How long things take has little relation to how much they matter. Swallowing an optional vitamin and a life-saving pill take the same few seconds. Fixing a minor corner case bug and a system-crashing major one might take the same time. This is why pure reactivity is bad. THREAD!
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Acting on self-interest sets up conflict with others acting on self-interest of course, but you’re not doing others any favors by curtailing it. Your self-interested actions are the peer review of the logic of my self-interested actions.
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Your refusal to react as I want reshapes my attempt at leveraged action. It forces me to contemplate the use of power and coercion to get my way. If I choose to use those, I’m being selfish rather than self-interested. Your self-interest is what helps me detect my selfishness.
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Anxiety is, in a way, conflict-aversion debt. When you consciously curtail self-interest, you let conflict debt accumulate in relationships. Your subconscious recognizes this and mints AnxietyCoin in your head to represent deferred conflict debt.
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Anxiety is a very poor way to process improperly expressed self-interest, since it does not carry the logic of leveraged time/action. So it just sloshes around screwing up all behavior somewhat randomly. Problems inappropriately expand to occupy anxiety available. Inflation.
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Anxiety particular leaks into reactions, because cues to react trigger our subconscious awareness of our insufficient self-interest. Yes, you read that right. There’s not enough self-interest in the world.
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Not enough people have the skill, self-awareness, and most importantly *courage* to fulfill their responsibility to be self-interested. Self-interest is not a natural and automated intuition. It’s a learned skill and an expression of nerve.
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The opposite of self-interest is not altruism but anxiety and unchecked excesses on the part of those who *need* your self-interest to recognize their selfishness and be forced to face the coercion and power they’re deploying.
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What they do with that is their moral dilemma. They may choose to change or not. Your job is to create that moral dilemma. That’s ultimately the stakes riding on your reactivity. Be self-interested, or be part of the problem.
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End of conversation
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