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How can I grow beyond cynism/hopelesness?

#1 · September 2, 2023, 12:05 pm

Quote from Power Duck on September 2, 2023, 12:05 pm
Hello guys,
I was planning to create this post after finishing my finals, however this issue of mine is affecting both my mood and my studies.
Some time after I joined here I decided to understand how evil can people be. Some of my methods were normal, that is doing some introspection and watching murderers in interrogations. Other methods were extreme involving watching disturbing things done to people, I'm not proud of it, neither I think it's something a person should watch to mature and realise how evil we can be. However it accomplished what I intended: I realised how far evil can go, that evil is not something strange that you rarely found, it's something that can be found everywhere in many people you will meet, something that's part of each of us, something that makes us human, and that, unless we become aware of it we will hurt those who care about us.
That was an introduction, I eventually accepted the absurdity of life and that death and cruelty are something common, beauty and kindness wouldn't be desirable traits if cruelty and evil didn't exist.
However there's just this thing I cannot get over with, and that is the fact that in most relationships, your values, your goals, your efforts, and your personality don't mean nothing unless you first have power. I understand this, we are biologically programmed to like powerful people, while powerless people or less powerful people dont get much attention. However this doesn't make the feeling go away, the very fact that most people aren't aware of this increases the feeling of loneliness and of "not fitting". Another thing that causes me to feel hopeless is the fact that mental health issues and unconsciousness about ones psyche and deep thoughts create low quality individuals that aren't capable of having healthy and loving win-win friendships and relationships, they are at mercy of their instincts and this never ends well, so they end up pulling power moves to deal with their issues. Most people are like that, specially young folks, internet and social media offer an instant escape from the horrors of their minds, thus the problem is never solved and a broken society is formed. Because of this reason I often feel lonely and different from the rest, specially considering I don't have many friends to talk to about my struggles and doubts, hell the friends I have would be better described with the word "acquaintances".
Maybe it's my environment or the people I choose to spend time with. But I have yet to meet a person my age that's high quality. At least this website as shown me that those people indeed exist.
So, enough ranting and lamenting, I don't have meaningful relationships but I have goals and hobbies I enjoy so 1/2 of my emotional needs are fulfilled. My question here is: how did you personally grow beyond this feeling of cynism and hopelesness?
I appreciate the help.
Cheers.
P.S:
I deleted things that felt manipulative. If there's anything else that feels like it, feel free to comment about it in feedback/clarifications.

Hello guys,

I was planning to create this post after finishing my finals, however this issue of mine is affecting both my mood and my studies.

Some time after I joined here I decided to understand how evil can people be. Some of my methods were normal, that is doing some introspection and watching murderers in interrogations. Other methods were extreme involving watching disturbing things done to people, I'm not proud of it, neither I think it's something a person should watch to mature and realise how evil we can be. However it accomplished what I intended: I realised how far evil can go, that evil is not something strange that you rarely found, it's something that can be found everywhere in many people you will meet, something that's part of each of us, something that makes us human, and that, unless we become aware of it we will hurt those who care about us.

That was an introduction, I eventually accepted the absurdity of life and that death and cruelty are something common, beauty and kindness wouldn't be desirable traits if cruelty and evil didn't exist.

However there's just this thing I cannot get over with, and that is the fact that in most relationships, your values, your goals, your efforts, and your personality don't mean nothing unless you first have power. I understand this, we are biologically programmed to like powerful people, while powerless people or less powerful people dont get much attention. However this doesn't make the feeling go away, the very fact that most people aren't aware of this increases the feeling of loneliness and of "not fitting". Another thing that causes me to feel hopeless is the fact that mental health issues and unconsciousness about ones psyche and deep thoughts create low quality individuals that aren't capable of having healthy and loving win-win friendships and relationships, they are at mercy of their instincts and this never ends well, so they end up pulling power moves to deal with their issues. Most people are like that, specially young folks, internet and social media offer an instant escape from the horrors of their minds, thus the problem is never solved and a broken society is formed. Because of this reason I often feel lonely and different from the rest, specially considering I don't have many friends to talk to about my struggles and doubts, hell the friends I have would be better described with the word "acquaintances".

Maybe it's my environment or the people I choose to spend time with. But I have yet to meet a person my age that's high quality. At least this website as shown me that those people indeed exist.

So, enough ranting and lamenting, I don't have meaningful relationships but I have goals and hobbies I enjoy so 1/2 of my emotional needs are fulfilled. My question here is: how did you personally grow beyond this feeling of cynism and hopelesness?

I appreciate the help.

Cheers.

P.S:

I deleted things that felt manipulative. If there's anything else that feels like it, feel free to comment about it in feedback/clarifications.

Lucio Buffalmano, B and 2 other users have reacted to this post.

#2 · September 2, 2023, 12:50 pm

I'm getting things here.

I'm afraid to be dominant, and I'm paying the price. The price of being low power.

I'll go first as dominant as I can and then to more power protecting. Just realized that this could be the case after checking a power move with my new teacher and feeling better.

The power move in particular:

I tell her that I got wrong a date of a exam so I have to study way more.
Her: hahaha you're crazy
Power Duck: ? (Wtf was that)

I'll get into more arguments this way, but I don't care, I'm fed up with this.

I'll keep thinking about this, but Im pretty sure this is a case of my mind trying to rationalize feeling bad for being low power.

Still I don't think this post is useless, most issues related to loneliness and not belonging as well as mental health issues could stem from being low power. If this were the case, then this completely changes the game.

John Freeman and Drazil have reacted to this post.

#3 · September 2, 2023, 12:59 pm

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on September 2, 2023, 12:59 pm
Hmmm difficult question for me.
I share many sticking points with lots of the folk here.
But cynicism is one of those that some folks mentioned here -and that is even more common in more strictly "red pill" circles-, but that I haven't personally experienced much of.
(One thread on similar topic here).
And I haven't reflected on it deeply enough to have any epiphany or enlightening take to share.
To me, cynicism doesn't activate at all in describing and accepting how things are.
But a few notes I may share:
Life is BOTH light and dark
Why being cynical when BOTH good and dark are part of it?
Competition/collaboration, "good/bad" are BOTH part of life.
To me, cynicism is an over-focus on the negative, with not enough focus on the positive (while naivete is the ignorance/downplaying of the dark and over-optimism is over-focus on the positive without enough focus on the negative).
But the moment that one balances things, then it's just... "how things are".
So a note on this one:

Quote from Power Duck on September 2, 2023, 12:05 pm
However there's just this thing I cannot get over with, and that is the fact that in most relationships, your values, your goals, your efforts, and your personality don't mean nothing unless you first have power. I understand this, we are biologically programmed to like powerful people, while powerless people or less powerful people dont get much attention. However this doesn't make the feeling go away,
I don't see it that way.
Your values, efforts, goals, personality, do matter.
And if you display them well, they also feed into that "power".
A good chunk of "game" is in showing those in a way that also gives you points (several examples in SU).
As a matter of fact, I think that those values are what can set a high-value man aside from most anyone else.
High-value is uncommon.
High-value AND straight/value-adding is even MORE rare.
The more women I've met and got to know, the more I realize that high-power, great guys are SO rare.
And when you walk along, it makes a BIG difference.
Focus on producing more of the good
This is a general good life approach:
Focus on what you can change.
You can change yourself, what you put into the world, and you can also shape the world and people around you.
Speaking of which...
Focus on leading others to display more of their better side
Much of PU is about activating in others their collaborative and "best" mode.
So, you have an ACTIVE role in shaping people to show and act more on their "better side".

Hmmm difficult question for me.

I share many sticking points with lots of the folk here.

But cynicism is one of those that some folks mentioned here -and that is even more common in more strictly "red pill" circles-, but that I haven't personally experienced much of.
(One thread on similar topic here).

And I haven't reflected on it deeply enough to have any epiphany or enlightening take to share.

To me, cynicism doesn't activate at all in describing and accepting how things are.

But a few notes I may share:

Life is BOTH light and dark

Why being cynical when BOTH good and dark are part of it?

Competition/collaboration, "good/bad" are BOTH part of life.

To me, cynicism is an over-focus on the negative, with not enough focus on the positive (while naivete is the ignorance/downplaying of the dark and over-optimism is over-focus on the positive without enough focus on the negative).

But the moment that one balances things, then it's just... "how things are".

So a note on this one:

Quote from Power Duck on September 2, 2023, 12:05 pm
However there's just this thing I cannot get over with, and that is the fact that in most relationships, your values, your goals, your efforts, and your personality don't mean nothing unless you first have power. I understand this, we are biologically programmed to like powerful people, while powerless people or less powerful people dont get much attention. However this doesn't make the feeling go away,

I don't see it that way.

Your values, efforts, goals, personality, do matter.

And if you display them well, they also feed into that "power".

A good chunk of "game" is in showing those in a way that also gives you points (several examples in SU).

As a matter of fact, I think that those values are what can set a high-value man aside from most anyone else.

High-value is uncommon.
High-value AND straight/value-adding is even MORE rare.

The more women I've met and got to know, the more I realize that high-power, great guys are SO rare.

And when you walk along, it makes a BIG difference.

Focus on producing more of the good

This is a general good life approach:

Focus on what you can change.

You can change yourself, what you put into the world, and you can also shape the world and people around you.

Speaking of which...

Focus on leading others to display more of their better side

Much of PU is about activating in others their collaborative and "best" mode.

So, you have an ACTIVE role in shaping people to show and act more on their "better side".

John Freeman, B and 3 other users have reacted to this post.

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#4 · September 2, 2023, 1:09 pm

Deep thanks Lucio.

Apart from the high power part I just mentioned. Your response made me realize one key thing I just failed to realize:

If people don't know what an eagle is they can't appreciate it until it's at its peak. It's when they see it majestically flying high in the sky that they say "woah I want to be like that".

True power is doing things with the conviction that you are in the right, that you want the best for others, and want them to fly high with you. If they don't like it they can stay down but they won't stop you from reaching and helping others to fly high in the sky, even if that means fighting nails and teeth for what you believe in.

If you don't like your environment, change it. If you don't see good, lead others towards it. And most importantly, be ready to fight, because you will have to.

Lucio Buffalmano, John Freeman and Roberto have reacted to this post.

#5 · September 2, 2023, 8:47 pm

Hello Power Duck,

I agree with Lucio.

Something else to consider maybe: when we're in a phase of new realization we see new aspects of life that we missed previously.

So we overlooked negative things that were not in our awareness. It takes time to integrate them in our World view. Until we integrate them in our World view and they become normal I noticed I often feel down for a few weeks or even months, depending. So there's a down before a new up.

It comes with the territory. The more we're aware of certain things, the more we move away from our older view of reality that was probably further from actual reality.

So right now you're becoming aware of power. Now you'll see it everywhere for a few months or more, depending. And then something else will enter your awareness and so on and so forth. So I think it's part of the learning. There is pain in learning because there is change. So we suffer also because our sense of identity changes.

In case you're interested, there is this excellent article from Lucio that was quite helpful for me.

Lucio Buffalmano, Jack and 2 other users have reacted to this post.

#6 · September 3, 2023, 1:07 pm

Wow, thanks John. It's indeed helpful.

I believe my problem was as the article you linked mentions, that I didn't check power moves in a high quality way, I usually engaged in turkey spirals, playing games but never giving straight talk, so I saw the moves but never tried to lead others into behaving like high quality people.

Lucio's response also made it clear to me. I've assumed as my duty to lead people close to me into behaving like high quality individuals, beginning with myself. It's been only a day and so far I'm feeling great, I've finally understood why high quality people are dominant.

Cheers and thanks for the response.

Lucio Buffalmano, John Freeman and Roberto have reacted to this post.

#7 · September 4, 2023, 12:07 am

Thanks John I hadn't seen that article before. One of the first note documents I started when I came here was the rather directly titled 'deal with A-holes don't be one'

My 2 cents worth

A good leader spends a lot of time unblocking people and supporting other people's ideas in the team.

Of course if they challenge you slap down but the rest of the time build up.

Lucio Buffalmano, John Freeman and Power Duck have reacted to this post.

#8 · September 4, 2023, 12:18 am

Quote from Transitioned on September 4, 2023, 12:07 am
Thanks John I hadn't seen that article before. One of the first note documents I started when I came here was the rather directly titled 'deal with A-holes don't be one'
My 2 cents worth
A good leader spends a lot of time unblocking people and supporting other people's ideas in the team.
Of course if they challenge you slap down but the rest of the time build up.

Thanks Transitioned.

I agree. Personally I think that when someone makes a big mistake it's important to slap hard and then build up if he apologizes. Could be wrong here, but I think that when one has a history of being a pushover is better to go for the extreme first, what's "hard" for a pushover may not be so extreme for a good leader but rather normal.

Cheers.

Lucio Buffalmano and John Freeman have reacted to this post.

#9 · September 4, 2023, 1:01 am

Slap down hard* of course :)

#10 · September 4, 2023, 11:47 am

@transitioned: thanks for the wisdom. I admire your way of explaining things in such a synthetic yet clear way.

@power duck: my 2 cents.

I think it’s better to let people do what they do and focus on yourself first. At this stage you’re opening your eyes as you said yourself. So I think it’s better to focus on oneself than to try to get people to change their behaviour. First it’s more effective: you can really only change yourself and it’s already hard enough. Second you’ll avoid unneeded conflicts: I personally did this mistake so many times I’m baffled. I think it’s interesting at this stage and at later stages as well to observe other people and take notice. To to them question as to why they behave like that. Not out of judgment but to understand. People will notice soon enough as you rise up and soar. The people worth your leadership will show up by themselves.

So I think it’s worth giving yourself time. I’m aware all of this is quite mind-bending. If you continue to study PU, post cases here and act on the information you’re golden. I personally would focus on that rather on other people. It takes a couple of years (at least) for any change so no rush I think.

I think you have the right attitude/mindset: « keep pushing ». And the change will come soon enough. Kudos to you again. All these stages are normal: highs and lows.

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