What differentiates driven people from complacent ones?

[RAFox]

Chase once said in one of his articles (back in 2013, I think) that he acknowledges the lifestyle of watching TV all day eating junk food, but that he could never live that way. I'm certain this rings true to a lot of us here.

So this is what I've been thinking about lately:
What makes complacent people less ambitious? What makes them not lift a finger for the sake of living a better life? Is it their upbringing, their role models/experiences during childhood? Or even overconsumption of media? Are they just caught in a certain poisonous mindset?

I would love to hear your thoughts and theories on this matter.

Rogan

 

[Chase]

RAFox-

Character flaws, mostly. I think.

The perfectly normal person is happy with a normal life and aspires to nothing greater. There's not really a reason for him to. A man can do well in school, get a decent job, get a decent wife, go to church, have two kids, buy a house, and more or less live a fairly comfortable, reasonably enjoyable life, and come out at the end of it feeling it was fairly meaningful, too.

A disproportionate number of people in power are psychopaths, because these are people with a character flaw that predisposes them toward seeking power over others. A disproportionate number of people who contribute great leaps forward in human technological innovation are odd ducks with strange obsessions who care little for normal things in the world (Archimedes, Newton, Tesla, Turing).

Most great men are either extravagant men who have an outsize need for attention and validation due to whatever reasons (possibly missing love/acceptance as children, or otherwise great expectations placed upon them while young), or strangely driven men with singular fixations who feel a need to bring something into being that previously did not exist.

Another thing worth considering is that "drive" can be fleeting, and while some men are inherently driven due to character flaws or singular minds and obsessive tendencies, others are temporarily driven to achieve a certain objective, and then once they achieve it, the drive vanishes. I've seen a lot of guys get into pickup and become extremely driven, for a time, because they see an objective they want and it feels so close they can taste it. Once they get it, and enjoy the fruits of it, the drive disappears, and you check up with them a few years later and they're living these totally ordinary, normal, average lives, and perfectly happy doing it. In this case, the drive seems to be a temporary state pushing them to achieve a certain end goal, and once they get it, the drive goes away.

So maybe the answer is there are two types of driven men:

• The more "normal" driven men who are driven to achieve something to gain a specific end goal, only to return to complaceny

• Men with character flaws driving them to be perpetually ambitious and high-achieving (or at least attempting to be)

Chase

 

[Drck]

Agree with Chase, which unfortunately means that an average and happy guy is doomed to be a loser, LOL

Seriously, to achieve something above average a guy usually needs above average motivation. You can't be too happy, you need to get out of your comfort zone, you have to have some discipline to keep pushing persistently forward. This is of course much easier if you have some underlying drive, such as anxiety, complex of inferiority, or even emotional pain. Or, if someone like parents are pushing you into it...

For example, there are a lot of doctors or lawyers who have OCD, the anxiety and desire for control it drives them to perform well in academic area. Normal and happy person just can't keep up, he doesn't have the energy to sit and study books, hours a day for years; he doesn't have the motivation to go over the same details over and over... For normal guy it is just much easier to sit on a beach and simply enjoy life...

Same with politics, normal person simply have no ambitions to become one of the "elected" ones. Makes you even wonder why normal person votes at all, but I guess that depends on definition of "normal". I'm not saying that people shouldn't vote, not at all. I'm just saying that the 'voting material' is just not there. All we unfortunately have is fake hopes, corruptions and lies. What a shame for such a great country like US...

 

[RAFox]

Chase, Drck, thanks for responding

Most great men are either extravagant men who have an outsize need for attention and validation due to whatever reasons (possibly missing love/acceptance as children, or otherwise great expectations placed upon them while young), or strangely driven men with singular fixations who feel a need to bring something into being that previously did not exist.

I feel like this is the answer I was seeking. Especially since I interact with very passionate artists - the ones with the singular fixation - on one hand and with ordinary students on the other. It seems clearer now.

And yes, I also support the theory that one needs a certain dose of personality disorders in order to "reach for the stars" - mainly Narcissism and Machavellianism.

A quick introspection reveals to me there might be an underlying fear of, when the time comes, looking back and realizing how monotone and underwhelming my life was, and that my current actions are an effort to never making that thought cross my mind.
I believe this is somewhat similar, albeit different to being afraid of dying without ever leaving something behind, a legacy.

And Drck, yes, I also agree some balance of motivation and discipline needs to be maintained.

Or perhaps it's none of the above and the ones who keep trying harder to get better are the ones who watched Dragonball as children, haha!

Rogan