In hindsight, this post does stand out as off-topic and unrelated to the rest of this blog but I couldn’t help but share it anyway.

“Whether the future is wonderful or terrible is, in part, up to us.”

– William MacAskill’s “What We Owe The Future”

Over the past few years, I’ve collected some principles:

1. A good world is not natural. For a good world to exist, it must be carefully curated into reality and then indefinitely nurtured by a certain number of individuals in each generation.
2. Whether one’s impact is on institutions, on other people, and/or on one’s self: as individuals, each of us will dramatically transform the world and its future during our lifetimes, for better or for worse. (ripple effect)
3. Effort without talent will surpass talent without effort.
4. Talent itself is an illusion, as it’s actually the result of accumulated time and effort spent acquiring skills, knowledge, and experience.
5. Success is also an illusion, as it’s actually the result of enduring through many doubts, setbacks, and failures until an unexpected and previously undefined state of relative ‘success’ is reached.
6. There are simple metaphorical building blocks (including kindness, compassion, selflessness, stoic optimism, and action on that optimism) that all individuals can create on a daily basis, which then directly help to build a good world.
7. Human to human connection is the ultimate catalyst for the development of a good world.
8. All in all, listen to the heart, it knows the way.

These aren’t original – I’ve paraphrased them from excerpts and quotes from philosophers that I’ve read over the years that live rent-free in my head. William MacAskill and Stephen Covey are contemporary inspirations, while John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke are more dated ones.

I accept these principles because I cannot accept their opposites. I cannot accept that we as individuals do not have a dramatic impact on the world and its history-in-the-making, regardless of our background and status. I cannot accept that the lighthouse keeper, the cashier, or the truck driver has any less of an impact in the world than the president or the pope. Dare I say that we are each the president and pope of our own reality, with the direct power to change the tiny locale of the world that is immediately around us, which thereby carries consequences downstream of our locale, permeating locales of neighbors, family, friends, colleagues, competitors, and even arch nemeses (should you have any). The effect again ripples onto those people’s connections, and on, and on. I’d argue that even your actions today, even within the past few hours, have been impacted by your past interactions with others, whether those interactions took place 5 years, 5 days, or 5 minutes ago. For those who may have read Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’, we are all little golden butterflies who play some large part in shaping the future. We, as mere individuals, matter more than we can conceive.

In the process of developing Emberwood, philosophy in a sense reigns as a major guiding light. I feel like the whole point of why I started Cider Mill Studio in the first place is to express myself and the nuances of the philosophical ideas that might make the world a better place via story-telling and art. There might be nothing more apt to change the hearts of others than through art. Quoting Alan Moore,

“I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change peoples consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman.”

In summary, philosophy gives the why to everything that is sought (and thereby, if we have one – a philosophy – it gives us a boost to our self-efficacy, or our belief that we can achieve something). Self-efficacy is a pre-requisite to finishing any meaningful project, so I just wanted to dive into it a bit here. Perhaps some of you are working on meaningful projects of your own. I wish you the best of luck in your pursuit of successful completion of these endeavors, and please feel free to share about your journey in the comments, and perhaps any principles you have picked up over the years – I’d love to read your thoughts and I’m sure others would too.

As always, cheers to our dreams,

Wady