December '23

Morality, tidal gravity, and a career retrospective

21.3.92 by Gerhard Richter

Creative Riff

let's get sentimental

                 babe

Ideas

Inherited Morality

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential (and controversial) thinkers of the past couple hundred years. And I’ve probably met a dozen or so people in my life who know who he is and significantly less who have actually read him. As such, I want to spend some time discussing one of his primary works: On the Genealogy of Morals.

As you can probably infer from the title, Nietzsche dissects our modern morals and how they sprung into existence. He starts by digging into the dichotomy between “good” and “bad” as well as “good” and “evil” (think about that for a moment and see if you can discern what the difference is). But ultimately what Nietzsche is doing here, is outlining the premise of our morality and why we think some things are “good” and others are “bad”.

And this discussion serves as a really interesting precursor to the ramifications morality has on the human condition. Consider your own upbringing and how it shapes your day-to-day decision making. We have 9-5 jobs because “that’s what you do”. You put 5% in your 401k because “that’s what your grandparents told you”. You wait till marriage to have kids because “its what our theology dictates”. And I’m not saying any of those examples are wrong/bad/ill-advised. Instead, what I’m trying to exercise here is that the way you live your life is fundamentally grounded in the morals of your parents/community/society.

Now tell me, how does someone impose these values on you? Think back to your own parents. When you stole that toy from your sister and were chewed out by your parents and you asked “why” — what did they say?

“You just don’t do that.”

“You need to learn to share.”

“How would you feel if someone took your toy??!!”

See the common theme? Guilt.

And if each and every one of us is living our lives fixed upon some predetermined moralistic notion that was imposed via a guilty conscience, then its no wonder we hit 25 or 50 or 75 years of age and stop to ask “Wait, why didn’t I quit my job and do X like I always wanted to??”

In summation, this isn’t me telling you to quit your job and move to LA to pursue that modeling career. But this IS me saying its okay to question the nature of norms, virtues, and morals.

Groupthink isn’t sexy. It never was (and never will be).

Tidal Gravity

Many of us already know how “tides” work with regards to bodies of water, but I’ll briefly reiterate since it preempts my primary discussion point.

Basically, in the image above, we can see that the Moon is exerting its gravitational field on the Earth’s oceans and it causes this sort of "squishing” that results in water levels to rise or fall depending on where you’re located on Earth and where the Moon (and Sun) are tangentially positioned. The “squishing” is a result of an unequal gravitational field, and in this case, it is a relatively small gravity (the Moon) being exerted upon a relatively large object (the Earth).

Now consider a black hole:

Black holes are former stars that collapsed in on themselves to form a “singularity”. This results in something very small that exerts an ENORMOUS gravitational field around it.

Now consider what would happen if an object — let’s say an astronaut — got sucked into a black hole:

The gravity exerted by the black hole on the astronaut would be drastically different between their head and toes, resulting in what Stephen Hawking coined as “spaghettification”. So yeah, Interstellar isn’t all that accurate in this regard :p

Reaching an Actualization Plateau in Your Career

I spend a lot of time questioning the nature of my career path; both how I got here and where I’m headed. More specifically, in the past 6 months or so I’ve reached a point where my job is not as fulfilling as it once was (and there are a few reasons for this).

Upsides

• Very smart and capable coworkers

• Great pay and benefits

• Comfortable (don’t have to try too hard or work long hours anymore)

Downsides

• Not being challenged

• No longer interesting

I felt like I had reached a self-actualization plateau with my career. That is, I had maximized my potential within the job I had taken a few years prior and reached a point where I was reaping all the rewards from the aforementioned “grinding” — but still found myself unfulfilled day-to-day. In the tech industry, this is often referred to as “burnout”. Its a combination of stress, being locked into a high paying job that’s hard to walk away from, and being unfulfilled in the day-to-day.

Now, if you go onto Blind or Reddit, there are plenty of threads about “burnout” and several recommended “solves”:

• Take a couple weeks PTO

• Take a leave of absence for 2-3 months

  • Most big tech companies allow this. No pay, but keep health insurance.

• Switch teams

• Take a new job (externally)

Ultimately, I decided to switch teams internally since the root of my consternation was being “bored” and “no longer growing” in my previous role, but I think this sort of personal crisis served as great learning opportunity for myself and what I want from the next ~40 years.

Eventually, you’ll reach a point where you have money. You’ll reach a point where you have a reliable car. You’ll reach a point where you have that dream job. And you know what? Those things will only take you so far. It’s like if your happiness was a glass of water. Your career can only fill that glass so full. At some point, you need to find those other things that top it off and pursue them.

Some Literature

In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.

- F Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

Thanks for reading my Substack! Feel free to share if you’d like.

Link to this post: https://aidanjude.substack.com/p/december