A Stoic Opportunity Part 2: Stoic Daddy Issues
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December 13th, 2020
I discovered Paul Skallas recently. He goes by the name LindyMan on Twitter, and has a newsletter I am quite enjoying. His style is clean and stark. He released a missive on envy today, which felt timely to read.
Below is some wisdom from the article, with quoted passages:
You only envy somebody if you view them as your equal, with the attached belief that the person you envy is better than you in some way ...
I envy someone if I believe I could have been like him. The reason I envy rather than try to emulate him is often that I do not believe I CAN become like him- although we were equal at the outset.
Envy is the one emotion that masks itself …
One of the things that distinguishes envy from other emotions is that we don’t want to admit it. If we’re angry we say we’re angry, if we’re in love, we say we are in love, if we are sad we say we are sad. But we have a hard time admitting envy. It’s special. It digs deep. As a result we cloak envy and conceal it. We give other reasons for attacking a person.
He also wrote about how being envied is a mark of success, the three strategies of those who envy, and what he calls “destructive envy” …
But I started posting on Twitter and gaining followers, I started seeing people hate me for no reason. Real dark stuff. Then once I was out of those smaller account categories (reference groups) I was attacked by larger accounts as I gained followers. You see this same pattern in business and other status endeavors.
Destructive envy was on my mind this morning, before I saw this missive on envy. I’ve written about the dangers of parasocial projections before, and about the “hungry ghosts,” and I even wrote about certain encounters I had with them, but I have not written or thought much about the dangers of envy.
How does one deal with the envy of others? Ignoring them is the first thing that comes to mind. The second thing is developing a personal protocol for engagement.
I follow this Facebook group that shares dank Stoic memes, and they recently had a really good “how to have a good internet discussion” post. Following the first principle alone would probably solve the majority of internet disagreements: Don't bring up your interlocutor's ego or amount of ego you think they have.
It lists other good principles on how to engage, but this list and others like it usually do not advise on who to engage with, which is arguably more important. It is not wise to engage with the envious, and it is best to relate to these individuals from a distance.
The more stature you get, the more people are going to existentially poop on whatever you are doing. You’ll also have less bandwidth to deal with these existential poopers, which will only increase their envy.
In my last encounter with a hungry ghost, my one-two punch was the following: become untriggerable, and then send loving-kindness. I sense this is still the correct protocol to use with the envious variant of the hungry ghosts.
I would be foolish to think I can escape the ill-will of the envious. Some people will simply have Stoic Daddy issues, and that is something I sense is best framed as a Stoic opportunity. Perhaps at a high enough meta-perspective, it is best to view this as a symbiotic relationship that is mutualistic.
The envious may serve as an opportunity for the Stoic to practice his or her virtue, which in this case is the enactment of the above protocol. While the Stoic, especially ones who have Stoic Daddy vibes, can simply stay sovereign, and serve as a loving mirror.
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