I think this applies not only to teenagers, but to millennials as well. I have one. She is 33 years old. We used to be on the same page. Not any more...
Impressed at the simple fact of any young person defining 'Apology' correctly as opposed to saying, "I'm sorry." Great to hear an actual linear discussion in logic and reason.
Then, to hear a young person ALLOWING themselves to be directed to critically THINK is quite phenomenal. Thought we in the rural sticks of the U.S. were a rare breed and it's nice to know there are young people helping other young people outside the sticks willing to stop gnawing those old, dry bones having no substance to get to the new juicy bone with real meat on it to literally promote growth and maturity.
A bit, yes. We need to break the back of the teacher's union, and stop giving tax exemptions to institutions of higher learning that no longer teach but indoctrinate, and somehow begin to clean up our cesspool of a government. There's much to do, and little time to do it.
This piece was great. Everything inside it encapsulized the immature mind, the ego, the boundaries or walls between which we operate for homeostasis.
I recently had the satisfaction of replying to a man's query as to why I refused marriage to him over 30 years ago. Only a few emails before that he had "don't contact me again!" grabbed his marbles to go home with his lip out. Pointing that out, and his veiled insults, insinuating projections and moralistic judgements made on little more than rumor...just as stated here. It was a weird kind of closure for me as he was unable to address the pass-agress behavior as an 8yr old boy helpless and angry at rough treatment and isolation by his father, nor any regret over lost employees or love relationships as a result of his own. I am more resolved than ever to examine my own reactions, and ponder why I do what I do in the context of my child & teen years.
New subscriber. Read the book, which was a bit of a slog. But I found it impressively insightful and wise. I think it's terrific someone's devoted a substack to the subject. I found the notion that we should treat our oppressors sympathetically to the extent possible, almost breathtakingly difficult. It requires a conquering of foundational human instincts. And yet I believe he's right iin the end. Thank you for this Mr. Koehli.
Great comment — it is SO breathtakingly difficult, and I think it’s one of the primary challenges of the book. The easy way to read the book is to say, “Yeah, I can see how that person over there is thinking and behaving all wrong.” But it’s really hard to start out by asking, “Am I approaching things in an unhelpful way?” But even if we do try to use reason and “treat our oppressors sympathetically," is that effective? I remember during 2020-22 listening to Martin Kulldorff and John Ioannidis talk calmly and logically. I showed videos of them to some people, but it was like it didn’t penetrate their brains. It was like their brains were only activated by emotions and moral language, and these men weren’t using emotions and moral language. I mean, it made me want to scream to see that the way they talked could not penetrate the minds of people I knew. It’s like we're all being pushed into an existential struggle to claim the moral high ground via language rather than actually and logically being on the high ground.
I've been arguing with people for years, "liberal" friends, family. All wasted breath. wasted words. I recently observed to one friend that he only reads and listens to one side, while I along with most Conservatives understand and listen to both sides.
Of course most of us we don't actually read say, opinion pieces in The New York Times, but we can't escape the MSM. It's everywhere, all the time. Besides, their black and white, Manichaean world view is simple to grasp. It's also quite obvious that the side they listen to have a tremendous vested interest in defending their status quo. Are the pharmaceutical companies objective? Can they be trusted? What is their history? Can the power mad politicians be trusted? Can "journalist "fact checkers., something we never needed in the past, to be trusted?
SO I posed this question..."Suppose you were a Martian in need of information regarding earthly culture, Would you pay more attention to the earthling who was acquainted with just the one side of vitally important worldy matters, or two?
I thought it was a pretty nifty point, but my friend was deaf. dumb. and blind/ They all are.
Yes, that's a difficult one. It sounds a bit easier when I think about it in terms of being "understanding, but firm." Being sympathetic does not have to mean ignoring reality, or being a pushover. We can still stand our ground, so to speak, but with magnanimity.
One thing that promotes disintigration of an unhealthy ego (and David Lynch mentions to this in the quote you shared) is undeniable failure, getting knocked on your ass by Life. Of course, the shielding of teenagers and young adults from responsibility and consequences, and the extension of childhood through the teenage years and even into the 20s (and in some cases even beyond that) enable the teenager or young adult to persist in his protective bubble of ignorance, within which he can consider himself right about everything.
I don’t understand how some people’s minds actually work, how they reach the conclusions they instantly seem to reach. Did they listen with their full attention to the announcements being made, did they hear the same words thoughtfully being spoken that I heard? If so how is it that they reached almost instantly and especially so after a day or two after the announcements the exact opposite conclusions that I reached?
How is it that we reached the exact opposite conclusions after listening very carefully to the words being used, to the meanings and intent of the announcements being conveyed in a most reasoned and rational way? I see a hyperbolic reaction to put it mildly, unreasonable and highly overreactive with ranting and raving, a totally off the charts reaction whereas I perceived it to be a reasonable well laid out long deliberated fully encompassing all areas of concern announcement. I think I’m right and I have some personal knowledge and experience in the areas of the announcements.
My teacher asks us to evaluate people primarily by their "tone level." There are some quirky people that are difficult to evaluate this way, but most can be spotted for their "chronic" or you could say, habitual, tone level. How the ego, or self, manifests itself depends a lot of the tone level that a person is dramatizing or stuck in. This phenomenon is related to the being's attention and mind. The mind is full of experiences that the being can have its attention on. He will tend to think and behave in non-optimum ways to the extent that his attention is stuck on some past experience or mental "machine" rather than on the present time environment.
Writers seem very focused on the whole phenomenon of social anxiety - how will my peers judge me if I ______ ? I don't remember this being an issue in my upbringing except perhaps when I was quite young. So this seems to me like a game or "scam" being run on young people (as well as adults) for the purpose of giving them something to worry about that is really of very little importance.
The whole subject of how psychopathic individuals or groups led by a psychopath influence the people or communities they are associated with does not seem to be very well studied. Lobaczewski was one of the first. To the extent that the study of the mind itself is under the influence of psychopaths, this gap in knowledge (and curiosity) can perhaps be understood. But it is a very valuable study and I am not happy with people in the field who seem to be totally unaware of it.
We recently watched the movie To Kill A Mockingbird. At one point, little Dill Harris dares Jem to run up on the porch of the Radley house, where a supposedly dangerous person lives. Without that dare, and the stories from local gossips about the Radleys, the little boy Jem would probably not have any particular concern about the Radleys and would spend his time playing less risky games. So we see that less sane people can "egg on" the more sane to do stupid things based on information that is often maliciously inaccurate. This dynamic needs to be taken more into account when evaluating social behaviors. After all, behaviors are meaningless out of a social context. So it only goes to reason that social interactions would lie close to the cause of social behaviors.
I think this applies not only to teenagers, but to millennials as well. I have one. She is 33 years old. We used to be on the same page. Not any more...
Impressed at the simple fact of any young person defining 'Apology' correctly as opposed to saying, "I'm sorry." Great to hear an actual linear discussion in logic and reason.
Then, to hear a young person ALLOWING themselves to be directed to critically THINK is quite phenomenal. Thought we in the rural sticks of the U.S. were a rare breed and it's nice to know there are young people helping other young people outside the sticks willing to stop gnawing those old, dry bones having no substance to get to the new juicy bone with real meat on it to literally promote growth and maturity.
I was similarly impressed with the young man. Equally impressive was the teacher.
Especially, the teacher.
There are young people; moral, ethical, mature who are capable of critical thinking. Offers some hope, huh?
A bit, yes. We need to break the back of the teacher's union, and stop giving tax exemptions to institutions of higher learning that no longer teach but indoctrinate, and somehow begin to clean up our cesspool of a government. There's much to do, and little time to do it.
This piece was great. Everything inside it encapsulized the immature mind, the ego, the boundaries or walls between which we operate for homeostasis.
I recently had the satisfaction of replying to a man's query as to why I refused marriage to him over 30 years ago. Only a few emails before that he had "don't contact me again!" grabbed his marbles to go home with his lip out. Pointing that out, and his veiled insults, insinuating projections and moralistic judgements made on little more than rumor...just as stated here. It was a weird kind of closure for me as he was unable to address the pass-agress behavior as an 8yr old boy helpless and angry at rough treatment and isolation by his father, nor any regret over lost employees or love relationships as a result of his own. I am more resolved than ever to examine my own reactions, and ponder why I do what I do in the context of my child & teen years.
New subscriber. Read the book, which was a bit of a slog. But I found it impressively insightful and wise. I think it's terrific someone's devoted a substack to the subject. I found the notion that we should treat our oppressors sympathetically to the extent possible, almost breathtakingly difficult. It requires a conquering of foundational human instincts. And yet I believe he's right iin the end. Thank you for this Mr. Koehli.
Great comment — it is SO breathtakingly difficult, and I think it’s one of the primary challenges of the book. The easy way to read the book is to say, “Yeah, I can see how that person over there is thinking and behaving all wrong.” But it’s really hard to start out by asking, “Am I approaching things in an unhelpful way?” But even if we do try to use reason and “treat our oppressors sympathetically," is that effective? I remember during 2020-22 listening to Martin Kulldorff and John Ioannidis talk calmly and logically. I showed videos of them to some people, but it was like it didn’t penetrate their brains. It was like their brains were only activated by emotions and moral language, and these men weren’t using emotions and moral language. I mean, it made me want to scream to see that the way they talked could not penetrate the minds of people I knew. It’s like we're all being pushed into an existential struggle to claim the moral high ground via language rather than actually and logically being on the high ground.
I've been arguing with people for years, "liberal" friends, family. All wasted breath. wasted words. I recently observed to one friend that he only reads and listens to one side, while I along with most Conservatives understand and listen to both sides.
Of course most of us we don't actually read say, opinion pieces in The New York Times, but we can't escape the MSM. It's everywhere, all the time. Besides, their black and white, Manichaean world view is simple to grasp. It's also quite obvious that the side they listen to have a tremendous vested interest in defending their status quo. Are the pharmaceutical companies objective? Can they be trusted? What is their history? Can the power mad politicians be trusted? Can "journalist "fact checkers., something we never needed in the past, to be trusted?
SO I posed this question..."Suppose you were a Martian in need of information regarding earthly culture, Would you pay more attention to the earthling who was acquainted with just the one side of vitally important worldy matters, or two?
I thought it was a pretty nifty point, but my friend was deaf. dumb. and blind/ They all are.
Yes, that's a difficult one. It sounds a bit easier when I think about it in terms of being "understanding, but firm." Being sympathetic does not have to mean ignoring reality, or being a pushover. We can still stand our ground, so to speak, but with magnanimity.
This is great, thank you.
One thing that promotes disintigration of an unhealthy ego (and David Lynch mentions to this in the quote you shared) is undeniable failure, getting knocked on your ass by Life. Of course, the shielding of teenagers and young adults from responsibility and consequences, and the extension of childhood through the teenage years and even into the 20s (and in some cases even beyond that) enable the teenager or young adult to persist in his protective bubble of ignorance, within which he can consider himself right about everything.
I don’t understand how some people’s minds actually work, how they reach the conclusions they instantly seem to reach. Did they listen with their full attention to the announcements being made, did they hear the same words thoughtfully being spoken that I heard? If so how is it that they reached almost instantly and especially so after a day or two after the announcements the exact opposite conclusions that I reached?
How is it that we reached the exact opposite conclusions after listening very carefully to the words being used, to the meanings and intent of the announcements being conveyed in a most reasoned and rational way? I see a hyperbolic reaction to put it mildly, unreasonable and highly overreactive with ranting and raving, a totally off the charts reaction whereas I perceived it to be a reasonable well laid out long deliberated fully encompassing all areas of concern announcement. I think I’m right and I have some personal knowledge and experience in the areas of the announcements.
Excellent article and well written.
Thanks, David
Awesome. Thanks.
My teacher asks us to evaluate people primarily by their "tone level." There are some quirky people that are difficult to evaluate this way, but most can be spotted for their "chronic" or you could say, habitual, tone level. How the ego, or self, manifests itself depends a lot of the tone level that a person is dramatizing or stuck in. This phenomenon is related to the being's attention and mind. The mind is full of experiences that the being can have its attention on. He will tend to think and behave in non-optimum ways to the extent that his attention is stuck on some past experience or mental "machine" rather than on the present time environment.
Writers seem very focused on the whole phenomenon of social anxiety - how will my peers judge me if I ______ ? I don't remember this being an issue in my upbringing except perhaps when I was quite young. So this seems to me like a game or "scam" being run on young people (as well as adults) for the purpose of giving them something to worry about that is really of very little importance.
The whole subject of how psychopathic individuals or groups led by a psychopath influence the people or communities they are associated with does not seem to be very well studied. Lobaczewski was one of the first. To the extent that the study of the mind itself is under the influence of psychopaths, this gap in knowledge (and curiosity) can perhaps be understood. But it is a very valuable study and I am not happy with people in the field who seem to be totally unaware of it.
We recently watched the movie To Kill A Mockingbird. At one point, little Dill Harris dares Jem to run up on the porch of the Radley house, where a supposedly dangerous person lives. Without that dare, and the stories from local gossips about the Radleys, the little boy Jem would probably not have any particular concern about the Radleys and would spend his time playing less risky games. So we see that less sane people can "egg on" the more sane to do stupid things based on information that is often maliciously inaccurate. This dynamic needs to be taken more into account when evaluating social behaviors. After all, behaviors are meaningless out of a social context. So it only goes to reason that social interactions would lie close to the cause of social behaviors.