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2023-04-20

Last updated Aug 15, 2023

# Contemporary Issues: Psychology and Personal Growth

#psychology #personaldevelopment

# Self-Help Manual

# Outline

# Insight List
# Idea Dump
# Outline
# Draft 1
  1. The status quo
    1. Hook example? (like how Louie starts his lectures)
      1. “the rat race”
      2. burnout
    2. Western society is trapped by three assumptions:
      1. the point of life is to maximize your self-interest and wealth
      2. we’re individuals trapped in an adversarial world
      3. that this path is inevitable.
    3. This era of “financial maximization”: the belief that the rational choice in any decision was whichever option made the most money. The default setting that rules our world.
      1. A.K.A. when a culture is driven by the need for money to make more money; monoculture of money optimizing for more money.
      2. When everyone is optimizing for money, the effects on society are horrific. (e.g. environmental collapse, corruption, exploitation, and unhappiness around the world.)
      3. As money maximization continues, all of us — and the poor and disempowered especially — face a bleak future. This model is only interested in supporting those that can afford to buy in.
      4. The default conception of “the good life”
    4. How does this affect us?
      1. Tensions of the good life: we believe that suffering is necessary for growth.
        1. Ourselves: working to death
          1. This becomes part of our identity
            1. E.G. capitalism (situation) -> working (coping) -> workaholism (habit) -> workaholic (identity)
          2. This is further encouraged by our culture
            1. Passion principle; Passion perpetuates inequality
            2. Stress is a culture
        2. Others: zero-sum game; we can only succeed if others lose
          1. How Social capital can work against you?
  2. How can we stand against this?
    1. Criticism: Personal solutions like self-care and therapy are like band-aids…
      1. Cards/Stop emotional bleeding
    2. Structural:
      1. We must acknowledge that we are living in a sick system
        1. Freedom requires awareness of exile
      2. We must adopt a new sense of values
        1. God calls each of us to the vocation of freedom
        2. Leadership involves helping yourself and others see things in a new light
      3. We can only get through this together thorough community
        1. Benefits
          1. Human connection is the built-in mechanism for stress resilience
          2. Caring creates resilience
        2. Why?
          1. Ubuntu: my freedom is tied to someone else’s freedom. I cannot be free unless they are free.
        3. Perhaps we can start a movement – Movements are born from strong ties, peer pressure, and new habits.
          1. E.G. Bentoism
  3. Conclusion
    1. What makes change difficult is fear
    2. Cards/Change happens only when we are willing to leave the familiar-that-enslaves behind

# Writing

Why We Run: A Reflection on Human Flourishing in an Era of Financial Maximization

“Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place” - The Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland

I have a question for you: Have you ever felt like your life was a hamster wheel, and you couldn’t stop running on it?

As the school year nears it end, I see all around me my graduating batchmates preparing for the workforce: making their resumes, surveying different companies, and going through interviews. These all mark the end of an era, but also the beginning of a new journey. However, I can’t help but feel like nothing is going to change. Many of us have already been through this process before, just in different flavors: internships, org positions, college applications, etc. We put so much effort into developing ourselves just to ensure better futures. But in an increasingly competitive world, will we will never stop fighting for this security?

Probably not. “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat,” Lily Tomlin says. We can’t get off the hamster wheel because we don’t know what life is like without constantly running. So what drives this hamster wheel? According to Yancey Strickler, our society is trapped by three assumptions: (1) the good life is all about maximizing your self-interest and wealth; (2) we’re individuals trapped in an adversarial world; and (3) that this path is inevitable — a necessary tension for achieving this good life. Behind all of these assumptions is “financial maximization”: the belief that the rational choice in any decision was whichever option made the most money. As a result, we are always optimizing for money.

Consequently, we see everything through an economic lens. We unconsciously view ourselves and other people as commodities, judging based on the amount of “value” that can be provided; this leads us to curating our identites and networks, as shown by both recruiting and dating. Through our resumes and interviews, we present ourselves in a way that makes us look like a potential asset for hiring companies; similarly, through our profiles, we depict ourselves in a way that makes us look like a potential partner for searching singles — who alre also filtering themselves. So through this lens, everything becomes a transaction. For instance, when we connect with others, we inherently expect to benefit from it: love, opportunities, information, etc.

I believe that this perspective (the economic lens) is reductive, and it has led us to indiscriminate destruction — of ourselves and those around us. For instance: burnout is so pervasive within this generation, yet we continue to allow it anyways. Why? It’s because being burnt out is now part of our identities. Living in a reign of financial maximization has pushed us to constantly work in order to assert our worth. This way of coping with the times became a self-reinforcing habit (workaholism), which then brought about a dominant identity: (workaholic). Basically, we never quit the rat race because we consider ourselves rats.

And this workaholism is further encouraged by our culture; you know what they say: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” It won’t feel like running if you enjoy it, right? But in the end, it’s still work. To us, passion is our motivation; to society, it is fuel for labor. In fact, according to Erin Cech, this passion principle has culturally legitimized and reproduced an exploited, overworked white-collar labor force. The psychological harms of being exploited and overworked are undeniable; workers are constantly exposed to failure and rejection (thanks to living in a dog-eat-dog world), and they are estranged from their humanity (Marx’s theory of alienation). In other words, passion enables dehumanization. And minorities bear the brunt of this — for passion perpetuates class, race, and gender segregation and inequality. No one wins in this rat race…except the capitalists.

We learn to deal with this inhumane system through emotion-focused coping, or what I like to call self-care: reciting affirmations, engaging in hobbies, practicing mindfulness, etc. While these coping skills are helpful, they are also band-aid solutions, addressing only the symptoms of the problem that is capitalism. I would argue that these solutions actually perpetuate it; looking at the giant wellness and self-help industries (e.g. skincare and the book genre), we can see how capitalism both profits from self-care and utilizes it to sustain worker productivity. Self-care encourages us to go at our own pace, but it also motivates us to continue running the race. In order to save ourselves, we must tackle our problem by the roots.

It all starts with recognizing our enslavement. It’s quite the paradox, isn’t it, how in a laissez-faire system we are unfree? We are enslaved by not only a capitalist society, but also ourselves (through certain habits like workaholism). Acknowledging our undesirable status quo (while painful) will open us to new possibilities, which will allow us to rethink our conception of the good life. Personal fulfillment alone is no longer enough; if we want to be truly free, we must work together towards the liberation of others. The ancient African concept Ubuntu (“I am because we are”) represents this beautifully; it indicates that our freedom is tied to everyone else’s, and that we cannot be free if others remain enslaved. This is best exemplified by movements (e.g. mutual aid groups, strikes, campaigns, etc.) and their power to create change.

Therefore, the best way to challenge our status quo is by building community. According to Dr. Ayesha Khan, it helps us cope with our distress more sustainably and critically engage with oppressive systems when necessary; she writes: “If we don’t spend time together or laugh and cry together, cook together, mourn together and practice being emotionally vulnerable together…how will we fight oppressive systems together? If we cannot prioritize caring for each other, being intimate with each other, being soft, and nurturing, how will we be free”?. Human connection is our built-in mechanism for stress resilience; given that we are deeply immersed in the culture of stress, caring for each other is more vital than ever.

Overall, hustle culture is dehumanizing; as a form of slavery (both internally and externally), it applies not just to the captured (workers), but also to the captors (owners). In the end, everyone is a servant of money. We will only be able to truly flourish when we are all free from enslavement, and this all starts from connecting with each other. In a society that aims to isolate us from ourselves and one another, caring is truly revolutionary. To end this reflection, I’ll leave you with this beautiful African proverb: “If you want to run fast, run alone. If you want to run far, run together.”

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