[Bakary]

One key insight about social relationships that took me a while to understand is that people respond mainly to whether you are life-affirming in your behavior or not. If you have things going on in your life and aren't afraid to exist as a person, they will naturally gravitate to you and give you a lot of leeway. Being a nice person or an asshole is orthogonal to the issue: they are just facets that may help or hinder this depending on the situation. In fact, they are defined entirely in relation to people's general impression of you so they have no real meaning on their own.

People then end up frustrated because they often confuse being weak and hollow as being nice and being assertive and self-directed with being an asshole.

In a way, we are Veblen goods: it's all about status and perceived scarcity in the end, whether it's conscious or not. That is not necessarily a negative or depressing thing as it also is the engine behind great things happening.

[ambivalents]

I'd love to know more what you mean by 'life-affirming.' Based on context, sounds like you mean, be an authentic person, don't sugar coat things, be imperfect, show vulnerabilities. Is that right?

I find myself drawn to these types--they may have asshole-ish moments or nice moments. That doesn't matter as much as my personal connection to them, the sense of whether I am rooting for them or not.

[Bakary]

I would define it as a positive feedback loop that is a mix of authenticity, energy, personality, desire, boldness, desire and will. There is perhaps a better word for it, but generally a person that exemplifies some of the strongest characteristics of human life as instinctively recognized by humans themselves.

As a corollary, such people tend to be naturally charismatic, but I would venture that this is a direct consequence of their other traits. One arresting definition of charisma I have heard is that it is a measure of how much you can delineate yourself as an entity in the world and how you can use that to affect reality. Life-affirmation and a zest for living draw directly into that.

Note that I don't necessarily include intellectual brilliance in the equation, though it obviously helps.

[waheoo]

Adjective; having an emotionally or spiritually uplifting effect.