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Redefining What it Means to Matter

2016-06-03 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:52 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning · mode: Personal essay

Hank argues that culture's measures of mattering (salary, fame, money, singular heroes) are scarce and misleading; people matter because they make life better for others now and in the future, as part of humanity's shared labor.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — People crave meaning; culture offers salary, big impact like Zuckerberg or Musk, and #goals as surrogates

  • ★★ Hank saw a comic by Korean artist Yaho on Tumblr with 88,000 notes, voicing a theme he hears online, at his shows, in real life and in his own head. — 00:00:00 · Tumblr
  • ★★★ Hank says what people crave besides stability is meaning, and thinks it is getting harder and harder to find. (hedged) — 00:00:16 · meaning of life
  • ★★ Hank says culture whispers that salary is a good surrogate for meaning, while we also want a big impact like Zuckerberg or Elon Musk and to fulfill every kind of #goals. — 00:00:22 · #goals
  • ★★ Hank says culture has always told lies but seems to be getting better at it, and, pointing back at the comic, asks what signal culture gives that individual humans matter at all. (hedged) — 00:00:50

00:00:54 — Commoditized labor and appreciation; Twitter poll on happiness vs making a difference; fame and money as bad metrics

  • ★★★ Hank asks: when human labor is commoditized, as now, do we stop appreciating others' work and feeling appreciated, and where then does meaning come from? — 00:01:00
  • ★★ Hank's Twitter poll on whether people would rather be happy or make a difference split almost exactly 50/50, and many said they couldn't imagine being happy without making a difference. — 00:01:17 · Twitter
  • ★★★ Hank says cultural mythology defines making a difference, and its common surrogates, fame and money, are bad metrics: always scarce and defined relative to others, not absolutely. — 00:01:30

00:01:45 — Machines taking jobs will force a redefinition of work and meaning; we expect too much of ourselves

  • ★★★ Hank says we are headed into a world where machines take over many human jobs, so we will have to redefine not just work but meaning. — 00:01:45
  • ★★ Hank says wanting to make a difference makes sense for a cultural species and made humanity wonderful and powerful, but thinks we are starting to expect too much. (hedged) — 00:02:01

00:02:13 — The myth of the singular hero: Edison, the Wright Brothers, Musk; everyone labored together

  • ★★★ Hank says we cannot all be Elon Musk, and argues even Musk cannot be what we think of as Elon Musk. (hedged) — 00:02:13
  • ★★ Hank says Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, the Wright Brothers did not invent flight, and Elon Musk has never built an electric car; these are inspiring stories. — 00:02:18
  • ★★★ Hank says we tell those stories because the real story is too complicated: every human who has existed and exists labored together to build this world. — 00:02:24

00:02:44 — 'We feast on the labor of centuries'; we matter by making life better for others; caring is what matters; sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank quotes his bandmate Joe DeGeorge, who said in the tour van last week (week of 23 May 2016) 'Tonight, we feast on the labor of centuries', a line Hank will never let go of. — 00:02:44

    “Tonight, we feast on the labor of centuries.”

  • ★★ Hank says the good things in our lives are mostly because other people worked to make life better, and asks only that his forgotten labors add to theirs. — 00:02:51

  • ★★ Hank says that as he has worked to appreciate the work behind his home, town, country and world, he has become happier with who and where he is. — 00:03:07

  • ★★★ Hank says that in the end we matter because we make life better for people around us and for people in the future. — 00:03:19

    “we matter because we make life better for people around us”

  • ★★★ Hank says humanity's story is not one of a few people with gigantic effects, only the easy story to tell; caring for ourselves and others is the only thing that has ever mattered to our species' future. — 00:03:25

  • ★★ Hank says that even in really dark times in his life, this is the one thing he has tried to be sure about. — 00:03:44

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says this is not a cop-out: huge tasks lie ahead, done by many teams and zero isolated individuals, and the mythology of the singular hero is dubious. — video description
  • ★★ The description says we are all going to work hard to make the world better, each in our own way, and thanks viewers for putting their abilities, skills, talent and labor into it for future generations and for people today. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: cumulative culture · Elon Musk · great man theory · meaning of life

Also: People: Joe DeGeorge · Mark Zuckerberg · Thomas Edison

Projects: Tour Because Awesome

Works: comic by Yaho seen on Tumblr

Organizations: Facebook · Tumblr · Twitter

Groups: Wright brothers

Concepts: Technological unemployment

Memes: #goals

Only in the description or credits: Yaho

Also centred on cumulative culture: I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration · 5 Songs You've Never Heard That You've Heard 1000 Times · Dear Young People, You Terrify Me · What a Concept!! · On Immunity, Inoculation, and Individuals · The Weirdest Post-Chemo Symptoms

Also centred on Elon Musk: What Elon Musk Got Wrong About Twitter · Elon Was Right

Also centred on great man theory: I Gotta Go: Signing Off and Thinking about Inspiration · The Myth of Greatness · Making the World's Largest Ball of Paint · On Immunity, Inoculation, and Individuals

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