Asklemmy

52020 readers

343 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

What's the most important problem in the world that one can work on? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by boramalper@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

19 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Cross-posting a 2023 Hacker News thread:

Everyone has different perspectives and values, so what do you personally think is the most important problem in the world right now? Is it something that one, or a group of early enthusiasts, can work on?

The original quote is from Aaron Swartz:

Life is short (or so I’m told) so why waste it doing something dumb? It’s easy to start working on something because it’s convenient, but you should always be questioning yourself about it. Is there something more important you can work on? Why don’t you do that instead? Such questions are hard to face up to (eventually, if you follow this rule, you’ll have to ask yourself why you’re not working on the most important problem in the world) but each little step makes you more productive.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

picking up litter in your local park, or just volunteering to trim the weeds in it, does make a big impact.

the problem is once you start doing that don't hang around in the park looking for litterers who are trying to 'ruin' your good deeds.

i have notice in volunteer work there is a fine line between doing good, and then imposing your rules on everyone else and become massive asshole. this is why HOAs and such go so wrong. they usually start off with good-intentions but get warped into perverse controlling nonsense.

and if you volunteer and find out the people around you are weirdo assholes, just quit and do something else. i joined a community garden awhile back and left after 6 months because so many members were losers who were just shitting on everyone else's plot for not being as nice as theirs or getting jealous that a plot 10 ft over 'got more sun'. it was insane how petty and pathetic a lot of the long time gardeners were because they felt they were 'owned' the garden.