I’ve been following your whole series on moral mazes. I felt the rest of them were important because they explained why “working for the man” was bad in explicit terms, but this one was a pleasant surprise. Until about halfway through this post, I was under the impression you were articulating the dangers of moral mazes in the abstract while carefully ignoring any implications it would have for your own career on Wall Street. The point I realised you’d actually quit was a jaw-dropping moment, given that I already knew you weren’t staying in that situation because you had a good use for the money.
My only complaint about this post would be that the intellectually detached way that it’s written and lack of object-level game plans will prevent it from feeling like a real option to a lot of readers. Most people know that something is wrong with these systems, but when the rubber meets the road, they default to the familiar script the same way you did. Intellectual understanding of a problem is necessary for a certain kind of person to take action, but it isn’t sufficient, and in some cases it can leave people dangerously unprepared for reality the same way that learning karate does for a street-fight.
Thank you for all that. I worry about the same thing—that this will not feel/be sufficiently actionable for people, and they won’t be that likely to change their situations based on it. As George Carlin says, some people need practical advice. I didn’t know how to go about providing what such a person would need, on that level. How would you go about doing that? It feels like a book-length or longer problem, the same way one can’t write a post on how to prepare for a street fight that would actually be that good, beyond giving basic pointers (like run away).
As George Carlin says, some people need practical advice. I didn’t know how to go about providing what such a person would need, on that level. How would you go about doing that?
The solution is probably not a book. Many books have been written on escaping the rat race that could be downloaded for free in the next 5 minutes, yet people don’t, and if some do in reaction to this comment they probably won’t get very far.
Problems that are this big and resistant to being solved are not waiting for some lone genius to find the 100,000 word combination that will drive a stake right through the middle. What this problem needs most is lots of smart but unexceptional people hacking away at the edges. It needs wikis. It needs offline workshops. It needs case studies from people like you so it feels like a real option to people like you.
Then there’s the social and financial infrastructure part of the problem. Things such as:
Finding useful things for people to do outside of salaried work that don’t feel like sitting at the kids table. (See: every volunteer role outside of open source.)
Establishing intellectual networks outside of the high cost of living/rat race cities. (Not necessarily out of cities in general.)
Developing things that make it cheaper to maintain a comfortable standard of living at a lower level of income.
Finding ways to increase productivity on household tasks so it becomes economically practical to do them yourself rather than outsource them.
I’ve been following your whole series on moral mazes. I felt the rest of them were important because they explained why “working for the man” was bad in explicit terms, but this one was a pleasant surprise. Until about halfway through this post, I was under the impression you were articulating the dangers of moral mazes in the abstract while carefully ignoring any implications it would have for your own career on Wall Street. The point I realised you’d actually quit was a jaw-dropping moment, given that I already knew you weren’t staying in that situation because you had a good use for the money.
My only complaint about this post would be that the intellectually detached way that it’s written and lack of object-level game plans will prevent it from feeling like a real option to a lot of readers. Most people know that something is wrong with these systems, but when the rubber meets the road, they default to the familiar script the same way you did. Intellectual understanding of a problem is necessary for a certain kind of person to take action, but it isn’t sufficient, and in some cases it can leave people dangerously unprepared for reality the same way that learning karate does for a street-fight.
Thank you for all that. I worry about the same thing—that this will not feel/be sufficiently actionable for people, and they won’t be that likely to change their situations based on it. As George Carlin says, some people need practical advice. I didn’t know how to go about providing what such a person would need, on that level. How would you go about doing that? It feels like a book-length or longer problem, the same way one can’t write a post on how to prepare for a street fight that would actually be that good, beyond giving basic pointers (like run away).
The solution is probably not a book. Many books have been written on escaping the rat race that could be downloaded for free in the next 5 minutes, yet people don’t, and if some do in reaction to this comment they probably won’t get very far.
Problems that are this big and resistant to being solved are not waiting for some lone genius to find the 100,000 word combination that will drive a stake right through the middle. What this problem needs most is lots of smart but unexceptional people hacking away at the edges. It needs wikis. It needs offline workshops. It needs case studies from people like you so it feels like a real option to people like you.
Then there’s the social and financial infrastructure part of the problem. Things such as:
Finding useful things for people to do outside of salaried work that don’t feel like sitting at the kids table. (See: every volunteer role outside of open source.)
Establishing intellectual networks outside of the high cost of living/rat race cities. (Not necessarily out of cities in general.)
Developing things that make it cheaper to maintain a comfortable standard of living at a lower level of income.
Finding ways to increase productivity on household tasks so it becomes economically practical to do them yourself rather than outsource them.