Comment by xenocratus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xenocratus | Hacker News Reader

> Choose money and you’ll end up working all the time. Choose beauty and you’ll always want to look better. Choose fame and you’ll constantly be seeking attention.

This is straight-up paraphrasing David Foster Wallace in This Is Water, just that DFW was talking about these things as de-facto personal religions that we're usually unconscious of. So the "choose" part isn't nearly that explicit in his view.

The bit in This Is Water:

> If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you... Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

> Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

I wonder if this is an explanation for impostor syndrome. Every time I read about it, it comes from people working in intellectual professions. Those people probably value their intellect a lot, possibly more than money, status or things like that. Thus their insecurities manifest themselves as impostor syndrome.

Interesting thoughts.

I think the impostor syndrome is more related to fear of failing the others trust, regardless of what field we have in mind.

Let's say your friends want you in their ... volleyball team. They think you're good.

And now you start worrying about making them disappointed.

Although you're the best they know, for real.

That'd be the impostor syndrome, but in this case unrelated to intelligence. Instead, a social thing, related to ... Fear of losing some of one's status? (Whatever that status is about.)

> "I think the impostor syndrome is more related to fear of failing the others trust..."

And why might one fear betraying the trust of others in ones intellect?

Could it have something to do with being viewed as less capable, less intelligent?

I think for some it could be. Earlier in my life I know it was for me (this exact circular spiral as described above)

The speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

fantastic talk, thank you.

So don't be an idiot and "worship", be a rational balanced human and as the OP says diversify your interests. DFW tends to exaggerate to make his points, and this is an example. Nice prose, be it describes idiots and implies to the reader that everyone are such idiots.

DFW concluded that if you don’t choose what to worship it gets chosen for you. What he’s saying is that one should be conscious and deliberate, self aware. Like much of DFW there’s a strong christian undercurrent to ‘this is water’. Far from being an argument against religion and worship the message i take is that the value of religion can be that it focuses one outward, towards community and so on.

not choosing is a choice too.

His point, I'd say, is that whatever the choice (including not choosing something consciously) should be done consciously. I.e. You should be aware that you aren't choosing anything, or that you want to pursue money, or fame, or whatever.

Can one really not chose in this situation? What one worships is somewhat synonym with what one values the most. How can a man ever not have something that he values more than other things? On what basis would he act?

DFW claims religion is immune to this effect but to me it seems like another statement to add could be: “worship god and you’ll feel like a sinner”

> worship god and you’ll feel like a sinner

Especially if you pick the wrong God.

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