It’s mostly that, as I mentioned in my first response, what praises I get are empty. I can’t broker them into job offers/recommendations, or unalloyed recommendations to potential investors or sponsors, or potential dating partners, or the like. Everyone seems to say “Brent is cool, but...”—and after awhile, I’ve developed enough mistrust and bitterness and neurosis that the ‘but’ would be justified, if not for other people with similar levels of bitterness or neurosis or what-have-you that seem to be able to broker their successes more… successfully.
I suppose my problem is that for me, praise is a predictor of resource-access, because I’m about *DOING* things—and then later, when I pull on those resources and they actually aren’t available, that can be devastating. Imagine what would happen if 15 people tell me that I’m a trustworthy person to lead a crisis, and then someone shows up needing my help with a big crisis, and none of those 15 people show up to follow.
What happens is, I try to manage by myself and wind up exhausting and traumatizing myself, get it mostly done anyways, and then suffer the insult of people telling me how I could have done better because they’re judging my results against people who actually had teams who would follow them. And then the “mediocre” success of my solo results is used to justify why the teams don’t show up next time.
I’ve only managed to solve this when literal lives are on the line, or by pouring tens of thousands of my own dollars into other people just so they’d come along and follow me, or by pouring months into giving them literal transformative experiences. Otherwise I get a small amount of empty praise, but no buy-in.
And I’m not saying any of this to condemn ANYONE who hasn’t given me the buy-in; I’m just documenting the problem as a step towards finding a solution. I try very hard to hold no real bitterness, here.
1) The amount of social capital that’s allocated in this community is too little.
2) Social capital is allocated for the wrong reasons.
I’m not sure what case you are making. When it comes to 1) there are communities where job offers are given based on the social capital that the person earned in the past. There are other communities where the job offers are rather given based on the skills as they are assessed in an interview.
I would expect our community to put less weight on social capital acquired in the past when given job offers then most other communities. It’s debatable whether that’s good or bad.
When it comes to 2) it might be that social capital is allocated based on a variable like personal charisma instead being allocated for past accomplishments. If that’s the case that would be more problematic.
Are you arguing 1) or 2) or do you see something else?
Ah yes. So here we might have the connection to the first model I mentioned: status as the amount of resources you can expect to leverage if you need it. This is still different from relative influence in an important way, because it’s about absolute influence, which is positive-sum, and plausibly the actual thing we want.
I have experienced something similar a few years ago in my freshman year of uni. It was a time when I felt very worthy, but then when I had a burnout nonetheless, none of that status amounted to any help. It made me a lot more suspicious and a lot more needy. I haven’t recovered since.
So this whole thing seems to connect to the idea of Hufflepuff virtue, right? I hadn’t realized these people were ahead of me.
It’s mostly that, as I mentioned in my first response, what praises I get are empty. I can’t broker them into job offers/recommendations, or unalloyed recommendations to potential investors or sponsors, or potential dating partners, or the like. Everyone seems to say “Brent is cool, but...”—and after awhile, I’ve developed enough mistrust and bitterness and neurosis that the ‘but’ would be justified, if not for other people with similar levels of bitterness or neurosis or what-have-you that seem to be able to broker their successes more… successfully.
I suppose my problem is that for me, praise is a predictor of resource-access, because I’m about *DOING* things—and then later, when I pull on those resources and they actually aren’t available, that can be devastating. Imagine what would happen if 15 people tell me that I’m a trustworthy person to lead a crisis, and then someone shows up needing my help with a big crisis, and none of those 15 people show up to follow.
What happens is, I try to manage by myself and wind up exhausting and traumatizing myself, get it mostly done anyways, and then suffer the insult of people telling me how I could have done better because they’re judging my results against people who actually had teams who would follow them. And then the “mediocre” success of my solo results is used to justify why the teams don’t show up next time.
I’ve only managed to solve this when literal lives are on the line, or by pouring tens of thousands of my own dollars into other people just so they’d come along and follow me, or by pouring months into giving them literal transformative experiences. Otherwise I get a small amount of empty praise, but no buy-in.
And I’m not saying any of this to condemn ANYONE who hasn’t given me the buy-in; I’m just documenting the problem as a step towards finding a solution. I try very hard to hold no real bitterness, here.
There are two hypothesis here:
1) The amount of social capital that’s allocated in this community is too little.
2) Social capital is allocated for the wrong reasons.
I’m not sure what case you are making. When it comes to 1) there are communities where job offers are given based on the social capital that the person earned in the past. There are other communities where the job offers are rather given based on the skills as they are assessed in an interview.
I would expect our community to put less weight on social capital acquired in the past when given job offers then most other communities. It’s debatable whether that’s good or bad.
When it comes to 2) it might be that social capital is allocated based on a variable like personal charisma instead being allocated for past accomplishments. If that’s the case that would be more problematic.
Are you arguing 1) or 2) or do you see something else?
I’m claiming 1) and 2) together, in point of fact. I’ve been claiming this for awhile.
Ah yes. So here we might have the connection to the first model I mentioned: status as the amount of resources you can expect to leverage if you need it. This is still different from relative influence in an important way, because it’s about absolute influence, which is positive-sum, and plausibly the actual thing we want.
I have experienced something similar a few years ago in my freshman year of uni. It was a time when I felt very worthy, but then when I had a burnout nonetheless, none of that status amounted to any help. It made me a lot more suspicious and a lot more needy. I haven’t recovered since.
So this whole thing seems to connect to the idea of Hufflepuff virtue, right? I hadn’t realized these people were ahead of me.