Thread by @theorangealt, It’s high time I became a prophetSo, hear me out The most [...]

It’s high time I became a prophet

So, hear me out

The most meaningful thing you can do with your life is — figure out how to be a good person, and teach others by being a very vivid and visible example (because people learn by imitation)

This is fully compatible with any other noble goals you might have, and will in fact aid those goals

Because a) being awesome, powerful, capable, brave, non-depressed, non-procrastinating, will increase your speed at least twofold

And b) getting powerful and capable and brave allies will likely bring a *qualitative* improvement

There are likely many people around you — or people in communities that you could reach with time — who are at least as capable as you, and who can be pushed to become [similarly well-functioning] with some luck

You might not realize just how much [interacting with somebody who is a good example] can change one’s life path, speed it up by years

You can legitimately achieve times and times and times more in your life than you would have achieved otherwise (and have a more rich and fun life than you would have otherwise) by becoming a visible good example for other people

And the key word here is "visible"

Don't just do good things, but do good things in the presence of others

Try extra hard to be better in the presence of others than you are when nobody is looking

And it doesn't mean "hide the problems you are facing"

The point isn't to show "hey I'm awesome", the point is to show "here is how to be awesome"

Other people have the same struggles you have

For some of them, seeing a *single time* when somebody with the same struggle — somebody who looks like them — overcame the struggle and did the right thing..

..will keep popping up in their memory for *months*

With a single demonstration, "this is who I am, and yet I can still cope / do the right thing / etc, here's how I do it", you can make somebody slowly change over the course of several months

Because they will keep remembering

They will fail the first time and the second time and the third time but they will still remember that hey, it's actually *possible*, and this will let them keep trying

Many people don't have that many friends / acquaintances / coworkers to begin with, and a large share of those are sufficiently different that "oh, they are like me but they succeeded" won't work out

A large share are eliminated further because they succeeded for unrelated reasons (extra capital / a large safety net / luck / whatever) and imitation won't happen

You might genuinely be the only person in someone's life who is simultaneously
- in a similar situation
- open
- and cares enough to spend the effort on being a visible-good-example

And the more often you behave like a visible good example, the more effortless it will get

You can become, without exaggeration, 100x more often a visible-good-example than other people in someone's circle

Because so many people are so incredibly bad at it

Stories about not learning anything after working somewhere for a year, or three, or five

Stories about becoming more mature after a year knowing [someone] than after twenty years of living with your parents

If you get good at being a visible good example, you can be one of the best things that happened to somebody in a year

And not once but many times over, to many people

People live for a long time, people join communities and travel and move to other countries, and people propagate everything they learn

Which makes helping other people grow the most positive-sum game I can think of

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