Your most fundamental motivations are inherently irrational/instinctual, but once you know what they are you can pursue them more deliberately. Nobody can decide for you what the meaning of your life is, you have to discover it through experience and introspection.

Can someone distill the good faith argument against rust? Is there one?

https://xkcd.com/927/

The problem is that even if it’s objectively better, you can’t magically convert everything instantaneously, and it’s a lot more work maintaining rust and C versions of the same code until everything is re-implemented in rust.