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Speaking broadly, there are two ways to think about life: passively or actively. Passive philosophy amounts to letting things happen, whereas active is about making things happen.
I generally try to stay active. If I want something to happen, I need to make ithappen. Sitting around waiting for something to happen or for someone to comealong and tell you what to do is passive.
You can find plenty of examples of this in life, and you may also notice thatpeople who achieve their vision of success tend to be active. The belief thatthe world owes you something and you shouldn’t have to take an active role inmaking things happen harms you and you alone. Actively working to pursue yourgoals is the only sensible way to get through life.
Some people can get far in life passively, and–anecdotally speaking–they tend tobe people with relatively strong support networks. It could be that theirparents are very involved in their lives, or they have some other stronginfluences, such as a spouse, close friend, or partner. These people would beremarkably successful if they just took a more active role in their lives(provided they wanted to).
I’ve contributed to many open-source software projects over the years and havecreated a number myself. I’ve been asked by people before how they can “get intoopen-source”, and to me, this question is absurd: the only thing holding youback is you. The cool thing about software is that it’s soft, and the only limitto what you can do is your time and energy. There are no open-source police outthere; you can publish as much or as little code as you want. There are infiniteresources on the Internet and elsewhere to learn about writing software.
It can be easy to fall into the passive trap. It’s easy to be passive; beingactive is hard. Being active is scary; it means that if you fail, you can onlyblame yourself. You become fully responsible for your actions, and you have tobail yourself out when things go wrong.
To me it has felt for a long time like there’s been an uptick in the generalinfantilization of everything, but it may just be that I’m growing older. Yousee this often in the various media we’re exposed to, especially advertising,and the way politicians and anyone in positions of power speak down to peoplelike they’re idiots. A lot of the modern-day political backlash seems to be aresponse to this kind of infantilization and condescending patronizing.
Passivity is choosing to be infantilized, or in other words, it’s choosing tolet someone else make your decisions. Being active is harder, but the result will always be better.
