The intolerable rise of perfectionism

> Another way to resolve the tension is to accept to have lower standards and go on with your life.

For myself, long run, that is going to increase tension for me internally. I can't force myself to be satisfied with myself if I am not. I'd rather believe in a world that lacks absolute standards in perpetuity and have to consider myself perpetually adaptive than believe I've either succumbed to some group think ideology of 'relaxing' because it's comfortable for people who are fine with me being substandard (and then I get stuck with the problem of - is this because they are using me for their own comparison?), or been indoctrinated into stupid thinking that is fine with lowering my standards because it judges me based on a particular context that may not be indicative of an overall trend of my life absolutely.

> "Resolution lies on either end, depending on how possible/practical it is to improve a given skill."

At the end of the day pragmatism must be valued. Competition between people is useful but if it turns into a downward spiral of stepping on one another arbitrarily without reason, logic, without any ends tied to the means - then there is no united sense of progress from which every person inside a group can orient direction in thinking, and unifying action into something beautiful. I'm a software developer and computer scientist, so, all the spaces between coding (thinking, interacting) need to be filled in and can't always be explicitly stated. People have to make assumptions, it's easier to just decide - do you like where you are? Do you like the people around you? Can you see value in all of this?

If you can't do that, that is when competition becomes destructive rather than productive. Being able to identify these things in real time, continual process of living life. I wish I could be weak sometimes just because it's easier, but my life hasn't allowed me to be. I make mistakes continuously and sometimes they are plain to see, not only to myself, but to everybody. The awareness of this - in perpetuity. This connects people to systems that are always attempting to correct behavior. So people who go over and over and over at it - it's the same thing. No judgment, being totally neutral is most simple. Functioning like a machine. It's easier to just call it aspergers or neurologically distinct. Can't know people's intentions and inferring them to be intentionally malicious can lead to disaster. The problem of wanting to avoid the truly worst things that could happen in life. Not just because bad things have happened, but because, hyper-awareness. We are always connected to things that say 'bad things happen to people' and not everything can be explained away.

Talent, necessity, etc. Survival instinct. Calling it talent seems to be a diminutive, it directs the focus towards something narcissistic, vain - easy to prejudice against. Some things are born from necessity. Process of continual refinement, it's a compulsion because it says "I need to survive".

Apologies that you found it irksome! When you have authority (which requires an implicit kind of trust to be established assuming individual A can guide individual B) that establishes a unidirectional responsibility over people. It's a balance. If you want that authority you have to police yourself. I personally do not find myself comfortable in such positions. But I'm aware of the dynamic because it forms a feedback loop. If you show signs of 'weakness' and by 'weakness' I mean taking actions orthogonal to the overarching goal of directing, guiding, teaching, counseling, etc - then the group dynamic can easily devolve into a pedantic sorts of chaos. That doesn't always have to be a bad thing (e.g. good dialogue can result, understanding and new awareness can be established).

My perspective in the U.S. we are living in a time where this kind of authority is desired highly by lots of people because it's being reflected as 'the standard' with the current leadership. The problem is it's fundamentally built on principles that operate like a pyramid scheme. If you want that authority, the more you must conform. The more you conform, the more sameness you see. The more sameness you see, the more you can pretend you are the one with the authority. Carrot, stick, etc.

So if you aren't the literal leader that allows you to be manipulated very easily. I'd rather just have the awareness. My individual autonomy of reasoning is not something to be sacrificed because it goes down to my own personal core and it is fundamentally vital for me to believe I am sane, which is absolutely essential when I have time to myself to think for myself (not to mention essential for survival, I reason for a living - software). It's clearly easy to get caught in the waves of group thinking. People all make mistakes.

I was taught that I should care about that and if I dont, I am lacking self co trol and rude and that is wrong. And practically speaking, if you hurt peoples feelings they will retaliate one way or the other or avoid you. Especially insecure people.

Controlling what you say is seen as bad thing online, but it is a thing that majority of people in real world do constantly and are expected to.

> Me neither, in this context - though there's the US legal concept of "exigent circumstances" which allows police officers to enter property without a warrant if they believe a crime is in progress.

Indeed, I had encountered 'exigency' and so had some idea of the general idea—just never 'exigence'.

This article reflects a view that "perfectionism" is the cause of anxiety, depression, and social insecurity. It seems more likely that self-destructive perfectionism (since positive perfectionism is framed here as well) is a result of anxiety and social insecurity, not the other way around.