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Self help isn’t really my deal, but I am going to show you how your implicit philosophical commitments are holding you back and preventing you from achieving your potential
Certain ideas and attitudes are baked into the collective mind of western civ, especially Americans, (read Tocqueville), and you won’t escape them until you learn to notice them. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1034162623799906304
The belief that holds you back the most is your belief in the spiritual equality of all people. This is a bad belief; it turns your ambition into resentment, and it creates cognitive dissonance when you pursue excellence
Cognitive dissonance is the pain of confusion you feel when you are compelled to act in a way that contradicts your beliefs. You don't actually want equality on any level. You want superiority, whether in the form of money, status, or power https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1025738550501752835
Everyone wants some form of superiority. Especially within communities with nominal equality norms, people compete for intangible forms of social status, respect, and moral reputation. It's impossible to reconcile the teaching of equality with the outcome of status competition
When you are told you are equal, in ANY capacity, you feel cognitive dissonance, because in your gut, in your bowels, you know it ain't so.
The lie of equality, once believed, always fills the deceived with resentment, because if everyone is spiritually equal, then there is no defensible reason why honors should go to others instead of you. The only possible explanation is that the honored have somehow cheated
If everyone is equal, and you aren't on top, then the achievements of others can only be explained by the externalization of blame. And of course, social status and moral reputation are a zero sum game.
So believing in equality, even in its rarefied forms, is what's known as a limiting belief. And it limits you in two ways, and my hope for you is that you can manage to overcome both of these limitations.
The first way that belief in equality limits you is: it stops you from recognizing your betters. It used to be possible to admire another person and look up to them, not only in terms of their accomplishments, but also in terms of their character. Equality robs you of that
The second way that equality limits you is by telling you that you don't need to change. If everyone is equal then your deficiencies are externally imposed upon you, and hard work and honest self-improvement are impossible, because there is nothing wrong with YOU
You must learn to let go of resentment, and the way that you do this is through humility, by learning to recognize the superiority of others, when they are superior to you, so that you can use them as a positive example
The desire to abolish all teachings about equality is not, as the resentful man imagines, the desire to look down on other people. Quite the opposite, it is the desire to look up. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1034801427913170944
But at the same time the psychology that fears being looked down upon also misconstrues what it means to look down, because it cannot conceive of earned or merited superiority. This is how belief in equality warps you. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1024462008018591744
Again, if everyone is equal, then all superiority comes from cheating, and all authority is innately illegitimate, and all achievement is unearned, which is why the egalitarian refers to merit as privilege.
When superiority is merited, it does not look down with contempt, but with righteous obligation. When you believe your inferiors are your equals, you will feel no inclination to help them, because 1) why would your equals need your help? 2) you see them as competitors
In this way, a commitment to and a belief in equality degrades the soul of both the higher and the lower man. https://twitter.com/0x49fa98/status/1065642170118328320
A lot of these problems come from the Rawlsian metaphysical stance, which did not originate with Rawls, but which has found its most successful advocate in him. One of the worst things you could possibly believe is that you were born "into" this world, when no such thing occurred
This metaphysical stance imagines "you" as something distinct from your body or your circumstances, as if you were some cosmic essence randomly joined with a human husk, and even people who claim to be atheist materialists believe this, either way it's a garbage belief
In the Rawlsian stance, you exist independently of your circumstances, your genes, your parents, your historical and social context. The truth is you could only ever be the product of your environment. You didn't grow into the world, you grew out of it
When you imagine yourself as someone else, you are in fact imagining someone else, and if you had their circumstances, you would be them, and not you. There is no such thing as the veil of ignorance, there is no throng of souls queuing up outside the world to get in
Understand that even though luck is an element of success, believing in luck is an element of anti-success. When a powerful man invokes luck, its a rhetorical stance to placate the crowd. When a weak man invokes luck, he's just making excuses
When I was younger and I believed these lies, I didn’t know how to better myself, in large part because I didn’t have a model of the world where it was possible to be better than other people. I had never conceived of the possibility, honestly
Pursuit of success and excellence only became an physical possibility for me when I realized that it was a metaphysical possibility. This is a trap you can fall into, if you have a bookish temperament.
I only became free to develop myself once I had this understanding. And this is a very good example of freedom being good for a particular purpose, but not in the abstract
Many of the bookish sort never have this realization, because they tend to be very good in school, and in school, you never have to work hard for your achievements. In fact, there is no surer sign of a bad student, than to notice he is expending a lot of effort
Smart people who do well in school believe in theories of equality because academic achievements come very easily to them, and then when other forms of status are not so simple, then the resentment begins to grow...
