Dark Personality:

Rolf Degen

@DegenRolf

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1 Std.

People with dark personality traits have a bleak view of the world, perceiving it as devoid of meaning, beauty and interest. Aversive (“dark”) personality traits are traditionally studied as predictors of harmful or manipulative behavior, yet their underlying cognitive-affective structures remain underexplored. This research investigates whether the Dark Core of personality (D)—the common aversive essence of all dark traits—is associated with primal world beliefs, which are deep-seated assumptions about the nature of the world. In sum, D was negatively associated with the beliefs that the world is safe and enticing, indicating that high-D individuals tend to perceive the world as uncooperative, unjust, unpleasurable, uninteresting, meaningless, and lacking beauty. The belief that most experiences and interactions in life are meaningless specifically introduces an all-encompassing bleakness Whereas it was anticipated and is not particularly surprising given prior findings that individuals high in D view the world as dangerous, competitive, or uncooperative, […] individuals high in D not only view the world as dangerous, competitive, and uncooperative, but also as less pleasurable, less stable, less regenerative, and less meaningful—extending well beyond prior findings. Primals such as Interesting and Meaningful seem to reflect a kind of meta-justificatory framework, in which anti-social actions appear legitimate not because others do the same, but due to an all-encompassing pointlessness. Indeed, what is the point in upholding any (injunctive) social norms if human interactions are generally meaningless or pointless?

Psychological Sensitivity to Pain:

"Common psychological / everyday terms

• Highly sensitive person (HSP)
  Widely used. Refers to people who process stimuli and emotions very deeply. Suffering—both their own and others’—hits harder and lasts longer.

• Hyper-empathic / extremely empathic
  When someone absorbs others’ pain almost without a filter.

• Emotionally vulnerable
  Describes the exposure to suffering, not the cause.

• Pain-sensitive / suffering-sensitive
  Not a formal term, but linguistically precise and often exactly what people mean.

Philosophical / existential language

• Melancholic
  Classic, non-pathological. A person who perceives depth, loss, and finitude very clearly.

• Tragic disposition
  Someone who experiences life primarily through suffering and meaning rather than pleasure.

• Existentially sensitive
  Attuned to suffering as a basic feature of existence.

Clinical-adjacent (only if appropriate)

• Depressive temperament
  Not a diagnosis, but a personality style.

• Affectively hyper-reactive
  Neutral, technical wording.

Plain truth, without sugarcoating

Many people who “seem to suffer all the time” are not weak or fragile. They are too open, too permeable, and never learned emotional boundaries. The constant suffering is often overexposure, not pathology."

A Timid Man:

ChatGPT:

"A timid man is a man who holds back because of fear, insecurity, or lack of confidence.

Plainly put:

• He avoids confrontation and risk.

• He hesitates to speak up, especially around authority or strangers.

• He worries about judgment or rejection.

• He often lets others decide, even when he disagrees.

• He may want things badly but struggles to act on them.

Important distinction: timid ≠ kind or thoughtful. Timidity is about fear-driven restraint, not morality. A timid man can be intelligent, decent, or capable—and still fail to assert himself when it matters.

Also worth saying honestly: timidity is usually learned, not fixed. It often comes from upbringing, repeated negative experiences, or long-term avoidance. It can be unlearned, but only through discomfort and practice, not reflection alone."

Books vs. This Blog:

Reading three well-chosen books from cover to cover is a better use of your time than reading this blog.

Twitter versus Books:

Compared to reading books, almost all time spent on Twitter is wasted.

Nevertheless, Twitter does have a strange allure.

Reading:

For the first time in a week, I read for several hours.

Mediocricity:

ChatGPT:

"Mediocricity is the condition of being unexceptional—not bad, not great, but comfortably average. It describes outcomes, performance, thinking, or systems that avoid extremes and therefore also avoid excellence.

Here’s the idea, cleanly broken down.

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What mediocricity really means

At its core, mediocricity is regression toward the mean in human behavior and institutions.

• It favors safety over risk

• Consensus over originality

• Predictability over ambition

• Stability over progress

Mediocre things work well enough. That’s their strength—and their ceiling.

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How mediocricity shows up

1. Individual level

• Doing what’s expected, not what’s possible

• Avoiding failure so thoroughly that growth never happens

• Optimizing for approval rather than mastery

Mediocrity here is often driven by fear: fear of standing out, failing publicly, or being judged.

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2. Organizations

• Committees dilute strong ideas into harmless ones

• KPIs reward compliance, not insight

• Innovation is praised verbally but punished structurally

Result: nothing breaks—but nothing truly improves either.

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3. Culture & society

• Average opinions dominate public discourse

• Extremes are discouraged—even when they’re correct

• Excellence is tolerated only if it doesn’t disrupt norms

This creates a cultural “flatline”: stable, calm, stagnant.

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Why mediocricity is so persistent

Because it’s comfortable and self-reinforcing.

• Mediocre systems reward mediocre behavior

• Outstanding performance raises expectations—and that’s inconvenient

• Average performance is easier to manage, predict, and replace

In short: mediocricity scales well. Excellence doesn’t.

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Important distinction

Mediocricity ≠ incompetence

• Incompetence fails outright

• Mediocricity succeeds just enough to survive

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When mediocricity is useful

Let’s be honest: it has its place.

• Safety-critical systems (aviation, medicine protocols)

• Standardization and reliability

• Situations where variance is risk

The problem isn’t mediocricity itself.
The problem is treating it as a virtue everywhere.

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Bottom line

Mediocricity is the absence of failure without the presence of excellence.

It feels reasonable.
It feels responsible.
It feels mature.

And that’s exactly why it quietly kills ambition, originality, and progress—while convincing everyone that this is just “how things are.”

This could be pushed further: mediocricity in academia, science, management, or even personal decision-making."