Loneliness is a yearning for some non-specific dream person to appear and perform a role. Lonely for "that person" who wakes you up in the morning and waits for you at night, we feel tasked with finding someone to portray that character.
But a real person might not be home in the mornings, or might sleep even later than you. A real person might not be predisposed to waiting, being intensely engaged in some pursuit or another. The Special Someone is a fantasy, and real people have limited ability (let alone interest) in portraying one-dimensional fantasy characters. Real people come with a whole backstory. You can't conjure someone fresh to make the role-play their core function.
If you do find someone willing to enact your wishcast - to do the waking and the waiting - there will be perturbances, because it will never completely or consistently fit your mental fantasy. Always "off", you'll always be lonely. The perfect benevolent character in your head was never a human being. Human beings are ambivalent and complicated. Upsettingly, it's never quite all about you. That's why you can't get no satisfaction.
If you can escape the dreamy realm of role play - of desperately seeking the person to act the part - the waking and the waiting, etc. - then, good news. You live in a world full of billions of people. They're doing just fine, and you can enjoy that they're out there, living their lives obliviously to you. You might occasionally offer some support or encouragement - just because! - but it needn't lead to a "Meet Cute" kindling of a fantasy scenario. You can just let it be what it is, which is pretty good!
I've described two radically different scenarios, but you'll feel lonely in either, because you'll never be awakened nor awaited per that special no one in your head. Caught up in drama, the shortfall feels bitterly lonely, even if s/he's right here right now. But if you opt out of contriving indulgent cinematic tearjerkers in your mind over What's Missing, you'll experience loneliness as a light wistfulness.
You can be free, and able to do whatever you want, encumbered by a light wistfulness.
I maintain a "Must-Read" list on Twitter, carefully curated to offer a smart, insightful, funny stream of tweets. I don't agree with everyone on the list, but all are reasonably clear-minded and interesting and don't just echo trendy sentiments.
I recently removed Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Elon Musk because both have gone from being trollish dicks who periodically say clever things to a more robust trollish dickishness unrestrained by intention to be clever.
I've resisted this move for years. There's grave danger in closing one's ears to those with whom one disagrees. But I demand nutrition. There must be some enrichment. Snide pique and dorky trolling do nothing for me, even from those with whom I agree (e.g. a lot of the Lincoln Project stuff turns me off, though I strongly support their mission).
I'd love to include a MAGA in this list who offers thoughtful perspective (however flawed), and who doesn't just fling memes and contrived horseshit. I've never found such a person, so I settle for anti-Trump commentary by former Republicans (well-represented on this Twitter list), who help assure me that I haven't been spun into irrational fury and paranoia by cynical profiteers.
It's a concern of mine because while I still strongly disagree with Reagan and GWB, I see now that I was incited into hating/fearing them way too severely. I was spun into seeing them as devils, so now that an actual devil has appeared, I question my appraisal. But with Dick Frickin' Cheney voting Democrat, I'm much more confident. It's truly that bad.
If you read the epic tale of the sale of my startup to a major corporation (it starts here), you know my thoughts on the vast chasm between founders and corporate managers, most pointedly stated in this installment:
The best route for creative people with business impulses (or vice versa) is to hatch one's own startup. And then sell out to puddy pudpuds who'll follow procedures to maintain it and apply relentlessness to profit from it.
The same analysis was back-linked in this later short posting.
Well, have a look at this exploration of the gaping differences between companies in "founder mode" or in "manager mode".
Interestingly (and well-explained by my writings in that series), creative types would instinctively roll their eyes at the very notion of "manager mode", while corporate types (aka "puddy pud-puds") would do likewise at the mention of "founder mode". It's every bit as partisan a divide as Harris vs Trump. Yet I think there's something to be said for both. In the epilogue of my series, I strained to be terribly mature, taking a higher perspective:
Both sides screw up when they encroach too far on the other's territory. I am absolutely a poster child for the woes of a creative founder hitting a wall after sticking around too long. With some funding, I might have instituted the revenue scheme on my own early on. But I lacked the funds and the time, and that's on me (though, in my defense, I was perennially being drowned by relentless scaling). I should have been talking to investors (learning to polish my shoes, to carefully modulate my voice, and to project gravitas), when I was mostly freaking out about the latest spammer, or getting the newsletters out on time. But, as I've explained, there's a point where you're so locked into daily overhead that the marginal time to push forward disappears.
I make a terrible pudpud, and CNET made a terrible creative founder. I stuck around too long and, paradoxically, they jumped in too early. The operation suffered from my poor pudpud skills as well as from CNET's poor creative skills.
If you're the least bit embarrassed by the memory of Americans carrying around Mao's little red book, wearing Che Guevara t shirts, and cheering the Viet Cong to seem edgy, maybe you can break that pattern of atrocious stupidity and not make Hamas your edgy righteous paragon.
…while justifiably sympathizing with Palestinians.
I have some additional thoughts as to what's really happening in the scenario described in my previous posting, "The Fog of Self Awareness". I described how people fall unwittingly into loops, trying the same thing over and over while expecting different results, as a foggy amnesia blocks self-awareness of their predicament.
I attributed it to the need for continuity. You fancy yourself a chef - a conceit which persists despite the enormous mountain of evidence that you're patently no chef. Forced to choose between contradictory views, you can guess which choice most people make.
This provides the basis for most comedy: the buffoon desperately and tenaciously clinging to presumption despite snowballing contrary evidence.
If you try to make the person cognizant of their plight (and manage to survive their reaction), they'll, at very best, nod impatiently and set themselves to do better next time. As if steely determination is what's needed. This also presupposes that previous attempts were performed by a pathetic slouch...even if they tried super-hard then, too!
At a certain point we need to try something else, and not just keep taking the same run at the impasse. At a certain point, we must recognize the futility of our efforts. Let's call that point The Futility Threshold.
However patently true this may be, it coexists with the antithetical truth that determination and grit can be highly effective. Very often we truly must transcend our slouchy selves via redoubled effort. Iteration - enduring poor results until they eventually improve, seemingly by magic - is a fundamental process.
So the threshold of futility is a crucial consideration. At a certain point we need to stop and reconfigure. In our effortful determination, we can fail to notice that we've passed this point, but outside observers do notice. For them, we're hilarious, trapped in an obvious loop without a shred of self-awareness. A fog having settled, we've lost our clarity.
It's the familiar error of using the wrong tool for the job. Maslow’s hammer! Determined pushing is how we get cars out of mud. But past the futility threshold, we must cease pushing, sip some coffee, and chart a new course involving shovels or chains or tow trucks. When perspective freezes, we lose the flexibility to view from multiple vantage points. Our efforts grow more and more futile (and funnier and funnier) while we remain grotesquely un-self-aware.
This has reverse engineered the observation that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." This saying always irritated me, and now I understand why: Anyone who's ever gotten good at anything has, indeed, done the same thing over and over with gratifyingly different results! Iterating in order to improve is the foundational human magic trick!
But only up to a point. The futility point!
The Fog
What about the "fog" - my foggy characterization of the tendency to become too distracted to notice the futility of one's circumstance? The fog which leaves us blind to overwhelming evidence that it's not going to happen even with an extra generous running start? The fog which creates the amnesia about how hard we've been trying all along?
"Fog" describes zones outside the spotlight of our momentary attention. Mental fog seems to rush in to fill an attention gap the way oxygen rushes in to fill a physical vacuum. The absence of Anything feels like an eerie, foggy Something.
A wine expert friend once told me that a tannic wine is either 1. too tannic, or, more likely, 2. lacking in all other tastes. Similarly, "foggy" is a concrete way to describe the "flavor" of a gap; of negative space; of the Ignored.
I noted that "a fog having settled, we've lost our clarity." This describes the experience of frozen perspective. Lithe reframing dispels fog by viewing from multiple vantage points, casting light from all directions...while a frozen perspective feels foggy everywhere beyond the tight tunnel vision. And so we may err endlessly, oblivious to the obvious truth.
The act of balancing attention and shifting viewpoint - i.e. active reframing - not only dispels fog, but also recharges our self-awareness and sparks the creativity to devise fresh methods which can connect effectively with desired outcomes.
A friend faced an unexpected major expense. Living paycheck-to-paycheck, he was stuck. I loaned him the money, which he agreed to repay in monthly chunks. I imposed one condition: he had to self-manage his payback. I didn't want to keep track, or discuss, or think about it at all.
He'd wound up being a paycheck-to-paycheck guy thanks to his lack of organization skills. I feared it might be tough for him to tabulate the repayment, and, sure enough, it all blew up after a few months and I needed to dive into bank records to determine my abashed friend's current debt.
No big deal, but a few years later he hit another snag and needed another loan. I restated my conditions, imploring him to find some way to track payback. No problem, he replied. He'd just note the payments in his phone's calendar!
But if the answer was so easy, why hadn't he done that last time?
Either:
1. It isn't that simple...which means more drastic steps are necessary, or
2. It is that simple...which means he hadn't taken the previous loan seriously (if so, why would I want to loan to him?)
Most people would get pissy at this point, insisting, baselessly, that they had it all under control this time, but my friend pulled off a small miracle of self-awareness by fully grokking my point. "I've got this" isn't a universally applicable response!
He understood that he needed to take more drastic steps. So will he manage to track his payments this time? Probably not. But it won't be for lack of self-awareness!
Meanwhile...
A Bengali woman in my neighborhood is trying to make a go as a restaurateur, but she has a rather fatal flaw: she cannot cook efficiently. She fiddles endlessly.
It's tough to be a professional chef when one isn't, uh, a professional chef. So her customers wait hours for her to dash out of her kitchen in an aggrieved, apologetic tizzy. Every time!
I tried texting ahead, but it didn't help. She can’t cook to a deadline - any deadline. So I asked her to try texting me five minutes before the food's ready. She agreed cheerfully, and asked a perfectly normal question: When, exactly, would I like it?
As if it mattered! She can't cook to deadline! The question is nonsense! But I couldn't penetrate her amnesia. Fancying herself a restaurant chef, she rotely follows the form of what chefs do. Her self-awareness is less than miraculous. But it's the same fog.
An important unrelated point: If my friend could organize himself, it would help him far beyond the satisfaction of my petty preference. Same for the Bengali chef. It's unreasonable to expect people to rectify their shortcomings for my gratification. I've learned not to take this sort of thing personally!
I've been trying to connect the two experiences and understand the fallacy behind this. I think it hinges on a phrase I used above: "rotely following the form." Both cases involve a false assumption of continuity. She fancies herself a chef. All the contrary evidence remains perpetually behind her. That was before, but the future is bright!
We assume that we own our trajectory, our continuity. We surely have some degree of control. "I've got this!" We imagine ourselves abstractly, as cartoon avatars hypothetically poised to gamely accomplish the task and fulfill the role. Neat, crisp, and squeaky clean! Meanwhile a compassionate amnesia conceals the upsetting disjoint between this cartoon tidiness and the mess that is our reality.
My examples spotlight particularly well-intentioned and sincere people. Imagine how much stickier it all gets when one must factor in snide disregard or even outright malevolence. What if my friend were reluctant to pay back the loan?
In fact, we even project negativity when none is present. This explains the basis for Napoleon's quote: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." The apparent reluctance to take responsibility, and the apparently heedless failure to stave off inevitable breakdowns, make it easy to suspect ill-will.
But even "incompetence" is unduly brusque. It's really just a narrowness of framing. We're naturally foggy in anticipating outcomes, and amnesiac to previous failure which would shake our sense of smooth cartoon continuity. We genuinely imagine our next run will be the good one, putting it all right, even though, past a certain point, we're exhibiting the proverbial insanity of doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
The trick is, as usual, a flip of perspective: own your incompetence. Inhabit the discontinuity. Don't aim to feel smart, aim to actually get smart. By allowing ourselves to feel perpetually messy, we stoke curiosity and kindle creativity to patch holes, clear obstructions, and find new procedures (i.e. the "drastic steps" I urged my friend to devise). Live in the actual mess, not a slick imaginary cartoon. Shake off the amnesia and get real!
In the examples above, I was the one illuminating blind spots and contriving workarounds, while the other person labored to preserve continuity. I brainstormed while they remained stuck in slapstick comedy loops, endlessly assuring "No problem!" as an endless series of rakes slapped their faces.
As they framed it, there was a need to Do a Thing, so they reset - over and over - with steely determination to get 'er done. It never dawned on them that such an approach deprecated their previous efforts. They'd tried plenty hard those times, too! If it were just a question of steely determination, why were they caught in an endless loop? But a protective fog blocks any such consideration. Don't worry; this time I've got this!
Determination is not a cure-all. Reframing is also necessary. Me, I'm a mutant, aware of, and blithely amused by (but never depressed about) my myriad shortcomings and my track record of failure. I DON'T HAVE THIS!
So I work tirelessly to erect scaffolding and baffles and workarounds and levers and pulleys to overcome my propensity for failure and avoid the slapstick comedy loop. I have no confidence in the notion that I just need to really try this time, because I always try hard. That's my baseline! And I recall with crystal clarity the many times I applied full-hearted determination straight through to unmitigated disaster! At least I avoid the fog (while opting out of aggrieved embarrassment in the clear light of my feebleness). I just keep toiling, head down, like an ant.
This flip of owning your messy incompetence allows you to finally connect expectation with outcome; to dispel fog and escape the slapstick comedy loop. Our dodgy, inept lifestream is, paradoxically, something we can train ourselves to masterfully control, because it's real. The hypothetical shiny cartoon, not so much. A pose, by definition, has no substance!
Postscripts
The fallacy I've described affects all kinds of intelligences. AI chatbots have a devilishly hard time helping you devise directions ("prompts") for your future use with them. They labor with brisk confidence, certain they can anticipate their hypothetical reaction, but when you clear the slate (purging memory of the prep work) and try the prompt, it almost always misfires horribly. The bot goes “Huh??”
And something fascinating happens if you let the chatbot monitor the full arc of this process. If you don't erase the prep session, and instead open a new browser window to try the prompt with a fresh chatbot, then show the results to the original bot, it will steel itself to try again with greater determination ("I've got it THIS TIME!") with similar results...over and over. The same foggy amnesia! The same slapstick comedy loop!
At a certain point, I bought a bunch of tools and a stack of DIY books so I could be more of a manly man and FIX STUFF. And I found that each time I tried to faithfully follow instructions, there'd be some unique problem not anticipated in the books. It happened every time, yet an odd amnesia always made it feel exceptional.
Shaking off the fog, I realized that nothing ever goes normally. Even highly-experienced master carpenters reach an "aw, shit!" moment in every job (but they, unlike me, can improvise workarounds). Every day, they go out expecting to Do the Thing, but it's never just that, and amnesia makes the derailments feel eternally surprising.
An associated blind spot is discussed in The Expert/Layman Triage Fallacy (don't miss, too, the follow-up, where I explain how this fallacy is so strong that many people can't even parse anecdotes about it).
I once did a fair bit of teaching of younger jazz players, mostly via seminars in Europe. Often I'd encounter someone with no perceptible swing feel - which is catastrophic. After an hour of hard work and pushing and carrying on, occasionally I might cajole one into swinging, which felt like a revelation, but I'd coach them straight through that threshold to something even higher. Not just swinging, but really swinging! And it was surprisingly common to see a few reach that lofty height...at least for a brief moment.
"Wait! Stop! Freeze!" I'd scream. "You heard what you just did, right? That was really swinging, and it felt super different, right?"
"You cannot ever go back. This isn't your new normal; it's your new baseline. You must never - even in your worst, sloppiest, most unguarded moment - swing any less than you just proved you can. If you hadn't just proved what you could do, you might have doubted your capability. But that was proof-of-concept, and it can no longer be doubted. You know how swinging you can be, so anything less from this point forward would be inexcusable."
"Failing to swing your ass off is now a capital offense. You can no longer protest that, hey, you were trying your best. Now that we know what your best really is, settling for less makes you a lazy, shitty, spoiled baby. You can't shrug off not swinging. Not anymore!"
How many of them powered up, proceeding at this higher level? Very few, of course. Most immediately dipped all the way back to their previous level; to their status quo. Not because greatness was too demanding or draining or challenging, but because they couldn't reframe themselves. Crappy unswinging mediocrity felt comfortable. It made them feel like themselves. It felt like home. Like their own comfy beds. Night night!
But every great once in a while, one would experience some internal snap (something must snap!). Reframing would happen, and they'd power up several levels, renouncing the fluffy pillows and blankets of mediocrity. Swinging hard became their new normal.
Those were the great ones. And this explains: 1. Why there are so few "great ones", and 2. What one needs to do to be great.
Their greatness wasn't a matter of latent capability (aka "talent), or hard work (strictly speaking), or even the quality level of their result. It was about two things: reframing and commitment. The two things nobody looks at or worries about or talks about or aims for.
These things constitute the Dark Matter of the human universe, and that's what this Slog has mostly explored all these years.
When a selfish person offers a trifle, your debt will be immense.
Selfish recipients get it. Duly surprised by generosity, they make a hero of the giver. But generous recipients often miss the rarity of the gesture. The offering of a potato chip may require celebration. A selfish giver requires praise and stroking, like a puppy who shits in the appointed box.
Generous givers and recipients can recognize each other, so the transaction is casual and easy. And well-matched selfish people smoothly play out their game theory, maneuvering past issues of intent, and ultimately agree to treat generosity as an inexplicable fluke.
The problem is with mismatches. When a generous person gives (nonchalantly) to a selfish person, primal suspicions are aroused, and it can get nasty. But it's worse when the selfish give to the generous. Failure to duly celebrate, praise, and stroke makes it all seem for naught. Gut-wrenching!
Always assess your donor! Calculate how lavishly they need to be patronized!
A friend once sent me a jokey email where he'd satirized some news item by turning it into a fairy tale or limerick or whatever. It was clumsy, and I was busy, but I shot back "Ha!" Weeks later, he informed me how many hours he'd invested in the effort, and how stricken he'd been at my monosyllabic reply.
I take people at their word that they don't like to be patronized. And feelings of superiority don’t come easily to me, anyway. So it never occurred to me to assess my friend's primitive writing skills and grade him on a curve, graciously reporting that I'd laughed and laughed at his fabulous, wonderful email.
People actually love to be patronized. They eat it right up. In fact, it's often impolite not to! So the next time someone offers...anything, remember to judge them first. Size them up! Then, if appropriate, respond as if they'd presented you with their live, beating heart. If you get it wrong, and stroke unnecessarily, they'll just figure you're weird. But if you fail the other way, and don't reply on a curve, things can turn out very badly.
Centrists and moderates of either stripe who are alarmed by Harris' pandering talk of price controls (if you're going to ape Nixon, I'd much rather you break into hotels than mess with the economy) should read Josh Barro's superb centrist analysis (and teeth-gritted approval). I'll surmise:
It's bad...
...but it's smartly mitigated,
...and she needs this in her platform because Biden killed himself by failing to address cost of living
...and she's standing up to the hard Left in other significant ways
...so we should give her this so she defeats the Tasmanian devil.
It's a five minute read that can transform your view of what's actually going on with this stuff.
"But with your vote, the reign will be over. That horrible reign. In a way, it's a reign of terror, you know, it's a weak reign. It's an incompetent reign...It's a very dangerous reign."
Throughout history, demagogues have disparaged weakness in the same breath as they've decried dominance. That's the route to really effective scapegoating. You must make both contradictory assertions.
Jews get the "credit" for this. For centuries, we've heard how Jews are inferior, weak, and cowardly and that they run the world, cheat you out of your money, and devour your babies. All those things! So many things!
Lately it's been applied much more widely, and people are surprisingly cool with the contradiction. The juxtaposition of impotence and omnipotence somehow feels acceptable. Consider "elites", a word pronounced by both extreme left and extreme right with drippy contempt. The dissonant amalgam of contemptuous weakness with savage superiority feels credible. No bells ring.
Here's the basis: Self-pity and self-aggrandizement are two sides of the same coin. They fuel each other. For example, arrogance is always based in insecurity, and only the fearful become bullies. "Normal" people don't feel incessantly kicked, nor do they thirst for someone to kick. But once you're skewed, one way or the other, you'll inevitably draw in the antithesis.
So painting a scapegoat as both impotent and omnipotent bridges this psychic ambivalence. One-stop shopping, if you will. The scapegoat is more than just a problem. It represents all the problems - an integrated projection of contradictory impulses. Demagogues know this, and use it to stoke maximal hatred; to really scape the goat. The target is your despised oppressor while also a delicious outlet for your oppressive tendencies.
I always flip the camera, even when the result isn’t flattering, so I must concede that Donald Trump, himself, is often viewed by people like me as both feebly impotent and frightfully omnipotent. Being on the right side doesn't make one immune to demagoguery. Being correct doesn't mean you’re a clear thinker.
I try to avoid the trap by favoring the "impotence" framing. I want to block Trump from power not to thwart his diabolical master schemes, but for the same reason I want to keep a horse out of a hospital.
