I was trying to find a pattern behind the human irrational behaviour regarding certain things – status symbols, compulsive shopping, trying to acquire symbolism of achievement thinking it will result in the actual thing, trying to optimise decisions about even the smallest things and “win”… but what if there isn’t any?

What if the root of it all is profoundly irrational?

What if it’s merely an extension of childhood patterns that were never actually understood and replaced, and instead, one is trying to be “good”, to “please the parents”, in order to “win”?

What if people are unconsciously negotiating with some implicit, invisible parental figure, and trying to be successful in life by meeting some criteria – “look at me, I have all the wealth symbols, I’m successful, can I get approval now?”

Because, for them, somewhere, the parents are actually in charge of the world, and if they are pleased, everything will be all right. So, depending on what they think their parents are expecting of them, what the rules of the game are, they will try to win.

So, is the rule that the person with most money wins? Most status symbols? Most degrees and titles? Most fame? Stable income and predictable life? Joined the military and died protecting his country? Married and had children? Performed religious duties well? Because people don’t look like they are all playing the same game, and yet, strangely, they all are – they all try to gain approval, be good and successful; unless they are so broken they are completely self-destructive in their pathology.

Anti-religious people seem to try to use this form of behaviour to try and discredit all religion as a way of appeasing “sky daddy” of some kind, and yet, the connection of this behaviour with religion and its projection upon transcendence seems wholly incidental. The materialistic atheists manifest the same behaviour through different symbolism. The religious person will think that he with least unforgiven sins and most sacraments wins; an atheist will think that he with most offspring, control over most assets and with greatest reputation in society wins, but both are trying to check boxes in order to “win”.

Unfortunately, at no point do they seem to stop and think about what the fuck they are doing here; it’s all automatic, following an instinctual line of either pleasing the parent or rebelling in order to get attention. The irony is that they will devote an inordinate amount of effort to trying to “win” at the most insignificant things, such as buying the best dishwasher, camera, TV, watch or a car, where a rational bystander would notice that it doesn’t actually matter, because after getting to the point of “good enough”, the differences don’t actually gain you anything. Basically, after getting a watch that looks elegant, appropriate and not “tacky”, nobody really notices anything about it, and yet, people will invest incredible amounts of effort into it. It sounds irrational, and the first instinct is to try rational arguments, but what if it’s actually irrational to the point of complete disregard of all rationality? What if people are just following the invisible lines towards parental approval, or rebelling against imagined parental authority, and their entire existence is essentially sleepwalking, barely perceiving anything beyond trying to satisfy the limbic system of their brain that was conditioned somewhere in early childhood, to try to navigate parental approval?

There’s definitely lots of that everywhere – an endless effort to appease an invisible or imaginary parental authority in order to navigate the needs of your limbic system that is stuck somewhere in early childhood. But it’s not all I’m seeing. There are other motivating factors – respect and love, for instance. You don’t dress up for a special occasion because you seek approval, but because you respect the occasion and the people involved. You don’t treat your spouse well because you seek approval from your invisible parent; you do it because of love and respect.

I don’t buy myself expensive photo equipment in order to impress anyone; I do it because I understood that respect for my art form and craft requires it, and deliberately starving it of resources means disrespect, and if you disrespect your own work, how could you expect others to appreciate it? It’s a delicate dance between pathology and virtue, between self-contempt masquerading as asceticism, and overindulgence. It’s so easy to go overboard either way – do too much, or not enough, and the line of moderation might not actually be where you think it is.

I do, however, have one thing to recommend. Awareness. Know what you’re doing, and know why, and then it becomes very easy to find the correct course. Have your head in the game, and see the big picture of what you’re trying to do, and what methods you are choosing.