Amerika

At the core of most human behavior we find self-pity. It provides the most convenient excuse for inaction, ever: “I am a victim of circumstance, my luck was bad, therefore I am to be pitied and I should not be obligated to do what it is obvious that I should be doing.”

It is the get-out-of-everything card. If you want to stop feeling an obligation to think about and adapt to the world, then make the most of what you have, go ahead and embrace the self-pity. Play the victim. You are now (at least in your mind and social group) off the hook.

Self-pity works in our minds because of the inherent potential solipsism of thinking itself. A thinking creature can always abstract itself away and view itself and the world as the same thing, in a theological sense; this is different from viewing the self and world as contiguous, like pieces of the same landmass.

In this solipsism of consciousness, caused more by the independence of our minds than any habit of thinking itself, self-pity works because we tell ourselves a lie and convince ourselves so that we can convince others. Inverse peer pressure changes our mental habits like this.

We are signaling within our minds but using the opinions of others to validate that signaling, offering up something that we think people will believe. People favor a victim, and we need that camouflage especially if we are doing something selfish.

Self-destructive behaviors arise this way. We tell ourselves a lie to protect ourselves from a fear, then have to justify the lie, creating layers of deception. Because these are contrary to reality, we then collide with reality when our lies do not work as well as being realistic would.

A feedback loop then occurs: we engage in self-pity, which causes self-destructive behaviors, and then use the results of that self-destructive behavior to feed our self-pity. At this point, stall and terminal spin have resulted.

Much like how an airplane needs to keep flying speed in order to have enough lift under its wings, we need to constantly seek something positive — an opportunity, a creation — in order to pull ourselves forward toward the process of living.

Without that opportunity and creativity pulling us forward, we fall into ourselves. This leads to pitying ourselves for being stranded there. Self-pity is an inflammatory reaction to the ambiguity of life and our fear of not finding something to pull us forward.

Life deals in heuristics, but humans want certitudes. What can we say except that this is an eternal struggle inherent to life? It is lessened by having a strong culture around you, but to have that, you must give up self-destructive self-pity first.

Tags: individualism, narcissism, rationalization, self-destruction, self-pity, solipsism