What keeps you going?

While reading Reddit, I came across this

http://en.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1txt9b/what_keeps_you_going_serious/
And I asked myself what kept me going - what actually keeps me going?

Like most people, I've been through good times, meh times and times that I felt bad about. But I always work through them in the end. Why?

I thought about this the whole of last week, whenever I felt the slightest sense of worry, fear, anger, frustration and other negative emotions. And out of it, three words consistently appeared out of the mist - hope, wholeness and purpose.


Hope. A belief that it always gets better, as long as you keep it up. Faith without the expectations.


Purpose. The meaning of whatever you do.

A: Why do I write programs?
B: On a basic level, because I like the feeling of my fingers tapping on a good keyboard. That marvelous awe and reverence for the countless engineers, designers that made it possible for test to appear on my screen, at my command.
A: But if that, you could have become anything else that requires lots of typing.
B: That's true, I also like blogging. : )
A: What makes developing software so attractive?
B: It's about "that jazz" of having written something meaningful and difficult, that nobody has ever written before. It's about seeing real users - most of which I will never meet in person, getting value out of it. It's about giving birth to a creature that lives in a server in cyberspace, with its own mind and ability to act.
A: But the life of a developer is filled with problems. What gives you the drive to solve them elegantly?
B: And that leads us into the next point...


Wholeness.

I believe that people's minds are fragmented. We behave in one way together with our parents, another way with our friends, another way while we are in an exam etc. Like nearly all useful software, there is no way one class/routine/function can handle every situation. So what we call ourselves is really many pieces working together.

Sometimes, one piece cannot fit the situation. So they split.

But once split, conflicts may appear. In computers, they're called bugs. In humans, procrastination is a classic and widespread example. You want to work, but the other side wishes to play.

Of course, in procrastination, play wins and work loses. How do you get parts to work together?

This process is called integration. The end result is wholeness.

The path to wholeness is not necessarily a happy one. There are often failures and causes to be unhappy. 

This reddit user puts it well.

I feel like this quote can sum it up for me.
''I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.'' 

- Hugh Mackay

 

Whoa! Did you hear that? Even the bad is really good. Now that's enlightening zen.

On a more serious note, I think that sums up what I feel about my Facebook feed. It's this invisible pressure to be happy, to be seen happy, and to do happy things. To laugh, to joke, to make gags, to party, eat exciting food, get cool gadgets.

Which are all great fun. Except maybe happiness isn't the default setting for everyone. Maybe for some people, it's really more important to be whole, among other things, like being smart, or interesting. Maybe that bad day you're having is actually a blessing in disguise.

Oops, that's a rant/analysis for another day.

What keeps you going?

v1.0

Sale of Human Organs

http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/01/19/1448247/nobel-prize-winning-economist-legalize-sale-of-human-organs

I have written earlier about the prospect of legalizing the trade of human organs. The discussion in the comments summarizes many arguments for and against this.

I think the consequences are as follows.

1. The supply of willing donors and organs will dramatically increase. Far fewer people will die waiting in line for donated organs.

2. Organs will fetch high prices. The thing of greatest value to most humans is life itself. If people are willing to pay even a fraction of what we know spend on medical care, so will they pay for matching organs when organ failure is imminent.

3. There will be an obviously great incentive to keep yourself healthy. Healthier lungs will obviously be preferable to tar-blackened lungs.

4. It will be highly suitable for social matching. Since it's hard to find good matches when you need them, matching donors is great. Whole networks of mutual organ donors could be matched - the larger, the more potential matches, the better.

5. Organs may not even carry the high net cost at all. If people insured each other, it could simply be a net trade in the long run.

6. People will live longer lives. Patients at the end-stages of their respective diseases will have better chances of survival and higher quality of life.

7. Death will not be such a tragic thing. When one dies, many others will survive.

8. Medical schools will have no shortage of human specimens. Once people come to terms with the meaty organs within their bodies, they will become more mature emotionally. For the first time in history, most people will come to terms with what life is, what death is, and how beautiful and marvelous this natural process is. They will come to see death as a kind of giving back.

9. There will be many more blood donors. Since the blood donation process is really nothing compared to surgical procedures, blood banks will have no shortage of suitable blood for saving lives.

The Bad

10. Illegal organ trade already occurs. It is a growing problem in many places. China harvests organs of prisoners.  The only reason there is such great incentive for this is because there are no effective, legal ways to get to a limited supply of organs. 

10K Illegal Kidneys Transplanted Every Year

It's not that "organ harvesting" will not occur in a free market, rather, there will exist alternatives.

11. There is already profit generated. It's just that the donor and their associates will never get any of it, because that would be illegal.

I'm sure there are many more benefits. Human organs are basically a free resource and could trigger a new renaissance in terms of how we see ourselves and others as biological beings, that will change the course of human history.

Empathy and Software

Slashdot Comment:
In short, the big problem is not that machines are thinking like humans, but that humans are thinking like machines.

While working with user databases, I find it's easy to forget that for every user ID, there is a real, thinking human. A person, an individual, a personality, a living body.

Multiply that by the number of users...

It takes a lot of empathy to make user-friendly software.

~~~