The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

Attention:
People have always pursued fame and attention as a way
to feel enlarged and more important. They become dependent on the
number of people applauding, the size of the army they command, the
crowd of courtiers that serve them. But this false sense of purpose has
become greatly democratized and widespread through social media.
Now almost any one of us can have the quantity of attention that past
kings and conquerors could only dream about. Our self-image and self-
esteem become tied to the attention we receive on a daily basis. In
social media, this often requires becoming increasingly outrageous to
capture eyeballs. It is an exhausting and alienating quest, as we
become more of a clown than anything else. And each moment that the
attention ebbs ever so slightly, a gnawing pain eats away at us: Are we
losing it? Who is siphoning off the flow of attention that was ours?
As with money and success, we have a much greater chance of
attracting attention by developing a high sense of purpose and creating
work that will naturally draw people to it. When the attention is

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unexpected, as with the success we suddenly have, it is all the more
pleasurable.
Cynicism:
According to Friedrich Nietzsche, “Man would rather have
the void as purpose than be void of purpose.” Cynicism, the feeling that
there is no purpose or meaning in life, is what we shall call having “the
void as purpose.” In the world today, with growing disenchantment
with politics and the belief systems of the past, this form of the false
purpose is becoming increasingly common.
Such cynicism involves some or all of the following beliefs: Life is
absurd, meaningless, and random. Standards of truth, excellence, or
meaning are completely old-fashioned. Everything is relative. People’s
judgments are simply interpretations of the world, none better than
another. All politicians are corrupt, so it’s not really worth it to get
involved; better to abstain or choose a leader who will deliberately tear
it all down. People who are successful get there through gaming the
system. Any form of authority should be naturally mistrusted. Look
behind people’s motives and you will see that they are selfish. Reality is
quite brutal and ugly; better to accept this and be skeptical. It’s really
hard to take anything so seriously; we should just laugh and have a
good time. It’s all the same.
This attitude presents itself as cool and hip. Its adherents display a
somewhat apathetic and sardonic air that gives them the appearance
that they see through it all. But the attitude is not what it seems.
Behind it is the adolescent pose of appearing to not care, which
disguises a great fear of trying and failing, of standing out and being
ridiculed. It stems from sheer laziness and offers its believers
consolation for their lack of accomplishments.
As hunters for purpose and meaning, we want to move in the
opposite direction. Reality is not brutal and ugly—it contains much
that is sublime, beautiful, and worthy of wonder. We see this in the
great works of other achievers. We want to have more encounters with
the Sublime. Nothing is more awe-inspiring than the human brain
itself—its complexity, its untapped potential. We want to realize some
of that potential in our lives, not wallow in the cynical slacker attitude.
We see a purpose behind everything that we experience and see. In the
end, what we want is to fuse the curiosity and excitement we had
toward the world as children, when almost everything seemed
enchanting, with our adult intelligence.

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The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man’s
always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are
deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in
despair. The immeasurable and infinite are as necessary for man as the
small planet he inhabits.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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