What's The Sense of Accomplishment In Running Down a Checklist?

Time to talk about what goes on in my brain meats.

I don't get this "sense of accomplishment" thing. I read the accounts of people who do. I hear their stories. I've known them in person. I've been there when they did a thing, beat a challenge. I know what it looks like, what it sounds like, and I grok why it matters. That's not why I say I don't get it.

I mean it literally: I do not experience, and never have experienced, that thing.

I was a Boy Scout once. Skill awards and merit badges were a thing. Never got any sense of accomplishment from any of them; I had a checklist to work from, so all I did was run down the checklist and get things signed off. Meet requirements; get the thing. It's no different from questing in World of Warcraft.

I have a Bachelor's and a Master's degree. Same thing. Get the checklist, run down the checklist, get shit signed off, collect degree. There was not a damn thing to it that anyone else who wasn't a retarded Rhesus monkey could NOT do. (That there are people who have, somehow, failed to do it astounds me. How do you fuck this up?)

Jobs? Checklists. Always fucking checklists. Run down the list, check off the things, don't fuck it up, get paid. So fucking what.

There is nothing special to a goddamn thing I've done. Just draw up a checklist, and check items off as they're done, only to say "About damned time." when it's finished. Satisfaction is so rare that I can remember every instance when it has occurred, and where some go "I did that!" as if it means something I look at it and go "And? What's special about this?" Because there isn't. Not one god-damned thing.

I could not put my finger on my dissatisfaction, until I recently hit upon it while thinking through a related frustration of mine: seeing people waste time and resources needlessly repeating the solving of a solved problem. (e.g. Coming up with a strategy to beat a raid boss, when the World Best raiders already figured that out months ago and put forth detailed video strategy guides on what to do and how to do it.)

Life is a solved problem.

We already know what to do, and how to do it, about every last fucking problem Mankind and Civilization has. It's all been done before, and it's all been solved already, so all that you need to do is (say it with me now) RUN THE FUCK DOWN THE CHECKLIST AND DO THAT SHIT PROPERLY!

There is NO sense of accomplishment in executing the solution to a solved problem. Not one fucking iota, and the biggest problem I see is that we have a population--of all races, both sexes, and every creed--that somehow fails to recognize this fact. Meet the requirements to get the results, and you get the results you expected.

It was this realization that finished off what lingering adherence I had to the Whig View of History. There is nothing new, and therefore nothing to accomplish, until the cancer is burned away.