[frankohn]

I understand your feelings. You spent years working hard to learn and master a complex craft, and now seeing that work feel almost irrelevant because of AI can be deeply unsettling.

However, this can also be an opportunity to gain some understanding about our nature and our minds. Through that understanding, we can free ourselves from suffering, find joy, and embrace life and the present moment as it is.

I am just finishing the book The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, and your comment made me think about what is explained in it. Tolle talks about how much of our suffering comes from how deeply we (understandably) tie our core identity and self-worth to our external skills, our past achievements, and our status among peers.

He explains that our minds construct an ego, with which we identify. To exist, this ego needs to create and constantly feed an image of itself based on our past experiences and achievements. Normally we do this out of fear, in an attempt to protect ourselves, but the book explains that this never works. We actually build more suffering by identifying with our mind-constructed ego. Instead of living in the present and accepting the world as it is, we live in the past and resist reality in order to constantly feed an ego that feels menaced.

The deep expertise you built is real, but your identity is so much more than just being a 'principal engineer'. Your real self is not the mind-constructed ego or the image you built of yourself, and you don't need to identify with it.

The book also explores the Buddhist concept that all things are impermanent, and by clinging to them we are bound to suffer. We need to accept that things come and go, and live in the present moment without being attached to things that are by their nature impermanent.

I suggest you might take this distress you are feeling right now as an opportunity to look at what is hurting inside you, and disidentify yourself from your ego. It may bring you joy in your life—I am trying to learn this myself!

[guitarlimeo]

I'm reading The Compassionate Mind by Paul Gilbert and I find it shares many similar ideas. Also I've been interested by Buddhist concepts like impermanency for a while.

While I think rationally what you said is good and makes sense, at the same time it feels like it says you should forget your roots and be this impermanent being existing in the present and only the present. I value everything about my life, the past, my role models when I was a kid, my past and current skills, all friends from all ages, my whole path essentially. When considering current choices I have to make, I feel more drawn to think "What has been my path and values previously, and what makes sense now?" instead of forgetting the past and my ego and just hustling with the $CURRENT technology.

At least that's how I have thought about my ego when I have tried to approach it with topics like these. It might allow me to make more money in the present if I just disidentified with it, but that thought legitimately feels horrifying because it would mean devaluing my roots.

Interested to hear your take on this.

[frankohn]

I think that's right when you say: "What has been my path and values previously, and what makes sense now?" That is actually a sensible way to approach the present moment.

Disidentifying from your ego doesn't mean you have to act like a stateless robot with amnesia. Your past experiences, your role models, and your skills are still there for you to recall; they are tools that help guide your decisions. Disidentifying just means you don't let the mind-constructed image of those things define who you are. It means you don't have to constantly mull over the past, and you don't feel threatened when the things you valued in the past ends or changes.

However, I was really struck by your comment that disidentifying would feel horrifying because it would mean "devaluing your roots" to make more money. I am wondering if this is what you really think.

Imagine if letting go of that specific past identity led you to a truly marvelous opportunity in the present: not just more money, but working with wonderful people, doing engaging things, and being genuinely happy. Would that really be horrifying just because it didn't perfectly align with your roots? Probably not.

I suspect what you actually find horrifying isn't "devaluing your roots," but rather the idea of selling out. The real nightmare is getting a well-paid but completely soulless job where you are unhappy, working on things you don't care about, or being treated like a disposable cog who just takes orders.

Just my two cents, I am no spiritual guide!