Idea Deflection Is A Symptom Of Under-Earning

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Luke Ford

One of the 12 symptoms of under-earning according to Underearners Anonymous is: “Idea Deflection – We compulsively reject ideas that could expand our lives or careers, and increase our profitability.”

I’ve been thinking about my character trait of dismissiveness. It’s a reflex with me and it is part of my idea deflection in particular and under-earning in general.

I tend to present a hard cynical exterior to the world and dismissiveness is just part of the package. My cold front keeps others at bay and it keeps me isolated.

One of the tools I’ve learned in 12-step work to work with an unwanted trait is to figure out how the trait serves me, how it hurts, and how I would benefit from the opposite of the trait.

Here’s what I wrote in answer to these questions:

ADVANTAGES: Reduces my options and choices in life and this saves me time and energy. Accurate dismissiveness is a form of clarity. Accurately dismissing things and people reduces my exposure to dangers and wasting time and traveling down unproductive paths. Accurate dismissiveness reduces danger, bad choices, time sucks, unhealthy ways of living and thinking, and reduces my chances of relapsing into my addictions. Accurate dismissiveness is a powerful way of saying yes to top-level choices. Accurate dismissiveness opens me up to what is good and powerful and beautiful and true. It keeps my side of the street clean. It keeps me from getting enmeshed and entangled in people and things I’m better off without.

On the other hand,, I can use ambivalent to maladaptive levels of dismissiveness to keep myself isolated, unattached, uninvolved, at arm’s length from people, it can be a wall that I build to not only keep bad things at bay, but to keep beauty and truth and good people and good possibilities at bay. I can use dismissiveness to keep myself feeling safe by dismissing deeper and more human levels of involvement with other people and with new ideas and new practices. To the extent that I use dismissiveness to shore up my false beliefs about my own greatness and wisdom, I’m living in delusion, not in reality. Once you dismiss somebody once or twice, they’ll likely never offer anything to you again. They’ll dismiss you. So my dismissiveness has cost me potential connection and prosperity. As an employee, I’ve often dismissed or minimized my employer’s concerns, and that has led to disaster. As an employee, I have often felt that I knew better than my superiors and employers, and that has not usually served me. My dismissive attitude has caused other people to dismiss me. I tend to present a cold hard dismissive cynical exterior to the world and that does not endear me to others. That has kept me lonely and isolated and poor. Even people in my life know not to share vast parts of themselves with me because they’ve too often felt the sting of my dismissal.

To the extent that my dismissiveness comes out of my insecurity, it is maladaptive. To the extent it comes out of my security and clarity, it is adaptive.

My maladaptive use of dismissal keeps me isolated, keeps me in delusion, keeps me the skunk at the garden party. It limits my thinking and my choices and my options for interacting with people. It limits my opportunities for prosperity. It keeps my life small. I hurt people with my instinctive dismissiveness, and hurting people hurts me
and lowers my self-respect.

My life would benefit with less maladaptive dismissiveness, with less dismissiveness coming from a place of insecurity, because it would allow me to be more appropriately open to the world, to others, to new ways of thinking and living and connecting. I would be able to see my own errors and shortcomings and inadequacies and so I’d have a more appropriate and accurate appraisal of myself and where I can contribute to the stream of life. Other people would like me more. Dismissiveness is a form of idea deflection, which is a symptom of under-earning. Less of this symptom would likely mean less under-earning. by letting go of this false dismissive self, I could become more of my better self, a more honest self, a less artificial self, a less defended self.

I remember one Shabbos lunch for Orthodox singles where we were all invited to share one thing about ourselves. I shared, “I love sarcasm and irony.”

My therapist responded, “That will really make women want to get close to you.”

One therapist said to me, “You might only heal once you’ve put down your [psychological] weapons [such as dismissiveness and cynicism].”

Another therapist said to me, “I’d hate to see you waste your life in delusion.”

Another therapist said to me, “I’d hate to see you become one of those guys at the bar bending people’s ear about what you could have been.”

When I was once vulnerable with a therapist, she said to me, “This side of you will attract people, not repel them [like you normally do].”

A friend said to me: “You just want to be a celebrity. That’s all you dream of. It’s a dream life, you want, baby. You can’t settle for the prosaic tasks of building up a good life.”

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Hamas v Israel

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Luke Ford

A friend says: What gets me about how the propaganda front is going is that Hamas clearly attacked Israeli with a mind to the second and third order consequences of their actions; and there’s very little discussion of that among the opinion-forming institutions/forums.

As far as I can tell Hamas miscalculated in the following ways. 1st they didn’t expect to penetrate so far so fast and face so little opposition. 2nd they were expecting a much faster and wilder Israeli response, not the unrelenting bombing, and brief land incursions. 3rd they thought their allies in Hezbollah, Iran etc would give them far more support. That largely hasn’t happened, possibly because Hezbollah’s initial attempts were largely disastrous for them. The IDF seems to have adjusted their doctrine significantly and effectively with the Shiite militia.

My friend in government said that we basically sank all of Iran’s surface ships in response to the hostage crisis under Carter, but it wasn’t until after we accidentally shot down one of their civilian airliners (legitimate mistake) that they “respected our resolve.”

They know this about themselves. And they know that this puts us in a catch 22.
The only means we have for addressing them on their own terms is something that our own culture is, in public, almost completely incapable of understanding much less condoning. Any action that would reclaim our dignity in the eyes of the Muslim world degrades and marginalizes us in the West. And visa-versa.

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When The Camera Turns On You

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Luke Ford

I heard a comment once on talk radio that everybody thinks he can act, run a country, and host a talk show.

Acting is largely reacting and a large part of the TV sports broadcast is up-close shots of members of the crowd reacting to the game.

Imagine the camera turned on you and you knew that your face filled the TV screens of millions of people? How would you react?

Some people jump up and down and wave like it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to them. Other people have more muted reactions. I think there are all sorts of age, sex, race and class differences operating here. I just saw a shot of the crowd in the India-England World Series of Cricket match and it appeared that the upper class, well-dressed contingent in this part of the India stadium displayed under-stated smiles while the working class around them whooped and hollered.

When I see someone painted in his team colors, I don’t expect that person to be a six-figure earner. In my life experience, the more intense the person’s fandom, the more desperate the life (and this fandom might dominate in arenas outside of sports such as politics and religion). If you like yourself, you don’t need to lose yourself in a team. If your happiness depends upon the fortunes of your team, you don’t have much going for you.

The more individuated, rational, intellectual, abstract, buffered and disembodied your approach to life, the less likely you’d be to express rabid enthusiasm in any context. I’d expect overall that sports fans are more tribal and right-wing than the average citizen.

Here’s one academic survey on class differences:

…the higher in socioeconomic status you are, the more independently oriented you are likely to be, while the lower in status you are, the more group-minded you are likely to be…

Because lower ranking people have fewer resources and opportunities than those of relatively high rank, they tend to believe that external, uncontrollable social forces and others’ power have correspondingly greater influence over their lives. Success for them, therefore, depends on how well they can “read,” rely on and help out others, the psychologists’ theory holds.

By contrast, those who enjoy more resources and greater class status live in contexts that enhance their personal power and freedom — larger and safer living spaces, the means to buy high-priced goods and experiences, and education that provides access to influential people, ideas and venues. These conditions give rise to a more self-focused approach to life, the theory states.

“With wealth and privilege comes this island of sorts, this increased insularity from others,” as Piff puts it.

I notice that children tend to react more to the camera than do older people and men more than women. Asians, of all the races, seem to react least to the camera.

I heard an observation that while the middle class in America welcome fame, the working class and the upper class generally don’t want it.

Here some random observations on life:

“Happiness is a liability in only one profession — attorney. Clients and superiors see it as a lack of commitment. When you leave at 6 pm, you have to look unhappy at having to leave so early. Opponents in court and depo see happiness as a weakness. Peers are jealous.” (Attorney caller to Dennis Prager)

“Being a gentleman is considered as weakness.” (Next lawyer caller)

* Saying “that ideology matters more than blood relations is a lot like saying that Chicago Bears fans root for the Bears because they believe intellectually in the Bears` Tampa-2 defensive alignment, while Green Bay Packer rooters have chosen their team out of their faith in the merits of the Packers` 3-4 defensive set.”

* “It really can’t be disputed that Jewish American men treat their wives better than men of all other religions by orders of magnitude.”

* “Unless I am wrong, Luke, you basically advocate for the shadow side of everything your father stood for?” (Mate)

* Woman: “Does nothing ever offend you because you are dead inside or because I just don’t matter to you?”

* Chaim Amalek: “You have a history of exposing the underside of every movement/activity you have attached yourself to.”

* Friend: “You just want to be a celebrity. That’s all you dream of. It’s a dream life, you want, baby. You can’t settle for the prosaic tasks of building up a good life.”

* “Luke is like a chrysalis in a chrysalis in a chrysalis, destined to repeatedly molt one identity as he take on another. SDA to orthodox Jew, and now from orthodox Jew to…”

* All of my therapists have told me that when I let my cynical guard down, I am easier to get close to.

* A friend who’s known me since childhood says: “You want everyone to love you. You want to be special to everyone. I so understand you. You have to have been unloved to understand this need.”

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Philosopher Nathan Cofnas on DEI & the Middle East Conflict (10-27-23)

Posted on October 27, 2023 by Luke Ford

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The New Yorker: Jim Jordan’s Conspiratorial Quest for Power – How the Ohio Republican built an insurgent bid for Speaker on the lies of Donald Trump.

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Luke Ford

Jonathan Blitzer writes:

* …online conspiracists began claiming that Starbird and other researchers at the Election Integrity Partnership had colluded with the Department of Homeland Security to censor twenty-two million tweets during the 2020 election. This was, Starbird told me, “a literal misreading” of the group’s findings. But the conspiracy theory had all the key elements to spread widely, starting with the fact that it was politically useful. “People wanted to believe it,” she said.

Allegations began to appear on fringe news outlets, such as the Gateway Pundit. On August 27, 2022, Mike Benz, an ex-Trump appointee who runs an organization called the Foundation for Freedom Online, wrote that his exposé of D.H.S. would provide “the basis for a full-scale bipartisan Congressional committee armed with subpoena power.” The story soon reached Breitbart and Steve Bannon’s podcast. On Twitter, Trump supporters told Starbird to lawyer up.

* Of all the partisans spreading attacks against the researchers, the most significant was initially one of the most obscure. “I don’t think it’s possible to have spent more hours a day on this,” Mike Benz, of the Foundation for Freedom Online, has said. “My wife calls it the man in the box because my whole life has just been listening to this whole network, day and night, and chronicling and archiving and explaining.”

Benz, a lawyer by training, describes himself on his organization’s Web site as “a former State Department diplomat responsible for formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters.” But a recent investigation by NBC News found that several years ago he maintained an online persona under which he posted explosively antisemitic and racist content. In one post, from 2017, he wrote, “If I, a Jew, a member of the Tribe, Hebrew Schooled, can read Mein Kampf and think ‘holy shit, Hitler actually had some decent points.’ Then NO ONE is safe from hating you once they find out who is behind the White genocide happening all over the world.” His inspiration, whom he credited with “putting the puzzle together,” was the alt-right influencer Milo Yiannopoulos. A year later, Benz stopped posting under his white-nationalist pseudonym and entered the federal government, taking a speechwriting job in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He joined the State Department in November, 2020, but left a couple of months later, at the start of the Biden Administration.

Since then, as the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, where he appears to be the sole employee, he has focused much of his attention on Renée DiResta, the research director of Stanford’s Internet Observatory and one of Starbird’s co-authors on the Election Integrity Partnership’s final report. DiResta has a number of associations that are easy to misrepresent. As an undergraduate, she interned at the C.I.A. Before joining Stanford, she served as the research director of a controversial cybersecurity firm called New Knowledge. In 2017, during Roy Moore’s Alabama Senate race, New Knowledge experimented with a small-scale disinformation campaign of its own. According to the Times, the effort included creating a Facebook account meant to draw in conservative voters. (DiResta was not working for the company at the time.) The next year, she testified before the Senate on Russian interference in the 2016 election; a team she led then wrote up a report for the Senate Intelligence Committee. On the Web site of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Benz outlined what he called DiResta’s “censorship industry career arc” and wrote that “the prominent role Renee DiResta plays in EIP—a government-partnered Internet censorship consortium—is particularly worrisome and disturbing.”

* On March 2nd of this year, in a Twitter Spaces conversation attended by some thirty-nine thousand users, Benz made contact with Taibbi. “I’ve been hoping to talk to you for a long time because I believe I have all of the missing pieces of the puzzle,” he told Taibbi, according to a recording of the conversation. “You’re someone who can actually communicate the story to a large platform. I can tell you literally everything.” The E.I.P., Benz said, was “the deputized disinformation flagger for D.H.S.” He went on, “Basically, they gave this private group—E.I.P.—D.H.S.-F.B.I. powers to talk directly to the key content-moderation liaisons.” Taibbi responded, “I’m very anxious to talk to you.”

A week later, at Jordan’s invitation, Taibbi and another journalist involved in the Twitter Files, Michael Shellenberger, gave public testimony before the weaponization subcommittee. While they addressed the members, Benz, dressed in a dark suit, sat in the row behind them. Both Taibbi and Shellenberger cited the E.I.P. and the twenty-two million censored tweets, though that figure never appeared in the materials they’d published in the Twitter Files. Afterward, they acknowledged that Benz had helped them with their testimony. Evidently, it was his influence that led Shellenberger to call the E.I.P. “the seed of the censorship-industrial complex.”

* They weren’t alone in relying on Benz. By then, he claimed to have given eight congressional briefings, spoken regularly with congressmen and senators, and addressed members of the House Oversight, Homeland Security, and Judiciary Committees. On March 10th, Jordan sent letters to Starbird, DiResta, and Alex Stamos, the head of Stanford’s Internet Observatory, demanding access to e-mails and other communications with both the government and the tech platforms dating back to January, 2015.

Within days, Taibbi posted another thread in the Twitter Files about the “Great Covid-19 Lie Machine: Stanford, the Virality Project, and the Censorship of ‘True Stories.’ ” After the 2020 election, many of the researchers involved in the Election Integrity Partnership had regrouped and launched the Virality Project, making its mission the tracking of online misinformation surrounding covid vaccines. This time, the mechanics of the operation were simpler. D.H.S. was not involved. Researchers posted their findings online each week and sent them to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Surgeon General. Taibbi’s thread, which received more than forty million views, rearranged information that Stanford had already been making available. “Even though all of our work is public, they reframed it as a secret cabal,” DiResta told me. “I study rumors and propaganda, but that doesn’t mean we can do anything to stop them when we become the subject. It’s a problem for the field. What can you do when it happens?”

* When Starbird and I spoke in July, she was about to fly across the country again, this time at the request of the House Homeland Security Committee. Bishop chairs its oversight subcommittee, and he had some more questions. According to multiple Republican and Democratic staffers, Bishop and Jordan were sometimes at odds. Bishop felt that Jordan could be doing more to push the investigation. When I asked one of the staffers what that meant, I was told, “Jordan only pursues most of Mike Benz’s theories. Bishop wants to run down all of them.”

* He described the end goal of Jordan, Benz, and others as the turning of social media into “nato for maga: keep the liberals out, the voters down, keep us in power.”

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