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Well, if we're going by the metric of what will be remembered for the longest time, then the most important things are to bring people together [1]; find true love [2]; and make sure you don't sell shoddy, low-grade copper. [3]

> ...make sure you don't sell shoddy, low-grade copper. [3]

I wish I could be around in 10,000 years when future historians are puzzling over a digital document that they think is of extreme historical significance, but is actually some angry Karen's 1-star Yelp review for a Cheesecake Factory in Little Rock, Arkansas.

So my nerdiness is a very particular niche and a book about certain conference on Episcopalian growing pains called Shaping Our Future happened to fit into it, like nobody I show this book to seems to find it interesting but me, haha.

But one of the talks given at that Episcopalian conference claimed, much to my shock, that we needed more little kids running around during the church service, not less... even raising the idea that maybe children's ministry breakaways were not correct. What unimaginable chaos did they intend for my solemn-leaning Catholic-raised soul? Never! But then the talk quoted a different work by Stanley Hauerwas,

> The Christian community’s openness to new life and our conviction of the sovereignty of God over that life are but two sides of the same conviction. Christians believe that we have the time in this existence to care for new life, especially as such life is dependent and vulnerable, because it is not our task to rule this world or to “make our mark on history.” We can thus take the time to live in history as God’s people who have nothing more important to do than to have and care for children.

[emphasis mine.]

So there I was running around, trying to make my mark on history, it was not going especially well heh... Really marked a big shift in my attitudes.

What if caring for new life is of no interest to someone? This advice just sounds like pigeonholing people into roles, making sure people know their place, and don't ask too many questions.

So I don't necessarily want to get too far into this because this is HN and religious discussion kind of doesn't belong here... But let me say very briefly that if someone calls themselves a Christian but mocks you for not having children, then in the selfsame breath they are mocking every modern Catholic priest; most monks, nuns, and hermits; the guy who wrote half of the New Testament; and yes, even Jesus himself. So that the community as a whole is open to New Life and that each individual person feels like they are not in a rush and could potentially parent children if that is the gift that they are called to, should never be mistaken for a requirement that each individual person must do whatever they can to have children.

> "We can thus take the time to live in history as God’s people who have nothing more important to do than to *have* and care for children."

I think this statement is very problematic, especially if you want to be inclusive to the childless or celibate. In the end, it's not an applicable answer for everyone. It's only an answer for those who have already subscribed at some level to that belief, thus I find it unsatisfactory.

You seem to be intentionally finding offense. This isn't the right forum for that.

It is not offense, it is a logical analysis of the statement. This is the perfect forum for such analysis. If it's not the correct forum for my analysis, then it is not the correct forum to be posting such statements in the first place.

I would say it is the opposite: the formula "you can thus take the time to live in history" is quite a celebration of freedom.

Very many feel a call for making a family, the said idea blesses them encouraging them to follow that call without reticence. And the formula in no way seems limited to making a family: "live in history" has the highest degree of freedom, in one direction.

I guess to each their own. I read what's written as constraint and limitation, a freedom only to those who struggle to think for themselves.

You are making no sense. The statement "consider yourself free to take the time to live in history" means "you can follow your own projects - as opposed to devoting oneself on a single task".

How can you read that «as constraint and limitation»? You cannot read a banana into a pigeon if not for performance art. What has «think[ing] for themselves» to do with the said concept?! It is fully inconsequential. According to which mysterious theorem should "consider yourself free to be active in the world" have any relation to cognitive dependence?!

It is an abuse of the statement when it's immediately contradicted by explicitly setting a specific task as "most important". I read how it was written as "don't be too ambitious, don't be worldly, have a lot of kids", a regressive viewpoint.

> pigeonholing people into roles, making sure people know their place, and don't ask too many questions.

This has to be one of the best descriptions for religion that I ever read.

What you just said has to be one of the biggest generalizations for religion that I have ever read.

Not really: that is what you do with children in the stage and amount where you have determined they are too immature to properly understand.

I wrote about pigeonholing adults into the role of child caregiver, constraining their opportunities to do something else with their life. What they quoted applied to adults, not children.

And I made instead a clear statement that it «applies» to those which are considered children.

I am not following. Are you talking about pigeonholing adults who you think lesser of, or actual children?

> Never!

Note that some other traditions of gatherings do have children running around during the service... It is like being a point inside an area of brownian motion. Yes, it does not facilitate - but it more mirrors the reality of being in the world, "«unimaginable chaos»" and nonetheless ("nobody told you you will practice in natural lab conditions"). The children would make a smoothed progress from natural encounter to discipline (of course meaning self-discipline).

Note also that the suggestion was about chaos in the «service», not in the monastery.

Agree that children add life to the service, there is also something to be said for giving the parents a break from having to worry about their kids.

So, kids in the main service for the first half, and to "kids church" for the second half.

> It means I'm done climbing the corporate ladder. It means I can work just hard enough to pay the bills at my day job, while leaving ample free time to engage with creative pursuits that satisfy me.

Not so fast there buddy.

The reason for climbing corporate ladders is to enrich your own life and give you more wealth, which can make your life far more comfortable and gain you respect and recognition amongst peers when it is most valuable: while you are alive.

Even if you could be remembered all throughout time and even past the heat death of the universe, it would be pointless because you are dead and cannot experience this fame. You wouldn’t care either way, that’s what makes death so final.

If you are not careful, you could just end up as a wage slave contributing to the rise of someone else’s awesome life. And then you can experience the pain of being forgotten when it hurts the most: while you are still alive. You won’t have to wait till the heat death of the universe to finally be forgotten, people can just stop giving a shit about you right now. Keep climbing.

> The reason for climbing corporate ladders is to enrich your own life and give you more wealth, which can make your life far more comfortable and gain you respect and recognition amongst peers...

But that's the thing- I don't actually need any of those things. My upper-middle class life is already comfortable. My peers already respect me. Sure, there could always be more money and respect, but that would always be the case, no matter how high I climb. There will always be someone with more money and respect than I have. There is no "Final Boss". Even Elon Musk (currently the world's richest person) probably compares himself with historical figures whose wealth would put his to shame (Alexander The Great, Mansa Musa, Marcus Licinius Crassus, etc.).

It's like the old (and probably apocryphal) story of the conversation between Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut [1]. I have something the ladder climbers will never have- enough. I can either continue deferring happiness until I reach the next rung of the ladder (and there's always another rung), or I can decline to climb at all and choose happiness today, right now.

1. https://alearningaday.blog/2019/06/04/joseph-heller-and-enou...

> My upper-middle class life is already comfortable.

That’s pretty typical. One says that money or status doesn’t matter. Then you prod them and it specifically doesn’t matter to get more of it—to the person that already has more of it than most people.

Yesterday I drove out into the Arizona desert and gazed upon the stars. I didn’t think about my non-mortgage debt (because I have none); I didn’t worry about my interpersonal relationships at my job (because I have so much seniority now that I don’t have to worry about my boss being a complete asshole); I didn’t worry about what people might think of me (because I have a large social network and in fact I am meeting some friends for dinner right after this stargazing session); I didn’t worry about comparing myself to my peers (because they already respect me and my accomplishments/family/prestige). Then I stayed there for a good fifteen minutes, gazing at the stars, thinking about the vastness of the cosmos and conflated me having satisfied all my material needs, my close relationship needs, and my peer-respect needs with having gotten insight into the meaning of life.

In that moment I was enlightened.

This is great.

I'm struggling to decide whether or not this is sarcasm, because...

>Not so fast there buddy.

... I feel the urge to tell you the same.

>The reason for climbing corporate ladders is to enrich your own life and give you more wealth, which can make your life far more comfortable and gain you respect and recognition amongst peers when it is most valuable: while you are alive.

It sounds like "respect and recognition amongst peers" is more important to you (which is fine btw, no judgement) than it is to OP, but most of your post seems to suggest that that's where OP should be placing their importance. In point of fact, it sounds like they have already determined what is important to them, have worked to achieve it and are happy with where they're at.

>If you are not careful, you could just end up as a wage slave contributing to the rise of someone else’s awesome life.

... so? I don't mean to speak for OP with the comment I'm about to make, but for me, I don't care. As long as I can pay my bills, and then have enough money for my creative and extracurricular endeavors, then I'm perfectly happy. I don't care if that means that my position somewhere on the career ladder means that someone else is having a more "awesome" life than me somewhere else, because they're truly not. Their life is theirs, mine is mine, and I'm happy with mine. Hell, I'd even call mine "awesome".

>And then you can experience the pain of being forgotten when it hurts the most: while you are still alive. You won’t have to wait till the heat death of the universe to finally be forgotten, people can just stop giving a shit about you right now. Keep climbing.

But see for me (and maybe OP? who knows?), I don't care about being recognized by my professional peers. I care about my family, my friends, and the people involved in my creative (non-work) pursuits. And those are people who I know will never give a shit where I've climbed on a corporate ladder.

Speaking as the OP, I'd agree with what you've said.

I'd also argue that @xwdv's comment implies that I'm destined to be a wage slave whether I climb the ladder or not.

Whenever someone says money doesn't matter, ask them to take them up on their offer. They always refuse. These high minded principles sound great in theory, but don't work in practice or just words. Even if existence is small and fleeting, having stuff, status, and wealth still feels good.

It did not seem like that was the message? More just identifying a point where needs are met?

> Whenever someone says money doesn't matter...

Are you claiming that's what I said? Because I'm searching my posts for the phrase "money doesn't matter" and am coming up empty.

I was replying to "xwdv" not you

It's strange and slightly ironic to see this topic be discussed between someone with "richies" and another with "pauper" in their name.

Thanks for the lol, have my upvote.

The reason for climbing corporate ladders is to [... and] gain you respect and recognition amongst peers when it is most valuable: while you are alive.

"Peers", maybe but that just means "other people who value climbing corporate ladders" - who tend to be quite superficial people.

Hah. Some decades in now, the people I remember most have been anything but climbers. They were just here near me and the others they cared about. If being remembered is your motivation, you don't need to go anywhere.

In fact, you're probably climbing away from the people who already recognize and respect you best already.

Nobody will remember:

- Your salary

- Your fancy title

- How ‘busy’ you were

- How stressed you were

- How many hours you worked

People will remember:

- The giant monoliths you have erected to your own majesty

- Poems about the monoliths, or at least a few of the good lines

-Tim Carmody (tweet)

If you ask me, it is not about being remembered. It is about actual effect one has on the world. Some actions have tendencies to influence the world in certain ways, which we can often recognize. To do ones best to improve things does not mean to do only things others might remember. It is a far greater set of actions than that.

Relatedly, the idea that the notion of a 'self' is an illusion is similarly liberating. It takes work to remind yourself (our vocabulary doesn't help!) that this is the case, just as it takes work to remind yourself that your vision is blinded in the area where your optic nerve pokes through your eye. But there it is.

Plenty has been written about this, dating back centuries. The best distillation of it I found is in "Losing Ourselves" by Jay Garfield[0]

Both of these realizations have impressed upon me the importance of living in the moment. Of being there for others who are in need. Of trying to make the experience we all share here a bit better. Because that's all we have - the here and now.

[0]https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59576734-losing-ourselve...

I don't really understand this concept. I had my cofounder quote Alan Watts to me with that same thing. An illusion implies that someone is being fooled. Who is that someone, if there is no self?

Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby?

Personally, it seems to me that our concepts of morality and existence are just a bunch of wordplay, and the reason some question sounds "mystical" is because we omit a clause. For example, rather than saying "A should B" you should say "If A wants C to happen, then A should B". And that can be much more easily defined. Otherwise, "objective morality" makes as much sense as "objective sense of humor". Can a joke be "objectively funny" if almost no one laughs at it?

> Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby?

I'm not sure how the above follows from the illusion of 'self'. Despite the self being an illusion, we're still persons, and thus distinct from rocks, and everything else, including other persons.

The illusion is that there's a subject at the center of experience. I.e., we don't sense that we're identical to experience, we feel that we're having an experience. That there's some locus of control, independent of the rest of our body, including our brain, that's steering the ship. That's the illusion.

> Are we supposed to believe that there is no separation between us and a bunch of rocks nearby?

No, but our consciousness is an illusion. What separates us from other animals is how hyper-developed our prefrontal cortex is, and the sense of "future" and cause-and-effect.

I like to think that consciousness is just a side-effect of this advanced survival system. A bug, if you will. Consciousness is just a weird artefact of a biological system that has gone self-aware.

Here's a philosophical nerd snipe: we're aware of our physical limitations (i.e. our eyes can only see a limited range of wavelengths, we have a blind spot, etc.). What are the limitations of our consciousness? Our self-awareness blind spots?

We need to stop doing things we want to do and start doing other things we want to do.

I don't see life as a way to be remembered. I see life as a way to enjoy yourself and help others enjoy themselves. Following that train of thought, doing something that betters more people's lives is an arguably positive thing and many of the ways of helping others better their lives require lots of work. Who cares if no one is around after the heat death of the universe. People are alive now.

Many people's lives are pretty nice now, especially compared to say 150+ years ago where people had little time for leisure because they had to farm all day or clean clothing all day and cook.

I can certainly imagine we'll get the post scarcity world where even more people will have all their basic needs met. I'd like to be small part of helping to get us there whether or not anyone remembers me. And, I'd go even further, it's better than a life of "not giving a fuck because nothing matters".

"not giving a fuck because nothing matters" to me means you can murder people because nothing matters. It's all just space dust so who cares if you rearrange that pile of space dust from a thinking feeling person into a pile a goo. I don't buy into that.

> "not giving a fuck because nothing matters" to me means you can murder people because nothing matters

I don't think that's true. I've lived like nothing matters for most of my adult life, yet I have no desire nor stomach to hurt people on purpose.

It's like that misbelief religious people have about atheism: if there's no God, there's no ethics. That's completely wrong. Believing that nothing matters doesn't turn me into a psychopath.

I'm also atheist. But if I take the position that nothing matters then I mean that, nothing matters, that includes the suffering of others. If you disagree then like me, you agree something actually matters.

If you read my other comments in this thread, you'll find we're largely in agreement.

So are you saying you do things just so people remember you?

I wonder where would we as a species be if Newton or Einstein or Steve Jobs and a million others who contributed their little might to advancing our species forward thought the same?

There is some irony there in that it seems Steve Jobs did in fact do a lot to specifically be remembered, since we now have people ranking him in the same sentence as Newton or Einstein despite essentially being a semi-luxury good salesman.

I actually wonder if Steve Jobs will be remembered hundreds of years in the future. I have less doubts about Newton and Einstein, but Jobs... in the grand scheme of things, his contributions seem trivial. Not to diminish what they mean to us a decade after his death, but hundreds of years down the road?

> So are you saying you do things just so people remember you?

No, that's the opposite of what I'm saying.

> I wonder where would we as a species be if Newton or Einstein or Steve Jobs and a million others who contributed their little might to advancing our species forward thought the same?

Is my life better because those people did what they did? Absolutely. Would I be sad if they hadn't existed, or had lived a less noteworthy life? Probably not, because I wouldn't know any better.

If you Google "Who was the smartest person in history?", you'll probably encounter the name William James Sidis, who reportedly had taught himself multiple languages (and invented another) by the age of 8. In 1925 he wrote a book called "The Animate and the Inanimate", which (among other things) predicted the existence of black holes almost 15 years before Einstein did. And yet, we'll never know what ground-breaking work he could have done or advancements he could have made.

Because he chose to live a life of solitude, and died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 46.

Imagine for a minute that I could travel to an alternate universe, one where Sidis became the next Newton and made incredible discoveries that advanced the course of human knowledge and contributed to countless new discoveries to which I bore witness. I might be more depressed as a result, if I saw how much better off humanity's lot was. But imagine if I saw that we'd be worse off. Maybe Sidis would have discovered scientific principles which would have been usurped by Hitler or the like to build weapons that made the atom bomb looks like a child's toy, and which humanity used to destroy itself. If that's what I saw in this alternate universe, I'd be happier since I'd know that we had avoided that fate. Odds are, his contributions would have been a bit of a mixed bag.

But it doesn't matter, because I can't mourn what I can't see.

The answer to "where will we as a species be?" is (eventually) "consigned to the dustbin of history". We can make every effort to be the next Newton or Einstein or Steve Jobs. And if we make someone else's life more comfortable or interesting or fun or whatever in the meantime, I'd argue that's a worthy pursuit.

But re-read that Carl Sagan quote I linked to earlier [1], and think about how insignificant their contributions were in the grand scheme of things. I hope they enjoyed themselves while they were alive. Because now that they're gone, the clock is ticking on their legacy. Think of the most famous person you can (Jesus, Gandhi, etc.), and know that there will come a day when someone will utter that person's name for the last time.

You don't owe the future of humanity anything. Nor did Newton, Einstein, or Jobs. That hypothetical future humanity doesn't even exist yet, and given our trajectory as a species, it's almost hubris to assume that they will.

1. https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

Your post really intrigued me and now I have to read the book. If anyone else wants to read it as well, it’s available in multiple formats from the internet archive:

https://archive.org/details/TheAnimateAndTheInanimate.W.J.Si...

I don’t buy it personally. The logic you give to suggest we don’t have a responsibility to help others seems like it would also just as well imply we can feel free to hurt others, and I disagree with that.

Finally, within the frame of our social existence: we enjoy a lot of benefits that we inherit from our ancestors and I think it’s our responsibility to pay that forward to future generations. We should maintain what we have inherited and if possible improve the state of things as well. But, of course, we should also be concerned with our personal enjoyment as well.

> ...seems like it would also just as well imply we can feel free to hurt others, and I disagree with that.

I would disagree with that as well. I'd simply argue that the reason why we shouldn't feel free to hurt others is because we likely wouldn't want others to hurt us, and their feelings are just as valid as ours.

But I’d also like others to do what they can to help society.

I've got a quote (some would say a cliché?) for most situations, including this one:

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

If people "come alive" by helping society, then that's great. But "helping society" can be defined in many ways, big and small. If someone's definition of "helping society" is being a street busker and lifting someone's spirit with their music, who am I to judge?

maybe he wasn't as smart as claimed to be. Any of the 18th to early 20th century mathematics or physics greats can easily lay claim to that title.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to what is more important for you as opposed to what others think should be more important for you. We are nothing but our choices and experiences that come out of those. That is how I try to live my life despite the weird expectations the community I come from has from me. I simply don't care about what others think and that is just an incredible feeling.

> so why play?

Projected or perceived legacy after passing is correlated with level of consumption while alive.

Always has and always will be. Roman Emperors, Kings etc. they got to be on coins and have monuments erected after them after their death, AND at the same time they were the person with the most conspicous consumption in the whole country while still alive.

Case in point: Queen Elizabeth II.

Consumption seems like a never-ending treadmill of its own. I'm quite the foodie, but I've made peace with the fact that there will always be more restaurants out there than I can possibly hope to dine at during my lifetime. You could say the same thing about music, art, etc.

It's like Bud Fox said in the movie "Wall Street"- "How many yachts can you water-ski behind?"

Sure but it's always better to be at the frontier of consumption and if you are at the frotier then it becomes to push it forward in order to consume a revised and improved version of the stuff you like, or create something that doesn't exist but that in your mind you'd enjoy using.

Or you can... understand the nature of the hedonic treadmill, and choose to jump off, instead of spending ever more energy running in place, forever.

1. consume product 2. anticipate release of next product. 3. GOTO 1

I don't see how that answers the question. Or are you saying that the answer is "to consume a lot"?

To consume a lot of high quality things and experiences.

Maybe you know something I don't, but consumption never did the trick for me. And believe me, I've engaged in some pretty hard-core consumption. Long-term travel, drugs and alcohol, material possessions, sex, etc. I'll grant you that all of it resulted in temporary elation, but none of it resulted in long-term contentment.

I hope you have better luck with it than I did. But I doubt my luck would change if I simply tried consuming even harder.

You have simply been alive for too long. Or are paying too much attention to the wider scope. One of the two or a combination of the two.

In countries where there is a fast turnover such as sub-saharn Africa, people don't have such problems. They get out in the morning trying to get more and they die way before they hit the wall of diminishing returns and for sure way before start wondering about the wider scope.

With regards to wondering too much about the wider scope it becomes perfectly clear that having a high IQ isn't always an advantage. You want to be the luckiest dumbass to achieve both maximum consumption and the ability to never ever start pondering concepts such as the wider scope or any of the unsolvable phylosphical questions

Doing things to be remembered is like putting the cart before the horse. People who we remember and cherish for what they left behind did whatever they did from a complete different context, they were most likely natural at what they did and they very likely enjoyed every moment of it and working hard wasn’t imposed from the outside.

This hit me while wandering around Wells Cathedral (Somerset, UK). There are marble memorials up on the walls with people's names on them.

To be able to afford this after your death, you'd have to be rich and famous (or highly connected to the clergy, I guess). The cathedral has been there for a few hundred years, and there are a few hundred names, so roughly speaking about 25 people in each generation got their names up there. From a population of somewhere between 250K-500K (at a rough guess - there's ~500 churches in the diocese), so 1 in 10,000 people at best, maybe.

I had no idea who any of them were. Still don't. The tiny fraction of wildly successful people who could afford to have their names immortalised in marble are still forgotten.

I will be forgotten. Nothing matters.