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Narcotics and narcissism draw from the same root word referring to numbness.
To retreat from reality is to close yourself from the inputs of the world, to become a closed system. Narcissism (self love) refuses reality in the same way the addict anesthetizes their senses.
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Trust is in short supply. People claim to be transparent, but most CEOs rate their confidence at reading the company at 75%, while employees rated at 20%.
Transparency is oddly murky.
The layers of bureaucracy and hierarchy establish a system, where there is a “speed of truth,” moving through the company. If you could calculate the time until the truth can penetrate to a CEO, perhaps a blunt and honest comment made by an underling where it heard and accepted, you would find that most companies have a terrible problem with transparency and truth.
This is further confounded by everyone, claiming to be transparent, which they must to maintain their job.
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Viktor Frankl says to make the pain of life bearable; you must find meaning: a purpose by looking into the future.
Yuval Noah Harari says fantasy provides meaning for suffering.
We can conclude that the only way to bear the absurd pains of existence is to have a rich fantasy that you genuinely believe in.
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Rationality and faith require leaps from facts to belief into truth to justify our version of reality.
Nature (in this case, reality) does not make leaps but infinitesimal tests and failures producing incremental changes.
When you are baffled at where you are, realize that nature* is the orienting ground you seek.
(*nature itself is a contentious term, which I will post on next time)
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The insistence on transparency can only go so far. Awareness of motivation is often unknown, subliminally psychological, and instinctual.
We cannot strip beyond our skin without encountering the shifting mechanisms that, once observed, change their function: awareness through observation alters motivation, subverting them into alternate desires.
To know something (or someone) is to stop at a certain level, or else you risk reshaping them, which inverts certainty into unpredictability.
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Knowing people are trainable, you can break expectations for your own gains, but it will incur resentment that will lead to confrontation.
Be sure you have a legitimate (logical not emotional) precedence and a grievance they can remediate.
When confronted you can provide them with a choice: accept my behavior or compensate me for compliance.
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To see clearly we should look to reality.
Yet the insensate brutality of reality will destroy you.
Maintaining delusions is what allows us to fully live: to thrive, rather than just survive, because to only survive is existentially meaningless.
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We forward face: facelifted, in the mirror practiced, rejuvenated, moisturized, and made up. The cliche is that the face is a mask hiding the true self (or lack of a self).
Yet, the face is vital to the community: we push forward the good-looking orators, designating them "the face of the company" or community. They distract from the rot with burnished beauty, allowing nothing to speak for itself. They mediate perception.
"The face" is more than attractive: it is a mediating proxy of charming lenses, a model of possibility, which sells us.
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To explore the edges, you step across an insubstantial infra-thin line into the extremes.
In crossing, you are socially (spiritually) evacuated from the standard or commonplace.
Here, the open ones are shunned as deviant and closed out. In losing the common, a community is found amongst the uncommon, marginally normalizing the once aberrant.
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When something doesn’t go right, we find somebody/something to pin it on.
While unfair, condemning an external other provides two vital functions: blaming releases us of responsibility and our deep seated fear of being out of control now has an actionable target.
Scapegoating is a "regulatory outlet" bleeding off rage by condemning others, which requires staying blind to reality to govern our emotions. All it requires is sacrificing others because of our weaknesses.
