Sep 19

 Tricky day yesterday.

Let's just get right to it. I had a serious knock to my faith in humanity. Not because someone was an asshole or treated me wrong. Just. Because. People are people. It came on long and slow. After a chat with a friend. I became slowly more frustrated, disappointed, disillusioned. All those words. And then some. It really knocked me off my zen perch.

I went for a walk later on with Hazel. She asked if I was ok. Ehhh yeahhh, mehhh. Convincing she said. I let it out. She understood. Very frustrating. She also said you know how this goes. I do.

Here's the thing. I think - at this point in time I have a pretty good grasp of People.

Interally inconsistent. Many voices arguing cross points. The consistency you largely get on the outside is a disciplined manufactured piece of content and belies the inner debate. Belies the sometimes mood swings or strength of counter arguments and the like. And none of it has to make sense it just is. I want a donut. No, do not eat the donut we're on a diet.

At times, especially during high stress, emotion or otherwise, that internal inconsistency is more apparent to even the most casual of viewer. The flipping of opinion. The unpredictability of decisions.

And the more you "know" someone, ie, get to dig into them, the more the inconsistencies are observable. Because they can share their flip flops, confusion, internal arguments.

People are flawed. None of us are perfect. Some are more flawed than others. We are also emotional beings, rationality is the icing on the cake. The cake is actually emotion and biological drives. You can check your evolutionary development for that, which came first. Spoiler. It wasn't the rational bit.

Also. Without exception. People get "stuck". They get stuck at a level that they are comfortable with, or cannot proceed any further with. They get comfortable with a set of lies and beliefs they tell themselves about the world, who they are, their position in it. They make camp. And they live there. It's not about truth. Objectivity. Rationality. Being true to yourself. It's a choice about which lie you eventually believe, which bit of fantasy you end up going with. About your life. What you are enjoying. That this isn't a grind. That this is all fine. That this is normal. That I am happy. That my career is what I want. That voting for Fred Fucksticks does make sense.

This is universal. People get stuck. The younger they are, the chances are they are not yet stuck. The older they get, the more stuck they are likely to be, until they end up, entirely stuck. Static.

As a purely personal anecdotal aside, I watched this happen in realtime with a couple of my old friends over the course of more than 30 years. By the time they hit their 30's you could see the concrete setting, and at the time, I found it quite disconcerting. There was a while there that it made me really unhappy. They were no longer able to change, open minded. They were ossifying. This got worse as time went on. I realised this was the secret to the varying mindsets of the generations, and that the older you got, the more set you were, unable to shift, and ultimately become bizarre anachronistic products of your era, no longer fitting in with the world around them.

Anyway. People getting stuck. Unable to move on, change. Accepting of the lies they tell themselves.

In the most extreme of cases you see this as the abusive relationship behaviour pattern. Where battered spouses put up with it Because... insert your rationalisation here.

The mistake is in thinking this is just an abberant behaviour that abused people engage in.

It is not. It is near universal if not actually universal. It's just that in the case of severe abuse, it is more obviously a "wrong" pattern. Why Would You Do That ? For everything else that is less extreme the same holds true, it's just that it's less obvious people are effectively gaslighting themselves.

That's also a good, if not entirely accurate summary of the situation.

People delight in gaslighting themselves.

Billions of people do it everyday together in the most obvious of ways. Religion. Gaslighting. Reaffirmed by group consensus, and reinforced by social cohesion. Peer pressure.

How strong is that gaslighting ?

As strong as it gets. It is the bedrock of all reality. People are willing to die for it.

Thus we have an incomplete picture of what it is to be human. There are other things involved, but for my point, that's enough to go on.

I understand all of the above things. I take people for who they are, knowing all the above inconsistencies, foolishness, tragedy, flaws. It's ok. It's people. I don't judge. People are at the level they are at.

But.

For all that. For me being zen with all that.

1% of the time. 1%.

I want to scream into the sky.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU.

So that was yesterday.

I think the trigger there, was not so much knowing this shit happens. But watching a very severe retreat from reason into absolute bullshit. The smokescreen rationalisations that came out behind them in their wake - which were horribly weak and did not withstand any kind of scrutiny. The retreat into a safespace of belief and lies. The speed of it and the severity of it took me a little by surprise. Not entirely surprise. But a little.

And afterwards. Slowly. Apparently. I was not cool with it. It was a massive disappointment.

Hazel put it this way.

You've spent hours with someone. Talking shit through. Seeing them make progress. Only suddenly to revert all the way back. It's extremely frustrating and a waste of your time.

I don't particularly agree with the waste of my time, although, objectively you could make that case. I think it's.. always worthwhile. It's a journey, not a destination, and the journey can never be wasted. Admittedly this is super arguable and is perhaps just down to context.

Another of my friends thought that the journey was worthwhile. And that perhaps my expectations were too much. The Occam's razor of it is what it is, is pertinent here. That if people were able to change, or not engage in shittiness, or abuse, or whatever it is they were doing, then they wouldn't be doing that. Wouldn't be talking about it. Circular. My counter point was that people change over time. Can learn over time. Circular does not mean forever. Anyway.

It's not my expectations of the situation. I didn't have an expectation of one thing or another. It is always their journey, not mine. I don't make the decisions about which path they should take, or what they think or where they end up. I just am there for the ride, and give them insight, or point out bullshit and inconsistencies and offer support. The debugger looking for shit code at worst, the listening ear at best.

I think it was the use of some really shitty gaslighting to cover their change of heart that really caused my trigger. Really ? You're going with that obvious bullshit ? Well ok then !

But. I understand. Of course I understand. This is the nature of people. Still. I can be disappointed.

This is why, I reflected, shrinks are at pains to stay at arms length from people. Do not get attached. Do not have an emotional component in people. Treat them as sudoko. A sausage factory. In, analysis, out. Wash your hands of them. Go home. It makes sense. It gives you the best chance of not picking up emotional fallout.

On the other hand. It also, in my opinion, makes them far less capable of effecting useful aid. Because they don't give a shit. It's just an excercise to them. A job. A task. Of course. You couldn't really invest in people to that extent. As a professional doing that job, you'd likely burn out in short order. Overloaded by the baggage of it all.

Still. Even for a professional shrink. They take flak. Damage. And go down. And I am very sure they must also face disappointment, frustration, when a client they work with suddenly as a massive setback and you go back to square one.

The bottom line is also this. Again. Once more. For the hard of hearing in the back.

You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

There's also a lovely quote about this, from an old actress I cannot now remember. Bad on my. The quote basically goes something like :

In order to stay young, you need to continually unlearn the truths you were taught.

It's a neat way of summarising that ossification of your reality. It's also connected - but not entirely the same as - the gaslighting people perform on themselves.

I think if nothing else, in the last couple of years, I have refined my model of people in two very important ways.

The internal consistency. The chaos within of the multiple voices. And the self gaslighting. Albeit the latter one I have known about for a very long time. It's become increasingly clear to me not that it's just a thing, but how universal it is, and the extent of its smothering nature.

Today I am more zen about it all. But it has taken me the better part of a day to right that ship. And I am still somewhat smarting about it. It's going to take many days if not weeks for the waters to finally become glass calm about this.

It's also a lesson for myself. About my emotions. And that sometimes I am slow to react. It takes time after the event for the emotions to come up. The rational bit is miles ahead. The emotional animal behind wakes up, and is or isn't cool with the shit that just went on.

I am also increasingly learning the importance of talking about that shit with people. Whereas before I would be hard pressed to tell you if it made a difference. Now I can tell you it does. Let it out. Talk it through with someone. Let go of that stress.

Eh well.

Swimming today. Although the days are getting colder. And swimming on a chilly day is a bunch less enticing.