Our ways of defining a better future and bringing it about are different, but I think in the end all the opinions and alternatives are worthy of consideration and the best ways of doing things will be found out with evolution of those ideas just like natural evolution has chosen for the best surviving species. With no one perfect end result in mind but occupying different niches, in multitude of different and equally effective ways, always changing dynamic interconnected whole.

I think there have to be world full of specialists working together to create the better future - and to stitch them together, make them pull in the right direction there have to be those specializing in the big picture. So both detail and high-level view are required. And surely it requires great care to distinguish those things we can change from the things we cannot. And each and every one of us has to make this decision themselves - something one person is unable to change might be changed by the means of another person. Yes, you should think hard about those things that are thought to be unchangeable, maybe you can be the one that can shift the paradigm. Maybe you can be the one to find your meaning, your passion, your ultimate happiness there.

Your problem here seems to be inability to choose what you should be doing to give your best for the better future, to find that ill that you should be addressing. And here we come back to the premise of this post: you should find amongst the possibilities available (probably not immediately apparent) the one that ignites your personal passion. In this you will be passionate, in this you might be revolutionary, in this you can best give your contribution. And if this is wrong, you will understand it and will adapt to a more right option. Important thing is not to keep doubting and worrying and postponing but to start doing.

This reminds me of that old (I don’t know whom to attribute it to) story about a goat starving to death between two haystacks because he couldn’t choose which to eat first. Sometimes it is best to choose one thing practically at random than to keep on choosing forever.

The question for me is - what if this is just a human weakness and we’d live better or survive longer when we all just thought somewhat more about the big picture? Perhaps there’s some very little thing in world that has to be changed, someone just has to think of it - like leaving the press-iron on. This is why I have this instinct to worry: the common wisdom is, that you shouldn’t worry about things you can’t change - but if you don’t think about these things, what if you miss something you *can* change? I’d like to believe into any one of these principles I mentioned above and then follow my individual inclinations - but what if there *is* no arranging principle and I should really be somewhere else, turning off some global or social press-iron even if this means denying my personal desires?

This sounds a lot less crazy when its just a feeling inside me. :)

But, Lex, you are again thinking that I am talking about on society level but I am talking about personal growth. I think you cannot deny that people are the happiest when they are doing what they love to do themselves. I am encouraging them to do that despite it seeming impossible. Most things are not as impossible as they seem at the first glance.

I don’t think a poet would be very happy paddling a boat even though it is necessary and I don’t think he or she should shirk it. I don’t think that a poet should only do poetry and nothing else - he or she would have nothing to write poetry about in the ivory tower when they did (or only poetry about writing poetry about writing poetry…). I think a balance has to be found for everyone between immidiate concerns (the lower levels of the Maslow pyramid) and self-realization (the top end of that same pyramid). You have to arrange to have those immidiate concerns met as well as the means to do what you love. In the perfect world you can do those things at the same time - write poetry and make enough money with that to cover your basic needs. In real world you probably cannot - you might have to make compromises, you might have to sacrifice something… But it isn’t as hard as it seems, that is my point.

As for the idea that nature somehow arranges that there are enough people with suitable inclinations then I believe this is right - provided this is not a fixed inclination but developed with person, which means that a person naturally inclined to do rocket science can’t be present in an Amazon rainforest tribe. This is something that you develop towards, you find amongst the things that are possible for you to do. I do believe something evolution-like grants that there are enough people to do everything. Nature is too general a word to understand whether it is the same idea you refer to or not but I rather think not as evolution-like process can’t “know” what it’s doing.

And that life of “pursuit of immediate needs without any overarching goal” is too sad, I am trying to convince people that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Of course, as a philosophical standpoint I still think that this is arguable ;) You seem to think that a person has sort of a natural state and we need to discover our own and follow it - people are happiest when doing what they are naturally inclined to do (this idea, I believe, is already there in Plato’s Republic) and a society has naturally a required number of people for all its different tasks. I’d like to believe that (that as a whole the Society or Nature actually knows what it is doing), but I doubt whether things are that simple. It seems to me that there are always contradictions between needs of society and needs of an individual, between needs of different individuals, between immediate needs and overall goals of a person. A group of people in a lifeboat, on a stormy sea need everyone to paddle, even when someone’s natural inclination is to write poetry. You’ll probably saying now, that immediate needs should not prevent us from following our life goals, but this is exactly what life is for most people - pursuit of immediate needs without any overarching goal. (Of course, I think that there are enough people who dream their whole lives about their grand Goal, without actually doing anything to pursue it). Ehh, life is complex…

Ausaltöeldes, minu esimene reaktsioon seda pilti nähes oli selline -
“Ei ole võimalik, Sa oled nii noore kallima leidnud!”
Te olete lihtsalt õega nii sarnased. Täpsemal vaatlusel ja teksti lugedes sain muidugi asjas selgust.
Samas tekitas see kirjatükk hea sooja tunde :)