@thesotiris 18 December 2025 more from that month

The Force of Nature Mindset: Never get upset with people's micro-provocations

Have you ever caught yourself getting intensely and involuntarily upset over the smallest offenses by others? Do you get even more frustrated over the fact that you were frustrated in the first place? **Context** Sure, people can intentionally or unintentionally behave like assholes, disrespecting us and poking at our fragile self-esteem in ways we can’t foresee or prepare for. But whether they intend to offend or not, anyone can engage in a random behaviour that randomly bothers us for… reasons. It’s just as much on us for getting offended as it is on them — if not more on us. Examining **the ‘*****why*****’ — the psychodynamic processes between sensory input and conscious conclusion** — can help expand the potential of those processes, and perhaps give us a chance at more accurate situational awareness. **Analysis** Was there a recent instance when you pondered how **you lost your cool**, how **out of control you were, and out of character** you felt when you got pissed off'; just because someone annoyed you, disrespected you, insulted you, or was just being an asshole in general **without really having any power over you at all, other than the power you gave him**? This is because you value despicable individuals too much. You respect them too much to hold their opinion of you as one that matters to you. You overly grace them by portraying them **as a fully conscious entity with agency** and with **a voice that matters**. So when they insult you, you feel that **their presumptuous judgment of you** somehow matters to anything or anyone that matters. What if I told you that the more you get upset with people’s misbehaviour, the more you prove you respect them by default, probably undeservingly? **In practice** Here’s an example of what I mean by being bothered by people only because you respect them too much. Imagine walking in the park and a small tree branch snaps and falls on your head. Ouch! That hurt! You rub your head a little, and that’s it. You move on. The tree branch doesn’t have an opinion of you, and whatever “it did” happened without malicious intent towards you. Now imagine walking in the same park, and some guy throws the same branch at you. The branch hits you exactly on the same spot with the same force, and the physical pain is the same. This time, it hurts more, though. You’re not only wounded physically, but emotionally too. The second example is much more hurtful to you because, on top of bodily anguish, you also take the ill intent against you as having some meaning for and about you. This is why an excruciating trip to the dentist isn’t as traumatic (not even close) as a mild slap on the cheek by someone you love. Or why rape is mentally devastating as compared to a strenuous workout, even though the latter could often be even more physically painful. It’s not the physical pain: **it’s the meaning we attribute to our self-worth from knowing that a conscious entity deliberately chose to harm us**. When a human **with agency** hurts you, you are furious because you feel violated, on top of having to suffer pain. Your self-esteem is threatened, so you feel compelled to assert your dominance. You feel challenged by a sentient being, which is worse than the random force of indifferent nature hurting you randomly without any hurtful intent. It’s the ill intent, the lack of mindfulness and consideration, the hatred towards you that enrages you because then you attribute meaning to conscious, deliberate disrespect against you. You think to yourself: “*Am I not important enough to be considered?*” And then you fall into the trap of desperately and clumsily trying to assert yourself to prove to others (to yourself mostly) that you *are,* in fact, important. Granted, aggression can and must be met with **reciprocity**, but escalating a situation never ends well for anyone. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/dealing-with-child-abuse-in-the-absenc Here’s another example: You sit alone at a cafe, sipping fresh, aromatic coffee. A random toddler comes up to you, stares at you, and calmly asks: “*Why are you so ugly?*” Would you get upset? I hope not. Some would, actually, because their insecurity puts them down so much that they see themselves as lower than a toddler. I’ve had similar experiences when kids came up to me to announce that they’d noticed things about me that were less than flattering. Did I get upset? Quite the opposite. I was entertained. I cherish the innocent honesty of children. They don’t mean to offend. And even if they do mean to ridicule me, they’re just kids, right? It’s not like their opinion about my appearance and character carries the same weight as that of a mature adult, right? Now, if an adult came up to you and asked why you were ugly or stupid or whatever, would you react differently than if a child had done so? Chances are, you would. We tend to revere adults more than children, so we assign more meaning to the words of adults, even though it should be the opposite: the **unfiltered, pure, innocent words of children** are more honest, undiplomatic, and free of agendas, and therefore, more meaningful and true. Remember, **it took a child to point out that the emperor wore no clothes**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/what-you-owe-your-children **A force of nature is unintentional** This is why we get upset when directly or indirectly disrespected: we see the **conscious intent behind provocations**, and we conclude we aren’t worthy of respect. If thunder wakes you up at night and doesn’t let you sleep, it’s annoying, but you “won’t lose sleep over it” (pun intended). If your neighbour wakes you up at night with his noise, you see deliberate disrespect, and it bothers you more than the thunder, even though the decibels are the same. Why? Because thunder is a **force of nature**, without intent, without conscious judgment. Thunder happens whether you’re there or not. Nature neither respects nor disrespects anything. Nature is indifferent because **nature is not self-aware**. However, when self-aware organisms disrespect us, we take offense because their low opinion of us threatens our self-regard. If our self-regard is based on external input (mostly, it almost always is), then we need to keep feeding it with positive input from people with the ability to consciously perceive us. It is precisely this **ability of humans to perceive and assess** us that makes their provocations meaningful: If they judge us to be unworthy of consideration, perhaps we are. **Unphased mindset** You give too much credit to people. They don’t have the **cognitive ability** or ****free will**** to judge you appropriately. Therefore, **their rejections, and approvals for that matter, don’t carry weight**. **Your self-esteem must not depend on the arbitrary, agenda-driven, and biased opinions of others**. Besides, most people don’t know enough about you (or themselves) to hold any valid opinion about you. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/free-will-revisited Their petty provocations say more about them than about you. And responding to pettiness is pettiness in itself. You don’t need to react to their provocations; otherwise, they win. Losing your frame and reacting to them means they managed to control you. You might be wondering about the impressions of others about you; what will they think if you fail to assert yourself against a provocation? Wouldn’t that mean submission? Wouldn’t you begin to lose respect for yourself, too? Not necessarily. It would be submission only if you predictably respond as they want you to respond: to take them seriously and give them validation. If you’re concerned about impressions, then simply roll your eyes, utter a dismissive “*yea yea yea*” like Chev Chelios in **Crank**, and brush it off as a mildly annoying but meaningless fly buzzing in your ear. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0479884/ This way, you do acknowledge the disrespect to avoid being perceived as a pushover; you don’t want to be seen as weak and thus invite more aggression. But you’re doing it dismissively, brushing it off as a minor, insignificant annoyance rather than anything else. If you respond with anger and a desperately needy posture of trying to prove yourself, you come across as weak and insecure in your conviction about who you are. You don’t need to prove anything to people who disrespect you. You don’t value the opinions of people who fail to respect the respectable (assuming you are indeed **worthy of respect**). https://sotiris.substack.com/p/how-to-be-the-most-alpha **There is no free will** This is why I keep writing in my other publication, ***Bonds of Prometheus***, about how **free will does not — not truly — exist**. https://sotiris.substack.com/ https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-narcissism-of-free-will If you strip free will from those who disrespect you, then you suddenly see their petty provocations as a force of nature: lacking conscious awareness, agency, and intent; and thus, there is no meaning in their violations. This is **not to provide excuses, but rather explanations**. But **if you see someone’s aggression as the instinctive, unconscious, and involuntary nature of a wild beast, then it ceases to have meaning**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/excuses-vs-explanations-part-2 Free will does not exist, and it’s fine. We are all the inevitable consequence of random genetics and deterministic life experiences that were not of our choosing. Every choice you make with the **illusion of free will** is processed through the mental pathways that define your cognition; again, those pathways were formed for us by random, indifferent nature. This notion upsets people, because, for one, they don’t like being told they are unfree — generally, we tend to delude ourselves that we’re free, even under **tyrannical governments**. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/you-are-a-slave And second, we fear that the **denial of free will** would promote unaccountability and thus encourage criminal behaviour. But this is a false dichotomy. We aren’t free, but we must still pay for our mistakes, whether we hurt ourselves alone or others. Understanding that free will does not exist offers explanations, not excuses, and it spares us from false meaning when we make mistakes or when others hurt us. This does not mean that those who hurt us are off the hook, and it does not mean that we don’t have to face the consequences of our mistakes. What it means is that you can hold yourself accountable without blaming yourself. You can hold people accountable without assigning undeserved meaning to their intentions against you. Therefore, the **usefulness of acknowledging that free will does not exist** is that you see evil people as a force of nature: harmful, but meaningless. Your abusers are will-less automata who pass the Turing test. All they can harm is your body. But they can’t destroy your self-esteem, just like no storm, earthquake, or wild animal attack can. Deprive them of agency (but not **accountability**), and you’ll see that they hold much less power over you. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/excuses-vs-explanations