A word to describe a common experience of high level entrepreneurs (n > 200).

There is a kind of taking that is not greed and not even envy in the usual sense. People who have never had to protect a high-output life do not know what that life is made of. They experience their requests as ordinary: talk about my thing, sit in this mood, solve this tangle, be available in the way everyone else is. They do not see that an afternoon of being pulled off the work is not “an afternoon.” It is a break in the chain that produces books, businesses, championships, capital. It is cost-blind.

I call it asympathy.

It sounds like (a)sympathy, or being without sympathy.

But it’s actualy (asym)pathy, or asymmetric pathos.

Asympathy is the relational stance in which one person treats attention, access, and emotional labor as interchangeable across a large gap in operating cost. It is feeling and relating to another human being as if the costs (high, lows, and demands) are symmetric, when they are not. Which means the damage is disproportional to the intention.

Sometimes, we think that there may be solidarity in other “successful too” peer groups.

But consider Will and Jada Smith.

One could say that Jada, among other things, demonstrates asympathy towards Will.

“Just get a better peer group” doesn’t alleviate it.

The deciding factor is whether someone is a boon or a drain in the presence of someone else’s altitude.