Venkatesh Rao @vgr 2019-08-05
I used to think limiting self-perceptions are mainly about beliefs. Putting yourself in a box made up of fixed mindset beliefs about yourself.
Now I think the walls of the box represent emotional range. What you believe about yourself is a function of what you let yourself feel.
Venkatesh Rao @vgr 2019-08-05
Arendtâs taxonomy is useful for classifying emotions.
Labor/domestic emotions: pain, bliss, joy, fear, compassion
Maker/agora emotions: satisfaction, frustration, righteousness, happiness, sadness
Action/polis emotions: exhilaration, terror, anger, vengefulness, poignancy
Venkatesh Rao @vgr 2019-08-05
The range expands the further you go from home and expand your spatio-temporal horizons
Aesthetic and competitive emotions live on the edge between making and action. Artists and traders are almost-complete humans. Edge of being of homo faber. Not yet prepared to appear in public and be recognized as human and part of history, but willing to appear by proxy.
Domestic emotions are limited in space but also in time to +/- 1 generation.
Trying to get at the long-term emotional toll of domestic cozy, the cost of having a mind bound within ânarrow domestic wallsâ as Tagore called it.
This is high-modernist idealism, but it gets at something deep. Iâd like to see a cyberpunk/hacker sensibility postmodern-pragmatic GenX version of this poem. A $5 challenge.
Pamela J. Hobart @amelapay 2019-08-05
I am trying hard to figure out the motivation(s) for self-limited emotional range. Some of it is simple aversion to feeling âbadâ but some is complex - like thinking anger is distasteful, sadness reveals weakness, etc
Gary Basin @garybasin 2019-08-05
The larger your shadow is, the more predictable you are
Maynard Handley @handleym99 2019-08-05
Iâm not sure I get this.
Is the point that people are afraid to work on something difficult, try something ambitious because theyâre scared theyâll fail?
ie issue is fear of failure (or being mocked along the way) NOT belief that they perhaps canât do it?