What to Do

> One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious.

From what I encounter, almost daily, I don't think everyone is on the same page, on that; especially amongst folks of means.

I have seen people without a pot to piss in, treat others -even complete strangers- with respect, love, caring, and patience, and folks with a lot of money, treat others most barbarously; especially when they consider those "others," to be folks that don't have the capability to hit back or stand up for themselves.

As to what I do, I've been working to provide free software development to organizations that help each other, for a long time. It's usually worked out, but it is definitely a labor of love. The rewards aren't especially concrete. I'll never get an award, never make any money at it, and many of the folks that I have helped, have been fairly curt in their response.

I do it anyway.

I'm one of those people that doesn't think we should try to "take care of the world". I prefer the older, time tested answer of what to do:

> You should be wise, brave, honest, temperate, and just, uphold tradition, and serve the public interest

As noted in the essay, this idea of "taking care of the world" is relatively new. PG claims it's because only now we can take care of the world, but I think it's just a naive idea that doesn't stand the test of time. I'm sure its not novel idea, and many others had thought of it and tried to implement some version of it in their society. But because it hasn't become cannon in any group or culture, it's a bad idea in that it doesn't produce human flourishing. Whereas ideas around wisdom, bravery, honesty, etc have replicated throughout cultures and led to everything we cherish

The idea is that you cannot take care of the world if you can't take care of yourself. So at first you must be these things. Ironically the most empathetic people I have met that purport to care most about "the world" are often the most dysfunctional people - substance abuse, medications, no strong family ties, anxiety, neuroticism, etc. These aren't people we should try to emulate.

Only when you have your house in order can you attempt to help others. Start with the people immediately around you. People you know and love and that know and love you. If you've ever dealt with a family member with a serious problem, you'll see how difficult for you to help them. Now imagine helping a friend, then casual acquaintance, then stranger finally a stranger on the other side of the world.

We should have humility as to what kind of impact we can have on the world and look inward to those around us where we can have the most impact. Otherwise you might as well wipe out hundreds of thousands of people and spend trillions of dollars spreading democracy in the middle east.

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> Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.

No, tradition is ways of living that have stood the test of time. They might not be perfect, but the idea that you can just reinvent all that stuff and do it better than tradition is the kind of thing that the Greek word "hubris" was invented for.

Also, upholding tradition doesn't mean being blindly enslaved to it. Part of the reason traditions got that way is that people adapted them when things changed.