An Open Letter

I went to watch a horror movie with A, And she recommended unseen screen, Where the movie isn’t announced ahead of time and you see something that hasn’t yet been shown in theaters. We both assumed it was horror, and once we were watching the trailers she mentioned that now that she thinks about it she doesn’t actually know if it’s a horror movie. We ended up watching a two hour 40 minute political thriller/documentary about Russia in the 2000s. She fell asleep during the movie at one point which is really funny to me, and the movie was not necessarily good, but I realized that I actually really did enjoy it. I think one of the things I took away from it that I wanted to write down was how the main character essentially had his life fully rerouted an experience in his formative years.

In the movie it explains his backstory as someone who didn’t want to get into politics or anything like that and rather work odd jobs, and was part of the rebel/punk scene. He then meets a girl that is so incredibly unique and different from everything else that he falls in love with her. He gets into theater and the arts, and they are in a relationship and eventually one of his old friends who got into banking and made a lot of money essentially stole his girl from him. He continued to involve them in extravagant and lavish experiences, and the girl eventually ends up cheating with him. In a memorable scene, he talks with his father and tells him how after they had broken up he felt relieved, but at the same time theater could no longer satisfy him and he was essentially cursed with ambition. His father, who was a politician warned him against this. In the rest of the movie this person continues to climb in the chain until they are essentially a close advisor to Putin, and eventually it leads to his demise.

I thought about this because I realized that if I had had an experience like that during some of my formative years, I think that would’ve done an incredible amount of damage to me in the trajectory of my life. This person who was going down a completely different route fully pivoted their life into chasing power because that was who he lost his love to, which was his priority. And because of that he became disillusioned with the idea that power and wealth is what you should be chasing. And I think that he ultimately was not really happy or content the same way he was once he later had a child.

I think I see this story play out in several different flavors. I think about how there is the entire manosphere, where people are convinced that chasing wealth and monetary shows of that should be one’s objective in life. I think of people who hyper fixate on the gym, and think about how their social value is essentially tied to how muscular they are, or how physically strong they are. I also think about all of the people that play league too much and see their worth as tied to their rank. And I think all of these things are not inherently evil on their own and into some extent necessary in different ways. But at the same time these are not the sole optimization objectives or even necessarily that important I think. I think it is important to have financial security and some amount of success, I also think it is helpful to be in good shape. I also think it doesn’t hurt to be good at competitive things, but I do think that there is a hyper fixation or too much of a focus on some of these things that lead to neglecting other things that create a well formed individual. I think those important other aspects are sacrificed because they aren’t seen as important or of any value, at least compared to the main criteria. And I think that if I had had one of these experiences earlier on it would have absolutely derailed my life. I’m very fortunate to have both been successful in a lot of the endeavors that I’ve done, and I’ve also not had too many instances of direct competition especially in the romantic sense or in a way that matters to me too heavily. The closest thing I have that was maybe academics being compared to my sister, and maybe video games wanting to be the good friend in the group. Both of these things propelled me to be successful in these avenues, but at the same time I was able to let go and focus on other things because I think I did not have a strong loss associated with them. If I had lost the girl that I was interested in or in a relationship with to someone else that was for example a higher rank in league, I would probably have taken that as a strong source of feedback about how I value is tied to league and not sufficient. And the crazy thing is at least in the movie, the girl did leave for that reason. And I think especially in those early formative years is where you have autonomy, if this is what you see, and especially because stuff like social media will feed you more of these things, I can see it being something where you view the world as solely interested in that. And you see that as the entire market, pricing your value. But at the same time as an outsider I very much think that not a lot of my friends if any are that into extravagant wealth, and often or at least I would like to think it’s almost a negative thing. Someone being super showboaty and flaunting wealth would probably be seen as bad by my friends that are female. And so because of that perspective I’m able to separate my notion of value from wealth, but if I didn’t have other experiences I might’ve really fallen for that. I’m very grateful that I’ve managed to get to this point in my life where I’ve had a decent foundation of experiences where I am not horribly impressionable, and that I was able to get here without being poisoned by one of these predatory experiences. I’m very grateful for that, and I’m also very grateful for the movie for making me aware of that perspective.