Lately, I've been thinking about a framework I call scarcity vs abundance environments for us humans. In short, most of our lives (especially here in America) we are in scarcity mode and we usually have competition - to get into schools, in school itself, work life and so on. When we encounter people, we usually find them to be self-protective, closed. Many purely social social experiences can have this quality as well.

In contrast, we also find ourselves in environments - usually when we're part of some collective activity - where the scarcity starts to be forgotten/recedes into the background and a group shifts into abundance mode. What was zero sum becomes greater than the sum of the parts. My most recent experience with this was at a concert. Once everyone settled in, everyone's interests became 100% aligned on having as much fun as possible in order to vibe with the band (and inspire them). People became way more open. The more an individual contributed, the more everyone got out of it. I've noticed the same dynamics in other locales as well - group exercise for example.

The terminology I most used before would be something like "it had a good vibe" to refer to abundance and maybe "toxic" for scarcity. But I've realized that there's benefit to being more fine-grained than that. I really like abundance environments and I'd like to be able to seek out more of them. I'm highly conscious of when an environment has moved into an abundance mode, and I'm trying to be in abundance mode as much as I can.

I'm also interested in thinking about the nuances of this framework. One type of activity could just as easily be scarcity or abundance (think of an overcrowded concert) however certain things (music for example) have abundance properties. Being part of a group is a requirement, but not a guarantee. Candidly I wonder if part of this is awakening our dormant hunter-gatherer selves.

I don’t understand why I see so many taken or married women with personal male trainers. A lot of those trainers don’t even look like what they preach. How are they supposed to help you build muscle or improve your cardio when they don’t seem to have much muscle or fitness themselves? It makes me cringe. But the muscular ones are even more suspect because we know that if they are fit and muscular, whether naturally or through steroids, their testosterone could be higher than average, making them hornier and more likely to crash out. And honestly, it’s annoying because it always seems like those guys have hidden intentions. I feel like they just want to smash their female clients. This is why, if your girl has a personal male trainer, don’t date her—or just smash her and leave

Male user who normalize cheating. Need to get humbled