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Showing posts with the label arrogance

The Spotlight Effect

There's a well known psychological phenomenon known as the "spotlight effect," which claims, basically, that people are selfish, and that no one really cares about our perceived flaws as much as we ourselves do. Every person is in the centre of his or her tiny universe, so of course, any rupture to the tranquility of one's world results in [perceived] chaos. For example, there have been studies that prove that we overestimate how much other people really care about us. In the Thomas Gilovich study, researchers asked participants to walk into a crowded lecture hall wearing an embarrassing shirt. Every participant highly overestimated the amount of people who even noticed their shirt, missing the mark by as much as 500%! What does this mean, and why am I writing about this during my 3 am blogging rambles? I guess I've been highlighted in a lot of photographs recently. As I've written in some previous posts, I'm quite self-conscious of my appearance (as man...

Thirst For Destruction (Of The Self)

I've only seen two types of people in this world. Sometimes they are both, some are more extreme than others, and some interchange. Essentially, a (wo)man can only be in one of two states: a state of heightened esteem, to the point of arrogance; or a state of complete submission and weakness. This state of being eventually shapes a man's character, for a man who leans too much on cowardice becomes a coward, and the man who is consistently in a state of arrogance becomes an arrogant man- the state becomes embedded in his personality. How do we know that a man can only be in one of two states? When a man faces a dangerous or difficult situation, he rarely takes responsibility for himself, for this goes against the man's natural need for survival. Taking responsibility involves taking a risk of being rejected or hurt. The man's natural instinct, therefore, is to tackle the situation in a way so that his ego is protected. For example, when coming across a bear, the arrogant...