Today, failing to show someone respect is considered abusive, a borderline criminal act, requiring immediate condemnation at best, summary justice at worst. A lack of respect, which is simply a failure to admire, can end badly.

But behind our insatiable appetite for motivation lies a fundamental and damaging ignorance of what motivation actually is, and where it really comes from:

And when your identity is invested in knowing what you are talking about — being successful, being the expert and being right — when that is challenged it generates an existential crisis. Your very being is threatened.