There's no mediocrity there's just this illusion created by the very riches and powerful to make even more money, to create a crazy game to make us feel bad and always keep charging for the carrot.
Uh, no. There are a lot of medicore people (I'm one of them) and a few winners.
Life is a competition. Never, ever forget that! Those who are the strongest, smartest, richest, best-looking, socially-aware and most driven are the ones who will probably succeed. (There's always luck involved.) They will get the best jobs (or not have to work), the best mating opportunities, the best everything.
Every minute of every day you are not spending on improving yourself and your position in this world is wasted time. If you do not struggle, you will not succeed, period.
Now, having given you a motivational speech that a Chinese "tiger mom" would find barely adequate at best... the question is, what does this have to do with happiness and overall life satisfaction?
Well, almost nothing. Success can provide opportunities for happiness, but that actually has to be pursued on its own. And the things you need to do for happiness are often in opposition to the things you need to do for success.
What I really want people to do is to just be aware of the tradeoffs. If you want to coast through life, that's fine, as long as you have a good understanding of the costs and benefits.
>They will get the best jobs (or not have to work), the best mating opportunities, the best everything.
This is very much impossible. Above average? Probably. But then they become satiated with the above average things that they do have, get bored, adopt a new definition of "average", and wish they had the bank president's salary. The bank president wants to be president of Goldman Sachs. The president of Goldman wishes he had a wife like so-and-so's.
Ambition is fine and all, but once you start measuring your life that way there's nothing but a black hole all the way down.
>If you want to coast through life, that's fine, as long as you have a good understanding of the costs and benefits.
Same thing definitely goes with viewing life as a competition.
Of course competing is part of life. I don't conflate that with it being the existential meaning of my existence. Sneezing is part of life whether you like it or not. Is life just one big sneeze?
Oh young grasshopper! Your analogy is very flawed.
Competition defines your existence. It determines where you live, where you work, and what you eat. It has determined who you are and how you are made, for you are a product of evolution. It is woven deeply into the fabric of your existence, on a daily level as well as on geological timescales. It even determines how you think, according to some theories about how mental processes work.
You don't have to derive your existential meaning from competition, but ignore it completely at your peril.
What is this competition? What are the rules? What if I don't wish to play? When does the competition end? What is the prize when the competition ends and you are the winner?
Uh, no. There are a lot of medicore people (I'm one of them) and a few winners.
Life is a competition. Never, ever forget that! Those who are the strongest, smartest, richest, best-looking, socially-aware and most driven are the ones who will probably succeed. (There's always luck involved.) They will get the best jobs (or not have to work), the best mating opportunities, the best everything.
Every minute of every day you are not spending on improving yourself and your position in this world is wasted time. If you do not struggle, you will not succeed, period.
Now, having given you a motivational speech that a Chinese "tiger mom" would find barely adequate at best... the question is, what does this have to do with happiness and overall life satisfaction?
Well, almost nothing. Success can provide opportunities for happiness, but that actually has to be pursued on its own. And the things you need to do for happiness are often in opposition to the things you need to do for success.
What I really want people to do is to just be aware of the tradeoffs. If you want to coast through life, that's fine, as long as you have a good understanding of the costs and benefits.
But life really is a competition.