I've come to exactly that conclusion about my family. I love them but frankly their concern for me translates into very little benefit for anyone. Also their criticisms were largely born of themselves and served primarily to limit me.

Same, but I'll take it one step further.

I have never had an actual _conversation_ with my own mother (single parent home) who is now in her 70s. Every attempt at a discussion has always ended up without her actually trying to listen and heaping on (berating) criticism that is either coming from her own shortcomings/fears (and she's a very fearful person) or she'll interrupt me and heap on criticism based on what she thinks I'm going to say. At least that's how it's been since I was too big for her to continue to beat me.

There hasn't been a shred of concern for my own interests and goals and in my 30s I don't expect that to change from her. She's been trying to break up my older brother's marriage for near 20 years (after successfully driving his previous partner away and a few of mine). She wasn't invited to my brother's wedding and if I ever meet someone that I care about again, she will not get to meet them. Ever.

If I were more cynical, I would say that every time our goals aren't lock-step with her goals for us, she makes a concerted effort for us to fail, but I imagine that she really thinks she has the best of intentions. She is just crazy.

So sure, love your family, but that doesn't mean your family is good for you. If your family isn't good for you, limit their ability to do damage in your life. If you can't do that, cut them off.

To you and other people in similar situations:

https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists

a community of (and for) people dealing with similar problems.

(Not diagnosing your mother, but, let's say, a lot of actions look familiar)

Also check out this less well known disorder (did not become official because of unrelated political reasons): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadistic_personality_disorder

My mother isn't entirely like busterarm's, but I recognize plenty of similarities, maybe mine has more self-discipline.

Good call, this is an excelent community with some hearthbreaking stories. There is also a whole network of subreddits on the topic, some very active (lower right sidebar).

I got the same impression.

The world rewards non-conformists deeply if you do it right.

Doing it right is mostly finding something that contributes value to the world. A non-conformist collecting toothpicks? Not so much.

Zero-to-one is a great guide for non-conformists. This, not so much.

"Zero-to-one is a great guide for non-conformists."

Is that a book or an article? Never heard of it. Care to give a pointer?

"Care to give a pointer?"

https://xkcd.com/138/

But in all seriousness, it looks like it's a book by "venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder, and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel along with Blake Masters". If it's an article, it isn't on the first page of DDG or google.

The book started out as lectures notes for a university course on startups taught by Thiel. You can find the original notes at http://blakemasters.com/peter-thiels-cs183-startup. There is also an EPUB version available from https://stanfy.com/blog/epub-version-of-peter-thiel-lectures....

Its a book by Peter Thiel.

Responses like this are why the overwhelming majority of social skills advice is either useless bullshit or actively harmful. Someone thinks hard after reflecting on the low lessons he's learned and the response is some form of accusation of mental illness or abnormality.

All useful social skills advice makes the writer sound like an asshole because being nice all the time, to everybody is for saints/idiots and plenty of social games are zero or negative sum.

> being nice all the time, to everybody is for saints/idiots and plenty of social games are zero or negative sum.

Sure, but that's only because the rest of us are being nice frequently enough that your statement is true. If everyone decided to start “gaming” social interactions, i'm not sure we'd be left with a society i would want to live in... Part of the social contract, i think, involves not emphasising what chumps everyone is for following it. For pragmatic reasons.

> Sure, but that's only because the rest of us are being nice frequently enough that your statement is true.

No, playing cooperate bot and being nice to everybody all the time really is a losing strategy and many social games really are zero or negative sum. This has absolutely nothing to do with how often other people are nice. They are facts about the world not moral judgments.

> If everyone decided to start “gaming” social interactions, i'm not sure we'd be left with a society i would want to live in...

Probably not but it would at least have the virtue of honesty. Your preferences are a fact about you, not deep statements about reality. The universe does not care and your descendants 200 years hence will be as different from you as you are from your ancestors in 1815. If we're around that long, we'll all be monsters to some. Morality is mostly, perhaps entirely fashion and economics.

> Part of the social contract, i think, involves not emphasising what chumps everyone is for following it. For pragmatic reasons.

The social contract is a very, very misleading metaphor. The world of zero and negative sum social games is the one we actually live in. All human progress has come from expanding the domain of the positive sum games but the other kinds will never go away. The universe is limited and our desires are not.

If you want a treatment of what a world based on this very cynical truth would look like I recommend beginning here.

http://bactra.org/reviews/cassini-division/true-knowledge.ht...

http://crookedtimber.org/2015/05/19/ken-macleod-seminar-2/

http://crookedtimber.org/2015/05/15/rationalism-and-the-true...

> Probably not but it would at least have the virtue of honesty.

Gaming a system involves manipulation.

Most forms of human manipulation involve deceit, which is the absence of honesty.