Dirty Fuel and Tribalism

One of my favorite quotes is from Bezos: "Your margin is my opportunity."

Another one of my favorite quotes is from Johnny Harris - former journalist at Vox - on excited accountability. This has been a core tenet for me to circumvent our greatest vices and uncertainties to force myself to learn things and force myself into "do or die" situations.

And lastly, studying the autobiographies of great people and how normal they were 10-20 years before they became known for their platitudes.

I will admit two things about myself that may be fixed eventually with age, experience, losses, and hard lessons. I am a very tribal person that cares about what my circle thinks and that I am not content with resigning myself to be subordinate to anybody on a clear dimension.

I think tribalism is important for instilling an environment that teaches you to acquire skills in an accelerated manner, while formatting distributed rewards in a way that keeps you emotionally stable while doing so.

I think tribalism is also important for instilling an innate sense of purpose to fall back on, when life goals eventually crumble and reform upon major life milestones.

When I lose, I become obsessed with how I can be better on a dimension that my tribe cares about. Losing in an objective fashion instills a dirty fuel in me to beat the victor any way possible.

Every situation in life is a puzzle with a possible solution given your skillset. Some are easy, and some are nigh impossible, but there's never an excuse to accept defeat. You can argue that in a "Wargames" like situation, that some situations have the only winning move is "not to play." My core belief is that these situations don't exist, and if they do, only comprise the back half of a scenario where actions leading up to it could have been taken to win.

The criteria for victory is simple. The majority of what society (our tribe) believes is the right objective thing.

We always need an enemy, and the tribe with the largest number of followers always wins. In a game theory sense, the tribe with the largest number of followers often wins not in a numerical sense, but because diversity of thought often belays advantages which promote assimilation, innovation, and better approaches. Many would decry that tribalism is a bad thing; that tribalism promotes infighting in society and would have justified actions now deemed inhumane today like discrimination, genocide, etc. I would point out that containerizing individuals with tribes has been the best fuel for driving them towards singular outcomes and innovation; when things are black and white, individuals find it easy to maximize efforts towards singular goals. Hence also the propensity for wartime to produce some of our greatest inventions.

The cultural norms within tribes are perfect conditions for creating dirty fuel and people with "chips on their shoulders." A VC I used to work for, Hummingbird, specifically looked for people with things to "prove to the world" and with "chips on their shoulder." A common joke is that this equates to "childhood trauma," but the adage is clear - people who have been fundamentally altered to view certain things as "do or die" in what normal people would regard as "unreasonable."

"A child scorned by a village will burn it down to feel its warmth."

In a way, having the ability to think this way is reassuring. That you can self-destruct yourself at any time, in order to level the field. For me, this is a great source of emotional stability and a north star for me to be always be comfortable being the least informed/accomplished person in the room, which much of my day to day job entails.

One day I'll be comfortable.

But until then, I will beat you, in my own way, until I stand in the penthouse where everyone else teeters at the top rung of their ladder.