About safety, crab mentality & variables in life

Please don't take my words too literally, as my information, like that of many others, doesn't come from books and eyewitness accounts (which could also be fake news since the authors of these sources may have fallen prey to some ideologies), but is instead filtered and reprocessed by some individuals I don't know, yet paradoxically, I have an opinion of them - that's just a bit of background.

On YouTube, there's a video - or rather, a clip - of a lecture by the late German professor Vera Birkenbihl titled "Become adults finally". In it, she briefly mentions a myth/legend about Napoleon Bonaparte, who, in his youth as an insignificant soldier, approached his general's command tent after a remark about his arrogance and asked him, "General, what do you see out there in the distance?" "Well, clouds, what else should I see?" Napoleon is said to have replied something like, "...and behind them is my star, and I always know it's there." For those who haven't yet grasped what this is about, it's about life goals or a life goal. Whether or not this conversation took place is irrelevant; it's a beautiful story, and we know about Napoleon: He briefly conquered Europe.

I first saw this video a few years ago and simply thought, "Wow." The next day, a star was tattooed on my arm.

This intro is by no means meant to compare myself to Napoleon, much as I would like to, but it is an analogy about the mindset of someone who circumvents the usual boundaries and has done so - depending on the perspective - more or less successfully.

Security is a concept that is not compatible in this context. I don't want to be too drastic in my comparisons, as collective radical changes overnight by individuals would lead to nothing but chaos and the collapse of society, though they are unlikely and would only occur as a reaction to disasters or political instability, but that's just a thought on the side. The masses love security. At least the feeling of security.

Anyone who knows what next week or next month will look like, what they will work, who they will spend time with, and how much money they will have, is not truly living. This person, with a 99.99% probability, makes no decisions that influence anything significant, nothing that would lead to a different direction or new situations. And this is due to the desire for security. This desire ensures one buys the same bun from the bakery every day, takes the same route to work, watches the same favorite series in the evening, and always stays in the same circle of acquaintances; the variables remain the same.

I hope my train of thought isn't too disjointed, but I often find myself wondering: Should I still listen to the people around me? Consider their opinion as something constructive? What's the point if I take the opinion of others about my own plans seriously when they are caught in the same routine with the same variables? Doesn't that ultimately lead to conformity?

This brings to mind "crab mentality" again. To recall the basic definition from Wikipedia: "The crab bucket is often used as a metaphor reflecting the behavior 'if I can't have it, neither can you.'" There are certainly more precise terms and explanations for this, but that's not the point here; the thought is merely to underline it.

However, when I think of my environment and this effect, I do so with no malice or disdain. I believe everyone has a few people who truly want the best for them, and if you're lucky, you'll find them in your family. Such people know no different and only want to protect you from "the harsh awakening to reality" with their preaching about "foresight" and "security." But what do they really know? Do you let a craftsman explain how to become an astronaut and what the path looks like? Or should one even take advice from anyone, or does it just cloud one's own path, one's own intentions and goal, and in any case, pull one back into the reality of the other crabs?

A few years ago, when I was involved in multi-level marketing with a dubious company and, as is typical, wanted to convince everyone to get rich with me, I learned, besides the fact that the "business model" was nonsense and I might be very susceptible to cult-like structures and should work on that, a lot about my environment and "crab mentality."

I often heard "do something real," "when I was as young as you, I tried that too, but it's all nonsense," etc. What always struck me; people seemed "defeated," as if they had given up and conformed. Of course, that particular thing was nonsense at the time, but does one have to give up immediately after a defeat and should no longer take risks? Maintaining the same variables and only changing them minimally every few years to eventually sit in some great office with some great title, having seen or experienced nothing, having met no one outside of one's box, seems to me not to be the path to freedom and knowledge.

Of course, changes to such variables as job, place of residence, etc., can also bring massive losses and damage, but what if it turns out to be the opposite? And: Is the risk really so high, or do we just imagine the worst-case scenario?

Conscious risks may lead one behind the clouds into the fog for a long time, bringing constant doubt about one's own judgment, but then one lives one's own life and not that of others.