Category Archives: Life Education

Don’t Mistake Entitlement for Unfairness

Context, Staying Grounded, Thoughts On Life

“Life is unfair.”  No it’s not: life is life, it follows its course.  The world on its own has no concept of fairness or unfairness.  Often times people feel the world is unfair to them because it doesn’t give them what they think is due to them. What they fail to understand is: the world doesn’t owe them anything.  The world is not a conscious entity you interact with.  Once you realize this, you can escape the “me against the world” fallacy and realize that the unfairness you might feel stems from the entitlement which makes you expect the world to give you things.  Therefore the real problem is entitlement.

Concepts like “Deserve” and “Entitlement” and “Fairness” are human inventions, they are not a property of reality. Once you realize this, you can understand why the world doesn’t operate the way you think it should. Nature does not believe you deserve anything, nor does it believe you are entitled to anything.  It doesn’t even acknowledge you exist.  Expecting Nature to abide by your expectations is unrealistic, and calling that unfairness is an incorrect categorization.  It is just Nature’s nature.

Not only is entitlement a wrong mentality to have for the world, but it is wrong to think that your view of entitlement is the right one.  Because entitlement is a human construct it is subjective on all levels.  What you deserve, when you deserve it, and why you deserve it changes based on who you ask.  Some people believe you deserve respect, other people believe you earn it.  Some people believe you deserve respect when you’re born, others believe it’s when you’ve reached a certain age, or proven yourself somehow, perhaps by surviving in [the wild/civilization] on your own.  The ‘entitlement’ you have to things is therefore very contextual, varying from person to person, culture to culture.  

Some people may argue that in a civilization there are objective laws which govern the land and when those laws aren’t upheld it’s unfairness.  This too is wrong because laws and civilization are run by people, and the interpretation of the laws of the land is decided by the enforcing person’s world view, not yours.  Therefore, you should not be surprised if the enforcing person’s view on fairness does not align with your view and if they act in a way that you disagree with.  This is why there is no fairness on your terms in the world. This is why it is wrong to assume that because laws were written to be objective, the interpretation of said laws will be in line with your subjective interpretation of what an objective interpretation is.

You can overcome entitlement by changing your expectations.  You should expect nothing from the world.  The world works the way it does independently of you. If you stop expecting things in return, you can stop feeling the bitterness and resentment that stems from entitlement, and you can stop focusing on the unfairness and wasting your time and energy on a negative emotion that does you no good.  Instead, you can invest that energy and time in activities that increase the likelihood of you achieving your dreams. Not expecting anything from the world is not the same as giving up on trying to get anything from the world: If you want something go and get it.  All I wish to point out is that if you don’t get it, after you’ve put in a lot of work to get it, it’s not because life is unfair: life is life. Let go of entitlement, and replace it with appreciation for what you are given and do have.  You will be happier this way.  

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Accept Yourself, Accept Others, Find Balance – How to Achieve Healthy Relationships

Life Education, Relationships

From my post What are Relationships? we know that a relationship is the shared reality that is created when two independent entities interact and influence each other.  With this philosophical basis as our ground, we can now derive some corollaries

Two independent entities interact in a relationship.  What this means is that if I want to be in a relationship with you, I need to be separate from you.  If I try to please you and end up trying to win you over by doing everything you like and therefore becoming you–melding my identity into a dependent identity–then I am no longer independent and we cannot form a relationship.  This is a common relationship mistake people make.  I cannot have a relationship with myself.  My separate personalities can, but I as a summation of all my personalities cannot have a relationship with myself.  Therefore if you try to become the person you like, do not be surprised when they do not want to form a relationship with you: it’s impossible: you are them, there is nothing to form a relationship with.  At the same time I am unable to have a relationship with myself, I am already in a relationship with myself, and if you are most people you want relationships with other people and not with yourself: you already have it.

In order to achieve this you have to Accept Yourself.  Accept yourself for who you are, a separate independent identity of a person.  Whoever you happen to be: be OK with it in the sense that you acknowledge yourself as an independent identity with independent properties.  If you are unsatisfied with your properties you can work on self improvement (Part 1: Mindset and Logic) but you must accept that you are who you are.

In order to achieve this you also have to Accept Others.  If you are narcissistic and self centered and do not acknowledge the independent identities of other people as they are with independent properties, then you cannot form relationships with them.  This is the opposite of the above disorder: instead of trying to become the person you like, you try to turn their independent properties into properties that depend on you, basically trying to turn other people into versions of yourself.  It would be good to learn some Respect for others, perhaps that will help you accept their external existence. 

In a relationship, two independent entities influence each other.  Let’s prove this by contradiction.  Let’s say two independent entities are in a relationship but do not influence each other: I make my decisions in complete independence to Bob, someone I’ve never met on the other side of the world.  Bob also makes his decisions in complete independence to me, who he’s never met.  Our decisions may propagate and impact each other through the shared physical reality of Earth, but  only  through transitive relationships (I am related to Joe who knows Bob so if I impact Joe then through Joe I impact Bob).  There is no direct relationship and therefore no shared reality between me and Bob.  Without a shared reality, there is no relationship. Therefore, in a relationship, two independent entities influence each other.

In order to be in a relationship, you have to Achieve Balance between influencing the other person enough such that the relationship exists and influencing too much such that the other person’s identity becomes dependent on you.  The same statement applies to the person you are forming a relationship with.

Thus: Accept Yourself, Accept Others, Achieve Balance!

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Wise Business Quotes

Life Advice

Business

“Don’t worry about doing something initially that will constrain you in the long term because if you don’t win in the short term there won’t be a long term anyway” – Paul Graham

His curiosity about the world and openness to it is summed up in the spirit of a Chinese-style calligraphy painting behind his desk. “Set your goals high; make friends with different kinds of people; enjoy simple pleasures. Stand on high ground; sit on level ground; walk on expansive ground.” – Li Ka-Shing

Li’s younger, more high-profile son Richard has a stake in a family trust but runs his own telecom empire. He says he follows two of his father’s business lessons. The first is to “leave something on the table for the other side” in business transactions because that will help to bring deals back to you in the ­future. The second is a message his father wrote down for him when he was younger: Success is all about planning, study­ing downside risk and execution; “arrogance leads to failure.”

“Where is my lead, what is my edge. Wherever you’re ahead, focus on that. If you’re trying to win, your opponent won’t give you the time to train your weaknesses, so push ahead and exploit your strengths.” – Day9

What do entrepreneurs know that no one else knows? – Quora

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