Why isn't Trump happy? Observations on grievance, utility theory and Epictetus

 Donald J. Trump was just indicted on felony charges, and that can ruin your whole week, but I mean that question in a more general sense.  Pictures of Trump with an expression of a scowl are easier to find than those of him with an expression of contentment unless he is posing, and he has adopted the gesture of the raised fist-- a common symbol of the black power movement-- as something between affectation and Tourette's-like tic.  Donald Trump was born to a life of privilege beyond historical royalty.  He has been given literally everything.  His family bought his way into the Ivy League, transferring him from Fordham to U Penn with donations because his academic qualifications and native intelligence were insufficient to gain admission on merit alone.  His father, Fred Trump, began transferring money to him through illegal tax schemes at such a young age that the only way Donald could ever fail to be absurdly rich was if he simply became the worst businessmen in all of history.  In fact, he may be that, given how much money he has lost, being among the few people capable of losing money on Manhattan real estate and casinos.  Yet Trump is no mere idiot, but an idiot savant.  His one, true genius is that of the pose.  His past association with professional wrestling is perfect beyond the President Camacho comparisons.  He is to business as wrestlers are to martial arts:  he is great at bragging about how great he is at it.  That skill allowed him to recoup his money through a television show, and licensing his name to have others stick it on buildings that they built.  He then used his gift for posing to become the President of the United States of America.  The most powerful person in the world.  With... an assist from James Comey.  Few if any in human history have been given more than Donald J. Trump.

So why isn't he happy?  The answer is the same as why he now stands indicted.  The first president or ex-president ever to be so.

What motivates Donald Trump?  The easy answers are vices like vengeance, greed and narcissism, yet underneath all of his vices, one finds the following:  a gap between what he has and what he believes he deserves, creating an angered sense of entitlement to what he does not have.

Despite having more than nearly anyone in history.  He was born to wealth and privilege beyond historical imagination, and despite his repeated failures in everything, he never faced any consequences.  No consequences for his business failures, no consequences for his constant lying, his fraud, his crimes, and really, the only consequence he has ever faced, in any real terms, is as follows.  He falls into the category of incumbent presidents who failed to win reelection, which is an embarrassment to be sure, but in historical terms, the judgment on George H.W. Bush (as an example) is not so harsh in that dimension.  Even the impeachments are hardly more than additional points of grievance for a man motivated by little else, which is really just a gap between what he has and what he believes he is entitled to have.

Epictetus was a Roman slave and stoic philosopher.  How can one live a life of peaceful mind as a slave?  The anti-intellectual reaction to Epictetus or to those who study him seriously would be some sort of acceptance of the institution of slavery, which would be both a) dishonest, and b) simultaneously blind to Thomas Sowell's observations of the historical patterns of slavery.  The point, rather, is that individuals can learn from the individual man, Epictetus.

Stoicism comes from an era in which the social structures required people to accept the positions to which they were born.  They could either find satisfaction in a life of honor and integrity, or destroy themselves in their own minds.  Epictetus watched those of more privilege do the latter, while he found a way to do the former.  In an era when even Marcus Aurelius either failed to see the contradictions between his philosophy and slavery because the institution simply was, or lacked the courage to challenge it-- likely the former-- what else could one do?

Steven Pinker has coined the term, "progressophobia," for the fear the left has of admitting that progress occurs.  Zoom out, and the world is inarguably a better place.  Slavery still exists.  There are more slaves in the world today than there were during the 19th Century, but modern, American leftists only want to talk about American descendants of the triangle trade because they have no sense of perspective, nor true concern.

One need not accept injustice to live a life of integrity and find peace of mind in that, yet finding that balance requires recognizing what constitutes true injustice.  Epictetus experienced true injustice, even if it was so ubiquitous throughout world history that an ideology of abolitionism was millennia away, but what that means is a gap between what is and what should be.

When you see a gap in the absence of such a gap, exaggerate its size, or fail to see what you can do despite it, the result is grievance.  That is what leads you astray.  That is what leads Donald Trump astray, along with everyone else who fails to appreciate progress, the opportunities in modern, Western society, or merely their own lives.

It is no small irony that modern, left-wing grievance politics have so much in common with the personal failings of Donald Trump.  Imagine yourself born to the privilege of Donald Trump, and given everything that he has been given.  Would you lash out at everyone and everything?  Only if there is something deeply wrong in your mind-- only if you imagine a gap between what you have, nearly unprecedented though it may be, and what you think you deserve.

That same manner of thinking lies underneath all grievance politics.  I have X.  I am entitled to Y, where Y > X.  The belief in entitlement and the focus on Y rather than X produce anger and grievance.

What is the alternative?

Appreciate X.  Think about what you have, not what you don't have.  Would you rather be born to a poor family in 20th or 21st Century America, or nobility in Ancient Rome?  America for me, and part of that is...

Understand that you have agency.  Is there something you want?  Instead of whining that you don't have it, or blaming someone else, take steps.

Are you focused on Y because someone else has it?  If so, then stop.  What you have is not a parameter of my utility function.

Notice that Donald Trump goes wrong in all the same ways as leftist ideology.  He was born to privilege and wealth, but never appreciated anything.  Instead, he always craved more.  He'd rather be an ancient emperor, just for the sake of the gap.  Modern leftism, of course, filters everything through conflict theory and tells those on the oppressed side of every oppressor-oppressed dyad to believe that they have nothing.  Trump whines and blames as a primary tactic.  Same with the left.  Agency?  Why bother with the hard work?  And all of this is rooted in the mathematical error of building your possessions into my utility function in the following perverse way.

If I am altruistic, I can characterize that with the following utility function:  U = f(my money) + g(your money) where df/d(my money) and dg/d(your money) are both positive.  I gain from having money, and I lose if you are in poverty.  Where this goes haywire is if dg/d(your money) is negative.  I want you to lose, because I'm a psychopath.  (Take away their money!  They have too much!)  Or instead, I construct the following utility function:  U = f(my money) - g(your money - my money) where dg/d(your money - my money) > 0.  Now, I lose utility if you have more money than I do, just because I get jealous.

Also known as "income inequality."

Do you see how Trumpian this is?  In fact, it is precisely what makes Trump such a miserable fuck, perpetually raging against imagined slights of cosmic injustice when he is among the most privileged people in the history of humanity.

A gap between what you have and what you think you deserve.  That is the source of grievance, anger and misery.  In contrast, consider Epictetus, not-- as anti-intellectual leftists would have it-- as a defense of slavery, but as an alternative way of thinking.

Then, stop being angry about what you don't have.  If you want something, make a plan and take steps to achieve it.  And stop looking at what others have.  Unless you are purely altruistic, what they have shouldn't be a parameter in your utility function.

Just a few simple steps to avoid being like Donald J. Trump, a sad, sack of shit who should have been the happiest man in the world.

I didn't get a jazz post up yesterday.  Again.  Here's the greatest piano virtuoso in the history of the instrument, Art Tatum, "Get Happy."  Tatum was so good that we have bebop because of him.  Why?  Charlie Parker heard him and quit piano because he knew he could never do this.  Sergei Rachmaninoff heard him and said, "I can play the same notes as you, sir, but not at that tempo."  Do you play piano?  A lesson in stoicism:  do not compare yourself to Art Tatum.  God came down to Earth, played piano for a bit, and recorded under the pseudonym, "Art Tatum."