One Punch Man On Success & Life
Plus! Assorted Links #11: The promise of psychedelics, self-love, and more!
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One Punch Man On Success & Life
⚠ Trigger Warning: Depression ⚠
I.
Saitama is this skinny, seemingly innocuous, bald-headed dude. He is the protagonist of a popular TV show/anime called One Punch Man (it streams on Netflix).
As the title of the show suggests, Saitama’s punch is so annihilative that one punch is all it takes to kill any enemy.
What if the villain is Carnage Kabuto - this monstrously huge villain with ridiculous strength, speed, and intelligence?
Not a problem. One punch is all it took for Saitama to defeat him.
What if Saitama was against Boros - a dude who can shoot a beam so powerful that it can wipe out an entire planet?
It only took one serious punch from Saitama to finish Boros off.
Saitama is so strong that he is indestructible. This is him when he is facing off against any villain:
Here is the important part: Saitama was not born with this much power; neither was such strength magically granted to him. He worked his ass off to get where he is. Apparently, he trained so intensely that he at times felt he might die, and claims that it is what caused all of his hair to suddenly and eventually fall out. This is why it would be unjust to say “he is the strongest superhero”. A more fitting description would be “he is the most successful superhero”.
Saitama didn’t settle for mediocrity. He worked hard, pushed himself as much as he could, and never gave up. He seems to have ticked all the boxes in the “How to Become Successful” checklist and it paid off too.
Should be pretty awesome to be Saitama, right? Wrong.
II.
Plot twist: Saitama is depressed1. The show establishes this in the opening episode where he has the following internal monologue:
I trained so hard that no one is able to beat me. I'm the hero I dreamed of becoming. So what is this, what's wrong? Why does my heart feel so empty?
As the days pass, my emotions grow more distant. Fear, tension, anger, joy....I feel none of them anymore. In exchange for power, maybe I've lost something that's essential for a human being?
I used to feel all kinds of emotions whirling inside me when I fought. Fear. Panic. Anger. But now, all I need is one punch to end it.
Having overwhelming strength is pretty boring.
He achieved everything he ever wanted to achieve and how does he feel? Empty, emotionless, and is profoundly bored - all of which are symptoms of depression.
The only thing he seems to enjoy, unironically, is getting defeated by his friend in video games. Even when there is a monster in the city killing innocent people, Saitama is more interested in playing another game with his friend that he is likely to lose. That is how much he craves a struggle.
Saitama feels empty because he is unable to experience failure, fear, stress, and tension. He is devoid of the satisfaction one gets from undergoing a struggle. In other words, the lack of misery in his life is the source of his misery.
Now consider humans - we spend all our life in pursuit of success and are harsh on ourselves when we fall short of it. We constantly worry and fear that we will turn out to be a failure in life. We feel guilty if we are not hustling all the time.
But as One Punch Man shows us, the allure of success is deceptive. Saitama does not feel at peace after becoming successful. He does not feel joy or satisfaction or a sense of accomplishment2 or any of the nice things we think we would feel when we become successful. He instead feels empty and pointless. His story shows us how disappointingly unremarkable success is.
III.
Success is overrated. If one were to rate success on a scale of 1 to 10 on its efficacy as a source of happiness, it would be -9000/10.
If success is not a good source of joy, what is?
Albert Camus, a famous French philosopher addressed this in one of his iconic essays titled “The Myth of Sisyphus”3. In the essay, Camus talks about a guy named Sisyphus who had to push a boulder up a hill.
Every time he reached the top, the boulder would roll down and he had to start again from the bottom. He had to do this over and over for eternity. Ugh. Sounds boring, exhausting, and pointless. But Camus argues that Sisyphus must have been happy because one doesn’t enjoy reaching the top, one enjoys the struggle to the top.
The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
- Albert Camus
Our source of joy is the road to success and the good news is, we are on this road at this very moment where we are trying to get by our day by catching up with our friends, spending time with our loved ones, finishing up work at the office, trying to overcome anxiety and depression with our therapist, planning our finances, trying to get in better shape and failing and then trying again, pursuing hobbies, quarreling with our spouse/partner, doing house chores, figuring out our career, laughing at memes and fighting existential crises. (Oh, in case you are fighting with existential crises, you should check out this article)
Every day, we are pushing our boulder of life uphill only to restart the next day. There is nothing at the end of all this and whatever we are taking on today, be it unpleasant or pleasant, is all we have. All we can and should do is take great pleasure in these daily struggles of life. Meanwhile, we must abstain from hoping for a future where we are successful for such a kind of hope only robs us of the ability to live in the present.
Saitama shows us that we do not enjoy success, we enjoy the painfully challenging road to success.
This Week’s Interesting Reads
ACX Reader Survey on Depression, Gender Identity, Political Leanings & More
By Scott Alexander
Research Survey | 2 hour listen | Tags: <find in below screenshot>
ACX is a blog by San Francisco Bay Area psychiatrist Scott Alexander. His blog is one of the most popular blogs in the world with a really active readership community. The New Statesman characterizes it as "a nexus for the rationalist community and others who seek to apply reason to debates about situations, ideas, and moral quandaries."
Personally, I have learnt the most from this blog - a lot of my thinking, writing and reasoning is heavily influenced and inspired by Scott’s articles. His articles are well-researched, thorough, and unimaginably thought-provoking. It is by far the most intellectually stimulating blog I have ever read. I cannot recommend this blog enough.
Having said that, ACX in partnership with other researchers from his readership community has a series of surveys on a variety of topics (listed below). You do not have to be a reader for it to fill this. They are genuine researchers with no conflicts of interest trying to understand underresearched things such as the negative effects of meditation, hit rate of psychedelics and more. Some topics are even controversial and sensitive which is why I would recommend you to take it because not many have the courage to research such topics.
These are the topics:
Please find the links to the survey in his blog post (here) and please follow the instructions outlined.
Michael Pollan — This Is Your Mind on Plants
By Tim Ferriss
Podcast | 2 hour listen | Tags: Mental Health, Plant-based medicine, Psychedelics
It is startling to know that opioid getting banned was purely political. It was banned not because of its psychomedical effects or its addictive nature but because a group of people that the US government disliked were using it. The ban was imposed so as to hit them.
It is just petty to find out that all the taboo and apprehensions we hold today around drugs are the outcome of a political move by the Nixon administration. Equally petty is how cigarettes and alcohol are so openly accepted and legally allowed considering their addictive nature (many psychedelics are not nearly as addictive as liquor, alcohol, and caffeine).
On the other hand, it is heartwarming and encouraging to know that psychedelics are gaining acceptance both in the government institutions like the NIH and the broader mental health research community.
In case you are not aware of the psychomedical benefits of psychedelics drugs here it is in a nutshell:
“Psychedelics, used responsibly and with proper caution, would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology and medicine or the telescope is for astronomy.”
– Stanislav Grof
If you want to know more about psychedelics and how it helps with mental health issues like depression, PTSD, and existential distress, you can start here. Physical health has seen a lot of breakthroughs from anesthesia to morphine to complicated surgeries but mental health has not seen many and psychedelics could potentially change that.
Plus, Michael Pollan’s command over language and his articulation skills are drool-worthy. If not for anything else, listen just for that.
On Being Able to Defend Oneself
By The School of Life
Blog | 7 minute read | Tags: Mental Health, Psychology, Compassion, Self-Love
This article takes a deep dive into why we cannot stand up for ourselves in the face of an aggressor. For example, you might get shouted at by your boss even though you did everything right. But you might not have the courage to stand up for yourself. In the Art of Arguing at Workplace, I outlined a couple of ways to deal with this situation. But many would find it difficult to employ those solutions. Why?
This article posits that we do not stand up for ourselves because we also hate ourselves or dislike ourselves. So the first step is to treat ourselves with love and compassion. Only then will we get the confidence to stand up for ourselves.
Quote of the week
Chogyam Trungpa, A Tibetian monk, on Life:
The bad news is that you’re falling through the air with no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground below.
That’s all for this week!
I am not qualified to diagnose Saitama with depression. It is only my interpretation of the show.
Perhaps he did feel all of this but it was only momentary
The OG material might be a bit overwhelming if you are new to philosophy. So watch this lecture series (click here) by Prof Eric Dodson where he explains the philosophy of Camus in an easy to comprehend manner. Thanks to Bhavya (click here) for the recommendation.
Thanks to Ananya and Krithika for reading drafts of this.
All views expressed by the author are personal.
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