I love this so much. I was definitely raised to be a people pleaser, and I think that's led to me being less pleased with myself, and attracting people into my life that aren't pleased with me, either (probably because they are also not pleased with THEMselves). It's a cycle worth breaking, for sure. Thanks for the encouragement!
Well said. Epictetus said it well too: “If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.”
I remember the Lincoln "quote" as, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
To be a successful politician I guess you just have to fool most of the people most of the time...
Lincoln (along with Woodrow Wilson) was one of the worst things that ever happened to this country. At a time when the country was seriously divided along regional lines, he refused to let the deep south go. His decision to wage war on them pushed the next tier of states into their camp. He then proceeded to lay waste half of what had previously been the entire country and cause the deaths and mutilations of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. Even the enslaved blacks, whose condition was an ancillary issue at the start of the war (elevated later in the fight to give the war a higher meaning when the struggle was not going well for the north) found themselves little better off after war's end for another century...
I have never had much luck pleasing others. There is a general principle. Cleaning something for example, a kitchen say, can take you an hour to get it 90% clean. Getting it to 99% clean though doesn’t take you 6 minutes more work. It takes you 10 hours. To get it 99.9% clean takes you 100 hours. To get closer to perfection you spend exponentially more time for little gain. There is the odd thing that is needed for. But these moments are few and far between.
If my reasonable best leaves you wanting tell me what I missed. It might be significant. But if no amount of improving really changes your attitude toward me then so be it. You get stuck with my reasonable best.
I want to point out a context that very few these days seem to make.
You're referring to a single aspect of the mentality called *codependence*. The term came out of 12-step programs and originally was specific to the relationship between an addict and their enabler, but the psychology and relational dynamics involved are the same regardless of the context.
We could call the addiction involved, in the broadest sense, *validation dependency*. Although the same person can slip into and out of codependence depending on the situation, the codependent mentality and the mentality of humanness (self-validating) are mutually exclusive -- kinda like an erection and urination are mutually exclusive. We can operate under one or the other at different times, but only as a hard either/or at any particular time.
Common experiences of codependence are, for example, the mental mode we tend to revert into on returning to a good home to visit parents, or the submissive, even servile, mentality we devolve into on walking into a courthouse, jail/prison, or any state or federal building where we know we could suffer serious harm should we cross lines we might not even know are there.
Codependence is a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for cultism. Cultism also requires psychotic persons that seduce codependent attachment and then exploit it. This means that some relationships (including parent-child) are cultic, while others are not.
Is codependence a state or range of states along a continuum? Like, for example, I need social interaction more than my wife does. I am confident, and comfortable alone, but as an extrovert, I am somewhat more "dependent" on interaction with others than she is. Is this phenomenon the same as codependence, but we only call it codependence when it reaches an unhealthy or pathological level? Or are they different phenomena?
You won't find any of this in a psych textbook, of course, even though it's so nearly universal. If we studied it honestly it would unravel all the bullshit on which supremacism and authoritarianism rely. We don't need the psychologists though. It's easily observable and the fact is we've all engaged in it so we know exactly what's going on.
I don't think codependence can be boiled down to a simple state of mind/cognition, although I'm sure they could get in there with an MRI machine and see differences in brain function. Codependence involves both a mentality, i.e., a constellation of psychological factors, and relationships of a kind the mentality demands under the belief that, “Otherwise, I’ll die.”
I make no claim to have a comprehensive understanding of codependence, nor am I interested. My interest is to know it when I see it, know what the alternative is, describe it so that others can see it, and explain how to escape from codependence into humanness.
The easiest way I know to differentiate between healthy interdependence and codependence is by looking at two factors:
1. Do we assume without question that it’s on others to take care of needs for us that we’re incapable of taking care of for ourselves?
2. Do we demand that they do it for us?
A person for whom both are true is codependent, both in terms of their mentality and in the kind of relationships they demand.
A person in possession of their humanness does not make assumption #1. And even if they get into a fix where they see no possibility of a need being met unless someone else does it for them, they refuse to lay the demand on others that they **must** do for them.
Introspectively, codependence is signaled by our, “Otherwise I’ll die!” or “It’s the end of the world!” reaction.
99.99% of the time that we feel like that, it’s bullshit. Either what we feared never comes upon us, or it does happen, we go through it, and we realize that surviving it wasn’t the terrifying, difficult prospect we thought it would be. We survive. So, we were wrong about it.
But if we succumb to that delusion of existential threat, believe there's nothing we can do about it, insist it's incumbent on others to do for us: we’re codependent in that scenario. We become open to the option of degrading ourselves and pimping ourselves out in the most horrific ways in order to avoid a near non-possibility and get others to do for us.
Without this self-degradation and offering ourselves for sale, supremacism and authoritarianism cannot operate, because they can’t keep their legs under them—like trying to dance on a marble floor smeared with grease. No traction.
This is why I roll my eyes when I hear people talk about “fighting” and “war” and the like. It shows they’re still deluded about the nature of the situation. When people correctly realize that we give elitist parasites the only “power” they can use against us, they need to take the next step into honesty and admit that our own codependence creates the vacuum that sucks their violence and violations into existence.
You can see how this works in all kinds of power-disparity contexts: political oppression, domestic abuse, even addiction. The victim ceases being a victim the instant they reject and abandon their codependence and pick their humanness back up—even if it means death.
Where the codependent says, “Otherwise, I’ll die!” the human being says, “Otherwise, there’s a way and I’m fucking finding it!”
Frederick Douglass’ fight with “Mr. Covey” is a must-read in this connection. Best description of going from codependence to humanness I’ve ever read. Begin reading at "Long before daylight".
Yeah, it's proven to be a very robust and simple way of understanding people. No codependence = no cultism, no matter the scenario or sector or sphere or field.
I fumbled for a long time looking for the healthy alternative -- what are we doing when we're not codependent. What is it about and what is it called?,
Then I realized that self-degradation renders a person into a non-person, a tool, which is kinda the whole point for the psycho-ruler/killers among us. It's how psychopaths look at other human beings. They don't see precious persons, because they themselves aren't precious persons in their own eyes. It's just use or be used.
So, then, the alternative to codependence became obvious: embodying and operating in our natural, innate humanness. The opposite of codependence is humanness.
This has a bearing on anarchism. There's always been something that nagged me about anarchist thinking. It turns out that it shares a similar lack of humanness with archist (supremacists/authoritarian) thinking. Both very similarly try to approach human problems "objectively" -- which in effect means inhumanly -- in terms of mechanical structure, external forces, existential limitations, etc. You don't read much on either side about the crucial centrality of our unmanipulated motivations -- **what we really want** -- as key to successful relations in the human networks we call "societies". Both sides refer to "the masses" and treat them to some degree as tools, resources, and products.
To the degree that we eliminate subjectivity, we eliminate humanness.
Subjectivity is not a problem to be solved, nor is it the prime portal for bias and error like it's cracked up to be. The actual portal for bias and error is codependence, not subjectivity. Honest admission that we live, breathe, think, and act as thoroughly subjective beings who can find ways to temper the stupid thinking that results **precisely from erroneous denial of our limitations as subjective beings** helps us to avoid the slippery slope into superstition and eventual delusion **which is so much greater a portal for idiocy and error that the comparison is ludicrous**.
The psychopathic mentality doesn't denigrate and oppose subjectivity because of problems inherent to it, but because they are flat out incapable of navigating it, so they do what they always do: demonize, censor, erase, and destroy. No only can't they manage the dance of healthy, constructive interpersonal relationships and dealings -- the only way they find any confidence to do anything at all is if they're in a position to dictate and force the dance to become a march they dictate every step of the way.
I love this so much. I was definitely raised to be a people pleaser, and I think that's led to me being less pleased with myself, and attracting people into my life that aren't pleased with me, either (probably because they are also not pleased with THEMselves). It's a cycle worth breaking, for sure. Thanks for the encouragement!
I am happy to help ❤️
Oh, and by the way… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaA3YZ6QdJU
Love it!
So me!!
Well said. Epictetus said it well too: “If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.”
Man, those stoics kicked @$$!
💯
First and foremost, Bravo!
I remember the Lincoln "quote" as, "You can fool some of the people all of the time and fool all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
To be a successful politician I guess you just have to fool most of the people most of the time...
Lincoln (along with Woodrow Wilson) was one of the worst things that ever happened to this country. At a time when the country was seriously divided along regional lines, he refused to let the deep south go. His decision to wage war on them pushed the next tier of states into their camp. He then proceeded to lay waste half of what had previously been the entire country and cause the deaths and mutilations of hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. Even the enslaved blacks, whose condition was an ancillary issue at the start of the war (elevated later in the fight to give the war a higher meaning when the struggle was not going well for the north) found themselves little better off after war's end for another century...
Thank you :-)
I am right there with you on Wilson and Lincoln. It took me longer to get there with Lincoln, but I am there now too.
With all the propaganda we were fed in school about Lincoln, it's amazing any of us were able to get to the other side of it...
FDR was another disaster...
Totally. Why do they keep putting monstrous presidents on the money?
If George Washington wasn't still on the one dollar note I'd say it was a reflection on the quality of the money itself...
Eisenhower is on a dollar coin, and he warned us about the military industrial complex, so there’s that too.
As presidents go, I think Ike was one of the better ones...
All if this is for me!! I should read this article at least once a week!! Thank you Mr. Cook!!
I am glad to have been of service. And I am sorry to hear about your husband. ❤️
Check in here anytime—we have a great community!
Sometimes I don't agree with even myself.
IKR!!
I have never had much luck pleasing others. There is a general principle. Cleaning something for example, a kitchen say, can take you an hour to get it 90% clean. Getting it to 99% clean though doesn’t take you 6 minutes more work. It takes you 10 hours. To get it 99.9% clean takes you 100 hours. To get closer to perfection you spend exponentially more time for little gain. There is the odd thing that is needed for. But these moments are few and far between.
If my reasonable best leaves you wanting tell me what I missed. It might be significant. But if no amount of improving really changes your attitude toward me then so be it. You get stuck with my reasonable best.
That is a reasonable outlook!
(And a well-said truism about that kitchen-cleaning phenomenon.)
So True Christopher and needed to be said!
I especially like:
"GETTING ALONG DOES NOT REQUIRE IDEOLOGICAL CONSENSUS."
Right. It blew my mind when it occurred to me that not only do we not need consensus, but that the attempt to get it is producing MORE strife.
Very Important!
I never agree to disagree lol.
🤣
Excellent stuff!
I want to point out a context that very few these days seem to make.
You're referring to a single aspect of the mentality called *codependence*. The term came out of 12-step programs and originally was specific to the relationship between an addict and their enabler, but the psychology and relational dynamics involved are the same regardless of the context.
We could call the addiction involved, in the broadest sense, *validation dependency*. Although the same person can slip into and out of codependence depending on the situation, the codependent mentality and the mentality of humanness (self-validating) are mutually exclusive -- kinda like an erection and urination are mutually exclusive. We can operate under one or the other at different times, but only as a hard either/or at any particular time.
Common experiences of codependence are, for example, the mental mode we tend to revert into on returning to a good home to visit parents, or the submissive, even servile, mentality we devolve into on walking into a courthouse, jail/prison, or any state or federal building where we know we could suffer serious harm should we cross lines we might not even know are there.
Codependence is a necessary but insufficient prerequisite for cultism. Cultism also requires psychotic persons that seduce codependent attachment and then exploit it. This means that some relationships (including parent-child) are cultic, while others are not.
Is codependence a state or range of states along a continuum? Like, for example, I need social interaction more than my wife does. I am confident, and comfortable alone, but as an extrovert, I am somewhat more "dependent" on interaction with others than she is. Is this phenomenon the same as codependence, but we only call it codependence when it reaches an unhealthy or pathological level? Or are they different phenomena?
You won't find any of this in a psych textbook, of course, even though it's so nearly universal. If we studied it honestly it would unravel all the bullshit on which supremacism and authoritarianism rely. We don't need the psychologists though. It's easily observable and the fact is we've all engaged in it so we know exactly what's going on.
I don't think codependence can be boiled down to a simple state of mind/cognition, although I'm sure they could get in there with an MRI machine and see differences in brain function. Codependence involves both a mentality, i.e., a constellation of psychological factors, and relationships of a kind the mentality demands under the belief that, “Otherwise, I’ll die.”
I make no claim to have a comprehensive understanding of codependence, nor am I interested. My interest is to know it when I see it, know what the alternative is, describe it so that others can see it, and explain how to escape from codependence into humanness.
The easiest way I know to differentiate between healthy interdependence and codependence is by looking at two factors:
1. Do we assume without question that it’s on others to take care of needs for us that we’re incapable of taking care of for ourselves?
2. Do we demand that they do it for us?
A person for whom both are true is codependent, both in terms of their mentality and in the kind of relationships they demand.
A person in possession of their humanness does not make assumption #1. And even if they get into a fix where they see no possibility of a need being met unless someone else does it for them, they refuse to lay the demand on others that they **must** do for them.
Introspectively, codependence is signaled by our, “Otherwise I’ll die!” or “It’s the end of the world!” reaction.
99.99% of the time that we feel like that, it’s bullshit. Either what we feared never comes upon us, or it does happen, we go through it, and we realize that surviving it wasn’t the terrifying, difficult prospect we thought it would be. We survive. So, we were wrong about it.
But if we succumb to that delusion of existential threat, believe there's nothing we can do about it, insist it's incumbent on others to do for us: we’re codependent in that scenario. We become open to the option of degrading ourselves and pimping ourselves out in the most horrific ways in order to avoid a near non-possibility and get others to do for us.
Without this self-degradation and offering ourselves for sale, supremacism and authoritarianism cannot operate, because they can’t keep their legs under them—like trying to dance on a marble floor smeared with grease. No traction.
This is why I roll my eyes when I hear people talk about “fighting” and “war” and the like. It shows they’re still deluded about the nature of the situation. When people correctly realize that we give elitist parasites the only “power” they can use against us, they need to take the next step into honesty and admit that our own codependence creates the vacuum that sucks their violence and violations into existence.
You can see how this works in all kinds of power-disparity contexts: political oppression, domestic abuse, even addiction. The victim ceases being a victim the instant they reject and abandon their codependence and pick their humanness back up—even if it means death.
Where the codependent says, “Otherwise, I’ll die!” the human being says, “Otherwise, there’s a way and I’m fucking finding it!”
Frederick Douglass’ fight with “Mr. Covey” is a must-read in this connection. Best description of going from codependence to humanness I’ve ever read. Begin reading at "Long before daylight".
https://archive.org/details/unset0000unse_o3u1/page/42/mode/2up?q=%22Long+before+daylight%22
I agree with all of this (and love the Douglass excerpt). I am going to save this whole thing for future reference!
Yeah, it's proven to be a very robust and simple way of understanding people. No codependence = no cultism, no matter the scenario or sector or sphere or field.
I fumbled for a long time looking for the healthy alternative -- what are we doing when we're not codependent. What is it about and what is it called?,
Then I realized that self-degradation renders a person into a non-person, a tool, which is kinda the whole point for the psycho-ruler/killers among us. It's how psychopaths look at other human beings. They don't see precious persons, because they themselves aren't precious persons in their own eyes. It's just use or be used.
So, then, the alternative to codependence became obvious: embodying and operating in our natural, innate humanness. The opposite of codependence is humanness.
This has a bearing on anarchism. There's always been something that nagged me about anarchist thinking. It turns out that it shares a similar lack of humanness with archist (supremacists/authoritarian) thinking. Both very similarly try to approach human problems "objectively" -- which in effect means inhumanly -- in terms of mechanical structure, external forces, existential limitations, etc. You don't read much on either side about the crucial centrality of our unmanipulated motivations -- **what we really want** -- as key to successful relations in the human networks we call "societies". Both sides refer to "the masses" and treat them to some degree as tools, resources, and products.
To the degree that we eliminate subjectivity, we eliminate humanness.
Subjectivity is not a problem to be solved, nor is it the prime portal for bias and error like it's cracked up to be. The actual portal for bias and error is codependence, not subjectivity. Honest admission that we live, breathe, think, and act as thoroughly subjective beings who can find ways to temper the stupid thinking that results **precisely from erroneous denial of our limitations as subjective beings** helps us to avoid the slippery slope into superstition and eventual delusion **which is so much greater a portal for idiocy and error that the comparison is ludicrous**.
The psychopathic mentality doesn't denigrate and oppose subjectivity because of problems inherent to it, but because they are flat out incapable of navigating it, so they do what they always do: demonize, censor, erase, and destroy. No only can't they manage the dance of healthy, constructive interpersonal relationships and dealings -- the only way they find any confidence to do anything at all is if they're in a position to dictate and force the dance to become a march they dictate every step of the way.
This is solid, and all seems right to me. And I think this relates:
https://christophercook.substack.com/p/exact-moment-i-became-anarchist
For me, it was the opposite—humanness, in its deepest essence, is what convinced me.
Yeah definitely relates.
I say it much shorter:
https://substack.com/@duell/note/c-116785383?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=8mqdm
Yeppers!