You should be a little careful. The odd thing about creative professionals, which includes most software developers, is that if you take Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the truth for the general population, for creative professionals this pyramid of needs is inverted.
You see, most creative professionals are profoundly unhappy people. This is because the equation for happiness is usually easy - your expectations have to be lower than your achievements. As a side note, this is why the renowned mid-life crisis happens, because that's the point in your life when you realize that many of your dreams are impossible.
But going back to creative professionals - our expectations are off the chart. It's because we've been taught that we can achieve anything, with our imagination being the limit and hard work being the currency. It's because many of us come from families of high achievers. Yes, we are profoundly unhappy because our expectations are usually much bigger than our achievements. This is the reason for why many of us are idealists, for why we want to change the world. Many of us are also atheists, but all of us want to achieve some form of immortality, therefore that's the reason for why many of us want to build things that are long lasting.
I used to say the same things as you did. You may not feel the above right now, I'm going to make the assumption that you're in your twenties, which means you've got the energy to be hopeful about the future. But take it from a 32 year old that is going through a mid-life crisis 10 years earlier (or maybe it's just a burnout episode, I don't know), but this youthful energy is going to dissipate and you're then going to feel the emptiness in your life. And I'm lucky, because I have a wife and a 4-year old whom I love very much and which represent my reason for getting up in the morning.
I was more cynical than he is at 32 when I was 14. On the one hand, I've learned to be more idealistic, but on the other hand, with how things are these days, what sort of worldview do you expect kids to learn? Since when should youth be so flagrantly ignorant as to form a worldview of sunshine and daisies while terrorism, corruption, and destructive climate change take up most of the headline space?
People have been asking this same basic question for years - heck, vast swaths of literature have been devoted to this basic question. The shortest answer I can come up with is that, if you look at it with a wide enough lens, the world fundamentally sucks. War, terror, corruption and the like are part of the human condition so as long as we exist, so will the darkness. In my mind, the key is to turn off the news, shut down a web browser and simplify, but my key likely won't work in your lock.
Have you ever read The Sun Also Rises?? Hemingway struggles with similar questions and he's a far better writer than I am!! :)
First of all here's the good news: You have been deceived! By the media!
The media is making money by reporting on "things that could kill you". It's getting more efficient at that over time, so if you do watch the news - and I implore you not to - you will start to believe the world is a bad place. That is because you will never, ever hear anything positive in the news. Because it won't sell.
For every crime in this world, there are ten million selfless acts of love. If the news reported on both equally, it'd be very boring. You'd constantly hear about somebody helping another, or putting somebody else before themselves, and you would never even get to the crimes. Not enough time.
For every murder in this world, there's a friend risking his own life for another. Or 10. We won't know. For every war, there's a million times more peace.
Look at the facts, people. Is it so hard to understand? Is propaganda, dull, dumb, and effective as it is really so hard to get around? Open your eyes, and turn off your TV, newspapers, and the associated websites.
There are three reasons why watching news is a huge waste of your time.
1 - negative bias to an extreme that is hard to imagine, as described
2 - non-actionable items. Each time you consume news in any form, ask yourself: What can I do about it? What do I have to do about it? Why did I need to know this? Am I just rubbernecking here (hint: YES, you are!)?
3 - Propaganda and lies. I used to read my local paper front to back every day. And there were a handful of reported-on news where I was an eye-witness. A demonstration, an accident involving me. And even for these harmless items, the news was just plain wrong. THIS WAS NOT WHAT HAD HAPPENED. But it was in the paper. Facts had been altered. Not even maliciously, just to make better story, or because the journalist on the ground couldn't see everything, or whatever. Now if the stories I had direct first hand knowledge of where wrong - how about all the others I knew nothing about? How accurate is that going to be? It's not.
And war propaganda. Just read up on Goebbels, every nation in the world is today doing the same things, and the patterns are so easy to spot you will wonder how you could ever miss them. All the media, particularly in the US, but also other countries, are full of it.
before that it was the threat of nuclear war, ecological collapse, and economic stagnation. before that it was the draft, violent racial injustice, and a nearly complete collapse of legitimacy of national leadership. Idealistic youts have always had reasons to be cynical. (and sadly typing up this list, I see how many of the reasons to be cynical remain powerful generation after generation)
Exactly my point! Cynicism is often well-warranted, especially if you actually have high moral ideas. What people ought to be scared of are the people who aren't cynical because they simply don't care.
> Since when should youth be so flagrantly ignorant as to form a worldview of sunshine and daisies while terrorism, corruption, and destructive climate change take up most of the headline space?
Maybe because:
1. Headlines don't equal reality. Do we live in a worse world than before, or do we just have better ways of spreading information, and that such headlines tend to sell more than more benevolent news?
2. They perhaps wouldn't be doing anything about it anyway. Many cynics tend to be complainers rather than complainers + doers. What good does it do if you're a cynic if all it does is that it makes you sit around and mope? And if you are living in a good place with good people, and you aren't out to change the world having a positive outlook might be better for you own good than worrying about people in distant lands that you don't intend to try to help anyway.
Oh I don't know. Maybe the common dismissal here on HN of any positive outlook or belief in oneself as being the result of naivete and lack of life experience. That in time they will resign themselves to realize that they are as useless as the cynic sees himself and others.
I see what you mean. It did sound a bit too inevitable and forceful, perhaps.
That said, I didn't read it as a dismissal or even outright cynicism. Rather, it seemed like a personal experienced they wanted to share as a bit of a warning. Which I think is really good, because I and many people I know feel similar looking back.
But looking back in that manner doesn't mean I don't look forward with hope. It just means that I wish I'd been a bit more careful at times about what I pursued, as I definitely feel more of a struggle in the energy department that I didn't feel a few years ago.
I think this is a good writeup and your point about expectations is spot on. That doesn't mean that we lower expectations though, that means you keep driving till you meet them - however Sisyphusian it may seem.
By the way I'm 31, married with three kids and just recently joined the software/startup world - so your send up doesn't really fit my profile. I haven't seen any dissipation of "youthful energy" yet - if anything my energy is just more and more focused as the years go by.
You see, most creative professionals are profoundly unhappy people. This is because the equation for happiness is usually easy - your expectations have to be lower than your achievements. As a side note, this is why the renowned mid-life crisis happens, because that's the point in your life when you realize that many of your dreams are impossible.
But going back to creative professionals - our expectations are off the chart. It's because we've been taught that we can achieve anything, with our imagination being the limit and hard work being the currency. It's because many of us come from families of high achievers. Yes, we are profoundly unhappy because our expectations are usually much bigger than our achievements. This is the reason for why many of us are idealists, for why we want to change the world. Many of us are also atheists, but all of us want to achieve some form of immortality, therefore that's the reason for why many of us want to build things that are long lasting.
I used to say the same things as you did. You may not feel the above right now, I'm going to make the assumption that you're in your twenties, which means you've got the energy to be hopeful about the future. But take it from a 32 year old that is going through a mid-life crisis 10 years earlier (or maybe it's just a burnout episode, I don't know), but this youthful energy is going to dissipate and you're then going to feel the emptiness in your life. And I'm lucky, because I have a wife and a 4-year old whom I love very much and which represent my reason for getting up in the morning.