different than the people who got married previously we can't assume that divorce rates will follow the same trends. For example, people enter marriage now older and more educated. We know both of those decrease the probability of divorce.
Prenuptial agreements still have a value within the UK, they are considered intent towards your actions in the event of a divorce and unless there are significant extenuating circumstances leading to the divorce are normally honoured. As long as neither of you are cheating, abusive, performing illegal acts, etc, the prenup usually holds up.
> You can also try to leverage the feeling to stop yourself from wasting those 50+ hours rewatching Game of Thrones and instead putting that time into becoming more like someone who you perceive as being less mediocre than yourself.
Isn't that the point, though? You could spend those 50+ hours struggling to do something to pull yourself out of mediocrity yet still end up frustrated, defeated, and unhappy. For some people -- perhaps even most -- watching Game of Thrones again might just make them happier. I see nothing wrong with that. It's the relentless drive to achieve fame, wealth, importance, that can lead many to depression, constant self-criticism, and unhappiness. Choosing to spend that time on something enjoyable, even if to you it seems unworthy of your time, is a fine way to enjoy the fruits of one's labor.
Spending some time doing R&R might set the creative juices flowing. Over-focusing on one single problem might lead to burnout and then anxiety and the feeling of being mediocre. Humans have a few basic needs, and excelling at work is just one of them, if we ignore the others we might sabotage even the one we care explicitly about. It is good to switch back and forth between work, learning and just being passive and enjoying your senses.
I've got to the point where I don't feel comfortable unless I'm working of sideprojects or otherwise improving myself during my 'leisure' time. Even commenting here is me fooling myself that hacker news is 'productive' :(
I did that for many years. It made me better at my craft, at least until the next "big new way of thinking" comes around. I've recently stopped when I've come to the realization how precious time and experiencing good health is.
You only have so many days on this earth. Don't sell them all to someone else on the pretense that it makes you be able to sell them all to someone else for a little more money.
I'm mostly concerned that I'll be destitute when I'm too old to get hired. And hiring in software development is cutthroat, unless you are happy grinding out meaningless widgets to mostly line someone else's pocket.
Nobody around me seems to give this a second thought though. I don't see how they aren't setting themselves up for misery in the long run.
Honestly, in the US, you will be destitute unless you are immensely wealthy. Nursing homes cost $100K a year today, imagine what they will cost when it's your time to be in one. Insurance doesn't cover it, neither does Obamacare. If you go the Medicaid route, they will take all your income and assets minus your house and car, assuming they are paid for.
It gets depressing fast, enjoy it as much as you can until that day comes.
The question I always ask myself is "what do I really want?". Is what makes me happy finishing X project, or do I really want to finish X project so I can enjoy Y guilt-free? Doing it out of joy or guilt? For me, I've become a lot more consciousness of when I'm doing project-type stuff because I genuinely find it interesting and fulfilling, or I'm just pushing through so I can check a box.
from the outside, this approach creates tremendous success in life in long term. from the inside, it can easily lead to state of never-being-really-happy since there is always next thing to chase or learn. be careful there
in the end i do believe we all want to be happy, and this translates into many things (work success, affirmation of peers, creating family, adventures etc).
Fwiw, this isn't an approach as much as a troubling situation I have found myself in, where I get no enjoyment out of anything, and constantly feel the pressure to keep a roof over my head, and stave off the crises of age that is in everyone's future.
I've tried pills and therapy, but ultimately I've come to the realization that you can't medicate and therapize reality away, and the best way forward is acceptance that life is work, and work is life, and that 'work/life balance' is for kept housewives and millionaires, and people who are going to be going to be very desperate in their old age :(
You are probably better off than 95% of the population of your country. You can have a roof over your head, and food in your belly, for less than $20k per year. Surely you have enough confidence in your skills that you should be able to manage this salary?
Have you lived on $20k a year? It's desperation. You are constantly waiting for the next shoe to drop. Forget about medical costs, forget about the fact that anywhere you can do this is an unpleasant place to live, and far from everything. $20k a year and old age? There's a reason for the skyrocketing suicide rate of men in their fifties and sixties right now.
All I want for retirement is the same lifestyle I have now. Anyone who thinks that it's going to be somehow easier to live with less when they get older is fooling themselves. If you won't live like that now, you won't want to live like that later; you are just pushing the burden off onto your future self.
> All I want for retirement is the same lifestyle I have now.
So you are ultimately content with your current lifestyle?
You could always change it. There are people who lived for $5 a year if I recall correctly, for years[1].
What you feel and what you call "reality" is actually just an illusion. You can get away from it. Simply knowing that there are people who made it gave me enough hope and confidence to persevere through the shittiest times this society made me go through.
The way we live nowadays we have no time to really reflect on anything. Even if we feel the stereotypes and expectations of a society don't align with us very well and that we'd like to challenge them we have no time to come up with a plan. This is certainly a problem, but once you realize that there are totally different ways of living - that you can get away from it all - it becomes much easier to come up with and make small adjustments, which will make us happier over time.
[1] Ran Prieur, see http://www.ranprieur.com/essays/dropout.html for a quick taste and please go read the rest of his essays later. I have tremendous respect for the guy; he offers a completely different perspective on our society and lives according to it. Oh, and also sometimes comments on HN.
> since there is always next thing to chase or learn. be careful there
That's what I feel is missing from all the posts and books recommending constantly improving yourself. They mostly focus on the effects, which are not the (main) point in my opinion at all.
When you're climbing a mountain, the moment you step on top of it may feel cathartic, but is it really worth it if you hate climbing? Remember that there's also a way down; how much of your euphoria will remain if you hate every moment of your descent?
Constantly improving and getting better at something is only worth it if you enjoy the process.
>Constantly improving and getting better at something is only worth it if you enjoy the process.
Or if you want to stay employable in a technology job :|
Or if you need to distinguish yourself in a world where everyone is living paycheck to paycheck, and consequently content to take a salary that doesn't account for retirement.
I spend a few weekends implementing something that might save lots of time at work, mostly done now. If it works and is as useful as I believe, I'll ask for time off to compensate.
I don't do this to excel. Maybe I just don't have enough individual competitive spirit; too much of Nordic group orientation.
I can tell you this is the most fun work I did for a long time. I don't have to stress or cut corners, I can do things as they should be done.
In my experience, my ability to handle stress is already lowered considerably after work. Learning something new afterwards by trying implement a ToDo app or build something that might make money (in my case) can add stress.
Don't get me wrong, I've learned tons of new stuff and I really like it. It even comes with some benefits. But we can't ignore how stressful it can be pre-finished product. Usually the rush comes after it finally works.
Now add on top of that a wife who doesn't want me at a computer, but instead doing something with her. Honestly, during those times when that one piece just doesn't work right, I prefer to not be debugging too. Yes I have the option to walk away, but then it never get's finished.
My point, it makes sense why so many of us, even very talented ones, aren't cranking out apps in our spare time. We'd rather do something enjoyable for a change and have healthy relationships.
I applaud anyone who both manages to enjoy their job, excel at it and have someone that's cool with you doing that thing when you get home too.
I don't think my situation is different -- I did write that to do things right at work was such a sublime and motivating experience, that I did it with my free time... :-(
Could you explain what the real Dunning-Kruger effect is? I always thought it was pretty much "you're so dumb that you think you're smart".
Wikipedia says:
"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is"
Which, to me at least, pretty much reads as "you're so dumb that you think you're smart". (Or, to be slightly more accurate, "Your ability is so low that you think your ability is high")
I don't claim to know anything about this, just genuinely curious what you mean.
Dunning–Kruger showed that less competent individuals in a sample thought they performed much better than they actually did, whereas more competent individuals thought they had not performed as well as they actually did.
The less competent individuals did not think they were "smart" or on the same level as those that performed better in the tests. Just their perception of where they were was markedly different to the perception of those that did well in the tests
When I was 5 year old, I thought I was a maths genius. I had arithmetic absolutely nailed and I knew there were a few more things to learn, but arithmetic was easy so presumably there was just a little more to learn before I could be a professor.
It has nothing to do with being smart or dumb. Consider the way expertise in one field seems to lead many to believe they are experts in other fields, or as I like to put it, "engineers know everything".
The ELI5 is everyone thinks they are closer to average than they are. Both people above and below average are effected. They still recognize which side of average they fall on though.
I'm surprised that not a single comment here suggested that mediocrity is boring.
Boredom is of course a subjective state of mind, but I have a feeling that the average and the boring cannot be entirely statistically unrelated in humans.
This sort of article should really serve as a wake up call to this community.
There was another article here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12329255, where some comments mentioned that people should retrain once jobs become available for consistent automation.
Typically immigrants do this work, low educated immigrants. They do it because they can't get any other work in higher skilled professions. Sure they could be a driver, oh wait soon that will be autonomous. They could work in a warehouse, oh wait Amazon is doing it's best to disrupt that. They could be a cleaner? Oh wait, companies like Roomba and Dyson are working to disrupt that.
The point I'm trying to make here, is for all the poorly/low educated people and lets be really, seriously honest are in the tens of millions. What are they going to do?
I've traveled all over the world, all the continents. There are segments of the population that can't read, can't write, can't even grasp basic maths. They are the ones who depend on these low end jobs.
Are you going to tell me with a straight face they they can re-train, go back to school and work in STEM? It's just not feasible. Also, who is going to pay for all these millions to retrain for years. Remember, they'll probably have to restart their education, basic maths, basic science, then college, then university. That's what 7 years? Who will pay for their living expenses for them and their family?
There is a ticking time-bomb coming soon. Where we'll have an OMEGA man type of situation. All sorts of jobs will be automated and people won't have anything to do.
What are the solutions?
1) Do we implement 1 child per couple policy? To lessen the burden on the state?
2) Do we provide free schooling with a zero-tolerance on NO child left behind? So that they can go on to STEM fields?
3) Are there enough places in STEM fields for those who do retrain to move into? Is this another thing for government to throw money at?
4) Does society move from a capitalist to a socialist/communist system? But what happens when government runs out of money?
What are we going to do?
Just saying people will retrain is just utter folly.
There is a time-bomb ticking and some of you just don't realise it.
Want to know the result of no jobs, low educated populous, government with no money, socialism failed. Oh yeah. Greece. How's that doing for the last 10 years? It will be like that for another 25.
We need to work less. Society has become more and more productive, but we still work 40 hours a week. There's this obsession that everyone has to be constantly working and then using this money to pay for things. We work to live and live to work.
People used to work 6 days a week, 12 hours a day. One of the effects of the industrial revolution was the 40 hour work week.
It takes less man-hours to create physical products than ever before. A man and a horse used to be able to work an acre a day, a man and a tractor can do 150 acres in a day, and the tractor drives itself.
That's a 15 000 % increase in productivity.
Clothing production has seen similar increases in productivity, so has mining.
We as a society are literally making work for the sake of it.
I agree, and am intrigued by where the 40 hour/5 day work week came from and what the consequences would be of reducing it. Why can't we aim for a world in which people can live happily by only spending half their time working, freeing up more time to actually enjoy ourselves? Is it because some people will always out-compete them by willingly working longer hours? Or something else?
Historically, union-drived pressures and left wing politicians is what made the 40 hour week a thing from the previous 48/56/whatever. That's also how most European countries got paid vacations, ...
They have been completely neutralized since, especially on the "asking better conditions for everyone" front (a perfectly valid strategy when you think about it, companies will in the short term, especially for low skilled workers, make less money (that's ignoring the positive externalities from working less of course) ) hence why you don't see better living and working conditions.
Also, there is more mainstream media penetration, which leds people to be more exposed to the "working more is better" ideology.
Reducing the 40 hour working week still doesn't solve the problem of providing a means of living to uneducated workers whose jobs are taken over by AI.
Some people suggest basic income as the solution: well forget about working less hours then for those people who still have a job, they will have to earn the money to pay for the part of society that can't get a job anymore.
Basic Income is a large discussion in itself, and can’t be dismissed so easily, but this thread is not the place for such a discussion. You’ll have to wait until the next Basic Income thread comes up here on HN (as it has many times before), and try to make your simple dismissal then, and see what happens.
STEM work requires above-average intelligence, and even the most basic jobs are probably only available to 25% of the population. Hard-core mathematical engineering is only available to the top 1-2%. So yes - retraining is pointless if the raw ability isn't there.
But people don't need to retrain. What they need is an economic system that allocates their time usefully instead of declaring it worthless and wasting it.
The amount of work that needs to be done and can't yet be automated is almost infinite: infrastructure improvements, simple renovations, community projects, recycling - the unused pool of potential is huge.
It's not entirely the case right now, at least in sciences, there is still medium-skilled technician work.
But these jobs are subject to the same pressures as driving, cleaning and apple-picking. They're being increasingly automated and the technicians replaced by one person to operate the fluid-handling robots.
Edit: maybe I misinterpreted and you're saying that people don't need above-average intelligence to be an actual research scientist, perhaps on the non-tenure track level. Maybe that's true. But, it requires a strong interest and years of training, hence the long apprenticeship of the Ph.D / postdoc.
I might have missed something -- I was thinking more of industry STEM jobs. I truly believe a lot of people can get into software development, for example, with normal intelligence, about a year of time investment, and perhaps above-normal self-motivation.
If you seriously think that all it takes is one year to become a competent software engineer/developer, sorry , but you have no clue what it means to develop good software.
Software development is devilishly complex (as in multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary) to do right. It takes years to master it.
I develop software for a living, and I dare say I'm better than most at it. I've been doing it about 20 years, since I was writing Z80 assembly as a middle schooler [1]. It would take a lot more than a year for someone to learn to do my job. But I'm a lead engineer, not an entry level developer.
However, it would take less than the total amount of time I've been building software to do what I do, because my path to my job took me through all sorts of software development I don't do anymore. That includes 8 years of higher ed, of which I apply only a tiny fraction on a daily basis. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't trade all that education for the world. I draw upon it in plenty of indirect ways. I just know there are more direct routes for someone who simply wants to become an application developer.
I know this, because I know plenty of people who have taken less than a year to get into the industry, and are now productive developers. One of my friends even wrote about how he did it in detail [2]. There's a fantastic episode of Software Engineering Daily interviewing a guy who landed a lucrative job at AirBnB little more than a year after doing a dev bootcamp [3]. My own brother has been in the industry less than a year after coming through General Assembly and is doing quite well. I interview people all the time who have similar stories. They're not unicorns.
Developing software isn't easy. But it's also not that hard. At least the sort of software most of us build. You only need a couple people at the typical enterprise who are capable of doing architecture and the most technically intense stuff.
A person of average intelligence but with above average determination can earn a PhD in some scientific fields and make a useful contribution. I've seen it done.
Are you sure that "no jobs, low educated populous" really describes Greece? Especially "Greece 10 years ago"?
I know plenty of highly educated Greek engineers or other professionals (e.g.: archeologists) and not being Greek myself I met them through international working groups, so I suppose they qualify as "educated-enough" outside their own borders, too.
On top of that, the current economical situation of Greece is due to some decisions taken outside of Greece itself and it is debatable if the current state of Greece was really the only possible outcome for them.
Setting his/her rant aside, Greece is suffering from a serious case of "Brain Drain" that their brightest people had fled the country a long time ago even before this latest economic crisis hit them, and after that it accelerated this trend and became more pronounce to the point that it really drags their economic recovery.
I know some Greek expats and they told me about this problem and the dilemma that they're facing now between returning to the country and facing the mounting challenges there, or staying put and watching their country go through this difficult time from faraway.
So, certainly Greek people is not a low-educated populace or whatever he/she said.
Yes, brain drain is an issue for sure (it is also an Issue in Italy, for example, even if the country is bigger and economy is somehow in a better situation, at least for now).
I am an (Italian) expat myself, so I know the dynamics very well.
All the countries in the Mediterranean basin suffer from that phenomenon to a varying degree and the two Italian profs interviewed in the article is just another example for that phenomenon and the state of affairs in these countries.
So, blaming all the shortcomings it wholly on education or culture in general is unfair and misleading.
The number of poorly/low educated people are in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
And I'm not sure why you feel the need for a throwaway, seeing that HN user has a pretty big biased for basic income.
Also, I don't think your question quite hits the mark, for several problems. For one "runs out of money" is a pretty vague concept and you have to define it more strictly: seeing that money is merely an abstraction for our economy, do you mean a situation where privately owned automation/capital would mess up the economy as we know it (ie. money can't be used, massive inflation etc.), or do we run out of wealth (goods), or something else? In a magical-land of socialist/communist with state-own automation and capital, the first case isn't really a thing. If we run out of goods, then apparently the automation isn't enough and human needs to start getting to work again.
Jobs by itself is merely a proxy for productivity, and productivity is what we want/need. Trying to keep job AND reduce productivity isn't just solve any problem (since someone else will ignore it and blows you out of the water).
Your post has a lot of hidden assumptions -- on top of the fact that the issue itself is a hard one. I mean, if in the end there isn't enough resources to sustain the human population that we have right now, a whole lot of us is gonna die, in one way or another ...
> they'll probably have to restart their education, basic maths, basic science, then college, then university. That's what 7 years?
It's actually going to be closer to 10-12 years. And that's only going to get them to maybe a community college graduate level. They still won't be doctors or software developers or engineers.
Also there's also the simple, but unsolved problem of people just unwilling to learn. You can't make the horse drink and all that.
1) Do we implement 1 child per couple policy?
This would work, until you run out of people.
2/3) Consider AI, what with all the STEMS ? Also, how many stems do we really need ?
4) As soon as everything is automated, capitalist "win the game". No money will flow back. You have to abandon this at some point.
4) What if the government runs out of money ?
Same things that would happen now, increased taxes, or a bankrupt state. In a pure socialistic state this would translate in: you will have to do with less (not money, but luxuries).
Social Security 24%
Health Care 25%
Safety Net Programs 10%
Benefits for Retirees 8%
Social programs according to this consist of 67% of the total budget.
Where is the money going to come from?
Also, you know what happened to France when they hiked up their Tax rates? They moved to London. Where did the Russians go? They moved to London. Where did the Greek millionaires/Billionaires go, probably London.
The rich in the US have already started making plans on where to go, there are a lot of places for them to live.
If you think Basic Income is going to be the solution. I'm very sorry to tell you. It's not!
So a substantial portion of the US is already getting basic income, remove the progressive tax system and replace that with basic income and everybody gets it without spending any more.
then a lot of people will try to run from the hungry mobs when time comes. or suppress them by force, redistributing their money to the force of course, so much for hard-earned income.
Also, you know what happened to France when they hiked up their Tax rates? They moved to London. Where did the Russians go? They moved to London. Where did the Greek millionaires/Billionaires go, probably London.
Expatriation tax (for existing wealth) plus sales tax (for new income). It doesn't matter where they live if the money is taxed at the source.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
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I think the amount of comments on this post satisfies the criteria.
I find it disappointing as much by the quality of the submission as by the interest it is receiving on HN. That being said, thank you for replying to a honest question. :)
many folks on HN consider "being mediocre" and "being happy" as mutually exclusive. The article is thus thought provoking for this audience and could be considered interesting according to the guidelines.
That said, I have to say the article is at best ... uhm ... mediocre. I think it is a topic worth discussing, though.
Evolution functions at the level of populations, not individuals. The individual's mandate is always simply to lead their best life. Evolution is a phenomenon that happens on top of that but defines it. Letting go of your dreams of long-run impact on the world's gene pool is just as important as letting go of your dreams about being the greatest entrepreneur of all time. Those dreams are probably making you miserable without improving your life.
As far as capitalism, I disagree. To whatever extent modern capitalism cares about people, it cares enough about mediocre ones to let most of them live modern, comfortable lives in today's society.
> social media ensures we're constantly exposed to the highlight reel of people's lives and that's leaving some feeling like they're not quite making the most of their time on this mortal coil.
Social media and the internet has made it incredibly easy to see the various people out there who are in the top of their league at any particular hobby, vocation or activity, and made it seem like that's the 'norm'.
If you're an entrepreneur, it can feel like everyone's making millions off their startup ideas and that anyone who isn't is a failure. If you're a web developer, it can seem like the majority of developers are experts in every one of the latest trendy languages and frameworks and that you suck for not being like that. If you're making a game, you might end up judging your worth in comparison to say, the makers of Minecraft or Pokemon GO.
But keep in mind that these are outliers by default. The top percentage of people in a field are overrepresented online and even then, they mostly only post about the things going well in their lives.
Most people are average, and for any one thing you're interested in, there will almost always be many millions of others who are either better or worse than you at it.
And hey, you don't have to be 'great' or even 'good' at something to be successful in it. Many people who were 'average' in a field ended up doing really well in it regardless. Maybe they had a good team, maybe they put in a stupid amount of time, maybe they simply had the right idea at the right point in time. You can just as easily be an expert or prodigy toiling away in obscurity as you can a celebrity with few skills to speak of.
In other words, don't worry too much about it.