Feel like wasting life?

S

sina12345

I don't know if this applies to others as it does to me, but academically I do pretty well in school, I like my maths and sciences and history, I don't exactly study too hard, but its a part of school I actually enjoy learning. I like knowing how things work and how the world operates...my problem is that I feel like I am doing nothing useful in society following a filmmakers life.

Sure entertainment is a huge part of our society, but thinking how I would feel about myself makes me doubt my decision to get into this field. Why not be an astrophysicists and contribute to our world, be an engineer, a researcher or a scientist...an academic.

I know that both worlds are worlds that appeal to me, but am I going into this field because I'm too lazy to study for those career paths, or am I legitimately interested in this field?

I don't wanna sound like I'm having an emotion crisis here haha, but can anyone relate to this at all?
 
If your karma is to contribute to the world in some positive way, and your talent is filmmaking. Then I would suggest you transmute those two things into your dharma.

You can always make documentaries that can educate people about important events in the world, right?
 
we need more intellectuals like you in the film industry. its full of goons trying to make money. there aren't enough intelligent artists who are trying to make a statement
 
Da Vinci was an scientist and an artist... he pursued his art through science and his science through art... why must the two be considered separate entities?
 
your overstating your importance in the world...

Don't get me wrong, as individuals, I think EVERY person is of infinite value, but to presume that the world will somehow be impacted by you on some large scale is narcissistic to say the least.

I think taking a path where your WORK is socially value positive is the lazy one! By letting the results of your work, in the which you you get paid for doing, and find PERSONAL, selfish, gratification, be your contribution to humanity, you neglect the TRUE social INTERPERSONAL interaction. You have an obligation to help other humans DIRECTLY.. indirectly helping people is all a sham, a cash cow for middle men to rake profit from misery. This is not to say an organized approach to compassion is bad, just that it not the SAME as doing something good your self. Do you feel good when you help someone in your neighborhood who is having a hard time? .. do you feel that good when you right your check to the IRS? Similar services may be provided.. ? I digress..
 
I don't know about anyone else...but I know when I am taking the right path. I have persued things that in my gut I knew I wouldn't like...but I had to give it a go.

I think you need to listen to your gut.
What do you really want?
 
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know" - Ernest Hemmingway

I can offer what will be a prosthetic assurance, that the result of your choosing, is only that of the quest for gratification. "Fulfillment" is discoloured, too discoloured, by the instance of a career, that brings to question the cliche of "The ceiling of intelligence", and the importance of it.

What is valued, is subject to change. There are a thousand discoveries, moments that are missed, that fade as the clocks change. Time. You have to pursue honesty, or the idea of it.

I however, am moments away from seeing a relative for the first time in four years. Happiness.

Why not do both?
 
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wheatgrinder said:
your overstating your importance in the world...

Don't get me wrong, as individuals, I think EVERY person is of infinite value, but to presume that the world will somehow be impacted by you on some large scale is narcissistic to say the least.

I think taking a path where your WORK is socially value positive is the lazy one! By letting the results of your work, in the which you you get paid for doing, and find PERSONAL, selfish, gratification, be your contribution to humanity, you neglect the TRUE social INTERPERSONAL interaction. You have an obligation to help other humans DIRECTLY.. indirectly helping people is all a sham, a cash cow for middle men to rake profit from misery. This is not to say an organized approach to compassion is bad, just that it not the SAME as doing something good your self. Do you feel good when you help someone in your neighborhood who is having a hard time? .. do you feel that good when you right your check to the IRS? Similar services may be provided.. ? I digress..
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I never said that I want to be the guy that did this...or that...but I want to be the guy who was on the team who helped....(prove the string theory?). That is what I mean by contributing to the world, I'm talking about pulling my weight, helping out, doing my part. And I have to disagree in the sense that a single person can't impact the world on such a large scale, Einstein, Newton, Galileo, all good examples of people who made enormous impacts on the way we live our day to day lives. Who's to say that I can't take a part in our scientific world, and discover and learn things about our world we have yet to imagine? Not saying that I would go and come out with a universal theory of the universe, but at least a part of the group that researches in that field. I don't understand why in the Western world, specifically a capitalist world, the idea of a person having a significant impact is looked at like a crazy man.

After reading what you wrote 4 times, I have to say wheat you have a style of writing that I find very hard to decipher :huh: so I'm not sure what you meant by the interpersonal interaction, or directly/indirectly helping other humans. I'm obligated to do that?

Frankly I'm not obligated to do anything for anyone if I chose that route, but that is not my point anyways (unless you referenced it in another context I misunderstood).

Libby said:
I don't know about anyone else...but I know when I am taking the right path. I have persued things that in my gut I knew I wouldn't like...but I had to give it a go.

I think you need to listen to your gut.
What do you really want?
Click to expand...

Yea...that's pretty much my problem at the moment, and I got maybe 2 months to decide.
 
kgasser2 said:
its full of goons trying to make money. there aren't enough intelligent artists who are trying to make a statement
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This is questionable. There have never been so many film-makers, able, to create films. It's playing ratios. I however, plea that every artist does not, arrive on my screen with a "statement". A statement arrives after an assumption, from those who have lived, from a diligence, or a passive dismissil of torment, or change. At the same time, i cannot sit through mind-numbing pap, passed off as entertainment.

I do believe in statement, it's evident, but in the present era, inspiration is an escapee.
 
I think you should drop out of school and walk the earph...Like Qaui Chang Kang(ms)....yea I know I stole that.
 
Why don't you document your dilema. You can kill two birds with one stone. One being making a film and two analyzing your quest in life.

Truth is, most people never know what they want to be when they grow up. They work to pay the bills and that extra money they have they can fulfil something else they desire.

As far as giving yourself two mos notice...one thing for sure,, life is fluid. It changes and so will you. So nothing is carved in stone.

Why do you have only two mos to decide anyway?
 
Scientific advance is extremely important. I feel you on this one. I have a B.A. in Anthropology, and very seriously considered continuing to get a Phd, and a large part of my reasoning was a desire to help add to the advancement of the science. Heck, even one measly article published in a scientific journal is extremely important, because science works by having many such little contributions add up to a massive whole.

But art is also extremely important. In fact, artistic expression is on the very short list of things that are universal to every human society in recorded history. Dude, we had cave paintings tens of thousands of years before we even began farming. Something that is so universal to all humans certainly has something to it -- it's written into us genetically, for one reason or another. My opinion -- it helps keep us sane, helps us interpret the crazy world around us.

So, if you buy into my logic, your decision is a win-win situation. Either way, you're contributing to making this world a better place. Which means the real question is --

WHICH ONE ARE YOU MORE PASSIONATE ABOUT?
 
Sorry to come of like a jerk but that just me.. I am..

don't take ME seriously.. its just easier on you if you dont...

Let me distill it for you.


Don't try and make your selfish desire for grandeur to be some sort of "Im doing it for the little people" line of bull. It aint so. Your considering it for purely selfish reasons.. so you can feel good about your self...

Your the one whose concerned that your not contributing enough... not me..

The only way your doing something for the little people, is to actually DO SOMETHING FOR THE LITTLE people.. any other action, is just pseudo help..

Im sure that on the streets of Calcutta, Its so much easier to starve to death knowing that somewhere in the world a college kid has finally grasped a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics, now if they would just hurry up and die, and decreases the surplus population already... :) (smiley makes it funny? right?)

geeze.. kids these days..
 
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wheatgrinder said:
Sorry to come of like a jerk but that just me.. I am..

don't take ME seriously.. its just easier on you if you dont...

Let me distill it for you.


Don't try and make your selfish desire for grandeur to be some sort of "Im doing it for the little people" line of bull. It aint so. Your considering it for purely selfish reasons.. so you can feel good about your self...

Your the one whose concerned that your not contributing enough... not me..

The only way your doing something for the little people, is to actually DO SOMETHING FOR THE LITTLE people.. any other action, is just pseudo help..

Im sure that on the streets of Calcutta, Its so much easier to starve to death knowing that somewhere in the world a college kid has finally grasped a deeper understanding of quantum mechanics, now if they would just hurry up and die, and decreases the surplus population already... :) (smiley makes it funny? right?)

geeze.. kids these days..
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Not targeting you, specifically, wheat, but you happen to be the most recent post, as I happen to be on this thread. It seems that not just you, but a lot of people are coming down on sina for wanting to make some grand contribution to science, like he's got delusions of granduer or something.

Scientific advancement is extremely important. And it works because bright individuals, like sina, have a desire to contribute to it. That doesn't mean he's going to cure cancer. But maybe he'll do one study, of which there are many, that will help get us one step closer. That's how science works -- in baby steps (for the most part).

You can do either one, sina. And they're both valid life-choices. Like I said earlier, win-win. Whichever one you choose as a career-path, you can choose the other as a hobby. Like knightly said, they don't have to be mutually exclusive.
 
CF, no, I think im the ONLY one coming down hard.. thats my job. :)

So Ill take the blame.

The opening question is: "my problem is that I feel like I am doing nothing useful in society following a filmmakers life."

The question is not about weather or not the OP IS making a contribution, but rather about how the OP "feels" ...the choice between ART or SCIENCE is arbitrary and will not CHANGE how the OP feels, once hes a profesional scientist and spends most his day writing for grants, hell be just as disillusioned as he is as a filmmaker..

... and frankly, who cares how anybody "Feels!!" feeling one way or another has not made ANY DIFFERENCE to any other person, EVER... Its only ACTION, that makes ANY difference... so the quickest way to ACTION is to do it your self. Today, right now, the OP could go find somebody that needs help and help them.. and he WILL FEEL GOOD..

Take another step closer to curing cancer... or help a teenage kid down the street who cant read.. you can start fixin one today.. the other takes a life time of dedication...

Look, if you want to help, help.. don't couch it in some ideological high brow baloney.
 
wheatgrinder said:
CF, no, I think im the ONLY one coming down hard.. thats my job. :)

So Ill take the blame.

The opening question is: "my problem is that I feel like I am doing nothing useful in society following a filmmakers life."

The question is not about weather or not the OP IS making a contribution, but rather about how the OP "feels" ...the choice between ART or SCIENCE is arbitrary and will not CHANGE how the OP feels, once hes a profesional scientist and spends most his day writing for grants, hell be just as disillusioned as he is as a filmmaker..

... and frankly, who cares how anybody "Feels!!" feeling one way or another has not made ANY DIFFERENCE to any other person, EVER... Its only ACTION, that makes ANY difference... so the quickest way to ACTION is to do it your self. Today, right now, the OP could go find somebody that needs help and help them.. and he WILL FEEL GOOD..

Take another step closer to curing cancer... or help a teenage kid down the street who cant read.. you can start fixin one today.. the other takes a life time of dedication...

Look, if you want to help, help.. don't couch it in some ideological high brow baloney.
Click to expand...

Clearly you've already made some sort of assumption about me and making your points based on that assumption. I never said I'm doing this for the purpose of HELPING OTHER PEOPLE. Frankly, IDGS, I want to live my life though knowing that my meager existence had at least some sort of positive aspect, be it in a movie people liked and laughed over, or a discovery of something or other. I never claimed that I want to do this to help other people, this is in the end as the title suggests if I feel like I'm wasting my life going into either career.

Also your prediction that whether or not I will miss the other career choice when I choose the one seems sort of absurd. Why would you assume something like that will happen, has this happened to you or is this generally a pessimistic attitude you hold. ;) (Winking makes it less rude)

Either way, in the end I'm here to hear the stories of people older and wiser than me that have experienced things I have yet to experience, which is why I made this thread. For example Cracker having a B.A. in Anthropology is something that gives me hope, that you can have a win-win situation and that my life doesn't end up in a shitty cubicle with hundreds of other failed lives pushing buttons.

Murdock..there's like an 80% chance I might do that :P
Also Googling mutually exclusive is also encouraging.
 
of course I make assumptions.. why bother with real facts.. it so much more fun to just make stuff up..

Though, how was I to interpret "my problem is that I feel like I am doing nothing useful in society following a filmmakers life." in any other way?

The opposite of "doing nothing USEFUL for society " would mean to well, do something useful for society. Last I checked, society is comprised of people, so doing something useful for society generally means doing something useful for people, being useful is "helpfull" hence I derive you want to do something to help people..

I suppose you could do something USEFUL for society but not HELPFUL for people.. I think Marx, Engels and Stalin had that idea too.. A 4.62mm x.39mm hunk of lead can solve most of the PROBLEMS of humanity (a good thing) by simply killing them (not so good). Its a life style choice... :)
 
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