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The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

thewalrus.ca

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Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#111

Post by rKarpinski »

herval wrote: post #46
nahimn wrote: post #8

Call me unempathetic, but how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller, IE: lets say a small locale or village). But you could have easily said the same thing in a non-digital age, with just more rudimentary metrics and a market that is a community that either values or doesn’t value your work. Much like the proverbial school playground (which could al…

> how would this be any different in a non-digital era? You’ll still have a market (albeit significantly smaller you answered it yourself. What's harder, to become the best tennis player of your neighborhood or the best tennis player on the planet? What if you base your self on something that's fringe at a global scale, but acceptable in your local culture? What if all your human interactions are on the internet (wit…

> What's harder, to become the best tennis player of your neighborhood or the best tennis player on the planet?

>> When I was twelve, I used to roller-skate in circles for hours [...] One Saturday, a friend invited me to roller-skate in the park. I can still picture her in green protective knee pads, flying past. I couldn’t catch up, I had no technique. There existed another scale to evaluate roller skating [...] Soon after, I stopped skating.

Seems like the author struggled with comparison before the internet, like the grandfather comment said.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#112

Post by ndarray »

mettamage wrote: post #39
fHr wrote: post #7

I have a career, nice coworkers, have few hobbys and have good friends. The only thing fucking up my selfworth honestly is the dating landscape with all this social media artificial bullshit were nobody wants to commit anymore and everything is fake. It is not worth engaging in it currently and you rather focus on yourself and education/career more it gets you further. If by chance you meet a unicorn take the chance…

Funny, I have career issues and dating is easy but that’s only because I was willing to stake my whole life on it and use everything in my power to change it (except changing my looks - I look mediocre). Happily married right now. Feel free to email me to exchange some career advice for dating advice.

> I was willing to stake my whole life on it and use everything in my power to change it

You made dating easy by fully revolving your life around it for some period? That sounds very interesting - mind sharing the bullet points with everyone?

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#113

Post by squidgedcricket »

lordleft wrote: post #108
skissane wrote: post #4

The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless…

I am a Christian. Something I have found within my faith tradition (and something I find is lacking in the culture around me) is a sense that I am in possession of an infinitely durable source of dignity and worthiness that is not tethered to who I am or what I have done. I have found this conceit enormously consoling.

I'm envious of that intrinsic sense of self worth, but I don't follow how that's a consequence of being Christian. I carry guilt and shame from sins that can't be rectified, knowing that Jesus loves me doesn't help me love myself.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#114

Post by 2grue »

One thing worth noting is that the metrics the author mentions (sales, likes etc) are clearly, as everyone would readily admit, not a true measure of value. At best, they're a proxy for what actually matters. And we know from Goodhart's law and reward hacking that optimizing a proxy is, at some point, either useless or actively counterproductive. This thought can be a real source of peace of mind.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#115

Post by nbzso »

Just a hint for the brave ones: The collapse of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is the goal. A global regime aimed at citizens obedience, control over movement, food, and resources is planned and in motion. There is no conspiracy or delusion in this. Seeing this requires just a drop of critical thinking.

If your perception of yourself is firmly attached to the collective projections imposed by governments, ideology, religion, or any form of group thinking, you are cooked.

In times like this, one must find the connection with nature and take action. Get out from the cities. Search places with enough water and option of growing your food locally. Be prepared for this activity to be outlawed under the Global Climate Emergency act, which the UN is ready to activate under the command of elite families and their servants in governments, military, and science institutions.

In essence, when your money is truly worth nothing and your life is driven by debt, you are a slave for life.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#117

Post by pram »

tejohnso wrote: post #106
skissane wrote: post #4

The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless…

I was confused by this part of the article: For Marx, the poet of economics, when a person’s innate value is replaced with exchange value, it is as if we’ve been reduced to “a mere jelly.” What's wrong with basing your worth on something like value provided professionally plus value provided personally, to myself and others? Are we supposed to think that we are valuable (worth something) just because we exist?

It might be fine if you’re a successful professional or entrepreneur and have a good salary or business.

Of course if you’re an Amazon warehouse worker or a burger flipper, and your labor is completely fungible and provides low monetary remuneration, then you would judge yourself as low(er) value in comparison. So determining your self-worth via other properties makes a lot more sense huh?

We can create value through more things than what we do for a job. It’s true!

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#118

Post by nostrademons »

skissane wrote: post #4

The other day I was talking to a psychologist about [difficult personal situation which I am unable to discuss publicly] and she said to me “This must be really damaging to your self-worth.” And, my honest internal reaction to her statement (although I didn’t say it out loud to her) was “Self-worth, what is that?” Because I’m not sure if I have any? I don’t mean that in the negative sense that I think I am worthless…

A related observation I've gotten from interacting with normies including my wife:

Most people assume there is such thing as a "self" and that it is okay, natural, and desirable to preference yourself when interacting with other people. Indeed, for most normies, there is only various people and their selves interacting. My autistic perspective is that there is only a system of the world, various roles that people happen to occupy, and here are my options for where I can slot into it, might as well choose the best one, but it never occurred to me that the other people in the system could be individually influenced or that you could preference your self over others. At least, until I interacted with others enough to realize that that was all they were doing.

Relatedly, most normies project this self-interest onto aspies and assume that when they are saying how the world is, they are pushing their own agenda, because in their worldview everybody has an agenda. As a result, the aspie tendency to make observations about broad sweeping systems comes off as arrogance, as preferencing themselves and their worldview over everybody else. But to an aspie, there is no such thing as arrogance, because arrogance implies that one preferences their self-worth over others, and there is no such thing as "self" or "worth", and it is nonsensical to talk about self-importance.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#119

Post by MisterBastahrd »

squidgedcricket wrote: post #113
lordleft wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a Christian. Something I have found within my faith tradition (and something I find is lacking in the culture around me) is a sense that I am in possession of an infinitely durable source of dignity and worthiness that is not tethered to who I am or what I have done. I have found this conceit enormously consoling.

I'm envious of that intrinsic sense of self worth, but I don't follow how that's a consequence of being Christian. I carry guilt and shame from sins that can't be rectified, knowing that Jesus loves me doesn't help me love myself.

It's pretty funny when you consider that a huge part of Christian evangelism is the attempt to convince normal people that they aren't worth dirt and are condemned to eternal torture unless they believe in somebody that the religious can't prove exists for a feat that they can't prove ever happened.

Re: The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

#120

Post by Aeolun »

darby_nine wrote: post #96
orbisvicis wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flip side of detaching self-esteem from technical competency is that you can make very strong assertions without being arrogant. People of integrity with utilitarian leaning are often labeled amoral or unemotional. People with a strong drive not attached to financial gain are often termed unambitious. Your perceived worth really depends on values of society, so if you remove yourself from the equation, you only h…

> People of integrity with utilitarian leaning are often labeled amoral or unemotional. Utilitarianism is a moral concept. I think you just mean analytical.

Maybe, but some people think it’s weird when you say “of course I’d divert the train over that grandpa”
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