What?

So I read this book called The Subtle Art of not Giving a Fuck. Hats off, it's one of the greatest books invented. Honestly, it might even top The Mom Test. One thing in the book caught my eye, and it's a core part of my philosophy.

Nobody's special.

Here, read this excerpt:

• "Sometime in the 1960s, developing “high self-esteem”—having positive thoughts and feelings about oneself—became all the rage in psychology. Research found that people who thought highly about themselves generally performed better and caused fewer problems. Many researchers and policymakers at the time came to believe that raising a population’s self- esteem could lead to some tangible social benefits: lower crime, better academic records, greater employment, lower budget deficits. As a result, beginning in the next decade, the 1970s, self-esteem practices began to be taught to parents, emphasized by therapists, politicians, and teachers, and instituted into educational policy. Grade inflation, for example, was implemented to make low-achieving kids feel better about their lack of achievement. Participation awards and bogus trophies were invented for any number of mundane and expected activities. Kids were given inane homework assignments, like writing down all the reasons why they thought they were special, or the five things they liked most about themselves. Pastors and ministers told their congregations that they were each uniquely special in God’s eyes, and were destined to excel and not be average. Business and motivational seminars cropped up chanting the same paradoxical mantra: every single one of us can be exceptional and massively successful. But it’s a generation later and the data is in: we’re not all exceptional. It turns out that merely feeling good about yourself doesn’t really mean anything unless you have a good reason to feel good about yourself. It turns out that adversity and failure are actually useful and even necessary for developing strong-minded and successful adults. It turns out that teaching people to believe they’re exceptional and to feel good about themselves no matter what doesn’t lead to a population full of Bill Gateses and Martin Luther Kings. It leads to a population full of Jimmys"

You see, this makes a lot of sense if you think about it, right? It's illogical. Influence in a static world is necessarily zero-sum - for someone else to become popular and exceptional mean that another person must be less popular. In fact, the average person lives a mediocre life, and most of us will not end up living a top 0.1% life. So, what can we do? Well, there's three reactions to this news:

1. You go and strive for living, hoping to be in that top 0.1%, but ultimately fail and end up dying, unable to please everyone (and also just not lucky enough).
2. Your ego is too much. You believe that you've been "wronged", so you go and try to be in the bottom 0.1% (which, is admittedly a lot easier), and get a high off other people's voes to your state, as they pity you.
3. You accept the fact that life is pointless, and that eventually, we will all die and in 670 years, nothing we make will be significant. This lowers the burden on you to "overachieve" a lot, in fact, it's what I personally believe in. Instead of trying to compete against others for influence, you simply just live a happy life, cherishing the ordinary things that matter whilst chasing your passions.

In fact, my personal take on this issue is that even though to others, your life might not mean much, why the fuck do you care? It's YOUR life no? Live it how you want, find love, find your calling, and maybe if you're lucky and want it enough, you'll end up in that envied 0.1%.

This way, you're the underdog, and as someone who has watched plenty of competitive games, the underdog always wins. And you know what, nobody's probably reading this blog too, but I don't give a fuck.