# Listen to Gryffindor

Lesson: The enemy is compliance, and the solution is courage.

(This post uses the Hogwarts houses as an evocative lens. See the footnote[^1] if you are unfamiliar.)

Behaviour: 
- You're making a career choice. Your local EA community needs a director. You're unsure but commit, since it's important work. You don't get funded, work for less than your happy price, and start running on fumes.
- You're trying to think how to get something real done, again. You think of HJPEV. You realize you need to be more diligent, lock in and apply conscientiousness, and solve the problem. You spend years trying to simulate conscientiousness, and pay the rent to unworkable TODO systems, overburdened calendars, and feeling trapped in systems devised by you.
- You buy a robot vacuum. You tell your SO how it cost 1/40th of a human life, and you are fine with that. You feel guilty. It still gnaws at you, six years later.

Before we talk about what connects these, let's look at some shadows.

## Shadow work

I tried reading some blogs and books on so-called _shadow work_ - psychological work related to subconscious, repressed wants and needs. I found value in _Existential kink_ by Carolyn Elliott, which offered this frame of relating to your repeating problems in your life by trying to prod your psyche if it actually enjoys something about the experience. 

Example: I hoard browser tabs. Sometimes I am bothered and stressed by this. The simple explanation is that I have some blocker about cleaning them, which is causing this behaviour. The shadow work / existential kink lens theory would be: "What need / want are these browser tabs serving? Why does it feel like I lose something valuable if I try to apply a simple solution to this situation?"

General thought: I think shadow work and its genre of tools are much more useful in looking at _wicked_ or repetitive problems in your personal life, ones where you have already explored the simple solutions. I think one thing that goes wrong with some self-help and therapy styles I dislike (classical psychoanalysis, for one) is that it _immediately_ jumps to complex explanations, looking for reasons for everything. (Sometimes a lot of what is troubling you in your life is connected, but I think it's often worthwhile to start simple, and raise the complexity of analysis and problem-solving as the simple solutions reveal more information and/or don't work.)

I also greatly enjoyed David Chapman's [_Buddhism for Vampires_](https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/), especially the _We are all monsters_ essay series. Which takes a bit of a different approach:

To observe the headings of the blog sequences:
> Eating the shadow
>
> Romancing the shadow
>
> Hunting the shadow
>
> Absorb your shadow
>
> Drinking the sun

And then interpreting them into the verbs that the blog text uses: hunting (finding what you've hidden from yourself) -> chewing (getting intimate with it, no distance) -> swallowing (it's no longer "not me". may need to regurgitate and rechew) -> digesting (becomes normal, malleable) -> burning (fuel for creative work and practical magic).

Chapman does some interesting Buddhist framing as well (hence the name of the blog), core part of this in my notes being: 
> reframe: not "rejected parts of self" but "rejected aspects of experience", avoids the True Self trap.

Which makes more sense to me than the glaringly Jungian / psychoanalytic frame common in shadow work, that spends a lot of time on "the self" and how the work can help move it forward, or some such.

Chapman also states 
> It's slow, bodily, repetitive, often disgusting. Not a weekend workshop. Not spirit-talk. Stomach feelings, not metaphysical ideas.

And this, I think, is one reason why his Vampire / monster aesthetic is worthwhile. It sets expectations well - and also has useful associations. At least for me, personally, a lot of my repressed parts _felt_ reprehensible, morally wrong, even monstrous. 

Which is what leads us to the next part of my adventure:

## Villainy as an outlet

After spending a bunch of months background pondering the shadows of my mind, something concrete started to form. I started to form this concrete hypothesis that EA (and rationalism) are making people too _compliant_, and this needs some shaking.[^2]

So I started building the concepts for a blog sequence: Effective Villainy. You just need to endorse your ego, your desires, your repressed, unpalatable side, and you can reach power beyond measure.[^3]

TLDR on Effective villainy, condensed from my notes on the subject:
- Effective Villainy is an aesthetic and philosophical counterfoil to Effective Altruism. It doesn't oppose doing good. It opposes doing good from a place of self-erasure, guilt, and obligation.
- EA selects for people who already care too much and then tells them to care harder. It rewards self-sacrifice, legibility, humility, and careful, measured action, which can push people to double down on these virtues in harmful or unproductive ways.
- Effective Villainy says: know yourself before you give yourself away. Own your desires openly. Acquire power without apology. Act with passion and conviction rather than careful defensibility. 
    - Importantly: Close the moral accounting department. There's no scoreboard.
- Trust that a person who is fully alive and honestly selfish will do more good than a person who is dutiful and slowly burning out.
- It's not a 180 from EA - my intention was to do a 360.[^4]
- The aesthetic is deliberate: villain rather than hero, dramatic rather than measured, ornamental rather than minimal. Not because aesthetics are trivial, but because the right aesthetic can unlock things that argument alone cannot.
- TLDR of the TLDR: _you're allowed to want things_. It might even be _positive_ to act on your wants. [Shock!](https://xylix.fi/shocked-pikachu.jpg)

## Why villainy isn't the answer

The fact that I wanted to perform a 360-degree turn, instead of a 180, was quite telling. As was the fact that the kind of villainous acts I wanted to perform were suspiciously tame: Wanting to donate to ineffective causes just because they lit up my heart, deciding what to work on by listening to my heart, wanting to be able to say _no_ when someone tells me I should do something. Wanting to just do stuff without thinking of optics.

And most importantly: If you are building an inversion, you are being affected by the thing you are inverting. An inversion can never be _free_. And freedom was the core of what I was missing.

When looking for inspiration, I didn't end up admiring actual villains. I started to admire the _Absurdist hero_.[^5] A fledgling scientist who stares into the darkness, consciously or subconsciously realizes that no one sane can solve this problem, and awakens into the _mad scientist protagonist_. To quote Okabe Rintarou: "Hear me privileged companions, time is ours. Hououin Kyouma’s mind recognizes no limits, neither does his reach. Heave anchor. The ship of fools is about to embark."

Also: optimizing for power won't make you happy: HPMOR Quirrell's legibility, inability to look like a fool, and having already decided what everything means, and what matters (nothing), were a very significant factor why, even though he might have had the seeds, he never awoke as a _true protagonist_, be that an evil or good protagonist. He got stuck optimizing for power, even when, in the end, it did not actually cure his deeper boredom and dissatisfaction with life. (Even if it did bring momentary satisfaction, when he did not need to suffer direct foolishness, no more.) He had lost the pieces to be a sane protagonist, but he could not consider the choice to be an insane protagonist, so he had to go villain.

## Where are we now, and where are we going

So why all this talk of villainy if it isn't the answer I'm offering? Why have we not addressed the post's title yet?

The relevant clue here is that the monstrosity, the counterculture aesthetic, the shadow work, are never the final answer. They are fuel for transformation. It's why Chapman's sequence leads to [_Drinking the Sun_](https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/drinking-the-sun), not _becoming the vampire_.

Let's go object level for a bit: Why was I repressing my desires? What was the problem they were a signal of?

My current best guess, mediumly held, is that I was being _compliant_. 

> Compliance psychology is the study of the process where individuals comply to social influence, typically in response to requests and pressures brought on by others. [^6]

The behaviour that I had most trouble with, and that kept popping up, is a specific form of people pleasing. But importantly, I wasn't trying to make people _pleased_. I was trying to avoid upsetting their expectations.

This thread of behaviour is what combines the examples in the intro of the text - doing things I should, doing things the way I believe they should be done, applying moral calculus to daily life because I thought it should be applied everywhere.

In my own case, I needed some kind of psychological escape velocity to break this pattern. Normal techniques were never enough. After staring at the fascinations with fictional dystopias, Moloch, and generally various kinds of abhorrent processes of optimisation that deny one their own will, it became quite apparent that I was acting bound. Limited.

And the villainy frame gave me the escape velocity that was necessary. By talking to people about the fact that I was writing this countercultural take on EA, I could bring more of myself to the surface, and break the mirage that I was spending a lot of social and other effort constructing.

So the real diagnosis for why I did not have boundaries, why I felt I was giving too much up, is not that the goals were not (at least primarily) aligned with what I desire. But the method of how I was existing in spaces where other people work on things that really matter was not working for me.

After chewing on these themes a bit, I found the next shadows: behind the dystopian fiction, behind the need/want/goal of optimization, was something scared. And what it was scared of was _softness_. Wholesomeness, loyalty without qualifiers, _just being allowed to belong_, the _Hufflepuff virtues_. And it was harder to reach, because I am more scared to admit to desiring soft things than to admit desiring ~edgy things.

I cannot write wholesomeness.[^7] And it's not because I don't like it. I enjoy wholesomeness, it's just very scary.[^8]

So what are the Hufflepuff virtues besides the wholesomeness neighborhood? How am I supposed to chew on these? The _monster_ frame really has a hard time evoking the right imagery here, so time for the next frame.

## The virtues of Hufflepuff

Starting from a vibes-based list:
- Honesty
- Kindness
- Laughter
- Generosity
- Loyalty
- ~~Magic~~

(Tone: joking. It's a fun emergent association that when considering Hufflepuff virtues, what comes out are the [_Elements of Harmony_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elements_of_Harmony).)

Who are Hufflepuff heroes? Where to look for inspiration here?

- Luna Lovegood is a Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff hero, and I talk about it more in my draft [Endorse weirdness. No, really.](https://xylix.fi/blog/endorse-weirdness). You know - when the gang visits her home in _the Deathly Hallows_, the part that sticks is that she has paintings of her friends up on her bedroom roof, along with a chain of _friends, friends, friends_ connecting those pictures. It feels kind of unsettling in the moment, but from her perspective it's just simple.
- Paddington. A pure Hufflepuff hero: an immigrant and outsider who builds community wherever he goes just by earnestly believing people ought to be kind, and having the quiet moral authority that comes from actually living that way. The Hard Stare isn't a weapon, it's genuine disappointment that you're not being decent, and somehow that is more devastating than any sword swing. [The London mural evokes the vibe quite well.](https://www.visitlondon.com/-/media/images/london/visit/things-to-do/family-activites/paddington-bear-itinerary/paddington-london-mural-1920x1080.png?mw=960&rev=26b528dda6ba4624a045e47c3fa590f2&hash=4A9A0FE58123764E3668B3D39FB10290)
- Columbo. The Hufflepuff answer to the detective genre. Everyone he faces is rich, clever, scheming, convinced that they're the smartest person in the room. Columbo has neither the paladin charisma of Gryffindor, nor the status-consciousness of a Slytherin. He's just _easy to be around_, curious, funny, blatantly peculiar. That's what makes the villains drop their guard, and by the time they realize his brilliant memory for people is a real weapon, it's already over. He doesn't need to intellectually duel: the battle was won before it started. But beyond the charm, what makes Columbo a Hufflepuff genius is the sheer dogged dedication to doing his job well:
> You know, sir, it's a funny thing. All my life I kept running into smart people. I don't just mean smart like you and the people in this house. You know what I mean. In school, there were lots of smarter kids. And when I first joined the force, sir, they had some very clever people there. And I could tell right away that it wasn't gonna be easy making detective as long as they were around. But I figured, if I worked harder than they did, put in more time, read the books, kept my eyes open, maybe I could make it happen. And I did. And I really love my work, sir.
- And of course, the character who unifies chaotic fun, friendship, and mad science, while plausibly hosting timeline-shattering eldritch powers (breaking physics, appearing in impossible places, having precognition), and whose only ambition is to use it to amuse her friends: Pinkie Pie

What about Hufflepuff fiction themes? The obvious candidates here seem like Ursula K. Le Guin, and Studio Ghibli. Stories where power-grabbing costs you, and friendship, loyalty, and importantly, mercy are often rewarded. Non-obvious candidate but quite fitting: Terry Pratchett. Combines the Ghibli theme-motif of "ordinary is interesting, actually" with fun and good vibes, friendship, and mercy. And there's a core Pratchett ethos that ties back to (the) Columbo (quote), which doesn't consist of the Glory of Gryffindor, the Intellectual deliberation of a Ravenclaw, or the cunning planning of a Slytherin. It consists of showing up and doing your job, not because the stakes are larger than life or for a complicated reason, but because people matter, and caring for them and for your work matters, because the people matter. And you don't need to force it, because you can _love your work_.

Takeaways / Hufflepuff actions I have been missing:

As someone prone to over-intellectualization and abstract moral frameworks, I think there is a bunch of value I've been missing in _just caring_. Making fun happen for people I care about just because. Sharing because I can, and because I want to, not for an end goal. Caring for my own well-being, not because it is necessary for my work, but because it matters. And, importantly, just allowing myself to care, without being scared that caring might force a worldview update.[^9]

## Stopping performing, starting being

What was the actual blocker between pre-2026-me and current-me? Why did I not see that the above stuff is important and matters to me? On the object level, it's dozens of things. On the meta level, I think, fundamentally, it was about courage. I needed a Gryffindor virtue to be able to _get_ how I was repressing my inner Hufflepuff.

What to do with this information?

Notice when you're performing. Notice when your [defiance](https://mindingourway.com/defiance/) is still shaped by what you're rebelling against. And when you find the thing that's actually scary, the deeper layer of your shadow: have the courage to keep looking, to keep staring into your personal darkness. Keep looking, keep paying attention, and then, eventually, [by becoming more whole](https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/seeing-more-whole), by listening to Gryffindor: [_set your heart ablaze._](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SftPh1QsKRc)

[^1]: The Hogwarts Houses from Harry Potter are a vibes-based personality classification system that I use as an evocative lens. The core part is: Gryffindors are the brave and convicted, Slytherin ambitious and cunning, Ravenclaw intellectual and curious, and Hufflepuff loyal, kind, hardworking. (The original Harry Potter suffers from not understanding its own framing, and ends up with Hufflepuff as the default house for people who don't fit any of the others, and Slytherin as the house for mean and evil people. But the lens is quite clear, when you correct for this.) Additionally I use the combined-house phrasing (Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff) to describe someone who is primarily of the first house but exhibits significant characteristics of the secondary house.
[^2]: On reflection, I was projecting pretty hard here.
[^3]: I don't think this is _completely wrong_. I think will to power is a real tool, it can provide real-world returns, and I think Nietzsche and Chapman are the writers who put it the best. See [You should be a God-Emperor](https://meaningness.substack.com/p/you-should-be-a-god-emperor). Pattern here being: Humans do self-limit a lot, and you can bend or remove some of those limiters, with the right work. But in the end, my own path, even though inspired by this, considers the next steps subtly different.
[^4]: And this is part of where I went wrong. I decided the conclusion I wanted to reach before the work was finished.
[^5]: I have always liked Camus' vibes, but I have not managed to connect his ideas to _what truly matters_ before I arrived here.
[^6]: [Wikipedia: Compliance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(psychology))
[^7]: Part of what brought me here was that I was generating a cast of characters templated on me for my medianworld. Different aspects or life stories that can be generated out of Xylixes that get pulled in different directions. And I realized the way I model those characters doesn't leave space for any Hufflepuff. And on reflection, it didn't make sense. I greatly enjoy and find worthwhile friendship, trust, loyalty, and kindness. But this was the real repressed part.
[^8]: What is the concept your heart of hearts desires, and you are scared to play with? What evokes unsettling positive vibes in you?
[^9]: I'll note here that I think the way I (and many rationalists) undervalue [Green](https://joecarlsmith.com/2024/03/21/on-green) thinking is related. Sometimes the [snail crossing the street](https://xylix.fi/snail-crossing-street.jpg) or [Blåhaj going to waffle house](https://youtu.be/X1beEuBV7M0?si=7cjBTm9M8HSG5Rwh) is just cool and good. Enough said.