what we can learn from Sam Bankman-Fried

From time to time, I have these grand delusional ambitions to help the world.

To think beyond me and help others.

I even confessed this is a bunch of friends. Silly me!

I said to them: more money doesn't matter to me, and that I am oh so privileged, so I need to help others.

Life went on.

Have you heard about Sam Bankman-Fried?

The FTX collapse? Ringing any bells?

Bankman-Fried was part of the "Effective Altruistic" movement. A philanthropist and humanist first, billionaire second. So we would believe.

He ended up fooling a lot of people. Some compare it to Bernie Madoff. But I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

SBF too had this grand vision of helping others at scale.

I later learnt this concept is called the Messiah complex (it's not addressed in the DSM, but is compared to the delusion of grandeur).

I want to admit that I make an extreme effort to avoid the News. The reason is that the News is filled with negativity not useful for me to achieve my goals. But I do want to say I'm glad I learnt about the FTX collapse.

Perhaps, this 'save the world' mentality was just a facade for what was really going on, but it made me think about this delusion of making the world a better place.

After all, with solutions comes even more problems. I even postulate that there are an infinite number of problems to solve in the world. So thinking about all of them, let alone trying to solve all of them, is an impossible task.

Plus, why do I want to solve the world's problems (or the biggest problem)? To increase my self-worth? To have a statue made in my honour? Come on.

I always thought that fulfilment comes from being able to have a positive effect on your surroundings.

Do you know the best form of torture? Tell a person to move rocks from one place to another and then tell them to move them back again.

Boredom is a killer so is the perception of not making any progress.

Coming back to having a positive effect, I was talking to a friend at the gym, also about these grand plans of making the world a better place.

He told me: the world is a big place.

A very big place.

But think of one person's life.

A single person's life is a whole universe. Like the world.

If you can help a single person, isn't that enough?

If you can help just the people you love and care about around you, isn't that enough?

What do you think?

Stay focused,

Shivan

PS: Sorry, I changed emails and this previous newsletter went into spam. Here it is if you want to read it.

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