Here is a talk that Alain de Botton gave at TED, which is food for thought and a manifesto for everyday living.

I just have one problem with the slogan de Botton was saying, “we need to define success according to our own terms and not according to expectations of others”. But what does “our terms” really mean? All in all, we only have two sources of goals: genetic and social. (That is, if you are a secular-minded person like de Botton and myself.)

If we renounce any notions of success that are “imposed” on us by society, that only leaves us with our innate, animal objectives: survive and leave offspring. There may not be anything wrong with that in itself, but it’s hardly the unique individual vision de Botton would like. The idea that any one of us can set her or his own objectives as opposed to taking them from other people is pure self-deception.

The honest view would be that we can choose which socially suggested goals to pursue and what priority to assign to each of them; and even that choice is not free from social pressures.

Still, his talk is optimistic and refreshing. This is what TED should be. Pure ideas. Succinct, powerful, clear.