Homo Deus

The value-based and policy-based distinction isn't one I'm familiar with, but it makes total sense to me. Two very meaningful ways of assessing progress. I think my usual mindset aligns more closely with policy-based, but with some distinctions.

My goal is usually to push the limits of my potential. I don't really care about comparisons to others (and when I do find myself caring, I try to stop). I want to be better than I was yesterday or last year, which I think aligns to your policy-based, but my mental model is that I have a certain amount of potential inherent, and I try to use it and develop it as much as possible. 

In other words, I think I blur the two together a bit. My 'value-based' is about achieving my maximum potential: if I'm at 100% of what I could possibly achieve, that's a win. It doesn't really matter whether my 100% is more or less than someone else's. Of course, the problem is I have no real way to know what my potential is, and so looking at others' success can be inspiring and help me increase my assessment of what is possible for me. Maybe that's a second goal: one is to achieve the limits of my potential, but the second is to be always increasing my estimation of what that potential is. 

For that reason I have no interest in random people as a comparison point: I like to read biographies of the most interesting people, the people who can inspire me to be and do better.

So I guess that's the step I take for more enlightenment. Read about the lives of others who are more enlightened than I, and seek to push myself to learn from them. 

If that speaks to you, perhaps that also gives us a thread to pull for our new blog. Can we highlight practices of others that are productive or enlightened? Give others examples to learn from? I don't think we would want to do only those posts, but it could be an interesting series of articles to profile, and give us some concrete content to generate.

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