Interesting throughout.
“It might sound morbid, but it’s worth beginning with the end in mind. Specifically, your funeral. Simply ask yourself: “What would I feel good about someone saying in my eulogy?” Think about what you’d like a family member, a close friend, a distant relative, or a co-worker, to say at your funeral.
This method helps us understand the question of “What do I value?” from other people’s perspective. At your funeral, even your co-workers would be unlikely to say, “He helped us close lots of million-dollar deals.” They’d talk about how you were as a person—your relationships, your character, your hobbies. And they’d talk about the positive impact you had on the world, not how much money you made for your employer.
Now apply what you’ve learned to your life today. What does the life you want people to remember in a few decades mean for the life you should build now? So having started in this cheerful place, let’s bring things a little closer to home.”
-Nir Eyal, “The Ultimate Guide to Unstoppable Motivation.” nirandfar.com. December 26, 2023
The problem with the eulogy method is that it starts with the assumption that the perceptions of others are what motivate you. Perhaps I am unusual in this way of thinking, but funerals are for the living. It is to help the living come to terms with a hole that has been cut into their lives by the sudden absence that a death brings. It’s not for the dead.
In most instances, funerals are a lie told to comfort the living. It focuses on the good qualities of the deceased. It ignores the bad qualities. It is based on other people’s perceptions, which are shaped by their own narratives. It has no bearing on the truth.
Let’s reframe this suggestion. Let’s imagine that you are the last in line. When you die, there will be no one to bury you. No one that remembers anything you did. There is no external source that is going to validate your choices. What will you do then, when you have no legacy, no long term significance?
That’s a lesson worth learning. Each of us is nobody, going nowhere. Even Shakespeare, and his writings, will eventually be lost in time. But, we can experience Shakespeare now. The fact that Shakespeare will be gone, in the future, does not detract from the fact that we can read what he wrote now.
I think this is true of everyone. It’s all theory of visitors. We have this moment. We have this shared time together. Can we not value the moment, without having some idea about producing something, turning an encounter into a statement about our beliefs and values? The whole eulogy frame is broken, a railroad track guiding you not to real values but to a predetermined number of ways of living that ultimately depend on projecting a persona, a false self.
Is it not better to think there isn’t a self, or at least if there is one, one without any consequence?
Open Question: Is a college education worth the expense, including tuition, opportunity costs, debt obligation, etc.?
“Using data from the expanded College Scorecard, this report ranks 4,500 colleges and universities by return on investment. A First Try at ROI: Ranking 4,500 Colleges finds that bachelor’s degrees from private colleges, on average, have higher ROI than degrees from public colleges 40 years after enrollment. Community colleges and many certificate programs have the highest returns in the short term, 10 years after enrollment, though returns from bachelor’s degrees eventually overtake those of most two-year credentials.”
–A First Try at ROI
“Bentoism was introduced in a book called This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World by Yancey Strickler that theorizes that the world operates according to a limited understanding of self-interest. We see Now Me as the only rational perspective. The other spaces are seen as emotional or nebulous when they’re seen at all.
Bentoism extends how we define self-interest. Its structure expands beyond the here and now. This is useful as a personal tool (the focus of this website) or as a way to identify new values and forms of growth (the long-term goal of Bentoism). A company like Patagonia, for example, is focused equally on the growth of a Future Us value like sustainability as they are the Now Me goal of profitability.
At the heart of Bentoism is a belief in a wider spectrum of value. Bentoism justifies new concepts and approaches to identifying, growing, and protecting value in new forms.”
– http://bentoism.org/about
“If you are disagreeing with someone you don’t trust and don’t value (e.g. because you think they’re a jerk or out to get you), your disagreement is adversarial. Your goal is to manipulate them into a desired outcome, not resolve the disagreement per se. You don’t need them to agree with you, just to do what you want.”
—David R. MacIver, “Notes on Disagreement.” drmaciver.com. June 13, 2019.
Never quite thought about it this way before, but the questions of trust and value are central to every relationship.
There are many reasons to not trust someone. If someone is selfish, they will almost always put their interests above others. If someone is incompetent, you cannot trust them to do what they say they will do. If someone doesn’t like you, then you cannot trust them to pursue your best interests.
Most of us probably don’t think about it systemically. If we decide to trust someone and they habitually or seriously violate our trust, then we don’t trust them again. If we are in a low trust environment, where we have extended trust to different people and had them violate it, then we learn to be less trusting of other people in general. Same is true when someone we have extended trust to keeps that trust and when we live in high trust environments we learn to be more trusting.
There is also the question of instrumental value. Why spend time disagreeing with people of no consequence in your life? Why spend time in an adversarial relationship with someone who doesn’t add value to your life?
Trust and value can be a useful lens to think about not only disagreements, but relationships as well.
I was reminded of this talk recently. Thought it was worth adding since the advice is timeless, even though it is relatively old. The only thing I don’t like is the use of the word, “fuck,” and the cutesy obscured spelling of it. Here’s an idea, if the word “fuck,” is inappropriate, don’t use the word. But, it is most definitely appropriate here. Get rid of the asterisk. [Hey, just realized that asterick is from the Greek aster, meaning star, which is also in disaster. Don’t know why I never thought of that before.]
If someone asks you whether you are willing to do something for free for the “exposure,” “experience,” or some other line of nonsense, tell them, “No.” If you want to volunteer your skills in your community, fine. But, don’t volunteer to work jobs for free. Doing so implies you do not believe what you do has value. Everyone does work of value. Get paid for it.
Oh, and Mike Monteiro has a new book out for pre-order via Amazon, the only way you can get it.
cafebedouin.org 