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I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually. That was hard to swallow

I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually. That was hard to swallow. I think the next hard to swallow realization was that I’m not a very good person. I’m not mean to anyone, but I invest very little in actually doing good. I know I should, I have the resources to do it, but I’m still so self absorbed. I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month. I used to think I was a pretty nice guy until I realized how terrible I am at changing my behaviour to help other people. In all practicality I’m kind of an asshole. I’ll do better.

lopatin 5y ago
Not going out of your way to help people doesn't make you an asshole. > I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month. These things are normal, I wouldn't worry too much about it. But you are right that going through life thinking you are some lonely, tortured genius is not healthy and is a recipe for being a true asshole.
- tasty_freeze 5y ago
  Not helping others when you are able doesn't make me an asshole; it makes me self centered. Yes, it is quite normal, but I disagree with your next clause: we should think harder about it and not dismiss it so easily. I've pitched this one before, as it is a short book (pdf, or audiobook) and is one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time. It was Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save [1] The book methodically and non-judgmentally addresses many objections and false beliefs people have about charity [2] and effective altruism. In a nutshell: ideally we'd have enough resources that everyone had everything they need, but we don't. There is a strong instinct to care more about people who are similar to you or live near you than for others, but we shouldn't. That is, the suffering of a person you will never meet is just as real as the suffering of someone you are friends with. Because we have limited resources to help others, the resources we do have should be focused on those who are worst off. [1] https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/peter-singer/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/peter-singer/ [2] For instance, many people moan about how much of the federal budget is spent/wasted on foreign aid. When asked to guess how much of the budget is spent, people (in the US) commonly guess 10-20%. When asked what they thing would be more appropriate, they commonly say 5-10%. The reality is it is well under 1%.
  - wruza 5y ago
    To play a devil’s advocate (I don’t think I’m right, it’s just the next obvious thought), the life you save produces another two, and after few steps you still can’t. Animal charities, and I feel sorry for this comparison, in areas without controlled population tend to overwhelm themselves to the point where the charity dilutes into conditions indistinguishable from natural. You may say, well, then help fixing the root cause. That’s right, but you have to find true one and fix it, and both is hard. Much easier to calm yourself by a donation to people who you prefer to believe to understand more.
    - tasty_freeze 5y ago
      The book addresses this argument. One point is that when people have secure lives, the birth rate plummets. When your only capital is children, you make more children. By meeting the needs of the worst off, they have fewer children, not more. I'm sure there were other points made, but I don't want to attempt to restate those from my shaky memory of what I read more than a year ago.
hvasilev 5y ago
I'm arrogant beyond belief and a self-absorbed asshole. I'm absolutely comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations in my personal life where this has been massively advantageous for my own psychology. By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't see people not using the knowledge that Isaac Newton shared with us, because he was a horrible person... I honestly think that if he saw a shrink and worked on "his issues" (by today's standards) he would have lobotomized himself. Nietzsche had a good intuition about people that optimize for full manifestation of the self in reality, but was kind of naive what qualities these people would exhibit. It is the entire package, not only the "good parts" (by today's standards)
- emrah 5y ago
  > By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't know if there is any data/research on being successful or valuable requiring an arrogant narcissistic personality. I believe it doesn't. If anything, such people became successful despite having such difficult personalities.
  - hvasilev 5y ago
    The "difficult" in difficult personality is not for themselves, it is for everyone else. It is not necessity for being successful or valuable, but it is undeniable that people like that exist throughout history. At the most fundamental level: It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities like "arrogant" that are of no possible value. Societies need to believe certain things to function. You cannot have a society where each individual is like Isaac Newton. I'm sure that if you asked the people that were knew him, they would say that "one is more than enough..."
    - dudeman13 5y ago
      >It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities (like "arrogant") that are of no possible value Why?
wruza 5y ago
These realizations are easier to swallow (or spit back out) when you ask people directly, or recall when they said so or otherwise. The “not goodness” that you describe is likely a sort of self-eating during yet another crysis. I know I should This is a great opening to self-analysis. Whence do you know it? What’s the goal? What if you did something “good” whatever it means to you, what then? Imagine it, what’s different? Walking this graph of questioning every term may discover the true source of your unease, which may be completely unrelated to “being good”.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I’ve contemplated these questions a fair amount and I suspect the answers are approximately these: I know I should do better for other people because a) my success in life has depended on others to a large degree and b) I’m not doing much to help others succeed I know I worry about my own security because I grew up quite poor and I struggle to imagine that things will still be secure tomorrow, or even by half way through the day If I could overcome that I would likely feel more at ease and be better off for it. At the same time, I’d likely enjoy helping others with resources like time, wealth, and energy which I felt more secure to offer. I immensely enjoy opportunities to help others when I do allow myself to do it, and I believe I would continue to enjoy it if I did it more Some of this is hypothetical, but I figured I’d outline my thinking so it seems less like I’m beating myself up for no reason. You’re right - without questioning or exploring the thoughts, I’d likely be pursuing the wrong thing or for the wrong reasons. I think several lines of questioning are how I got here though. Having said that, I’m certain “being good” will never mean a singular thing and as I make efforts to enact change, more questions and more answers will put me on a different track. Absolutely. For what it’s worth, a major source of the question and desire to do good or to be a better person came from reading and researching stoic philosophy. I don’t adhere to it or love all of it, but I do love the notion of living in accordance with nature. As a social animal, what are my duties to those around me? In all practicality, what is the best thing I can do for the people I have duties towards? As a dad, a friend, a neighbour. Something about that framing really resonates with me. Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.
FinanceAnon 5y ago
You're not either a good guy or an asshole. There is a lot inbetween. Sometimes good people make mistakes, but I don't think it's good to instantly label them as assholes.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I agree. I think the problem with me is that I’m very aware of how I can be better and why I should be, but I’m failing to make it happen. My main blocker is typically myself; what I think I need, what I want, generally protecting my self interest to an unnecessary degree. In my defence I think I’ve gotten better about it over time and have taken real steps to do better. It still bothers me quite a bit sometimes. I know I should do better.
Mezzie 5y ago
I went through similar realizations and have had another: - My intellect is isolating me, but it's not my fault and it also is not the fault of people around me. Not any more than it is either my fault or the average person's fault that I need a stepstool in my kitchen since it's not designed for me. (I'm quite short). Being very intelligent is like being very tall in that it's falling to one side of the distribution curve and human society/life is going to be designed for the average person. As shitty a measure as IQ is, having a 140 IQ is kind of like being 7 and a half feet tall: Nothing is wrong with you, but good luck. Basically, that my intellect is isolating not because I am superior to the other apes, but because any personal characteristic that puts me on one end of the bell curve when it comes to experiences is going to be isolating. I also feel very isolated due to my homosexuality and my MS, and in some similar ways: They all involve experiences that influence me in foundational ways that most people cannot understand and never will.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  Thank you for this - I like your perspective on what I said a lot. That’s a genuinely useful insight. It’s not particularly negative or positive, but very sensible.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    I'm glad it's helpful! I thought I'd drop it in because I did have the 'oh my god, other people aren't the problem, I'm just an arrogant asshole!' moment in my 20s, but assuming my intellect was a non-factor in my ability to connect with others had its own problems. I corrected too far in the other direction ("stop thinking you're special/smarter than everyone else, that's just your arrogance talking") and it made me depressed because when I disagreed with most people around me/wanted different things, I assumed it was because I was the problem (as opposed to others). It turns out none of us are a problem. We're just different.
hilbert42 5y ago
"I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually." Everyone is self-absorbed to some extent; it's an evolutionary trait that helps with our survival. Some will be self-absorbed in a narcissistic sense, others, as you've mentioned, with their security and position. Then there are those who are so completely self-absorbed with their ideas and interests—interests that have become so integral to and inseparable from their thinking that the way they think has shaped their identities. In essence, ideas have shaped and remolded their personalities in ways that let them think and dream of little else other than their principal interests. I would suggest that if we examined the behaviors and inner personalities of many if not most of history's great illustrious thinkers such as famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and many others who we now revere and respect—then there's little doubt that we'd find many of them would easily be classified as self-absorbed assholes. Moreover, the term self-absorbed asshole would automatically apply to many by virtue of their very nature—and it would still apply irrespective of whether their interests are noteworthy or important and or whether their work actually possesses any real value or utility or not. Simply, one can be a self-absorbed asshole no matter what the intrinsic value of one's work is. For instance, take Isaac Newton, who from various accounts was a rather nasty man and that's likely putting it mildly. Then there are true self-absorbed bastards like Fritz Haber the German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber–Bosch process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen that led to the large-scale production of fertilizers, this process has benefited many millions of people worldwide over the past century. Despite Haber's important discovery he nevertheless remains a self-absorbed asshole with his stripes as rotten as ever—just by virtue of the fact that he's also the Father of chemical warfare having overseen the 'weaponisation' of chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber's virtuous discovery doesn't mitigate him in any way as from various accounts he was a truly nasty person. Then there's Einstein. Can you imagine Einstein arriving at the patent office in Berne fresh off the very tram that he'd already envisioned as central to his thought experiment in relativity—only to confront his co-workers with those very ideas? I've no idea whether Einstein did so or not [he likely had more sense not to] but it's easy to imagine that he did and that his co-workers quickly offered excuses then exited his presence in great haste. The fact is, one has to be self-absorbed in one's thoughts if one is to achieve anything worthwhile. Whilst there are notable exceptions, I'd respectfully suggest that for most people that it's not possible to integrate thought into concepts and cohesive ideas without being obsessively involved with them. How one presents or hides this self-obsession to others in the outside world that is perhaps the main or most important issue. Being adept at handling one's obsessions in the presence of others and in social settings is a worthwhile trait, that's if you possess what it takes to do so. Unfortunately, not everyone does and the ones who don't are likely to end up with the 'asshole' moniker. (For my own part, when I'm self-absorbed with a problem it's best others not be around me as they'll likely be ignored. At least nowadays I've some cognizance of my problem: for the women in my life have repeatedly pointed out that being male means I've only the limited capacity to think about one matter at a time. I now understand this.) There are of course a few in the genius class who can be both totally self-absorbed in whatever interests them and who simultaneously seemingly run normal lives without any additional effort, it's as if they've two independent brains running in parallel. Names that spring immediately to mind are the likes of Mozart and Leonard Euler but there are many more. There are stories of Euler—likely the most prodigious and prolific mathematician in history—being totally absorbed and doing mathematics whilst his rowdy kids surrounded him, it seems that nothing ever distracted him). If I recall correctly, all up Euler had 13 kids. How he also managed to have ever had sufficient time for doing great mathematics remains one of the great imponderables. Finally, we need to mention and separate out how great minds interact with one another when on matters of common interest. Such individuals often have obsessive interests that are so heightened that their psyches exclude them from considering almost everything else. It's not only a specific common interest that binds them but also it's the minutiae of detail within that interest, it's key—it's the very 'spice' of such interest. One can imagine being a fly on the wall in the heady day of the early 1900s listening to conversations between the likes of Einstein, Hilbert, Lorentz, Poincaré, Minkowski and others. That said, the fact that pockets self-absorbed assholes — assholes of such high and outstanding caliber occur with such rarity that they can be ignored for all practical purposes.

lopatin 5y ago

Not going out of your way to help people doesn't make you an asshole. > I buy things I don’t need knowing the same money could literally save lives. I worry about my own security even though I could find a new job within a month. These things are normal, I wouldn't worry too much about it. But you are right that going through life thinking you are some lonely, tortured genius is not healthy and is a recipe for being a true asshole.

tasty_freeze 5y ago
Not helping others when you are able doesn't make me an asshole; it makes me self centered. Yes, it is quite normal, but I disagree with your next clause: we should think harder about it and not dismiss it so easily. I've pitched this one before, as it is a short book (pdf, or audiobook) and is one of the most impactful things I've read in a long time. It was Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save [1] The book methodically and non-judgmentally addresses many objections and false beliefs people have about charity [2] and effective altruism. In a nutshell: ideally we'd have enough resources that everyone had everything they need, but we don't. There is a strong instinct to care more about people who are similar to you or live near you than for others, but we shouldn't. That is, the suffering of a person you will never meet is just as real as the suffering of someone you are friends with. Because we have limited resources to help others, the resources we do have should be focused on those who are worst off. [1] https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/peter-singer/ https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/peter-singer/ [2] For instance, many people moan about how much of the federal budget is spent/wasted on foreign aid. When asked to guess how much of the budget is spent, people (in the US) commonly guess 10-20%. When asked what they thing would be more appropriate, they commonly say 5-10%. The reality is it is well under 1%.
- wruza 5y ago
  To play a devil’s advocate (I don’t think I’m right, it’s just the next obvious thought), the life you save produces another two, and after few steps you still can’t. Animal charities, and I feel sorry for this comparison, in areas without controlled population tend to overwhelm themselves to the point where the charity dilutes into conditions indistinguishable from natural. You may say, well, then help fixing the root cause. That’s right, but you have to find true one and fix it, and both is hard. Much easier to calm yourself by a donation to people who you prefer to believe to understand more.
  - tasty_freeze 5y ago
    The book addresses this argument. One point is that when people have secure lives, the birth rate plummets. When your only capital is children, you make more children. By meeting the needs of the worst off, they have fewer children, not more. I'm sure there were other points made, but I don't want to attempt to restate those from my shaky memory of what I read more than a year ago.

hvasilev 5y ago

I'm arrogant beyond belief and a self-absorbed asshole. I'm absolutely comfortable with that and feel no need to change. I can point out multiple situations in my personal life where this has been massively advantageous for my own psychology. By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't see people not using the knowledge that Isaac Newton shared with us, because he was a horrible person... I honestly think that if he saw a shrink and worked on "his issues" (by today's standards) he would have lobotomized himself. Nietzsche had a good intuition about people that optimize for full manifestation of the self in reality, but was kind of naive what qualities these people would exhibit. It is the entire package, not only the "good parts" (by today's standards)

emrah 5y ago
> By the way, some of the most valuable people in our societies are borderline horrible arrogant narcissists. I don't know if there is any data/research on being successful or valuable requiring an arrogant narcissistic personality. I believe it doesn't. If anything, such people became successful despite having such difficult personalities.
- hvasilev 5y ago
  The "difficult" in difficult personality is not for themselves, it is for everyone else. It is not necessity for being successful or valuable, but it is undeniable that people like that exist throughout history. At the most fundamental level: It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities like "arrogant" that are of no possible value. Societies need to believe certain things to function. You cannot have a society where each individual is like Isaac Newton. I'm sure that if you asked the people that were knew him, they would say that "one is more than enough..."
  - dudeman13 5y ago
    >It is arrogant to believe that from purely biological point of view, an individual would posses qualities (like "arrogant") that are of no possible value Why?

wruza 5y ago

These realizations are easier to swallow (or spit back out) when you ask people directly, or recall when they said so or otherwise. The “not goodness” that you describe is likely a sort of self-eating during yet another crysis. I know I should This is a great opening to self-analysis. Whence do you know it? What’s the goal? What if you did something “good” whatever it means to you, what then? Imagine it, what’s different? Walking this graph of questioning every term may discover the true source of your unease, which may be completely unrelated to “being good”.

steve_adams_86 5y ago
I’ve contemplated these questions a fair amount and I suspect the answers are approximately these: I know I should do better for other people because a) my success in life has depended on others to a large degree and b) I’m not doing much to help others succeed I know I worry about my own security because I grew up quite poor and I struggle to imagine that things will still be secure tomorrow, or even by half way through the day If I could overcome that I would likely feel more at ease and be better off for it. At the same time, I’d likely enjoy helping others with resources like time, wealth, and energy which I felt more secure to offer. I immensely enjoy opportunities to help others when I do allow myself to do it, and I believe I would continue to enjoy it if I did it more Some of this is hypothetical, but I figured I’d outline my thinking so it seems less like I’m beating myself up for no reason. You’re right - without questioning or exploring the thoughts, I’d likely be pursuing the wrong thing or for the wrong reasons. I think several lines of questioning are how I got here though. Having said that, I’m certain “being good” will never mean a singular thing and as I make efforts to enact change, more questions and more answers will put me on a different track. Absolutely. For what it’s worth, a major source of the question and desire to do good or to be a better person came from reading and researching stoic philosophy. I don’t adhere to it or love all of it, but I do love the notion of living in accordance with nature. As a social animal, what are my duties to those around me? In all practicality, what is the best thing I can do for the people I have duties towards? As a dad, a friend, a neighbour. Something about that framing really resonates with me. Upon reading it years ago and letting it incubate, I came to realize I am fairly poor at fulfilling my duties.

FinanceAnon 5y ago

You're not either a good guy or an asshole. There is a lot inbetween. Sometimes good people make mistakes, but I don't think it's good to instantly label them as assholes.

steve_adams_86 5y ago
I agree. I think the problem with me is that I’m very aware of how I can be better and why I should be, but I’m failing to make it happen. My main blocker is typically myself; what I think I need, what I want, generally protecting my self interest to an unnecessary degree. In my defence I think I’ve gotten better about it over time and have taken real steps to do better. It still bothers me quite a bit sometimes. I know I should do better.

Mezzie 5y ago

I went through similar realizations and have had another: - My intellect is isolating me, but it's not my fault and it also is not the fault of people around me. Not any more than it is either my fault or the average person's fault that I need a stepstool in my kitchen since it's not designed for me. (I'm quite short). Being very intelligent is like being very tall in that it's falling to one side of the distribution curve and human society/life is going to be designed for the average person. As shitty a measure as IQ is, having a 140 IQ is kind of like being 7 and a half feet tall: Nothing is wrong with you, but good luck. Basically, that my intellect is isolating not because I am superior to the other apes, but because any personal characteristic that puts me on one end of the bell curve when it comes to experiences is going to be isolating. I also feel very isolated due to my homosexuality and my MS, and in some similar ways: They all involve experiences that influence me in foundational ways that most people cannot understand and never will.

steve_adams_86 5y ago
Thank you for this - I like your perspective on what I said a lot. That’s a genuinely useful insight. It’s not particularly negative or positive, but very sensible.
- Mezzie 5y ago
  I'm glad it's helpful! I thought I'd drop it in because I did have the 'oh my god, other people aren't the problem, I'm just an arrogant asshole!' moment in my 20s, but assuming my intellect was a non-factor in my ability to connect with others had its own problems. I corrected too far in the other direction ("stop thinking you're special/smarter than everyone else, that's just your arrogance talking") and it made me depressed because when I disagreed with most people around me/wanted different things, I assumed it was because I was the problem (as opposed to others). It turns out none of us are a problem. We're just different.

hilbert42 5y ago

"I went through a phase of beginning to think my intellect was isolating me and realized I was just a self absorbed asshole eventually." Everyone is self-absorbed to some extent; it's an evolutionary trait that helps with our survival. Some will be self-absorbed in a narcissistic sense, others, as you've mentioned, with their security and position. Then there are those who are so completely self-absorbed with their ideas and interests—interests that have become so integral to and inseparable from their thinking that the way they think has shaped their identities. In essence, ideas have shaped and remolded their personalities in ways that let them think and dream of little else other than their principal interests. I would suggest that if we examined the behaviors and inner personalities of many if not most of history's great illustrious thinkers such as famous scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and many others who we now revere and respect—then there's little doubt that we'd find many of them would easily be classified as self-absorbed assholes. Moreover, the term self-absorbed asshole would automatically apply to many by virtue of their very nature—and it would still apply irrespective of whether their interests are noteworthy or important and or whether their work actually possesses any real value or utility or not. Simply, one can be a self-absorbed asshole no matter what the intrinsic value of one's work is. For instance, take Isaac Newton, who from various accounts was a rather nasty man and that's likely putting it mildly. Then there are true self-absorbed bastards like Fritz Haber the German chemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the Haber–Bosch process to synthesize ammonia from nitrogen that led to the large-scale production of fertilizers, this process has benefited many millions of people worldwide over the past century. Despite Haber's important discovery he nevertheless remains a self-absorbed asshole with his stripes as rotten as ever—just by virtue of the fact that he's also the Father of chemical warfare having overseen the 'weaponisation' of chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber's virtuous discovery doesn't mitigate him in any way as from various accounts he was a truly nasty person. Then there's Einstein. Can you imagine Einstein arriving at the patent office in Berne fresh off the very tram that he'd already envisioned as central to his thought experiment in relativity—only to confront his co-workers with those very ideas? I've no idea whether Einstein did so or not [he likely had more sense not to] but it's easy to imagine that he did and that his co-workers quickly offered excuses then exited his presence in great haste. The fact is, one has to be self-absorbed in one's thoughts if one is to achieve anything worthwhile. Whilst there are notable exceptions, I'd respectfully suggest that for most people that it's not possible to integrate thought into concepts and cohesive ideas without being obsessively involved with them. How one presents or hides this self-obsession to others in the outside world that is perhaps the main or most important issue. Being adept at handling one's obsessions in the presence of others and in social settings is a worthwhile trait, that's if you possess what it takes to do so. Unfortunately, not everyone does and the ones who don't are likely to end up with the 'asshole' moniker. (For my own part, when I'm self-absorbed with a problem it's best others not be around me as they'll likely be ignored. At least nowadays I've some cognizance of my problem: for the women in my life have repeatedly pointed out that being male means I've only the limited capacity to think about one matter at a time. I now understand this.) There are of course a few in the genius class who can be both totally self-absorbed in whatever interests them and who simultaneously seemingly run normal lives without any additional effort, it's as if they've two independent brains running in parallel. Names that spring immediately to mind are the likes of Mozart and Leonard Euler but there are many more. There are stories of Euler—likely the most prodigious and prolific mathematician in history—being totally absorbed and doing mathematics whilst his rowdy kids surrounded him, it seems that nothing ever distracted him). If I recall correctly, all up Euler had 13 kids. How he also managed to have ever had sufficient time for doing great mathematics remains one of the great imponderables. Finally, we need to mention and separate out how great minds interact with one another when on matters of common interest. Such individuals often have obsessive interests that are so heightened that their psyches exclude them from considering almost everything else. It's not only a specific common interest that binds them but also it's the minutiae of detail within that interest, it's key—it's the very 'spice' of such interest. One can imagine being a fly on the wall in the heady day of the early 1900s listening to conversations between the likes of Einstein, Hilbert, Lorentz, Poincaré, Minkowski and others. That said, the fact that pockets self-absorbed assholes — assholes of such high and outstanding caliber occur with such rarity that they can be ignored for all practical purposes.