Ask HN: How to be in peace with all the wrong in the world?
I don't know how to write this properly, sorry. I'm approaching 40 and I have no one I look up to as a role model (parents are fine but got the same problems as the general population).
People are usually being jerks, not thinking about others, supporting racist ideas, voting to put psychopaths in power, not respecting the laws everywhere, taking advantage of others, etc. The list is infinite and this is all I can see. Every. Day.
Is resignation the only way to keep sane? Going back to my home, working on my computer and avoiding interacting with others? Shrugging things off as "that's how they are"?
It feels like I'm turning into my grandparents/parents in that way: slowly but surely without energy to affect change. But while they seem fine, I can't cope mentally.
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https://saltyoldgal.blogspot.com/p/prevention-is-hard-to-mea...
So, actively look for good news. There is good news out there, for example:
In 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases of Guinea worm in 20 endemic nations in Asia and Africa.[3] Ghana alone reported 180,000 cases in 1989. The number of cases has since been reduced by more than 99.999% to 22 in 2015
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradication_of_dracunculiasis
Try to make things a little better in your little world. Try to be helpful and do good and yadda.
Also, make sure to take care of yourself. If you are hungry, tired, sick, broke, etc. the world tends to look pretty bleak.
Seeing the cycles can be interesting like how military elites often wind up diminished - often not violent revolution because that favors another set of warrior elites often but trade undermining their power but being too useful to purge - the alternative is being unable to maintain their forces. Nobles became vestigial compared to magnates and tycoons.
Post Sengoko Jidai merchants went from lower than farmers but better than untouchables to being allowed to carry one sword.
Not going to have much luck taking the needle out of the world's eye while the plank is still in your own.
Just saying that very few people are actually as blameless and de-clawed as they imagine themselves to be. If OP ever acquired enough power to not really give a shit what anyone else thinks, I'd put my money on him becoming every bit as nasty. Not so sure on racism and sociopathy though. There are so many ways to be a jerk.
If we want to go in the other direction with this, Nietzsche's "slave morality" comes to mind.
The other matter: In reply to People are usually being jerks, not thinking about others, supporting racist ideas, voting to put psychopaths in power.., you actually said all of the awful qualities you recognize in other people are every bit as prevalent--if not more so--in yourself -
So I take that as meaning, in this case, "You are as much a jerk, a sociopath, a racist, as them, if not more so". If it doesn't mean that, why say it? It's easy to say biblical platitudes without facing/admitting the actual meaning in the world, on a particular occasion, like this. If that's not true, then maybe what you said isn't right - that thing about all of the awful qualities you recognize in other people are every bit as prevalent--if not more so--in yourself. Maybe you think that because something like it's in the bible, it must be right.
Well, I guess this is a good example of "We are not all that different" - what you explained you mean in the end makes total sense.
(Not sure about the last paragraph..Nietzsche is a good friend!)
Like take this quote for example:
"Maybe you think that because something like it's in the bible, it must be right."
This is either your unkindness and disregard for me personally, for religious people in general, or for all of the above. It's just that the tables have turned to the point where this manifestation is socially acceptable, so you're blind to it.
As for the Nietzsche, one has to wonder how many people are against racism due to a deep moral sentiment--like the abolitionists of old? How many are against it because it works against them--like minorities? How many are against purely from the fear of repercussions--the HR department, or society at-large?
From what I've seen, people in that first group are an exceedingly rare breed.
By 'biblical platitudes', I meant, well, your point was the 'mote in your neighbour's eye, beam in your own', right? That's why you were saying every bad thing they saw in someone else, the same or worse was in them? Maybe I'm wrong about that.
I was focused on specifically what you said. Sorry if you don't want to face the implications of that. I'll try to forget about it too, I guess. Maybe we aren't so alike? Good luck.
Seneca reminds us[0] that we may be the sons of whomsoever we will:
"We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality -nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one."
> "Is resignation the only way to keep sane?"
Resignation is not likely to produce the good you seek.
Epictetus' Discourses [1,2] offers advice on attaining and maintaining tranquility, even in the midst of hardship.
If you have the time and interest, a meditation retreat may offer deeper, experiential insight into the nature of existence; the topic comes up fairly regularly on HN[3].
[0] http://www.stoics.com/seneca_essays_book_2.html
[1] https://archive.org/details/epictetusdiscour01epicuoft
[2] https://archive.org/details/epictetusdiscour02epicuoft
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=vipassana&sort=byPopularity&pr...
From Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies (1865):
...a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he may; clearly at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, manifest to him;—this, the piece of true knowledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, "This is the best of me; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing;" it is, in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a "Book."
Perhaps you think no books were ever so written?
But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. It is mixed always with evil fragments—ill-done, redundant, affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and those are the book.
Now books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men:- by great readers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before;—yet have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that—that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings; or flatter yourself that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect, that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and time? Into that you may enter always; in that you may take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, once entered into it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the Dead.
"The place you desire," and the place you fit yourself for, I must also say; because, observe, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this:- it is open to labour and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the [gates], there is but brief question:- "Do you deserve to enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms?—no. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain; but here we neither feign nor interpret; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognise our presence."
This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. You must love them...
The best writing I know on particular favourite books/writers are Robert Louis Stevenson's essay Books Which Have Influenced Me[0] and Colin Wilson's book The Books In My Life. Also Chesterton's Twelve Types[1] and Emerson's Representative Men.
[0] https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/stevenson/robert_louis/s848...
[1] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12491/12491-h/12491-h.htm