Worthlessness

Worthlessness, the key to most of my moments of sadness, the idea that my use for this world is close to nothing. Related to the idea that I am wasting all my capabilities that I can offer this world, all the abilities and opportunities that chance has given me have gone to waste. Rich, tall, good looking, friendly, optimistic (I can already see the confusion in your face, but even the attempt to write this is optimistic). What can I offer this world with all these abilities? But more importantly, why am I so driven to offer this world something, to achieve higher status and receive acknowledgement from the rest of the world. This primal need of superiority and competition, of wanting to achieve a certain status. It’s interesting to see that despite me opposing the direction of society, as it is made up of social pressure and deceptive illusions distracting man from their truest desires and motives as a human being. I still manage to want to exceed in this society and to show off my superiority among other humans using these channels which I despise so greatly. These channels of functionality that are used in a practical sense to achieve rankings of individuals as to create a more efficient and uni-directional society have consumed my life. For example, educative channels to work more efficiently in the capitalist system, IQ tests that rank individuals for a functional, uni directional sense of intelligence, art schools that try to insight free, unique creativity and then try and examine how good or bad their art is.

All these systems of testing are very practical and help society function, but they are also deceptive. The self-imposed full objectivity and authority in ranking each individual; their way is the objective truth - this 20% you got on your art coursework is the value of your art (I use art because it is the most subjective and multi directional practice I can think of, but this also applies to philosophy and most subjects to different degrees.) I don’t really see much of a problem with this because it does in a way help with the function of society, ranking helps the probability of getting the best etc. The problem is when these rankings over run a person’s life, a person becomes a slave of the ranking system, he values himself and his work strictly down to these ‘experts’ that go beyond their role of functionality and enter a role of inherent superiority and complete objectivity. Making a person feel worthless, and those that enforce this idea feel worthy after years of being the same situation. Teachers are not usually the best students at school, but they are usually the biggest sufferers of this mental enslavement by the educative system.

I am really hating on the educative system because it is so far the main institution where I see this uni directional and rigid illusive objectivity take place. I am no stating, that the educative system is bad, but that the arrogance behind it and the objective authority educative actors play is harmful. Can’t we just treat the educative system and testing simply as functional, why must it have such a big impact on our sense of self-worth. Why can’t we see it as a means to achieve an efficient society, why must we make it so personal and tied to an individual’s identity, especially when there is not a great deal of objective truth as seen historically by theories and thought schools that have been proven wrong again and again. I guess it is a natural tendency to direction and to rank everyone, I do it myself instinctively as soon as I meet someone. Pre-judgements and assumptions on the most basic information is a classic human trait, I suppose linked to a desire for security.

Children do it primarily as they grow up, if you are in the first set in maths then you are smart, if you are in the lowest you are stupid. And fair enough, children have obvious tendencies to resort back to these primal desires of reductionism for security, but they are also very malleable and able to learn how to change. Now adults that do this are really regressive, and slaves to this mentality of ranking and reductionism, yet these are the people we call teachers. So, children are raised, and those that have in grained in them this idea of simple ranking more than others go on to be teachers and have the responsibility to teach children to not think in this way (the teachers that actually want to be teachers not the ones just seeking employment).. They should do this theoretically but are not given any instructions and do not even know they are slaves to this primal tendency themselves. So, you end up with a self-sufficient, narrow tube of human regression and suffering in the educative system.

Leaving the educative system’s way of producing invalid worthlessness in children, we shall move on to worthlessness as a whole. Worthlessness is really something humans experience as they fail to feed their own ego. They fail to achieve that natural instinct of being superior to others, to overrule and be acknowledged by others. It is the failure to do this, so when you feel worthless do not think it is because you are not providing to society, think that it is that you are not providing to your own ego. You know dam well that society doesn’t give a shit about you, that people don’t really give a shit about how well you do, because you don’t give a shit about how well they do. Do you care about Steve Jobs because he did well and is successful and you admire him? Or do you care because he gives you a glimmer of hope and guidance to feeding your own ego?

Now imagine if you don’t have an ego, and that you look at the hard facts, these are the questions you would ask. How much change would I bring to society in the course of the human race if I dedicate myself to looking after a tree and having good relationships with people (answer: 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001% change). How much change would someone like Leonardo da Vinci bring to humanity ( 0.00000000000000000000000000001 (- two zeros from yours)). Because someone else probably sooner or later would of discovered the same thing. Therefore, Da Vinci as an individual didn’t do much, his ideas did. Now if you look at it in a very pessimistic way because he came up with the idea before the next guy that would of come up with the idea 10 years after (for example), that might mean that the human race has 10 years less as his inventions may create mechanical progress and greater damage to the environment. It may of shortened the time on earth, of course this is extremely pessimistic but it is valid. You can also look at the benefits of these inventions like saving people and creating opportunities etc. But it has many negatives, like killing people in war for example. And even if you push positives and negatives aside, it is highly likely that someone else would of come up with the idea eventually, so you can’t say that he created the idea, but that he discovered the idea before others did and therefore that individual becomes less important. Basically, no one knows the repercussions of having an impact on society or being ‘valuable’ to society. And if we see the whole picture, every individual is pretty much worthless to society in terms of progressing humanity, because it would come about sooner or later, and there is no way of knowing whether your input was positive or negative.

So therefore, stop giving into this idea that you are worthless to society and start understanding that you are abandoning your ego. Let it go, it doesn’t matter. The only people you do have an impact on are the people that invest in you, the people that you love and are close to. Looking that their life spam, you are likely to have a unique impact that is very probabilistically going to be positive due to the easy observation of the effects and their short life spam For example, perhaps your effect on their life is 5%; compared to the 0.000000000000000001 % you could of done for humanity. Logically speaking, they are the ones that make your life meaningful and worthy. Chances are that in their life time they won’t meet another person that has the same impact as you, as unlike the human race they won’t meet trillions of people and won’t live hundreds of thousands of years. So your knowledge of impact is pretty much certain, this is the way you can be most impactful by shrinking your sample size and concentrating on this. It will also make you happier. Peace.