A philosophical view on self-improvement [X-post TRP]

X-post because the discussions here are often different/better.

I stumbled upon a good Youtube Channel recently (Academy of Ideas) which explores and explains several of history’s greatest philosophies. In this short post, I’m going to link two video’s to the brand of self-improvement preached here at TRP: Becoming the best version of yourself. These videos position the pursuit of excellence as a meaningful way to live your life and provide abstract principles to support this lifestyle.

Creativity and the pursuit of excellence

One of philosophy’s main questions is: How should I live my life?

Pursuit of happiness (Hedonism)
Pursuit of excellence

Aristotle argues against hedonism as a path because it’s one in slave of your animal desires. Instead human beings should pursuit a life of excellence and fulfil their ultimate function.

So what perfection should we pursuit? If we consider creativity to be the uniquely human function, then the perfection of creativity would be a guideline in living your life. Have no passions to explore your creativity? Then design your own life itself (self-improvement) and become a work of art. Such a person has to discard the expectations of society and instead erect his own ideals to pursuit and attain. To let this creative potential atrophy is to live a life of willing slavery and normalcy… which is sadly all too common.

Introduction to Nietzsche

This brings us to Nietzsche, who regarded philosophy as a means to facilitate the emergence of the ‘higher man’; One who rises above the uniform masses of society. The higher man is characterised by a selection of powerful (competing) drives resulting in an inner chaos. His challenge is to structure his chaos and pursue an idealised version of himself.

His path is to abandon the herd, it’s distractions and limitations, and thereby free his mind to ponder life’s questions. This pondering will ultimately lead the higher man to realise that ‘God is dead’ and that life and suffering is objectively meaningless.

However, as Nietzsche explains, there is no objective truth anyway… So why cling to an objective meaning of life? Instead derive meaning from the pursuit of your idealised self. Your suffering is no longer meaningless, but instead offers opportunities of growth and learning.

[–][deleted] 9 years ago* (14 children) | Copy Link

[–]theredpill101 7 points8 points9 points 9 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

The question you pose is the question to be asked. Why live?

I feel that, at the most base levels of TRP, that is the question you are forced to ask yourself. Self-improvement is great. Educating yourself is great. Chasing women is great. Not chasing women is great.

But why do we do these things? What is the higher goal we are trying to achieve?

You won't have big muscles forever. You won't chase women forever. There is no prize for reading the most books. You receive no trophy for having the most sex. So what is the point of it all?

This question is one for the ages - it has scared most everyone. Most philosophers have thought about it and attempted to find a suitable answer.

Biologically, we are here to reproduce and pass on our genes (you may include raising the children you produce in this category).

Economically, we are here to work, pay taxes, and buy things.

But your reasons for being here personally, emotionally, and spiritually are up to you.

On your bad days, you'll find no reason to be here at all. Suicide may seem a perfectly reasonable action. After all - no matter what we accomplish, given enough time the universe itself will die and everything we have ever achieved will vanish, and there is nothing we can do about that.

On your good days, you'll have your mission, and these events are the far and distant future will never occur to you. You will work towards your goals, whatever they may be, and you will feel fulfilled in so doing.

Ultimately, much of how we perceive ourselves and our lives has to do with our attitude towards it. Chemicals in the brain play a large role, to be sure, but your own attitude and take on life plays a large role as well.

Albert Camus wrote an essay, the Myth of Sisyphus, which I would recommend (despite how dry it is). He wrote it in response to the Absurd movement - people who experienced WWII and concluded that there can be no God, because a just and loving God would not have allowed WWII and its various atrocities to occur. Reasoning that God did not exist, many people had their reason for existing spiritually sucked out from under them. Suicide was the answer for some of these people.

Camus ends up concluding that we should not commit suicide because, and I'm fumbling for words here, life is meant to be lived. Each of us perceives and experiences life in a different way, and one of our goals should be to complete as much of the human experience as we possibly can.

Feel all the emotions, experience all the adrenalin rushes, love everyone, hate everyone, to know embarrassment, betrayal, and pain, and so on. To commit suicide would be to cut our most intimate moments with the universe short.

By the end of his essay, Camus finally addresses the Greek myth of Sisyphus - a man who has insulted the gods, and whose punishment is to push a rock up a hill, only to see it roll down into another valley, and push it back up again, for the rest of eternity. Camus concludes that Sisyphus is victorious in this punishment not when he manages to get the boulder the top of the hill, but when he decides to walk back down to the bottom and start pushing the boulder again.

In essence: our victory is not in our achievements, but in choosing to shoulder new burdens each time we cast off old burdens.

OP's post brought to my mind a scene from Chuck Palahniuk's book Fight Club:

Tyler Durden, standing in the basement of Lou's Tavern, addresses the men gathered there to fight. He says to them:

"We're the middle children of history. Our generation has no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives."

I don't have any answers to give to that. I will say that I agree with /u/asd100 where he wrote:

And we really should be above that.

But I don't know where we go to achieve that.

[–][deleted] 9 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 9 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 9 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 9 years ago* (4 children) | Copy Link

People hate nihilism, especially fired up self improvement idealist.(they can only see death beyond their fired up pursuit)

Delusions of grandeurs are fine iin a ordinary social context, but offensive and dihonest from a ontological standpoint. It's not the rat race I detest, but the arrogance in what fundamentally is just a copping mechanism with meaningless. Asceticism is just a cognitive rat race. So to anser your question, absolutely not, both ghandy and donald trump are masturbating, they just use different methods more or less popular. Now in that context I would like to add the justin bieber(just because he is famous for no reason at all but being cute), enjoy unapologetically life, not as a pursuit of happiness, but in a frame of mind that it would be a fools errand to have demand, expectations or to want something unrealistic. You can not will life into something intentionally, you can only act and hope that the dominos fall as you predicted. But there are to man. Zen(real traditional zen) was in line with this approach of letting go, realising your limited ability to change the world and being fine with it, but they also had a arrogance of the to cool for school standing on the sidelines and just poking fun at everyone else(that is the point fundamentally of koans). I know I am guilty of that sin as well trough my post but I just can't help it when faces with german idealism in a context of pragmatism like TRP.

Your HST, quote is excellent to drive my point home, you have been given a good car, you can protect it, never drive it out of the garage so you don't scrape it, some polsih it, some tune it, they take it to expos a few actually win and brag about it, some are just boring enough to just comute with it . Some reject the car and it+s self indulgence and never drive it(because then they can feel good about protecting the enviroment and bragging about that).

I think the best you can do is just enjoy it, enjoy the drive, the road, enjoy the ride regardless of what you do with it as a purpose whatever the B desitination may be, the time spent there is more important, if you don't enjoy the car your doing it wrong, you don't deserve it and your just jumping from validation to validation regardless of it's source.

[–][deleted] 9 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

Can I go so far as to call it pragmatic hedonism in the here and now?

I would say hedonism implies a pursuit. The idea is to not have a intrinsic rule to live by. You just make conscious decisions for optimal outcomes. Some are to change exercise routines, some are to try out a LTR, some are to just fix a bad week with a long hedonistic weekend. Puting context before concept is crucial.

My interpretation of such a lifestyle is too conservative and risk averse.

the decisions you take make it so, mine was very self destructive and wild until I consciously put the breaks on because it was becoming unstatisfiying in the long term.

I'd rather take my car off road and try to make some interesting detours.

that is the thing, you do, not because of a systemic requirement but because you decide you want that.

I don't blindly accept limitations of gender/class/race/ability but rather explore my options anyw

I agree that sometimes you need unsustain idealism or abition to jump over some hurdles. My "system" has not "push" for the individual.

I'm competing with myself rather than others with the ultimate goal of maximising my potential exposure to new experiences.

Actually if you want something the white guy wants you are using a external reference so it is like competing with others. The part about continuous improvement is very possible in this context, it just looses it's "mantra powers". You actively need to find satisfaction in working out dayly, otherwise you let go.(on the bright side you do get to change types of working out a lot)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]theredpill101 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

To give two cents on your question:

In counter argument I would like to ask if participating in the rat race is really such a terrible thing?

We would have to define what "the rat race" is. Is just working a job "the rat race?" Or is it working a job and keeping up with the Jones's?

Let me first give you my thoughts on asceticism. I studied Buddhism for many years. I ended up discarding Buddhism as a lifestyle because I felt that it prevented me from feeling human. Buddhism's key tenets require that we love everyone and everything, we hold no ill will, we don't form attachment, we discard negative emotions, and so on, all in an effort to find some sort of inner peace.

It's an ideal way to live, for some. But for me, and for many others, it is not. It precludes us from experiencing all that life has to offer with the hope of gaining a state which I already attain at various times. Why would I trade the highs and lows of life - the feelings that let me know I'm a healthy functioning human - for a melancholy maybe-above-average steady state?

Many of the relationships that I've most enjoyed have been flare-like. They flash up incredibly brightly, and then they crash and burn. For the first part, it's amazing. For the second, you pay the man (so to speak). Why would I sacrifice any of that in the name of a boring steady-state?

That, I suppose, is my gripe with asceticism. It has benefits in small doses, in short-term practice. But as far as a life is concerned? I could see myself being more interested when I'm older and more worldly, but certainly not now.

Which brings us back to your question: what is the rat race, and is it necessary?

I imagine we would all define the rat race differently. If you love your job and waking up to go to work every day, you certainly don't feel like you're a part of the rat race. If you are comfortable with the things that you have and don't feel the need to buy-buy-buy, you don't feel like you're a part of the rat race.

I would say that if you do, in your own mind, feel like you are a part of the rat race, it is a bad thing. If you work a job you hate, but can't leave because you have bills to pay, or if you feel caught up in a senseless work scheme performed in order to achieve nothing in particular, or material goods, or something you don't really want, you have made a wrong turn.

Though they may not be pillars of TRP, there are frequent mentions of the following on TRP which I support and which I would argue will remove a person from the rat race:

Minimalism - realizing that material goods do not bring you happiness, they only add clutter. Scaling back your lifestyle to something easily managed, and being satisfied with simplicity in the things you own.

Exercise - Every man deserves to know the extent of his capabilities. With a few exceptions, every man can get darn close to his peak. Exercise keeps you healthy, it garners interest from women, it improves your self-confidence.

Personal Finance - if you are in control of your finances, you are in control of your life as far as intervention from the government/law goes. If you wish to be truly independent, spend less money than you make, hold no debt, spend on things that make you happy, make a point of saving a notable percentage of your earnings.

Relationships - TRP is all about relationship building. Whether it's finding a ONS, or (much to the dismay of some) building/improving a LTR, this is the point of TRP. If you have a family that makes you happy, you remove one element of being in the rat race (performing work for no purpose). It should be said that a family can trap you in a job you hate, thereby damning you to the rat race, but that takes us back to Personal Finance and Minimalism. With the right planning and a healthy mindset, you can prevent/remove yourself from the rat race.

Travel/Experiences - It is often said, and I am a big believer, in the use of money to purchase experiences rather than material things. In 40 years, chances are you will not remember that $2500 gaming computer, or that $80k Audi, or that diamond necklace for your wife. In 40 years, you may resent having bought that house that was too big for your needs, or taking out that second mortgage to finance an SUV, or losing your valuable comic book collection in a fire.

But experiences. These are things that cannot be taken from you. 40 years from now, you're going to remember that trip to the Bahamas. You're going to remember taking a tour around Oahu. You'll remember sailing the Pacific, you'll remember the camel rides outside the Great Pyramids, you'll know the taste of the first real Chinese noodles you tasted in Guangzhou, you'll remember taking meditation lessons with Zen Buddhist monks in Japan.

Somewhat paradoxically, these experiences - which have absolutely zero worth to anyone except you - make you more appealing to others. I don't mean to say that your Audi won't get you female attention - it will. What I mean to say is that you can shell out $80k for a car (which was probably financed, enslaving you to the rat race for 5-10 years) to get the phone number of a girl who probably doesn't like you (but loves your car) - or you can spend $10k to travel Europe for a month - and meet new people who also like to travel - and then come back and tell the story and find girls attracted to you because of who you are and what you do.

I'm trying not to turn this into another novel, but to answer your question in short: the rat race is a bad thing. If you feel caught up in it you will not find any sort of happiness because a part of being in the rat race means you have failed in other aspects of your life.

[–]sheds82 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]sir_wankalot_here -1 points0 points1 point 9 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]sir_wankalot_here 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Title	A philosophical view on self-improvement [X-post TRP]
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	29
Comments	16
Date	August 24, 2014 6:57 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/AlreadyRed
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/AlreadyRed/comments/2egoyx/a_philosophical_view_on_selfimprovement_xpost_trp/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/AlreadyRed/a-philosophical-view-on-self-improvement-x-post.1124241 https://theredarchive.com/post/1124241