Viswanathan K's Thoughts

You know how they tell you to follow your dream? To do what excites you? Or, if that’s not possible, be passionate about what you do. Gets to you, doesn’t it, especially since most people are stuck in, well, boring jobs? Guess what, all that hype about passion might all be, well, hype. Sure, there may be a handful of people who did follow their heart and became hugely successful, but they are such a microscopic minority that it would be very risky to try that course. Or so Scott Adams would have us believe. So what are Adams’ reasons behind his assertion? For one, he argues that passion (often) blinds you to reality. Which, more often than not, will lead to disaster. Of course, it’s passion and being somewhat blind to the obstacles that produces outcomes that change the world. But the success rate for passionate people is low. Of course, this being Adams, he suspects a cynical reason as to why many successful people talk about passion: “Naturally those successful pe...

Arrogance: a word with a negative connotation. Humility: the opposite of arrogance, ergo a positive thing. Or so they would have you believe. I have never understood why people expect humility and make it sound like a good thing. Don’t get me wrong: I am not advocating arrogance. Rather, I am saying that sometimes the opposite of a bad thing is not necessarily a good thing either. After all, both are extremes (boastful and self-deprecation), so why don’t people advocate the middle ground instead? Surely a guy who is very good at something or did something great does not need to go around belittling his own achievements. And yet society almost demands humility from its members. No wonder Arthur Schopenhauer asked: “What is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with envy, a man seeks to obtain pardon for excellences and merits from those who have none?” Schopenhauer then went further and attributed a reason for why this is the case: “N...