Rent-seeking

I've posted about intrinsic economic value and was struggling with the nomenclature, untill I ran up into this article on wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Basically, consider the economy to be a big pile of value, with more value being added by those who find new resources, invent new technologies and offer new services. In short : People who add stuff.

Now imagine I had a small bit of that pile and threw that away to take more of the big pile into my hand. Sure, I get richer, but essentially, the big pile just became a bit smaller and all the other people became a bit poorer.

And that's basically the problem with about everything, isn't it? Actors that maximize their own profit to the detriment of the total system. A bit like the Tragedy of the Commons.

I'm more and more convinced that to actually build a society that is stable, it needs to have the expectation of adding to it as a basis. And for those so entitled : Merely being alive isn't adding to the world, you have to actually add something.

todo

I met an ex of mine yesterday. In a way, it was nice and we had a fun time. She's changed. Grown even. I had the feeling I was doing the same, but as the evening progressed, I felt that she was keeping a distance.

Logical, considering she just had a new partner and since there was a chance we'd end up sleeping together if he wasn't in the picture. In a way, that's a compliment, somehow I'm 'dangerous' or at least attractive at some point.

But there's something wrong in the way I'm dealing with emotional stuff. As the evening progressed, I felt rejected. Something that made me go back into my needy mindset, meaning I couldn't enjoy myself anymore and got sad.

It's not that I'm desperately in love with her anymore, it's been over a year. There's something else wrong that I still have to fix. I guess I'm afraid of rejection, like every other guy, but somehow it makes me act irrational and emotional. I need to get rid of this if I'm ever to get into a healthy relationship.

*click*

Stuff is starting to click. Life is on track and I'm adding things because I want them. It's funny how actively starting with a new way of living gives you a chance to completely rebuild the way you live and by extension, the person you are.

I like this. A new year of affluence and growth, coming up

Boundaries & reflection.

After some asian enlightenment stuff i've been talking with a good friend about why some people seem to get somewhere in life, where others seem to lack the faculties to get there.

I get the feeling that the ability to get ahead in life partially relies on the ability to reflect upon whath appens to you.

And I remembered something about boundaries. We put a boundary between ourself and the rest of the world, isolating ourselves from the world outside and vice versa, isolating the world from ourselves inside. Alan Watts has some nice points about this.


Though classifying people is a bad, bad thing to do, as it is mirrored in the way you look at yourself, I do wonder if looking at this boundary between yourself and the world leads to different types of people.

It should be easy to divide people into four categories:

Non-reflexives, or those that do not look at themselves or the world.
World-reflexives, or those that reflect upon the world but not themselves.
Self-reflexives, that reflect upon themselves but not on the world around them.
Full-reflexives, (Bi-reflexives just sounded..bad) that reflect on themselves ánd the world around them, applying the reflections from the world on themselves and vice versa.

I'm going to look at this for a while, and update later.

cynism

In every cynic, there's an optimist who is afraid that they might be wrong.

Elements of personality

There seems to be a transition in my thinking. More and more, it's simply doing what I want and less trying to appear like something I feel I should be.

In my theatre classes, we used something called the theory of elements to determine our playstyle. Fire, water, earth, wind. All of these were explained in terms of a cowboy walking into a saloon.

Fire walks in with zest and flamboyance. He's not afraid of anything because he's faster on the trigger than anyone. Anyone shoot at him, he'll just shoot them first. Balls first, loud, full and sure of himself.

Water walks in like a cyclone that embraces the entire saloon. If he gets shot, he shows and shares the pain with those around him, so they can see that shooting him is a bad thing. He's like a little vortex drawing out the emotion in people.

Earth, ah. The stoic. Earth would simply stand quietly. Walk inside without saying anything. Earth would get shot and look at the gunshots and think "Hm. I appear to have been shot" without changing his demeanor. He's unshakeable but within the confines of himself, where fire is so outside himself.

Wind is the neurotic. His eyes dart from point to point, always looking for dangers, threats, planning, adapting. If someone goes for their gun, he'd outsmart them by always being prepared. Hands fidget, thoughts jump from point to point. Always prepared and always reacting to everything.


These are characters you use on stage, but they have their merit in knowing yourself. I used to be water with a lot of earth and air mixed in. Now I'm starting to become more earth. More grounded in my own choices and less reliant on the outside world to determine my behaviour.

I've got a girl whom allows me to simply be, instead of proving myself all the time. I'm choosing my own path and starting to plan the rest of my career or at least my life path. It's not a sudden epihany, but a slow change creeping in your every day behaviour. I'm not sure if it was actions or thoughts that made me change first. But they're both aligned more now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a superman, but something is changing. I like this.

Love

And for the first time, it feels completely relaxed and natural. She gives me that feeling in my stomach when she does something nice and I notice I want to make her happy. But it's not as frantic as I'm used to. It's great to talk but the rest of the world is still there, instead of head-over-heels insanity.

Am I finally growing up? I sure hope so. I think she's healthy for me. I'm showing more of myself, consciously trying to drop barriers. It's scary at first, but so great afterwards. It makes me feel a strange calm. Everything will be allright.

I hope I can give her what she needs too.

The moment you start telling the world how it really works and should be is the moment you are so disconnected you need to get out of your mind and just experience again. It's so easy to just sit back and just think, instead of taking part.