Welcome to the forum, Quinn. Glad to have you here. :)
I wonder to what extend the imposter syndrome in EA is unique to EA, and to what extent it is a broader societal trend of comparing ourselves to others. This could easily turn into a long rant on social media and how comparison is the thief of joy, but I’ll try to keep it concise: we generally only feel that we aren’t doing enough when we see other people that are doing more, and we usually have a very superficial glance[1] at doing more. When I feel the worst about myself is when I’ve made the poor decision to scroll through Facebook or LinkedIn, and I see other people doing things that I wish I was doing (and I am confident that this is not unique to me). Mimetic desire at it’s finest. As you can imagine, I don’t often scroll through those things.
Maybe these trends are both exacerbated in EA because it is a fairly online community, and also because it is a fairly young community?
“Superficial” in the sense of us mainly seeing crafted images rather than seeing realities. I see that someone earns 250,000 USD per year and donates half, but I don’t as easily see A) the tradeoffs & sacrifices that person made in order to do that, or B) the fortune/privilidge/luck that allows that person to do that. Here is an image I think of often, from Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhapy.
Welcome to the forum, Quinn. Glad to have you here. :)
I wonder to what extend the imposter syndrome in EA is unique to EA, and to what extent it is a broader societal trend of comparing ourselves to others. This could easily turn into a long rant on social media and how comparison is the thief of joy, but I’ll try to keep it concise: we generally only feel that we aren’t doing enough when we see other people that are doing more, and we usually have a very superficial glance[1] at doing more. When I feel the worst about myself is when I’ve made the poor decision to scroll through Facebook or LinkedIn, and I see other people doing things that I wish I was doing (and I am confident that this is not unique to me). Mimetic desire at it’s finest. As you can imagine, I don’t often scroll through those things.
Maybe these trends are both exacerbated in EA because it is a fairly online community, and also because it is a fairly young community?
“Superficial” in the sense of us mainly seeing crafted images rather than seeing realities. I see that someone earns 250,000 USD per year and donates half, but I don’t as easily see A) the tradeoffs & sacrifices that person made in order to do that, or B) the fortune/privilidge/luck that allows that person to do that. Here is an image I think of often, from Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhapy.