John Mearsheimer: belief

Transcript context

…What advice would you give to a young person today about how to have a career they can be proud of or a life they can be proud of? Well, I think it’s very important to make sure that you do something in life that really interests you. My mother used to use this phrase, “Floats your boat.” You want to do something that floats your boat or to use another one of my mother’s phrases, ” You want to get off. You want to do something where you get up out of bed in the morning with a bounce in your step.” So I think that if your mother and father want you to be a lawyer and they’re pushing you to be a lawyer and you don’t want to be a lawyer, you want to be a policeman, be a policeman. Don’t do what other people want you to do because it’s very important to find a job, an occupation that you really love. The second thing I would say, and this has to do with your point about humility, you want to think about the humility hubris index. My friend Steve Van Everett, who teaches at MIT, he and I invented this concept. We call it the hubris humility index, and you want to have a healthy dose of humility, but you also want to have a healthy dose of hubris. You want to think you can change the world. You want to think you can make things better for yourself. You want to take chances. You want to think sometimes that you know better than other people do. Hubris is not a bad thing, but at the same time, you have to have humility. You have to understand that a man or a woman has his or her limits and you want to listen to other people. You want to be a good listener. So always remember the importance of the hubris humility index and the importance of having healthy doses of both hubris and humility. Speaking of humility, you’re mortal, like all humans are, do you ponder your mortality? Are you afraid of it? Are you afraid of death?…

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