Under the reign of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi

Party), the atrocities committed between authority figure and victim ignited individual

trauma for both parties and a level of intergenerational guilt, shame and grievance for

decades to come. Dehumanisation is the phenomenon that can be seen through

periods of war, including Nazi Germany, the Rwandan Genocide and the contemporary

American-Islam conflict. It is abolishing any human characteristics of a person and

denying any proof of their humanity. It is the form of mental programming that “opens

the door for cruelty and genocide,” (Livingstone-Smith D, 2011) and under the Nazi

Regime; it culminated in the rape, torture, starvation, experimentation and slaughter of

between 17 and 20 million ‘untermenschen’ subhuman people. Within concentration

camps and extermination camps, demonised groups included the scapegoated Jewry,

Communists, Freemasons, negroes, Gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, religious

people, creatives and intellectual opponents. Adolf Hitler’s goal of transforming

Germany into a racially unified state of “perfect Aryans,” (Nyiszli M) or

Volksgemeinschaft, was undoubtedly among the most successful attempts at genocide

ever committed.

In exploring the impacts of dehumanisation in this era, the value lies in acknowledging

the idea as a phenomenon of authority, rather than a result of war. “Dehumanisation

doesn’t only occur in wartime - It’s happening right here, right now,” (Haslam N, 2017).

Dehumanisation exists in the modern world, just as it did in Nazi Germany and to some

degree, in every conflict before it. Therefore, to understand the present, one must first

observe the past. Between the experiments of Nazi physician, Josef Mengele on twins,

the Milgram shock experiment exploring obedience to authority, intergenerational

trauma or second-generation trauma, and life in the concentration camps;dehumanisation is evidently the catalyst where ordinary people will commit heinous

acts.

As for the purposes of analysing dehumanisation as a historical phenomenon, it is the

core element behind mass murder, racial discrimination and bigotry. Studying

dehumanisation involves reflecting on human beings as a species and appreciating the

past in hopes of preventing hellacious events, such as those seen in Nazi Germany,

from occurring in the future. This encapsulates the whole purpose of history. Historical

investigation via anthropology and historiography can provide a foundation to discern

the past and comprehend our world today, since many elements of societies are

surprisingly unchanged.

Regardless of historical perspective on why something like the Shoah (Holocaust)

occurred; demonisation and authority still exist in the modern world and provide

evidence of dehumanisation in war today. “Aerial bombers nuke entire cities of people

with little guilt because they couldn’t see or hear them,” (Sharief S, 2020). The impact of

dehumanisation on both victims and perpetrators alike can be seen in the phenomenon

of a “psychological loophole,” (Resnick B, 2017); that under Adolf Hitler, in particular,

“normalised ever more extreme forms of sadistic cruelty - that devoured both victim and

perpetrator,” (Kahn-Harris K, 2015).

This psychological loophole was evident in Nazi Germany in WWII, whereby the act of

dehumanisation went against the “deep and natural inhibitions - against treating other

people like game animals or vermin,” (Livingstone-Smith D, 2011) and decreased one’s

own humanity the more it was reinforced. For example, “even Eichmann was sickened

when he toured the concentration camps, but to participate in mass murder he had only

to sit at a desk and shuffle papers,” (Milgram 9).

In a more contemporary sense, there was US President Donald Trump’s travel ban; “a

temporary ban on refugees - a new ban on issuing visa to travelers from six

Muslim-majority countries,” (Resnick B, 2017). Psychologist Nour Kteily, author of The

ascent of man: Theoretical and empirical evidence for blatant dehumanisationidentified that hate crimes against Muslims in the US are at all-time high since 2001.

The “psychological loophole” or cycle of dehumanisation is explored by Kteily, whereby

“the more Muslims felt dehumanised by Trump, the more they dehumanised Trump” and

that it works “both ways,” (Kteily N). This reinforces the proposal that while many Nazi

officials and SS soldiers punished and tormented the Jewish and other subgroups at the

time, they too were psychologically plagued by their actions in the years to come.

As for the modern case of Islamophobia, statements such as, “Muslims are a potential

cancer to this country,” sound eerily similar to the “plague”, “pests’‘ and “vermin’‘ those

German subgroups were labelled as under Hitler’s regime.

Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Dalia

Mogahed, even suggests the “legitimising of those perspectives with laws and with

people in positions of authority” normalises social demonisation and Islamophobic

rhetoric for all. Likewise, as US secretary Ben Carson compared Muslims to “mad

dogs”, an SS soldier called Auschwitz prisoner Eddie Jaku Juden Hund, a “Jewish

Dog,” (Jaku 98).

As we recognise demonisation and dehumanisation as a phenomenon of authority

rather than war, the reality of what happened in the Holocaust becomes clearer and the

line between then and the modern world - smaller.

Intergenerational trauma is defined as “thoughts, feelings, and behaviours generated

from the survivors’ experiences and transmitted to their offspring,” (Patricia Dashorst,

Trudy M. Mooren, Rolf J. Kleber, Peter J. de Jong, Rafaele J. C. Huntjens, Eur J

Psychotraumatol, 2019). Studies have shown intergenerational trauma manifests both

biologically and through interaction between first-generation victims and their children

and grandchildren.

In this analysis, ‘second-generation victims’ and ‘children’ of survivors will be used

inextricably. Also described as ‘postmemory’, (Novick P, 2000) trauma is transmitted

“through repetition, identification and mimesis,” (ibid.). In the case of the Holocaust, by

analysing recounts of survivors and studying how their trauma is expressed to, andinherited by, second-generation victims, we can explore the impact of the Nazi Regime

over time. Add to this, by analysing contemporary conflicts - the prolonged effects of

dehumanisation can be deduced.

Two underlying elements of this analysis must be defined. Firstly, the nature of trauma

in first-generation Holocaust survivors. Such damage manifested in flashbacks and

recollections in “abrupt, fragmented phrases,” (Friedman C, NightFather, 1994),

physical malformations, such as those seen in Mengele’s twins, “after the war - my

sister and I were skinny and undernourished. We had problems with our lungs,”

(Grossman V, survivor) as well as the obvious PTSD and accompanying emotional

consequences, “loss of a personal identity,” (Levi P, If this is a man, p.g. 101).

Additionally, second-generation trauma from the Holocaust came via the psychological

domino effect of torture, starvation, torment, mass extermination and exhaustive labour

on those first-generation victims.

Studies and historical literature such as Carl Friedman’s NightFather - based on her

own experiences - suggest that a child raised hearing first-hand reports from survivors

of the war, has a high likelihood of developing childhood trauma. This did not simply

occur from children being educated on the Holocaust; rather, the unorthodox manner

used by survivor-parents to express their trauma was difficult to comprehend and

utilised terminology that was outside the frame of reality in which their children lived.

An example is illustrated in NightFather, where a Holocaust survivor father expresses

his trauma indirectly rather than through direct communication. He often refers to the

concentration camps as simply “camp”. In response to the father’s fragmented stories,

the children first believe camp to be an illness, then suddenly a place where no one gets

eggs, “An egg!” (Alphen E.V. Second-Generation Testimony, Transmission of Trauma,

and Postmemory. 479).

It’s not mentioned how old the children are but it’s assumed they are of a very young

age, and still trying to piece together definitions of words. Inevitably, these seemingly

made-up “fairy tales - contradict his (Simon) frame of reference of reality and normality,”

(Alphen 481), confusing his developing brain as it tries to distinguish language used inthe concentration camps from his reality. In this sense, it can be deduced that trauma

does not always transfer explicitly from survivor-parent to child, and it’s possible for

traumatic family dynamics to lead a child to have worse trauma than that of their parent;

“the parents seem to be able to cope better with life than their children,” (Alphen 483).

The fact that the survivor-parents had experienced a normal life or frame of reference

before the Holocaust, allowed them to separate themselves from those traumatic events

- unlike the second-generation victims.

In further attempts to understand dehumanisation and its relevance today,

contemporary conflicts such as; the prolonged America-Islam tension—emphasised

more so after 911, the Rwandan genocide, the Afghanistan War, or the Ukraine’s Great

Famine; infer that intergenerational trauma is embedded in those affected, even when

the conflicts occurred 20-70 years ago.

Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, inspired by the trials of Adolf Eichmann, a

Nazi official and “engineer of the Final Solution,” (Lagnado 181); conducted experiments

on obedience which he wrote about in his book ‘Obedience to authority - an

experimental view’. Here, Milgram proposed that a man obedient under “ubiquitous”

authority can become an “instrument” for carrying out given orders and “therefore no

longer regards himself as responsible for his actions,” (Milgram 2). This theory

embodies dehumanisation since both are intrinsically linked to hierarchy and reveal how

potentially ordinary people like Eichmann can commit atrocities as seen in Nazi

Germany.

In essence, the Milgram Shock Experiment was a series of obedience tests performed

by Stanley Milgram, with the aim to “find when and how people would defy authority in

the face of a clear moral imperative,” (Milgram S, 1973). With an “experimenter” in a

lab-coat, a subject or naive “teacher” and the victim or “learner”, Milgram used a fake

“shock machine” to determine how far the subjects were willing to go to shock the victim

when they chose an “incorrect” answer within what was declared to be a memory test.The machine ranged from 15 - 450V, increasing in 15V increments, with the acting

“learner” uttering fixed sounds and dialogue based on what voltage was selected.

Milgram’s inspiration, Eichmann, was one of the sole contributors to the deportation of

those demonised groups to concentration camps and killing grounds, planning every

logistic detail himself.

However, it is not the kind of person Eichmann was at face-value that intrigued Milgram,

but how, “he came closer to being an uninspired bureaucrat who simply sat at his desk

and did his job.” Milgram wished to comprehend how atrocious actions, such as those

taken by Nazi officials and soldiers, are minimally dependent on the values and

conscience of the individual. Rather, they are achieved by a divergence of responsibility

from that individual onto what they deemed a higher, “legitimate authority,” (Milgram 6).

Josef Mengele, or ‘Uncle Mengele’, was the sole man to stand at the entrance to

Auschwitz and direct each captee to either their death in the gas chambers, or hard

labour in the death camp. Along with this basic role, he would shout for SS Nazi soldiers

to aggressively search the crowd and remove any twins to use for Mengele’s

experiments; these children would become “Mengele’s twins”, (Lagnado L.M. Children

of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz 3).

With these children, Mengele possessed a powerful desire to “produce a master race of

blond, blue-eyed Aryans,” (Lagnado 5).

To explore this gruesome topic, Lagnado wholeheartedly dived into the lives of

approximately 10-13 sets of twins or individuals who survived the wrath of Mengele. The

authors were Lucette Matalon Lagnado & Sheila Cohn Dekel and the article came from

Lagnado’s newspaper being contacted by twin survivor Eva Morez in 1984. She

proposed that someone write about Mengele and the twins, and considering Lagnado’s

late husband was a twin and had tried to publicise Mengele’s actions right before

passing away - the journalist accepted and interviewed Morez immediately.

Mengele’s primary role within Auschwitz - directing prisoners either to their death in the

gas chambers or to hard labour—became the representation of his character for thoseprisoners’ experiences at the camp. The ‘Angel of Death’ could not have assumed this

role alone without dehumanising every individual “down to the level of an animal or

lower,” (Sharief S, 2020). This display of blind-sighted dehumanisation can be more

easily seen in Mengele’s experiments on up to ‘3000’ twin children, (CANDLES). The

impact of those horrific experiments created a certain kind of trauma in the approximate

160 twins who survived, some even demonstrated a paradoxical relationship with

Mengele with “memories of the handsome young doctor who had tortured and-they

thought, loved them,” (Lagnado 6).

The “charming and carefree” physician believed the genetic characteristics of twins held

the key to breeding “perfect Aryan’s” as they were supposedly “perfect genetic

specimens”. Between inserting chemicals and needles into the eyes, injecting twins’

hearts with chloroform (Nyiszli M, pathologist), drawing large quantities of blood,

removing organs without anaesthesia and castration; “Mengele was one of the most evil

men in the history of mankind,” (Jaku E, Holocaust survivor, 2020).

Josef Mengele proved to be the source of life-long trauma for every survivor and as

illuminated by Lagnado in her interviews with these individuals, such trauma also

manifested in the relatives of the victims; intergenerational trauma.

Many of the survivors, once adults, were both psychologically and physically tarnished;

this trauma spread like a plague to their loved ones and even children. Twin survivors

Eva and Miriam Morez, formed an organisation called CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz

Nazi Deadly Laboratory Experiments Survivors) to unite all surviving Mengele victims

and make known their stories, “I had read many of the books about Auschwitz, but to

my great sorrow they never mentioned Mengele and the twins,” (Morez E).

Introspectively, dehumanisation proved to be a fundamental element in the expansive

success of the Nazi regime in the sense that Hitler nearly achieved his goal of

exterminating any non-Aryan Germans and establishing a racial state, with

Volksgemeinschaft being the eventual outcome. Adolf Hitler utilised dehumanisation to

create a “movement” as he described his party, scapegoating the Jews and demonisingother subgroups - classifying them as “life unworthy of life,” (Lebensunwertes Leben).

The primary motif behind the Nazi regime was automating horrific processes, such as

mass murder via the gas chambers in the concentration camps and enforcing these

under a completely “fascist, totalitarian state,” (Grobman G.M, 1990). This automated

methodology is also known as “mechanical dehumanisation,” (Sharief S, 2020).

Historically, the victims of these processes suffered life-long injury and illness due to the

harsh circumstances and varying levels of PTSD; Mengele twin survivor Vera Grossman

had “very vivid memories of Auschwitz,” (Lagnado, 14). These victims are the

first-generation survivors of the Holocaust and many of them had children. Despite

these children and even the grandchildren not experiencing the same traumatic events

themselves, they are still subject to the after-effects of the war. These children are

referred to as second/third generation victims.

The generational impacts are summarised by Ernst Van Alphen in Second-Generation

Testimony, Transmission of Trauma, and Postmemory as trauma adopted through

“disconnection - unintelligibility” and a “deep personal connection” to those events via

the “family dynamics,” (Alphen 16). Author of After Such Knowledge, Eva Hoffman,

proposes the trauma of latter-generation victims as possibly “worse than that of

survivors’‘; the premise being that the children don’t have a “frame of reference,”

(Alphen 9) to distinguish the traumatic stories expressed by their parents from their own

reality.

Essentially, the phenomenon of dehumanisation is one that can be connected to most

war events in the latter 20th century and also in the 21st century; where it is utilised to

distance a man from his victim and remove the personal connection. This is what allows

an official US collateral damage tracker to be called “Project Bugsplat”. A “bugsplat” in

US drone strike terminology is a civilian death. Again, this bears witness to animalistic

dehumanisation first hand; comparing a person to a bug, just as Rwandan civilians were

called “cockroaches”, and Jews, “vermin” or “pests”. Stanley Milgram said that when

authority is involved in dehumanising the enemy, the perpetrator can “absolve himself of

any responsibility,” (Milgram 33). Dehumanisation did not simply occur under Adolf Hitlerin his striving for racial unity, but exists within our media on a daily basis; the effects of

which are evident in those past “subhuman” groups still suffering today.

• What I mean

• State of mind and state of feeling

  • Smells, music, locations and associations

• The modern hamster-wheel that limits you without you ever knowing

  • How modern consumerism keeps you in a state of rigidity and psychological inertia

• What you choose to say or think about reinforces what’s real to you and therefore significantly influences your state of mind

• Ties to strategic self-deception

• How your vibe with someone influences your actions, such as influencing how you pick and choose what nuances to apply to the context of that person/your specific engagement with that specific individual

  • It’s not about the lesson, it’s about the impact of the lesson. Or simply, the impact on the individual target. You can manipulate someone to change their internal state to something that will likely serve some value to them.

• Other “worlds” on the same planet

  • Niches of people in particular states of being associated with their context

  • Like hoodlams in NYC

• The implications of all this, what you’re missing out on and what you can do about it

• Neurology - the dissonance between my view of pornography in a non-triggered vs triggered-currently watching and strengthening the neural connection state

What I Mean

Your state of mind. Your headspace. Your state of feeling. The nature of how you presently perceive things.

State of Being = State of Mind and state of Feeling

What influences your state of being?

Smells, music, locations, colours and associations.

Familiar smells from times where the entire context of your life made you feel a particular way (how this relates to trauma will not be explored here). E.g. smells near your old high school.

Putting on that one song immediately makes you feel a certain emotion.

Going back to your childhood homes

As for music, people often think that you listen to music that aligns with how you’re feeling. Like you get the urge to listen to sad music when you’re sad so you can process those feelings.

Music is possibly the biggest control mechanism for your state of being. Later we’ll talk about how this relates to strategic self-deception (both a positive and negative thing).

The Modern Hamster-Wheel That Limits You Without You Ever Knowing

How modern consumerism keeps you in a state of rigidity and psychological inertia

This is where we speak about modern consumerism. However, we’ll not get into the rabbit hole that is western capitalism and its apocalyptic dangers.

Modern consumerism keeps you in a state of rigidity and psychological inertia.

What do I mean by that?

Imagine the day in a life of Joe:

Joe wakes up on his day off, and first things first goes on his phone. He does this for 35 minutes.

Joe then gets out of bed and eats cereal for breakfast.

He sits at home and watches TV until 11am, since that’s what he’s done for years.

He drives somewhere for an hour or so. To a fish n chips shop and walks in a park.

He comes home, because he’s not accustomed to doing anything or going anywhere besides this park, and maybe the local beach. Although he usually avoids the beach unless it’s not too busy.

He watches TV again at home, makes dinner and hangs out until bedtime.

You might say Joe’s day sounds fine. You might think “if that’s how he wants to spend his time, so be it”.

Except that this isn’t necessarily how Joe “wants” to spend his time. And no I’m not talking about the possible epidemic we’re in where people en masse engage in high dopamine activities because their brain perceives it as good, while silently wishing they were doing healthier, more productive, more interesting things.

I’m talking about the habits Joe’s fallen into.

Sometimes when a particular way of living becomes your normal, everything associated with that life feels like all there is for you.

Joe feels “this is how I live my life”.

Yet if he started recognising his habits and rituals, he could try different things and possibly live a much different day than he’s experienced in a while, which may result in him feeling more alive!

Here’s Joe’s alternative day in a life:

Joe wakes up (on his day off) to an alarm set at the unusual time of 6:43am.

He makes some coffee at home and sits outside on the ground drinking it. He even sits inside on the floor and drinks it for a bit.

He brings a tent and drives to nice spot in a park where the beach is in view and pulls out his laptop to play Minecraft.

He then goes down to the beach and dives in the cold water for a bit.

He puts earphones in and lays on the sand listening to music.

He then takes them out and just sits there for an hour.

He drives for 1.5 hours to a friend’s house and on the way stops at a cafe for his first meal of the day. He continues to the friend’s home and just knocks on the door. Friend says they’re busy but can talk for a bit. They sit outside on the front porch and chat. Friend goes back inside and Joe heads off to the local indoor bouldering gym and pays for a day pass. He climbs for a bit and leaves once he’s tired and happy with his experience.

He drives home, makes dinner and writes stuff he’s thinking about and posts it online.

I’m going to reflect for a second. ONE second.

I’m implying that a habit-based day is bad and a subjectively more interesting one is better.

This is not true. The only thing I really want to highlight is that Joe could find himself living the same day for a long-time, where he misses out on some unique experiences, underestimates the power of his free will and ends up feeling a weaker sense of “alive-ness”.

Let me show you some images:

Feel the images. Imagine the world they come from and put yourself in that atmosphere.

Here are some more examples:

Listening to Do You Think We’ll Last Forever by Caroline Rose, a state of being comes up. I imagine being 7 or so, with a mother’s group being active at the time and JP, V’s Mum…

*names are abbreviated for privacy*

Maybe a period in life of people and nothing else, and being paid attention to without needing to do anything?

Another state:

Nighttime, mildly cool, sitting on the lounge with the cold white sheet on it on the balcony at (1220 powerhouse road) a male friend like S (S and C - these are abbreviated family friends) or another male family friend with perhaps someone else over, with both my mum and dad there. Quiet night, arms down on the lounge by my sides. Food has previously been set out, available to pick from downstairs at a rectangular table with about 6 chairs on either side and 1 on each width, not a full dinner. Music both mum and dad and the family member(s) like is playing far in the background and they’re all downstairs eating a little, laughing and having great conversation. It’s years before some big problems and unfortunate incidents occur for some of these adult individuals. I’m not an adult at this time but I’m happy.

Implications:

How you spend your time

Your happiness

Your values and priorities (feeling the importance of people in a moment, over many other “important things”)

How much of life you get to experience

Your empathy and understanding of other people

Diversity of feelings you could have to feel more alive

Choice and Perception

What you choose to say or think about reinforces what’s real to you and therefore significantly influences your state of mind.

If I say that I want to kill myself, that makes me think “wow yeh I really am at my breaking point I guess it was all too much for me”. I then am in a depressed state for hours.

If I internally judge myself too much for giving into an urge to watch pornography, I feel like shit and I attribute that to the porn. But no, it wasn’t that. It was me fixating on the fact that I watched it that made me feel shit. Now I’m in a state of mind that makes me more likely to eat junk food, watch Instagram reels, watch adult content yet again and significantly reduces the likelihood that I’ll do something interesting with my day and to-some-degree decreases the chances I’ll engage in social events even if invited. I know all this from experience.

So when you think a lot and fixate on things you don’t like about yourself, that you didn’t like about your day, or when you say negative things about these things out loud, you might:

• See everything as worse than it is

• Not engage in particular endeavours like socialising, activities that differ from your usual routines or anything adventurous.

Oh dear.

Ties to Strategic Self-Deception

Near the beginning of the post we spoke about music being one of the best control mechanisms for how you feel. Just put on a particular song and instantly change how you feel. Try it now! I just did, first with “My Own Summer” by Deftones and then a completely opposite song “Sunsetz” by Cigarettes After Sex.

You can use this to put yourself in the hustle mindset. Some hardcore music and you can life weights at the gym at the same time and convince yourself you’re that guy. Partly because the sick music makes it feel like that's your current life soundtrack, partly because you’re doing something hard. You can do this regularly and things like it and do the whole identity thing too, which means to say “I’m the kind of man who [insert positive traits]” whenever you do something that technically makes that true, even if it is benign.

As for “States of Being”, your state changes. You may be more inclined to go talk to women, to try and be productive in study or business, seeing torrential rain outside no longer makes you want to curl up in warmth, but makes you want to immediately run out of the house and run through the rain, even sprinting eventually. And you do it. I did this multiple times over the years I was in hustle mindset.

NOTE: Strategic Self-deception like this can lead to a lot of problems in your life, but may happen as a transitory phase. I’m using it as an example for how music contributes to state of being.

Other “Worlds” On The Same Planet

Look back at the images from earlier.

“Feel the images. Imagine the world they come from and put yourself in that atmosphere.”

Let’s take these two:

If I put these together, I can imagine starting in primary school, with kids that do drugs just outside the school. I know people who sell drugs and people talk about it. There’s concrete everywhere. When you think of recreation, you think only of the dingey outdoor basketball court you have in the school, the local cornershop and causing trouble in the town hanging out, loitering, being loud.

Why? Because it’s a town with little things to do. There are shops that sell basic goods and liquor, a barber shop and homes. As a minor, whatever bar that exists in the town is barely known to us and is full of 50+ year olds anyway, primarily men.

The residential homes don’t inspire you to be creative or make money through ambitious means. They’re just one story and are often made of boring brick, with a small, unappealing lawn, even if some are well-kept. The grass is dry.

With the same drugs above but in the ghettos of New York City (NYC), I imagine a constant smell of cigarettes and piss, knowing that many people you see on a daily basis around the alleyways would stab you if they felt threatened for whatever reason or wanted to take your shit.

You have some connection in a weird sense during adolescence as you and your friends buy and take drugs. Some of your friends are strays - homeless without parents. But now that you’ve stayed in the same place as a mid-twenties adult because it’s “where you’re from” and so you think thats how it works, just to stay, you don’t feel that same connection. Old “friends”, most of which you wouldn’t even call friends, suddenly weren’t around, died or were imprisoned. You feel like you’re 60 years old and that this is all life is. You say “this is life”. You don’t hear the same political discussions as someone in the heart of NYC. You aren’t on social media. You haven’t played and don’t know anyone who’s played Minecraft and the most famous musicians on the planet you’ve somehow never heard of. You only listen to underground ghetto hip hop artists who aren’t very good and post only on Soundcloud.

I remember the feeling back in primary school, in Wollongong. The feeling that it was a hot day, but not feeling painfully hot. The smell of mowed grass in the big field we had behind the school. A state of existence that made the idea of mowing lawns horrible to think about. In high-school these smells persisted in my suburb within Wollongong and when combined with the non-painful concrete restriction in my body from spending much effort to go anywhere, made spontaneous adventures rarely something I wanted to do. It was usually when it was cooler and the smell of grass was absent and Mum wasn’t obviously locked in doing work that I felt I could go hop on multiple public transport pieces, go to a party and end up God knows where.

These are States of Being - things you can’t connect to and have never empathised with simply through a lack of awareness, but which exist on the very same planet as you.

Vibes and Nuance

How you vibe with someone influences your actions, such as influencing how you pick and choose what nuances to apply to the context of that person/your specific engagement with that specific individual.

For example, I might generally believe that owning no furniture and minimal belongings is awesome for me personally. If I were to get into a romantic relationship and move in with that person however, this general belief may need to change. I may need to buy a table for us to sit at together and eat food, a desk so I can do work at home instead of always needing to go to a cafe. But until then, my belief can stay the same.

Or can it? Self-help marketers say “your current identity needs to align with the life you want and it’ll come true. Otherwise you’ll never achieve what you want”.

I just don’t think this is the case, and this is coming from someone who believed this stuff more than anything else and was one of those marketers.

I can feel a special way with this girl and buy the furniture and purchase a car if we decide to have children. I still believe that owning little can be awesome, but for this girl I want to make sure we’ve got what we need and what she needs to help our relationship flourish.

Nuance: The Lesson

It’s not about the lesson, it’s about the impact of the lesson. Or simply, the impact on the individual target.

You can manipulate someone to change their internal state to something that will likely serve some value to them.

Implications, What You’re Missing Out on and What You Can Do About It

Your state of feeling impacts what you’re inclined to do tomorrow (hopefully some cool new different fun stuff) and impacts how you generally spend your time and day and night and life. If you’re not in that state of mind though, certain possibilities and realities never feel authentic and they never become things you even want to pursue.

Your current state of feeling while reading this makes everything you’re currently attuned to, feel or believe, feel like all there is. If I try and feel into other states of being, all of a sudden other people’s beliefs I thought was ridiculous actually made sense, or beliefs I previously had felt egotistical and clearly incomplete, such as the idea that people need to take accountability for their lack of money. In reality, that perpetuates the systemic issues that have led to many people financially struggling, so it’s not obviously the “right thing” to do.

Neurology

A massive part of what influences your state of feeling, your awareness and your actions is neurology.

Neurology is the study of neurons. Neurons facilitate all brain function. They hold significant responsibility for:

• Memory

• Habit associations

• Skills

• Emotions

• Thoughts

• Learning

• Reinforced feedback loops

The dissonance between my view of pornography in a non-triggered vs triggered-currently-watching-and-strengthening-the-neural-connection-state

To be continued

…

Reality isn’t what you think it is, it’s everything you’ve never thought about or had the opportunity to feel.

Good luck,

R

Trust me, I would know. I was there the whole time.

I say that when you buy something that you expect to get a benefit or favourable outcome from, you want it to serve you. But then you get locked into having it or the expectations of it, now you’re restricted. Like today I let go of the $60-90 Jasper Skytram ticket I booked and didn’t go, because getting there on time would mean stopping minimally on one of the most scenic drives on the planet - the Icefields Parkway between Banff and Jasper, BC, Canada. I decided that the stops along this incredible freeway drive were worth more than whatever awesome view I would supposedly see on this Skytram, plus I was getting tired and wanted to eat a very late breakfast (3pm) and have coffee to relax at a cafe.

Other things potentially related to serving:

• Slaying 💅

• Doing what you love in your life

Doing what you love

Some people do things for themselves and other people and not out of self-deception. They actually feel what they want, rather than listening to what people tell them they should do based on their situation (having little money for example) or listening only to logic in their mind or indoctrinated/conditioned internal desires. They know exactly why they’re doing some work or engaging in a particular endeavour and it brings peace to them, which means they go to sleep at night happy and wake up happy. This means they’re generally at peace with their mistakes, flaws, knowing who they are, what they value, what they stand for, being okay with not being seen as okay,

Maybe they help people, maybe they kill people. Slaughter them. Whatever they do serves them. Does that mean they act purely out of self-interest? Yes, in a way. But the negative connotation is socially constructed and really self interest is a neutral thing. I can do things because it makes me happy, like being a teacher and writing content online. This can help other people but really if I didn’t enjoy it, regardless of how much my teaching or writing would help other people, I probably wouldn’t do it. Does that make me selfish? Yes. Do I give a shit? No, not really. Sorry.

Why is being selfish fine? Because there’s no alternative. Even if someone wants to help people, it’s at the most fundamental level what they need to do in order to feel at peace with their actions. If they aren’t helping people, they feel guilty. The internal feeling inside is intrinsically based on “self”.

Silence

Live in a place that feels like a home, even if you’re not there often. Means adding little trinkets, plants, whatever makes it feel lively instead of just white walls and sadness. I’ve learned about this by seeing boring, sad airbnb’s and boring cafes. It doesn’t need to cost much at all to make something feel lively. How incredible is it to decide to open a cafe in a town, city or suburb you feel at home and then think “what can I do here?” designing it as you wish and curating every part of the customer experience. Doing this because you want to do it. Not because you crave a profit, but because you feel better doing it than if you didn’t, regardless of the outcome/success of the business.

What makes me feel this way? Why do I want to hear the word democracy in my head and talk about freedom of speech, censorship, family and love?

Why do I want to say that you don’t need to do anything? You can be as you are right now and it’s no problem at all.

You can change the system if you want to, or at least try and fail. Revolt and get arrested, tased and pushed to the ground by authorities and cuffed as you feel peace in your heart knowing you did the right thing (what felt like the right thing to you).

Why do I want to say that you can rent out or sublet a property to tenants for a fair price, and avoid the temptation of short-term rentals. To screen your tenants to find people who are good people and you can do your best to ensure they enjoy the place they live and feel like they can get somewhere with their life while living there.

Why do I want to tell people that they can simply walk into nature/forests? That they don’t need to find a hiking trail. That as long as they don’t trample nature or litter, they should be able to go and enjoy the trees, sun shining through them, beautiful thick wooden trunks you can look at, brush your hand over or hug. To look out through the trees and stand there in silence. You can write things like “I love you” and post that online without context. You can acknowledge issues in the world like a lack of connection, increased porn consumption and not enough cafe setups making physical connection a priority. Like the cafe I’m at right now that has all the same round tables that 3-4+ chairs can be put around for groups to sit all facing each other, feet and legs touching or almost touching. Love spread. Plants make you feel like you aren’t just boxed into this artificial fake world of perfection, avoidance of nature, restrictions, structure and a lack of creative or opinionated, political or social expression.

You want to post your opinions about how the world works and is going (political opinions) online like on X and to be allowed to do that without fear of losing your job or being arrested.

Make life serve you, simply by doing your best not to let things take life away from you. We should have more trust in people’s intentions, should they not be in a position where they must commit treason to get their basic necessities. Education, making friends in uni. Being able to work what job you like and not worry about not earning enough to sustain basic quality of life and savings. When you die you might never get this thing again, please do all you can with it and live true to yourself.

I’m now reading Wikipedia pages because they’re direct and extensive and so I’d rather read that and it be only partially correct than try to find sources that only give me part of what I want to know but which may be more accurate. I’ll read other sources later. I want to do minors at uni in a mixture between international politics, business and economics.

Making and posting content online purely for yourself and with no expected metric outcomes to actualise is great, especially when people read or watch your stuff anyway. Expressing yourself freely, creating, not just consuming other people’s content. Putting something in the world that wasn’t there before. Just knowing that you can “vibe-code” apps, even if you don’t actually feel a need to do it or at least feel no need to complete an app. You can journal stuff on paper, take photos of it and upload it online if you felt so inclined and weight up potential consequences. Imagine the aesthetic of that - the handwritten pieces of paper crafting a unique message, posted in a multi-image Instagram post and with no caption or simply the words “I love you, live a good life”.

P.S. I know this post doesn’t make much sense and the heading “Doing what you love” only partially corresponds with the contents within, but I found this valuable to write and maybe you’ll get something from it.

You can rush to get to the cafe and miss out on compartmentally processing important information using your Default Mode Network (DMN), but this doesn’t make any sense. You’re going to the cafe because you want peaceful time to yourself, yet you’re throwing away peace by rushing. The cafe is a means to an end, the end being peace. The implications of this are that you can stop worrying about a lot of things. I can stress about whether to talk to a girl or not, to go to one place for a cinnamon bun for another, but ultimately to get a girlfriend or to have a nice treat all lead back to wanting to not want something, be fulfilled and consequentially at peace, therefore stopping thoughts about these things is probably the best option and I can have my peace.

Stop worrying about everything, just stop.

In fact, do any “means to an end” actually work? How much can and should you distill your appropriate actions down having acknowledged what you want at the deepest level. If I want peace of mind, do any of these things I do matter?

• Writing posts online

  • No I don’t need to do this, I can just sit here with coffee. That puts a smile on my face

• Going to cafes

  • I’d certainly like to. Otherwise I’d just lay down and probably sleep. Would probably just walk a bit, then sit down or lay down and sleep. Only occasionally would I feel like walking quite a bit.

• Working a job for money

  • Idk, can you just do nothing? Maybe

  • Can you find some way to make money online considering it doesn’t need to be complicated and then just relax the rest of the time? Probably.

• Drinking coffee

  • It’s boring sitting on the ground doing nothing drinking water bro and eating oats

• Eating healthy

  • Makes me feel good, otherwise I wanna kill myself and feel shit

• Eating only 2 meals per day

  • It’s good. My eating lifestyle keeps my body fit… I don’t care to answer these questions

• Eating minimal junk food, only an occasional baked good from a cafe

• Playing Minecraft

• Being nice to people

• Having my laptop out at a cafe.

I’ve been vibing with people and women here in Vancouver so far… yeh both men and women. Fucken oath. Not sure if that’s my changes in social conduction or the people in the city or both?

Just stop doing shit. Then add back in things once you genuinely feel you want to, rather than never questioning the fact that you feel a need to do particular things.

If something is merely a means to an end, it’s a want and not a need. It means that it’s there to serve you, but can be discarded once it doesn’t.

It’s amazing knowing that if I wanted to for the next 2 months, I can just explore and go to cafes and build some kind of online business making money. Anticipation vs realisation of something?

Save up money from a job, quit or go on extended leave, spend money on a credit card and then just make the minimum repayments with savings you have. Eventually go back to working and make larger payments to pay off the credit balance.

Even writing this post is me wanting to feel good about making something unique, creative, money, creation, built, my own, my own, business, money, coffee shop, sitting, sipping

to feel happy, at peace with my day.

You can do that by closing your laptop and sitting not thinking.

Choices

I’m selfish, I’m scared, I overthink, I lust, I have intrusive thoughts, I give into temptation, I glance multiple times at great butts, I feel hesitant to help someone in need, although past evidence suggests I will do it anyway, I just don’t know how minor or severe the event must be for me not to. I judge people.

What about you? What do you have to say for yourself?

You lie to yourself

You make everything more complicated than it needs to be. Needs to be. Go enjoy your life brother. Woman, girl, wow… Lay down on the warm sunny concrete pavement with the left side of your face pressed down to the heat. People walk past you but don’t step on you, perhaps you’re invisible in this world. Or maybe there’s no one around. Silence. A view up to the sky with sun adding massive glare, some tree leaves are heavily confuscating the frame and a bird flies by over the blue sky at the top and right of the frame. Aggressively and passionately playing the drums to Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups or maybe your own or a different song, just with Lazy Eye overlayed. The ending with the piano key in the middle of the guitar riff.

Writing via feeling. Sick of logic. I want to be around you who match this feeling.

Are states of feeling that feel negative something to be avoided or embraced? What are the implications of each? Perspective, empathy? Is that even needed. Can I just chase the feeling that brings me joy, a state of heaven and bliss and life?

What kind of poetry is this?

Allow your decisions.

Keep the Snake in mind. Keep the neural conditioning and pathways in mind.

The “Snake” and neural conditioning don’t need to be read about in order to understand this post.

Disallowing and judging your decisions will consistently lead to misery.

Have faith in yourself.

Realistically, you’re not going to be able to have faith in yourself and have this acceptance until you’ve suffered. You’ll likely need to have minimal faith in yourself for several years until you come to know parts of your innate nature, including your general intentions, through life experience.

There’s no reason you’re not allowed to have faith beforehand, but it’s probably not going to happen. If you were to theoretically have faith in yourself as early as age 10, you’d be thinking something like, “I have faith that I’m a good person with good intentions who will figure it out”. Or “I have faith that I will do what I feel is right”.

This point about decisions made me think of something important but unrelated and meta:

When someone conveys one piece of information to you, it doesn’t automatically mean other pieces of information are also being conveyed.

For example, I can tell you that accepting all your decisions is a solid prerequisite to peace in mind. You might exclaim, “so you’re also saying that it’s good for me to watch porn or when I look at that I should just accept it? That doesn’t sound good”. I’ll hereon refer to this example as the Decision Advice.

I’m not saying that. You’re saying that.

In Systems Theory, Predictive Coding states that humans always try to piece together an understanding of the world and how to conduct themselves within it.

If I give you a new piece of information (in italics above), it might challenge parts of your developed understanding. There are now “gaps” in your understanding here and there. Imagine the holes in Swiss cheese.

To reduce uncertainty; which is seen as bad in a human’s psychology because it’s associated with fear, anticipation and consequentially a risk of death; you will fill the gaps in understanding with presumptions, things you fear to believe or want to believe are true or expectations. However, you don’t see that you’re the one who’s filled the gaps. Whatever you believe I’m implying when I give you the Decision Advice, you’ll think I believe that, when really I only said what I said and nothing more.

I call this Presumption Bias…

The bias here is that you interpret what I mean based on your presumptions used to fill in the gaps in your challenged understanding of life and how to conduct yourself.

In our example, I’m not telling you as a consequence of the Decision Advice that you must accept your pornography use. In fact if you asked me for detailed advice I’d probably say you should accept when you give into the urge to consume porn, but actively try to resist as often as possible. The more “reps” you get in, successfully allowing an urge to pass by like a cloud in your mind, the more the neural pathways associated with the compulsive porn use will weaken, meaning each rep gets you closer to being free of adult content as a coping mechanism you can’t resist.

But I’m not telling you that.

You can believe and do whatever you want in response to the information someone conveys to you, but just acknowledge that when you judge that person’s intentions or implications that weren’t directly spoken, you are making presumptions, which therefore may not be accurate.

Let’s talk about a mental model.

Faith Vs Expectation

Most people:

1. Think of what they desire

2. Expect it

Try to:

1. Think of what you desire

2. Have faith that it’ll be happen eventually

What do I mean by “eventually”?

If your desire from step 1 is something you want to happen next week, it won’t necessarily happen. Such as your plan to socialise more next week and so you set the desire to meet a girlfriend. It may not happen.

If you expect that desire of meeting a girlfriend to happen and it doesn’t, you’ll be very disappointed.

If you have faith that it’ll happen and it doesn’t, you’re less likely to be disappointed.

Reason being, when you really want something, your thoughts, intentions and actions will often lead to it happening in the future. You just can’t predict when that will be.

Also, let’s say you want a girlfriend. What you may really want is love and acceptance from yourself and so the feeling in your heart that you thought was related to needing a girlfriend suddenly turns into a sense of fulfilment when you decide to love and accept yourself without conditionally needing to achieve certain things first.

The feeling you wanted to address was successfully fulfilled, just not through the means you thought it would be. Sometimes you don’t want what you think you want.

But let’s say you do want a girlfriend and that’s your actual desire (related to belonging, social connection and acceptance from others), your actions will be subtly affected over time by that desire and so you can have faith that at some point your actions will result in meeting one.

If you never meet a girlfriend, which probably isn’t the case, oh well. If you’re on your deathbed, you may say “it is what it is”, because since meeting a girlfriend was faith rather than expectation, there’s no dissonance between what you thought would happen vs what did. This same logic is why exceeding customer’s expectations in business can be make customers come back for more and therefore help the business grow; because if you provide less than what was expected, people will often become frustrated and resentful; but if you provide more than the customer will feel a higher degree of certainty that paying you money will result in a positive ROI (Return on Investment).

Does having faith mean that you stop making active efforts to fulfil your desires? No.

If you had that thought while reading this post, you’re suffering from Presumption Bias, which we spoke about earlier. You’re presuming that I’m also saying that you should replace active decision-making with faith in a desire. To add more nuance, you make decisions that you believe will support your desires, yet after each decision is made, you accept that you made it and have faith that it’ll contribute to the desire being realised.

Contribute?

Yes, even decisions that afterwards make you think, “that probably wasn’t the best decision”, which means “that decision probably doesn’t align with my desire”, can contribute to what you want eventually. Look at this image:

Now, what desires are we talking about in this post?

Ones that you actually care about.

People say “I want to become a lawyer”.

Do you really?

Or is it more like this:

• I want to become a lawyer.

• Why?

  • I want to help people in need and ensure justice is brought to those who’ve done wrong

  • Why?

    • I don’t just want to do things for myself. Also I know that there are people who don’t get arrested when they should have.

    • Why do you care about those things?

      • For the first point, I don’t think I’ve done enough for other people.

      • When did you start feeling that way mostly?

        • Mostly when I was 16 or so, I started thinking about it and then thought “maybe I’ll be a lawyer”

        • What were you doing at 16 before you started thinking about this?

          • I guess I was just doing my thing, thinking about myself and what I wanted and needed

          • Why?

            • Well that’s just what people do I suppose. I wanted to have good days and happy times

            • What’s a good day and happy time to you?

              • Something where I’m entertained and often with people

              • What would happen in a day that was not good and not a happy time?

                • If I wasn’t hanging out with anybody, when I didn’t feel joy in the things I was doing, bored,

So yeh.

Bye!

If it’s mostly feeling you’re experiencing rather than actual worded, doubtful thoughts, it’s you talking.

The Snake is the phenomenon that generates thoughts you didn’t consciously choose to generate. Like a spontaneous thought of whether you should’ve said something different in a social instance.

“You” are the conscious response you give to those thoughts, when you’re engaging in that conversational dialogue in your head.

So we agree that there is the Snake and then there is you who responds to the thoughts it generates.

But is there more?

Yes, there are your neurons.

I was addicted to pornography for years and due to various reasons, watching it is deeply ingrained in my body as a consistently high-dopamine activity. It is hard for me to refuse urges, although I’m working on it right now, getting in the reps.

I have neurological pathways that contribute to urges to watch porn arising. Each time I give in, the naked people spark dopamine in me because I’m an animal who instinctively values sex and so the behaviour as something “pleasant” is reinforced, making it harder to refuse the urges in future.

If I refuse, the connection between “urge to watch porn” and “big dopamine hit” reduce. My body gives the urge but doesn’t get the reward, meaning the neurological connection may not be needed.

This urge is not the Snake, because it’s feeling-based and not-thought based, but it isn’t my gut feeling. I can still put one hand to my heart, the other to my belly and ask myself, “I want to watch porn. Is that true?” and I’ll feel the answer “no” even if the urge is active.

I feel “the addiction/my body wants it, but I don’t”.

So here’s a diagram:

I am the eye, then there is the Snake and the Neurons. WOO.

You’re the decision maker. That’s what you’re responsible for. The neurons can have their affect and the Snake can say what it pleases, but you make the decision.

Though I get bothered a teeny bit that I don’t understand manufacturing, because in comparison, digital stuff doesn’t really feel real. It feels like if digital didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be very useful.

You need to care about what you’re doing, then you’ll do well in it, be present in it and live a happy day-to-day life. If you don’t care about it, you won’t do so well, won’t be present and will go through your whole work day anticipating the next time you can do something enjoyable. For many people, this just means going home and watching stuff or eating.

The modern world makes it hard to listen to your heart and to follow what you want to do and to only work when you’re happy to, rather than make you work almost all year if you don’t want to lose your job or suffer financially. So doing work you don’t overly enjoy and then distracting yourself with consumerism is inevitable for most people. Now you’re barely living life. Sucks.

Meanwhile other people are living a different reality:

Getting up whenever they want.

Engaging in enjoyable hobbies regularly.

Doing work they enjoy. They find it easy to be present there and feel at peace doing it. Thoughts in their mind are things like, “I feel no need to be anywhere else right now”.

They feel like who they really are is who they embody. For some this means self-expression is a part of life. Like for me my Instagram is kinda something that makes me happy, having basic captions and occasional photos and videos of stuff I actually give a shit about. The pinned posts are stuff I feel are aesthetic and cool. Yes I want people to see my Instagram, but there is a degree of “this resembles me and people seeing this, to me is a good thing. They can see who I am”. The desire to be seen.

Even me writing posts or making some posts public - that to a degree is me wanting to be seen. I want people to see some of the ideas I care about and value, the way that I think, the thoughts I have, the interests I hold, read about the experiences I’ve had and see what I like to research.

What’s the purpose of me writing this post?

I want to feel like I’m getting closer to a meaningful life while making money too. That’s why I titled this with the inclusion of “Digital Age” because I know how many ways there are to make money online. But the thing is, like I introduced, you must give a shit. It doesn’t matter how smart you are or how many techniques and advice you take on, if you don’t give a fuck about it, you won’t successfully do it. Or even if you do, you still won’t be happy. All the achievements and yet you have nothing.

So start right now. Have meaning right now. Stop. Start. Enjoy.

Stop what? Fabricating desires, ways of conducting and emotions.

Start what? Feeling, then following those feelings.

Enjoy what? You’ll know.

Turns out, this was a self-deception. I didn’t really want this.

What I really wanted was self-acceptance.

“Reaching my potential”, in reality, meant feeling like the confident, wealthy, calm, intelligent version of myself I fantasised about a few years back. I would make decisions and socialise for the main purpose of convincing myself I was that guy. I’d judge people internally in a way that implied I was smarter than them. I’d present myself in a way that made people see me as that idealised guy - all to self-affirm in myself that I was him. Why? Because once I became this “highest potential” version of myself, I’d finally be worthy. I could finally love and accept myself. Others would finally love and accept me.

During most of high school, I felt that the real version of me was unacceptable to people. I perceived that without a “mask” on, people thought I was boring, awkward, weird and stupid. It’s hard to remember if this lack of acceptance happened or not, because I would frequently put on acts to turn my awkwardness into something for others to laugh at.

But here we are today, having spent the last 5 years believing I was being authentic, because I chose the idealised version of myself and so I saw it as authentically me in the future, yet it turns out I was being a fake boi. I’ve actually lost love and acceptance or disconnected from it, via the following:

• Stopped speaking to a couple close friends from end of high school

• Left family behind to move to Melbourne, then temporarily to Canada

• Left behind a woman whom I was ready to love and who is the only person I’ve met whom I’d be happy to have children with

• Stopped having sex, deeming abstinence as noble, at least until I found a new deep romantic connection

• Stopped finding deep romantic or friendly connections. Zero additional ones since I began committing to this idealised-version-of-Riley pursuit.

So if I accepted myself as a flawed man from the beginning, I may have stayed with the woman I was ready to love and therefore received her love and acceptance. I could’ve had self-love and love from another, yet now I have neither.

Be careful what you pursue as your “purpose” - you might be completely lying to yourself but believe you’re being honest.

Years go by and you wonder why you still aren’t happy.

Alas,

R

This just makes me look like a weirdo who’s tense, so it makes them uncomfortable anyway.

I’m scared of looking weak or feminine with my body language or demeanour when I’m feeling quiet and reserved.

I’m scared of looking like a creep when I look at people. I look at people because I want connection and once I start my mind just obsessively looks for certain people to look at and to stop I need to force removal of staring and eye contact which makes me tense and paranoid on how people see me in those moments.

I’m scared of telling even therapists some of the things I’ve done and thoughts I’ve had, in case they see me as a sexual deviant or general weirdo. [update - I did this yesterday, thank god].

I’m terrified of people seeing me as bad in some way.

Please understand that you have fears, you just tell yourself you don’t, or you don’t admit how strong they really are.

I can train groups of 25 people, aged 18-65, with a loud, assertive voice. I can be myself, laughing with someone, making eye contact. I can be incredibly charismatic and seemingly un-concerned about how I’m being presented to others around me.

But these aforementioned fears still hinder me. But it’s not the fears that are bad, it’s the fact that I’m not willing to be vulnerable. I’m not willing to stop presenting as a certain person. I’m not willing to risk people misunderstanding me. I’m not willing to give people the opportunity to make presumptions about who I am at my core just because of things I’ve done and thoughts I’ve had.

It’s not necessarily who you are that’s the problem - it’s how much of yourself you’re not willing to show that’s the problem.

Additional notes:

People talk about not caring what others think because those people aren’t actually thinking about them. This isn’t true and if it was that isn’t necessarily positive. You’re best to acknowledge that people are judging you all the time, but that judgment is often projection. Displacement? I can’t remember, maybe. Projection is essentially what I was doing when I internally judged people’s intelligence to imply that I was smarter than them, which reinforced the intelligence ideal I thought I needed to embody in order to be worthy and loveable.

Acknowledge this judgment from others, then allow yourself to be as you are, not presenting to gain acceptance, allowing messiness if that’s applicable to you and embracing your polarising parts. Be willing to be judged, stop avoiding it.

Just as I used to “improve my social anxiety” by manipulating myself into a confident state before going into a social interaction. Even though I looked confident and I did initiate interactions like going up to speak to pretty women in public, I was still being avoidant. I was avoiding truly personal rejection, where I might allow myself to be so anxious that I struggle to smile and go walk up to the girl anyway, where if she rejects me, she rejects me being myself. That sounds bad, but it’s kind of beautiful.

That’s being confident - the confidence to be seen for who you truly are in that moment, and then pushed away or demonised. No matter how many confidence guru’s there appear to be online or in real life, can they do this? Or is rejection only allowed when their true self was never actually exposed?

Maybe I’m just an awkward little boy sometimes, but what’s the problem with that?

Riley