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The worst time is the most necessary time: the situation with the most reliance is also the situation with the most to lose.
The fact you rely on something is its value. Equally, no matter how robust, everything under stress eventually breaks. And it will always happen at the "worst time," as the failure designates the time as "worst."
All that is left is to predetermine how to react after the break.
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If your attention is captured, you cannot choose what to focus on. Without focus, without awareness, you cannot prioritize.
Others control you, blown about by distractions, prodded into place by manipulations.
This is not yourself. To know yourself (your values), you must recognize the impulses: of me, not of me, which takes focus.
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Those in authority become assured of their beliefs: "Since I am in power, it must be due to the quality of my thinking and dedication."
Unfortunately, when their patronizing, narrow-minded edicts meet resistance, they can only see the dissention as rebellion: "Can’t you see this is not only for your own good, but the good of all?"
Any response from below is inherently nonsensical, simply because it is from below: "If your thinking were correct, you would be in my role."
And yet, if the arguments do make sense (logic) then to maintain their role (identity) the authority must revert to bullying to maintain status (coercion). "Do it, or else."
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Some people can’t help but tell you what you want to hear, feeding your worldview.
It is not until you have confidently walked out onto the plank that you turn to find they have retreated to their safety.
You wanted the world to be a certain way, and in your passion (with your supposed allies), you forgot how the world works.
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We live in a society, not alone in space. We think of and desire the other; even when alone, we shape ourselves for others.
Every decision involves how we see ourselves through others, and every joy or disappointment comes from the success or failure to align to the other. And so, the striving is always emotional (from our desires), and the alignment is subjectively judged, letting every misalignment create fear and hurt.
Knowing that we are fueled by emotion, craving an oddly shaped personal outcome, we can work backward from the hurt to find the fear that stemmed from a failed alignment of how we fit into the world.
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How do you balance strength and confidence with kindness and empathy? To be sensitive and rational tends towards acquiescent compliance: a non-heroic trait. To give up sensitivity and rationality is to become brutish.
You only find the confidence by considerately tending to your beliefs and boundaries. You achieve heroism not by hiding behind boundaries, but by loving across them.
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What does it mean to “live in fear?” How does fear misshape us over time into petty and cruel things?
Can we redeem ourselves with one moment of bravery at the end? If so, your redemption could more easily take place right now: being brave now (looking within) saves a lifetime of inflicting pain around you.
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The promise of utopia is based on more happiness. But, the master planner’s conception of happiness is an abstract wish in the distant future.
Instead of focusing on the potential positives, Karl Popper suggests we look to falsification to prove and solve problems we have today concretely.
It is not as glamorous as a holistic sweeping change, but it avoids today’s idealistic hubris for steady improvement.
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Hedonism is the pursuit of pleasure: your pleasure.
Over-indexed on hedonism converts altruism into a self-serving glow: loving your child is for your own benefit, not theirs.
This discounts all the other motivations by collapsing them into one principle (selfish motivation), which requires mental two-stepping to validate your impulse to care.
(As humans, we are a multiplicity of drives and perspectives, many of which are social bonds, ideological impulses, and non-rational responsibility to others… which need not be reduced into a singular perspective.)
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"The mistake was not malicious, just incompetent."
This implies non-malicious intent, which is forgivable.
Yet, inaction to become competent is malicious, because the effects of incompetence and malice are the same.
By perpetuating the correlation that incompetence has no intent (such as a means to avoid responsibility or confrontation) we create a sheltered space for a pity monster to repeatedly harm us while apologizing.
