The choice, from the very start of this rat race, has been plainly visible to those of us with even the barest of above-average intelligence.
Society dresses it up in conceptual verbiage that echoes our cultural mores, but the duality is stark.
Do we:
Use our intelligence to prosper and gather wealth and security for a life in which we maximize comfort and predictability insofar as we can ever expect from it?
Use our intelligence to amuse ourselves until the day we die, embracing pointless and self-destructive abandon in order to shed a tethered, productive existence?
I’m not boasting that my intelligence is astronomical, or even noteworthy, but I am more intelligent than the average bear and my honest self-awareness lends me glimpses into the kernels of a reality many people don’t realize, or care, is there.
What is it they say or sang, different strokes for different folks?
I embrace different strokes and different folks. Whereas I used to condescend and judge, I just don’t give much of a crap what people do now. If they want to a, let them a. Who cares what I think about a? They sure don’t care if a is what gets them off.
Now the pathological detractor, the asshole devil’s advocate, might argue, “Well, why not both? Can’t you be “1” and “2?”
Point taken, but I would argue that the abandon I speak of in #2 is possible only in an existence free of the responsibilities and commitments from #1. When your life centers around a career and the daily task of growing it, expanding it, increasing its lucrativeness, in order to procure more stuff for yourself, your children, your spouse, and the household, there is no room for pointless abandon. Your worldview narrows and you spend your life retaining a limited scope where you must sustain a standard of living that relies on your subjugation to status-driven externalities. This state is mutually exclusive from an existence of amusement and half-hearted immersion in “shit that matters” in today’s materialistic society.
Recognize which path is your calling and go with it. If you foolishly attempt a contrary path that does not complement your essential self, you risk implosion. There are countless people in this category and they are the source of much dissatisfaction in our world. They are a great revenue stream for psychotherapists.
Ignorantly, I followed #1 as a young adult. I was married, bought a house, had a child, we even had a damned dog. It was fine but it wasn’t me. I imploded and brought the marriage down with me in a very dramatic measure.
I eventually found stability and peace of mind and somehow avoided an early bloody demise, but it was only made possible because I found a partner who was in the #1 category and who captured me as I ebbed from #2 to a latter stage #1.
As a young man, I never thought I would settle down or find someone who could love me, so #2 was good enough. If I would have known, I might have chosen #1 and been somebody. I could have been somebody!
But I didn’t, so what.