Standards. Seems like nobody wants to be held to one these days. Tell someone, “This is the standard I hold you to, and I won’t accept less,” and they act like it’s a personal attack. But standards are respect. I expect you to be X because I believe in my gut you’re capable of it. When you don’t, you’re robbing yourself—and me, if I’m the one expecting it. Word salad? 🥗 Yeah, maybe. It’s how I roll.
So what’s the standard for being in your life? Relationships, friendships, even acquaintances—yep, acquaintances. If yours are drug dealers or that crowd, raise the bar. Probably some childhood trauma behind that, common in those circles, I guess. My standard for acquaintances in 2025? Couldn’t be that crew. Sure, they might be family, but family’s only cool if they’re adding something positive. I’ve got no business mixing with anything less. Real family wouldn’t drag you down anyway—that’s respect.
Standards protect you. They filter the bad, let in the good. Like a coffee funnel—sometimes a few grains slip through. That’s the cost of bending your rules, the tuition of life. Take a risk on a friend who drags you into drinking more, some weird shit? That’s on you—association is real. People change, sure, but a blemish of who they were sticks. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Same deal with losing 60k on a house flip. Whatever screwed you, you identify it, raise your standard, move on. Higher standards mean fewer mistakes—common sense, no fancy logic required. So why are standards the bad guy? They’re respect for someone’s ability. Your partner’s your other half—you’d damn well better have standards there. The person you’re with most? You’ll blend, share habits. Physical health—do I want that? Mental health—balanced enough, blemishes and all? Psychology—do I even like who they are? Mix that with you, and boom: that’s who you’ll become, give or take a few habits. I’d bet 77.5%-87% accuracy. You know yourself best.
I’m not against standards. I’m fine being judged—I’ll perform my best, even at my lowest. Don’t fit my standards? Cool, no hard feelings. Maybe it’s mechanical, maybe I’m an idealist. Fair. But here’s the kicker: standards got demonized by people abusing empathy—some on purpose, some not. No standards? You’re wide open to attack from every angle. So could the real shield in life be standards? Part of me says yes.
Flip it to their side: “I know you expect this, but I can’t or won’t do it. I don’t want to lose you—loss stings more than gain—so I play victim, shift blame, dodge fixing myself.” Most can’t self-reflect—90% suck at it. They’d rather call you the asshole for locking the door than earn the key.
It’s psychological warfare—morality, empathy, all twisted up. Between classes, sexes, whatever. Women might edge out men in psychological tuning, some better than others. The best get the best; the worst get the worst. I hate thinking this deep—ignorance sounds blissful—but I can’t unsee it. It’s war, subtle or not, and that’s fine. People who weaponize empathy will kill you with it. People who use it as a tool, with a standard of defense, won’t let it run their life.
It’s hard. Social pressure’s a bitch—I’m nonchalant about it, but it’s fucking tough. In 2025, everyone’s lost in their phones, missing the real Wi-Fi, not just the internet kind. You’ve got to play along or get isolated. That’s their leverage—so few of us, so many of them. The old way—respectable, direct, bold—is fading. It wasn’t perfect, but it had common sense. What we’ve got now? Half-Orwellian, half-nonsense.
Operator’s Addendum
Psychology has mutated. This is the inevitable implication of our current operating environment.
In the industrial age, premium value was assigned to the capacity to suffer and outwork the competition. Brute physicality was the baseline standard.
Today, the puck has moved. We are in an information age where the game is fought with words, emotions, and optics. Brute physicality hasn’t just been disabled; it’s been actively demonized by those seeking premium lifestyles on subprime effort.
Objectivity is now a liability. Calling a spade a spade gets you canceled if it doesn’t align with the current comfort narrative. I see this structural flaw across every system. In personal relationships, pointing out destructive habits like binge-eating instantly makes you the villain. It’s the exact same mechanic in corporate operations—coworkers leverage tenure to mask incompetence, knowing full well that if the merit-based operator reacts to the inefficiency, institutional politics will punish the reaction, not the incompetence.
Look at the macro outputs of this system. Fake news moves markets. Society chases health fads and relies on GLP-1 injections instead of adhering to the baseline standard of consuming less and moving more. People simply do not want to be held to a standard.
In the Human Machine protocol, I have to remain ruthlessly objective. I must be brutally truthful about the inputs and outputs of my own physical system if I actually want to move forward.
The danger of this era is the illusion of an “anti-friction” environment. It looks like progress, but it’s actually the systemic dismantling of standards because people are terrified of being audited by the crowd. The crowd will believe whatever feels comfortable. Empathy has been weaponized by the weak against those holding the highest standards. It’s a structural vulnerability for the human psyche moving forward.
When someone pushes back on my standards now, I don’t bleed energy dealing with it. I avoid them like the plague or play the board until they lose interest.
The ugly reality of an anti-friction society is eventual collapse. When humanity gets this soft, who is going to be objective and hold the line? Who is going to actually build the physical infrastructure for the future? That is the ultimate friction: realizing that indefinite forward movement is impossible without resurrecting the old, hardened mindset.
It’s a circulating event. The system will eventually be forced to correct itself.