On Achievements

I have a somewhat indifferent approach towards achievements(mine and others’): with tendencies to gauge the personalities based on how their conversations flow and in terms of the quality of the questions and problems they are working on.

Recently, I’ve began to grasp why they actually might be a necessary construct:

• when leading larger societal initiatives, simply claiming ethical superiority doesn’t pan out well (and it shouldn’t) with the need to gain the trust of masses.
• you need displays of competence for people to will their incentives to align with yours somehow (necessary for collective progress).
• claiming dignity is simply not enough and that is a good thing.
• of course, this opens up a whole bunch of societal games and dynamics that are too complicated for me to completely break down right now.

If you do wish to make a change, you will someday have to take the helm of larger groups of humans. This is when being competent and having proofs for it becomes indispensible.

Although I find it a little saddening to chase tags and accolades explicitly, I do enjoy the idea of improving towards being the best, irrespective of the somewhat tangible recognitions.

This is again related to one of my other introspections that I rarely discuss:

• if the actually competent start practicing ignorance towards the larger responsibilities in society..
• the leadership positions would actually be occupied by personnel that optimize for attaining that title and not ones who are actually the most competent for carrying our the responsibilities pertaining to it.
• finally, these occupancies affect every ones’ existence and ignoring power just for the sake of being “beyond such earthly notions” is then, a more selfish act than chasing these titles, for the service to society is sub-optimal than it could have been if the actually competent chose to participate.

Albeit, I still maintain an indifference towards others’ achievements while being critical on the lack of my competence proofs.