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To be cool is to have a scarce trait, and as others emulate it (normalize it), you must chase a new scarcity to maintain your cool factor.
Cool is not happy because it is exclusive. Its pursuit is alienating.
To have it is to be seen and to be admired, but it does not participate in a broad, thick network of friends. It can be very lonely and fragile.
(inspired by Mary Harrington)
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Narcissism is an internal protection, a selfishness that paradoxically closes others out while demanding from them.
To encounter one who somehow dismantles the walls to provoke genuine concern becomes the narcissist’s scariest moment: to care is an infinitely more difficult a journey.
From Walter Kern
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“Victims blame the person. Perpetrators blame the situation.”
Problems can be solved, but recognizing the blame game means people are arguing for ego rather than solutions.
quote from Rob Henderson
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In today’s world, we are surrounded by the attention economy and the optimization movement that demands our attention every waking moment.
However, there is a growing trend towards “disciplined disengagement,” which involves actively disengaging from these demands to maintain our mental health.
This is not laziness or lethargy though it appears so, but a conscious effort to find a healthy balance between productivity and non-productivity. Yet this trend and prioritizing our mental well-being over the societal pressure to be constantly productive is itself another optimization to normalization and hyper-production: balance now for intense anxiety later.
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If you have godlike demands, your feelings of inferiority are ironically the result of them.
This means that if you didn’t feel entitled to anything, you wouldn’t feel as if you were somehow lesser than you are.
The paradox: expectations create your feelings, and your ambition creates lack.
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What if all tension comes from demanding your way? That means we are anxious because we want, so we strive to make it happen.
From objects to status to emotional manipulation, we must stretch ourselves out to accommodate our desires, risking a sudden snapping return and stung ego.
It seems our entire economy is predicated upon people stretching and remaining taught with potential energy until they eventually lose elasticity.
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Tempted by the serenity of the idyllic we become content unto idleness.
Yet the virtuous ideal is a persistent, returning idol demanding the sacrifice of tranquility for potential.
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The scapegoat is chosen, but often, out of convenience. It is the shock of pinning the tail that becomes the story, which is what allows the tragedy to continue.
The story is what is needed, not the pricking and the marking, but the gross action sates (and creates) the sordid desire.
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Charlie Munger offers some great advice: you don’t have to be brilliant or clever or intelligent to get ahead long-term, just try not to mess up.
Don’t swing for the fence and miss, get base hits every day.
In this case, ego-driven badassery is bombastic stupidity, which guarantees failure.
Be nice, be basic: stupidity comes from overdoing it.
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Our society coaches, in eco-cybernetic fashion, use your worst traits to counter each other.
To harness your pride, greed, gluttony, vanity, lust, or sloth, empower another (more compelling) sin.
Apparently, the way to counteract avarice is ambition, and vice versa: the politician will leave office only if he can make more money elsewhere, and the rich man will vacate the market and jump into politics because of his pride.
Thus, selfish traits have been recast as steadfast (predictable) and mutually beneficial.
While these counterbalancing forces appear stabilizing, they normalize rationalizing increasingly excessive appetites.
