I feel this too. It's perverse and it makes it feel like nothing is worthwhile unless it scales and earns a profit. I get that it's all in my head, but it's a real undercurrent in the west, particularly in tech. I'm not quite sure how to free myself of it...
All that is weighing heavily on us is due to being attached to false assumptions. There is, after all, no actual social reality by which to judge ourselves. Itβs all made up and seemingly supported by a deranged consensus reality. We are free as we are before and beyond any false assumptions. There is no need to be anything special and therefore, there are no serious moves to make.
Yes! There are no serious moves. Nothing in life is really serious, not even death.
But I feel like I need to reach some impossible state of ego integrity or ego death or something to actually live by that line of thinking.
So instead, I'm moved by fear and contrived seriousness. I want to be successful, or at least successful enough that one day I can spend my 80s seriously and nostalgically navel-gazing to bewildered viewers outside of my social reality, convinced that I am extremely special. [0]
I know I often think this way but I think what made it possible for me to pursue "unprofitable" hobbies was the realization that prophet isn't all that great an objective, it's just nice because it's easy to quantify. It doesn't tell you about the relationships you form or the things you learn. If you focus on things like that eventually thinking about prophet will actually make you feel a little sick and you'll pick up totally unprofitable things like learning Egyptian hieroglyphs and ukulele.
