A Sartrean Response to “Being Human”: Chapter III.

There is a song called “Most Girls” by the artist Hailee Steinfeld, and it’s honestly an awful song, because it is a toxic, spiteful answer to a common compliment. The compliment, in its generic form, is “you’re not like most girls”, to which the artist answers with the claim, “I want to be.”


It’s like the sort of people who take issue with the thought that parents would, say, raise their children properly and lovingly by telling them that they are special. If I had to guess at why so many people fall for self-destructive tendencies, it’s not because they think they’re special but because they’re taught they’re “normal” and expendable “like everybody else”. Yet this is utter poison and the most depraved of narcissistic tendencies, since it implies not only that the child has absolutely nothing to contribute to an ailing populace, but also that *nobody* does and no one *ever has*.


“Equality”, expressed in such a lifeless form, is death, since it is only “special” people who break out of their existing culture and find strength enough to *change* it. All of our problems can be solved through friendly competition in between the sorts of people who were taught that they would do great things, while all of our problems can be traced to weak, conformist people who were utterly rejected in their individuality and so became a mouthpiece for the common idiot.


The song by Steinfeld says, 


“Most girls are smart and strong and beautiful

Most girls work hard, go far, we are unstoppable

Most girls, our fight to make every day

No two are the same…”


Yet that’s the issue: that, if no two are the same, then there’s no sense in making sweeping claims about them, and, if most of them possess these virtues, then the virtues lose their meaning, since an excellence is, by its very definition, rare. A compliment will lose all meaning once you realize the flatterer would say the same exact thing to another. When somebody’s kind to me, I want to think and feel as though it is because I’ve *earned* that kindness and that for this reason I may *be of use* to such a person. Once I realize that *everybody’s* great from such a flatterer’s perspective, I reject him as a narcissist, since clearly greatness is a rare and evanescence quality of character, and all humility derives not from participation trophies but from the reminder of one’s own inferiority.


Most people are inferior of intellect, of character, of wisdom, and of strength and prowess. When you pay a compliment, you offer someone a relief from the reminder of these setbacks, and you offer hope that such an individual may *actually* matter, set apart from most. A healthy person never wants to be like most, and any healthy child believes oneself to be a liberator in the making.


**[({R.G.)}]**


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