Social status and self-possession

Chateau Heartiste has a provocative essay today on social status and self-possession. He wrote about how that changes for men as we grow older. Here is an excerpt:

...Remember when you were a teenager, how one throwaway affront could send you into a frenzy of self-examination and/or rageful retribution? You’d mull over that little calumny as if it were a final judgment handed up by Lucifer himself.

...Something about aging into a grown man with real responsibilities and a collected history of romantic failures and successes buffers him against myriad slights by other men and by opaque women. You could say it’s a dullness permeating the aging brain that fortuitously protects it from excruciating self-doubt, but I think instead it’s the opposite: a heightened awareness of the meaninglessness of most people’s opinions, especially opinions on the nature of one’s character or desirability.

Read more here.