Is passion overrated?

Post from MR about an Ivy League grad who asked "what should I do with my life?"

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2013/04/max-wants-to-know-what-to-do.html

From a young age we're taught to follow our passions. The myth goes, just follow your passions and you'll live a happy, fulfilling, wealthy life. But Max brings up a good point - what if you don't know what your passion is? It seems like you either have a passion or you don't. Tyler admits he doesn't have a good answer to the question. The best he can do is tell Max not to worry about it, "passion isn't a value in and of itself." At first this answer sounds like a cop out. But the more I think about it the more I like Tyler's answer. Why are we assuming that having a passion is a good thing?

As I started writing this post I browsed some quotes about passion. After reading a few dozen quotes something struck me, this whole idea that passion is a good thing is a relatively modern idea. When talking about passion modern writers and thinkers usually say something along the lines of Hegel: "Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion." But classical writers and philosophers write about passion very differently, usually something along the lines of Cicero: "He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason." Clearly these two writers have very different views of passion. To what extent these reflect social values of the time, I'm not sure. But I would guess that modern thinkers embrace passion, or at least view it more highly, than the Greco-Romans did 2000 years ago.

So has this passion thing gone too far? Are we teaching too many children to follow their passions? Is there more to life than finding and living your passion?

I've never had much of a passion. I certainly do a lot of things with passion but I have yet to find that one thing that I feel I was put on the Earth to do. And I suspect I never will. For a long time I've viewed this lack of passion as a problem. What if it isn't a problem? If I was following a singular passion I might have never explored music, economics, Roman history or the writings of Montaigne. What if my lack of singular focus has resulted in all my intellectual and social exploration? As Cicero wrote, passion requires irrationality, a certain lack of reason. No doubt the world certainly needs people who see the reasonable thing to do but decide to do the opposite. But if too many people follow their passion and decide to be writers or artists or play sports who will run our factories, build our bridges? Perhaps Hegel is correct, nothing great is accomplished without passion, but I would add that plenty of good is accomplished without passion.

Happiness as a byproduct

Great title for an article in the Atlantic: "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy"


http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/308555/4/?single_page=true

All about how parents' good intentions can (and often do) have a negative impact on their children. Barry Schwartz has a great line in this article, "Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing, but happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster." Barry Schwartz also gave a great TED talk on the paradox of choice, about how too many options lead to feelings of discontent and creates the fear of missing out. 

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

Another good  quote from the article, from Jean Twenge, "Narcissists are happy when they’re younger, because they’re the center of the universe... [but] instead of feeling good about themselves, they feel better than everyone else." In other words there are two ways to get high self-esteem (1) by thinking you're better than everyone else or (2) by feeling good about yourself. I'm reminded of my first (of 52) weekly resolutions of 2013 - Don't Compare Yourself to Others. If self-esteem and narcissism often go hand in hand then while you gain from one you lose from the other. So perhaps its just as important to ask "how does this make me feeling about myself?" as "how does this make me feel about others?"

Jesse Litvak

Now I normally don't take anything on zerohedge too seriously, but I've gotta say they've got this story down.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-28/we-are-doneski-gorgeous-how-bond-trading-wall-street-really-works

I'm imagining these quotes being read by Jesse Pinkman:

yo yo yo….if there is any color you can share on your wfmbs 06-ar10 4A1 from yest…maybe i can use that as leverage to go beat the guy up that owns the 06-ar12 1a1 bonds

Someday, hopefully soon, investors will demand an end to these shenanigans and move all fixed income and derivatives trading to exchanges.

Dating Redux

Another article about dating, however what I'm really impressed by here are the comments. This must be the most well written and thought provoking comments section that exists on the internet!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/fashion/the-end-of-courtship.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I've never been a fan of the hookup culture, not that I have a moral objection to it but its always felt to me rather empty. The author gives a few explanations for it, the still not so great economy, the now higher status of young single women or just plain old fear of commitment. But all of these explanations are grounded in fear. Relationships can be scary, relationships can hurt. Keeping things casual or low-key or unofficial is safe. To each his own, as Homer Simpson once said, "I want it all: the terrifying lows, the dizzying highs, the creamy middles."

John Cacioppo

An expert on loneliness and professor at the University of Chicago. Somehow the two flow very well together. Anyways, today I read an article (about a book) in the Atlantic with a different take on love:

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/theres-no-such-thing-as-everlasting-love-according-to-science/267199/

I've always taken a "I'll know it when I feel it" approach to love. One thing that has always struck me about falling in love is how much I internalize the other person and how I see myself reflecting aspects of their personality. On the flip side for the past two months I've been working on a blog post about falling out of love. This article puts that post into a different perspective.

Outsourcing

Absolutely brilliant example of outsourcing. A programmer at a company in the US paid a Chinese company 20% of his salary to do all of his programming work. He would then spend most of the day in the office essentially doing nothing and kept the remaining 80%. To top it off according to his performance reviews he was considered one the firm's leading programming experts. Besides the dishonesty I don't really see anything wrong with this, who is to say the company (and not the worker) should capture the benefits of outsourcing?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/16/developer_oursources_job_china/

Biotech

Thanks to John Mauldin I've become convinced that the next big boom will be in biotech. Stories like this only further support this hypothesis. If you've ever wished for more hours in a day then your dream might come true - and sooner than you think. A lot of people like to say "we'll never again create something as innovative as electricity or indoor plumbing. Things like Facebook don't even come close." And yes Facebook doesn't come close, but what about reducing your need to sleep by 75%? That sounds pretty revolutionary to me. If 1/3 of your life is spent asleep then it would be the equivalent of living 19 years longer.

http://sociologicalspeculation.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-sleepless-world-one-more-piece-of.html