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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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Plus one. And it is frustrating because it is so often divorced from reality and build upon the (non)premise of "No, this is how I feel. You can't argue with how I feel."

The counter-intuitive thing, in my mind, is that a well developed sense of self is often easier developed within a group or community. Major upfront caveat - not in a group/community that is completely dedicated to developing personal senses of self. Let me explain. Say you're part of a gym group - crossfit, traditional powerlifting, MMA, cycling, rock climbing, whatever. That group is there for the activity; developing the skills, trading advice, swapping stories. The purpose is beyond that of the group members themselves. This same principle applies to non-physical organizations as well. I'm in a professional society - let's say I'm a professional cake baker so that I don't doxx myself. I go to meetings and conferences, I know some folks. I've learned better cakery along the way. The important part in terms of sense of self is that I have these stable groups wherein I can place myself. I'm a batter cakerist than John from Cincinnati, but not quite as skilled as Mary from Hershey, Pennsylvania. I can lift more than Steve, but less than Don. We all get a long. I have confidence in what I can do, and a healthy humility regarding what I can't, and the group itself doesn't castigate me for my relative skill level.

Contrast that, first, to groups who are only about the preservation and boosting of the ego. These are largely online communities that sometimes get together in meatspace. What's the reward system there? Either a) be the loudest person in the group in terms of over-the-top unconditional support for the others (these would be your "yass queen, slay" types) or b) be the loudest person in the group in terms of victimhood identification. There's no other place to be within those groups because there would be no point. Again the whole point of those kind of groups is to boost individuals within them, there's no external goal/purpose/motivation. That leads to very quick sprints to the extreme.

But rewind the tape a little. What if I'm not in any of the above? I'm just a very online person who strongly identifies as something or another. Well, then we get into what I consider to be pretty dangerous territory. Absent of any meaningful community or group affiliation, people overcompensate be either super-inflating their own egos to fill up that void, or letting that crushing loneliness compress them into a neutron star that explodes. The outcomes vary. On the one hand, you have Gen-Z tiktokers giving rageful speeches about weird new pronouns. On the other, you have displaced loners killing themselves and, sadly, often other people. My theory is that it largely comes from the same primary source - lack of a sense of self and the resulting hyper-compensation. The cure isn't pop-psychology mindfulness, ill-defined "self-care", or, of course, hormonal modification. It's developing bonds within a structure larger than yourself to develop a stable self.