The Loss of Innocence | Clarissa's Blog
I also have this thing where as a matter of course I don’t realize what somebody meant to imply by their language until way after the event has occurred. For instance, I am reflecting on the pervasiveness of infantilism in contemporary society. I hadn’t realized this was such a problem before, because of course there are different kinds of projection, not just Freudian projection — one also projects onto the world one’s expectations, based often enough on the model of one’s own mind, and how one would expect oneself to react. But that is a mistake, which does nobody any favors. It’s far better to realize that there is a gap and that one is not responsible for bridging it. Just as one example of how things MAY slot into place to make more sense much later down the track, yesterday I recalled how one of the skydiving jumpmasters was cautioning people that if they had an emergency in freefall, there would be nobody to call upon and they have to handle it themselves. Okay, I thought, well that is common sense. But now I think about it, maybe it was a particularly culturally attuned warning: “You know you have been babied all your life? Well there are some places where that does not apply.”
I’m really not good at locking into people’s cultural expectations and heading them off, But I realize that this is a large part of what is expected from an educator (more babying?)
2.
There is infantilism even at a high level. One tells somebody something about a particularly negative event that one has experienced and gets a response, "You hurt my feelings!" That's really surprising. I think the worst aspect of it is that when somebody responds in that vein there is nowhere to go from there. For instance if the events related to my own life and had nothing to do with their feelings, but they cannot hear the narrative because their feelings will continue to be hurt...?
It's like there are rungs missing from the ladder, that prevent a higher climb. I can't put them back in place. They're just missing. I can't add them back in with any philosophical conceptualising or gentle assistance, or performing seal antics.
This whole sense of something fundamentally missing, that leads to a failure of communication, or more likely being blamed for hurting feelings when I take about a difficult topic ......
People don't know there is something missing. Perhaps they sense it on some level, but to that degree that they sense it, the situation only becomes worse. It's even more hurtful to indicate that there should be more there than there is than to hurt feelings by talking about one's life too directly.
I also have this thing where as a matter of course I don’t realize what somebody meant to imply by their language until way after the event has occurred. For instance, I am reflecting on the pervasiveness of infantilism in contemporary society. I hadn’t realized this was such a problem before, because of course there are different kinds of projection, not just Freudian projection — one also projects onto the world one’s expectations, based often enough on the model of one’s own mind, and how one would expect oneself to react. But that is a mistake, which does nobody any favors. It’s far better to realize that there is a gap and that one is not responsible for bridging it. Just as one example of how things MAY slot into place to make more sense much later down the track, yesterday I recalled how one of the skydiving jumpmasters was cautioning people that if they had an emergency in freefall, there would be nobody to call upon and they have to handle it themselves. Okay, I thought, well that is common sense. But now I think about it, maybe it was a particularly culturally attuned warning: “You know you have been babied all your life? Well there are some places where that does not apply.”
I’m really not good at locking into people’s cultural expectations and heading them off, But I realize that this is a large part of what is expected from an educator (more babying?)
2.
There is infantilism even at a high level. One tells somebody something about a particularly negative event that one has experienced and gets a response, "You hurt my feelings!" That's really surprising. I think the worst aspect of it is that when somebody responds in that vein there is nowhere to go from there. For instance if the events related to my own life and had nothing to do with their feelings, but they cannot hear the narrative because their feelings will continue to be hurt...?
It's like there are rungs missing from the ladder, that prevent a higher climb. I can't put them back in place. They're just missing. I can't add them back in with any philosophical conceptualising or gentle assistance, or performing seal antics.
This whole sense of something fundamentally missing, that leads to a failure of communication, or more likely being blamed for hurting feelings when I take about a difficult topic ......
People don't know there is something missing. Perhaps they sense it on some level, but to that degree that they sense it, the situation only becomes worse. It's even more hurtful to indicate that there should be more there than there is than to hurt feelings by talking about one's life too directly.
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