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Comment by dvh1990 | Hacker News Reader

dvh1990

Reading through the various comments, I wonder what happened to good old-fashioned ambition. Other than my post, all I can see are "it's ok, I feel the same way, don't change" replies.

We used to admire our heroes and try to emulate them, and if fortunate enough, come as close to them as our talents and circumstances would allow. And we did that through hard work, through having lofty goals and working hard to achieve them. Yes, many failed to reach their goals, but ambition and hard work is what built this species, this civilization.

Why are we forsaking that in favor of a "you don't have to try so hard, it's ok to be mediocre" mindset?

Why did we stop trying?

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    Why are we forsaking that in favor of a "you 
    don't have to try so hard, it's ok to be 
    mediocre" mindset?

One reason many feel is the fact that being "the best" often just means making some crappy corporation richer; when you start to feel that the whole system kind of sucks it gets harder to care about accomplishing things within it.

I grew up wanting to be a game developer, but what would that mean in a practical sense? Working 80 hours a week and at the end of the day I'm just making Microsoft or Activision or somebody richer? Even John Freaking Carmack eventually wound up working for Facebook.

Or going solo, and risking my ability to feed/house myself if things don't work out? Or working 100 hours a week because I'm already working 40-50 at a day job?

Ultimately as we get older those kinds of achievements tend to mean less to us than human connections.

If you hate this kind of thinking and/or feel it's wrong, I'm not here to change your mind. Just mentioning why some feel those kinds of ways.

I think it's perfectly fine to say "I'm happy where I am, I don't want more".

But that's not the OPs sentiment. I think that deep inside OP feels entitled to higher achievements than they have been able to reach, and are resentful of the fact that life hasn't been unfolding properly for a person of their talent.

To that I say, how long are you going to nurse your ambition without getting up and doing something about it?

I think ambition is motivated by a variety of things, one of which, is by comparing oneself (or having others compare them) to the accomplishments of others. While OP is pretty critical of themselves, they’re also reflecting and asking for feedback. Sounds like they would like to be more ambitious, but need some self-confidence.

To your point, I agree with you that advice like “be true to who you are, don’t change” may be the exact type of advice to where someone would be content with where they are, instead of striving to grow and try something new.

> One reason many feel is the fact that being "the best" often just means making some crappy corporation richer; when you start to feel that the whole system kind of sucks it gets harder to care about accomplishing things within it.

Ok, google makes billions and you make millions. that is a fine compromise by me.

> Working 80 hours a week and at the end of the day I'm just making Microsoft or Activision or somebody richer? Even John Freaking Carmack eventually wound up working for Facebook.

It appears you forgot the original motivation. You wanted to make games. That’s what you’d be doing besides “making a corporation richer”.

Similarly, Carmack is helping to shape the future of VR on the daily. I’m sure that’s why he does it and couldn’t care less how much money any corporation is making based on that.

People who want to make games usually want to be (co-)authors of the game and not just cogs in an organization with little to no to say about what the game should be like.

Nothing has changed. I admire lots of people but I don’t want to pay the price needed to achieve similar results. You have to love or at least tolerate the struggle to get results. So pick the struggles you want to have. Don’t pick the results you want to achieve and try to do the work needed. It won’t work.

This is such a callous take. OP has clearly spent time doing just that, and has reached a point where any rational agent would question the heuristic and seek advice. Without rational justification the heuristic is nothing other than dogma.

This could be called callous, yes, but I urge you to re-read the post. The OP didn't even complete his degree, and haven't done any other worthwhile project that requires some tenacity.

trying too hard is seen as uncool. We're kinda in an anti-work era in which the notion of having to work too hard or too long at things, is shunned upon.

There's more of us than of you. Fuck off, Achilles.

/s - of course.

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