Cause 4: Increased Demand for Illusion of Safety and Security
Re-reading after some life experiences, I see how true it is that, at its core, people just want to appear good and avoid blame at absolutely all cost.
People don't want to make smart purchase decisions, they just want to avoid all possible blame for making bad purchase decisions.
People don't want to the right things at work, they just want to avoid all possible blame for doing wrong things at work.
People don't want to raise their children to be outstanding success, they just want t...
The biggest problem with The Fear is that it leads one to look for the actions that tell a story that you are doing the thing that means that when you lose/fail it won't be your fault, as opposed to the thing that actually makes you win/succeed.
Totally explains my observations. Giving up chances of the success, just to remove feelings of responsibility at prospect of failure. The thing is, many people would still make the trade if you present it as such.
Often people who are counting on you, usually family members, will effectively let you know that while they care a non-zero amount about whether your life experience is miserable, or what impact your work has on the world, or what upside or opportunities for personal growth you might have, what they actually care about is whether you are projecting the illusion of security. They want to mentally cache that you/they ‘are going to be OK’ and that ‘everything is all right.’
When I first read this 6 months ago, I thought...
One thought I had is many of these causes directly follow from the meme that "Cthulhu Always Swims Left".
It's well known that size of government only grows bigger. As you explained above, it's not surprising that large corporations grows at the same time.
Your "Cause 8" was particularly provoking. I moved from another country to work where I am now. And my observations match almost perfectly with what you wrote. It is an absolutely sad state of affairs; where so much of a person's identity and well-being is embedded in th...
I suspect that super-competition exists in many areas far more than needs to happen, caused by people's tendency to over-value sank cost to enormous proportions.
This includes everything from competing for professorship. Ivy League spots. Big-4 accounting jobs.
In fact, I will go further and say that, many things that comes with "prestige" and "status", has some elements super-competition when viewed from a more rational point of view that ignores "prestige". It happens far more than people realize.