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Tags: existential
The meta-lesson of personal development is just existentialism
Now we need to see the tools, just how Andy’s Working Notes mentions with tools and the things which hold the tools:
“Adobe Illustrator is essentially different from any of the individual tools Illustrator contains. Such a medium creates a powerful immersive context, a context in which the user can have new kinds of thought, thoughts that were formerly impossible for them.”
Except it’s coated deeply in western culture.
Personal Development as an Incomplete Existentialism
A medium is the higher-order structure that organizes and integrates tools into a meaningful system.
- Someone who reads self-help books but only follows tactics (habits, productivity hacks, mindset shifts) is still operating at the tool level.
- Mastery happens when someone sees the larger framework, understands how tools interconnect, and can fluently apply and adapt them to different situations.
Self-help is like existentialism without the final view.
- Existentialism provides a meta-framework for meaning, responsibility, and self-definition.
- Personal development provides techniques for improving life, but without a guiding philosophy, it can become directionless optimization—improving without knowing why.
A person truly mastering personal-development would eventually have to step beyond tools and start thinking at the medium level, where they integrate everything into their own unique framework for life.