Dear Reader (especially those of you following your dreams),
Imagine you’re a pop star or famous actor. You have an entourage of yes men (or yes persons if that’s too sexist for you). They suck up to you, lavish you with praise, let you win at cards or video games, and generally act like they think everything you say is more brilliant or funnier than it really is. It doesn’t matter if your entourage is sincere in its sycophancy or cynical. You can’t tell the difference.
Now imagine that you stubbed your toe one morning. At dinner with your crew, you talk about how much it hurt. Everyone sympathizes and makes a big deal about how awful it is to stub your toe. Then, later in the meal, one of your cronies reveals he has been diagnosed with cancer. Everyone sympathizes and asks what they can do, including you. But eventually the conversation returns to the ordeal and agony of toe-stubbing. It’s not that anyone said toe-stubbing is worse than cancer, but the overall effect is to leave the subtle impression that your toe-stubbing is a bigger deal because it gets more attention.
Now imagine that you’ve had hundreds, or thousands, of similar experiences. Your hassles and minor hardships get more attention and sympathy than other peoples’ real ordeals—deaths in the family, car accidents, whatever. Over time, you’ll start to think that your small problems are more important than other peoples’ real crises and calamities. You’ll think your banal insights are brilliant while actual brilliant insights can’t hold a candle to your dim-bulb ideas.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief and co-founder of The Dispatch, based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that, enormous lizards roamed the Earth. More immediately prior to that, Jonah spent two decades at National Review, where he was a senior editor, among other things. He is also a bestselling author, longtime columnist for the Los Angeles Times, commentator for CNN, and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. When he is not writing the G-File or hosting The Remnant podcast, he finds real joy in family time, attending to his dogs and cat, and blaming Steve Hayes for various things.
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