"Psychologically unhealthy people, eg you and everyone you know, don’t have desires, at least not in the normal sense."
Strong echo from existentialism here. As I understand it, existentialism says that most of us live "unauthentic" lives where we constantly distract ourselves to avoid facing Reality. The distractions are not just stuff like TV or porn, they might be quite elevated and demanding. Proust wrote something on the lines of: some talented writers will rather go to war and die there than sit at the writing table and dig through their feelings.
But as far as I know, existentialists would not point to status games as a primary cause; they would probably see them as yet another distraction. The primary cause would be the fact that Reality is intrinsically alien and terrifying and we feel that we don't have any place or purpose in it, which is why, after Pascal, most of us cannot "sit quietly in a room alone". And that facing Reality means facing Death and what it says about us (we have an angel's mind, but we shit and die like worms). It's less a risk of failure than its absolute certainty.
In other words, carving our "authentic" purpose in this alien reality is a titanic task, beyond the means of most people; but as humans with a neocortex that demands meaning, we still have to justify our existence and give it some purpose. Hence the distractions.
This perspective resonates more with me because I find it really hard to do "actual stuff" in Reality, i.e. stuff that should be done because it's intrinsically valuable but does not have any immediate points attached to it and can only be done by going down lonely, dark paths that lead to Death and Reality.
As I see it, there's two ways out of this: the humorous, easy-going, dropping-all-pretense, relatively carefree attitude of some "enlightened ones" (mystics, daoist sages, zen masters), who seem to have found a sort of joyful nihilism in their appraisal of reality, or the titanism of individuals who manage to manifest their desires and their will-to-power in the world (I think of people like Napoleon, Musk and yes, even Kanye). Maybe their power and charisma, like your friend's aptitude to be a cult leader, comes from their ability to own and manifest actual desires, achieve individuation, and become a true personality, while their followers get to at least experience it vicariously and partially appropriate their personality through identification, like children who play at being adults.
But then again, can you tell if enlightenment is "the real deal" and not just another pretense? Is Musk manifesting his individuality, or is he running away like everyone else? It doesn't matter: it doesn't concern _you_, so asking these questions is just another distraction.
"Psychologically unhealthy people, eg you and everyone you know, don’t have desires, at least not in the normal sense."
Strong echo from existentialism here. As I understand it, existentialism says that most of us live "unauthentic" lives where we constantly distract ourselves to avoid facing Reality. The distractions are not just stuff like TV or porn, they might be quite elevated and demanding. Proust wrote something on the lines of: some talented writers will rather go to war and die there than sit at the writing table and dig through their feelings.
But as far as I know, existentialists would not point to status games as a primary cause; they would probably see them as yet another distraction. The primary cause would be the fact that Reality is intrinsically alien and terrifying and we feel that we don't have any place or purpose in it, which is why, after Pascal, most of us cannot "sit quietly in a room alone". And that facing Reality means facing Death and what it says about us (we have an angel's mind, but we shit and die like worms). It's less a risk of failure than its absolute certainty.
In other words, carving our "authentic" purpose in this alien reality is a titanic task, beyond the means of most people; but as humans with a neocortex that demands meaning, we still have to justify our existence and give it some purpose. Hence the distractions.
This perspective resonates more with me because I find it really hard to do "actual stuff" in Reality, i.e. stuff that should be done because it's intrinsically valuable but does not have any immediate points attached to it and can only be done by going down lonely, dark paths that lead to Death and Reality.
As I see it, there's two ways out of this: the humorous, easy-going, dropping-all-pretense, relatively carefree attitude of some "enlightened ones" (mystics, daoist sages, zen masters), who seem to have found a sort of joyful nihilism in their appraisal of reality, or the titanism of individuals who manage to manifest their desires and their will-to-power in the world (I think of people like Napoleon, Musk and yes, even Kanye). Maybe their power and charisma, like your friend's aptitude to be a cult leader, comes from their ability to own and manifest actual desires, achieve individuation, and become a true personality, while their followers get to at least experience it vicariously and partially appropriate their personality through identification, like children who play at being adults.
But then again, can you tell if enlightenment is "the real deal" and not just another pretense? Is Musk manifesting his individuality, or is he running away like everyone else? It doesn't matter: it doesn't concern _you_, so asking these questions is just another distraction.