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There are moments when you are ill-prepared, relying on who you are to carry you through.
At these moments, you are ill-prepared for attacks: off-balance and responding poorly
A seeming loss in these moments is still a win: to remain whole without harming yourself or others is more inspiring than reactionary flailing.
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We emit capturable data such as writing, but any AI (artificial intelligence) mimicking you is drawing from your emissions, not you.
We speak differently than we write and act differently in various contexts (code-switching).
There is still a tremendous gap between what we emit and who we are, also seen as actions versus intent judged one-dimensionally.
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Perhaps it takes courage to be disliked.
However, exhaustion provokes the same response: your core authenticity is exposed and governs your interactions without politeness.
Exposing your needs over niceties can appear as courage and empower you to be more fully yourself.
Courage arrives late: courage comes after the act and after the proving, but once there, it can aid you in the future.
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The prevailing sentiment has shifted from “faith in man” to “belief and Evil.”
Once our salvation, progress is now just an inevitable disaster. As well, our once-lauded freedoms are toxins we must mitigate with discipline.
As we withdraw into the negative, finding ways to hunker down and control ourselves, sniping at others to do the same, we move backward, or to the side, in a kind of cowardly crab walk into hiding.
The ramifications of our guarded retreat away from “communal trust” or “faith in man” is to vacate an advantageous position, which is quickly claimed by the very things we abhor.
It may seem a slight distinction, but to center disaster as inevitable has dire psychological effects that distort our actions toward self-centered competition and consumption rather than the open collaboration necessary to overcome.
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Perhaps the “true you” does not exist: what if finding yourself is an impossible dream and an excellent marketing ploy?
You can indeed “lose yourself,” in fact our society thrives on your lost blunderings, benefitting many therapists, gurus, and spas.
However, we are all shaped by society and culture to develop preferences, meaning that your most authentic self is adapted to the self-pleasures/pressures promoted by our society: including your subversive pleasure in thinking you are unique.
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We are admonished to “Find yourself, find your purpose, and be authentic.”
In a consumer society, ready-made identities are easy to adopt but come at a higher overall cost.
While it seems harmful, if not impossible, to deprogram yourself completely from societal norms and identity, any attempt to desist consumptive gluttony is laudable because it provides a space to allow your natural desires to displace mimetic striving.
related idea: perhaps the “authentic you” is an impossible dream and an excellent marketing ploy?
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Through evolutionary nature humans have a trust default: we tend to trust rather than be skeptical. This has proven beneficial (even logical) for many reasons.
Consider game theory where “cooperation first” is the best tactic, but also we can double down into trusting others up front rather than forcing people to earn trust.
This means for a very small percentage of betrayals you will attract many more of the right kind of people to you: people who will care and support you because you gave strong trust first.
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On a T-shirt, I saw Bart Simpson writing over and over on a school blackboard: “I will not trust what the government tells me.”
In this illustration, the educational institution does not trust the system that enables and supports it, opting to programmatically promote cynicism and rebellion.
Bart has merely traded one authority for the coercive discipline of a tyrant: the pursuit of truth through rationality begins with doubt, which (in this instance) is enforced through shame.
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When you doubt sincerity, words become merely a performative script: an aesthetic affect played as a game.
When sincerity disappears, so does trust. The byproduct of acidic cynicism dissolves communal bonds, isolating individuals into performative identities donned as costumes, and swapped just as quickly.
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We are creatures evolved from dirt, mere flawed organisms until our status is threatened, and then our ego angrily declares our self-importance.
We claim to do the work for money, except when we slip up or care too much, then it is all for others or for soul sustenance. We claim to be the romantic rogue and become the cutthroat mercenary with the next breath.
It is as if we don’t know and are frantically bouncing ideas off reality to see which one it will accept. We do anything to keep from looking within and either knowing or declaring we don’t know.
We consistently avoid honesty at all points.
