The Logic of Envy

The Art of War is also an assemblage, much either gathered by or ascribed to Sun Tzu, and comprising in large part of commentaries on the ground text.

If Art of War has coherence, it's likely much comes in the transmission and transformation, both prior to and following Sun Tzu. The inconvenience of both writing and reproduction also necessitates brevity, though that need not imply clarity.

I'm not sure the distinction made here is a particularly meaningful one.

Just a great read. I'm commenting to bookmark the post and commentary for myself.

Reading the room, I think I'm in the minority of those who think the author ('the last psychiatrist') is spot on about the psychosis of people. Particularly about an internal ledger kept in one's heads of who has sacrificed more or less, and the internal indignation people have about how their ledger with their children, friends or lovers are unbalanced and must be "balanced" in a twisted and covert way. Like depriving others of love and invoking envy in strangers lol - very much like the ethos of 'true money' of the original Bitcoin Satoshi's vision of 2009 corrupted into the FOMO and ngmi/wgmi cult of altcoins and ponzi's of 2022. A ledger of dollars and cents is actually a ledger about our collective unconsciousness of fear and loathing of capitalism and technology in the 21st century!

I loved the bit about people's true intentions of posting things on social media - it is deprive others of joy by acknowledging "I was there at the destination, at the party, on the beach" and "you weren't"; and how it causes a mass silent hysteria where one narcissistic injury leads to another - like a daisy chain or turtles all the way down of deprivation. It is a simple laugh with social media flexing but it is actually tragic when I see that when people use this motivation to make decisions about their careers, relationships and life goals - to move away from freedom towards security disguised as freedom.

I loved the blog's author's posting about Tony Soprano's clip in Dr. Melfi's office, about how he is envious of the "happy wanderer" and wants to "choke him out for no reason at all". I sincerely believe this is the ultimate jealousy of jealous people and narcissists - not someone who is as stressed as they're tryin' to keep up the daisy chain of deprivations and envy, but someone who is happy for "no reason at all" - and invalidates completely the empty status game and false self they've cultivated over a course of a life.

Obligatory link to ACX review: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-sadly-porn

+1 scattered, too long, random, and I hope basically wrong. And yet, I'm sure I'll be thinking about it this weekend.

(Now, how to get even with those who didn't read the whole article?)

I'm not sure if you are joking but you are of course implying to disagree with Last Psychiatrist is to confirm he is right about everything because disagreeing is resisting the truth.

When someone disagrees with a freudian, it's because they secretly know Freud is right about everything but are in denial.

Freud's theories are not provable or disprovable, if you want to kill your father you have an oedipal complex, if not you are repressing your oedipal complex. It's not subject to evidence since any event is explained under the freudian framework.

Last psychiatrist is presumably the "last" psychiatrist because the field has moved on from Freud's non empirical parlor tricks.