Liberal Vindication

I title this post Liberal Vindication but it could be titled with any political party or form of tribalism. Lately, I find the liberal party to be the most self-righteous. Everyone should have conviction in their beliefs. It crosses the line when one’s own beliefs are subjected to others, obligating others to live by their beliefs instead of allowing them to live within their own. This post can get controversial quite quickly, so I’d like to preface by saying there’s always exceptions and nuance to situations and that speaking in broad generalities allows us to see the big picture.

It is not exclusive of the liberal party to push a personal agenda onto public opinion, as that is the nature of voting and lobbying. For many reasons, obvious or subtle, conservative parties may be viewed as the unapologetic party while liberal parties may be seen as a voice for the unheard. Whether this is totally true or not, suppose that one party is seeking justice from another party. Wouldn’t it be natural for the party seeking justice to act as the righteous, to act as the protagonist of the story?

This is where I believe the commonalities of any parties with conviction and the liberal parties end. From my personal experience, from seeing myself and from seeing public figures online, disagreeing with an opposing viewpoint is only the beginning of a twisted relationship. When there once was civil discourse and the freedom to have opposing viewpoints, there is now immediate vitriol as one side stands chest-high, lording over any opponents.

The self-righteous attitude is perfectly acceptable within one’s own personal and private life. But when did it become acceptable to attack others for their viewpoint, to the point that conversation breaks down? Having disagreements is as old as time. Our reactions, our responses, and our navigation of it have changed.

There are huge overarching factors with globalism, the internet, urban sprawl, political divide, and more. Engaging and disengaging with preferred topics and circles has created echo chambers. Our strength and conditioning when encountering disagreements has become weaker and weaker.

The current state of weakness has manifested itself most fully when observing the liberal party’s confrontation of its opponents. In classical debate, when you have your opponent in your sights, you use clear arguments and reasonings to strengthen your position and to weaken theirs. Classical debate is not about the face of an argument and whether that face reacts in a specified manner or not. The end goal of classical debate is not to make the opponent cry, repent, or even change his mind. It is merely to present a strong enough case that your side is socially received as the winner.

Either from a breakdown due to the frustration of the liberal party dealing with conservatives maneuvering around the topic or law or from an unsatisfied result and divide when failing to address their own issues, persuasion and debate have moved from polite and civil discourse to thought policing and speech control.

This in lies the whole premise of our post today. Forced or coerced vindication, which I find to be no different from forced pleas or pleas made under duress, have become a staple tactic when dealing with liberal opposition.

Common tactics and phrases include:
“You should apologize.”
“You should take back what you said.”
“You should promise to never say that again.”
“You should make a claim for or against ___.”

Is this not how we talk to little children who lack judgment or experiences? Are we to talk to grown adults this way and expect their responses to be genuine? It’s one thing to say the above phrases aloud to comfort one’s self and to hear what they want to hear. It’s another thing to believe the phrases above could truly convey the gravity of a conversation and the ability to manifest a different attitude from someone else.

I say this knowing that these types of conversations and sentences are building blocks towards complex and difficult solutions. However, you and I should not be fooled into thinking that all causes are noble. I say this because it is incredibly easy to mix in these opinionated phrases with honest or well meaning ones. And that is where the self-righteous reside, on a thin line between what everyone can agree on and what everyone should agree on. Since when did anyone become in charge of what should be thought of?

This post will be followed up with future posts on topics of individualism vs. collectivism, reality vs. perception, desires and outcomes, and more themes.

Expectation of Feedback

The room you are about to enter in is pitch black. Before venturing more than a step, you fumble around for a light switch. Searching along the walls, you feel the plastic mold and familiar shape. Raising the switch upwards produces a small, audible click. Yet no light appears. Odd, you think. Perhaps the switch needs to be in the down position. Flicking the switch downwards, a similar but opposite click is heard. Still no light.

A mistake we make socially is believing that the way we interact with the world is the same way we interact with other humans.

The world is completely indifferent to expectations and has no directive from anyone. When we think of the people around us, we cannot hold them to this attitude. People like to say that they aren’t beholden to anyone but themselves. But by virtue of capitalism and due to the nature of family and proximity, it is nearly impossible to live without an expectation from another or without an expectation from ourselves.

When we have an expectation from the world, we rely on our agency to produce the desired result. If I cannot produce light in a dark room, I will find another solution such as a flash light or repairing the light switch. There is very little rational operation outside of this, as thinking or wishing for the room to be different brings no change.

The act of agency, the observable moments when a person applies change or control to their environment, is a form of communication. While earlier I stated that the world is indifferent to expectations and thusly would be indifferent to communication, acts upon the world carried out by agency is what produces change. So the world may not directly communicate to us or facilitate anything on our behalf, but without our influence we would have absolutely no control on outcomes.

This is starkly different from our expectations of humans.

In my analogy above, there is a human and an environment. Our human looks for ways to control or alter his environment and with that desire he extends into action. Change this analogy to there are two humans. One human is attempting to elicit a response from the other human, mostly in the form of illumination or visibility in this analogy. What would we expect from our human to human interaction? Should we expect the same approach as the first example, with human A looking for a light switch to see what human B is up to?

Unfortunately, not. Although there are many situations in which communication or a bit of direction can largely influence social interactions, more often I find that people elect non-feedback, non-confrontation, or to simply to ignore or move on from the situation. My most familiar outcome of this situation is that human A simply sees human B is “off” and human A proceeds to do nothing about human B until unprovoked change occurs.

I say unprovoked change in the same context as our human versus environment example. It would be unrealistic to expect change to occur to an environment, desired change, without correlating directive. Yet this is often the case with human versus human interaction. We believe the other participant in our conversation has the ability to change to our desired outcome without our input, without our agency, without our feedback.

This is partly for two reasons. In densely populated areas, it’s much easier to accept an environment and to move on from person to person we find incompatible, than it is to relocate or change environments we deem incompatible and to accept whatever people are thrown at us.

The second reason is that we innately understand that nature is indifferent to our expectations. This conversely means that we innately understand humans are not indifferent to our expectations. In fact, we can just announce our expectations and do very little else but wait for desired outcomes from others.

There are many metaphorical carrots on sticks that fool us into believing we are interacting with or providing feedback with others. While this analogy is becoming more and more abstract, try to imagine asking a room to illuminate itself or telling it to with rewards in mind. Even if the room has the ability and means to illuminate itself, it will not illuminate itself until there is feedback or interaction. And that failure to be bright is not interpreted personally or antagonistically by us, but rather as part of its nature.

There is a strange assumption that we believe it is in people’s nature to agree, work with, or understand each other innately. This handshake of an expectation only goes smoothly day to day because we’ve set a baseline social model we are all expected to follow. People are supposed to say “How are you?” but we are not supposed to be overbearingly honest. People are inconsiderate in traffic but if they wave and acknowledge the other party, it’s more reasonable. These social constructs are built over time and passed on to one another through day by day interactions, becoming social mores.

Social mores and our ability to disengage instead of confront expectations, is what is deeply different from approach with the world versus our approach with other people.

The most fascinating aspect of the topic of feedback is that I haven’t even reached the topic of the game world, or the nature of great design, which is to provide consistent and accurate feedback to the user. In a future post, I’ll go over designed worlds and how gamifying our world or providing accurate and consistent feedback changes our expectations, attitudes, experiences, and outcomes.

Loneliness and Individualism

Yesterday my neighbor had the television on while I was visiting. A commercial came on, something that I’m not particularly used to as primarily an internet user. It’s great to get a pulse on what the market is selling and what the market thinks of its customers.

It was a cellphone commercial for Visible. Visible is some sort of independent partner of Verizon. Looking them up, they are:

an American mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) owned by Verizon Communications.
Wikipedia

While it’s interesting on its own to go into the rabbit hole of what an MVNO is or how companies like Visible partner up with Verizon, I wanted to touch on Visible’s targeting approach. Their approach is to target individuals, offering plans that have discounted rates without the need for buying a family package. This niche targeting is only possible once a market speaks up about its need, usually in the form of shying away from larger, bulkier, family packages.

The first thing I joked about when seeing this commercial was that this marketing strategy would never work in Asia, as everyone is close with their family and there would be immense guilt shaming for moving away from the family, let alone the family cellphone plan.

As a Chinese American, I of course think about the duality between the East and the West, and how different our values are especially when it comes to collectivism versus individualism. I thought nothing more of this observation of mine aside that individualism was indeed a defining characteristic of the West.

What I didn’t expect was to stumble upon this reddit thread this morning covering the article, The State of American Friendship: Change, Challenges, and Loss. The first line of the reddit thread title is: [Today I learned] more than 1 in 10 Americans have no close friends.

The article is actually quite in depth, with multiple parameters and graphs. The article addresses things like the pandemic, gender differences, number of friends, satisfaction of friendship, childhood friends, best friends, emotional support, and politics. The article compares data from 1990 to 2020. Although it is indeed a 30 year range (don’t make me feel old), I’d like to see further back a generation and see how the effects have trended since then. I suspect things like the internet as a whole, smartphones and social media, and globalization or urbanization led to a less quantity of in-person interactions as a whole, which led to overall less quality social interaction, and all of these catalysts are rather modern.

To my surprise, in the reddit comments was a fantastic discussion on the breakdown of the third place and why it may be the culprit to our modern loneliness. When I first learned of this phrase in high school, I was taught Starbucks and all other coffee places were attempting to become the third place, the place were people hang out most outside of home or work.

[Loneliness is caused] in part due to the breakdown in civil organizations such as churches, clubs, etc. combined with the distancing caused by social media and technology.
reddit user

I thought the comment to be quite profound, as communities do seem to have collapsed or segregated farther the more our political and digital divide separates us. More profound was an analysis by another commenter replying:

One of the reasons the show Cheers was so profoundly popular in the 1980s was because generations of Americans were mourning, whether they realized it or not, both the death of (and the crass capitalization of) the third place.
another reddit user

He cites the book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. I’ll have to check out the book. In modern days, the capitalization of public spaces and the intense focus on individual liberties has alienated us from each other. Commenters suggest that our car is the most appropriate winner of the title of third place, with us spending so much time commuting or using our car as a second room. In California, it’s so typical for people to hang out in cars, to take naps or have sex, or to just sit idle in park. I’d argue the most apt third place we have is our smartphone, hooking us into what Aziz Ansari coined as our “phone world.”

None of these aptly fit the definition of a third place, as they are intensely private and definitely not neutral. Where we are willing to spend our money and where we are intensely private lies the intersection of an echo chamber. And that is the tragedy of the death of the third place. When we lose our ability to convene on neutral territory, we lose our ability to engage in conversations we may not want to be a part of. And when we lose our first contact with contentious ideas, we lose all ability to approach or engage at all.

Individualism has incredible benefits. As always, in a future post I’ll cover more about individualism and collectivism, as well as expand on themes of loneliness. To read more on an incredible reddit comment about third places and Cheers, here’s the thread.

Gazing Upon Ourselves

Popularly known as a daffodil, this flower has an interesting etymological and mythological origin.

The exact origin of the name Narcissus is unknown, but it is often linked to a Greek word for intoxicated (narcotic) and the myth of the youth of that name who fell in love with his own reflection. The English word “daffodil” appears to be derived from “asphodel“, with which it was commonly compared.
Wikipedia

We know the modern word of narcissist and its definition of selfishness.

[Narcissus] rejected all romantic advances, eventually falling in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his life. After he died, in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.
Wikipedia

I had learned of this myth through Ovid. There are many versions of this myth, all with a tragic ending, all ending with Narcissus either killing himself or rendered immobilized and turned into a flower staring into the water. In Ovid’s version, Narcissus is mentioned with another name, Echo. Echo was a nymph that quickly fell in love with Narcissus. As all myths go, there is always a quirk or a catch or something just enough to make the story awry. In Echo’s case, she could only repeat what Narcissus said, leading him to confusion and anger. Narcissus rejects Echo’s affection, angering one of the gods. Yes, in typical fashion, Greek and Roman gods loved to interfere and meddle with the affairs of humans. As punishment for rejecting Echo, Narcissus was led to his demise. For when Narcissus was a baby, the oracles predicted Narcissus would live a long life, as long as he never discovered himself (another typical mythological setup). Narcissus found himself staring into a pool of water where he caught his reflection.

Narcissus did not realize it was merely his own reflection and fell deeply in love with it, as if it were another young man. Unable to leave the allure of his image, he eventually realized that his love could not be reciprocated and he melted away from the fire of passion burning inside him, eventually turning into a gold and white flower.
Wikipedia

[side note: wikipedia does a fantastic job at condensing and summarizing classic literature, at least at the base level]

Other versions change out details such as Echo being a different character or gender, or Narcissus ending his life in different ways. What’s tragic looking back at this story is that Narcissus does very little to earn or deserve this punishment. Many of the myths with gods punishing humans involves humans having unbridled arrogance or hubris, especially when measuring themselves up against the gods. There very much was a “respect your elders” and respect the history/culture theme in the ancient myths. Can you blame them? Innovation wasn’t exactly around the corner in those times.

And after knowing this story for so many years, it’s finally clicking to me now as I’m researching and writing this post that Echo is another irony of this story. What else would Narcissus hear from someone who fell madly in love with him? Why, his own words of course.

Yet Narcissus rejecting love advances only to die by falling in love with himself seems like a very undue punishment.

The myth is remarkably memorable. But its start? Narcissus was doomed by the oracle in the very beginning. His fate was only in good hands as long as he never discovered himself. What does that say about us? What does that say about individuals? The Greeks and Romans were obsessed with oracles and fate. Did this story pertain to ill-fated individuals? Or was this story more about our actions within our lives?

The metaphor I like to interpret with or without the mythology is that by devoting ourselves to others, we limit our obsession with ourselves.

This post was prompted by today’s reddit post citing the article Narcissism reduces the quality of long-term friendships, study finds.

If all you care about is you, what do those around you get out of it?
top reddit comment

Shocking, a negative trait makes people like you less
another reddit comment

“Friendships”. These people are incapable of even comprehending what that means. They see people as means to an end and that’s it.
another reddit comment

The article’s conclusion seems obvious, as well as the comments. The takeaway I got from this article and the thread is that narcissism bad, kindness good, and there are two kinds of narcissism: admiration and rivalry, which lead to different outcomes, however ultimately both lead to more conflicts and less close relationships.

Defining personality traits and behaviors is helpful, especially when we can collectively agree X trait is negative. Acknowledging and focusing on specifics is the first step towards changing something. But that is where I find the reddit thread and article to fall short.

Is it just enough to understand something is bad, recognize that bad quality in others, point it out, and repeat a list of symptoms or consequences associated with said bad thing? I’m obviously not placing the onus of changing difficult individuals upon each reddit commenter. Some redditors even come forward with their experiences with narcissists.

Story time!!: I used to date a girl with Borderline Personality Disorder and she went through friends like she changed clothes. And it was all because she was so afraid that they would “see through her” and leave her.
another reddit comment

This redditor goes on in more detail about this girl’s behavior and her consequences. This story, along with others in the comments, are powerful enough for users to type up their bad experiences and share it with strangers online. This amount of power seems irreversible, as people are in charge of their own lives, with their own autonomy. Is it really our place to stop a narcissist? Isn’t that life’s responsibility?

Well, I’m not asking for us to stop the unstoppable. In fact, taking steps in identifying narcissism and its consequences is a first step towards socially engineering narcissism out. And while it’s unrealistic to expect narcissism or any other negative qualities to become fully eradicated, it’s hopeful to think we are able to navigate negative traits with others and with ourselves more easily as our social knowledge becomes more powerful. I say this because there are forces of technology and innovation which inadvertently affect our social constructs and interactions. It becomes easier for a narcissist or sociopath to remain hidden in an online world, but it also can become more exposing for them and others as well.

What I would love to see more discussion of is:
How do we define narcissism as a long term trait and how or should we prevent it?
To what degree is selfishness important in society and how wide should the spectrum of generous to selfish be?
How do we interact with or limit the power of narcissist within our lives?
Are traits like disagreeableness, independence, stubbornness mutually inclusive of narcissism?
How has innovation such as social media, globalization, and internet alienation affected narcissism?
Are techniques like labeling or othering causing more tension and negativity, creating a feedback loop?
Is narcissism curable?

Hearing What We Want to Hear

In my last post, I went over remasters of older games. StarCraft II, while not a remaster, was a sequel to the most famous Real Time Strategy game of all time, StarCraft: Brood War. In my early college days, I spent a lot of time watching streams of this game and grinding the ladder. I hit a plateau in Diamond and did not push myself too hard to get past that level. I watched a few of my replays, looked up a few builds and guides, but ultimately shied away from pushing myself further competitively.

Whenever I become engrossed and immersed into a game, I start to see it everywhere, even in my dreams. I remember the month I really got into Dance Dance Revolution and started seeing arrow patterns in my sleep. The brain is an extraordinary thing and it rather joyfully seeks out patterns, even when they might not exist.

I was taking Metra train rides at the time from Chicago to the suburbs once a week. I always enjoyed riding trains. I would nap or watch youtube videos to pass the time. I remember so distinctly one afternoon I was falling asleep on the train and I overheard a conversation. “Supply block… twelve… depot…” Was I overhearing a StarCraft II conversation? “Lings… two base…” Were they talking about Terran versus Zerg?

I sprung up from my slouched slumber and eyed around the train. The conversation was coming from two older professionals, one man and one woman. I focused more closely on their conversation. It had nothing to do with StarCraft.

StarCraft was a great game that I enjoyed for many years, even more years as a casual spectator. I have fond memories of the game, but ultimately it was a chapter in my life. Contextualizing one chapter of my life and one misheard conversation, what other conversations have I misinterpreted due to the lens I held at the time?

One of my very favorite quotes in all of Mad Men is in Season 4, Episode 8: The Summer Man. Don writes to himself in a journal.

People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.
Don Draper

This line struck me and has never left. Our perceptions of our lives and of others deeply shapes how we interact with them and how we perceive them. It seems obvious that our perceptions shape how we perceive things. But our biases go much farther than selecting bits of information we like and censoring out others. Our perception and biases blind us to who people identify themselves as. Of course, this quote can be read into as first impressions or taking people’s word for face value. But the more powerful message to me is that our minds will change reality when it conflicts with our desires.

Is Don talking about the women in his life? Or is his question more of a reflection of himself and what others perceive of him? This extends to ourselves as well. We may perceive others incorrectly because of our desires, but that also means others may do so as well, seeing us the way they want to see us. It takes time and a lot of experience to understand who people truly are, especially when we give each other the benefit of the doubt and we have our biases filtering out reality.

The next time you find yourself thinking, “am I just hearing what I want to hear?” try taking off the strongest lenses or paradigms you’re holding and remember that others have the exact same problem. Communication is about conveying ideas across to one another, accurately. After all, do we talk to each other or are we talking to ourselves aloud?

Tracing Outlines and Finding Character

In the beginning of 2022, I read a delightful book by one of my favorite authors, Malcolm Gladwell. The book was Talking to Strangers and details all the conceptions and misconceptions we have when communicating with others. I do need to revisit this book again, because this blog post isn’t necessarily about this book, but rather what I’ve come to find is true when speaking with others and becoming close with them.

I have an extremely varied history of hanging out with people of all walks of life. I’ve made friends with people in all sorts of settings, from hospital wards to hotel conventions, and homeless shelters to millionaire residences. An intriguing thing about meeting so many people is what it is like to become close to them and what our initial impressions of them inform us about them. Was that thing I noticed at first a red flag? Or was I just being far too judgmental?

A friend once told me, “What you see in the first ten seconds of meeting someone typically tells you all you need to know.” I was shocked by their statement and asked if they really meant it. “Yeah, what they say, how they act…”

I’ve heard more than one great quote about first impressions.

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” -Will Rogers

“Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.” -Cynthia Ozick

“You only have one first chance to make one first impression that lasts a lifetime.” -Nas

But to what merit do first impressions really hold? Don’t people typically move with their best foot forward? Do we not live in a digital age in which any manner of thing can be manipulated, highlighted, omitted, etc.? I certainly wouldn’t base my entire outlook on another person simply from their handshake. But as humans it really is impossible for us to not to judge or catalog in any sort of manner. Some may do it less than others and not all perceptions are enacted as judgments. The real question is: which things can we see in others that remain true over time? What are true red flags? What are true green flags?

There are dozens of personality tests online and several axis in which I could measure personality and actions. Some may ascribe to astrology or typing to describe actions and follow through. Others use personal experience and sands in the line to determine who they think they are dealing with. Here are some things that I believe traverse culture, gender, religion, and identity.

How does this person see themselves in relationship with the world?

This relationship typically changes very slowly over time. When you meet someone, there is relative certainty your snapshot of their relationship with the world is accurate unless there is drastic change, change that is probably easy to document or observe. What do I mean by relationship with the world? Well it extends into many things. How does this person handle responsibility? Are all things one on person’s shoulders? Whose? Are things equally divided? Under what circumstance? It’s easy to see this getting quite political, but I’d argue these ideas inform us of a person’s politics rather than the other way around. This question can also get quite abstract and what I found most helpful was to see people with similar positions handle different situations and people with different positions handle similar situations. Isolating situation vs position can help us determine personality.

How does this person interact with others?

This questions get very tricky, very quickly because of the way to interpret this question. Typically we ask ourselves this question, with ourselves as the object. How does this person interact with me? And, it is just as easy to observe someone interact with another and confuse this interaction or misjudge them. Typically, people are quite conscious of their actions when they are interacting with someone they feel is important. The less important or serious someone thinks of the situation, the less conscious they are. This is how we get stories of people observing how others treat service staff but this is also how we get social media videos of gift giving to the homeless. It’s important to note with this question and with all other questions that this blog post is about getting to know people over time, and with that comes multiple observation points. It is extremely easy to judge or misjudge someone off of one interaction, such as getting cut off in traffic or someone passing on the last slice. Look for interactions that seem genuine or personal and see in which situations does this person act differently.

How does this person respond to change?

“Change is the only constant in life” -Heraclitus

Our response to change and our observation in others informs us about how we feel about our current situation and our ability to navigate life. Simply put, those who dislike change are those we feel most comfortable in the current situation and do not wish to navigate to any other situation. It’s easy to hand-wave off those who dislike change with the previous sentence, so we have to remember change is often extremely difficult for anyone to handle. Despite that, change is persistently occurring, so it is an important quality to observe in others. This question colloquially comes out as, “Oh he’s just a pessimist,” or “Wow, you’re such an optimist.” Yet the question of how people handle change can vary dramatically from subject to subject. An extremely open minded person could be a stickler for plain foods. I find this question informs me of what values are immutable and which situations are inconsequential, and that can tell you a lot about someone.

How has this person changed in the last year?

We do ourselves injustices by judging others off of snapshots. These judgments exist because they work in some fashion, some where and in some time, they have helped us avoid working with or dealing with bad situations. We call these red flags. We’ve heard of people counting red flags and either having them whiz by an oblivious person or enacted on and ended by a firm believer. But what I rarely hear is the nuance and the change in judgments about someone. Typically this is because walking back an opinion is not only unsexy, it’s hardly worth sharing. Most opinions people share are face-value, instant reactions, in the heat of the moment, when the conversation was current. Unless people see a strong consequence or result by publicly changing an opinion, there rarely is public display of change of opinion. So to that I say, withhold an opinion if possible until you find it difficult to change your opinion. Easier said than done, as most people have a hard time understanding to what degree they could change their mind on something. But none look more foolish than those who jump from bandwagon to bandwagon with such little conviction of their own. Instead, hold an opinion of someone and have charitable interpretations, opportunities for change, and remove eggshells/landmines in their path before you close the door on your opinion of them. It is highly likely you or I have made a bad impression or snapshot, but quickly made up for it moments or situations later. With all that said, two is a coincidence and three is a pattern, so unless the person is oblivious, it is a conscious behavior and pattern.

These four questions encapsulate all I have to ask about someone after knowing them month after month, from knowing hundreds of acquaintances to making just a few dozen close connections. They are not as punchline or sexy as “Does this person talk behind other’s backs?” or “Is this person a hypocrite criticizing others but not themselves?” Witty and petty remarks can all fall back into these questions.

Remember that all time and effort is finite, so we can understand a lot about someone based on how they spend their time and effort. Spend your time and effort effectively by figuring out what’s important to you and sticking to a positive and constructive mindset. Meet others and find those whose characters match yours. Be the change you wish to see. Answer the questions above with yourself in mind.