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What people want as much as anything and the number one economic principle of our times

Friday 6/21/24

People want to be told that whatever they're doing, and whatever they are, is great, no matter if what they're doing is horrible, and what they are is not good. They may know that what they're doing is horrible and that what they are is not good. They can even know this as well as anyone could know it.


What they want--and this is just about everyone--is to be told, regardless, that what they are, and whatever they're doing, is great, and that they could do and be no better. It doesn't matter if this a wildly untrue statement, or that they know it to be.


This is the most basic principle of economics in our world right now. That what someone else does, or is about, makes those other people feel like whatever they're doing, and whatever they are, is great. Those other people can can think that's crazy, though they're most likely not to think about it at all, which is what they want.


Goodness in others and in other things, and substance, and value, is what makes us think about our respective levels of goodness and the value of what we do, are trying to do, offer, create. And that's when you get problems.


But being told these things, regardless of whether or not they're true--and actually being more desirous of being told them when they're not true (underline that)--is what most people want from someone else, or what someone else does, or what someone else is saying, or what someone else's example, as such, suggests.


This may go even more so in publishing and with the kind of person in it or who wants to be a member of that system and group.


But the truth is, it's so easy to be so much better. In everything. All the parts of life.


You can't be so mortally offended and angered over obvious, basic truths, that you double down in those not so great things you're doing and are about, or hate that other person and wish them dead because they're not lying and they might represent a better way of doing things and of being.


It's not a big deal, a death sentence, an obliteration of the self, that a person can do better. It's an opportunity. Opportunities are good things. The only bad thing about an opportunity is when one fails to take advantage of it.


I'll give the example of the drinking again. People look at me like, "Wow, that guy is so strong, he's who I think of when I think of beating a drinking problem, and he did it during a very hard time, he just did it."


But the day before I quit drinking, I was awful at not quitting drinking. I did something better. I was the same person. Well, somewhat. I'm a better person now. In various ways. But I had this capability. It was in me. Rather than say, "This is fine," I said, "This isn't good." I could accept and understand that. It didn't void my worth as a person. That this was so didn't end my life, consign me to some lower rung. I could do something.


And now I am so this other thing, right? A non-drinker. A model of kicking a drinking problem. And how long did it take for that to change? No time hardly at all.


So much is this way for us. Physically, intellectually, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. With writers and writing. So that thing you wrote sucks. Okay. Identity what was wrong with it. Do it again better. Do the next one better now that you've identified what was bad with the last one.


People often act like they have no agency, no say-so, whatsoever. That they're locked into being that person. That they need to be lazy, not work out, not learn, not get up early and launch themselves into the day, not express themselves better, because that's who they are, and there's no altering the product on the showroom floor. The die is cast and all that jazz.


But that's not the case. You can just do all of those things if you want to. If you decide to. You'll be happier. You will feel better about yourself.


What people prefer to do though, instead, is hate. (And it can be over the smallest things. "She expects me as an adult who ought to have a remedial understanding of language to know that it's anyway and not anyways, I'll show her!" Or you could just fix it and sound like a more educated adult. The horror.) To hate someone who is not like them because they do those things, and to seek out and partake of that which tells them what they're doing is good enough and great and all they need ever do, and the people saying that, the people whose work says it, the people whose brands radiate it.


The result is this stubborn, nonsensical commitment to being miserable, to being lesser than a person could be, and very likely not being much, if anything, good at all.


A lot of things are in us. You can just use them, instead of having them sit there doing nothing. Okay, so you're not right then and there great at this or great at that, and what you're doing isn't so hot. So? You can just change that in like five minutes. You could be the best ever at that thing going forward. What would it then matter that you weren't that thing before? It was in you all along if you wanted to act on it. All that's changed is that you did. Isn't that an obviously more logical, healthier, happier, and better way to be?



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