{"id":12289,"date":"2018-04-09T00:48:15","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T16:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=12289"},"modified":"2018-04-09T00:48:15","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T16:48:15","slug":"fault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/2018\/04\/09\/fault\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s my fault and that&#8217;s a good thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(notes for a future essay about self-blame, responsibility, the concept of fault)<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">A long term tension in my life: I don&#39;t feel qualified to lead, but I don&#39;t see anybody really worth following, either. When, where and how did I inherit these annoyingly perfectionist standards and ideals?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/981637431639228416?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 4, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@visakanv\/self-love-and-the-moral-failing-fallacy-8913e67834b8\">Beeware self-flagellation<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[spoiler] In Good Will Hunting, the pivotal moment happens when Robin Williams&#8217; character repeatedly tells Matt Damon&#8217;s, &#8220;it&#8217;s not your fault&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=znHtGpCAfGY\">Mumford and Sons \u2013 Little Lion Man<\/a> : <em>&#8220;But it was not your fault but mine. And it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time. Didn&#8217;t I, my dear? But it was not your fault but mine. And it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time. Didn&#8217;t I, my dear?&#8221;\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@NataliMorad\/how-to-be-an-adult-kegans-theory-of-adult-development-d63f4311b553\">Kegan&#8217;s Stages of Adult Development<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/integralleadershipreview.com\/15642-sentence-completion-assessments-for-ego-development-meaning-making-and-wisdom-maturity-including-stages-overview-and-summary-this-article-began-as-a-series-of-short-white-papers-providing-various\/\">similar to Kegan&#8217;s theory<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>the interesting thing I\u2019m not seeing mentioned is \u2013 people don\u2019t necessarily climb the hierarchy in a linear, progressive way<\/p>\n<p>I think a lot of smart, frustrated people are those who conceive of the higher levels but aren\u2019t able to enact it because of their ineffectiveness at dealing with lower-level demands<\/p>\n<p>something like a mortgage is a persistent mid-level demand \u2013 you can\u2019t run or hide from it the way you might with something less persistent. so you either learn how to perform and deliver, or you struggle, drown, perish<\/p>\n<p>everybody underestimates how challenging this is, and a lot of people deal poorly when discovering that reality is more difficult and painful than their expectations \u2013 pick up negative coping mechanisms, etc. it\u2019s a significant part of why the world is so messed up, in a day-to-day sense<\/p>\n<p>but this entire struggle plays out on a mid-tier plane, and maybe the lower tiers when things get dysfunctional<\/p>\n<p>and mid-tier obligations are a huge burden that weigh people down from grasping at higher-tier concepts<\/p>\n<p>it doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be something noble or good. in breaking bad, walter white seeks self-authorship, to determine his own fate. the show itself, like most shows, is largely a form of escapism for audiences in mid-tier circumstances<\/p>\n<p>circling back \u2013 some people start with a very low-tier model of reality, and either never climb, or are maybe dragged 1 or 2 tiers above by circumstances, and they try to adapt. they thrive, survive, flounder or fail, and that\u2019s the plot of their entire lives, basically. it\u2019s very contained, very local<\/p>\n<p>then maybe there are people who continually seek to identify, examine and grasp higher-tier models of reality, and go through this in a very linear, progressive way<\/p>\n<p>but a thing you can do with mental models that you can\u2019t do with say, lifting weights, is that there isn\u2019t actually really anything to stop you from going all the way to the asymptote<\/p>\n<p>a child in the gutter can dream of the stars<\/p>\n<p>most decent people spend most of their time engaged in exploring the ethics and conflicts and challenges of mid-tier reality<\/p>\n<p>people discussing their relationships with one another, their work environment, their family and so on. and I don\u2019t mean to dismiss these things, these are the important, grounded realities of everyday life. and I\u2019m definitely suspicious of people who wax lyrical about the higher-tier things when they can\u2019t take care of themselves<\/p>\n<p>but while i\u2019m suspicious, i\u2019m not dismissive. because it does seem like there are times when the people who break into high-tier contexts and make a difference are people who get there almost *because* of their dysfunction. it\u2019s complicated<\/p>\n<p>in practical terms; high-tier contexts are spaces where changes can and do percolate through the entire system \u2013 philosophers, economists, statesmen, authors, filmmakers \u2013 people who go beyond working on their local issues and have species-level impact<\/p>\n<p>I suppose the practical question is, I\u2019m trying to make sense of how differently-calibrated people progress in life, and whether there is an optimal sort of calibration for people of certain dispositions, and whether it\u2019s worth making the effort to recalibrate<\/p>\n<p>when I frame things in terms of \u201cI suppose the practical question is\u201d, I\u2019m already revealing the degree to which I\u2019ve been conditioned to think a certain way<\/p>\n<p>it would be interesting if we could meet the 27.5 year old Visa from an alternate timeline, who never got married, never bought a house, never had to hold down a job<\/p>\n<p>and to figure out if there are things that he knows that I don\u2019t, things that he\u2019s good at that I\u2019m not<\/p>\n<p>it\u2019s easy to see what I have that he doesn\u2019t<\/p>\n<p>it\u2019s hard to see what he has that I don\u2019t<\/p>\n<p>it\u2019s all conjecture on hindsight, but it\u2019s significant because it would influence how I plan the remainder of my life<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mnrothbard\/status\/982665556351504385\">American Chopper -&gt; Peterson clean your room<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s okay if you only save one person, and it&#8217;s okay if that person is you<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(notes for a future essay about self-blame, responsibility, the concept of fault) A long term tension in my life: I don&#39;t feel qualified to lead, but I don&#39;t see anybody really worth following, either. When, where and how did I inherit these annoyingly perfectionist standards and ideals? &mdash; Visakan Veerasamy&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-self-repair"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s5gxNz-fault","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}