3290: Can We Be The Authors of Our Lives Without Suffering from Main Character Syndrome by Ira Israel

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[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Can we be the authors of our lives without suffering from main character syndrome?

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_01]: By Ira Israel of IraIsrael.com

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Justin Malik, your very own personal narrator.

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[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: covering productivity, minimalism, personal development, all that fun stuff.

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And with that, let's get right to another post and start optimizing your life.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Can we be the authors of our lives without suffering from main character syndrome?

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_01]: By IraIsrael of IraIsrael.com

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Quote,

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization.

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity,

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: permanence, or connection with the world around us.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Relationships with others are notably fragile.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Goods are made to be used up and discarded.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence,

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_01]: separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_01]: on their power and freedom.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Christopher Lash from the culture of narcissism, American life,

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: and an age of diminishing expectations.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_01]: It is an old joke that if someone attended Harvard, served in the Marines,

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: or is vegan, you will know it within one minute of meeting him.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Scott Galloway adds people who do crossfit to this list of braggarts.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01]: How do we determine if someone is a potential friend or foe when we first meet them?

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Like many other animals, we need to discern if someone is a member of our tribe or not.

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_01]: The concept of tribal needs to be revisited under the ascendancy of late capitalism,

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_01]: social media, and globalization.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_01]: In a tribe, usually consisting around 140 or 150 related family members,

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: rarely would a member transgress the established laws or mores

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_01]: and risk being ejected into the wild to fend for herself.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_01]: But since the Industrial Revolution, with many people living in cities away from their families,

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: under our system of highly competitive late capitalism

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_01]: coupled with a gig economy of workers continuously seeking their next jobs,

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_01]: many people place a primacy on procuring potential clients or employers

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01]: rather than establishing secure human connections.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Every social situation is viewed as networking.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Relationships have become transactional.

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_01]: In Los Angeles, where I reside, I often witness people meet for the first time

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_01]: and do what I refer to as hovering, not dissimilar to dogs when they first meet,

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_01]: to check if the person is friend or foe,

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_01]: and then what potential role that person can play in the mental screenplay entitled

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_01]: This Is What I Think My Life Should Resemble, i.e. Playmate, Plaything, Partner,

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_01]: or Next Source of Income.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Since humans are so much more sophisticated than dogs sniffing each other,

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01]: affinity grouping is how tribalism manifests visually.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Two people see that they are wearing the same brand of clothing or shoes,

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_01]: have the same color credit cards, have similar coiffed hair,

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_01]: or similar handbags or cars and their lizard brains start to let down their guards.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_01]: After visual cues we use verbal language to determine commonalities.

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_01]: What's your name? Where are you from? I love your jewelry.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Can you believe the Dodgers lost yesterday? Did you see that Bitcoin drop today?

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_01]: What do you do for a living, etc.?

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_01]: All of this verbal balayhu is simply to determine if the other person

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_01]: is a trustworthy member of our tribe, or if we should beware.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Once safety is established, I've seen many people lunge into either a hard cell or a soft cell.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I think this is what Christopher Lasso presciently predicted in The Culture of Narcissism.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Much of the technology of the internet that originally intended to bring people together

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_01]: has now been corrupted into exploiting the hedonic treadmill of consumer capitalism.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: The tools needed to establish authentic rapport have been doled from over-stimulation

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: and having too many choices.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Just as an experiment, notice the percentage of emails and messages you receive this week

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: that mention some service or online course or new technology or travel experience

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_01]: or something that is going to end up making your wallet a few ducats lighter.

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_01]: The questions that I always wonder are, where's the authenticity?

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Can people be authentic when they're selling something?

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: When I lived in Paris in the early 1990s, it was still vulgar to talk about work and money.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't polite conversation.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_01]: But the American dream and American way has flooded the world with people who think they'll be happier

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_01]: if they own more stuff or better stuff or different stuff, more better different,

[00:06:26] [SPEAKER_01]: but still just stuff.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And once they own more stuff, then they have to tell more people about the stuff that they own.

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_01]: In 1899, Thorsen Veblen called it conspicuous consumption.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_01]: As you already know, the primary thing that correlates strongly with happiness

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01]: is the quality of our intimate relationships, more secure connections.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_01]: After that comes autonomy and agency.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Owning more stuff does not correlate strongly with happiness

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: due to the fact that our minds are analogous to hedonic treadmills.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Shortly after we sate any desire, it is replaced by another desire.

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_01]: A few years before Thorsen Veblen, Nietzsche prodded his readers to live their lives

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_01]: as they were constructing works of art.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Teenage solipsism and nihilism could be way later,

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_01]: at least remedied by creating, creating beauty,

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_01]: adding beautiful, creative expression to the world through music

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: and literature and poetry and art and sculpture.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: But how can these artists and musicians and writers

[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_01]: effectively market their arts today on the internet

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_01]: without appearing to suffer from main character syndrome

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_01]: or what was previously referred to and sometimes diagnosed as narcissism?

[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: There used to be something called the art of conversation

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_01]: where through discussing art and music and literature,

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_01]: people found the members of their tribes.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_01]: After capitalism implodes and another modus operandi of human interaction emerges,

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_01]: will the next society look back on us as narcissists or sociopaths

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_01]: or is the authors of our lives who just happen to cast ourselves

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_01]: as our own main characters?

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_01]: You just listened to the post titled

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Can We Be The Authors Of Our Lives Without Suffering From Main Character Syndrome?

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_01]: by Ira Israel of IraIsrael.com

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_01]: and I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:09:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Daked Ira.

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of this is what the minimalist authors I narrate talk about.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Conspicuous consumption, the hedonic treadmill

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01]: that are secure and intimate connections

[00:09:48] [SPEAKER_01]: are what truly bring happiness, not things.

[00:09:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And we know this, yet it's so difficult to break away from the norm

[00:09:55] [SPEAKER_01]: and not by that shiny new object.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I get it.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_01]: That's what this podcast is really for, to help you and me both

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_01]: to at least make a more conscious decision

[00:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: about what we bring into our lives,

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_01]: whether objects or living things like people.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Because even just second guessing it can have a huge impact.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01]: If we can take away that impulse by being slightly more mindful,

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_01]: we may just lead happier lives.

[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_01]: So make that conscious decision today.

[00:10:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Hope you're having a great morning, afternoon or evening

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_01]: whenever you're listening to this.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'll see you tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.