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Charlie Munger – Feeling Like a Victim Is Perfectly Disastrous
- bmitc 3y ago[flagged]
- pastor_bob 3y agoNobody ever made a billion dollars being generous
- Nullabillity 3y agoExactly. So maybe we shouldn't be celebrating billionaires.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago> See Munger's dorm buildings that he pushed upon universities that make prisons look like hotels. I've seen them, and they look preferable to the dorms I actually lived in. Getting a room to myself instead of 2-4 people sharing a (what felt like) 100sqft space.
- bmitc 3y agoWere your dorm rooms brand new and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and forced upon the university and city via throwing money around? Also, there are plenty of reports of just how bad his designs are: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/02/business/munger-residences-michigan-windowless/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/02/business/munger-residence...
- arcticbull 3y ago> Also, there are plenty of reports of just how bad his designs are. There's also plenty of great reviews of it. [1] 8.3/10 seems hardly catastrophic, especially if it gives people an affordable place to live. I feel like the vast majority of the criticisms come from people who definitely didn't live in them. [1] https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduate-residences-ann-arbor https://www.veryapt.com/ApartmentReview-a7222-munger-graduat...
- xboxnolifes 3y ago> Were your dorm rooms brand new and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build and forced upon the university and city via throwing money around? Irrelevant to whether or not I would enjoy being in them.
- bmitc 3y agoIt's not really irrelevant. If someone spent all that money and effort on a building and you had no windows or exposure to outside light until you left the building, you don't think that would affect your enjoyment of the building? Especially knowing that perfectly serviceable and better alternatives exist but that's what they went with?
- infecto 3y agoSo I take it you lived here?
- homefree 3y ago+1 these looked great, I would have much rather lived in this than the triple with zero privacy I lived in during school.
- bmitc 3y agoI lived in my own room with a shared living room in a dorm room decades ago. And it had a window and opened to the outside. The point is that better designs exist, but people will defend Munger just because his design could be worse. I think my opinion and reaction is based upon his reaction. He rejected all criticism outright and refused to listen to anyone. It was his design, or he would take his money away.
- decafninja 3y agoBetter designs exist, but they are rare, often due to circumstances like costs. I too would have welcomed a private windowless dorm room versus having a forced roommate with no privacy. I specifically chose to commute an hour+ from my parents home because I couldn’t stand the lack of privacy offered by any of my school’s dorm options.
- homefree 3y agoI saw more of the opposite - people dismissing him because of identity politics and just because he's a billionaire. My impression was he had strict requirements because part of the design is about tradeoffs and cost and the reason this kind of thing takes forever and gets expensive is because of all of the arguing that happens during it. You end up with a design by committee and worse outcome. I'm skeptical of the 'better designs' not having these tradeoffs.
- qwytw 3y agoIt could be worse, sure. But those rooms (at least some of them) don't have any windows. Why would you build something like that?
- missedthecue 3y agoMy dorm room did not have windows. Honestly it would only be a problem if I never left it. But I was out and about every day to classes and friends and other typical university things
- psunavy03 3y agoThat's like every university dorm building built before 2010.
- KerryJones 3y agoThis is a pretty narrow look at his life, I'd encourage looking more deeply before pointing fingers. I am not defending his dorm buildings, but this feels misplaced. Especially today.
- bmitc 3y agoIt is indeed misplaced, and I apologize about that, as I mentioned in another comment elsewhere. I have looked into Munger at various times, but I can withhold.
- bloodyplonker22 3y agoIt's easy to make a pithy observation that he's a billionaire and then proceed to spew hate while thinking everything is a zero sum game. When Charlie was in his 30s, he was broke, his 9 year old son died, and he had a divorce. He was never a victim that blames others for their misfortunes though.
- bmitc 3y agoSo it's his fault that all that happened to him? I am sorry that someone has died, and I regret making a comment on this particular post before realizing the actual post topic too late, but I am not too keen on living my life based upon how billionaires think. Munger, like many billionaires and as the above quote and his dorm designs showcase, liked to speak about things he didn't know anything about, and people like to idolize billionaires in hope that they will someday be one too. Self-pity is a natural human emotion. Rejecting it outright and replacing it with self-blame seems beyond strange. I would recommend people to sign up for a therapist and have a professional help them work through life rather than a person only well known for hoarding capital and opining on things he isn't educated in.
- megaman821 3y agoHe is sharing what worked for him. Sorry it does not conform to your world view.
- bmitc 3y agoIt's not my world view. I prefer to listen to professionals.
- megaman821 3y agoMaybe you need a professional to tell you to stop worrying about what other people find inspiring.
- bmitc 3y ago
- endtime 3y agoI lived in the Munger building at Stanford for a year and it was amazing. Maybe the other buildings aren't like that? But it was the best dorm I ever lived in, by far.
- patmorgan23 3y agoThe proposed Munger Hall at UC Sana Barbra is what is being referenced. The building does not currently exist. The University Architect resigned in protest over it's design. I don't think the Munger designed the other buildings that bare his name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munger_Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munger_Hall
- alliao 3y agomaybe he's discouraging university education...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- adventured 3y agoIt's very easy to say even when you're poor. I grew up relatively poor. I spent numerous years of my adult life poor. It was easy to say regardless of how much money I had. In fact, I hate the opposite premise: everything that happens to me is out of my control, my choices are out of my control, my mindset is out of my control. I'd rather own 100% of the blame for my circumstances than wallow in victimhood forever. Wallowing gets you nowhere, it won't actually get you out of the situation; taking responsibility in one way or another (either for your present mindset, or for choices you made that got you there), is the required minimum to get out. This is a choice you get to make. How much willpower do you possess? How much discipline do you possess? What are you willing to do about your circumstances? More money doesn't dictate willpower or discipline, if anything it makes you soft, gelatinous.
- sethammons 3y agoI grew up poor. Something I realized early on is I had a lot of victim-mentality people around me. The world happened to them. I decided at an early age (like, under 10) that everyone is 100% responsible for everything that happens to them, including by chance. You get hit by a car? You were standing there. In this world view, you can have more than 100% responsibility because the driver that hit you is also 100% responsible. Armed with that, instead of accepting and complaining about my situation, I worked my ass off to change it. And I did. By a lot. When I had kids, I tried to teach them the same thing. '"She made me sooooo mad" -- no, you are mad because you. Yes, your sister should not have pushed you. Yes, it is also on you to control your emotions. Let's go talk with your sister about pushing you.' I expect there will be people who downvote this. Keep looking for others to blame and see how that works out. Take responsibility. Fix a thing. This also leads to another of my early discoveries (also, under 10): if you can't do something about a situation, don't -- and don't worry. If you can, do -- and don't worry. These have served me well, even if "wrong."
- jodrellblank 3y ago> "I decided at an early age (like, under 10) that everyone is 100% responsible for everything that happens to them" Do you think you were responsible for thinking like that when you were 9 years old?
- sethammons 3y agoSomewhere I likely came across the idea that I was responsible for myself. I'm not sure if that was something my dad said in passing, or in a book I read, or a show on TV. I probably did not have the genesis of that idea in a vacuum. Given the environment I was in and the people that surrounded me, I could see that they blamed the world for their problems and it didn't appear to be working out for them. I grew up with no role models on how I should live - instead, I saw many examples of things I did not want to emulate. One of those things was a victim-mentality.
- anonuser123456 3y ago>See Munger's dorm buildings that he pushed upon universities that make prisons look like hotels. Do you mean the highest rated campus housing on University of Michigans campus? Yeah. He sure victimized students there.
- mritchie712 3y agoI try my best to do this. When I find myself blaming person X for thing Y, it's pretty easy to come up with a way to blame myself instead (e.g. I shouldn't have involved person X in thing Y to begin with). It oddly makes me feel better and move on with a solution instead of stewing over person X's blunders.
- JohnMakin 3y agoPredators take advantage of this quality to gaslight/scam people, FYI.
- hotsauceror 3y agoYeah. "He wouldn't have hit me if I had just kept my mouth shut, I know how angry it makes him when I ask about money." I want to say this position is despicable, but that's not a very charitable reading. But I fail to see how 'making everything your own fault' is in any way a healthy mechanism for dealing with others. Other people DO make mistakes. Other people have loads that they ARE expected to carry. Other people ARE expected to comport themselves a certain way. This not only absolves anyone but yourself of any responsibility to do anything, but it also offers yourself up as a scapegoat to anyone who needs one.
- boeingUH60 3y agoPersonally, I don't make bad things my own fault. But I consider them my responsibility to fix.
- blooalien 3y ago> "I don't make bad things my own fault. But I consider them my responsibility to fix." ^^^ This! It's only your fault if it's actually your fault - If the blame genuinely lies with someone else, there's nothing left to do but take actions to a) fix it, and b) ensure that it never happens again. Can't rely on others to fix things, because the fact is that most people simply won't even try.
- jrflowers 3y ago> If you just take the attitude that, however bad it is in any way, it’s always your fault I like the idea of having an inspirational quote that shares a premise with a suicide note pinned to the wall, it is very motivating
- epiccoleman 3y agoEh, I don't read it like that, but that's the cool thing about words and individuals I guess. You can view it as a fatalistic acceptance of too much responsibility for one's own suffering or a motivating reminder of your agency. Or somewhere in between. I often find it inspirational when I'm stuck in a self pitying mode.
- jrflowers 3y agoI love the idea of cargo cult-ing myself into major depression by doing reverse cognitive behavioral therapy in order to be more like a nonagenarian billionaire. “Mimic severe mental illness by refusing the nature of reality” is a piece of advice that only a genius could conjure up
- ethanbond 3y agoWhat CBT protocol did you do that had you systematically putting agency and responsibility outside of yourself?
- jrflowers 3y agoYou make a good point. CBT is about assigning blame to the self. Despite being labeled “cognitive distortions” things like black and white thinking and personalization and blame are things that CBT teaches you to do more often
- cornyhandle 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lordnacho 3y agoHe passed away earlier today, which is I guess why this is here. He's got a point, too. To be a victim is to be helpless, and if you can choose to not see yourself that way, you can at least have some power back.
- kmeisthax 3y agoThis only applies to a very small subset of victims who have the means to individually recover what has been taken from them. If you don't actually have the ability to do so, then pretending that you aren't a victim is just refusing to acknowledge reality. Awfully convenient for the person who put you in this situation. The reason why people 'choose' to be victims is that it allows collective organization against the thing that has victimized them. This is not helplessness, this is taking power back.
- watwut 3y agoYou are victim when somebody else harmed you. To be victim means that somebody else harmed you. And when people in that situation blame themselves, it is great for abusers but bad for them.
- makeitdouble 3y agoTrying to convince yourself you're not a victim also leads to weird mental twists, like concluding you're where you are by choice and reframe your situation as some success to not look like a loser. Accepting you're being fucked is the first step to get out of it.
- codegeek 3y agoMunger didn't say that you should deny being a victim. You should just not use that situation as an excuse for your future actions. Anyone can be victim of anything. But what you choose to do after that experience is the key.
- KittenInABox 3y agoThe quote is... "If you just take the attitude that, however bad it is in anyway, it’s always your fault and you just fix it as best you can – the so-called ‘iron prescription’ – I think that really works." ...does not work for e.g. victims of child abuse. Child abuse is never the fault of the child.
- profsummergig 3y agoCharlie Munger had great advice in general. And I've learned a lot of good from him. But I will never get over the hypocrisy of owning a quarter of Coca Cola and constantly criticizing Americans for being overweight (he used words like "sloth").
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vlod 3y agoDid he actually say this? I can't find any reference to this. (google search)
- profsummergig 3y agoHe used words like "sloth".
- jstarfish 3y ago> But I will never get over the hypocrisy of owning a quarter of Coca Cola and constantly criticizing Americans for being overweight. That's not hypocrisy, that's savvy. Hypocrisy is an American drinking Coke while complaining about their weight.
- vannevar 3y agoHypocrisy is spending billions of dollars to convince people to buy sugar water and then complaining about their weight. I guess you could call it savvy, but I think predatory is a more apt description.
- solarkraft 3y agoThere's a way to avoid (conscious) hypocrisy here: Convincing oneself that marketing (propaganda?) isn't effective and you're just giving the people what they would want anyway.
- 3y ago
- CPLX 3y agoLion to Wildebeest Community: Feeling Like Prey Is Counterproductive Reference: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/warren-buffett-americas-folksiest https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/warren-buffett-americas-f...
- nickpp 3y agoI actually watched a short the other day where a wildebeest horns a lioness throwing her high in the air a couple of times. It was fearsome. It saved its friend from being eaten by the lioness even! We all have a (larger or smaller amount of) power left inside of us. Being a victim means giving up that power. Don’t. Fight!
- swarnie 3y agoDid he ever get his university prison camp finished?
- wackycat 3y agoIsn't he the guy that tried to build windowless dorms? Anyone who thinks humans should live without natural light is not anyone I am interested in taking advice from. Ref: https://www.archpaper.com/2023/08/university-california-abandons-windowless-dorm-munger-hall/ https://www.archpaper.com/2023/08/university-california-aban...
- jjoonathan 3y agoAffordable housing where all I have to give up is a shitty view? Sign me up!
- mnkv 3y agoYou give up a shitty view and any chance of fire escape. Such a savings!
- anonuser123456 3y agoBuildings like this have sprinklers, automated firewalls, multiple exit routes, redundant alarm systems etc. Lots of off campus student housing is still knob and tube wiring in shoddy timber construction.
- anyfoo 3y agoObviously (which makes me guess you’re not serious) it’s not about the view but the natural light.
- jjoonathan 3y agoNothing beats natural light at its best, especially in CA, but gee, all sorts of people default into shitty depressing natural light situations (MA, I'm looking at you) that could be trounced by a mediocre artificial setup. If you listen to the tone of the rhetoric here you'd think Munger was killing babies, when in fact the light situation evidently doesn't even reach everybody's threshold for the simple action of buying a decent lamp. Shrug.
- 3y ago
- jjoonathan 3y agoThis is true. It is also true that dispensing this particular advice is self-serving for people in power. In a revolution, things get worse before they get better if they get better. Revolutions come at huge negative expected value. However, appeasing powerful forces can also have hugely negative expected value. Sometimes the calculus makes sense, and when it does, you should hope that people are appropriately discounting the self-serving advice from the powerful.
- BirAdam 3y agoEh, a revolution happens when people take responsibility and do something. Tyranny happens when people behave as and think like victims.
- SoftTalker 3y agoI think it's more self-serving for those in power to encourage a culture of victimhood, where they set themselves up as the saviors. This is a standard political gambit: create or identify a group of victims, and declare that you will get "payback" for them and make their situation better. Of course you don't, but that's OK, you got their votes and you just recycle and amplify that play next time.
- jjoonathan 3y agoSure, co-opting a revolution is a common and effective tactic, but so is "fall in line" (or "don't worry about it" or "focus on yourself" -- all identical from a political action perspective). Revolutions can be actually revolutionary. Often they are not, but they can be. "Fall in line" can never be revolutionary.
- somesortofthing 3y agoIf this was the universal(or even most common) outcome of people organizing against sources of suffering in their lives, we'd still be living in stone age city states. The process you describe has time and again led to net-positive outcomes. "It has to work 100% of the time or it's not worth doing" isn't a standard we apply anywhere else.
- pjmorris 3y agoThis reminds me of something a friend said that's stuck with me for ~30 years: 'The bad news about taking responsibility is now it's your fault. The good news about taking responsibility is now you can do something about it.'
- CSMastermind 3y agoSimilar things I've heard: Just because something isn't your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility. Hardship is a guarantee; victimhood is a choice. If you see a piece of trash, you can think that people are terrible for littering, or you can pick it up. It only takes a small percentage of people littering to destroy an environment but it also only takes a small percentage of people to clean it up.
- kamaal 3y agoTaking extreme ownership of things might make you feel very uncomfortable while starting, but its makes things a lot more easier as they go, because you are for better or worse in control. You either way in control, you just wish to not exercise it if you don't take extreme ownership of things. Reminded of two things while we are at it. Sam Altman, once told this in a class - Its easier to start a hard company, than to start an easy company. Then something I heard on Joe Rogan- The more you indulge yourself in doing hard uncomfortable things, the more easier and content it gets as it goes. Its the people who do the easy things that end up bad. “Tom, don't let anybody kid you. It's all personal, every bit of business. Every piece of shit every man has to eat every day of his life is personal. They call it business. OK. But it's personal as hell. You know where I learned that from? The Don. My old man. The Godfather. If a bolt of lightning hit a friend of his the old man would take it personal. He took my going into the Marines personal. That's what makes him great. The Great Don. He takes everything personal Like God. He knows every feather that falls from the tail of a sparrow or however the hell it goes? Right? And you know something? Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.” ― Mario Puzo, The Godfather One of the greatest pieces I’ve read on extreme ownership.
- m463 3y agoI don't understand the last story about the banking and the mortgages. did she take the mortgages out of the son's bank or put them in or ... ?
- debacle 3y agoThe bank was insolvent because of bad debts, so the grandfather put the bad debts on his books and some of his good debts on the bank's books so that the bank was solvent.
- 1oooqooq 3y ago> poor grandfather > only judge in a town > enough money to send all nephews to college > enough money to literary "save the bank" with nothing but his amateur money lending hobby checks out the background of everyone who tells others to just "pick themselves up by their bootstraps". Rest in peace.
- yoyoyo1122 3y agoIsn't this like the saying "pain may not be your fault but it's your responsibility"?
- neogodless 3y agoIt's more like focusing on what caused the pain instead of what to do about it.
- gazelle21 3y ago[dead]
- swayvil 3y agoA victim has a lot of power though. A victim suffers. You aren't allowed to question a claim of suffering. Therefore a claim of suffering is an axiom. Axioms are the foundation of (a certain kind of) reality.
- nemo44x 3y agoIt's disastrous for an individual to feel like a victim but it's beneficial to groups trying to build power by manipulating people into believing they are victims. Grievance studies in particular are designed to do exactly this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tech_ken 3y ago> He thought that every mischance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every mischance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity but to utilize the terrible blow in a constructive fashion. Feeling like a victim is not the same as wallowing in self-pity. Recognizing that you have been victimized in some way could easily be the first step towards taking ownership of your own circumstances and pushing for their improvement. Moreover, if you are being actively victimized it's probably not healthy in the long-term to pretend like it's "your fault", you're just going to make yourself crazy that way. Taking a clear view of the causes of your current circumstances is the only way you can act effectively, even if those causes are outside your locus of control. Playing these weird heuristic games to avoid "victim mentality" is just as deluded as drowning in "poor me".
- zozbot234 3y ago> it's probably not healthy in the long-term to pretend like it's "your fault" ... Tak[e] a clear view of the causes of your current circumstances There's always things in your control and things out of your control, but the notion of "victim" does zilch to clarify which is which. It's a pointless distraction, a snare for the mind.
- KittenInABox 3y agoHeavily disagree. It is very clear when you are a victim of child abuse that no part of your abuse was in your control, because you were a child. It's also super fucked up to say the notion of, say, a rape victim is a pointless distraction. I think a "what was in your control about you being raped" is just about the least productive way to go about the scenario of being victimized.
- zozbot234 3y agoEven if the child abuse was not in your control, how you react to it might be. For example, there is a nasty cycle of violence where people who have been abused in the past are at severe risk of abusing others in turn. That's the kind of thing that one would very much have control over, even as a victim of such grievous acts.
- jay-barronville 3y agoI love it. Without even knowing about this particular quote, this has been my standard for myself for some years now. The “it’s always your fault” concept is scary to some folks—and I understand why—but it’s changed my life since I adopted it years ago. Generally speaking, my framework is: 1. I’m NOT a victim. 2. I accept that everything that happens in my life is my fault. 3. I control the controllables; I can’t fix what I can’t control. 4. I must be a problem solver rather than a complainer. 5. Whatever happens in life, I give myself a cap of 48 hours to get over it—this includes being sad, grieving, being unproductive, etc. I have a few more points in my framework, but these are the key ones. Now, I want to be clear that you can, in fact, be a victim and things can happen in your life that isn’t your fault, which makes #3 seem a bit contradictory. But if you’re thinking like this, you’re missing the point. The point is to have a framework that allows you to progress in life without allowing room for excuses. When my wife first started dating me, she was skeptical of my framework—she said it seemed a bit too robotic. As we’ve gone through stuff life has thrown at us and she watches me fight through it all without ever curling up in a ball, she’s fully on board now. I say all of this to say: Take control of your life. You can do it and it works.
- nickjj 3y agoOftentimes 3 and 4 can lead to you escaping everything which may make your big picture situation worse. "It's becoming miserable to work at X because so-and-so is very challenging to work with". You can't control so-and-so and stewing in this environment while complaining isn't going to help the situation so the only choices are to never bring them up again and be internally miserable or leave. If you leave, the outcome of that might mean you can't pay your bills.
- matteoraso 3y ago>1. I’m NOT a victim. >Now, I want to be clear that you can, in fact, be a victim and things can happen in your life that isn’t your fault Going to be honest here, I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you saying that people should go through life never feeling like a victim, even if they are one? I don't see how that would be helpful. >5. Whatever happens in life, I give myself a cap of 48 hours to get over it—this includes being sad, grieving, being unproductive, etc. You must seriously loathe yourself or live an incredibly sheltered life if you actually follow this (e.g. not just bottling up your emotions and pretending that you're okay). If your dad died, are you seriously just going to take a weekend to try and power through the grieving process? Actually, if you think spending more than 48 hours being unproductive is something that you have to "get over", do you even let yourself have weekends off from work? This is the kind of mindset that leads to people committing suicide.
- boh 3y agoI wonder in the 99 yrs of his life how often Charlie was anywhere near victimhood.
- jjri 3y agoDid you read the article?
- ihumanable 3y agoSomewhat the height of survivorship bias. There are a many number of people that don't adopt a victim mentality, work hard, and try to get ahead and just don't. For every Charlie Munger there are tons of working poor that get up everyday, work hard for minimum wage, then go off to their second job. My entire childhood I watched both my parents, who both had 2 jobs, work themselves non-stop to try to provide for us. They didn't drink or do drugs or consider themselves victims, and it didn't help one bit. Asking the man who wins the lottery how to live a good life and be successful often ends up with them telling you to do whatever it is that they did. It might even be good advice, but it's a ridiculous appeal to authority. Charlie Munger got all this success and he did X, ok, did other people do X and not achieve this level of success? How many people did not-X and were perfectly successful? It's subjective finger wagging dressed up in more appealing clothing for those that already agree with the opinions to point at and be happy about. Because at the end of the day, it allows us to blame people's misfortune on them, they've adopted a victim mentality and that's why their lives aren't working out. It allows the class that has the vast majority of wealth to deflect any critical examination of the power structure that perpetuates this state. You aren't underpaid, you just have adopted a victim mindset. You aren't exploited, you just haven't found a way to turn the challenge of paying your rent into riches yet.
- theGnuMe 3y agoFrom your bio it appears that they raised a software engineer. That has to count right?
- bigyikes 3y ago>They didn't drink or do drugs or consider themselves victims, and it didn't help one bit. Are you saying that your family would have been the same had your parents done drugs or considered themselves victims? If so, why do you think that? Seems like a very bold claim. If not, what are you actually saying?
- theossuary 3y agoI think the end point is that if more people were able to admit when they're a victim, instead of being shamed for it; then change could occur.
- feedforward 3y agoSomeone tell the Israelis whining about "October 7". Feeling like a victim all the way.
- RSMDZ 3y agoI have great respect for Charlie (RIP), but there isn't much insight here. The crux of the article is that self-pity is never useful, but it then presupposes that accepting personal responsibility is always useful. Personal responsibility is not the only way to ameliorate the great problems of our life. In fact, for the majority of human history, the idea of pivoting away from self pity from sheer force of will without the help of family and tribe would seem impossible. Instead of naivly rejecting self pity, I would like a analytical approach to question like How do we improve our ability to reject self pity? What is the role of social capital in self pity rates? What sociocultural issues have the greatest impact on endowing a sense of self pity? How has self pity been useful for building political movements?
- dr_dshiv 3y agoRest in peace: https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/charlie-munger-berkshire-hathaway-dead-74d476a8 https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/charlie-munger-berkshi...
- Xcelerate 3y agoMy mother passed away from cancer when I was 11. Originally when she learned she was terminal, she thought it might be a good idea for me to attend support sessions with the school counselor. Unfortunately in this case, the counselor wasn’t that great at their job, and I came home from school talking about how I was “anxious” and “depressed”—words I had never used before. My mother pulled me out of counseling and told my father, “I didn’t put him in there to feel sorry for himself about the situation.” She also told my sister and I before she passed to never use her death as an excuse to go through life miserable and sad—there were too many things to be happy about and we should give life purpose. So I agree with the gist of Charlie’s idea of acting like you aren’t a victim even if you do happen to be one. That said... I also think that due to either genetic predisposition or extreme environmental factors, there are rare cases where trying to take a positive attitude does not help and can in fact make things worse. Trying to use sheer force of will to “power through” certain situations may lead one to ignore other options (medication for example) and the build-up of a series of continuous failures to “think positively” may result in even worse outcomes where erratic or irreversible decisions are made during an irrational state of mind. I’m not suggesting self-pity, but rather the recognition that there are just some situations you can’t put a positive spin on and it is probably better not to try.
- dan-allen 3y agoThanks for sharing this. You’ve articulated a nuanced balance very well.
- kashunstva 3y ago> other options (medication for example) I would just add (your 11 y/o experience notwithstanding) that psychotherapy is a viable, and often preferable option for many. The fitness between therapist and client if definitely a key variable; but my experience with therapy vs meds has dramatically favoured the former. Agree that there are situations with no positive spin in the moment and maybe there will never be a positive spin; but maybe there’s a _growth-oriented_ spin. Eventually.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago(2020)
- SoftTalker 3y agoPersonally, thinking "it's always your fault" is as not nearly as important as thinking "I am the only one who can do anything (or cares) to make this better." Misfortune isn't always our fault. How we respond to it is.
- toss1 3y agoYup. I heard once a great way of putting it: It may or may not be your fault, but it is now your problem to fix. Whether it's a problem you made so can fix by adjusting your attitude/behavior/skills/etc., or a problem that someone else made, or the universe made, and requires some other fix, focusing not on how things got worse, and actually focusing on how to make things better, is the only way to make things better.
- epiccoleman 3y agoThe "your fault" part of the quote isn't something I take literally, just a pithy way of saying what you said in your post - that I'm the only one who's going to take responsibility for making it better. I also often remember a quote from Unsong - "somebody has to, and no one else will". I will say, though, that often things I don't like in my life _are_ my fault, and being willing to honestly assess those things is an important razor to cut through the bullshit of self pity. It's a quote best taken with a slight grain of salt, a lens for looking at a problem which you might not always want to wear. But I like it.
- tharkun__ 3y agoIt can also go the other way and something I often have to consciously work against: You can't always try to make everything better that you become aware of. You can't fix everything. Not everything is your problem to solve. In fact, some (important) people may not like it if you try to solve said problem. I very much have to make myself stay out of solving everything and just let others take care of it. Especially since I very much don't like other people I see that encounter the slightest problem and they just throw up their hands screaming "I don't know what to do so I'll just stand here and do nothing while someone else solves it". So it's quite the balancing act. Those people need to do more "my fault, I'll solve it" and I need to do more "not my business, let them solve it but secretly keep an eye on it to ensure that it does get done in the end coz it's actually important".
- debacle 3y agoMunger was born into an elite family with friends born into elite families, which is a winning strategy anywhere in the world.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoHard not to hear this as "I'm afraid that my victims will retaliate, therefore there are no victims."
- faeriechangling 3y agoI’ve never been fond of this line of reasoning because some people actually are victims and deluding yourself rarely has great outcomes. I think a truthful and accurate self-perception is loads better than just insisting you are never a victim.
- vasco 3y agoHe lost a 9 year old son to cancer, an eye to illness and all his money after a divorce. Seems like a cool guy to still be able to say it.
- bandrami 3y agoThis has real "dating advice from Brad Pitt" energy
- SilverBirch 3y agoI do worry that this sort of attitude can be the sort of attitude that contributes to such a high rate of young male suicide. Extremely high expectations, no sympathy and no support system means exactly this - when you are a victim it's all your own fault and there's one way out. No one wants to hear you whine. Telling someone they should be resilient doesn't necessarily actually make them resilient.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoI agree with the advice up to a point, but I'd like it more if I came from a background where people can prop up entire banks by shuffling investment properties around, rather than the advice coming from there. It's easier to view tragedy as something you can pick yourself up from when massive tragedy aren't mere punctuation points of the constant tragedy that is your own total immiseration.
- jancsika 3y agoI recently watched a coworker lose a job by embodying this very logic. I think the problem comes from the conflict between denying/rejecting victimhood, on the one hand, and realizing that one must get the fuck out of a very, very bad situation immediately, by any means on the other. From what I could tell it quickly becomes an inescapable cycle between "it's always my fault and I'll fix it"-- which implies leaving-- and "I've always been a victim and will always be one"-- which implies staying. There has to be a big enough window when the person admits to themselves and others that they are unable to get out of the conundrum on their own. And, ironically, that's the the moment when they start to accept help and start living without feeling like such a victim. But that window of opportunity is at odds with "it's always your fault and you just fix it," which strongly implies you and only you fix it. That doesn't leave much/any room to realize just how much you must rely on outside help to get out. Edit: added to the fact that apparently a lot of people also cycle between getting out of and going back to a bad situation. That makes me think it's less like flipping a bit and more like designing a high-pass filter to attenuate the victimhood frequencies.
- hyperthesis 3y agoYes. All communication is miscommunication. "[Y]ou just fix it as best you can" includes you getting help to fix it. Getting help is one of your abilities. So, for example, it's up to you to oppose discrimination via the legal system - it's your fault you're letting them get away with it. It's up to you to organize a union to counter exploitative practices - it's your fault you haven't done that yet. It's up to somebody to do something - it's up to you. If you're neglected what you can do, it's your fault. Munger isn't saying it's literally true, but that it is an effective way to face life (this "attitude... works" in the quote).
- Swizec 3y ago> which strongly implies you and only you fix it Asking for help is a perfectly encouraged way of fixing a problem. That's just a modality. You're still taking ownership of the situation and making steps to remedy. I'd go so far as saying that asking for help is often the quickest and fastest way of fixing an issue. People can't help unless they a) know you need help and b) know what kind of help. Just sitting there fuming in your victimhood won't inspire people to rush over and help.
- bena 3y agoMost philosophies come to this realization. Buddhism and Stoicism kind of center this whole ethos: If you can't do anything about it, you don't have to worry about it. Same thing is going on here. Munger is saying essentially that the past doesn't matter. The situation is what it is and the only thing that matters is what you can do to change it.
- stillwithit 3y ago“Self-pity doesn’t work, but if you hallucinate the pitiful state of things is your fault, it works.” Self pity and self blame are just euphemisms for the same emotional context of being down on yourself. Not really sure he says anything here, leverages swapping one term for another. It may be consistent within the context of human language but human feelings? How does “self pity” feel different from blaming myself for pitiful state of things as motivation to fix them. I’m not so sure last century’s rent seeker investors who worm tongued politicians into propping them up are dropping novel nuggets of philosophy.
- dang 3y agoRelated ongoing thread: Charlie Munger has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38451278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38451278
- WalterSear 3y agoIMHO, this is a crippling ideology, that crushes people's ability for self-compassion. This, in turn, destroys their ability to trust themselves, since they are so used to hearing themselves reflexively take out their distress on themselves with words like 'in any way, it's always your fault'. I've just spent the best part of a year in an IOP, unlearning this behaviour, and learning to acknowledge my own pain, trust myself and replacing inner criticism with self-advocacy, and I'm stronger and more effective for it.
- thenerdhead 3y agoHis philosophy was heavily inspired by Benjamin Franklin and other philosophers who believed in the same ideas on self-pity.
- hilux 3y agoFrom the Wikipedia page: "His father, Alfred Case Munger, was a lawyer.[2] His grandfather was Thomas Charles Munger, a U.S. district court judge and state representative.[3]" This is not the billionaire white guy who can empathize with most people's situation.
- hoangtrong001 3y agoLove so much