#142: Altucher’s Headshot, Godot’s Slaughterhouse & Amor Fati
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Thinking about Emails
I. Altucher’s Headshot
When computer programmer Ray Tomlinson sent the first email in 1971, was he aware of what he kicked off? The immediacy of electronic mail can get to you. Entrepreneur and chess enthusiast James Altucher admits:
Getting an email is a lot like being shot in the head.
I get this gut feeling that now my whole life has to change or I'll die if I don't immediately respond. I have to fight that feeling. And it’s all day long.
II. Godot’s Slaughterhouse
If getting an email is like being shot in the head, sending one is like being shipped to Godot’s Slaughterhouse.
As the sender, you get this gut feeling that your life’s fate is now in someone else’s hands. Much like in Samuel Beckett’s absurd play Waiting for Godot, you don't know when the reply will come or if you’ll receive one at all. You don’t know if the answer will be positive, negative, or worse, something in between. All you can do is hope you’ll soon forget you even sent the email.
Is it any surprise that some people cunningly time emails to weaponise them?
III. Amor Fati
Amor Fati is Latin for Love of Fate. The Stoic principle urges us to not only accept our destiny but embrace it and turn it into rocket fuel. Or as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche put it:
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it — all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary — but love it.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com
P.S.: Quick reminder of my latest essay on the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect and (misguided) trust in the media.