> You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.
I have a hard time interpreting that as what geohotz is saying. If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system
> If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system
I was wondering if that would come up and HN delivers without fail. Anyway, you are free to interpret it as you see fit.
The guidance was for someone who was struggling with a moral dillema on facing relatives in war and undecided over action. It is not a diktat to work or provide unquestion labor.
For anyone who understood the whole story and backdrop of the situation, a reasonable interpretation is
- you are responsible for your actions but you cannot control the consequences of your actions due to many factors.
- When you detach yourselves from results, you can do your job without anxiety.
- do not let the fear over results be an excuse for inaction.
Give it a read and decide for yourselves if you are not convinced. Even without the teachings part, the whole story of Gita is actually an epic story/novel with some strong and conflicted characters with elaborate back stories.
The point is worrying about results creates anxiety that takes away your focus from doing the job which results is lower performance -> subpar results - it is a recursive spiral. Also results are not "wholly" under our control. Hence avoid worrying about the results "while" doing it.
The final result of any action depends on a lot of external factors for e.g. one might develop a product, but whether it succeeds or not depends on other players, economy, luck and host of other factors that one does not control or know. This feeds into the first point about not worrying about the results.
The idea is to not fret over results and give your best with dedication. E.g. An athlete shouldn't be worrying about their results while playing and should focus on the play.
> How can you be responsible for your actions but not the consequences of your actions
I only mentioned control of consequences not responsibility. It doesn't mean you are absolved of responsibility from consequences of your actions.
Take driving. You can only control your actions but you cannot control what happens on the road. You are still responsible for your actions.
Should the fear of the unknown on the road stop you from driving? Absolutely not.
Yeah, I think GP is right and this all feels like word play to me.
Let's say you're making your ideal wood chair for your living room. You're "fretting" over getting the arms, legs perfectly aligned, surfaces smooth, identical chamfers, etc. But fretting is bad and makes it hard to get anything done so you stop. Then you end up with a roughshod chair.
You shouldn't "fret" too much, but you also shouldn't "fret" too little. You should "fret" exactly the right amount which is... tautologically true, and not particularly insightful. Giving your best is committing yourself to fretting.
(I'm not sure if you understood the Gita reference, if you did you can ignore my comment.)
A better analogy isn't so much a chair made by yourself, but say you're making a chair for a competition. The only thing you can control is your actions. What's out of your control is whether or not some other guy who's an absolute veteran is also planning to compete (making you likely to lose), or if almost no one else joined the contest (much higher chance of winning.)
Another example is in the workplace.
You control what efforts you put in.
But your promotion (or even firing!) depends on a ton of other things. If the company's doing poorly, they may not promote you even if you did a great job. Conversely, if the company desperately needs a new senior person and you're the closest fit, even if you just did a mediocre job, you may get selected.
What's common in both cases is - doing a better job is more likely to be better for you. But there are no guarantees you'll win/get promoted, so don't be attached to that outcome, but only your efforts/labour.
> You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.
> stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system
That verse is quite famous and the general interpretation as I understand is this.
You have control on your actions but not on its results. The results depend not only on your actions but on many other factors outside of your control.
Now, one can interpret that it is instruction to "stay in your lane", but I have not seen that interpretation so far in my life in India.
you realize that the caste system that currently exists is completely different from what it was conceptualized as right? you most certainly want to read the conversation between yudhistra and nahusha that talks about caste https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/30/
I don't think we actually know who conceptualized the caste system. Even Manusmriti seems to be not as old as we thought before.
However, even in Mahabharatha there are examples of Karna and Ekalavya who despite having qualities (as Yudhishtira claims) of Kshathriya, they were rejected by the society as being lesser.
It is possible that caste system is an extension and crystallization of nepotism. Typically professions and trade secrets are handed down the families and it is conceivable this was codified at some point far in the past.
To claim that caste system has a more philosophical foundation would be a bit of a stretch in my point of view, especially when it has been throughout the history being used suppress.
You need to understand the context. The quote in Gita was to motivate the best warrior of the time at the battlefront facing opponents who were mainly his cousins and uncles.
In that context the quote is about performing the duties you were born to do without overthinking the consequences.
the context makes it even worse. its a strange kind of tribalism that is being promoted here. "do what you are asked to without understanding the real consequences". btw war is actual zero sum usually.
I have a hard time interpreting that as what geohotz is saying. If anything it seems to promote rent seekers by telling you - stick to your lane and don't complain. I.e. the caste system