Scott Rodriguez7 said:Honestly, it doesn't have to be that way, and frankly, it really shouldn't be.😁
If you've got drive and actual ambition, there ought to be a real shot at climbing the ladder, snagging a raise, or taking on more challenging projects—assuming your industry even allows for that sort of thing.
You have to find a way to push yourself so you don't feel stuck or useless, and so you can actually prove what you're capable of.
The best way to handle that is by setting a specific goal to act as a motivator, which is something I touched on in my other post earlier in this thread. ☕
That goal is supposed to be the spark that keeps a person working hard.
I remember reading somewhere that people really need internal motivation to hit their targets, but let's be real—for a lot of folks, that inner drive just isn't strong enough on its own.🤷
A ton of people look for external motivators instead (like support from friends or family), and it makes me wonder: is that still okay, as long as they actually end up reaching their goal?
Have you actually read it...?
Scott Rodriguez7 said:Honestly, it doesn't have to be that way, and frankly, it really shouldn't be.😁
If you've got drive and actual ambition, there ought to be a real shot at climbing the ladder, snagging a raise, or taking on more challenging projects—assuming your industry even allows for that sort of thing.
You have to find a way to push yourself so you don't feel stuck or useless, and so you can actually prove what you're capable of.
The best way to handle that is by setting a specific goal to act as a motivator, which is something I touched on in my other post earlier in this thread. ☕
That goal is supposed to be the spark that keeps a person working hard.
I remember reading somewhere that people really need internal motivation to hit their targets, but let's be real—for a lot of folks, that inner drive just isn't strong enough on its own.🤷
A ton of people look for external motivators instead (like support from friends or family), and it makes me wonder: is that still okay, as long as they actually end up reaching their goal?
I suspect the situation is... significantly more convoluted than that...
It isn’t that many people actively seek this out—it’s more fundamental than that. It is an instinctual, almost primal drive... much like how an animal operates. A person simply acts, driven by the immediate demands of their environment or whatever situation they find themselves navigating at that moment. It happens within the context of the group one belongs to, functioning through a sort of unspoken cooperation with "their own"—whoever those people may happen to be...
It seems that over the last several tens of thousands of generations, human interaction has essentially boiled down to a somewhat spontaneous cooperation—a necessary coordination to handle the bare essentials of reproduction—augmented by a chaotic cocktail of secondary motivations. We are constantly navigating these endless social exchanges that shape our very cognition: how we think, what we desire, how we assign value, and where we draw the lines regarding responsibility, solidarity, respect, or even the sheer terror of consequences. It’s all driven by whatever drives us—ambition, the mitigation of immediate risks, the pursuit of dopamine through stimulation or recreation, and all the other psychological nonsense that makes us who we are...
Actually, if you look closer, we possess entirely functional internal mechanisms that allow us to adapt through a sort of coordinated "imitation" when certain situations arise—it’s almost reflexive. When something unfolds within the shared space of a group, individuals feel this spontaneous urge to participate and cooperate, though the intensity of that drive depends heavily on how much autonomy they actually retain... or rather, the specific social dynamics at play within the collective. And honestly, this notion that someone will hand you something—let's say, cash—as a literal "repayment" for cooperation is fundamentally counterintuitive. That isn't how it works. The exchange is realized through the very act of cooperating itself; that is its entire purpose. It is essentially just the reproduction of everything necessary to sustain the specific mode of existence that the group has already established...
When you look at the sheer scope of what’s being demanded of us today—how we’re expected to operate across so many different layers of existence simultaneously—it becomes clear that the entire system is fundamentally broken... It’s dysfunctional, plain and simple, if you consider how human beings actually function when left to their own spontaneous, natural devices...
First off, we are being fed this relentless narrative about the necessity of self-reliance—this idea that everyone must learn to become their own internal support system just to maintain any semblance of effort or purpose. We’re told to act *as if* there were someone else there to motivate us, or to work for some phantom companion, when in reality, the actual presence of other people is treated as nothing more than a hurdle—a source of competition or friction. It’s completely backwards... The whole premise fundamentally undermines the very reason humans form communities in the first place, rather than just living like hermits scattered through the woods. If you follow this logic to its conclusion, it’s a recipe for disaster—it guts the population's demographics over the long haul, breeds total social anomie, and leaves us all utterly atomized...
The secondary reasons are becoming increasingly "indirect"—if that’s even the right word for it. Let’s be realistic here: our fundamental necessities and primal drives haven't changed one bit. We still need water, food, shelter, fuel, hygiene, social connection, sex, escapism, relaxation... the usual list. But the reality is that none of these can be satisfied directly anymore. If you actually gathered a few dozen people today to just live authentically—to exist without those artificial layers and simply meet their needs—someone would inevitably call in the SWAT team to shut it down, and the individual would likely just end up getting beaten by the police...
Instead, we are handed these various options—tasks someone else deems desirable—to perform in exchange for something tangible, just so we can afford food, goods, rent, utilities, and so on... but to actually pull it off, we have to somehow maintain the sheer willpower required for daily struggles that simply cannot be justified by any direct motivation. It relies entirely on certain semantic structures we maintain within our own consciousness—you know, the idea that if you do Y, then X will happen, and X is desirable because... well, then you start thinking long-term, or perhaps you identify with this or that, or you motivate yourself through various irrationalities, or you persist in maintaining routines that make things easier...
But honestly, it’s all bullshit. It’s like forcing a monkey to play some game just to get a banana—except the catch is that the monkey doesn't even grasp the distinction between the two...
Regardless, there is an obvious, massive importance to self-regulation—clearly more significant than it could ever be once our inherent foundational patterns are already set. This means the relative success of the vast majority of the population in navigating life depends heavily on the conditioning and formative experiences that allow for such self-motivation and discipline... which, alongside inherited qualitative differences, shapes a person so that everything functions...
So, we're talking about upbringing, education, training, labor, specific types of drills, and those experiences—again, experiences of consistent activity or work, the experience of success, the influence of drilling, routine, and habit... and certainly, the vital integration of patterns and forms from one's environment, whether that stems from family or other social situations...
That is why I am asking—could people take a moment to reflect so we can analyze what those situations were, what those influences were, what those patterns were... if we simply set aside biological inherency—because, let's face it, we don't possess the technology to manipulate that—we are left with everything else that makes one person function differently than another...
For instance, it would also be interesting to ask how much time is required for a pattern to be integrated from experience, or how tolerance for effort and frustration develops through the daily grind of nonsense—again, through experience—and generally, how one manages oneself so that the daily exertion of any kind stops being such a monumental struggle...