Saturday, December 23, 2023

Ordinariness

Here's why we hate to hear our voices played back to us, or to unexpectedly glimpse ourselves in reflection:

It's not some complicated dysmorphia. It's not that we expected some other specific thing. It's that narcissists cannot tolerate the prospect that they're just some fucking person. That "I'm just one of them."

This worst of all possible scenarios fills us with horror and revulsion, explaining the horror and revulsion.



Same when we're confronting evidence of our failure, faults, and inadequacies. It's not the shortfall, itself, that galls. It's the recognition not of a blemished record, but of ourselves as someone even susceptible to blemish. We recoil from mountainous evidence, though doing so dooms us to mediocrity (or worse).



Why do humans so famously hate change, even though we perpetually despise our current status quo? Change might reveal our current position as something other than "end-all and be-all". And we'd much rather feel complete than strive for completion - which would require change!

We scarcely hesitate, however, to externally project that skew, indignantly demanding that the world (which is exactly to our specifications) shape up.


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