“Matthew Turpin is an American security analyst and former U.S. Army Officer specialized in US-China relations, economic statecraft, and technological innovation. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior advisor at Palantir Technologies.”
This is life for most people in the West. I’ve had to realize most people enjoy being a cog in a machine, putting tons of effort in a rat race to nowhere. They think making their bosses’ wallet larger helps the world somehow.
But at the same time, realizing this brings you no catharsis because then you’re just stucking working on stuff that doesn’t matter, and wasting your time and potential doing the bare minimum.
Only case where I personally find work fulfilling is if it creates something that I can later point my finger at and say “I built that” or “I helped out with this”. But most workers can’t ever say that because they work in services, or their efforts are hidden by the veil of corporate secrecy. Which means outside of the realm of their workplace, they are nobodies. And some manager can easily decide to remove them from that realm, leaving them with nothing.
I like putting extreme amounts of effort into things. I crave this kind of exertion. But I cannot deal with the fruits of my labor being transient and invisible to humanity. It demotivates me and kills me from the inside.