Your flaws matter less than you think

Why flawlessness is a faulty metric for human perfection

Jan 30, 2024

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A photo-realistic image of a mountain-climber scaling a tall mountain while using a (literal) crutch. The climber is depicted in the act of climbing a rugged mountain terrain, symbolizing the challenges and ambitions in life. The use of a crutch, a literal representation of support or a flaw, adds depth to the image, illustrating the concept of overcoming obstacles and pursuing goals despite limitations or imperfections. The focus should be on the climber's determined effort, with the majestic mountain in the background, emphasizing the grandeur of the challenge and the climber's resilience. — Image created by OpenAI's DALL-E

Great poetry and literature are spurred by depression. Great leaders are enabled by narcissism. Great performers—founders, athletes, musicians—function through myopic obsession and cut-throat competitiveness. Insecurity, the need to prove oneself, impels the exceptional.

This constellation of narratives is commonplace, including in Silicon Valley. Elon Musk is out to resolve his daddy issues. Sam Altman manipulates and silences dissenters. Steve Jobs succeeded by being an asshole.

This narrative is wrong; not just a little wrong, but wrong wrong. Empirically, it ignores the mountains of evidence that psychopathology impairs human performance. Philosophically, it implies that vice, not virtue, is the source of human greatness.

But the ubiquity of this narrative does draw attention to an important truth: highly salient, very real human flaws, even if they are not enablers of greatness, are not showstoppers for greatness.

Between the spectacle of Musk’s conte…

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