I'm confused. Is the thesis just that: peer pressure is real?
It's a little subtler than that: peers don't just influence to do things, they influence you to want things.
I read a book that blew my mind a little
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Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#32>Of course, none of these desires relate in any way to your personal happiness or true desires.
This is where it lost me. I can't agree with this statement.
Many people are savvy enough to know that they're influenced by the people around them. The natural response, of course, is to choose the people in your life, as well as be aware of the pros and cons of having those people in your life.
Most people who have a big impact on the world don't do it alone. They surround themselves by people who help them make that impact. This can be done intentionally. You can choose the "social norms" in your life, simply by changing who you're surrounded by.
So, no, I can't agree with the statement quoted above, for the simple reason that I can (and do) choose the people who influence me. (As do most people, at least to a certain extent.)
Do people choose who they're surrounded by? Of course!
Should people make these choices more consciously? Of course!
Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#33There are so many theories like this ("all human behavior is explained by mimetic desire" or "mimetic desire is the primary driver of human behavior," replace "mimetic desire" with X). They're all convincing and there's no shortage of evidence for each of them.
But there can't be many things that are "the primary driver of human behavior". This leaves these theories in an awkward position: "mimetic desire explains everything" is mind-blowing but clearly wrong whereas "mimetic desire is one factor among many" is a truism.
Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#34You are who your friends are.
Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#35It's often underappreciated how _hard_ it can be to tell why you want something. I've spent weeks thinking as rationally as I could about a decision, and with years of hindsight realised it was based mainly on what others wanted. If anyone feels they've solved this, I'd love to hear how.
It is hard.. My take is that you can't solve it, and shouldn't try to as it's effectively impossible. It's better to accept our minds nature and that we postfacto rationalize 99% of our decisions rather than rationally decide them. Instead accept it, and use that 1% that we do rationally decide to influence how you want the rest, including ambitions or emotional desires, to be over time. I mean, we're all basically toddlers on an emotional level, but with more sophisticated wrappings.
Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#36Seems like it's pretty easy to blow your mind. I recommend expanding it by thinking and reading more.
Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#37as someone with zero understanding of how Twitter works: did this author actually click "post" on 20+ individual Tweets? And hope that Twitter presents them uninterrupted in chronological order? Or does Twitter provide some way to write a "Medium.com style" article and have it broken into tweets? Am I old or something? I'm not even 30 yet and I cannot wrap my brain around this format or what Twitter is supposed to pr…
I think it's pretty obvious given how popular these types of threads are that Twitter does provide a mean to present them in chronological order.
It's less about the format, and more about discoverability.
Re: I read a book that blew my mind a little
#38Amazing and completely new way to think about the world or the universe! I got a really good name for this ultra new concept! We should call it "peer pressure"!!
Honestly reading this twitter I just rolled my eyes. He discovered peer pressure and gave it a pretentious name. This is nothing new, people have been talking about the emptiness of modern society and climbing the endless corporate ladder for decades and decades.
Let me tell you the real answer and this is literally the biggest joke ever: You are not designed to be happy. You are designed to be continuously unsatisfied always seeking to fulfill something that can never be fulfilled until you grow old and die. Why are we like this? Natural Selection.
A perfectly content human does not take the actions necessary to aid in survival. A content human does not work or compete. Thus the humans that survived the filter of natural selection are all humans that have some sort of innate desire to never be satisfied to always want more. One of the ways we unconsciously create voids we need to fill is to compare ourselves with our peers.