Declining Haughty Gamesmanship in Favor of Butterscotch

In my previous posting, "The Rip-Off", I described how I won — along every conceivable parameter, really — while making the most loser-ish real estate move possible. I claimed that this changed everything. But I just remembered that I learned this move ages ago.

A dysfunctional girlfriend who constantly complained about everyone in her life being out to destroy her accidentally sent me an email intended for her best friend, in which, to my non-surprise, she described me as out to destroy her (when, in fact, I'd spent years working strenuously to fill her with the same vitality and love as I was lavishing on my young web site). Coming after a long series of hair-raising indignities, my patience was exhausted and I severed contact.

Some time later, I mentioned on Chowhound how sad I was that butterscotch had become an endangered flavor, and a package arrived shortly afterwards containing butterscotch candies. I don't remember if there was a note or return address, but it was obvious who'd sent them.

The normal thing to do would have been to snidely throw them in the trash. "Good riddance!" That's the movie scene, right?

But that seemed like a waste of perfectly good butterscotch, so I kept the candy, I ate the candy, and I enjoyed the hell out of the candy noncontextually. It was pretty easy, really. You can choose this outcome, though you’ll never see it in movies. It's a reframing thing.

The moment of realizing my freedom to reject the conventional movie script was similar to another time I recognized that I'm not compelled to play out cinematic clichés at fraught junctures.

I'm free to frame as I'd like. The candy was delicious. My apartment is great. I suppose this sounds selfish, like I always go for high-testosterone wins regardless of circumstance. But nothing like that. If I can win without creating losers, and the movie script says I'd lose by "giving ground", I'll gleefully give all the ground in the world...and take my win. Consideration for others ought to be reserved for generosity, not haughty gamesmanship — and certainly not haughty gamesmanship that leaves me needlessly worse off. Why not just eat the damn candy?

The Rip-Off

I'd planned to spend my first months in Portugal renting a room from two of my dearest, oldest friends, but they turned out to be late-stage alcoholics who flipped between two modes:

1. "We hate that you're here and hope you drop dead", and 2. "Why are you so skittish around us? What's wrong with you? We're your friends and we love you!"

I found every excuse to get away: travel, chowhounding (familiarizing myself with every restaurant south of Lisbon and north of Alentejo), park visits and cafe hangs, but I discovered (this is actually useful information!) that you cannot fill up all 168 hours of a week like that. So I spent 6-8 hours a day sitting in my car. There was a tree I liked, so I parked in front of it. Good times!

I had to accelerate efforts to find my own place, so I auditioned a series of realtors, each worse than the last. As ditzy as they may be in USA, here it's worse. They're like used car salesmen. There's no code of conduct local realtors even pretend to uphold. I settled on a French guy, a moody chainsmoker who, once I'd signed on, didn't conceal his contempt. His cracked phone screen showed how desperately he needed his commission. At every gross place he showed me, he'd stare at me, willing me via psi-powers. Please buy. Please. You want this.

My living situation had become unlivable, so Frenchie found me a rental which turned out to be adjacent to a marble cutter, who started at 7am, the whole house shaking and fine stone dust pluming, triggering asthma that hadn't recurred in decades. This is how you force a client to buy ASAP. Clever Frenchie!

In my haggard state, I managed to mess up my ankle and could barely walk. And just around then began a series of food-borne illnesses (I'd developed an inability to fight off campylobacter) which eventually stripped 45 pounds off of me, leaving me dehydrated to the point where my kidneys filled with tiny stones.

Half-dead — and inclined to use my remaining energy to drown the realtor — we walked quite unexpectedly into a soulful, super-nice, perfect apartment. But it was 70,000€ too expensive, and the owner shrewdly noticed that I was geared up about it and refused to budge. For weeks. I actually begged at one point, but no dice. My realtor was so galled that he actually counseled me—against his own interest!— to keep looking. Everyone in my life begged me to tell the owner to go to Hell. There are other apartments, after all!

Nope. I bought it.

The owner couldn't stop grinning at the closing as I limped around coughing and making bathroom detours. But I bought, moved in, and swiftly began recovering, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I now live in a soulful, utterly comfortable apartment which, after three years, has appreciated above its sale price. A win by any standard. Asthma's better, stomach is mostly sorted, and Señora Vanessa is making great progress on my ankles.

I don't know many people who'd have bought. They'd keep viewing properties with the contemptuous Frenchman, limping, coughing, and faint from a diet of white rice and toast. The price was WAY too high, the owner was WAY too much of a prick, and this was a scene you'd have been delighted to walk away from...even though it was a really great apartment.

But that last part was the only part that mattered, under the circumstances.

I can't say it involved any high-mindedness. I didn't forgive anyone, or keep a "positive attitude". I merely followed my self-interest — like everyone does all the time! — in the presence of considerable gall. The ultimate example of not cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

Now, having discovered the massive rewards of losing face (it's like a superpower!), I'm a changed person. In such scenarios, I deny myself nothing on principle. I'm not normally selfish, but this is my sole exception. I garland myself with the luxury of doing what's best for me even when the situation calls for haughty self-denial.

The best revenge is living well, though it may take forbearance to get through the initial degradation. It absolutely made sense to shower money at a seller who wouldn't stop grinning because he'd made a killing by killing me...because it was my best shot at living. He won, but I won more!


Here's a follow-up

A Marginally Better Presbyterian

I was recently musing that a lot of people supported Trump because "he's a pugnacious shithead just like me."

Liberals would smirk at that. They'd nod their heads ruefully. So true!

But they support that sort of thing to their very core. After all, what screams Democratic Party more than a soft-focused video of a minority child entranced by a speech proclaiming in voiceover, "I want a president who looks like me!"

Yeah! That's the stuff! Beautiful!

Most people in this binary of binaries (well, Palestine/Israel is still marginally worse) have trouble parsing what, exactly, centrism even means. Here's a taste:

If a terrific Jewish presidential candidate were to run, I'd vote for them enthusiastically...but only because they were "terrific", not because they were Jewish. But if a Presbyterian candidate were only marginally better, I'd support that one even more enthusiastically. And I find it very hard to empathize with any other view. To me, you'd need to be so completely adrift in storybook bullshit and pure narcissism that you'd lost all sense.

Grace Me Up Right Now

This meme seems like such a mild, reasonable request. And yet, few humans until a couple decades ago would have imagined any entitlement to mercy when showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time. We easily recognized that even if you're there by invitation, with a mission of helping, even that wouldn't earn you a guaranteed pass ("No good deed goes unpunished!").

The notion of deserving grace is quite new, but it's so thoroughly baked-in that I seem like quite a jerk, objecting to a nice plea from a nice person who just hopes to be treated nicely. This only proves how entitlement has swollen to a point where all perspective has been lost.

Perhaps you'll see my point better if I diagram it for you:

"I didn't kill a bug once. I ask in return that I be allowed to waltz through life's landscape in a state of elevated grace". Hey, not too much to ask!

FWIW, your kids and grandkids won't even parse that stark diagramming. The point wouldn't penetrate at all. Entitlement, you see, is self-sealing.


Note, I originally posted this on my Facebook feed, where I tacked on this parenthetical comment: "In 1997, i invented food blogging. In 2026 I invented reposting treacly memes to rank on them. I am like a fountain of fresh obnoxious behaviors."

Never Coddle the Coddled

Solicitously deferring to attractive people only feeds privilege the rest of us lack. As with a black person gallantly yielding her 1958 bus seat, there are limits to gallantry.


See also "The Immense Stature of an Attractive Person Making Idle Small Talk"

Frame-Stuck

The Anguish of Señora Vanessa
I've avoided several orthopedic surgeries via yoga and weekly therapy. I am my physical therapist's Big Project, and results have been remarkable. She's been working so hard to put Humpty together again that if she spots me wearing the wrong shoes or moving the wrong way, she becomes distressed, exhorting me to do better and stop messing up her project.

At such moments, I consider her directions for a moment, and readily agree. New shoes will be ordered. And I won't angle my knee that way. Done! Will do!

But then she keeps on exhorting me. Exhortively! Greater and greater force and volume are applied until, finally, she collapses from the futility. Setting her jaw, she hisses "Do what you want. It's your body. What do I care."

It's very strange, but, hey, it's a strange country.

One day, in a flash of realization, I understood what was happening.

"Señora Vanessa, is the problem that I'm agreeing too quickly?", I asked.

She frowned and was silent. Señora Vanessa needs time when someone asks a question she's never been asked.

I continue: "Would you be more satisfied if I grunted, struggled, weighed, and only gradually passed a psychic kidney stone in my journey toward grudging acceptance? Must I clench and flail to show that I'm painfully digesting your instruction and committing to an actual behavioral change?"

Señora Vanessa was blushing. She'd never thought of it like this, but couldn't deny the truth.

I explained that I trust her, so when she tells me something, it slots right in. Done! Will do! She peered down at me on her massage table, marveling at my alien ways. It was like Merlin had appeared in her clinic.

My explanation would require laborious processing. It would hardly feel prudent to simply accept it, true as she knew it was.

Which, of course, is her point.

The Fine Line Between Acceptance and Insincerity
Señora Vanessa imagined that I'd been patronizing her all this time. My lack of flamboyant struggle meant I was being glib. Making light of the value of her substantial expertise.

"Sure, honey. I gotcha. I'll get right on that. Meanwhile, hey, can you work on my left calf a little?"

Merlin's Little Secret
I've gradually come to realize that other people don't reframe as easily as I can. People think that shifts of perspective happen spontaneously. While we dimly recognize that we can sometimes play some minor part, for the most part, the world seems to compel our interpretation. When our world and our gods choose to induce a shift, we find ourselves in a new mental place. We have reframed.

The truth, though, is that shifts of perspective are always easily and instantly accessible. Freedom is like a smartphone feature we forgot we own.

This, by the way, explains the event that inspired my "Surprisingly Uplifting Examination of Suicide" . Readers have asked what actually happened in that situation. Was it some cosmic revelation, or heavenly consolation? Nah, I just remembered I could reframe. It's always easily accessible for all of us. We own the faculty!

As I wrote in this terse posting , we imagine that we control our thinking, though that's ludicrously obviously untrue (try not to think of a pink elephant). And, conversely, we imagine that the world controls our framing, which is equally crazily untrue. We have it backwards on both sides of our functioning. The truth is that we're saddled with thoughts that simply arrive, but we are infinitely free — this is our free will! — to pay attention to them and interpret them and contextualize them and react to them per our choice of perspective/framing/point of view. It really is a choice, and it's far more powerful to choose the framing than to try to control the thoughts.

Perhaps I am a sort of Merlin, though not via special tricks. I just stopped ignoring the big trick we all possess. We work perversely hard to deny, ignore, and inhibit the faculty, occluding it more seamlessly than a solar eclipse! But it's slippery to try to reclaim it. The sticky wicket is that an ability to reframe is prerequisite to grokking reframing! It's the ultimate bootstrapping problem.

Sidebar
Let me step out from the curtains for a sec. Hi, I'm Jim! Writer of this essay! It's not yet the polished gem you're currently reading, but I'm realizing it will inevitably feel a bit foggy and slippery, like some of my other postings here [frowny face]. The problem is in this line you just read:

"The sticky wicket is that an ability to reframe is prerequisite to grokking reframing!"

You can't frame reframing without a facility for reframing...which requires a facility for reframing. Even though it's tantalizingly easy, innate, and immediate.

So this is nothing like explaining calculus or music theory. You need to stumble into it yourself, and all I can do is to get you in the mood via metaphors, anecdotes, and contagious enthusiasm.

We reframe countless times per day, but don't realize we're doing it. It feels imposed. This misapprehension makes us forget that we are completely free to reframe. We think we're following when we're actually leading.

Some people suspect this, and are ripe to flip into full recognition. So I'm working like a summagun to coax them from a variety of crafty angles. Or at least offer some visceral sense of things so that the next time perspective shifts, they'll have some perspective on their perspective.

But I can't neatly hammer this home, because it's visceral. It's about your subjectivity; your placement of attention; your interpretation. All these things are immediately accessible, but not super "thinky." All I can do is stoke your curiosity.

Ok, let's get back to it!

A Bizarre State of Perpetual Argument
As I laid pondering this on Señora Vanessa's massage table, the recognition began to extend itself (effortless daisy-chaining of insights is one of the benefits of lithe reframeability). I realized that I've experienced a subtler version of this impasse all my life. No one ever stops arguing when I concede an argument. They just keep going.

I always thought it was because they loved hearing themselves speak — i.e. they were really arguing internally, trying to persuade themselves. And while that's surely a factor, it's mostly because my agreement seems way too light and easy to be true. Where's the struggle? Why am I not clutching my forehead, yanking my hair, and bulging my eyes as I move an enormous mental boulder to foster a weighty change of perspective? There ought to be low moaning as I squeeze fresh fodder through my cognitive sphincter. So my blithe ease signals that I'm using empty words to put an end to the argument.

I am patronizing. I am glib.

Frame-Stuckedness and Culture
Señora Vanessa's version was more extreme because Portugal is a country where people are defiantly, fervidly, proudly frame-stuck. They haven't just forgotten how to reframe; they staunchly oppose it.

A great many people here remain in eternal mourning after anyone significant drops dead. Why do Southern European grandmas dress in permanent black? Because by a certain point, someone has surely died. And they will not let go of loss, nor would they ever want to let go of it. Or let go of much of anything. They defiantly, fervidly stand their ground. Character means never budging one's perspective.

What makes the Eastern outlook (dare I say "framing") seem so ineffable to Westerners? It prizes the release of psychic binding, while Westerners (especially Europeans, and especially especially Portuguese) would never consider any such thing.

I've been here long enough to watch the process unfold in real time. My sparkly 60 year old neighbor lost his 85 year old mother two years ago, and the sparkle has not returned. It will never return. And his friends, in turn, mourn for him, and the loss of his sparkle in their lives diminishes them, as well. A chain reaction of volitional self-immolation stems from a staunch unwillingness to let go of anything tagged "Existential".

And countless things earn that tag because high stakes create life's deepest richness — though the irony is lost that this very richness is what's lost upon self-extinguishment.

When the unthinkable occurs, violating our most emphatic red lines, self-extinguishment is the unavoidable result. There's actually a logic to it: "I can't survive X" would seem to compel us to dissolve upon X. At least if we're utterly frame-stuck.

See this series about how we're all survivors of multiple encounters with the Unthinkable

As I stroll Portuguese streets, I notice zombies. "We have feelings," they reason. "Deep, deep feelings. We prioritize our deep feelings, and mourning's not truly mournful unless it crushes our spirit with maximum drama forever. The ultimate expression of Feeling is a state of permanently resigned Numbness. The end game is to transform into a veritable fountain of numbness and non-sparkle. Such is life!"

And of course it's not just from mourning. One can become frame-stuck (aka "frozen perspective") in any context. In fact, that's what we like about this place!

Why has Portugal held onto its traditional culture so much longer than other European nations (e.g. dining culture here is an astonishingly direct connection to the medieval period)? An academic would attribute it to "cultural tenacity", which is true in a flattened, cartoonish view. But how is this stoked, moment by moment, in the minds of actual people? How, in their momentary activities, do they preserve old ways?

Frame-stuckedness! Frozen perspective! The cognitive sphincter of shifting perspective seals tight!

I'm not saying other places are particularly lithe about reframing (humans seem to range from "pretty damned stuck" to "quite impossibly stuck") nor am I saying that lithe reframability is always a greater good. It's much better for me, because I cope quite poorly with the aggregate results of whimsically self-imposed psychic burden. But I grew up in a thin pseudo-culture of slice pizza, shopping malls, and pinball, so for me there's none of the nutrition a Portuguese derives from tenaciously clinging to Culture.

Just as there's a fine line between agreement and patronization, "liberation" is perilously close to "groundlessness".

Of course, the difference is all in the framing.


There is a moral component to frame-stuckedness. In many contexts, it's another term for "heroism".

Updating Eleanor Roosevelt

Updating Eleanor Roosevelt's quote — valid for millennia but now completely obsolete:

Small minds discuss memes

Average minds discuss celebrities

Great minds discuss events (faithfully echoing their tribal thought leaders)

Above and Below

The very worst waiters that I've ever seen all had something in common:

They all felt that being a waiter was beneath them.

When, in fact, being a waiter was well above them.

It was their superiority that made them inferior.


This much appreciated posting from way back in 2010 was only the start of my recognition of how upside down and embarrassing everything is.

Juice Squeeze

You cannot, in the present era, sell a used item to another person for a stated price.

If an item is worth $50 and you price it at $40, you will either be ignored (because there's clearly something wrong with it) or else be counter-offered $25.

It's been years since I've seen anyone accept an offer as-is.

I don't think it's stinginess. It's competitive imperative. People rush forward to perform the juice squeeze to indulge their adversarial impulses. An opportunity to conquer and crush! Unilateralism! It's a bit like Sue and the speed bump.

I recently posted an item for sale, making abundantly clear that the (very fair) $100 price was firm, and was flooded with messages ala "$85".

I replied to one:

Do you see any way to do this without launching a game of “Haggling and Screwing”?

Can you imagine a universe where someone charges a fair price, and you pay that price, and you’re happy? Or does that sound empty and pointless? Am I silly for even suggesting it?"

To be fair, current conditions make everyone overcharge now, to grant the sadists and conquerors their crushing victories. We charge $150, and let ourselves be bargained down to $100.

I can't do that, for four reasons:

1. I'm generous, so I prefer charging a fair price and making people happy. That, to me, is the win.

2. I'm efficient, and this route seems like a great big slobbering needless ordeal.

3. I don't like getting roped into dramatic shtick.

4. I don't negotiate with terrorists.

So I don't make many sales!

Opt-In, Opt-Out

There will never be a channel for people who do things I find interesting to inform me about new interesting things without inevitably filling the channel with blather.

I've now been internetting for 34 years, signing up for mailing lists and notifications I was inevitably compelled to ignore or to cancel. And I'm convinced it will always be thus.

There's something about the human world that won't allow genuine opt-in update channels to maintain their integrity.