I think a core factor here is something like ambition or growth mindset. When I have shortcomings, I view them as shortcomings to be fixed or at least mitigated, not as part of my identity or as a subject for sympathy. On the positive side, I have goals and am constantly growing to better achieve them.
There is a tradeoff between this ambition and feeling at ease in the moment. Most people could probably use more ambition/agency, but I don’t think it’s clearly worse/worthy of disgust that many people don’t care about growth enough to expend more than a certain amount effort towards it.
I’d be interested to know more about why you think you came to have relatively strong motivation towards achieving goals and whether you think that’s ideal (even for people who value ease more than you do?).
I’d be interested to know more about why you think you came to have relatively strong motivation towards achieving goals and whether you think that’s ideal even for people with different values than you.
I don’t know how counterfactual it was, but the obvious branch-point was committing really hard to not let my values be overwritten by the memetic milieu (though that’s not how I would have worded it at the time). Specifically, shortly before my twelfth birthday, I noticed that the people younger than me usually had grand dreams and ambitions (as children do), while the people older than me usually didn’t. Evidently something was causing everyone to give up on their dreams, and whatever that thing was, it was rapidly approaching for me.
So I did the obvious thing and swore to myself as hard as I could that I wouldn’t let whatever it was overwrite my dreams. And my dreams were not overwritten—though again, I don’t know how counterfactual my precommitment was.
From the previous post:
There is a tradeoff between this ambition and feeling at ease in the moment. Most people could probably use more ambition/agency, but I don’t think it’s clearly worse/worthy of disgust that many people don’t care about growth enough to expend more than a certain amount effort towards it.
I’d be interested to know more about why you think you came to have relatively strong motivation towards achieving goals and whether you think that’s ideal (even for people who value ease more than you do?).
I don’t know how counterfactual it was, but the obvious branch-point was committing really hard to not let my values be overwritten by the memetic milieu (though that’s not how I would have worded it at the time). Specifically, shortly before my twelfth birthday, I noticed that the people younger than me usually had grand dreams and ambitions (as children do), while the people older than me usually didn’t. Evidently something was causing everyone to give up on their dreams, and whatever that thing was, it was rapidly approaching for me.
So I did the obvious thing and swore to myself as hard as I could that I wouldn’t let whatever it was overwrite my dreams. And my dreams were not overwritten—though again, I don’t know how counterfactual my precommitment was.
What were/are your dreams?