Comment by mickdaisy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mickdaisy | Hacker News Reader

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I can try; I have yet to nail down a concise articulation of these, but here's my swing at it:

collectiveOwnership() would describe the process of the product gradually going from a dictatorship (I am the one who controls the code and direction) to democracy (all participants control the code and direction) as the community guidelines, culture, automated moderation, human moderation, and technical details of decentralized ownership are ironed out. This way we protect ourselves against any minority of stakeholders from having the power to pull a Cambridge Analytica and sell out the users and their data, or allow advertisers to dictate what's acceptable and subject LGBTQ+ creators to accidental censorship a la YouTube. If we can recursively create organizations that follow this model, I'm hopeful that people will gradually begin to expect and demand socially sustainable business models to drive the products that they use.

selfActualize() would describe the process of becoming all that we can be, which is the focus of Abraham Maslow's Motivation and Personality. Carl Rogers and Kurt Goldstein also covered it, but I think Maslow's take is the most thought-provoking. If you want some notes on his work, I'd be happy to share (they're linked in the post I shared here). Here's a wiki on it for a concise take: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization

Sticking that at the end of the main() method was my way of saying that I'll feel prepared to be selfish as soon as I've had some impact on the bigger picture.

This is just a personal difference of philosophy but I feel obliged to make the case that it isn’t self actualization that is desirable necessarily. I make that case because you yourself have made the claim that it is selfish, that your priority should be to make the world a better place first (in so much that can be defined).

What can be grasped, judging from the premise that the world has suffering and pain, and at times that becomes too much to bear for people (in the form of tragedy), but also in the form of malevolence. Tragedy being something that can be strived to overcome because after all life has limitation and constraints - the goal is to live in spite of those constraints in an effort to make things better. Or rather, to live with your aim up rather than degenerate down into malevolence.

It isn’t self actualization that is concerned, it’s about aiming towards something better across many dimensions. Self actualization is a piece of it, but isn’t the whole point. You might say it begins with the self rather that out in the world. Reduce your own propensity for malevolence. Tell yourself the truth and take care of yourself to put yourself together so to speak. When you are capable enough that you have made habits out of this with ease, your capacity grows outward.

Maybe you are taking care of your home more, maybe you feel like you have enough of your cup filled that you can take care of the attention you give to your children or the kind of attention and education. Perhaps you have enough capacity that you might expand your center out into the community and volunteer, start a business, give back to open source, join a community, lead even.

It isn’t necessarily that these are things are good by the nature of emulation (I.e. a good person does these things) it is a matter of what you value. What you value is directly observable by the evidence of your attention to those dimensions of life.

I don't disagree with anything you've said... I'm just a lousy communicator. I should have been clearer: I don't think self-actualizing is selfish, in fact I think for most people, self-actualization requires you to be unselfish. Maybe I can revise my statement to clarify:

"Sticking that at the end of the main() method was my way of saying that I won't feel self-actualized until I've had some impact on the bigger picture."

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