The wealthy are effectively “outside” all norms and standards and sense of consistency. This is why they both get away with so much shit and why they’re often utterly fucking insane.
It’s difficult to characterize Tsar Alexander, because it seems that most of his mental energy was caught up in creating narratives about what kind of person he was, and not so much on what he did or how he behaved. Alexander had 8 or 10 of these narratives going through his head at the same time, and wasn’t particularly bothered when they contradicted each other.
Alexander considered himself a true “Enlightenment Monarch,” and told anybody who would listen that he believed in a limited, constitutional monarchy, and wanted Russia to have elections, and a parliament, and independent courts. At the same time, he ruled Russia as a tyrannical dictator, which was justified in his mind because he believed that he was God’s chosen instrument on Earth. These two thoughts are not compatible.
But Alexander did not see a contradiction. He would simply switch between these two modes of thought depending on who he was talking to and how he felt that day.
Alexander believed himself to be the most honourable man in Europe, a man who revered ritual, and tradition, and justice. Simultaneously, he believed that God made him Emperor of Russia for a reason, and if he needed to go back on his word and use brute force to implement his will, that was all part of God’s plan.
These contradictory beliefs made Alexander impossible to deal with. His positions came off as utterly random, and they could change at any time depending on his mood.
Thank you for this, this is actually a fantastic story for me, I have spent the last few years (since Covid actually) trying to learn about cognitive dissonance in people and it turned into a deep, dark rabbit hole that shed a lot of light on heady ideas like free-will and how the brain actually works. (2/10, would not recommend this journey. Caused a small breakdown.)
But the short of it is, as a species logic and consistency is not only not that important to us, it’s not even natural to us.
Our brains are not the things we think they are, even time itself is not what we think. We just have these crazy machines in our heads that write storylines and narratives to explain how we feel and to tie events together to form a coherent story for how time is unfolding. But none of that is anything more than how a large language model “predicts” what should take place via odds and probability.
No part of our minds defaults to logic and sensibility, it defaults to “yeah, that makes sense I guess.” and for the vast majority of people, this is enough to get through the day, but we each are just absolutely swimming in logical inconsistency. Granted, some more than others, but it’s a hard-wired, built-in feature of being alive… your mind tells you stories to explain your experiences and feelings, and this story need not follow any rules of logic.
This is why we have flat-earther scientists and climate-change denying climatologists and doctors who don’t believe in vaccines. Those are extreme examples but if you search, you will find you also likely have dozens of smaller-scale contradictions in your thoughts, your life narratives, your reasoning for anything and everything you do.
Oh for sure – in the context of Tsar Alexander, he likely grew up being told from birth that it was his divine right to rule, whilst at the same time he wanted to be in with the trendy European crowd promoting democracy. I can totally see how someone might have these two halves of themselves that they cannot totally reconcile .
Musk, I believe, truly does care what people think of him. There was a time in the early 2010s when he had a trendy wife, was promoting open source specs for E-cars, and was doing as much as he could to signal to progressives that he was their man.
Only once it became clear that he could not live the consequence-free rich-man lifestyle with all of its abusive horrors and still be revered by the progressives, is when he ran like a crying infant to the skirts of its mother towards the conservatives. He ultimately wishes to be loved and respected by the in-crowd, doesn’t matter what they stand for.
Anti immigration…. Musk is an immigrant… an immigrant to the states, an immigrant to South Africa. His decision totally makes sense… it’s self hatred.
The wealthy are effectively “outside” all norms and standards and sense of consistency. This is why they both get away with so much shit and why they’re often utterly fucking insane.
K is helping a lot here…
Reminds me of Castlereigh trying to deal with Tsar Alexandar I at the The Congress of Vienna (1814)
https://youtu.be/QtOXq9SwarQ?t=1061
Thank you for this, this is actually a fantastic story for me, I have spent the last few years (since Covid actually) trying to learn about cognitive dissonance in people and it turned into a deep, dark rabbit hole that shed a lot of light on heady ideas like free-will and how the brain actually works. (2/10, would not recommend this journey. Caused a small breakdown.)
But the short of it is, as a species logic and consistency is not only not that important to us, it’s not even natural to us.
Our brains are not the things we think they are, even time itself is not what we think. We just have these crazy machines in our heads that write storylines and narratives to explain how we feel and to tie events together to form a coherent story for how time is unfolding. But none of that is anything more than how a large language model “predicts” what should take place via odds and probability.
No part of our minds defaults to logic and sensibility, it defaults to “yeah, that makes sense I guess.” and for the vast majority of people, this is enough to get through the day, but we each are just absolutely swimming in logical inconsistency. Granted, some more than others, but it’s a hard-wired, built-in feature of being alive… your mind tells you stories to explain your experiences and feelings, and this story need not follow any rules of logic.
This is why we have flat-earther scientists and climate-change denying climatologists and doctors who don’t believe in vaccines. Those are extreme examples but if you search, you will find you also likely have dozens of smaller-scale contradictions in your thoughts, your life narratives, your reasoning for anything and everything you do.
Oh for sure – in the context of Tsar Alexander, he likely grew up being told from birth that it was his divine right to rule, whilst at the same time he wanted to be in with the trendy European crowd promoting democracy. I can totally see how someone might have these two halves of themselves that they cannot totally reconcile .
Musk, I believe, truly does care what people think of him. There was a time in the early 2010s when he had a trendy wife, was promoting open source specs for E-cars, and was doing as much as he could to signal to progressives that he was their man.
Only once it became clear that he could not live the consequence-free rich-man lifestyle with all of its abusive horrors and still be revered by the progressives, is when he ran like a crying infant to the skirts of its mother towards the conservatives. He ultimately wishes to be loved and respected by the in-crowd, doesn’t matter what they stand for.