Kemtrup
Kemtrup
@kemtrup.bsky.social
Thoughts not about anything professional
But maybe that is why it is unpopular. People are so committed (unconsciously?) to trying to give (and often failing) their kids a leg up, they don’t want equality of opportunity in a more truly fair market of competition.
August 17, 2025 at 5:48 PM
“volunteer” experience, favoring fancy private high schools) that the rich have used to give their children a leg up in admissions.
August 17, 2025 at 5:46 PM
An added bonus is reduced existential terror in parents about saving to give their kids a leg up.

Such a program also would require increased focus on equality in education, eg ending legacy admissions, lotteries for all qualified students instead of looking for things (fancy personal statements,
August 17, 2025 at 5:46 PM
universal healthcare, and it very much captures anger about the injustice and unfairness of neoliberalism on both the right and left.

I’m not even sure I even like the idea, but it’s odd to me that someone isn’t pushing for it publicly, politically.
August 17, 2025 at 5:46 PM
It strikes me that this would be incredibly popular if someone sold it. It captures the imagination of the libertarian right (we still have free markets and maybe even lower income tax) and the left (in some ways this is far more egalitarian, esp if you leave in place things like
August 17, 2025 at 5:46 PM
This sort of psychological stance guarantees that one’s closest friends, and those which are in relationships of some kind of interdependence will come under the greatest attack. While enemies will be perceived with a more cool, logical understanding and even empathy. Enemies will make sense.
March 1, 2025 at 9:57 PM
doing only what they are told, or they are fakers, tricksters, manipulators who need to be punished.

I think politics has been taken over by this absence of mentalization.
March 1, 2025 at 9:53 PM
works by sacrificing and trusting that allies/friends will sacrifice too seems naive or absurd. Instead it FEELS that it must be that supposed allies are actually getting one over on you, manipulating you.

Such a person then attacks allies, friends as a test to see if they will be perfectly loyal,
March 1, 2025 at 9:53 PM
… you either get thoughtful acceptance of reality and growth, communication and collaboration to effect realistic change, or you get greater denial of reality, backlash, emotional explosion, attack…
February 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
As long as the environment provides for success, life is stable. The baby gets what it wants and feels omnipotent.

But when the environment fails to provide, when the territory can’t be acquired, when the economy gets worse, when greatness doesn’t come just because you say so, well…
February 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
When a tyrant or anything like a tyrant is in power, in business or politics- they see the world through the lens of omnipotence. “I want this and that is enough to make it be.” “I want more territory, there it is. I want economic greatness, there it is.”
February 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
see and feel the world through the infantile lens of omnipotence with no way healthy, thoughtful way to let go of omnipotence. Instead you see extreme denial of reality, paranoia, lashing out, attempts at manipulation, emotional explosions, malice, extreme neediness, etc.
February 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
provide things, in which one is obviously not omnipotent.

But when development goes wrong, the seeds of personality disorder and especially the inability to mentalize (intuitively form competing, realistic hypotheses about why people are treating you this way or that) arise. The person continues to
February 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
provided. There is no developed understanding of cause and effect, only a sense of I want and it happens, as if (metaphorically) one is omnipotent.

Ordinary development requires children to reconcile these feelings of omnipotence with reality, esp reality outside of the world in which caregivers
February 2, 2025 at 11:19 PM
I can’t find it :(
January 29, 2025 at 3:42 AM