
Improving Ourselves to Death - Futurebot
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/15/improving-ourselves-to-death
======
Tomminn
Improving yourself is only painful if you lack humility. If you have an honest
and realistic idea of how ordinary you currently are, and honest and realistic
idea of what you can actually achieve in 5 years, then the gradual self-
improvement process is pretty damn satisfying.

The problem isn't self-improvement. The problem is typically you get deluded
about your own magnificence, and you refuse to pop this delusion.

Rip the band-aid off, once and for all. Here and now.

Recognize you are not the special person you thought you were. Really see how
incredible all the people around you are. And I mean locally. I don't mean
people on the internet. I just mean the ordinary people around you scratching
themselves out lives that seem to satisfy them. Become one of them.

If you have it, keep all the ambition you have. But become satisfied with the
process of becoming what you want to be. Find someone, or something to pay you
to become who you want to be. This will not be easy, and the work will not be
easy, but the pain will be growing pain, and not decaying pain. Decaying pain
is what kills you.

Most of the work will be unpaid, this is okay. A happy little flow of money is
enough, because some money is really damn useful. Some food, some shelter,
some freedom. But there is much less in life that money will buy you than
people think there is. And there is much more in life that money robs you of
than people realize.

Again, rip the band-aid off. Right here and now. If you do it slowly like most
people do, you'll mistake the slow process of becoming wise to your own
ordinariness for decay. Rip it off, and then you can improve yourself without
pain.

~~~
jniedrauer
> Really see how incredible all the people around you are. And I mean locally.
> ...the ordinary people around you scratching themselves out lives that seem
> to satisfy them. Become one of them.

This sentiment has very little actual substance to it. I'm dissatisfied
because I want to do something meaningful. I want to leave behind tools that
will better my species. I don't want my legacy to be solving a few bugs in
obscure proprietary software. Why would I want to emulate people who are
satisfied with a meaningless existence? I would much rather rage against the
dying of the light.

> Most of the work will be unpaid, this is okay. A happy little flow of money
> is enough, because some money is really damn useful.

In a very literal sense, we trade life force for money. Money _is_ life force.
Telling people to work for free is doing them a disservice.

What exactly are you saying? Rip off the band-aid of ambition and stop trying?

~~~
coldtea
> _This sentiment has very little actual substance to it. I 'm dissatisfied
> because I want to do something meaningful. I want to leave behind tools that
> will better my species._

That's something 1 in 10000 or even less do. Why it would be you (or me for
that matter)?

> _What exactly are you saying? Rip off the band-aid of ambition and stop
> trying?_

If you're not getting results, and spend year after year on "self improvement"
skills to get to be Musk or whatever, why not? Enjoy life, nobody signed any
contract with the universe that they'll be the "inventor" and "great artist"
and so on.

What are you saying, the rest several billions that will not "leave behind
tools that will better their species" are useless waste of potential, or just
normal people living their lives, and it's the idea of this unlimited
potential that is a dangerous and damaging americanism peddled by snake-oil
self-help gurus?

(Heck, if the regular life of the species is meaningless in itself, then
inventing tools to improve it, wont add meaning to it, just some
conveniences).

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> > This sentiment has very little actual substance to it. I'm dissatisfied
because I want to do something meaningful. I want to leave behind tools that
will better my species._

 _> That's something 1 in 10000 or even less do. Why it would be you (or me
for that matter)?_

One: because you think it will be you. 1 in N people do something meaningful.
1 in M people who think they will do something meaningful, end up doing so. M
< N.

Anecdotal, of course, but so is everyone else here, so I'm not going to bother
with proof. If you want to see what I mean, take a cue from what is presented
as such sage advice upstream: look around you. Not many people are ambitious
on a grand scale.

Two: out of the people who did something meaningful, few of them were helped
by a "can't do" attitude. Even if not grounded in reality at all, you still
need to have amibition, for that rare case where you _do_ end up being the 1
in a million that does something meaningful.

Personally, I'm not a fan of this nihilist attitude so pervasive in cynical
ex-geniuses. I encounter it a lot among formerly precocious children in
compsci. It's negative, demotivating, and I regret ever taking this seriously.

So let me go on record to anyone who feels OP was talking you: the mere act of
_yearning_ to have a lasting effect on the world and on humanity makes you
special. Forget the naysayers and the cynics. Leave the bitter undisciplined
geniuses to their sour grapes. Go into the world and do what you can.

We need all the help we can get!

~~~
coldtea
That's the key difference in viewpoint though:

> _Two: out of the people who did something meaningful, few of them were
> helped by a "can't do" attitude. Even if not grounded in reality at all, you
> still need to have amibition, for that rare case where you do end up being
> the 1 in a million that does something meaningful._

Who says living your life, with its common challenges, etc, is NOT meaningful?

And that meaningful/happiness/success require some "superhuman" feats,
millions in the bank, or whatever?

> _Not many people are ambitious on a grand scale._

So? If I could change people's attributes on a grand scale, ambitious is not
what I'd made them. More compassionate, more altruistic, more vigilant against
BS, less polluting, more skeptical, etc -- there are tons of things I'd rather
people be more than "ambitious".

If anything I'd say ambition is a surefire way to make people uglier,
greedier, less tolerant and caring, more "me me me" (which in turn, hurts them
too, because others are more "me me me" as well), less present for their
family and friends, and ultimately (since only "1 in M people" end up really
doing something meaningful), ambition makes them bitter, unhappy, depressed,
and so on.

In fact the perfect recipe for the kind of self-absorbed and unhappy society
we have now.

In the words of Radiohead:

    
    
      Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
      Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy

------
Rescis
While I agree that we (where we is a reader of the NYT or other western
individuals) focus on hyper optimizing our life towards a perfect,
unachievable goal, I am not at all comfortable with the authors assumption
that it is inherently bad to do so, and that we should instead be happy with a
life of mediocrity.

Every single time humanity visibly progresses, it is because one person (or
many) found a problem with themselves or the state they were living in and
attempted to remove the problem in hopes of having themselves or their
environment become more 'perfect'. If people today decide to stop progressing
towards perfection and just be happy with what they have, then there will
still be large swaths of people living in extreme poverty, dying from
preventable diseases, and suffering from human rights abuses. I really do
believe that it is imperative from a humanitarian perspective that while we
still have problems in the world, we strive to do everything we can to fix
them—and that not doing so is horribly selfish.

~~~
bitexploder
Emotions and discontent are programmed in via evolution. The default state of
most people is not happiness or sadness. It is discontent. If you are
comfortable you aren’t going to keep trying hard. We have vast capacity and
have struggled for tens of thousands of years to reach this point. Millions
have died in wars for us to have what we have today. To waste that potential
and settle into some adtech driven fugue state is unacceptable to me. I will
keep learning, and struggling, and growing.

~~~
watwut
> Millions have died in wars for us to have what we have today.

Some of them fought to prevent us to have what we have today. Many fought for
bad causes, many fought essentially for nothing or because things were shit
for no gain. There were two sides to every war. Many fought over which
autoritarian will controll that village.

There is not reason to struggle unless you really struggle, through learning
is good.

~~~
bitexploder
I am just saying, there has been a ton of conflict and struggle for our
species as a whole over its history. A lot of crazy suffering happened to our
ancestors to get to this point and I feel driven to work hard, learn, and be
better than I was yesterday from that perspective.

~~~
theoh
The phrasing you are using:

"Millions have died in wars for us to have what we have today"

is problematic. I think a lot of the replies interpret it as a case of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc)

Even if that's not what you are thinking: sure, people die fighting for
particular causes, but people also die fighting to oppose those causes. The
history of war doesn't confer any intrinsic moral value on fighting. What
about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is–ought_problem)

"There has been a ton of conflict and struggle for our species"

This is more ambiguous. What does the "for" mean? Could it be replaced with
"in"? (i.e. it has just been endured) Or do you mean that the conflict and
struggle has all been directed towards the furtherance of the species? (e.g.
"it's been a tough two millennia for our species")

This is not simple stuff from a philosophical perspective.

~~~
bitexploder
I meant it from a broad cosmic perspective. Through the chaos and entropy of
the universe and evolution we are on the Internet using fantastically complex
devices to beam our thoughts across some unknown distance to exchange some
ideas. That chaos and entropy includes all the suffering of those that came
before us. There is no moral value to humans fighting and dying in the mud,
just a waste of potential. My personal view is every human life is a new
spark, a new shot to further ourselves as a species a little bit more and
that, inherently, progress is the only sensible option for our species. And,
being a human who thinks humans have a shot at being pretty alright in the
grand scheme of things, I think that struggle is worth undertaking. I know
philosophy is complex and this is not a very nuanced view point I am
presenting from that perspective, but I don't think my point requires very
much nuance.

~~~
theoh
You actually made pretty bold claims about discontent being the human
condition, I'd say they need proper justification if you want them to be taken
as universal truths, not just personal opinions.

~~~
bitexploder
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/17/psycho...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/17/psychology-
happiness-contentment-humans-aspire-goals-accomplish-evolution)

~~~
theoh
Well, if we're quoting Psychology Today bloggers (that author is one), how
about this counterpoint:

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meditation-modern-
li...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/meditation-modern-
life/201709/your-set-point-happiness)

I don't think it's a good idea to take Psychology Today or any other pop
psychology writing too seriously. Science doesn't have the answers yet in this
area.

~~~
bitexploder
I read this. Thinking things over. Thanks for the thoughtful discussion on
this topic.

------
paulpauper
Much of post-industrial Protestantism and the 'American Dream' is predicted on
the belief that individuals can redeem themselves through 'grit',
determination, and 'rising above' adversity. But an increasingly technological
and winner-take-all economy makes biological and economic factors possibly
more important than willpower alone. As it turns out, successful people are
not successful because they worked really hard (although many successful
people work hard), read a self-help book book of vapid affirmations, or have a
lot of willpower--but maybe due to having an high IQ, or having a lot of
family connections and wealth, or just plain stupid luck. Maybe instead of
trying to optimize our lives, we should try to just enjoy it.

~~~
hydrox24
To what extent does simply enjoying life exacerbate the problems you point
out?

If enjoying life is the popular thing to do, the well connected, high IQ and
high-grit people will succeed even more dramatically, assuming that such
people are often less affected by cultural norms than the modal person.

------
gurpreet-
If we were not to improve ourselves then it would be problematic for humanity
as a whole. Think of the health professionals (such as nurses, doctors and
psychiatrists) who, if had not put in their time and effort would not have
helped countless people. Or what about Edison, Newton, Einstein, Stephen
Hawking each of whom spent countless hours improving their knowledge to better
humanity.

On the other hand, you have multi-millionaires who have hustled their way to
the top but are miserable and jaded after improving themselves so much that
they neglected friends and family. Is it worth it then to pursue of a life of
improvement?

Ultimately, the decision to go down the path of improvement and subsequently
sacrifice is up to the person. But beware, this rat-race can never be won.

~~~
paulcole
> each of whom spent countless hours improving their knowledge to better
> humanity

Wouldn't you say that all of those improvements have partially led to the
predicament we're in today? An unsustainable drain on the planet's resources
and unchecked climate change?

Sure we got better at making iPhones but that meant we had to get better at
strip mining, shipping things around the world on freighters, and driving to
the mall, too.

~~~
RealityVoid
Only because we as a global society have decided we value iPhones and big
houses over a clean and sustainable planet. If we thought otherwise, we surely
could have gone in a different way. Through effort and ambition we când
improve and destroy things. It does matter what you aim at, not just that you
shoot.

------
castlecrasher2
Correct me if I'm off-base but it really feels like this article can be
summarized with "self-improvement has its place just as recreation does, just
don't overdo it." I suppose I'm just not sure what the author is arguing, just
that the self-help obsession is just real super bad. For me, my attempts at
self-improvement, which are admittedly many and varied and probably too
frequent, aren't merely chasing solutions but venturing into others'
experiences and picking and choosing which parts of their shoes I want after
I've walked a mile in them.

>He cites surveys that show that adolescent girls are increasingly unhappy
with their bodies, and that a growing number of men are suffering from muscle
dysmorphia

I'm sure consumerism has a role in this but I'd guess that increasing
childhood obesity and decreasing levels of testosterone in men are a more
obvious reason for these.

------
viridian
Ironically I think Ms. Schwartz could stand to improve her writing, and be
more productive with her audience's time. I gave up 7 long paragraphs in,
after realizing that:

a) no real counterclaim had been made yet, and b) I was only 1/4 of the way
through this article

Her concluding paragraph is that you should do non-productive tasks sometimes,
disconnect, and enjoy yourself. The great irony in this is that I recall being
given the same advice in the last couple of self help books I read, Deep Work
and The Shallows.

This article seems to be a mountain of words to broad brush a genre, but then
I could be wrong, as I only read a quarter of it.

~~~
piyushahuja
If you think this is bad writing (because it doesn't make a productive use of
audience time), the article has a piece of advice for you, "Put away your
self-help guides, and read a novel instead."

Like a novel, the reading of an article is meant to be an experience. It
follows the "show, don't tell" dictum pretty well. The critique of
perfectionism hits at you viscerally, instead of being an academic argument.
That good writing necessarily requires a more productive use of audience's
time (or follows some economics of the form of insights communicated/time
spent), is the optimizing/perfectionist thinking that Ms. Schwartz has taken
aim at in her content. So the form follows content in a way. The writer feels
that in today's self-improvement culture, we do not appreciate something for
its own sake. For example, when we read, we think of "what is it saying? Why
does it not say it quickly?", rather than imagining possibilities, chewing on
the words of a sentence, or relish the turn of phrases, or appreciating the
metaphors employed to communicate a feeling.

You do seem to be right in suspecting that you are wrong about the article.
Her concluding paragraph, for example, states that the one should be able to
enjoy experiences for their sake alone, rather than the sake of self-
improvement. "Things don’t need to be of concrete use in order to have value."
This is contrary to the assumptions shared by the two self-help books you
allude to: The Shallows and Deep Work. These argue for disconneting FOR the
sake of having some value in the dimension of self improvement: for being able
to improve the quality of your work (Deep Work), or increasing reading
comprehension, e.g. (The Shallows).

~~~
scarejunba
This is just another comment in the fetishization of everything long. There's
nothing particularly grand about anything being long. Timecube is longer.

I have 50 years at best left to live. This isn't competing with self help.
This is competing with the best books of all time so it had better be good.

~~~
kharak
Strongly agree. Most articles I come across could be summarized in bullet-
point style. How many articles are there that couldn't be compressed in 5-10
bullet-points, each containing a short sentence?

------
amriksohata
Yamraj in the Mahabharata asked Yudhister at the river, what is the greatest
truth in life? Yudhister replied, the greatest truth in this life is, despite
one having to die, man lives like he is going to live forever.

------
hamilton
I'll take any chance I can get to up this Lydia Davis short story, called "new
year's resolution"[0]:

I ask my friend Bob what his New Year’s Resolutions are and he says, with a
shrug (indicating that this is obvious or not surprising ): to drink less, to
lose weight… He asks me the same, but I am not ready to answer him yet. I have
been studying my Zen again, in a mild way, out of desperation over the
holidays, though mild desperation. A medal or a rotten tomato, it’s all the
same, says the book I have been reading. After a few days of consideration, I
think the most truthful answer to my friend Bob would be: My New Year’s
Resolution is to learn to see myself as nothing. Is this com¬petitive? He
wants to lose some weight, I want to learn to see myself as nothing. Of
course, to be competitive is not in keeping with any Buddhist philosophy. A
true nothing is not competitive. But I don’t think I’m being competitive when
I say it. I am feeling truly humble, at that moment. Or I think I am—in fact,
can anyone be truly humble at the moment they say they want to learn to be
nothing? But there is another problem, which I have been wanting to describe
to Bob for a few weeks now: at last, halfway through your life, you are smart
enough to see that it all amounts to nothing, even success amounts to nothing.
But how does a person learn to see herself as nothing when she has already had
so much trouble learning to see herself as, something in the first place? It’s
so confusing. You spend the first half of your life learning that you are
something after all, now you have to spend the second half learning to see
yourself as nothing. You have been a negative nothing, now you want to be a
positive nothing. I have begun trying, in these first days of the New Year,
bur so far it’s pretty difficult. I’m pretty close to nothing all morning, but
by late afternoon what is in me that is something starts throwing its weight
around. This happens many days. By evening, I’m full of something and it’s
often something nasty and pushy. So what I think at this point is that I’m
aiming too high, that maybe nothing is too much, to begin with. Maybe for now
I should just try, each day, to be a little less than I usually am.

[0] [https://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/lydia-
davis-...](https://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/lydia-davis-new-
years-resolution/)

~~~
smogcutter
That's a lot of first person pronouns for a story about self negation. (Which
is probably the point...)

------
rvn1045
life a lot more fun if your improving at what your doing. if your playing golf
and over the course of the year you improve and hit the ball farther and more
accurately - or you life weights and you get stronger, or your coding stuff
and you can do it faster, whatever it may be. I think there is a way to
approach improvement, perhaps with the mindset of detached perseverance which
will not only allow you to improve, but will allow you to do so without too
much mental torture and will make the whole process pleasant.

------
circlefavshape
I was goal-driven and discontent until the pressures of new fatherhood forced
me to pause. After a few years when the kids got a little bit easier and I had
no real active goals to work towards I felt content (and even happy) for the
first time since I became an adult.

I'm never going back to goal-setting. Looking back at it now I see my goals as
fantasies, and my efforts to make them real actively prevented me from
engaging with my actual life

------
mrhappyunhappy
I was taking the article seriously until I realized the whole thing is just an
affiliate link piece stuffing as many books in there as possible.

~~~
navane
Wow, it took me reading this comment to realize this. I even read a piece on
HN explaining this exactly is the easiest thing to make money on the internet.
Write one article that ranks good in google and links to a bunch of items you
get your percentage of.

------
newnewpdro
People tend to ignore the law of diminishing returns, and I think in this
context it's largely due to a fear of depression resulting from having the
bandwidth to reflect on reality.

------
sotojuan
Yeah I realized self help books and audio books are a waste of time and money.
You get the gist from the back cover. I believe in improving myself, sure, but
my approach is much simpler - just deliberate practice and being a well
rounded person. Being humble and realistic helps too - I’m probably not going
to be super rich, wealthy, or famous but my current life is far from bad.

This self help obsession especially among urban professionals is pretty
amusing. A lot of people who only read the latest self help books and listen
to the same podcasts at 2x speed but don’t actually do much.

~~~
x220
>I realized self help books and audio books are a waste of time and money

You may think that about the books you read, but that's not true about a genre
in general. It's useful to discriminate sources and figure out whether the
author has particular credibility in what she is talking about.

>This self help obsession especially among urban professionals is pretty
amusing

I think it's pretty telling that you think it's funny that people are spending
time thinking about how to make their lives better. What would be a better use
of time? Americans in particular used to habitually think about how to change
their habits for the better when they went to church every week. Now that
people don't do that anymore, something else fills that need. If you're
reading material written by someone who actually knows what they are talking
about (e.g. a doctor or respected psychologist) that is arguably analogous to
and better than attending church weekly.

------
sctb
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16119143).

------
erik_landerholm
Not improving ourselves to death is another option. The consistent part is
death.

------
intrasight
What's interesting to me is that I read the title as "Improving ourselves
UNTIL death" \- meaning improvement should be a life-long endeavor. I agree
with that read.

------
John_KZ
The article actually argues against self-improvement.

There are issues with trying excessively too hard or sacrificing too much to
reach certain goals, there are issues with trying the wrong way or towards the
wrong goals, but arguing we should take a casual and passive stance towards
fixing our problems and just let them be is really the most counter-
productive, lazy piece of advice I've ever heard.

------
kubov
There is an exhibition in Frye Art Museum in Seattle that somehow aligns with
the article. Worth checking out if you are in the area.

[https://fryemuseum.org/exhibition/6863/](https://fryemuseum.org/exhibition/6863/)

------
jpatokal
Tangential aside, but I have to admit that "You Do You: How to Be Who You Are
and Use What You’ve Got to Get What You Want" is a perversely brilliant title:
20 single-syllable words strung up into a staccato yet cohesive whole.

------
diimdeep
Yes we are Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement in age of aspirational
narcissism.

------
emmelaich
(January 2018)

