Thread by @DjangoWexler

This for sure. Pain is not a virtue.

https://twitter.com/CaseyLBlair/status/1417259668812931072

There's this instinct of "if I sacrifice something valuable, which I can recognize because doing so is painful, then surely I will be rewarded in return!"

Which is very understandably human and often completely wrong.

I feel like this is the impulse that makes people live in barrels at the top of poles and eat only mold "for God"; the sense that, the more difficult your devotion, the more serious and valuable it must be.

Also worthy noting that Casey is using "heroic" in the SEEING LIKE A STATE sense, meaning "stupid". Or more precisely "extremely vigorous but misguided", as in "They made heroic efforts to repair the side of the mountain with duct tape, but the avalanche buried them anyway."

One general theme of that book, applicable to many things, is that while extreme effort and overwork may occasionally save the day, *this is still a failure on the part of the system*. A system that needs saving by heroics is not a well-functioning system.