This is probably going to be me screaming into the void again. It was always going to be, I thought about screaming it into the void of my actual life… and the part of me that’s a brand manager wasn’t cool with that. I’ll never be a brand manager for anyone but myself, but I’m the only brand manager I can afford. That might be sadder than what I’m here to talk about. Leaving that right there.
but I could have been more than this. Not a lot more, in fact something so sad and awful I never thought I’d regret not being it. I could have been a cult leader, or something similarly soceopathic.
I have the economic background, not well off enough to be bought off, but over educated enough to be a serious threat to the world around me. Growing up, I almost always had minions of some kind. People insecure enough to follow me, but useful enough for me to trust them representing me. As we all know I’m utterly self involved, a classic fit for the role.
I guess up until now I thought something better would come along, and it hasn’t. I have just enough of a soul left to be a little conflicted about the harm I might cause….. but I could burn that, develop an ideology and collect enough washed out shills to live the good life, for a few years anyway.
is there an emotion that is a combination of incredibly ambitious and substantially depressed? That’s where I’m at about the whole thing. Like I used to think I’d be doing the world a favor if I offed myself, and now I think “what do I owe those assholes?” I just want a worthwhile damn project, and apparently that was too big of an ask.
the real sticking point is this thought; “If I don’t do it, someone else will.” That’s classic rationalization, you know who thinks that? monsters…… but I might be depressed enough to be okay with being a monster.
4 comments
Kind of relate, in the sense that I could’ve been so much worse than I actually am, and a large part of me still wants to be. The obvious problem is you then have to live with the self-awareness of what you’ve become, or spend all your time numbing that. So it wouldn’t actually feel like “the good life”. Unless you’re an actual sociopath, that kind of move just isn’t worth it.
test
Oh, I wasn’t expecting that “test” reply to go through, sorry. Anyways, I read your post and I relate to the “If I don’t do it, someone else will” thought process, I think. I don’t think its the rationalization of a monster. To me, this thought is something I have when I’ve given up, and I’m trying to make up for the pain of giving up on my goal by saying “the goal is still gonna happen, its just that I’m not gonna be the one to do it.” And to that I usually have the counter-rationalization that nobody is gonna complete that goal like im going to. Also, the trauma that I’ve accumulated throughout life has brought me a lot of guilt. guilt is a big motivator for me. I believe negative emotions can be a great fuel when they are tamed. do not use negative emotions as fuel if they are not tamed, very dangerous. sometimes this is the only fuel people have, and they must use it, this makes me upset.
“but I could burn that, develop an ideology and collect enough washed out shills to live the good life, for a few years anyway.” This to me does not sound like this “worthwhile project” that you seek. It feels like while the ambition is there, its not in the right place. Maybe it’s in that misplacement of ambition where a bit of that depression comes from (maybe idk). Or maybe its that you have a lot of ambition, but it has no where to go. Maybe that ambition is locked in a cage and being held hostage by both depression and the absence of a meaningful project.
Do you do a lot of things alone? It sounds like you have done projects in the past that you’ve enjoyed, but maybe you’re missing something this time around, like a social element. maybe you could have a project that involves other people in a peer to peer relationship, rather than a master to minion relationship.
it is possible that i have significantly misunderstood your post by not putting as much emphasis on the seeming desire to be a cult leader or something similar. hopefully not!
what this was set off by running into one of my former minions. He’s working as a security guard, and I guess doing fine, BUT, I feel like I let him down. I’m the egomaniac, it’s on me to develop a scheme to disrupt the world. I feel like he’d still follow me, if I had somewhere to lead him.
The weird thing is my read tends to be that a ranked hierarchy, there are people I rank below, and people that I don’t. When things are in that weird world of not being outranked…. my impulse is to take charge. So if I meet someone actually similar to myself; first reaction is “you want control? go for it.” and that often works, but there’s certain type A personalities that cannot be content until I submit myself to them, and I don’t know how to submit myself to anyone
that’s really what it all comes down to. I’ve made some big progress towards pretending to submit to authorities in my life, but when they want sincerity, I don’t have it. Deep down I don’t respect anyone. So I don’t know what I’m fit for. Not most things. I can never work for Walmart, just as an example, if I know that there’s a megalomaniac somewhere else in the building it bugs me until I either conquer them or leave.
I want to see the bond movie where the crazy self centered villain decides he’s done trying to earn James Bond’s approval, like F U James, you drive new cars around and you need to conquer me to feel complete? How insecure is that?!
Which is why I really can’t set out to conquer anything. I can’t admit to anyone or anything that I need them, that level of vulnerability is beyond me. Yes, I can like people, but everyone I’ve ever met is replaceable…. it wasn’t my choice, I dealt with a lot of loss until I realized I needed to focus on me rather than on people who let me down….. and die.
I’ve adapted hyper empathy because I feel so dissimilar from the rest of the species. So when I get this way, sociopathic, on a war path, it’s me being tired of trying to relate. No one wants to make the movie where they provide potential psychopaths fulfilling jobs which keep them too busy to hurt people.