I think there might be some ambiguity with the "sidekick" thing. I understand framing this as a hero and side-kick dynamic, but I think it might be easier to create a mental model of a team with some people playing more of a support role. [For consistency with other posts, I'm going to largely phrase things in terms of hero and sidekick] Either way, though, I see two general way things can go, one healthy and one unhealthy.
"I am going to do whatever I can to help this hero, no matter what" is a version of side-kicking I see a lot in books. And I recently pulled myself out of a relationship where I fell into a similar dynamic (although without my partner actually falling into the "hero" role). The "do anything, come what may" aspect is very dangerous. And when I first read this post, that was the part that I found slightly disconcerting.
However, there's another style of support/sidekicking that seems very healthy and productive to me:
"I am going to find a person or persons who are effective at achieving goal(s) I find important, and do what I feel appropriate to help them achieve those goals for as long as it seems like the right thing to do (where a condition of "right thing to do" is that they are treating me well)." This is a much more specific and conditional statement, and one that to me feels both powerful and healthy.
Reading some of the followup posts suggest that you and Brienne both fall into the second camp:
Brienne has been pretty explicit that if she's working with a hero, and finds out that they're wrong about a fundamental >thing and thus that she could make more impact on her own, she would do it, even though it would be a personal >tragedy.
The fiance of my best friend plays a supporting role (not a supporting actor, mind you) at a major movie production company. She doesn't act, she doesn't design things, she doesn't get credit for all the big achievements. She just keeps all the different parts working together, keeps everyone on schedule, and when necessary handles the details necessary for the big name actors to be at their best (accommodating dietary needs, etc). The high status individuals like actors and animators may be more directly involved in producing the movies, but without this supporting individual and others like her, big productions would never be possible. I feel that many large endeavors (and perhaps even small ones) need people who can play such supporting roles.
I think the danger of the hero-sidekick dynamic is if there is such a strong bond of loyalty to the individual that either the hero or the sidekick is willing to tolerate being treated poorly, or interacting with someone who is no longer important in achieving the overarching goals. And because you can have heroes without sidekicks but you can't have sidekicks without heroes, I would expect asymmetry in what sidekicks and heroes would naturally tolerate. But ultimately you are trying to WIN, which means that - emotional ties aside - the hero isn't as important as how your contributions are helping to achieve your stated goals. Which means that, as a rationalist, you should work with a hero only for as long as that is the rational thing to do. It's the potential for irrational loyalty that makes this subject slightly uncomfortable to me.
One of the things that I have found incredibly valuable for my romantic life, which seems equally valuable here, is to create a list of your goals, what you're looking for in a partnership/team, what you're happy doing and what you're unhappy doing. While, as rationalists, we should be capable of setting aside our emotions while in the midst of a personal relationship (romantic, or platonic hero-sidekick, or really any other) to evaluate whether it's the right thing, it's much easier if you have a preexisting guideline. This, in turn, should drastically reduce the likelihood of exploitation by a less-than-perfect "hero".
[Reposted from my personal blog.]
Mindspace is wide and deep. “People are different” is a truism, but even knowing this, it’s still easy to underestimate.
I spent much of my initial engagement with the rationality community feeling weird and different. I appreciated the principle and project of rationality as things that were deeply important to me; I was pretty pro-self improvement, and kept tsuyoku naritai as my motto for several years. But the rationality community, the people who shared this interest of mine, often seemed baffled by my values and desires. I wasn’t ambitious, and had a hard time wanting to be. I had a hard time wanting to be anything other than a nurse.
It wasn’t until this August that I convinced myself that this wasn’t a failure in my rationality, but rather a difference in my basic drives. It’s around then, in the aftermath of the 2014 CFAR alumni reunion, that I wrote the following post.
It then turned out that quite a lot of other people recognized this, so I shifted from “this is a weird thing about me” to “this is one basic personality type, out of many.” Notably, Brienne wrote the following comment:
She also gave me what’s maybe one of the best and most moving compliments I’ve ever received.
Sarah Constantin, who according to a mutual friend is one of the most loyal people who exists, chimed in with some nuance to the Frodo/Samwise dynamic: “Sam isn’t blindly loyal to Frodo. He makes sure the mission succeeds even when Frodo is fucking it up. He stands up to Frodo. And that’s important too.”
Kate Donovan, who also seems to share this basic psychological makeup, added “I have a strong preference for making the lives of the lead heroes better, and very little interest in ever being one.”
Meanwhile, there were doubts from others who didn’t feel this way. The “we need heroes, the world needs heroes” narrative is especially strong in the rationalist community. And typical mind fallacy abounds. It seems easy to assume that if someone wants to be a support character, it’s because they’re insecure–that really, if they believed in themselves, they would aim for protagonist.
I don’t think this is true. As Kenzi pointed out: “The other thing I felt like was important about Samwise is that his self-efficacy around his particular mission wasn’t a detriment to his aura of destiny – he did have insecurities around his ability to do this thing – to stand by Frodo – but even if he’d somehow not had them, he still would have been Samwise – like that kind of self-efficacy would have made his essence *more* distilled, not less.”
Brienne added: “Becoming the hero would be a personal tragedy, even though it would be a triumph for the world if it happened because I surpassed him, or discovered he was fundamentally wrong.”
Why write this post?
Usually, “this is a true and interesting thing about humans” is enough of a reason for me to write something. But I’ve got a lot of other reasons, this time.
I suspect that the rationality community, with its “hero” focus, drives away many people who are like me in this sense. I’ve thought about walking away from it, for basically that reason. I could stay in Ottawa and be a nurse for forty years; it would fulfil all my most basic emotional needs, and no one would try to change me. Because oh boy, have people tried to do that. It’s really hard to be someone who just wants to please others, and to be told, basically, that you’re not good enough–and that you owe it to the world to turn yourself ambitious, strategic, Slytherin.
Firstly, this is mean regardless. Secondly, it’s not true.
Samwise was important. So was Frodo, of course. But Frodo needed Samwise. Heroes need sidekicks. They can function without them, but function a lot better with them. Maybe it’s true that there aren’t enough heroes trying to save the world. But there sure as hell aren’t enough sidekicks trying to help them. And there especially aren’t enough talented, competent, awesome sidekicks.
If you’re reading this post, and it resonates with you… Especially if you’re someone who has felt unappreciated and alienated for being different… I have something to tell you. You count. You. Fucking. Count. You’re needed, even if the heroes don’t realize it yet. (Seriously, heroes, you should be more strategic about looking for awesome sidekicks. AFAIK only Nick Bostrom is doing it.) This community could use more of you. Pretty much every community could use more of you.
I’d like, someday, to live in a culture that doesn’t shame this way of being. As Brienne points out, “Society likes *selfless* people, who help everybody equally, sure. It’s socially acceptable to be a nurse, for example. Complete loyalty and devotion to “the hero”, though, makes people think of brainwashing, and I’m not sure what else exactly but bad things.” (And not all subsets of society even accept nursing as a Valid Life Choice.) I’d like to live in a world where an aspiring Samwise can find role models; where he sees awesome, successful people and can say, “yes, I want to grow up to be that.”
Maybe I can’t have that world right away. But at least I know what I’m reaching for. I have a name for it. And I have a Frodo–Ruby and I are going to be working together from here on out. I have a reason not to walk away.