…Incentive determinism is obvious. It’s just a bunch of tautologies: we are who we are, we want what we want, and we do what we’re caused to do. And yet, barely anybody thinks this way. It’s a cold, alien way of thinking.
Instead, we prefer to think in stories. We see the world as revolving around a colorful cast of characters—often representing warring tribes—whom we either like or dislike.
We infer people’s character traits by the words they use and in what order they use them. When everyone uses this shortcut to identify the baddies, the result is what Robin Hanson calls “righttalkism,” the view that all it takes to improve the world is to change how people talk. The logic is straightforward:
Bad things are caused by bad people.
Good things are caused by good people.
Bad people are bad because they talk the wrong way.
Good people are good because they talk the right way.
Therefore, if everybody talks the right way and nobody talks the wrong way, then everything will be good.
This is essentially what modern discourse is all about. We’re trying to get people to talk the right way and prevent them from talking the wrong way. We spend very little time discussing which incentive structures are the best, and tons of time talking about which sets of words are the right words and which sets of people are the right people. It’s why we write words at all: we think we’re the right people with the right words, and if we just say those words loudly enough, we’ll improve the world.
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David Pinsof writes: I believe people are motivated purely by self-interest, family-interest, and group-interest. No other motives exist because no other motives can survive the Darwinian process…
A gene for nepotism causes its carriers to lavish resources on genetic relatives, who are especially likely to share a copy of the gene for nepotism. Such a gene will spread when the benefit to the nepotist’s kin, multiplied by the probability of them sharing the nepotistic gene, outweighs the cost to the nepotist. It’s a kind of Darwinian accounting.
Then there’s group-interest. A gene for loyalty causes its carriers to selectively help specific people—i.e., allies—who can be trusted to help the carrier in return. Such a gene will spread when the expected benefit of getting helped outweighs the cost of helping. The benefit of having allies back you up in conflicts, for example, outweighs the cost of occasionally backing up your allies. More Darwinian accounting.
But not everyone can be an ally of everyone. Being loyal to one side means spurning the other. And resources are limited, so when you and I get more stuff (like power and status), we’re taking it away from someone else. And fitness is relative—it’s about who’s out-reproducing whom—so when our fitness goes up, someone else’s goes down. Which means hurting our rivals and helping our allies go hand in hand. Ergo, tribalism.
So we have arrived at the unholy trinity of human nature: self-interest, family-interest, and group-interest.
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David Pinsof writes: We love to be interesting. It captures people’s attention. It makes us feel smart and important. Psychologists compete to generate the most surprising, gee-whiz findings—which are the ones most likely to be false—so they can appear "interesting" to their peers. The stranger the finding, the less likely other plebeians are to believe it, which helps psychologists distinguish themselves from the plebeians.
Then there are the positive psychologists, who study how to be happy, even though nobody wants to be happy. These scholars aren’t so much interested in dunking on people or showing off how interesting they are; instead, they want to signal how nice they are. Happy people are friendly and easy to get along with, and we’ve picked up on this association. So people study happiness as a way of saying, “Hey look at me, I’m such a nice person.”
Then there are the political psychologists, who are mostly liberal, who study all the ways in which liberals are morally and intellectually superior to conservatives, despite the fact that liberals and conservatives have the same human nature, which includes the tendency to view outgroup competitors as morally and intellectually inferior.
None of this should surprise us. Like all humans, psychologists’ motives are more unflatteringthan they let on. They’re not noble seekers of wisdom and virtue, but normal, flawed humans, just like the rest of us.
If we want to improve social science, we must come to terms with this fact. The people studying humans are also humans, and that’s a problem. Zebras don’t study other zebras, and if they did, they would be very biased. For the same reason, humans are pretty bad candidates for studying humans. What to do?
Part of the solution is having more rigorous theories—ideally ones that leverage insights from evolutionary biology—that give psychologists less wiggle room to bullshit in their theorizing. Part of the solution is having better incentives for uncovering true information, rather than “interesting” information, like prediction markets, adversarial collaborations, pre-registration of hypotheses, and greater funding and support for replications. And part of the solution, of course, is psychologizing psychologists, so we know what they’re up to.
Which reminds me: what about me? Shouldn’t I psychologize the person who’s psychologizing the psychologists? I should, and I will. My motives are just as unflattering. I’m human too. Making other psychologists look bad makes me look good by comparison. It would be surprising if that fact did not tickle my dopaminergic neurons, vainglorious primate that I am.
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I studied Political Psychology in grad school, and my dissertation posed the question, “Why do we hold the political beliefs we do?”
You might think the answer is, “Because they’re true.” But you would be mistaken. Our beliefs are mainly about rallying support for the various factions and interest groups bound up with our political coalitions. Truth is beside the point. Whatever makes the country better is beside the point. Our politics is essentially no different than the politics of other social animals: we form complicated alliances to compete for power, status, and resources. The main difference between us and other animals is that our alliances are bigger and more complicated, comprising “strange bedfellows” like the alliance between devout Christians and wealthy businesspeople in the Republican Party (an alliance that is uncommon in other countries). If you want the full argument for this position, see my recent academic paper on the topic. If you want the general gist, see this post.
Just as seeing how the sausage gets made turns you off to sausage, seeing how our political beliefs get made turned me off to politics. It was a troubling experience. As someone who cares deeply about seeing through bullshit and believing true things (or who likes to think he does), I find it difficult to be a political person. Since ideologies are designed for rallying tribes, the odds of them accurately describing reality are low.
If you’re a member of “elite”, highly educated circles like I am, you are pretty much obligated to care a lot about politics, and to nod your head in agreement whenever people engage in partisan rants. In fact, you are obligated to join in on the ranting. It is a social ritual as old as our species: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and ranting against shared enemies has become the easiest way of making friends. Easier than talking about our passions, tastes, experiences, and curiosities. Easier than trying to understand how the world works, or why our species is so peculiar. Easier than talking about our families. Easier than almost anything.
So I have found myself increasingly alienated by our culture’s growing obsession with politics, despite the fact that people like me are in the majority. For example, did you know that roughly one in three people didn’t vote in the last presidential election, and that in prior years, it was closer to one in two? And that’s just for presidential elections—turnout is much lower for state and local elections. Besides, even among the people who do occasionally vote, a wealth of research shows that most of them don’t know much, or care much, about politics—they’re basically apolitical. But you never hear from these people on the internet, on podcasts, or on television. They don’t write books (that I’ve read). They don’t have substacks (that I’m aware of). They obviously don’t run for office. So it seems as if they don’t exist. But they are there, living among us. They deliver our packages, serve our food, fly our planes, fix our cars, and babysit our children. They’re not silent, because silence is deliberate. They are the Quiet Majority.
I used to be ashamed of my lack of interest in politics. Elite culture had convinced me I was a bad person for it. I felt guilty. I would try to force myself to keep up with political current events and manipulate myself into feeling as outraged as the people around me. I’d yell at myself: “David! Feel outraged!”. It didn’t work. I couldn’t feel anything about politics except despondency at the tragedy of the human condition. I flailed around for alternative political tribes to join but couldn’t find one that wasn’t overflowing with bullshit. I eventually settled on a vague sympathy for anarchy—the quixotic dream of a society without politics. Maybe if we could just stop competing for control over the monopoly of violence, or simply lose interest in controlling people with violence at all, and just live and let live, with a thousand different societies, businesses, communes, clubs, nonprofits, security companies, and arbitration firms, precisely tailored to the idiosyncratic needs of their members, with people free to join or leave whichever one they wanted, the world would be a better place. Less conflict, more diversity, better incentives, more effective and affordable security, fairer and speedier trials, less war, less crime, more options, more vibrancy, and more hope for the best societies to prevail against the worst ones, not through conquest, but through the freedom of voluntary association. The human species has lived without governments for roughly 99% of its history on this planet. Legislatures, nation-states, and militaries are recent innovations. Our minds are ill-equipped to deal with them. Perhaps it is time to return to our natural state, as members of small, nomadic bands, freely merging together and splitting apart as needed.
Is this bullshit? Probably. But it’s the best rationalization I could come up with for convincing myself that I wasn’t a bad person for ignoring politics.
But I have since come up with a better rationalization, and it comes from the wonderful and aptly titled book Why It’s OK to Ignore Politics, by Christopher Freiman. At the heart of the book is a powerful and underappreciated insight: politics is not the only way, or even the best way, to make the world a better place. Our culture has been working tirelessly to convince us of the opposite: that there is no nonpolitical way of being a good person. Ethics has been subsumed by politics. Curiosity has been subsumed by politics. The simple desire to learn a bit of evolutionary psychology has become a political statement. We can scarcely watch television without picking a side in the culture war.
To say this book is a breath of fresh air is the understatement of the century. We have literally thousands of books, published every year, with the implicit message that we should care more about politics. Yet there is only one book, to my knowledge, that argues the opposite.
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David Pinsof writes: Here’s a list of problems with the idea that humans are primarily interested in useful truth:
Most of the stuff that interests us is false and useless. And we know it. We freely admit it. We call this stuff “fiction.”
We’re not only interested in fiction; we’re more interested in fiction than reality. Novels sell better than textbooks. Movies sell better than documentaries. Tabloids are about a thousand times more interesting than scholarly journals.
We’re interested in celebrities, even though we we’ll never meet them. Useless.
We’re interested in sports, even though we can’t control the athletes. Useless.
We’re interested in sweeping generalizations, even though reality is complicated.
We’re interested in eloquence—enthralling speakers and stylish prose. But eloquence has nothing to do with truth or usefulness. Ditto for charisma, humor, whimsy, wit, passion, irony, and quirkiness.
We’re interested in new information (i.e. the “news”), even though the vast majority of useful truths are old.
We’re interested in spiritual flimflam about the “meaning of life,” even though it’s too vague to be useful.
We’re interested in self-help gurus who confidently tell us all that we can be the best, even though that is logically impossible.
We’re interested in contrarian hot takes, even though the conventional wisdom is usually truer and more useful.
We’re interested in simplistic partisan rants, and we’re bored by nuanced policy analysis. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
We’re interested in stuff that confirms our preconceptions. But that is the least useful information to focus on, because it just results in us doing what we were going to do anyways.
You know what’s actually useful? The tax code. Home repair. How cars work. Retirement planning. Noncollateralized loans. The actual policies going through Congress. The actual words in the contracts we DocuSign. Booooooooring!
Here’s a weird fact: modern humans have been around for roughly two hundred thousand years. Yet we only discovered how to find useful truths (i.e. science and free inquiry) a few hundred years ago—about 1% of our history. And plenty of countries stillhaven’t gotten the memo: heretics and dissidents are getting killed all the time. Humans really suck at seeking useful truth.
“But David,” you say, “it doesn’t make any sense. Why our brains so interested in bullshit? If our brains evolved by natural selection, then why do they function so poorly?”
They don’t. They work just fine. They just don’t work in the way you think they do.
People like to think that humans are the smart ones in the animal kingdom. We alone evolved to learn stuff, figure things out, and use tools. But that’s only a small part of the story of human brain evolution. The bigger part of the story is social. Our brains weren’t designed for solitary contemplation; they were designed for arguing, rationalizing, politicking, rule-following, covert rule-breaking, and excuse-making. We are homo hypocritus.
It’s actually pretty obvious when you think about it. How much of your brainpower is devoted to office politics and social life, as compared to, say, auto parts? How much of your conversations are devoted to gossip and people-stuff, as compared to, say, home repair? If we naturally use 90% of our brainpower for dealing with people, it’s hard to argue that our brains evolved primarily for tools.
Once we realize that the human brain is a fundamentally social brain, we can see the logic behind the subtle urges that goad us to click on this or skim through that. These urges are not designed for practical truth-seeking—or at least, that’s not their primary function. They’re designed to fulfill our social goals.
So what makes stuff interesting? Any information that helps us get what we want from the people around us, including the ugly things we can’t admit we want.
Below are some of the ugly things I’m talking about. These are the things that generally determine what humans find interesting:
We want to fit in. We often find stuff interesting because others find it interesting. Just as people can become famous for being famous, things can become interesting for being interesting. That’s why we’re interested in sports, celebrities, and the news, even though they’re mostly useless. Everyone talks about these things, and we don’t want to be left out of the conversation.
We want attention. When people listen to us, that’s a sign that we’re high status. We like that. So we’re interested in whatever grabs people’s attention, from the titillating to the gory to the gossipy to the paradoxical…
We want to form cliques. We’re constantly on the lookout for shareable tidbits we can use to signal membership in our special subculture, like historical esoterica or highfalutin theories. For example, if we casually mention the book “Capital in the 21st Century,” some people will look confused, but cool smart likeminded people will nod their heads. This allows us to covertly figure outwho’s smart and cool like us and who’s not, so we can connect with fellow members of the cognoscente, while subtly excluding dumb-dumbs who aren’t as cool as us. To pull off this strategy, though, we need to find nerd chic interesting in the first place. Not because it’s especially useful or accurate, but because it helps us hobnob with other smart, high-status people.
We want to display our superiority. The hotter the take, the fewer people believe it. So if we can convince people that the hot take is correct, then we get to look smarter than everyone else. The same thing goes for moral claims. If we can convince people that some widespread behavior is morally wrong—or some weird behavior is morally right—then we get to look holier than thou.
We want to display our group’s superiority. The more a piece of information disparages an enemy group (e.g., Republicans, “woke” people), the more we’re captivated by it. Spreading the disparaging information rallies our tribe and boosts solidarity. That’s why we’re more interested in simplistic partisan rants than nuanced policy analysis.
We want to persuade people. We want to justify our behavior, tell self-flattering stories, win debates, and rally people to our side. That’s why we’re interested in stuff that supports what we already believe or want to believe. The goal isn’t to learn anything new or better understand reality; it’s to gather ammunition for arguments.
We want to signal. Talking about scary stuff makes us look competent. Talking about complicated stuff makes us look smart. Talking about feel-good stuff makes us seem warm and cuddly. But in order to signal these traits, we have to be interested in scary, complicated, or feel-good stuff in the first place. So we’re interested in whatever helps us signal the kind of person we are—or want to be.
We want to be flattered. That’s why self-help is such a popular genre: it always involves praising the reader and telling them what wonderful people they are. The same thing applies to the groups we belong to. Any information that flatters our group, that “inspires” us and tells us how brave and virtuous we are—that’s interesting.
We want to oneup everyone else. That’s why we like cynical bullshit, including this very substack: it gives us all an opportunity to dunk on other people. If everyone else is a hypocrite, and everything else is bullshit, then guess who comes out looking good? You and me!
We want to show we’re on the same page. Working together requires coordinating our movements, which is why dancing and chanting feel good: it makes us feel like we’re a single unit (plus it strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies). But working together also requires coordinating our thinking. That’s why we like sweeping generalizations: it’s easier to mentally coordinate on false simplicity than real complexity. The ultimate mental dance is to converge on the same banal interpretation of a deepity, paradox, or jargon-laden word salad.
We want to be associated with high status people. That’s why “eloquence” is so interesting. It signals all sorts of cool characteristics in the speaker (wit, creativity, social skills), which means that the person must have lots of status or be well on their way to getting it. We want to listen to high status people, and we want to parrot whatever eloquent bullshit they’re saying, because that raises our status by association.
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ICT might also explain why working-class white people, around a decade ago, suffered a huge increase in “deaths of despair” and later embraced a “burn it all down” Trumpian populism. It’s not that they were poor or disadvantaged per se. Nonwhite people were (and still are) significantly poorer and more disadvantaged, yet they weren’t dying of despair. Why the difference? Nonwhite people thought they were better off than their parents’ generation, likely because prior generations were more overtly discriminatory. Working class white people, on the other hand, thought they were worse off than their parents’ generation, likely due to rising urbanization, educational credentialism, and declining low-skilled manufacturing work. Some working-class white people even thought they were worse off than African Americans, due to the zero-sum nature of social status: as one group rises, another must fall. The result was a white populist backlash that nearly destroyed American democracy (and still might).[2]
There is an important lesson here. In order to collectively satisfy our icky, competitive desires, we must ensure that everybody outcompetes their parents and grandparents in the game of life. Old people must never be cool. This ongoing upstaging of the elderly is crucial to the long-term wellbeing of our species, and it must continue for all demographic groups—or else we’re fucked. The moment any segment of society stops outcompeting their elders is the moment society starts to unravel. We must keep trouncing our elders, generation after generation, or else the fundamental tragedy of the human condition will catch up to us, and we will literally die of sadness.
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Did you spot the pattern? Of course you did. It’s the unflattering way our desires work. We’re constantly comparing ourselves to the people around us, and we’re never quite satisfied until we’re just a little bit better than, or better off than, they are. This isn’t true of allour desires (sometimes, we’re just thirsty and want a glass of water), but it’s true of a large percentage of them—dare I say most of them. The majority of our time and energy is consumed by small-minded social competition, and we really hate to admit this. Our need to cover it up is, perhaps, the greatest source of human bullshit.
Why are our desires secretly like this? Because natural selection, the thing that made our desires, is an icky, competitive process. Animals compete with members of their species for genetic representation in future generations. They do this by competing for physical stuff (like food and territory), social stuff (like friends and mates), and the capacity to get social and physical stuff (like status and power). The competition rages over thousands of generations, and the winners leave more descendants than the losers. We are descendants of the winners, and we have inherited their winning characteristics, including their desire to win—and to conceal that desire from themselves and others (in order to win).
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People should be allowed to express their political opinions freely in the workplace (but athletes should not be allowed to kneel during the national anthem).
Usually when I talk about these confusing beliefs, people get defensive. They come up with ad-hoc explanations. They talk about how some of these beliefs—either the first half or the second half—are actually perfectly consistent and logically defensible. As for the other half, of course they’re confusing! Those people are crazy.
But this is all very fishy. The more we try to patch up the inconsistencies in our ideology (but not the other ideology), the more these contortions look like epicycles in a pre-Copernican political science.
ChatGPT says: Nathaniel Branden’s work on self-esteem and Charles Taylor’s notion of the buffered identity can be mapped together in interesting ways—they both deal with how modern selves structure their experience of the world, but from different angles.
1. Branden’s core idea:
Branden framed self-esteem as the basic need to experience oneself as competent and worthy of happiness. He tied it to two practices:
Self-efficacy (confidence in one’s mind and ability to deal with life)
Self-respect (feeling oneself as deserving of happiness, integrity, and love).
For Branden, low self-esteem comes from self-evasion, dishonesty with oneself, or reliance on external approval in place of genuine self-trust.
2. Taylor’s buffered identity:
Taylor contrasts the porous self (pre-modern, open to spirits, fate, and cosmic forces) with the buffered self (modern, enclosed, experiencing itself as autonomous, bounded, and self-sufficient). The buffered self sees meaning as generated internally, not received from a transcendent order. It is “buffered” against outside powers, but also vulnerable to emptiness and fragility, since value has to be continually produced from within.
3. Mapping the two:
Self-esteem as a buffered virtue: Branden’s model assumes the buffered self. The individual is responsible for generating inner worth through honest awareness, self-responsibility, and rational integrity. There’s no appeal to external sacred orders; the “locus of value” is inside the self.
Fragility problem: Taylor notes that the buffered identity can feel hollow, perpetually anxious about its own foundations. Branden’s whole project can be read as an attempt to provide tools to stabilize the buffered identity—by training the self to relate to itself in a way that sustains confidence and dignity.
Autonomy vs. recognition: Branden insists on self-acceptance and independence from blind conformity, but he also admits that recognition from others can reinforce self-esteem. This parallels Taylor’s observation that the buffered self seeks both autonomy and affirmation in a secular age.
Moral horizon: For Branden, to live consciously and with integrity is a moral choice that nourishes self-esteem. For Taylor, the buffered identity risks losing moral depth when detached from larger horizons of meaning. One could argue Branden fills that vacuum with a secular ethic of self-realization.
4. Where they diverge:
Branden saw self-esteem as universally achievable if one lived by certain practices. Taylor would say this confidence depends on the cultural plausibility of the buffered self—a late-modern construction, not a timeless truth.
Branden viewed the buffered condition as liberation (autonomy, reason). Taylor sees it as ambivalent—freedom coupled with loss of transcendence.
So in short: Branden’s self-esteem teachings are almost a manual for how to live as a buffered identity without collapsing into self-doubt. They presuppose the buffered self and try to give it psychological ballast, whereas Taylor is more diagnostic and historical—showing how the very framework that makes Branden’s ideas intelligible is a product of modernity.
Here’s how it looks if you imagine someone with a porous identity trying to make sense of Branden’s self-esteem teachings:
1. The porous horizon of meaning
In a porous world (pre-modern, or strongly religious/animist), the self is not sealed off. Meaning, value, and danger flow through from outside: spirits, fate, God, demons, ancestors. A person’s worth is largely received, not generated — bestowed by one’s community, faith, or cosmic order. Self-esteem isn’t a standalone psychological achievement; it’s bound up with grace, honor, ritual purity, or divine favor.
2. Branden’s emphasis on self-responsibility
Branden says: “Your self-esteem depends on how honestly you live with yourself, how much integrity and consciousness you bring to your choices.”
A porous identity would find this odd or even alien — worth isn’t manufactured by one’s own mind, but mediated through participation in larger orders (sacraments, rituals, caste, honor systems). The porous self doesn’t own its boundaries enough to see “self-efficacy” as the ground of dignity. Instead, its dignity comes from alignment with the outside.
3. Fragility vs. security
Buffered fragility: For Branden, the risk is self-doubt, alienation, inner collapse if you don’t live up to your standards.
Porous fragility: The risk is being invaded or cursed, losing divine favor, falling out of harmony with cosmic or communal forces. Self-esteem is not something you shore up with daily practices of consciousness, but something vulnerable to external disorder.
4. Recognition
Branden says recognition is helpful but secondary; what matters most is your own self-regard.
A porous self would reverse this: recognition and external legitimation (by God, king, elders, spirits) is foundational. Self-esteem in Branden’s sense would be unintelligible without anchoring in external validation.
5. The moral framework
Branden’s practices (living consciously, responsibly, with integrity) are self-generated, chosen principles. A porous self would see these as too thin: morality is not invented, but received from a sacred or communal order. To imagine one’s self-esteem arising from self-created principles would feel presumptuous, even blasphemous.
Bottom line
For the buffered self, Branden provides a toolkit to stabilize autonomy and keep the modern individual from collapsing inward.
For the porous self, Branden’s model would seem incoherent — self-esteem would not be something you cultivate privately, but something you inherit or receive from your placement in the cosmic and social order.
1. Why Branden’s framework resonates with some
Self-made worth: Branden’s message — “you create your self-esteem through honest awareness, responsibility, and integrity” — plugs straight into the buffered identity. For people who see themselves as autonomous choosers, it feels empowering: I am my own foundation.
Therapeutic culture: Modern psychology, self-help, coaching, and even wellness industries are built on this logic. You don’t wait for grace, tradition, or authority; you practice mindfulness, journaling, affirmations, cognitive reframing — all self-generated tools to maintain self-esteem.
Meritocratic alignment: In liberal/professional classes, Branden’s model matches the ethic of individual performance, achievement, and self-actualization. High self-esteem is proof of inner alignment with your rational self, and thus of your competence and value.
2. Why others reject or distrust it
Traditionalists and religious communities: For people with lingering porous intuitions, self-esteem is not self-made but received: from God’s image, the family’s honor, social status, or divine law. To say “you generate your own worth” sounds arrogant, thin, or spiritually empty.
Collectivist critiques: Even secular critics argue that Branden over-privileges the individual. They see his model as blind to structural forces — race, class, gender, systemic inequality — that shape whether someone can realistically sustain “self-efficacy.” To them, Branden sounds like buffered hyper-individualism.
Populist backlash: In some circles, especially those that valorize faith, community, or tradition, Branden’s ideas are coded as “elite self-help talk,” detached from the shared moral orders that give ordinary life meaning.
3. Culture wars lens
Left-leaning therapeutic culture: Often embraces Branden-like frameworks — emphasizing empowerment, self-love, boundaries, self-care. But it mixes in critiques of external oppression, which complicates the pure “self-made esteem” story.
Right-leaning traditionalism: Pushes back, saying real worth is anchored in God, nation, family, natural law. Self-esteem as Branden defines it is seen as hollow if detached from sacred order.
Secular elite buffered identity: Finds Branden’s model stabilizing — it gives a moral-psychological script for thriving in a world without transcendence.
4. The irony
Taylor would say: the very intensity of today’s fights around self-worth, empowerment, and fragility show how precarious the buffered self is. Branden’s system is one attempt to patch the hole — a rationalized ethic of self-esteem as ballast. But those who resist it aren’t just being stubborn; they’re operating with a more porous sense of the self, where meaning can’t be generated by the individual alone.
Here’s how Branden’s self-esteem framework and Taylor’s buffered/porous distinction play out in the mental health and fragility debates today:
1. Safe spaces and fragility
Buffered framing (Branden-style): Fragility is an inner problem. The solution is to build stronger self-esteem by taking responsibility for your perceptions, thoughts, and actions. You don’t demand the world protect you; you build resilience.
Porous framing: Harm and danger can “invade” the self from outside — words, images, environments carry power. So protection (safe spaces, speech restrictions) makes sense. Worth is not just internal; it is preserved by shaping the external environment.
2. Toxic masculinity and gender norms
Buffered: Branden’s approach: true self-esteem comes from honesty with yourself, not from conforming to external scripts. A man with self-esteem doesn’t need dominance games; he lives with integrity. This critiques “toxic” models as evidence of low self-esteem.
Porous: In a porous framing, masculinity is sustained by external codes of honor, ritual, and recognition. Losing those codes means losing identity. Hence why some traditionalists bristle at “toxic masculinity” critiques: they see an external order dissolving, not just private psychology at stake.
3. Self-love culture and therapy talk
Buffered: Branden is almost the intellectual father of this movement — affirmations, self-acceptance, inner dialogue, all aimed at stabilizing the self against emptiness. The emphasis is on the individual’s responsibility to nurture self-worth.
Porous critique: From a porous view, this can feel hollow. “You don’t make yourself lovable; God does. Or your family does. Or your nation’s honor does.” Self-love without an external anchor looks like narcissism, because value is supposed to come from outside.
4. Why the clash is so heated
Buffered camps (therapy culture, liberal elites): Believe you can and must build inner ballast. They push resilience training, CBT, empowerment, boundaries.
Porous camps (traditionalists, populists, many religious groups): See this as delusional self-construction — a buffered fantasy of autonomy. For them, fragility isn’t fixed by internal work but by restoring external structures of meaning (faith, family, order).
5. Taylor’s lens
Taylor would say: the culture wars about mental health are really battles over which ontology of the self we live inside. Branden is the buffered self’s guru. But those with porous intuitions won’t ever buy into his framework — they want recognition and security from outside orders, not just self-generated esteem.
LF: I believe that we’re all oscillating between porous and buffered identity, but some groups are more buffered (those with advanced secular education) and other groups are more porous (traditional, religious). We all have situations in our lives, largely at work or secular school or in public with strangers, where we strongly incentivized to put on buffered identity.
ChatGPT says: Taylor himself says we never fully escape the porous intuitions; the buffered self is an achievement of modernity, but it’s “haunted” by porousness. We oscillate.
How the oscillation shows up:
Secular/educated classes: More buffered. They assume the self is autonomous, bounded, rational, responsible for generating its own meaning. Branden’s self-esteem language resonates here — your worth is in your hands, build it through conscious living.
Traditional/religious groups: More porous. They see the self as open to blessing, curse, sin, divine grace, communal honor. Value isn’t self-generated but received. This is why Branden’s framework sounds thin or arrogant to them.
Everyday life mix: Even secular people revert to porous thinking in certain contexts — “bad vibes” in a room, “energy” from a crowd, feeling “attacked” by words. And even traditional people show buffered intuitions in therapy or when speaking about self-improvement.
Culture-wide oscillation:
The 20th century therapeutic revolution (where Branden is central) massively expanded buffered self-techniques — therapy, self-help, resilience training.
At the same time, we see porous revivals: fundamentalist religion, conspiracy culture (demons → “deep state”), or even wellness spirituality (chakras, astrology). These are porous languages trying to make sense of vulnerability.
The politics of it:
Buffered-heavy groups (universities, professional classes) valorize autonomy, self-construction, and resilience.
Porous-heavy groups (religious communities, populist movements) valorize protection, divine order, and recognition from outside powers.
The friction comes when buffered groups think porous groups are clinging to superstition, while porous groups think buffered ones are arrogantly cut off from deeper sources of meaning.
You’re right: it’s not a linear story from porous → buffered. It’s an ongoing oscillation, and the balance differs by subculture.
The buffered identity isn’t just an inner state, it’s a role we’re incentivized to perform in certain arenas:
1. Work and school
In professional settings you’re expected to be rational, composed, bounded. No spirits, no fate, no “I felt cursed today.” The workplace rewards self-control, autonomy, “objectivity.”
Schools train kids to treat themselves as buffered: solve problems with reason, don’t talk about supernatural causation, don’t admit porous experiences like “the room felt haunted.”
2. Public with strangers
The more anonymous and impersonal the interaction, the more buffered identity dominates. You can’t assume shared sacred meanings, so you stick to neutral, bounded language: contracts, rights, preferences, data.
Think of customer service, legal disputes, bureaucracy: the whole machinery assumes buffered selves negotiating.
3. Incentives for buffering
Credibility: If you show porous reasoning in a secular-professional context (“God told me this is true”), you lose authority.
Efficiency: Buffered scripts cut down ambiguity — everything reduced to internal choice and external rules.
Status: In elite, educated circles, being buffered is high-status — it signals rationality, maturity, cosmopolitanism.
But…
In intimate life (family, religion, close friends), porousness floods back. People pray, share dreams, talk about vibes, rely on rituals.
Online communities can go porous too — conspiracy subcultures, fandoms, spirituality forums — all treat selves as penetrated by external forces again.
So yes: the modern condition is situational oscillation. Most of us are bi-cultural in that sense — buffered in public, porous in private. And the pressure to stay buffered in secular domains often intensifies private longing for porous experiences (revivals, mysticism, conspiracy, ecstatic music, drugs).
Here’s why Branden may resonate with you even as a traditionally porous/Orthodox Jew:
1. Branden’s ethic of responsibility overlaps with Torah ethics
Branden insists self-esteem grows from living consciously, responsibly, and with integrity. That’s not foreign to Orthodoxy — it parallels Torah’s demand for yashrut (uprightness), emet (truth), cheshbon hanefesh (soul-accounting). Both frameworks say: your inner life matters, and you must align actions with principles.
2. Buffering as a useful tool in secular domains
As you said: in work, school, public life, we’re incentivized to act buffered. Branden gives practical tools for thriving in those domains — cultivating self-trust, not collapsing under outside disapproval, maintaining dignity without needing external validation. As an Orthodox Jew moving in secular spaces, that’s powerful armor.
3. Branden fills a modern psychological gap
Tradition gives you external anchors: Hashem, halacha, community, mitzvot. But modern life also demands inner ballast when those anchors aren’t recognized or reinforced. Branden’s self-esteem model plugs that gap — a kind of “secular spiritual practice” that helps you stand firm when the outside world doesn’t affirm your values.
4. Dual coding: porous + buffered
As a Jew, you locate ultimate worth in being b’tzelem Elokim (in God’s image) — a porous, received identity.
As a modern individual, you also feel the pressure to generate inner stability — buffered self-esteem.
Liking Branden doesn’t mean abandoning porousness; it means using buffered tools alongside porous anchors. You end up with two operating systems running at once: divine dignity + psychological practices.
5. The deeper reason
Branden is attractive because he promises that you can own your dignity even when the world ignores your metaphysical foundations. That’s a survival skill in secular society. And for someone religious, it’s not heretical — it’s supplementary. You don’t replace God’s image; you fortify it with conscious living.
The transcript treats “emotional sobriety” as maturing into a buffered self (inner locus of control, self-authorship), then borrows porous practices (prayer, meditation, community) instrumentally to support that buffered stance.
Evidence from their own language
Freedom = capacity to choose one’s response; “appropriate and honest relationship to reality” (2:41–3:12). Classic buffered agency.
Second pass through the steps to address “emotional dependency,” with the aim to “support ourselves” (5:12–5:36). Emotional dependence is framed as pathology; self-support as health.
Clear inner locus: “I generate my feelings by the meaning I’m giving” (7:53–8:06); “You don’t get to tell me who I am… I become the final sifter” (11:27–12:04). Buffered identity 101.
Entitlement critique: “surrender that sense of entitlement that reality must follow my bidding” (8:42–9:04) and “life should conform to my expectations” is “the big lie” (9:12–9:49). This is reframing suffering as a meaning-making error fixable by inner work.
Responsibility vs blame: taking responsibility “empowers”; externalizing “disempowers” (16:02–17:15). Pure buffered moral psychology.
Learning from experience via “integration… connecting dots” (30:10–31:08). Self as reflective, self-correcting system.
Where porous elements appear (but get subordinated)
Step 11, “relationship with God as we understand it” (19:44–20:24), St. Francis prayer (33:05–33:12), loving-kindness meditation (25:54–26:26). These are used as techniques to enhance autonomy, not as authoritative, external orders that define the self.
They even warn against projecting control needs onto God (20:24–20:44)—i.e., keep prayer in a therapeutic lane that serves buffered freedom.
Net: the telos is a resilient, self-authored agent who regulates meanings and choices; God/ritual/community are welcomed insofar as they strengthen that inner regulation. That’s buffered identity with porous tools.
How you (Orthodox/trad) can use this without losing your porous anchors
Keep ultimate worth anchored in b’tzelem Elokim; treat Branden-style “freedom” as the disciplined stewardship of that gift, not its source.
Let Step-11 practices be avodah that orients the heart to Hashem, while you still own your reactions in secular arenas.
Translate their maxims into halachic/musar terms: “I generate my feelings by the meanings I give” → cheshbon hanefesh; “final arbiter” → kavod habriyot plus daas Torah guiding conscience, not random opinion.
Bottom line: the discussion presumes buffered identity as the goal of emotional sobriety, then selectively instrumentalizes porous practices. You can adopt their psychological skills, but keep metaphysical grounding porous: God bestows dignity; you practice responsibility to express it.
AA both critiques the naïve buffered self (“self-will run riot”) and then builds a chastened, disciplined buffered identity—anchored by a porous horizon (Higher Power). It’s a hybrid that ultimately valorizes bounded agency, self-regulation, and responsibility.
How the Steps map:
1–3 (Admit powerlessness; turn will/ life over):
Porous correction to over-buffered ego. You relinquish sovereign self-rule, re-situate the self under a Higher Power, and puncture omnipotent autonomy.
4–7 (Moral inventory, admit, become ready, humbly ask):
Buffered skills training. Radical self-examination, truth-telling, defect targeting, willingness—an inner locus of control for meanings, reactions, habits. “Humbly ask” keeps the porous check active so agency doesn’t relapse into ego.
8–10 (Amends; continued inventory; prompt correction):
Buffered responsibility in the social world. You own consequences, repair relationships, and run a continuous feedback loop (Step 10) of monitoring and course-correction—classic buffered self-governance.
11 (Prayer and meditation):
Porous practices instrumentalized to stabilize buffered agency. Prayer/meditation are framed as tools to discern and align behavior; they warn against using God to reassert control (anti-magical check).
12 (Carrying the message; service):
Buffered identity expressed as reliable agency for others. Service externalizes the disciplined self into action; community remains the porous container preventing solipsism.
Core Big Book themes that valorize the buffered self
“Acceptance,” “restraint of tongue and pen,” “pause when agitated”: self-regulation and choice.
“We cease fighting anything or anyone”: cognitive/behavioral reframing vs control.
“Faith without works is dead”: agency is required; grace doesn’t replace effort.
“Cleaning house” (inventory/amends) is an ongoing internal audit—proto-CBT.
Where the porous stays decisive
Ultimate warrant isn’t the autonomous self but “God as we understood Him” and the group conscience.
Grace, not willpower alone, breaks the addiction’s grip; community ritualizes dependence on something beyond the self.
Net mapping
AA dethrones the grandiose buffered self, then constructs a sober buffered identity: bounded, self-observing, responsible, capable of choice—kept humble by porous anchors (Higher Power, group, prayer).
Pitfalls on both sides: hyper-buffered (white-knuckle control, perfectionism) vs hyper-porous (passivity, “God will do it for me”). The program steers a middle path: disciplined agency under transcendence.
If you’re trad/religious, that’s why it fits: keep ultimate worth and guidance external (porous), use Steps 4–10 to cultivate the buffered skills modern life demands, and let Step 11/12 keep the ego right-sized.
LF: I often regret things I’ve said and done, but I don’t like hating myself. When I regret the past, how can I frame that to my maximum benefit? One possibility is – I was doing the best I could at the time with the tools that I had and now I have more tools and so I can do better going forward. Two – that was my journey.
ChatGPT says: Both of those reframes are solid and widely used in recovery, therapy, and self-development. They shift you from shame (self-condemnation) to growth (self-acceptance + responsibility). Here are a few more reframes that might serve you:
1. “That was training, not failure.”
Each mistake was rehearsal material for the person I’m becoming. Without those reps, I wouldn’t have built the muscles I have now.
2. “That was part of my teshuvah arc.”
For a Jewish lens: missteps aren’t wasted—they’re the raw material for return, repair, and growth. Regret is only toxic when it freezes me; when it motivates teshuvah, it’s holy.
3. “That was my shadow teaching me.”
What embarrassed or shamed me then is now a teacher. It shows me where I was unconscious. I don’t need to erase it—I need to learn from it.
4. “I was experimenting with identity.”
We try on selves, postures, words. Sometimes they don’t fit. That doesn’t make them stains—it makes them evidence of a living, searching person.
5. “That was a stage, not my essence.”
My worst words or actions don’t define my core self. They’re snapshots of a younger, less-integrated stage of development.
6. “That was grist for integration.”
The past feeds my present wholeness. Without it, I’d be less complete.
Daily Self-Talk for Regret
Grounding:
“I pause. I notice the regret, but I don’t fuse with it. It’s just a wave passing through.”
Compassion:
“I was doing the best I could at the time with the tools I had. Now I have more tools.”
Growth lens:
“That moment wasn’t wasted—it was training, a step in my journey. Even my missteps gave me wisdom.”
Identity check:
“My worst actions do not define me. They were stages, not my essence. My essence is b’tzelem Elokim—worthy, repairable, and growing.”
Reframe to purpose:
“I can use this regret as fuel for teshuvah, for integration, for kindness to others who struggle.”
Closing:
“Today I choose to live consciously, responsibly, and with integrity. The past is not my prison; it is my teacher.”
Posted inAddiction, Buffered, Porous|Comments Off on How do Nathaniel Branden’s teachings about self-esteem map on to the buffered identity?
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