Is it possible to be a good blogger if you don't have some kind of a chip on your shoulder?
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I think it’s possible, but you’d need a different source of motivation
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I don’t know what motivates people besides pettiness and resentment
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I think this is basically wrong. If you know what motivates you, you will generally find other media to express yourself, not blogging. Like Twitter. Blogging tends to clarify very illegible motives into less illegible ones.
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By "blogging" I mean specifically something like the meaningness project, your "gonzo density", manifesto-building etc.
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Yeah, chip-on-shoulder is not very workable for that. It can power things like standup, music, entrepreneurship, polemic, journalism, etc. Taleb is a rare longform resentment/spite guy.
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Entrepreneurship/polemic/journalism is roughly the exact combo I'm going for. Good disentanglement.
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Except in the rare cases of actual Count of Monte Cristo style actual revenge against people who provoked the resentment/spite, the emotion is generally an instant-gratification one, like scratching an itch, not an anticipation-based one in striatum circuitry
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We should deconstruct "resentment". I mean something like "desire to fight", which seems heart of all writing/shakering.
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When I'm fundamentally content, I have 0 desire to fight anything. Anger/rumination/sense of loss get me back to that.
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I'm the opposite, A/R/SoL stifles me completely. I can't be generative again till I let go. But that's just me. Fundamentally content is not the same as restful to me. That state makes me randomly curious/exploratory/mind-wandering.
I actually have Extremely Fringe & Undiscussable Pet HBD theories this might be an Anglo-Saxon thing or something.
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Epistemic status: sub-absolute-zero
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