Giver, Taker, Hermit, Leaf

There are four kinds of people in the world.

Axiomatically, the world is run by people who are not afraid of spiders.

Since I grew up on the manly man side of the family, I learned lessons most appropriate to men, back when we were serious about such things and were confident in our ability to pass lessons to the next generation.

The most significant of those lessons I find still relevant after years of reflection and maturation. OK decades of reflection. That lesson is “Make yourself useful.” I haven’t done many ‘boys and girls’ essays here, but I have talked about the roles of men and women via negativa. What men hate most is being told they are typical and useless. What women hate most is being told they are repulsive and worthy of abandonment. Since you can’t guarantee that men or women will get what they desire, your best bet is to keep them free of what you know they’ll hate. Interestingly enough for men and women alike, the worst punishment would be solitary confinement, and you can divine the nightmares of each when they give up on themselves after months in the dark dungeon.

A young friend of the family is entering a trade for which he has no prior experience or family connections. It’s none of my business or concern, but since this is a technical trade I admire, I am tangentially interested to see how he fares. During his apprenticeship, my advice - not yet verbally given - is ‘Make yourself useful’. But what I also know is that in trades where men proven useful and actually useless men don’t get along well. In fact, I never forget or discount the notion that, especially in the trades where literal and metaphorical spiders exist, hazing is real. Moreover, hazing is useful because incompetence is dangerous. Some teams cannot afford weak links. So young men are encouraged by competent men to stomp spiders as appropriate.

Part of the need for young men who aim to be useful is to shutup and take orders, to wipe the tears from their eyes so they can see straight. And some never quite get that right. There are any number of reasons for that, a rabbit hole which is tangential. But when there are tasks that need to be done, one becomes after one’s youth one of four types.

I tend to consider those aspects of society that change slowly over time. I value philosophy over politics. I value culture over fashion, and civilization over society although that last one takes a while to get a handle on. It’s only when you’re settled with where you are in those contexts that you can decide with finality.

Giver
You know what people want and what they need. You work to give them what they need. Occasionally you just give them what they want because they refuse to take what they need.

Taker
You don’t know what people need, but you know what you need and that’s your priority. You work to get what you need from whomever has it, with a mind to not pissing them off. Sometimes that involves measured giving.

Hermit
You don’t particularly care what people need. You don’t have the time nor the inclination to figure them out. You have what you need. The rest is just noise. You could give, you could take. What difference does it make?

Leaf
You have a vague idea of what people need, or is it what they want? You go with the flow and land where ever. It’s all the same to you. You accept that you change. Once you were part of the tree, now you are part of the ground. But who are you really?

If you live long enough, you will have lived several of these lives. In war, under duress, in times of dislocating change, you figure out which is your base self. Or maybe you always knew and have been striving to be the Other You, or get to the Other Circumstances.

People don’t have weaknesses so much as they overuse their strengths under stress. When things get real, people get real. As real as they can be. These types are who they are when speaking the loudest.

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I’m too observant and articulate, not to mention hard-headed to be a leaf most of the time. Hell for me is being a leaf in a random wind, forced to follow chaotic directions without my willpower. When I think of this it reminds me of a conversation I heard recently with Jordan Peterson and Arthur Brooks. It has four corners as well.

According to his interlocutor, there are four false idols (outside of God) for which humans are vulnerable and thus most likely to make human errors. They are:

• Power

• Money

• Pleasure

• Honor

The exercise, which takes some reflection because you have to say why, is which is the least important to you. You get rid of it and then look to the other three. Now which is the least important. In all of these matters, when you give up the idol, you don’t become completely rid of it, you simply revert to the typical mean of the people around you. If for example you give up Money, you don’t become impoverished. When you give up Honor (prestige, fame, acclaim) you don’t become a pariah. The point is to figure out which of these four types of rewards you are most susceptible to.

They say every man has his price. What do you give the man who has everything? More of what he idolizes.

Several years ago I used to introduce myself as half Jewish, half Catholic and half Black Nationalist. It’s just a short leap to see that I have almost no need for pleasure, but in fact I less of a need for power. This I have in common with Peterson and Brooks. This is the fascinating lesson.

I'm not interested in exerting control over others voluntary actions.

I would say that the reason for that is because you hate when people have power over you. Well that's certainly an indication of the undesirability of power that's my lived experience. I hate being being told what to do.

Not everybody hates that. People who really like power actually are not bothered that much when people have power over them because it feels legitimate. Inherently it's it's kind of an interesting thing so you find that totalitarians are pretty comfortable when they're in totalitarian systems. They were just like to be the totalitarian. Dictators admire dictators.

Funny I was just writing about exactly that this morning. This is part of our misunderstanding of totalitarian systems; everyone is striving to be free except the bully on the top. No it's bullies all the way down.

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I’m not sure that people are done with identity, although 23AndMe has filed for bankruptcy. We can take that as a sign that ‘identity’ as we’ve been blathering about is transient. Leafs are gonna leaf. Takers are gonna take. This is still the great power that is America and we Peasants need to be aware of how the power moves. Does it change who you think you are?