Ants possess no wisdom whatsoever. What they have is relentless performance—a clear, unwavering pattern that persists despite their endless circling. They remain focused on one mission: building. No passion drives their movement, no individual whims dictate their actions. We're obviously not ants, but perhaps we can learn something about the chasm between packaged wisdom and genuine experience by watching these creatures work, then comparing that to the slippery world of social media enlightenment.
A LinkedIn post caught my attention recently, racking up hundreds of likes and shares with this simple proclamation: "If you Don't Belong, Don't Be Long." Profound stuff, right? The message was clear: abandon any place where you don't feel you belong, lest your precious "passion" be snuffed out.
While important, passion is hardly life's backbone. It certainly doesn't fuel responsibility or creativity. Show me someone genuinely passionate about their daily obligations, and I'll show you a unicorn. I learned this the hard way with a former business partner who turned every conversation about delays, quality issues, or project hiccups into a philosophical debate about "passion" versus "responsibility." Listen, none of us descended from Mars. We're all human, subject to the same social dynamics and behavioral patterns, each carrying personal baggage that ebbs and flows with our enthusiasm.
You can't build societies on such whimsical foundations. Sure, people should recognize their worth and invest their hearts wisely. I get that this "follow your passion" advice comes from the entrepreneurial motivation playbook. But building should take precedence over drowning in narcissistic spirals. What happens to someone who never feels they belong anywhere? Do they just keep bouncing from place to place, contributing to destruction rather than construction?
Are ants passionate about colony construction? Or is their behavior driven by existential necessity?
When Passion Becomes the Slacker's Shield
Only the lazy weaponize passion to justify their inability to persist. Modern work environments have grown brutally complex and difficult to navigate quickly—that's simply the reality we face. Meanwhile, our tech-obsessed culture has conditioned us toward comfort and instant gratification. These challenging environments naturally make people question their capabilities and skills, which is perfectly healthy—provided they understand that meaningful contribution takes time, patience, and sustained effort. Real commitment starts with yourself: continuing to learn, experiment, fail, succeed, and repeat.
Passion amounts to a brief spark in the grand arc of human existence. Those moments of intense engagement or spiritual transcendence that we experience in various pursuits? They're temporary by nature. Consider prayer and the sense of reverence it can inspire—that profound spiritual connection doesn't last indefinitely. Should someone abandon prayer when the feeling fades? Take romantic love as another case in point. We all know those fiery beginnings, the intoxicating rush that transforms ordinary people into poets. When that initial blaze settles into something steadier, should couples simply call it quits? This kind of thinking represents intellectual bankruptcy—and frankly, it's a recipe for hedonism.
Or consider honesty as a behavioral choice. Should someone lie simply because deception feels more exciting in the moment?
The way passion gets packaged and sold today, it's become a destructive tool wielded by modern entrepreneurial gurus to build audiences and, ultimately, revenue streams. We're suddenly drowning in life coaches (a profession that didn't exist until recently), "capacity builders," and self-proclaimed passion evangelists. A reality check: Does an emergency room doctor wait to feel passionate before treating trauma patients?
Obviously, there's a world of difference between working in genuinely toxic environments—poisonous places that actually deserve abandonment—and simply feeling disconnected because of some minor incident that your imagination then inflates into an epic narrative. Next thing you know, you're scrolling LinkedIn and stumbling across that shiny post telling you to quit your job if the passion isn't there.
Let me be blunt: whoever wrote that post isn't nearly as passionate as you think. They've simply cracked the code on algorithmic engagement—they understand what drives clicks, shares, and ultimately, income. They wouldn't risk sacrificing their own stable income to prove their passion principles, but they're perfectly willing to mess with your head about life and responsibility if it serves their bottom line.
Packaged Wisdom: The Empty Vessel's Offering
Social media platforms are drowning in what I call "packaged wisdom"—bite-sized nuggets covering everything from lifestyle optimization to career advice, fitness routines to life coaching. Influencers gravitate toward this approach because it spares them the hard work of deep research and genuine insight while remaining irresistibly shareable. Many of these sound bites contain grains of truth, but they're almost always stripped of crucial context and nuance. They're designed to grab your attention with slick graphics and catchy phrases, maybe promising superhuman transformation in six days. But they won't stick with you as practical tools for improving your work, relationships, or personal growth.
The irony is striking. LinkedIn launched as a professional networking platform meant for sharing genuine expertise and industry insights. By definition, the content should have remained substantive and professionally valuable. Instead, our collective chase for engagement and profit has transformed it into a "packaged wisdom" marketplace where serious discussions about management methodology or design principles have become rare commodities. My father used to say that real knowledge lives in its original sources—books, research, primary documents. Maybe he was onto something.
That said, his view isn't entirely accurate either. Before social media took over, we had forums—primitive by today's visual standards, but remarkably effective for genuine knowledge exchange. Those platforms prioritized substance over style, meaning over aesthetics. The lesson here is simple: tools are only as valuable as we make them.
If you're still unclear on what I mean by "packaging": Think about those carousel posts littering LinkedIn feeds—you probably scroll through dozens daily without retaining a single memorable insight. Beyond being fundamentally useless, this constant stream likely fragments our attention spans, undermining our capacity for sustained focus and meaningful work.
These posts represent manufactured wisdom: influencers taking complex ideas (whether their own or borrowed from legitimate sources) and compressing them into digestible life or career advice, typically amplifying one angle while ignoring others. No methodology, no research depth, and most critically—no real experience backing the claims. Experience forms the bedrock of genuine knowledge. Without it, claiming wisdom is pure fraud.
My central point: we need to prioritize lived experience over prepackaged insights.
Understanding experience in this context requires multiple lenses. Take that passion post as an example. Before reflexively hitting "like," ask yourself: does this advice actually align with your lived reality? Focus on "experience," not "feelings"—there's a crucial distinction. Your personal experience encompasses your financial situation, family obligations, geographic constraints, risk tolerance for dramatic career pivots, and the time investment required to build expertise in new areas. The considerations are endless.
In practice, the "follow your passion" philosophy contradicts most proven mental frameworks and crumbles under basic analysis. Try applying Warren Buffett's "circle of competence" concept to passion-driven decision making. You simply cannot make life-altering choices based on promotional content designed to generate engagement.
The bottom line: real life is messy, complex, and nuanced. Packaged wisdom—usually profit-driven—deliberately ignores this complexity, offering oversimplified solutions to genuinely difficult problems. Instead, build intellectual and practical frameworks that help you research, analyze, and then decide. Don't just follow your passion blindly—cultivate and direct it strategically.
The Ant's Circle and the Human Stopping Point
So what can ants teach us about passion and packaged wisdom? In truth, ants know nothing about our intellectual struggles—we don't even know if they possess self-awareness. But we can learn something valuable about the difference between building and destroying.
This isn't just about critiquing social media posts; it's about understanding broader cultural shifts. Current platform trends push aggressive individualism—what sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called "liquid modernity." Meanwhile, influencers positioned as genuine experts are supposed to contribute to societal building, not demolition.
Real building doesn't happen through circulating abbreviated, unexamined wisdom that plants destructive ideas in readers' minds, especially without proper context. When you read a book—even on controversial topics—you at least get background, multiple perspectives, and comprehensive information. Reading places you in the ant's circle: continuous, purposeful movement rather than paralysis at the point of emotional reaction.
The passion-driven approach promotes toxic individualism while ignoring that genuine social strength develops through solidarity, persistence, and collective commitment. Civil institutions, families, and businesses can't function when subjected to everyone's personal mood swings and whims. This doesn't mean surrendering legitimate rights or tolerating abuse—that's an entirely different conversation. But it does require building genuine commitment and accepting responsibility.
You exist as part of human communities that develop through gradual evolution, sustained effort, and accumulated wisdom—not through impulsive decisions and fleeting emotions. Building requires patience and commitment. Destruction only needs one poorly considered emotional outburst to undo years of careful work.
The ants keep circling, building, contributing. The question is: will we join their purposeful movement, or remain frozen at our stopping points, waiting for passion to save us?
In Praise of Passion
Let me be clear about what passion actually means in this context: it's an intense, driving feeling of interest, desire, or enthusiasm toward something—whether a person, idea, activity, or goal. It's a "powerful emotion" that transcends ordinary interest, requiring emotional intelligence to handle, direct, and harness effectively. This is what's sometimes called harmonious passion—passion born from conscious choice. This stands in stark contrast to obsessive passion that spirals beyond control, causing exhaustion, emotional strain, and neglect of other life areas. But let's focus on the brighter side of the definition: passion connected to the drive to work, achieve success, and serve as a powerful source of internal motivation, inspiration, and focus.
All of this is beautiful—so let no one accuse me of being anti-passion.
The issue isn't passion existing as a natural human feeling, like any innate emotion. The problem lies in how it's exploited and expressed in unrelated contexts—through social media. And how individuals themselves misuse it. We also see how passion as a concept in religious teachings and philosophical reflections is treated with seriousness and discipline, never leaving the door ajar for uncontrolled impulse.
We can understand passion in two ways: first, as the primary driver—a miserable interpretation that cannot be correct. Second, as the spark, catalyst, or assistant—a narrow meaning that doesn't cover all of human existence. Beautiful and important, yes, but not the primary driver of human life.