The problem with those who avoid facing their frustrations is their back to front reasoning and the fact that a phony toughness has gained rhetorical power in Western communities.
Many people start with the estimation, “I’m a decent person, with high self esteem. Therefore, things ought to be easy for me. But if they’re not easy, it’s because someone is making things unnecessarily complex and they have no right to do that. I will teach them a lesson.”
I think if one starts from a position of how things ought to be, rather than setting out to find out how things are, one cannot learn anything new — that is, apart from what one THINKS one already knows. The idea that the “strong” identity is fixed and never alters is part of the attitude of this fake toughness. People like this don’t tolerate complexity, because they choose to believe that anything hard to understand is the result of others “making excuses”.
It’s all very strange, but it’s philosophical idealism at work, once again — the idea that because I think I have high self esteem, the world owes me deference and should present me with no difficulties.
STAY SANE AND SAVAGE Gender activism, intellectual shamanism
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