Alas: social success ≠ fulfillment

Well may one ask: What is more fundamental than social grooming? Here I am! How do you do? Beyond all pretension of runaway evolution and engorged cerebrality, we are still only pack mammals after all. And so, perhaps arguably all detail of information content exchange is mere trifling nuance and decorative embellishment to crucial interaction on the animal gut level of emotion as salient to all exactly the same social politics just as among any other primates. Thus, how every expression tickles others, always reflects upon you and determines the persuasiveness of your own standing, position, leverage and influence!

Indeed, beware! For by the previous assumptions or to whatever extent upon any occasion where the above may be true, then ever should one fail to leave a persuasive impression, or makes the wrong impression, then communication no matter otherwise how lucid and earnest or even however deadly urgent will never be received or reciprocated, no matter.

Alas, however, such incessant demands of social politics must inevitably come into irreconcilable conflict with the six core polemically purposeful and dramatic motivations of dialogue, because preoccupation with making a convincing impression, let alone endless social grooming and approval seeking, together quickly become all consuming and debilitating, soon to devolve, subvert and defeat all effort at ever conveying any honest thoughts, feelings and values, let alone ever then crafting plans towards considered action.

 

There has always been the traditional heteronymous credo of popularity as a rugged striving of committed individual responsibility, skill, effort and involvement, wherein one is owed nothing and owes everything. Hence at best, society only offers some tools to the diligently attentive and opens any field of play to the devotedly intentive, nothing more. Indeed, as far as ever making good enough for attaining togetherness, one is all quite on ones own!

After all, the directly opposite view, demanding society coddle the manipulative bullying and emotional extortion of the chronically fragile, is if anything, even worse!

But leave us not jump to any conclusions. After all, it is merely sophomoric and pigheaded simply to assume that every investment or compromise is even remotely moral compromise. After all, compromise is often essential, constructive and consummately skilled. But not so the stifling and alienated emotional substitution of values. -Of which conditional approval substituted for true acceptance seems the most conventional, followed in prevalence only by compensation neurosis as manifest in all manner of compulsive substitution to fill the void of the unloved.

 

And even barring the nastiest and most manipulative Machiavellian social climbing and exploitation or the notoriously ludicrous gambits of the self-styled seduction community, nevertheless, all the well intended pragmatism of somewhat heteronymously robotic even if purportedly reliable procedures for fitting in and meeting new people, The Magic of Small Talk, patiently going with the flow and hanging out interminably, all as exhaustively expounded on such websites as succeedsocially.com (perhaps commendable towards simply building confidence while overcoming the isolation consequent to moderate shyness and social anxiety, but definitely far less congenial to any other entirely different obstacle, complication or dissatisfaction in rising to any other challenge whatsoever) that, so vigorously address the utter bleak utility of adherence to social expectations entirely at the expense of relevant beneficial end user values, are all well known, actually thereby, even if it works, to vastly exacerbate boredom, distress and loneliness, because not everyone finds therein any pleasure or meaning, but only phony and stressfully joyless, unhappy, boring, lonely and pointless interaction, no more than an alienated and protracted chore in which to engage any active cognitive process, indeed much as with any other actual punishment and reward systems.

 

Indeed, knowing how to fit in often comes at odds with the courage of true and productive friendship. Popularity may even be known to drain personal resources and spread one too thin for the cultivation of any true friendship.

 

But whosever nevertheless as ardent disciple embraces the conventional wisdom, tried and true, with every enthusiasm of learning, will therefore tend only to dismiss any striving or investigation instead playing suitably each to our own unique strengths and disposition rather than misguided expectations mismatched to anyone else's, all towards fulfilling the varying social needs of entirely different personalities, all as entirely quite superfluous, insufferable, boring and needlessly complicated. On the other hand, however, for example, given as how it has been clearly and consistently observed even in early development, how gifted children mysteriously no longer require any guidance of socialization, whenever simply afforded opportunity of interaction amongst their true peers, other gifted children, that rather does beg the question of exactly who is truly inflicted with needless complication by whom!

 

For in the words of George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

 

Indeed, people and social systems alike are more efficiently accessible only given better transparency. And ever rising above the protracted caginess and needless stress of hanging out endlessly and making interminable banal small talk is part of the challenge of ever allowing a more genuine and emotionally secure society to arise in which life and true friendship can be more fun for everyone.

 

Indeed, especially given that impression is subjective and hence communication can only be approximate at best, perhaps what may be happier and care free will be art for art's sake, purest creativity, humor, playful intellectual provocation with nothing at stake, the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic information, the experiences thereof that may be shared with others, the smart person's social grooming instead of banal small talk, to express creativity so as to engage and to draw others towards consideration of whatever ideas pursued and wherever they may lead, even discovery, problem solving, planning and action. -Perhaps, as another byproduct, even social integration that is truly integrative rather than mindlessly normative!

—  Gian Vincenzo Gravina

Beware interminable pointless superficial small talk, only leaving one actually the more depleted, empty and discontent, all important expression still mute and frustrated.

Good conversation the more uplifting, energizes and deepens acquaintance by free flowing investigative personal information exchange, ostensibly on topics of mutual interest and concern, and given equal opportunity to hold forth unreservedly with full and pointed answers and then, likewise, to make inquiry in any depth and attend with undivided concentration. The highly evolved human social intelligence is an appetite returned and fulfilled by the care and personal investment in others of authentic intellectual, emotional, purposeful and imaginative participation in the ongoing and unexpected discovery and progress of human character and relations over time in cultures of participation offering challenge and support for risk taking, deprivation resulting in frustration, emptiness, inadequacy, sadness, malaise, discontent, boredom, anxiety, alienation and anomie.

Depending upon all manner of statistical factors and correlates such as individual stimulus needs, coping, self-efficacy versus helplessness, hope versus despair, procrastination and introspection, gifted underachievers in particular may even however flagrantly tend, seemingly by disposition, to be more greatly than others, boredom prone. Not that boredom isn't actually quite ordinary and prevalent to any dull routine. Boredom, after all, is a luxury of affluence and indifference free and secure from any actual struggle for survival.

Boredom is a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli or under stimulation, the lack of interesting things to see, hear, or do physically and/or intellectually arouse and engage curiosity over time. Boredom is an aggravated angst-ridden intrinsic yearning to occupy time with meaningful value. Boredom is a particular restless and even irritable condition of passivity opposite to active creativity, not liking what one is doing but neither knowing what else to do for desperate wont of any better idea. Even transitory boredom may often be regarded as a waste of time or far worse. Indeed, subjective time seems to drag interminably when suffering from boredom because of sheer monotony, the very infrequency of notable events resulting in boredom to begin with.

"Boredom is an emptiness filled with insistence."  —  Leo Stein

Boredom is often manifestation of exactly such dissident ennui as might actually stem from the depressive stressed out apathetic alienated lack of interest and self-knowledge of repressed desires under any static situation of manipulative coercion or captivity, unsettled, fidgety, helpless and out of touch even with ones own sense of oppression, likely thereby even overshadowing whatever joys otherwise experienced.

"Boredom: the desire for desires"  —  Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy, 'Anna Karenina'

Indeed, boredom is a contributing factor in however sullen and deadened anger and aggression.

"Boredom is rage spread thin"  —  Paul Tillich

Indeed:

 “Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism”  —  Wendell Phillips

Therefore:

“We often forgive those who bore us, but never those whom we bore.”

—  Maxims of François Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 

Yet exactly such an unhappy and painfully distressful evolutionary trait or response even such as sheer boredom, when seen nonetheless as a quality filter and an individual defense of autonomy and control, may nevertheless be valued as useful even if aversive, and recognized as a cry for change rather than blithely pathologized as entirely maladaptive.

“To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.”

—  Heraclitus

Hence:

"The life of the creative man is led, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes."

—  Saul Steinberg

Moreover, whereas likewise to idle and uneventful quiet, solitude may ever at least be at all tranquil, beyond sheer boredom alone, loneliness is the distress of being isolated and estranged from others, perhaps even rejected, unseen and unknown, helpless to connect, a painful awareness and important desire not being met, to feel needed, wanted and connected, and a longing not merely to interact at all, but actually however to relate to others, to genuinely react and respond to one another.

Worse, none dare call out distress straightforwardly, for the shame of rebuke even since childhood. For, whereas the familiar community of old was so stifling, the modern world ofttimes seems simply estranged and obdurate!

Hence, when mass anxiety fails to challenge our very way of life or to trouble the powers that be, and thus individual distress fails to evoke sympathetic feeling and therefore mutual aid, and if none any longer shall rally to the alarm sounded, then such only will signal vulnerability to predation and exploitation, merely endangering others as well as oneself.

Rightly and responsibly then, do we hesitate to reach out to others in distress of any kind. Because even though need is the motive ever to reach out at all, neediness is only cloying. Because loosing might rub off emotionally and socially! Because excessive burdens of responsibility to others often only drags down a life of promise. Because of compassion burn out. Because unconditional selflessness only invites the sucker's payoff. Because one never knows what desperately manipulative and neurotic pigheaded wretch or unfeeling confidence trickster will only bite the hand that feeds them! -And with utter impunity...

Hence, all the more, loss, decline, disappointment, grief and suffering of any kind, are all often isolating and lonely in their subjective intensity and hence introversion. Indeed, loneliness is also associated with mortality. And it will be in loneliness, whether as abiding in actual solitude or even whilst thronging amid the madding crowds, that are all conundrums and struggles of individuality contemplated, confronted and discovered, the separation and distinction of the self from the world beyond, with all personal longings and on whatever ones own terms.

For loneliness is a quality that defies simple objective measurement, even such as the frequency and duration of social interaction, but also of the nature, preference and kind. Loneliness may typically result from the dearth of an engaging social network and activities or interaction towards social integration and/or opportunities for emotional intimacy. Causes of loneliness are, most obviously, bereavement, longing for another absent or unrequited, abandonment, social rejection and abuse, isolation, neglect, not fitting in, discontent, alienation or individual dissatisfaction, reciprocal failure to relate, incompatible values, sheer irrelevance, the unsympathetic helplessness of society in denial towards the powerless individual in crisis and tragedy, but also stress, overwork and underutilization of skills and capability, deficiency of stimulating challenge and hope.

The outsider is the reject or unbeliever apart from common activities and purpose. Reciprocally, pandemic alienation and the boredom and despair of wage slaves and students, not even permitted the release of just giving up, is the result of sheer grinding busy work that has has lost all meaningful and satisfying initiative.

The adaptive modes of acquisition include achievement, productive creativity towards fulfillment of desires, even competition, aggression, force or power to simply take whatever one wants, and influence via succorance, reaching out where achievement and aggression are inapplicable, specifically, in solicitation of attention, sympathy, concern, affectionate care and support, to nurturance, the desire to help, reciprocal and complementary to succorance in any healthy give and take. However, without trust and respect, insecure reliance upon threatening and domineering social situations, even however actually unpleasant and stressful, only exacerbates needy codependent frustrated yearnings and bottomless emptiness.

Alas, the social incentives and disincentives so stifling of individual creativity, opinion, controversy and creativity, cheat us all of expression conducive to autonomous interpersonal interest and engagement in return for heteronymous non threatening conditional approval, learned helpless emptiness, boredom and loneliness.

No, loneliness is not resolved by the mere presence of others, touchy-feely commiseration on cue, mortification, bullying and scapegoating, nor any other empty social grooming and consensual validation, nor even necessarily by intimate acts, much less any interaction the more superficial or heteronymous. -such as shallow and perfunctory political activism,  that fabulously promises us each a place at their table, but only really means to say (as in that wonderful line from 'The Last Emperor'): "Join us comrade, or fuck off!"

Rather, loneliness is only ever truly resolved by someone else who relates and responds so as to move you, uniquely, with challenge and variety, compatibly and reciprocally, ever the better to know one another. And since emotion finding outlet thus becomes motivation, meaningful common goals put forth or inquiries actively pursued may greatly facilitate the aforesaid resolution of loneliness. Indeed, in substantive co-operative endeavor may the flame of just such affection be most readily be fanned and nurtured. And loneliness is but the starvation thereof.

All of this is precisely why simply hanging out aimlessly or meeting others for recreation and consumption, online or even in real life, striving so determinedly only to relax and seek for oblivion from the grind, is so completely boring, futile and irrelevant ever to finding new beginnings and connection out from the sterile void.

Better dead than mellow!

Indeed, healing loneliness requires more than merely satisfice, making do with ordinary casual social contact, even acquiescence to the safest and dullest small talk, conditionality, towing the line, generally going along to get along, but rather, true investment in others and any genuine and meaningful engagement into their individuality. For the deeper and more intense the longing, the keener the deprivation and frustration. And, to complicate the problem, there are many needs of immediacy that are simply ill served by the abstraction and remoteness of interactivity online. That is why truly engaging interaction online best plays to the highly cerebral strengths of the medium, at which the fundamental electronic tools of the Internet even excel.

The traditional Four Levels of Happiness are laetus: material physical satisfaction and immediate gratification, felix: the ego satisfaction of personal achievement, the Beatitude of contribution making an impact or difference beyond oneself, and lastly, the sublime fullness of goodness, beauty, truth and love, possibly so much as self realization.

And we may hope that the fulfilling involvement of interaction and relationship enters somewhere.

But even the precious pursuit of happiness is never guarantee even of hope and opportunity. All manner of daunting obstacles remain. But perhaps some measure of freedom may yet at all permit the involvement of stimulating intellectual challenge in practice and experience towards better decision making.

As, one way or another, primary needs still tend to call for attention first, even barring immediate threat to physical survival, economic requirements are often experienced as the most palpable barrier to self-actualization or at least freedom and autonomy in modern life. And as a solution, many yearn for recognition of their true potential and best opportunity for fulfillment thereof, via some capable and dedicated mentorship to success and fulfillment in a situation facilitating due compensation.

Alas, the deck is so often stacked against us at every turn. Certainly, there may be readily available general guidance in pursuit of the conventional expectations of others. But assistance towards one's own ends is by far the harder to find and often deficient if not fraudulent outright. Only compromise and snake oil remain ever abundant, barring the most extreme and resolute self reliance indeed.

Hence, Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness increasingly are quickly reduced to an ongoing invitation to bang one's metaphorical head against the proverbial wall!

And at a certain threshold of sheer frustration, the realization must dawn that compromise has spared no aggravation, nor do increasingly outmoded expectations manifest any greater efficacy than any other inane cargo-cult mimesis of success.

In the end, only truth to oneself is even worth the trouble.

_{Situation analysis:}

^{CONFRONTING ALIENATION}

Is this really all there is?!

Alienation is the condition in which individuals find themselves at cross purposes with, and dominated by, forces and institutions of our own creation, driven by their own Monopolistic agendas, confronting the individual as overbearing, loveless, conditional, bullying, threatening and manipulative alien powers.

The many dimensions of alienation include powerlessness, meaningless Nihilism, normlessness (anomie), social isolation, cultural estrangement and self-estrangement.

Unhappiness results from suffering, deprivation, frustration and fear or anxiety. Causes of unhappiness and misery include wrong doing, foolishness, unthinking poor judgment, mistreatment, cruelty, abuse of power, misfortune, stress, boredom and loneliness.
And learned helplessness is passive behavior produced by exposure to unavoidable aversive events, unpleasant experiences. When anyone perceives, correctly or incorrectly, that they have no control over their life, understandably often may give up trying and thus become depressed.

In such an empty, futile and meaningless existence, only constant guidance provides any distraction, and any measure of freedom only leads to gnawing boredom.

Passivity, giving up and refusal to try, may all help assuage mounting anxiety at the prospect of risk, great or small. But such coping strategy is to take refuge in ever deepening depression, even to the point suicidal despair.

Naturally, the unhappy are more easily manipulated because, readily, the unhappy individual is well motivated to seek consolation and relief from the pain thereof. -to feel better, to be consoled, to be reaffirmed, to feel whole and complete.

Hence, it becomes fairly simple for actual punishment and reward systems to control the ways and means by which the unhappy individual seeks comfort, consolation and respite. Thence, what will become more convenient than, one way or another, to market whatever the most readily available false hope instead of whatever they are really missing, but have been discouraged? All, however, to persistent futility. For what can be the point?

Alas, many people can never even conceive of questioning whatever the prevalent common wisdom, no matter how consistently it ever fails them in practice, emphasizing a mythology detailing some or other prescribed mechanics of prospecting for connections in utter disregard of every purpose, sense or meaning motivating outreach to begin with. 

In practice, often friendship grows from acquaintance in any given context, by extending the boundaries by involving the other person in other interpersonal or social contexts. Nevertheless, obviously there must be far more to it. Otherwise, loneliness would be vastly uncommon.

Any true solution to loneliness must address the inextricable discontent of sheer pointlessness by the exchange of attention as only possible given engagement in the reciprocal stimulus of meaningful content, expression and attention.

Because, even putting aside the most ruthlessly cynical how-to's of exploitative social climbing and frantically networking the cold and vast in actual practice and for all purposes and intents punishment and reward system of acquaintance, amid all of the failed and trivializing commonsense advice towards overcoming loneliness, suitable enough only for simple and moderate shyness or uncomplicated social anxiety, of where to hang out, flexibility, lowered expectation, making do with whatever company can be had, however empty, quiet patient perseverance in order to come off more cool, staying active however arbitrarily and likewise organizing one's schedule, who to keep in touch, how to strike up conversation, and even screwing up the courage to confide one's woes, only rarely does the sense of sheer futility and the quest for attention worthy meaning and value enter as an aspect of loneliness or frustrated motivation, alas unless in the context of the most dauntingly senseless religious proselytizing.

But even where the motivating quest for meaning and value is howsoever attended to, in relation to loneliness or not, and even with the sense of crisis so well deserved, nowhere does the abstract ever seem to connect to strategic application or action agenda.

Alas, anything so revolutionary requires not only a healthy discontent, even however restless, but conviction that it is in what we do, the context and content thereof and how we interact that we need some point to it, and very much for it's own sake and in the doing thereof as an essential and indispensable pressing human need or core value, rather than strictly optional or auxiliary, some mere ornamental crowning touch, let alone pragmatically superfluous or actually impractical.

No true friend demands your silence and stifles your growth.

It is not interminably hanging out for small talk that needs or deserves to be given any sort of a chance. Indeed, really giving anyone any chance at all, requires honest attention, genuine interest and sympathy, relative true intimacy that may likely to demand relative privacy in opposition to expectations of brainless and conformist hanging out. Individual freedom and security in any broader social contexts in order to ever really give anyone any chance, will never be achieved so long as doing nothing in particular remains so consuming and exacting a pursuit. Not everyone really has the passion for that bizarre sport.

Indeed, people first of all simply need to be. Therefore, greater true civility and vastly relaxed and simplified norms must come to the defense of even however incidental casual expression of identity. Only then will average people ever finally discover personal resources to spare for cultivating real talent and passionate genuine interests.

Indeed, the inadequacy of ordinary sheer social ineptitude can scarcely be any more daunting and baffling than, to the contrary, the despair that is transmitted from highly skilled incompetence in adept compliance with every expectation. -oppression propagating among the oppressed! 

Perhaps we might imagine that in some bygone era, what once was agreeable to one's fellow human beings was simply that one shared their burden, that they might reciprocate. It still is, except that the burden now a days, rather than actually relating to one another, is the miserable compliant embrace of alienation in a milieu wherein veritably by design, no one's needs can ever be met.

Boredom is resolved only by anything interesting enough to sustain attention. While love and happiness are supplied from someone from whom to exchange needed attention and engaging stimuli, that is, anyone who adequately relate to one another. -And loneness is the absence all thereof, empty of meaning, sheer pointless futility.

Indeed, the active psychiatrically Nihilistic engagement in loneliness even within social interaction, is boredom perpetuated under the noxious scam of boring people relying upon others likewise confused, helpless and not paying enough attention ever even to notice or care that no one is really paying attention to one another, repressed into sheer indifference beyond any sheer bother to relate.

But surely, what we all really need to share is in the fundamental exercise of freedom being nothing less than the perceptive and intelligent quest for any effective struggle to overcome alienation and loneliness, to connect in order to mount any resistance, making every reasonable effort to improve our lives, rather than endemic blithe rationalization and co-validation wallowing in denial and unaware incompetent accommodation thereof.

Indeed, given food, shelter, medicine and even entertainment, what else still remains more important to real progress than human connection of stimulus and attention in whatever expression and cultivation of our talents?

Alas, for all too many, the necessary cost of recreation, the desperate effort and struggle to recover from the learned helpless sheer exhaustion, fear and loathing of exactly the ever so vigorously marketed dubious practical and existential guarantees they all swear by, namely their family lives, schooling and job careers that they lead, has become the Narcissistic superficial and introverted oblivion of sheer cognitive, emotional and social disassociation, the next best thing to being dead, leaving little room for true immersive passion, trust, care and involvement in any experience of anything or anyone else or much of any deeply personal value.

Instead, only joyless unfulfilling toxic fear-based co-validation and satisfice in the embrace of superficial relations and oppressive conditionality, painfully corseted and closeted even out in the open! with determined satisfice committed to the profound alienation of networking only under whatever terms and purpose defined by unstated and uncritical consensus agenda, as proverbial cogs in the metaphorical machine and entrenchment in lives not much worth the living. -Making do in terror of being left out entirely and going nowhere at all, and worse still, of rejection, hostility, exposure and real danger to oneself and ones loved ones, of worse exploitation, even harsher abuse and life threatening decline. Lastly, determined inner life satisfice, consisting of whatever lonely individual resources and coping methods, however, weird, freakish, outré and bizarre outright or however dull, boring, downright ordinary, bland and banal.

And all such culminating in the very dread of hope itself, lest the temptation to risk may somehow ever jeopardize all so hard won in meek complacency and surrender. Even the inability otherwise to relate at all! In brief, all of the crushingly heavy and somber Existential responsibilities of heteronomy.

For, to quote George Orwell:

The main motive for ''nonattachment'' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.

Which also goes a long way in explaining the common and vulgar preference for the distance of empty idle gossip and groupthink over the penetrating discovery of interview and investigation yielding real knowledge.

According to Tom Hodgkinson, founder of the Idler magazine: "With a very few exceptions the world of jobs is characterized by stifling boredom, grinding tedium, poverty, petty jealousies, sexual harassment, loneliness, deranged co-workers, bullying bosses, seething resentment, illness, exploitation, stress, helplessness, hellish commutes, humiliation, depression, appalling ethics, physical fatigue and mental exhaustion."

Alas, however, suffering does not end at work or school. Unlike the alienated and futile struggle to relax endemic to recreation and the further desperation of prospecting and dating, any joy in leisure and dalliance for either their own sake, need also partake in idle unconcern with outcome to take care of itself. -Otherwise, yet another chore a best, if not the very worst cynical strife and deep intrigue.

The rarity of fulfillment via pleasurable engagement in meaningful interaction is often heady and intensive. Nevertheless, unlike grinding tedium, the relaxed idleness so distained by traditional work ethic, is actually of tremendous value. After all, the principle of diminishing returns frequently applies to labor; hence, all too often, the less work the more productive each hour thereof.

Indeed, in solitary idleness and contemplation is often the larger part of cogitation, pondering and processing culminating in planning towards productive work only at the end. The same is often true interpersonal free exchange and collaborative brainstorming, likewise to culminate only much later on in any organized call to action.

"The way of the idler is a chaotic one," writes Hodgkinson. "He attempts to escape from programmes, theories, formal spiritual practice, order, discipline… The idler's desire is to live with no rules, or only rules that have been invented by himself." And exactly that is a tremendous risk; sacrifice, great lonely effort, endurance and endless struggle from which the average person tends to flee. Indeed, just as Oscar Wilde said, doing nothing is hard work!
 

"All for one, and one for all!"

False happiness renders men stern and proud, and that happiness is never communicated. True happiness renders them kind and sensible, and that happiness is always shared.

 

— Charles de Montesquieu

Heaven is an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience. And Heaven on Earth would be any thriving association wherein individual needs are routinely fulfilled rather than frustrated. Communities vary in so far as the very nature of the association between people differs, with resultant fulfillment and frustration. And so, hope may endure that the more optimal social relationship the better individually. At any rate, for most of us, there is plenty of room for improvement!

FoolQuest.com strives at recruitment of prospective collaborators, whether for serious undertakings or just for fun, with integrity to accept responsibility for ones actions, enjoying pride in accomplishment, self-motivated, risk tolerant, curious, creative, problem solving, honest and capable of exchanging the most frank and brutal criticism while maintaining cross-functional task interdependent reciprocity, coordination and assistance, healthy quid pro quo and undiminished respect for one another, honest acceptance, happiness by intentional interaction as engenders susceptibility and stimulation of thought to euphoric exaltation of lively and spontaneous creativity; seeking together the challenge and stimulation of worthwhile and demanding goals put forth and yearning to take command and control of our own lives.

For such is the positive power of negative thinking!

Far short of paralytic anxiety, simple avoidance and cognitive narrowing or tunnel vision as to constrain ones repertoire of alternative solutions, introverted defensive pessimism only seeks never to raise expectations unduly, in order thereby to consistently reduce disappointment and anticipatory stress thereof. Whereas the Contrarian realistically cautious optimism of extroverted defensive pessimism is the active caution channeling even the most perpetual anxiety constructively into advance troubleshooting by anticipating even the worst-case scenario of any situation in order thereby to carry out planning so as to minimize losses and damage.

For example, any serious and successful investor, however necessarily risk tolerant, never simply relies upon luck, but demands the most rigorously critical extroverted defensive pessimism in formal business plans.

This is only for people who would anticipate not merely tolerating but actually enjoying creative tension, challenge and interaction and hence alleviation of boredom and loneliness thereby accrued, all as entailed in the collaborative exchange of assistance as ever necessary or helpful to whatever common endeavors.

Defensive pessimism and criticality are the singular predicate in support of improved global conditions, crucial for the one who is for all to safeguard and to pursue whatever common best interests most honestly and effectively, nevertheless and nonetheless, to the integrity to remain uniquely individual, at one and true to him/herself.

Experimentally, in good or bad circumstances alike, depressive pessimists demonstrate more realistic judgment and more accurate prediction than optimists, both perform equally well and better the median norm, but neither tend to perform well in attempting to exchange respective coping strategies.

And clearly, overconfident optimism also risks dangerous illusion under painfully debilitating pressures of suppression and denial.

Of course, however, friendship nevertheless remains a positive value proposition. Indeed, according to Aristotle, some level of friendship can found itself upon pleasure or utility. And why ever not?

Or as we generally expect, similar common interests, concerns and burdens may even be the least of complex and completing factors accounting for how close friends may uniquely relate to and identify with one another, with sympathy for imperfection. Indeed, that not only is convivial company entertaining and cooperation useful, but that true care is actually uplifting.

Indeed, again, according to Aristotle, the truest friendship manifests altruistic concern and even sacrifice for the other's best interests even to the point of good influence, care towards optimal character, the healthiest condition of the personality which is meaning as derived from purposeful active orientation of living towards value and hence the sterling character of ones life as a whole, with morality and integrity of fortitude even to withstand misfortune; indeed, hence the sharing of good conduct through ongoing relationship and the the practice of philosophy which is discourse ever extending one another's moral insight and compass (or, as according to Adam Smith, entirely appropriate enhanced self esteem in reflecting thereupon) being of greatest wholesome satisfaction.

In brief, that truest friendship is actually a reciprocally supportive good influence between rare individuals of sterling character. Better still, however, let us also recognize autonomy as morally indispensable virtues, thus perhaps even reconciling aforesaid ancient ideals with modern views of friendship as equal, private and voluntary.

And the most ideal networks of friends somehow together strive towards all their most cherished values and ideals as above. But how might such lofty ideals ever inform any realistic and practical minimums necessary to effectiveness and happiness?

The answer arises from bearing in mind that effectively regimented or else discarded, divided and conquered as we are, only autonomously tight knit pooled effort, task interdependency met by ready mutual assistance can ever begin to attend to and pursue aspirations well beyond the overburdened capacity of any lone individual. Also, the simple truth endures, that even in the most scarce attention economy, the most stimulating attention exchange value, with best return and most productive involvement possible, nevertheless remains for full undivided attention and in return for likewise in kind. 

For any purpose under the sun, building true community and optimizing a thriving attention economy may require more expansive involvement than afforded from idle vapid small talk and mere acquaintance. Friendship denotes co-operative and supportive behavior between two or more individuals. And indeed, just as with productive creativity, sustaining social connection often depends upon the active attentive investment of such fundamental resources as interest, sympathy, time and concerted effort.

Happiness requires positive self worth, control and self determination, optimism, security, outgoing expressive extroversion, adaptability, purpose and immediacy. So, is there any recipe for ever at all reliably serving up all of these cherished values? And what might be the required resources?

First of all, vital to the interaction of any productive free collaboration, coordination and task interdependency as ever arises, will always be the cultivation and preservation of of reciprocal logistical support by the honest assessment and nurture of the integrity of healthy quid pro quo assuring that everyone's needs including one's own are met in the exchange of all prompt and diligent vital assistance, all proffered in a spirit of generosity and received in due appreciation and trust vindicated, reciprocally.

Division of labor amongst various specialists is common in any any larger venture or endeavor. But real collaboration and cooperation often entails mutual assistance addressing cross-functional task interdependency of crucial specialized parts of another's otherwise specialized tasks or roles therein.

Happiness is acceptance and respect in anything compelling

Indeed, clearly optimal as any sort of wider or global condition satisfactory to individual happiness, nurturing social support just such as by which ever at all possibly any conceivable collective all are for one and each, remains among the strongest known predictors of individual success with the possible exception of self-efficacy.

And so, as far as moderate and even minimal necessary expectations go, it may be well opined that in the exchange of assistance and good turns, key always is to be extra helpful simply in order to accumulate and maintain a surplus in favors owed, by cheerfully giving more than expected, thereby preserving a comfortable margin in excess of whatever assistance one will foreseeable need to call upon. (But who's counting?)

And after all, principled conduct even as reflecting of benevolent character, turns out to be, indeed crucial, no less than practical utility and motivating joy at all, because there can be no hope that such will ever be accomplished manipulatively nor in selfish stingy reluctance or aloof self sufficiency on any side of the ongoing transaction. -Nor howsoever in any conceivable cross purpose or conflict of interests.

Again, this is only for people who would anticipate not merely tolerating but actually enjoying creative challenge and interaction and hence alleviation of boredom and loneliness thereby accrued, all as entailed in the collaborative exchange of assistance as ever necessary or helpful to whatever common endeavors.

Collaboration howsoever in making abstract decisions is moot without ensuing cooperation concretely.

Succinctly, free and independent collaboration outside of institutional structured social environments, can only depend all the more upon positive working relationships. Because when there are simply no other established resources to fall back upon, close collaborators no less than true friends, with simple and genuine ordinary curiosity regarding one another and and circumstances, must earnestly desire to help one another, even cheerfully with honest acceptance and respect.

Therefore, all purpose of evasion or withholdance will not merely reduce efficiency or injure morale, but paralyze and then dash any hopeful project that much more quickly and decisively.

“It's not what you know, but who you know.”

Meaning, of course: how connected you are, even for the most rank incompetents and scoundrels, that will be all too often so much more key to success even than the very greatest ability, all too often unrecognized and unrewarded.

And hence, who you can get to know. Networking. 

Indeed, or, var: “It’s not what you know or who you know, but who you sorta-know.”

In other words: six degrees of separation and all that. -Facility in extended networking, even however superficial, has been found to bring to light the competitive plumb opportunities first.

Or, var: “It's not who you know, but who knows you!”

Purport: It shall be the propagation of glowing reputation and standing that draws opportunity and opens many doors. But beware, for in the caution of Errol Flynn:

“It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.”

Or just perhaps, exactly as the abuse of power wielded by bullies and self appointed social gatekeepers ganging up to obstruct and extort all others, promotes mass fear and stifling intimidation, likewise friendship and generosity in helping bring success and popularity to others, the doors one is reputed to open freely for others by making introductions, networking connections and building functional webs of support, is all what actually creates value to generate demand, thus in turn leveraging one's own reputation, popularity and success.                                                                                                                       

“It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us.”

- Epicurus

“When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.”

- Edgar Watson Howe

“I get by with a little help from my friends.”

- John Lennon

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tell me what company thou keepst, and I'll tell thee what thou art.”

- Miguel de Cervantes

“My friends are my estate.”

- Emily Dickinson

“We call that person who has lost his father, an orphan; and a widower that man who has lost his wife. But that man who has known the immense unhappiness of losing a friend, by what name do we call him? Here every language is silent and holds its peace in impotence.”

- Joseph Roux

“He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,

And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.”

- Ali ibn Abi Talib, 4th caliph (602-661)

“Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.”

- Thomas Jones

   “I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”

                           &

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

- Abraham Lincoln

“It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.”

- Duc de la Rochefoucauld

“A true friend stabs you in the front.”

- Oscar Wilde

“Only your real friends tell you when your face is dirty.” (Or, var: spinach in your teeth...)

- Sicilian Proverb

“No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend until he is unhappy.”

- Thomas Fuller

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”

- Walter Winchell

“Life dies inside a person when there are no others willing to befriend him.”

- Mark R. J. Lavoie

“When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?”

- Kathleen Norris

4:7 Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.

4:8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.

04:9 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.

4:10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

4:11 Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?

4:12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

- Ecclesiastes, King James version

"I think a man only needs one thing in life. He just needs someone to love. If you can't give him that, then give him something to hope for. And if you can't give him that, just give him something to do."

- James Liddle

Memorable Quotes from Flight of the Phoenix (remake, 2004)

“The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”

- Allan K. Chalmers

“Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

“The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.”

- Ludwig von Mises

“A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”

- Gian Vincenzo Gravina

“There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.”

- Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

“Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.”

'Conversation with a Pacifist' by George Orwell

“My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.”

- Henry Ford

“True love does not come by finding the perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” 

— Jason Jordan

“A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.”  

- Fr. Jerome Cummings

“True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable.”

- Dave Tyson Gentry