Recently I have been troubled by the following problem:
I am in college and I feel that I have been given an opportunity that very few people get. Some people are starving or homeless or without a proper education or a terrible job. I therefore see it an obligation to make the best use of my time here, so that I can maximize how productive I am later on in life. If I do my homework faster and do more things that add to my education and give me more chances in the real world out of college, rather than procrastinate, later in life I will be able to reach my goals with more facility.
So, the question is about how I maximize my time or even know if I鈥檝e reached an optimum point? If I never play computer games or socialize or do anything 鈥榝un鈥?I could be spending time better and it could get me further in life. If I learn to speed read and write faster, then I can reach higher and more ambitious goals. Now, money isn鈥檛 what concerns me. What bothers me is that it seems that last year at college I was a bit of a moron, because I spent too much of my time socializing or doing things that won鈥檛 help me outside of college. The past cannot be changed, even if I did waste my time and money when I could have made better use of my education. However, I still have the potential to change the future. I could write a book in my spare time, make a movie or do all kinds of things that will help me later on in life so that I can do what I want to do: charity, film and teaching.
How do I evaluate my opportunity costs if I want to maximize other people鈥檚 happiness as well as my own. If I want to make the most people as possible happy, I should do things now, while I have the opportunity, to be able to do better things when I鈥檓 out of college. If I waste my time now, I could very well never do anything of any significance outside college and say that I spent a load of money on an education and ended up working at McDonalds, while there are people there that didn鈥檛 have the opportunity to ever reach where I could have reached.
Now, I was told that I should reach a happy medium between making myself happy through things that are purely selfish, and helping others too. The problem is that if I minimize the time dedicated just to my happiness but not to that of others, then I can maximize the time I spend helping other people and while I鈥檓 helping them I can feel happy that I am helping them. Instead of partying, I could sacrifice that now to maximize the degree of my happiness and that of other people afterwards. If I evaluate my opportunity costs, I could either be partying with a bunch of strangers or reading Foucault and adding to my education and to my productivity. So, there is a clash between maximizing my own happiness and that of other people depending on what it is I do with my time (eg. Party or build a hospital)
Could I not consider myself a bad person if I spend my life selfishly doing things for myself and for a tiny minority that surround me instead of knowing that if I had made better choices I could have potentially gotten a job where I could have maximized the amount of happiness that other people have. And so, what should I do? Even if I do find a happy medium between partying and helping other people, it seems that I will never have done 鈥榚nough goodness鈥? When have you ever done 鈥榚nough good鈥? When can you consider yourself a success and optimize your happiness while optimizing that of other people? Isn鈥檛 it technically immoral of you if you spend your time making yourself and only the tiny minority around you happy, when you could have potentially have helped a lot of people because of the opportunities you were given that others were not given?
Almost all human beings want to maximize the amount of goodness they do and maximize everyone鈥檚 happiness, therefore adding meaning to their lives and to other people鈥檚 lives. This is a complex, multifaceted question.
I need advice in order to better myself. I don鈥檛 want to change the world all on my own, but I want to maximize the degree to which I can make the earth a better place.
If you鈥檝e read this far, I thank you greatly. I will be surprised if I get any responses to this except words of cruelty and complaint.
(sorry to not have been concise)
If being morally correct and maximizing happiness are the meaning of life, how do you reach your potential?
I really like what I hear from you. You sound to me like a model citizen and an inspiration. Before I read the details of your question I was going to respond simply that I have not done so well at being morally correct, but I try and evaluate what I do today, not bind myself down in remorse about my past mistakes. I can see that your question is more in depth than that answer, but you can certainly apply it to your guilt over your earlier college behavior. We are all learning, and not perfect.
When I was 5 they made me a philosopher in kindergarten. My teachers kept sending home reports saying %26quot;Hiram fails to use time wisely.%26quot; To this day I do not know how a 5 year old uses time foolishly.
My life has in no way been a model for efficiency. I have wasted a great deal of my time on Earth and it is a shame I have to bear dilligently.
But a word about selfish versus self-lessness. I believe that in forgetting ourselves in good work we can attain the highest joy and fulfillment, but I do not think that %26quot;being for self%26quot; and %26quot;being for others%26quot; are opposites.
Here is how I see the opposites:
The ego-centric walk around with a giant rubber stamper with his or her name on it. He/she goes around stamping everything they see %26quot;Fred%26quot; built this hospital %26quot;Betty%26quot; built this school, %26quot;Ego%26quot; built this library. When someone reaches out to the ego-centric person for help they both fall over. ego-centric is off-balanced.
The Self-centered person stands on their own two feet. They can handle themselves in all circumstances (your socializing may give you skills to do this, as does any sort of %26quot;self-taught%26quot; training.) The self-centered person makes sure their needs are being met BEFORE they give away the goods. Helping others at their own expense strikes the self-centered one as oddly like killing the cow to get a cup of milk out of it. People who are useful are first useful to themselves. To be self-suffieicent does not have to mean cutting off from others but needing their help all the time isn't a sign of affection either. When the plane goes down you put the air mask on YOU before your child, because YOU are the one who has to get you both out of the situation. When a person grabs on to the self-centered person for help they get help, because the person is NOT IMBALLANCED.
So taking care of yourself, having a social life, putting your needs first is not selfish unless that is all there is to it. And lots of people feel good about building hospitals, just because their name is on it, and in 100 other aspects of their lives they are worse than useless.
So keep up the good work, but take care of yourself, and THEN forget yourself in your charitable work. Good Luck
If being morally correct and maximizing happiness are the meaning of life, how do you reach your potential?
Nobody can make those decisions for u. If u want to be the Mother Teresa type, where your entire life is devoted to others and u completely ignore your own %26quot;western%26quot; desires, then fine. If you need a balance, and time/money to take a vacation once in a while, act accordingly
One person cannot be expected to sacrifice their own life for others - and since most people would say that you need some happiness to live a life, they'd say that is that you're doing.
I admire that you want to help people so much, but you can't help people so that you begin to begrudge it or dislike it. You need your own time too, and finding the balance is your job.
Well, good luck with everything, remember you have your whole life to succeed and that you are allowed mistakes. Also, academic prowess is not the only way to help people, so don't avoid society to read copious amounts. No social skills is not going to help anyone.
First of all, life is not one big emergency room where you have to go around helping everyone. Do you want other people 'sacrificing' their lives for you? I hope not. If you have a friend that honestly needs your help and will not drag you down, then if you can help him that is fine. One thing to think about - Mother Theresa spent her whole life 'helping people'. But without the PRODUCERS (she was not one of them) she would not have been able to help anyone. Be a producer, not a middle-man.
Start thinking about what YOU want for YOUR future. Plot out short term and long term goals. There's no reason why you can't have time for fun. Just fit it in when it's appropriate and/or as a reward for reaching goals.
Find a mentor. Someone that you admire. Someone that has the kind of success that you want to attain. Ask them if you can use them for advice.
Learn how to invest. How to handle your money. It should be taught, but isn't. Knowing how to invest is one of the most important things you can do. Start here:
www.saveyournestegg.com
Learn to think so you can make good decisions and handle your bad decisions. Learn about logic and induction and deduction. Define your moral values and live them.
I also suggest reading this:
http://gos.sbc.edu/r/rand.html
I wish you a wonderful life.
You pose an interesting question(s), and I'm going to have a great time answering all of them. Probably leading you in a giant circle. But here it goes!
1. Your amount of empathy is astonishing, and admirable (making the rest of us feel like selfish misers lol) I want it understood that I am by no means, suggesting you drop this, if there were more people like you in the world, this could be a great place.
2. Understand that doing work faster, and not procrastinating, is not only potentially helping others, but is also helping yourself. This is one of those wonderful things that can help you too as long as you find what you called %26quot;the happy median.%26quot; Overworking can lead to stress, and loss of sleep, which can easily lead to common errors, and in the end injure your performance rather than enhance it.
3. I think this next point is a big one for you. You made the argument that by helping others, you would in fact be making yourself happy, which I believe is very true. But think about what it is you're going to do. You're going to build a hospital, saving someones loved one; husband, wife, brother, baby. You're going to help the homeless, give single mothers somewhere to raise their children, Open an orphanage and find children loving parents, right a self help book bringing others out of their own misery ect. ect. Do you see what you're doing? In just about any charitable act you are doing you are bringing or keeping a family together, loved ones and friends alive and happy. You're glue bottle sticking everyone together. But who's refilling you? Don't you see that what people need help with is their families? Who do you have besides a long list of people who owe you favors? In the end, every person you help, every individual you save is going to leave. And you will be alone
4. Have you ever thought that you are denying your help to surrounding invidivduals, to save people you don't know? Maybe your best friend (who's becoming annoyed at your increasingly obsessive study habits) is becoming depressed. Maybe your future partner is alone. By helping yourself you ARE helping others! Healthy relationships are good for everyone, just as much as a new hospital.
5. So how do you optimize your %26quot;superhero instinct%26quot; without comprimising your own self interests? It's exactly about finding the happy median. %26quot;You cannot help others until you help yourself,%26quot; is a quote from someone who I'm sure is vey important haha.
6. You can never do %26quot;enough good%26quot; no one can. No billion people, no trillion people can do %26quot;enough good.%26quot; If you are hoping to help, and help and help until there are no problems in the world, you need to adjust your goals to avoid disappointment.
You quest is honorable, and admirable. I would take my hat off to you if I was wearing one. But by sacrificing yourself (whats one or two parties going to hurt?) you are in the end going to hurt others.
You're a good person! You deserve happiness too!
The more power you have the more good you can do for others. A good education and a good job are power. Socializing, being a kind of networking, increases your power too. Moreover, as you experienced yourself, even when feel that you want only to work, you need to have some rest.
Happy medium, by definition, can not be an extreme - in this case, as you put it - %26quot;doing enough goodness%26quot;. Had, let's say, Mother Theresa done enough?; May be if she was sleeping less ....
If you are on your way to finish your schools with decent results, you will have %26quot;a job where [you] could have maximized the amount of happiness that other people have.%26quot;
Take it easy and All The Best
P.S.
Reading Foucault does not have to be on the side of work, but can be on the side of pleasure.
find balance and satisfaction in what you are doing and have accomplished
instead of focusing on everything that you could be doing better and might have achieved more, remind yourself of all the things you currently are doing and take pride and pleasure in the fact that you ARE helping
also, there are multiple ways of helping people. True, building a hospital or writing and inspirational story or wutev are all very good things, but going out and partying also reminds the special people in your life that they have you, a caring friend, who wants to be with them. It may not necessarily seem as profound in a number counting optimization of life for helping people, but having a social life for yourself also helps the other person/people in your social relationships.
no matter what you choose, you need to be happy in order to optimize anything. Your life worth isn't based on the numerical amount of happiness maximized or lives saved or parties attended, but you can evaluate yourself by how you feel. Either way, if you are happy, it will be easier for you to help others professionally and socially
best wishes!
