9 ms·
The Logic of Envy
- codefreeordie 4y agoWhat a strange, rambling, yet somehow-compelling read. I can't say I got anything specific out of it, and maybe I'm just posting this so that others will waste the same 30 minutes of their lives that I, now, can never have back. But I can't help feeling somehow like it was worth the time.
- rjbwork 4y agoAgree. It was well written and presented some interesting ideas. I don't fully buy it but they were worth considering.
- mrwh 4y ago+1 scattered, too long, random, and I hope basically wrong. And yet, I'm sure I'll be thinking about it this weekend. (Now, how to get even with those who didn't read the whole article?)
- codefreeordie 4y agoHave you considered implying that you had a major epiphany after noodling on it all weekend?
- borghives 4y agoi’m a vulnerable narcissist. still don’t know what to do about this information.
- WaxProlix 4y agoif you find out, be sure to let everyone else know.
- planetsprite 4y agothe humblebrag personality type
- ycombinete 4y agoPost more memes to /r/vulnerablenarcissist
- closedloop129 4y agoIf this is more a question than a statement, I would look at these key problems: >Still, their awareness of their gap between their ambitions and their inability to act causes intense self-criticism. Figure out why you are not allowed to act. How do others act without enough knowledge? They approach decisions differently. >In March 2019, doctors told Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Corey Knebel that it was his call whether to end his baseball season early to repair a torn ligament in his elbow. Knebel said during a press conference, “It sucked that it was my decision. I hated that. I really wish the doctor would have just said, ‘Here is what we’re doing.’” He wanted some other omnipotent entity to choose for him. *edit: A Freudian slip? 'Other omnipotent entity' should be 'other omniscience entity'. Omnipotence doesn't help with making the best decisions.
- lliamander 4y agoFascinating. Obviously makes one self-conscious about posting on a public forum that tracks status with points. I really like the idea that the point here is not happiness, but to try and minimize the damage to others from our own narcissistic tendencies. I will just add that the opposites of envy and resentment are admiration and gratitude. I believe cultivating the mindset of admiration and gratitude is healthy response to these dark tendencies.
- fatherzine 4y agoVery true. FWIW, you've used the exact terms I've embraced myself. As it happens, such wisdom flows in all the places one would expect it to flow. For example https://www.catholiccompany.com/content/7-deadly-sins https://www.catholiccompany.com/content/7-deadly-sins, which I just duckduckgoed. Yet it is often times so hard to open ourselves to it.
- rufus_foreman 4y agoGreat use of "Philip K. Dick" as a verb.
- staticman2 4y agoI agree with the people in the comment section at that blog who say Last Psychiatrist seems mentally unwell. He struck me as a Holden Caulfield type back when he was running the Last Psychiatrist blog. Everyone being a narcissist seemed the conclusion one draws based on their own issues.
- philosopher1234 4y agoUncomfortable conclusion for you?
- rjbwork 4y agoUncomfortable? Not if it were true. But categoricals tend not to be so.
- philosopher1234 4y agoThe stomach digests food
- bowsamic 4y agoNot always
- philosopher1234 4y agoNot what I said
- bowsamic 4y agoI inferred that you implicitly used it as an example of a true categorical
- rjbwork 4y agoSometimes. Other times the food is bad and the stomach throws it right back up. Sometimes the food is poisoned and the same happens. Sometimes someone is allergic and it kills them before it makes its way through.
- z0r 4y agoThis is an essay / review of a book by The Last Psychiatrist - I didn't know they published anything after the blog ended, but I've seen their blog posts here and elsewhere over the years.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoOne of Teach’s most interesting challenges to the reader: Describe yourself: your traits, qualities, both good and bad. Do not use the word ‘am.’ Practice this.
- booboofixer 4y agoI am imagining a scenario where someone who speaks English as a second language and has limited vocabulary has just been categorized as a… someone not good…
- bruce343434 4y agoI didn't understand this. Instead of saying "I am a programmer" you're supposed to say "programmer"? Is that really a life changing technique?
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoI think the 'am' constraint is meant to force you to shift your perspective from an internal frame of what you think you 'are' to an external frame of what do you 'do' through actions to/for other people and the world in general. Maybe these actions support what would be on your 'am' list, but maybe they don't and that might be a hint that you may not be who you think you are. I read the `practice this' part as meaning that you should actively be thinking more about how your actions affect the people and world around you, and less about how the people and the world are affecting you.
- lypextin 4y agoIt's supposed to shift focus from your identity to your actions. "I code for a living" / "I code often" or even "I like coding" are very different phrases than accepting the programmer identity/label. It's not about what you are, but what you actually do. Focusing on your actions instead of yourself is a lot less narcissistic.
- photochemsyn 4y agoWhenever the phrase 'evolutionary psychology' is used in a blog post it makes me physically cringe. One of the greatest problems in the social sciences is the apparent inability to distinguish between cultural influences and fundamental genetic influences. A whole host of so-called 'evolved behavior' is really little more than cultural norms that people have adopted and now view as natural and normal. Claims that these behaviors are genetically hardwired and subject to natural selection like other traits are largely unsupported. The whole field is highly questionable and has little real value or scientific rigor.
- syrrim 4y agoThe emphasis on a behaviour being genetic in origin is frequently absent in common use of "evolutionary psychology". A trait being the result of evolution, even if not darwinian evolution, is quite useful to know, and is usually clearly the case when we can tell the adaptive purpose of a behaviour, see it replicated across cultures, and so on.
- pengstrom 4y agoIdeas are subject to selection pressures too, no?
- a_c 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
- fatherzine 4y agoBehaviors are subject to natural selection, just like biological organisms are. Some behaviors are innate, others are cultural. Even better, culture is often times elaborate clothing for innate behaviors. Darwin cuts deeper than people give him credit for. As of behaviors of biological creatures being infinitely malleable and equally valid, like the software on a computer, i.e. behavior being arbitrarily "socially constructed", please explain the spider. Or the bower bird. Or falling in love.
- User23 4y ago> A whole host of so-called 'evolved behavior' is really little more than cultural norms that people have adopted and now view as natural and normal. That sounds plausible, but we really don’t know that it’s true. It’s obviously considerably more than just culture or genes, because, among other things, mating practices and thus gene flow are culturally determined. And then there’s epigenetics and confounds. > The whole field is highly questionable and has little real value or scientific rigor. This is true of all of mainstream evolutionary biology. Here is an article[1] touching on that. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a-new-theory-of-evolution https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/28/do-we-need-a...
- bobthechef 4y agoThe vulnerable narcissist vs. the grandiose narcissist. That is, the Hollywood-archetypal "nerd vs. jock", though I have also met some grandiose nerds in my time in addition to the vulnerable stock. On a different node, I also see that accusing someone of "narcissism" can itself be an expression of envy. If you succeed, you can debilitate someone else with doubt and guilt to prevent them from pursuing what they want.
- smitty1e 4y agoAside: Clausewitz's "On War" was mostly a collection of notes posthumously published, not by any means a finished product. [1] For such, stick to Sun Tzu. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_War
- dredmorbius 4y agoThe Art of War is also an assemblage, much either gathered by or ascribed to Sun Tzu, and comprising in large part of commentaries on the ground text. If Art of War has coherence, it's likely much comes in the transmission and transformation, both prior to and following Sun Tzu. The inconvenience of both writing and reproduction also necessitates brevity, though that need not imply clarity. I'm not sure the distinction made here is a particularly meaningful one.
- smitty1e 4y agoThat's a fair criticism.
- dredmorbius 4y agoThanks. They're both hugely influential books. AoW is much shorter ;-)
- naveen99 4y agoIt’s an oxymoron. envy is unhappiness with reality, it’s not logical.
- motohagiography 4y agoSuch an unblinking read. My only fear is that we are more likely to think this is really about someone else, and not keep these insights only reserved as a tool for introspection. Even if some hard parts take one by surprise or resonate, sure, reflect, and then I think it's impossible to both recognize those parts and then do anything like them again. That's what makes it amazing writing, when you can't unread it. Edit (later): There is something about psychology that pathologizes everything equally. There came a point where I started looking at what he meant by deprivation, and he makes it into a negative-moralization of wanting to be desired. What makes his analysis so compelling is that it logically lands every single time and does it so satisfyingly because it is predicated on a single basic inconsistency, and when your system is inconsistent you can prove anything in it. Taking the basic human want to be desired by others, pathologizing it into a negative extreme, and then producing these parables that reduce to the characters not disproving the pathologized negative definition of their normal desire, is absolutely his hustle. Maybe I should thank him for letting me know that I was the sort of person he thought he could fool! Love the writing, but when the game rails seep through it feels a bit weird. However, if it's true that economics is the dismal science, I have the impression that psychology is the cruel one.
- noname123 4y agoJust a great read. I'm commenting to bookmark the post and commentary for myself. Reading the room, I think I'm in the minority of those who think the author ('the last psychiatrist') is spot on about the psychosis of people. Particularly about an internal ledger kept in one's heads of who has sacrificed more or less, and the internal indignation people have about how their ledger with their children, friends or lovers are unbalanced and must be "balanced" in a twisted and covert way. Like depriving others of love and invoking envy in strangers lol - very much like the ethos of 'true money' of the original Bitcoin Satoshi's vision of 2009 corrupted into the FOMO and ngmi/wgmi cult of altcoins and ponzi's of 2022. A ledger of dollars and cents is actually a ledger about our collective unconsciousness of fear and loathing of capitalism and technology in the 21st century! I loved the bit about people's true intentions of posting things on social media - it is deprive others of joy by acknowledging "I was there at the destination, at the party, on the beach" and "you weren't"; and how it causes a mass silent hysteria where one narcissistic injury leads to another - like a daisy chain or turtles all the way down of deprivation. It is a simple laugh with social media flexing but it is actually tragic when I see that when people use this motivation to make decisions about their careers, relationships and life goals - to move away from freedom towards security disguised as freedom. I loved the blog's author's posting about Tony Soprano's clip in Dr. Melfi's office, about how he is envious of the "happy wanderer" and wants to "choke him out for no reason at all". I sincerely believe this is the ultimate jealousy of jealous people and narcissists - not someone who is as stressed as they're tryin' to keep up the daisy chain of deprivations and envy, but someone who is happy for "no reason at all" - and invalidates completely the empty status game and false self they've cultivated over a course of a life.
- danbmil99 4y agoJeez, this strikes me as a must-not-read. Your kink is not my kink.
- Rerarom 4y agoObligatory link to ACX review: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-sadly-porn https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-sadly-porn
- ycombinete 4y agoThe parts about sex, envy, and denial read like incel philosophy, written from another perspective. I.e. “women aren’t sleeping with me, because they want to deny me the pleasure of sex.” Overall the impression is that Teach sees everyone as being like the main character in There in there Will be Blood: https://youtu.be/cHuSRHxBgUg https://youtu.be/cHuSRHxBgUg
- Barrin92 4y ago>"A common belief is that people turn to porn because they can’t find sex or intimacy in real life. Teach turns this logic on its head: people don’t want sex or intimacy in real life. Thus, porn." The article dedicates a large chunk to consumption of porn or practice of certain kinks as an example of that theory, but there's not a mention of a very obvious fact, namely that plenty of couples do those same things including together, and they don't fall into either category presented in that quote. The entire argument looks at behavior through the lens of people who, by definition, already have reasons to be very envious which is tautological. Honestly it just sounds like one more book in the "angsty man self help" genre. edit: just saw the top comment under the post after writing this one and couldn't agree more: "People protect themselves with the smokescreen of "everybody" or "people". Every claim Ed Teach makes in his book about his fellow human beings is actually a revelation of who he is, not of who everybody else is. And as for his claim that "No one ever asks, 'Am I the narcissist who's hurting my family?'" then he is either a liar or has had very limited social experience."