Everything Is F*cked(77)
14. The development of rules and roles occurs in Piaget’s Concrete Operational stage and Kegan’s Interpersonal stage. See note 13.
15. Kegan, The Evolving Self, pp. 133–60.
16. Children do not develop what is called the “theory of mind” until ages three to five. Theory of mind is said to be present when someone is able to understand that other people have conscious thoughts and behaviors independent of them. Theory of mind is necessary for empathy and most social interactions—it’s how you understand someone else’s perspective and thinking process. Children who struggle to develop theory of mind are often diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum or having schizophrenia, ADHD, or some other problem. See B. Korkmaz, “Theory of Mind and Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Childhood,” Pediatric Research 69 (2011): 101R–8R.
17. The philosopher Ken Wilber has a wonderful phrase to describe this process of psychological development. He says that later developmental stages “transcend and include” previous stages. So, an adolescent still has his pleasure-and pain-based values, but higher-level values based on rules and roles supersede the lower, childish values. We all still like ice cream, even once we’re adults. The difference is the adult is able to prioritize higher, abstract values such as honesty or prudence over his love of ice cream; a child is not. See K. Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution (Boston, MA: Shambhala, 2000), pp. 59–61.
18. Recall from Emo Newton’s Second and Third Laws that stronger, sturdier identities grant us more emotional stability in the face of adversity. One reason that children are so emotionally volatile is because their understanding of themselves is flimsy and superficial, so unexpected or painful events affect them that much more.
19. Teenagers are obsessively focused on what their peers think of them because they are cobbling together identities for themselves based on social rules and roles. See Erikson, Childhood and Society, pp. 260–66; and Kegan, The Evolving Self, pp. 184–220.
20. This is where I first begin to merge Kant’s moral system with developmental theory. Treating people as means rather than ends is representative of Stages 2–4 in Kohlberg’s theory of moral development.
21. Albert Camus put it well when he said, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.”
22. Again, fusing Kohlberg’s Stages 5 and 6 with Kant’s “thing in itself” requirement for moral universalization.
23. According to Kohlberg’s model of moral development, by age thirty-six, 89 percent of the population has achieved the adolescent stage of moral reasoning; only 13 percent ever achieve the adult stage. See L. Kohlberg, The Measurement of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
24. Just as the adolescent bargains with other people, she bargains with future (or past) selves in a similar manner. This idea that our future and past selves are independent individuals separate from our present-moment perceptions is put forth by Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons, pp. 199–244.
25. Remember, we derive our self-esteem from how well we live up to our values (or how well we reinforce the narratives of our identity). An adult develops values based on abstract principles (virtues) and will derive his self-esteem from how well he adheres to those principles.
26. We all require a “Goldilocks” amount of pain to mature and develop. Too much pain traumatizes us—our Feeling Brain becomes unrealistically fearful of the world, preventing any further growth or experience. Too little pain, and we become entitled narcissists, falsely believing the world can (and should!) revolve around our desires. But if we get the pain just right, then we learn that (a) our current values are failing us, and (b) we have the power and ability to transcend those values and create newer, higher-level, more-encompassing values. We learn that it’s better to have compassion for everyone rather than just our friends, that it’s better to be honest in all sit uations rather than simply the situations that help us, and that it’s better to maintain humility, even when we’re confident in our own rightness.
27. In chapter 3, we learned that abuse and trauma generate low self-esteem, narcissism, and a self-loathing identity. These inhibit our ability to develop higher-level, abstract values because the pain of failure is constant and too intense—the child must spend all her time and energy escaping it. Growth requires engaging the pain, as we’ll see in chapter 7.
28. See J. Haidt and G. Lukianoff, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (New York: Penguin Press, 2018), pp. 150–65.
29. See F. Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press Books, 1995), pp. 43–48.
30. A great example of this phenomenon was the Pickup Artist (PUA) community in the mid-2000s, a group of socially isolated, maladapted males who congregated to study social behaviors in order to be liked by women. The movement didn’t last for more than a few years because, ultimately, these were childish and/or adolescent men who desired adult relationships, and no amount of studying of or practice in social behaviors can produce a nontransactional, unconditional loving relationship with a partner. See Mark Manson, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty (self-published, 2011).
31. Another way to think about this is the popular concept of “tough love.” You allow the child to experience pain because it is by recognizing what still matters in the face of the pain that she achieves higher values and grows.