I was having a discussion with my friend about Jordan Petersen, and the points made in this article remind me about something we were discussing.

One thing I don’t like about Petersen (among quite a few things) is his overarching belief in individualism. The world is too chaotic and complex and random for you to be able to completely influence your outcome, entirely within your own actions. Random circumstances and events play an equal — no more, no less — role in someone’s outcome. That includes your genetic stack of cards, your socioeconomic stack of cards, and your familial stack of cards (your parents can be talented, successful, loving individuals but still emotionally imperfect, and those effects are real). It also includes the random interactions, the chance encounters, and the butterfly effects of the right place and the right time.

Ceding a co-equal influence to things outside your control is really scary, and I think it explains this self-help “crush it and crush on yourself” trend on medium you describe. When I sit down at the beginning of the work-day, trying to cope with all the different ways I’m getting tugged in my career, all those self-help articles you mention are like a kick of dopamine. They massage my ego — yes, things are in your control, yes, you’re just a 5:30 am wake up and a sprint workout and a meditation away from getting what you want in life, yes, you’re the master of my own destiny. It’s an escape from the complicated and messy truth of “it matters but not that much.”

Thank you for this article — it’s always interesting to examine our psyche that arises from privilege. Obviously non-straightwhitemales have actually experienced the world’s cold, harsh randomness significantly more than me, which is why all this “control your destiny” self-help’s emptiness is much more obvious to them. They don’t have the privilege to have the myopia of the dude that killed it — ignoring those random lucky or unlucky circumstances isn’t an option…