> Don't spend a single moment in life doing something you don't want to do.
This advice or its cousins are found in many places around here and, well, I have a bad feeling about it. Is it not the epitome of egoism?
Is it possible to share a house with friends, or a spouse, or your kids, without ever "doing something you don't want to do"?
And in professional life, if you are a janitor, do you "want" to clean this toilets again? If you are a coder, you will do your share of boring work because you are in a team, right? And if you are a Big Boss, do you really want to fire this poor guy who is no fit here, will be no fit in no company you can think of, and has had already his content of shit on the head?
Even a painter, or a writer, or a comics guy like Mr Oatmeal have to do sometimes some things they do not "want" to do, professionally
The only people who really can avoid doing anything they do not want to do for a long period of time are the movie superstars and kids of some people of power. I do not think they represent a suitable ideal of life, and I do not think they are more happy than more normal poeple, quite the opposite in fact.
Then there are a few short-lived exceptions, a little slice of a life that is mostly free from hassles of any sort. I experienced this state during a few months myself: I got fired from a boring job, so I had the nice French wellfare and got 70% income for nothing. I also broke with my gf. At that time nobody counted in my life, I could and I did take risks, like getting involved in knife fight. I remember the only thing I did that I did not want to do was to take the train and join my parents to meet my grand-parents. for some important occasion. I actually had to wake up early and shave... But that's not real life, that's a short and egoistic period of my life. It has been somewhat useful in build my experience, but I'd not say I was happy. And most important is I would not make a general advice out of it. Only very few people in the world are lucky enough to find themselves with no professional or familial bounds and enough money to live free-wheeling for some month.
Or maybe the split is on another line: If young Americans can claim to never do what they do not want to do, maybe it is because they use autosuggestion, also known as The Coué method* , to make themselves "want" to do what they really just "have" to do. Using autosuggestion, I could proactively "want" to clean my toddler's diapers, or smile candidly and listen to this friend's spouse, while at the same time, deep in my heart, knowing she is really the boringest person in the world and I'd rather lick the streets than listen to her blabla (but I really like this friend, would not like to lose him...)
So yes, with autosuggestion, it is possible to force oneself to love to do what we hate to do, and it is most likely what many people do. But then, you'd have to balance carefully, because it is cheating, it is lying to oneself, and pushed too far it can become a poison, I guess.
This advice comes up very often when people write about re-evaluating their lives. (Also, this retort comes up very often when people read what those people wrote. I don't disagree with your logic, per se...)
I think you're right, but the author probably did not mean the advice as literally as you're reading it. You're interpreting the advice as a call for egoism [0]; selfishness to the point of being unwise. I think that when people write this, they're actually writing a call for hedonism[1].
Hedonism is different from egoism. Hedonism, the way I see it, is realizing that our existence is ultimately meaningless, and that we should optimize for our own happiness (and well-being) rather than any other metric; all metrics are meaningless, so we might as well stick to what makes us happy. In actionable terms, embracing hedonism means realizing that you should aim towards doing things that make you happy, and that this aim should be your guiding force (at every "single moment in life"). This doesn't mean that you should be happy every single moment; it means you should be optimizing for happiness every single moment. (To use your examples: a spouse knows that compromising will make them happier overall; a janitor knows that although his/her life aren't perfect, doing this is what will lead to his/her life improving (hopefully) or at least keeping them happier.)
Anyway, that's the way I understand this type of advice, and I appreciate the occasional reminders. (Also, I don't actually know much about philosophy, so I might be misusing terminology here; if so, please correct me!)
Yes, read flatly this advice is borderline egoism, but it can be read in a more useful way if some ideas are added.
You shall not want to do something that you would not want others to be allowed to do. (Eg: you cannot want to kill people for fun in the streets. That's a Kantian principle, IIRC)
You should better have a long-term perspective on what you want to do, and why. If you are tooth ache, your primary self probably do not "want" to go to dentist, but your reasonable self tells you that you have to do it, even without any immediate wishes to go.
Even if you were Xi Jinping or Obama, you cannot control everything you wish to control. The stoistic advice works here: you should do all you can to prepare yourself a nice cruise (or life), but once on the boat, you can't help if you are caught in a storm and should better shut up than complain.
An example is marriage+kids: you should probably jump carefully on this little boat, but once in, better eat your hat than jump overboard at the first annoyance.
The problem is, "want" is an ambiguous word. I want to learn calculus, I don't want to do all the homework required. Which "want" should I follow? I think people who say "only do things you want to do" mean the top-level kind, or some "total want" function that searches the whole treButkusbut that's a rather difficult function to "compute", even just to find the sign.
Like lots of hard problems in real life, it's basically one of predicting the future: which option will result in more happiness later?
"Is it possible to share a house with friends, or a spouse, or your kids, without ever "doing something you don't want to do"?"
I get what you and the OP mean, but I think there's an implicit cost that we're willing to pay in this case.
Do I want to take out the trash? Not always, but I want to live with the people I live with more than I don't want to take out the trash, so I take out the trash. It's probably more complicated psychologically than that, but I'm sure OP would agree.
This advice or its cousins are found in many places around here and, well, I have a bad feeling about it. Is it not the epitome of egoism?
Is it possible to share a house with friends, or a spouse, or your kids, without ever "doing something you don't want to do"?
And in professional life, if you are a janitor, do you "want" to clean this toilets again? If you are a coder, you will do your share of boring work because you are in a team, right? And if you are a Big Boss, do you really want to fire this poor guy who is no fit here, will be no fit in no company you can think of, and has had already his content of shit on the head?
Even a painter, or a writer, or a comics guy like Mr Oatmeal have to do sometimes some things they do not "want" to do, professionally
The only people who really can avoid doing anything they do not want to do for a long period of time are the movie superstars and kids of some people of power. I do not think they represent a suitable ideal of life, and I do not think they are more happy than more normal poeple, quite the opposite in fact.
Then there are a few short-lived exceptions, a little slice of a life that is mostly free from hassles of any sort. I experienced this state during a few months myself: I got fired from a boring job, so I had the nice French wellfare and got 70% income for nothing. I also broke with my gf. At that time nobody counted in my life, I could and I did take risks, like getting involved in knife fight. I remember the only thing I did that I did not want to do was to take the train and join my parents to meet my grand-parents. for some important occasion. I actually had to wake up early and shave... But that's not real life, that's a short and egoistic period of my life. It has been somewhat useful in build my experience, but I'd not say I was happy. And most important is I would not make a general advice out of it. Only very few people in the world are lucky enough to find themselves with no professional or familial bounds and enough money to live free-wheeling for some month.
Or maybe the split is on another line: If young Americans can claim to never do what they do not want to do, maybe it is because they use autosuggestion, also known as The Coué method* , to make themselves "want" to do what they really just "have" to do. Using autosuggestion, I could proactively "want" to clean my toddler's diapers, or smile candidly and listen to this friend's spouse, while at the same time, deep in my heart, knowing she is really the boringest person in the world and I'd rather lick the streets than listen to her blabla (but I really like this friend, would not like to lose him...)
So yes, with autosuggestion, it is possible to force oneself to love to do what we hate to do, and it is most likely what many people do. But then, you'd have to balance carefully, because it is cheating, it is lying to oneself, and pushed too far it can become a poison, I guess.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cou%C3%A9#The_Cou.C3...