#society #cooperation # [[Epistemic status]] #shower-thought # Hedonic Treadmill #to-digest ![[DALL·E 2022-06-19 14.00.19 - The invisible and mysterious wind driving men forward, against which they are powerless, the endless treadmill consuming their energy, digital art by .png]] >Responsibility is a societal creation. No one is truly responsible for another. You do not owe your children anything. They do not owe you anything. If you wish to do, then do. If they wish to do, they may also do. That which comes from the heart is. >~ [[Kapil Gupta - Direct Truth - Uncompromising - Non-Prescriptive Truths to the Enduring Questions of Life]] Understand why you are a slave, and you will be released. >When John Smith finishes school he is expected to get a job. And what getting a job seems to mean is joining another institution. Superficially it’s a lot like college. You pick the companies you want to work for and apply to join them. If one likes you, you become a member of this new group. You get up in the morning and go to a new set of buildings, and do things that you do not, ordinarily, enjoy doing. There are a few differences: life is not as much fun, and you get paid, instead of paying, as you did in college. But the similarities feel greater than the differences. John Smith is now John Smith, 22, a software developer at such and such corporation. >~ [[Paul Graham]] **Creating [[Wealth|wealth]] is fun if you understand it**, and it's good for society, [[How to build the future]]. >Besides, a million years of natural selection shaped human nature to be ambitious to rear successful children, not to settle for contentment: people are programmed to [[Desire|desire]], not to appreciate. > ~ [[Matt Ridley]] ![[DALL·E 2022-06-19 14.02.50 - The invisible and mysterious wind driving men forward, against which they are powerless, the endless treadmill consuming their energy, digital art by .png]] ## Random pessimistic thoughts >I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. > ~ [[Seneca]] >If you wish to have leisure for your mind, either be a poor man, or resemble a poor man. > ~ [[Seneca]] >Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. > ~ [[Thoreau]] >It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. > ~ [[Seneca]] >The record shows that, for society, the richer we become, the harder it gets to live within our means. Abundance is harder for us to handle than scarcity.* >~ [[Nassim Taleb]] >I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. > ~ [[Thoreau]] >The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure. > ~[[Hermann Hesse]]