I was recently told by a friend of mine — who also happens to be a psychologist — that I seem to be highly "self-referencing."

I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, and after doing some research... I'm not honestly sure that they really understood the meaning of the term.

But then again, terminology has a way of "wandering" over time, dependent on repeated popular usage. And so, we end up with terminology that doesn't exactly mean what we think it means.

I think what this person really meant to suggest was that I tend to take my cues for what to do in life primarily from my own internal guidance and reasoning, rather than from external or world "trends" or norms.

In other words, in a world often dominated by people's needs/desires to "follow influencers," I could care less about what influencers do, or what they suggest is the "cool" thing to do.

As I have written in the past, I tend to have a somewhat cynical/skeptical lens of perception. Part of that cynicism stems from actual observation that most people who undertake something have some kind of hidden agenda that is mostly oriented towards themselves, no matter how altruistic they might claim to be.

Of course, that can take both healthy and unhealthy forms.

Many years ago, I remember coming across the term "altruistic narcissism" as a way to describe this. Although we normally associate negative things with narcissism what this particular term implied was that we can be altruistic in our desire to maybe help others, or make the world a better place even while having part of our motivation be that our efforts are also to our own benefit.

I think that just lays at the root of human nature. We are ultimately looking out for our own survival and our own benefit, at least if we have a reasonably healthy and balanced mindset.

In a sense, Hive represents the perfect microcosm illustrating this particular principle. Consider how we upvote others to assign some rewards to them (selfless), but in doing so we are also gaining some rewards for ourselves (selfish).

So while our powering up and upvoting others might contain an element of altruism, it also contains an element of selfishness. Again, we probably experience negative connotations around the word selfishness, but without selfishness we wouldn't survive in life.

In terms of what we chase, it seems that we are almost always chasing things for ourselves.

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