I was born at the end of the cold war, unaware of the danger we were emerging from. Duck and cover drills (as if those could protect schoolchildren from a nuclear blast) were a curiosity of the past.
The farmer-poet Wendell Berry, who wrote about the dread of nuclear war, died recently. From his 1968 “The peace of wild things”:
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least...
Previously: GiveWell raised less than its 10th percentile forecast in 2023 · GiveWell fundraising up 17% in 2024
GiveWell has published its...
Maybe what humans need more than more advice is advice on how to actually apply advice — that is, better ways to bridge the gap between hearing it and living it?
So not just a list of steps or clever tips, but skills and mindsets for truly absorbing what we read, hear, discuss, and turning that into action. Which I feel might mean shifting from passively waiting for something to "click" to actively digging for what someone is trying to convey and figuring out how it could work for us, just as it worked for them.
Of course, not all advice will fit us, and that's fine. We can't expect to apply all advice we get, not even all advice that really resonates. Often, the greatest act of kindness we can do for ourselves isn't working to make ourselves more perfect, but understanding and accepting our imperfection and limitations.
However, realistically, I think the bigger reason we ignore most advice isn't that it's not for us — it's that we rarely pause to ask ourselves how it might look in practise or remind ourselves to follow through. That we waste the immense potential for transformation and for acquiring new habits and behaviours that's already out there.