Manifesto

This document is a highly fleshed out version of this post.

The main audience for this is those who feel unmotivated or lost or depressed. It's what I did personally to get myself unstuck.

Before you can move, you must learn what moves you

Goals (or desires or values) lie somewhere on the spectrum between terminal and instrumental. Money's (nearly always) an instrumental goal: it gets us other things we want, like sustenance, shelter and luxuries. But if you were to try to explain to me why you like sour foods or why you enjoy seeing your friends succeed, you might find it surprisingly difficult. This's the hallmark of a terminal goal: it's an end in and of itself, and doesn't require justification in terms of other goals it helps fulfil.

Terminal goals are your grounding. They're the roots of the mental structure undergirding your motivation, and they're the true underlying reasons why you do everything. If you don't know what your terminal goals are, you should really get to it. If you haven't yet, your options are to either...

1. figure out what your true desires are, move towards them with purpose and live a life you truly love
2. blindly stumble around, praying you find things you love
3. die a horrid death after decades of dissatisfaction

Most people don't know what their terminal values are. This might sound surprising, but it's actually the default state of the world. Your desires are opaque to direct introspection, and require you to pay attention while you try many things out. Most people either don't pay attention or don't try many things out.

Good news: most people did try out many things, but just didn't pay attention. And what that means is you don't have to settle for trial and error: just seeing a description of various desires is often enough for you to consciously recollect that which you subconsciously already learned to be desirable.

Tangent: this's actually what happened with me, which's probably why I'm so sure it can happen with other people. Went on Twitter one day, saw this post, and instantly had a revelation about my own desires and what I had previously enjoyed in so many different activities, but just couldn't pin down. "Knowledge is not an end in and of itself." -> wait, "knowledge as an end in and of itself" is exactly what curiosity is -> oh, curiosity's the thing pushing me to do research: not just the potential practical applications of the work, but also that the knowledge's just interesting to me on its own -> huh, I wonder what other terminal goals there are that I haven't explicitly considered yet?

With that said, here's a non-exhaustive list of terminal desires that might be pulling you:

• curiosity: The desire to know things as an end in itself. If someone asked me why I want to resolve "why's there something rather than nothing?", when it almost certainly has no practical implications on my life, I'd be hard-pressed to answer. I just do.
• autonomy, liberty, freedom: The desire to be unconstrained by the whims of others. The desire to be unconstrained by economic/material necessity. The desire to be unconstrained.
• the spirit of mischief: Pranks. Trolling. A desire to find things you shouldn't be able to do. A desire to do things you aren't supposed to do (whether social norms or some other intent being defied). Finding humor in fucking with things larger than yourself.
• competitive drive: The desire to be the best, not second place. The desire to win, often regardless of what game it is.
• hedonism: The desire to directly experience pleasure, in its most immediate dopaminergic form. Food. Sex. Drink.
• dominance, megalothymia: The desire to be seen by others as greater than them. The desire to be seen by others as more powerful than them, often to the point of fear.
• prestige: The desire to be seen by others as giving, altruistic, something to be aspired to.
• isothymia: The desire to be seen as equal to others. Fellow members of the same religion. Fellow countrymen of the same nationality. Fellow members of humanity, worthy of dignity and rights.
• the denial of death: Reaching for the forms of immortality that humans can reach. Longevity: personally living as long as you can. Glory: achieving things, such that your name or your ideas might outlast your mortal coil. Lineage: creating more beings in your image.
• a psychologically rich life: Variety is the spicy of life. The desire and enjoyment of exploring > exploiting, even when exploiting might be the most productive for fulfilling your other desires.
• contentment, aesceticsim: The desire to relax. To enjoy what you have already got. Habits and routine. To exploit > explore. Sustaining yourself comfortably
• telos: The desire to fulfil your potential/purpose. Often mixed with the notion of teleology, intelligent design.
• craftsmanship: Perfectionism, attention to detail. The desire to hone your craft and improve your skills. A direct enjoyment of the craft itself.
• beauty: The desire to engage with and curate beautiful art. Sometimes, even the desire to create beautiful things.

Some of these are related to each other, which I have (via this DAG editor) crudely and incompletely sketched out here:

Your job now, is to reflect on what desires are. Look at the list, look at the image, and try to see if any of them speak to you.

Similar vibes:

• Simon Sarris

That which moves you, can be moved

UNFINISHED: aka Girard 101, shifting desires, desires in conflict (usually pathological desires like sadism)

And now, you must move