stamp 202402161310
Pre-notes
- I originally made this note for one of my coaching sessions with Sascha Fast, and started to process / divide up later.
- I asked ChatGPT on how to divide these notes. Here is what it said: 202402251739 Szép új világ témák az OpenAI támogatásával
- I made this note using Sascha’s Knowledge Flower technique ref-fast-how-to-use-creative-techniques-within-the-zettelkasten-framework
Huxley imagined a perfectly stoic utopia
Huxley imagined a perfectly stoic utopia by creating [^1] a way for every single person to wish for nothing different than what they get in life.
What is the truth contained in this idea?
Huxley argues that suffering comes from the pain of people’s talents and aspirations not matching their circumstances, the roles they need to fulfill in a society. Most people either suffer from having much more brightness than what their circumstances enable them to explore, or having too much expectation put onto them than what their talents can fulfill, or other tragic mismatch between their inner and outer world.
There is some mobility in societies, but not enough [^2] to naturally offer the right person for every role and the right role for every person. [^3] Hence, most people will suffer due to getting a randomly assigned place in society (determined by the circumstances they are born into) that isn’t matching their capabilities and motives, dooming them to have an unfulfilled life.
How is this idea relevant?
The information age and globalism gives the illusion of choice to an increasing number of persons. While it also gives true benefits, in practice, people mostly are tied to the social class, place and belief system they were born into.
- vö: mormon stories / exmos: az ember általában a szülei vallásával hal meg
The visibility and glorification of success stories don’t give actual mobility to the masses. Peasants still become kings only in fairy tales.
For most of human history, people rarely had the chance to even imagine a different future for themselves than the past of their ancestors. [^4][^5] Except for brief times during technological jumps or discovery of new land and colonization. We are past a few generations that lived better than their parents, but millenials (gen Y) and especially gen Z are expected to live the same or worse quality of life (in Western societies) than their parents.
- vö: Interstellar - a nagypapa gen Z - “nem volt ám az olyan jó, hogy minden nap karácsony volt”
- vö: Steigervald Krisztián leírása arról, ki volt az első generáció (baby boomers?), akiknél már nem apáról fiúra, anyáról leányra szállt elsősorban a tudás (information age)
It makes sense that stoicism lives its renaissance. People need to re-learn that the way to a content life is wanting what we got, as ancient stoics taught.
How can this idea be useful?
We cannot change the fact that we were born into a non-utopian society where our desires and possibilities will probably be mismatched on some level.
But Mihály Csíkszentmihályi argues that by getting familiar with the workings of the state of mind he calls “flow” [^6], we can work on creating circumstances in our lives that have the chance of creating flow, the state of contentedness in our lives. The artificially created brave new world of Huxley can serve as an inspiration that we need to aim to find challenges tailored to us, in order to create contentedness in our live.
- 8.1b1c Csíkszentmihályi szerint az út a boldog élethez az, ha tudatosan megteremtjük azokat a körülményeket, amikben a flow állapot minél többször elő tud állni az életünkben
- 8.1b1c1 Barney Stinson karaktere egy érdekes de találó példája annak, hogyan ágyazhatunk meg az életünkben a flow állapotnak
How can this idea be used to simplify something?
The quest to find happiness in our lives becomes easier and more attainable if we accept that:
- We aim for tangible happiness, not a clickbait-worthy, instagram-ready life
- The way towards tangible happiness is knowing ourselves and our personal passage to “flow”
- Our personal passage to “flow” is always found within the reach of our true interests [^7] and capabilities
What is beautiful in this idea?
Harari says [^8] that most science fiction fail to imagine a real trajectory of humanity into the future, they only put present human drama into a new setting but tell the same stories.
In contrast, the Brave New World imagines a whole new way of living for humanity, a whole new way of human existence. For me, this makes it a beautiful piece of art.
Why: (what makes it a piece of art in my eyes)
Footnotes
…
[^1] For Huxley’s way of creating a true merit-based society see: 8.1a A gépesített reprodukcióval a Szép új világban a nők a férfiakkal egyenértékűvé válnak azáltal, hogy levetik reprodukciós szerepüket
[^2] An example of how rigid societies are is the fact that most people die in the same religion they were born into, withouth a real chance to examen and change their world view. [^3] “Everything has a place and everything is in its place” is a core idea of 5S in TPM. TPM: … 202401211913 5S: … 202401211912 [^4] See in Harari’s 21 lessons. [^5] Compare to Steigervald’s description of generations. [^6] The experience of flow is created by working on a task not too mundane, not too intimidating. [^7] See Elizabeth Gilbert’s comparison of passion and curiosity in Big Magic [^8] See in Harari’s Sapiens