This is not a post because I refuse to devote an entire piece to this observation. Our culture is fixated on positivity and affirming the whims and desires of the consumer: You are beautiful. Manifest your desires. You deserve to be in the company of only winners. Good vibes only. F*** the haters.
There’s a difference between maintaining a perspective of optimism for certain endeavors or in certain areas of your life as a strategic move to optimize your chances of success (the efficacy of which is borne out by a fair bit of social science) and pretending that you’re perfect and your every instinct and feature is true and wonderful. One is a discipline adopted by go-getters… the other is a narcissisic, world-eating delusion.
I can’t help but notice that all of those people who parrot the pop-psychology mantras of infallibility and uber-validation seem to lack the ease and sureness which seems readily apparent in those who possess it. These individuals lack confidence, aside from the bizarre counterfeit variety afforded by personality disorders. They are not happy-yet they are driven to announce and display perfect happiness at every turn. This is the culture of toxic affirmation.
All the people who want me to believe that everyone is beautiful or that fat is beautiful or that black is beautiful don’t seem to feel beautiful themselves. Beautiful people don’t shrilly announce their quality to the world.
All the cultural icons who make unbelievable confidence and riz part of their brand turn out, upon brief inspection, to be sad and lonely addicts… or desperately insecure (two categories which often overlap).
I’ve avoided naming names here. Scroll through your mental list of celebrities & public figures and you’ll be as likely to land on one of the kind that I’m describing as not. It’s important to realize that those figures who DO seem to be grounded and happy and confident will often spread the messages of toxic validation, because it pays. I like to think that Megan Thee Stallion would make some changes to her discography if she had total creative control but she doesn’t. She’s effectively a corporation, supporting the incomes and families of 1,000 people and beholden to two dozen different sales and recording contracts and guest appearance policies every day, and will be for decades.
The culture sells us the message because it’s a message that is popular among consumers, and because it’s a message that will cause profit opportunities to be generated in the future by people who believe that music choice or car ownership or purse selection can help define them as the beautiful and obviously happy person they want to appear to be.
Beauty matters for some aesthetic and sexual selections and is an evolved strategy for mate selection… nothing more.
Happiness is a transitory emotion that exists to propel you toward the things you need to survive and reproduce… nothing more.
Worth and confidence are qualities that are determined by the nature of your interactions with different social groups and are learned skills, like decision-making or patience… nothing more.
Some people have more of these things naturally and some less but they’re all qualities which can be increased in virtually everybody, and none of them defines who you are.
DON’T TRY TO BE HAPPY. TRY TO BE KIND AND CURIOUS AND USEFUL… AND HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW.
It’s always difficult to know, but Meg still seems like a decent and grounded person despite her incredible success. Even figures who maintain their character and virtue end up spreading the dominant messages of our culture, though, because they are not lone actors. They are figureheads atop a vast and invisible profit-generating machine.
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Toxic Affirmations
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This is not a post because I refuse to devote an entire piece to this observation. Our culture is fixated on positivity and affirming the whims and desires of the consumer: You are beautiful. Manifest your desires. You deserve to be in the company of only winners. Good vibes only. F*** the haters.
There’s a difference between maintaining a perspective of optimism for certain endeavors or in certain areas of your life as a strategic move to optimize your chances of success (the efficacy of which is borne out by a fair bit of social science) and pretending that you’re perfect and your every instinct and feature is true and wonderful. One is a discipline adopted by go-getters… the other is a narcissisic, world-eating delusion.
I can’t help but notice that all of those people who parrot the pop-psychology mantras of infallibility and uber-validation seem to lack the ease and sureness which seems readily apparent in those who possess it. These individuals lack confidence, aside from the bizarre counterfeit variety afforded by personality disorders. They are not happy-yet they are driven to announce and display perfect happiness at every turn. This is the culture of toxic affirmation.
All the people who want me to believe that everyone is beautiful or that fat is beautiful or that black is beautiful don’t seem to feel beautiful themselves. Beautiful people don’t shrilly announce their quality to the world.
All the cultural icons who make unbelievable confidence and riz part of their brand turn out, upon brief inspection, to be sad and lonely addicts… or desperately insecure (two categories which often overlap).
I’ve avoided naming names here. Scroll through your mental list of celebrities & public figures and you’ll be as likely to land on one of the kind that I’m describing as not. It’s important to realize that those figures who DO seem to be grounded and happy and confident will often spread the messages of toxic validation, because it pays. I like to think that Megan Thee Stallion would make some changes to her discography if she had total creative control but she doesn’t. She’s effectively a corporation, supporting the incomes and families of 1,000 people and beholden to two dozen different sales and recording contracts and guest appearance policies every day, and will be for decades.
The culture sells us the message because it’s a message that is popular among consumers, and because it’s a message that will cause profit opportunities to be generated in the future by people who believe that music choice or car ownership or purse selection can help define them as the beautiful and obviously happy person they want to appear to be.
Beauty matters for some aesthetic and sexual selections and is an evolved strategy for mate selection… nothing more.
Happiness is a transitory emotion that exists to propel you toward the things you need to survive and reproduce… nothing more.
Worth and confidence are qualities that are determined by the nature of your interactions with different social groups and are learned skills, like decision-making or patience… nothing more.
Some people have more of these things naturally and some less but they’re all qualities which can be increased in virtually everybody, and none of them defines who you are.
DON’T TRY TO BE HAPPY. TRY TO BE KIND AND CURIOUS AND USEFUL… AND HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW.
It’s always difficult to know, but Meg still seems like a decent and grounded person despite her incredible success. Even figures who maintain their character and virtue end up spreading the dominant messages of our culture, though, because they are not lone actors. They are figureheads atop a vast and invisible profit-generating machine.