Why do anything: thoughts on social issues and strength during tough times

When I was 19 I tried reading Either or, the first published work of Kierkegaard. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting to get out of it, possibly ‘wisdom’, ‘insight’ or basically anything that could confirm that I was heading in the right direction, that what I was doing was making sense, and that it was the right thing to do. Does anyone know anything at 19? At 19 you’re a year into ‘adulthood’ and even though it has been some years since for me, is what I’m in now ‘adult’?

I like the way Stephen King writes about being 19 in the introduction of The Gunslinger. It’s as breezy as ever, with many open doors, but it still hits a chord, because I can definitely remember feeling that way; that the world was at my feet, that I had jack-shit of an idea of where I was heading, much less that I had much of a notion of what I was getting into at the time. Yes, I have been there. We all have.

It was in Either or that I read that notion of a kid of 19, who was rich, but this was the 19th century, so that’s relative, and he asked himself this very simple question: why do anything? His reasoning was that he probably wouldn’t get any richer than he was at the moment, his life wouldn’t become more comfortable, and it probably wouldn’t become ‘better’, so there it was, that same question: why do anything?

Some time ago I was watching re-runs of The X-files, which was basically my favorite tv-show when I was growing up, and then there was this one episode where Fox Mulder and Dana Scully are stuck on a boat in the middle of a lake at night, trying to go after some murderous creature that was supposed to live there in the deep of the water. That scene on the boat must have been an improv by Duchovny, because there it was, that same question, and he related it to this notion that if you were a pirate with a wooden leg and a hook for a hand, then simply to go on living would be enough, but we, the rest of us, we have to be out there, we have to have a purpose and we have to make something of ourselves.

I really liked that scene, and if you’re interested, the episode is titled S3E22 Quagmire. That statement of Mulder really ties in to the why do anything?, because the fact of the matter is that if you have less to choose from, then there’s less of a choice to make. The statement works, because we know about those pirates from cartoons and movies, but they’re not flesh and bone people, but we can still extend the idea to folks that are nearer to our proximity.

So then, really, why do anything?
In a way this is a tough one, it’s one for debate, but it’s also a luxury to even ask this question. It’s also meta, in the sense that it’s almost a question about a question (just leaving out the ‘why’ turns from a future problem into an evaluation of the past), but at some point you just realize that the question is less essential than it seems to be.

Yes, you need to be deliberate about the way you spend your time. Yes, you need to do something that’s in line with your interests, character, temperament and all that. Yes, it needs to bring in enough money to sustain yourself and possibly your family. Yes, it needs to be something that gets you excited enough to be able to get up in the morning.

This last one is an ideal, obviously, because there are many folks who are stuck in their job, who either never liked it to begin with, or those who have reached that point where it becomes essential to move on to other and to bigger things. Over time the ‘why do anything?’ slowly morphs, it drifts away, and from time to time it pops up like a relic from the past, “Oh, yes, that old lot.”

To a large degree, a lot of this stuff is much simpler than we make it out to be. You may lean into philosophy, but you might also lean into it from a more nimble, and a much easier intent: it’s just human nature to do things. There are very few of us, hopefully, who are content to not do anything.

That in itself is a message of hope, and I fully realize that, and by extent I believe that it will be very hard for us to go on living without ideas and notions as such. Tied into this one is that most people are basically decent and are willing to do the right thing. With that in mind, it almost becomes child-like:
“Why do I have to do this?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

That in itself is so simple, but it’s also something that’s very easy to overlook. Even this, those two lines, show that there’s another element to that initial question as well: why do anything? It isn’t just singular and personal, but it greatly involves other people and new experiences. Which is the stuff that ‘kind of happens’, but that’s an inherent reward in anything that you commit yourself to doing.

That’s it?
There’s this other principle that I became more aware of as the pandemic unfolded: if more people are doing really good, then it ultimately benefits all of us. This is a very interesting concept, and it ties in to the way that a lot of companies go about their business these days: they freely give away knowledge, while they charge heavily for doing the work for you.

In itself this seems like a contradiction, because if you give away knowledge for free, then people don’t need your business. In fact, it will even make it easier for others to set up a business that might become a fierce competitor. In reality, this is not how it works, because what it does most of all is that it increases the size of the pie, but it’s also a way of building an expert reputation, it’s a peek behind the scenes and a way to build a customer relation.

Most recently I saw this principle being used by Louis Rossman (Apple repair), the Dutch Farmer (how to grow your food), the Courtney Project (self-publishing). This is also how society has changed: these three individuals are very active on YouTube and in their specific niche they tell you exactly how to turn an initial interest into a business.

The bottom-line here isn’t just that the best teachers are on YouTube, but most information is freely available, which in theory makes it much easier to turn thing around and to build that better life. But it doesn’t happen just like that. In fact, building a better life is a lot of hard work, but I do believe that the work-part is bigger than the difficulty-part. You know that statement, right: 1% inspiration, 99% hard work. Which you might even translate into something like: plan for a few hours once a week, and use the rest of the time to carry out those plans.

In summary:
- Why do anything? Is meta, but it’s also an over-analysis: we do things, because it’s human nature. Nothingness is anti-human.
- Why do anything? Is social, because doing things gets us in contact with other people, which is another inherent part of human nature.
- Doing anything, and doing it well is a step towards solving social issues.
- Doing anything and doing it well is also more ‘hard work’ than it is ‘difficult work’.
- The best teachers are on YouTube and they will show you the way.

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