This is a companion piece to a piece I wrote for my own blog, The Professional Amateur. In that piece, I talk about my experiences writing other people’s college application essays, how I would tackle them if I had to do it myself, and how I would try to get a dog an MBA. Reading that first is optional but recommended for your enjoyment.
Why is Self-Centered an insult?
We are all self-centered. Naturally, it is impossible to escape the confines of your own brain. You must see everything through your own eyes, hear through your own ears, and think with your own mind – nobody else’s. Thinking about it that way, the use of self-centered as an insult is more a matter of degree than of principle. Everyone is self-centered, and what people really think poorly of is being only self-centered, simply not considering the needs and wants of others around you.
Vilifying a blunt truth of life is instructive – I have written before on this theme. The idea that one can simply flex their power and influence upon us without the option to resist is an affront and a challenge that requires either combat or submission. As such, we come up with organizing principles – rules that simplify communication and allow us to couch our displays of power and influences in acceptable terms. These become, in some sense, reality, forming a set of totalitarian rules that one must follow to join or remain part of one of the fractal communities that make up society.
It then follows that the current highly-networked society puts a great deal of emphasis of caring for others. As the minimum viable size of communities rises due to greater specialization in tasks, communication and consideration become more and more paramount to maintaining community numbers and skills. Self-centeredness to a greater degree than others’ becomes an obstacle to community life, and is therefore called out.
Selected for Ambition
Here’s the thing, though – society still needs ambitious leaders and go-getters to entrust positions of power to. Greater specialization and division of labor means that even labors such as leadership, vision, and setting rules must be specialized into. We need a way to select who is allowed to manage things and steer the ship of society – the bridge crew to our deckhands, engineers, and seamen. All forms of government have a different method of doing this – warlordism through success in war, aristocracy by blood, democracy by votes, autocracy by ability to maintain rule. I do not think we live in any of these systems.
I think we live in a credentialorcracy, ruled by degrees, awards, titles and positions at megacorporations and international non-government organizations, all selecting for a few things – the wealth, the ambition, and the ruthlessness to ascend the vampiric pyramid of power and sit at its zenith. No better example exists than this article’s companion piece, where I encourage the itinerant applicant to upsell their experiences and tailor the story of their life to the whims of the admissions committee. Naked ambition must be clothed in the toga of idealism and concern for others in order to make it palatable to make a grab for the reins of power. Those whose naked ambition is earliest exposed are removed from the contest – to allow such an operator to exist could discredit it in the eyes of others and jeopardize the whole enterprise, so the gatekeepers naturally select for those who can best conceal their naked ambition. Theories and ideals are crafted to support this narrative, and show handy guideposts on how to climb the social cliff face.
Important to the credentialocracy is the appearance of egalitarianism while staying very strongly rooted in origins. Credentials such as education and awards are allegedly available to everyone, but in practice have buy-in costs. Diversity purports to make education available to everyone, but in practice makes them available to everyone the admissions committee thinks fits their idea of what “everyone” looks like. The preface “As an X person…” before any statement is the perfect manifestation of this look – one’s ancestry and origins are turned into credentials, providing context on the surface while conveniently excluding others and elevating oneself as a source.
This phenomenon wears many names and many faces – scientism, credentialism, expert worship, and effective altruism being just a few. The one I believe best explains how the sausage is made, however, is the humblebrag.
The Humblebrag
Webster’s defines the humblebrag as follows:
Humblebrag (verb): to make a seemingly modest, self-critical, or casual statement or reference that is meant to draw attention to one’s admirable or impressive qualities or achievements.
An example is provided below:
Writing is so torturously difficult – my inventories massive, my quality average, my sales nonexistent, myself at a loss.
Translation:
I write a lot as a labor of love, look at me being so artistic and creative.
A lot of the victim mentality and self-flagellating you see in public speech is simply a naked power grab. Ostentatious displays of charity and care for others are naturally used as a cynical marketing tactic, getting you to pay more for doing good works. Classifications such as fair trade, organic food, sustainable/responsible sourcing, so on and so forth – there is always an element of portraying the product as a responsible choice that does “the right thing”.
From a pure profit-oriented standpoint, one would think these are crosses to bear, but they’re really just part of the game. Pretending to be relatable matches the faux-egalitarian ethic of the credentialocracy, which encourages troweling the makeup onto the profit-greedy pig like it’s Animal Farm. The humblebrag is a perfect manifestation of this trend.
Advice to the Ambitious
Specialize into a form of public outreach or a fashionable cause that will allow you to make a lot of money. Convince others that you wholeheartedly support this cause, tying it into your life story and making your growth appear to be a natural extension of your capabilities. Go to big schools and corporations with international reach. Have or make a lot of money or rich friends who can fund your prestige-enhancing tech startup, renewable energy project, or social outreach effort. Use this to secure yourself a golden parachute or establish connections that allow you to enrich yourself. Above all, make room for those below rising to the top, because as their prestige rises, so does yours by proxy (do not forget this step). Last of all, refuse the temptations of lifestyle inflation. Continue to live simply and sock away savings so you can quit while you’re ahead - success can be fleeting, after all, and there’s no guarantee that this score won’t be your last.
Believing in any of it is optional. Collecting credentials is everything. And remember to quit while you’re ahead.
A few thoughts.
Being susceptible to Power and influence from others is a thing that we all must grow out of. It starts naturally with parents and teachers. No big deal, but hopefully we don't thrash around too much about it. The networked society grows, but is that really OUR society. When studying ancient communities, Robin Dunbar came up with 150, about the maximum number of people you could have a relationship with. After that, you can't hold it all together. Well, in animal groupings too, depending on their brain size. Sure, nowadays you may have more than 150 "subscribers", but how deep can those relationships be?
Selected by Ambition
There's a way how to select who is allowed to manage; (then you list a few by force), but still, some people have the urge to rise to leadership and some don't. To find a way to be "selected", credentials are how they find their way in. This includes our professed modern ideals; we're not even sure, just trying on the different costumes. Or our mentors and role models might point us in one direction. One’s ancestry and origins are turned into credentials in the "old world". With the novo-rich, money is enough.
We all curate our life story, and especially to ourselves. Ambition is good, but not if it is ambition through any means, by climbing over others.
You mention the "gatekeepers", that is a wonderment?
The victim mentality and self-flagellating you see in public speech can be a disguise. Or it gets votes from other victims. But more dangerously, we may believe our own words if we say them often enough, and then we denigrate ourselves for real. In our own mind we become disempowered.
The last part: what is security for the future? Even the Jet-Set goes bankrupt. The more you have, the more you consume, or place your bets, and speculate. Speculation means ride on the back of the trends. Is there really the impartial force of the "market", and neutral investor confidence? Or is it just the manipulation of the hedge funds. Can the trends move sharply?
If you have developed a broad outlook and built up your own agency, you'll probably be ready for anything. Well, that's the goal. If your bank goes under and locks its doors, what will you do? I don't say plan for that, but work with personal empowerment, and build confidence with a chain of successes. Small or large, doesn't matter.
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