Specifically, the assumption that your parents need to be proud of something… when, in fact, normal healthy parents are proud of their kids when they make mudpies or say “gaga” or something.
To put it another way, your brain has habituated to assuming that your parents’ pride is supposed to be conditional on you doing something, and that it’s therefore somehow “not right” for you to feel pride in yourself, unless you’re doing something that would get your parents to be proud of you.
Isn’t unconditional praise empty praise? Is getting a trophy at “Everyone Gets A Trophy Day” meaningful?
One of the reasons this sort of thing is difficult is because children are wired to believe their parents are intrinsically perfect, and that therefore any negative consequences of interacting with parents are considered to be your fault. If your parents aren’t proud of you (giving you Status pellets), then you must be defective.
My parents were proud of my academic achievements. I wasn’t, not really. Doing very well in school feels more like something that happened to me, rather than something that I achieved. On the other hand, my parents don’t care that I’ve beaten Battletoads, or ascended in Nethack, or beat Space Megaforce on Tricky difficulty without continuing, but, dammit, I’m certainly proud that I managed to do it! (Unfortunately, as the saying goes, that and $3.99 plus sales tax will get you a pack of Magic cards—I have no way of making any actual money off of this.) For a long time, I’ve gotten at least some pride from sources my parents have disapproved of. On the other hand, I used to have peers to impress with my mad game-playing skillz. ;)
Of course, later on in life, we do gain the ability to criticize our parents, their values and behaviors. But by that point, the damage is already done: we’ve already adopted their rules for SASS allocation, tucked away out of conscious awareness. And thus, we rarely question them.
I’ve been arguing with my parents about the merits of video games since I was, what, twelve? My mom is still convinced the use of the word “boss” to describe the powerful enemy fought at the end of each level was a Japanese plot to make American workers less productive by making them unable to cooperate with their supervisors at work.
Because by default, we assume that at least our Status and Affiliation have to come from other people. The irony, however, is that the people who really have( SASS in their lives are the ones who learned good rulesets from their parents for when to give themselves* (and others) positive SASS.
I don’t normally do the sort of thing I’ve been doing with you, with people who aren’t paying me money to do so. But that’s not as much a matter of needing to make a living, as it has to do with the fact that people who haven’t put something important on the line in order to get my advice, aren’t usually that motivated to stick with it through their resistance to the actual process of changing.
Thank you. I appreciate this. Really.
I have more to say in addition to the nit-picking I’ve already done in this comment, but I need to take a bit of a break right now, because I’m hungry and feeling a little down right now; I need to do something turn off the self-pity before I can start imagining myself into a different emotional state.
Isn’t unconditional praise empty praise? Is getting a trophy at “Everyone Gets A Trophy Day” meaningful?
What you’ve just said is isomorphic to a theist arguing that their holy book is holy because it came from a god, and that they know this because it says so in the book.
Be a rationalist. How do you know what you think you know? You believe in this “empty praise” concept, because it’s part of your framework for SASS allocation, and your brain defends it for that same reason. If you want to know the truth, you need to be prepared for the possibility that it may shatter all of your premises.
If your parents had offered you a different worldview, you would currently believe something else than what you currently do. And plenty of less-rational people than you are winning more at life than you, simply because they received a slightly-more functional set of SASS allocation rules by an accident of birth.
I’ve been arguing with my parents about the merits of video games since I was, what, twelve?
And yet, just by having that argument, you had to have accepted the core premise that pride should be based on accomplishments stemming from personal effort—you were only arguing about which accomplishments fit this description. Other families might place pride in knowing things, being a part of the family, showing loyalty, outsmarting people, knowing the right people, or any of dozens of other possible behavioral categories.
Um...
Sociometer theory is somewhat isomorphic to the truth, but it’s lacking in important distinctions. It ignores the fact that there are people who pride themselves in being nonconformists, or the actions of people who practically beg to be persecuted, and then wear their persecution like a badge of honor. In order to make sense of such behaviors, you have to understand that your esteem isn’t really measured by other people, except to the extent that you’ve been imprinted to measure it that way.
If a kid picks on you as a child, and your parents stand up for you, you learn that what others think may not be all that important. But if your parent teases you for being a crybaby, or tells you to ignore the other kids (and implicitly dismisses your fear), or tells you that you should just learn to fight back… you learn that your sociometer needs to be calibrated more from the outside than the inside.
In principle, a fully-developed human being would not require SASS from others, but rather give SASS to others. “Natural” schools of PUA, and charisma trainers of most other types already know this: making others feel important, liked, safe, and entertained is the best way to receive these values in return.
And you can’t genuinely give any of those things to other people, unless you know how to give them to yourself.
Okay, now I’ve read it. Oddly enough, I don’t have too much to say. (The fact that it’s almost 4 AM may have something to do with that.)
And plenty of less-rational people than you are winning more at life than you
I’m not so sure about that, mostly because I still haven’t figured out what it means to be winning at life. I don’t have a job, but at least I don’t have a job I hate. For a long time, I’ve been determined to avoid ending up living Thoreau’s “life of quiet desperation” or, to use a more recent metaphor, living in a Dilbert cartoon. And I’m not living in a Dilbert cartoon. I don’t want to be Dilbert, yet another cog in the corporate machine. I’d rather be Dilbert’s garbageman, the only person in the whole strip who isn’t stupid, evil, or a victim of someone who is. My brother currently works at Goldman Sachs, and he’s getting up early so he can spend all day putting numbers into spreadsheets and then go home and collapse into bed. I don’t know if I’d trade places with him. In the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, I sort of take the side of the grasshopper, or at least that’s what try to convince myself of.
Now, if I could only stop worrying about what happens when the axe eventually falls...
I’m not so sure about that, mostly because I still haven’t figured out what it means to be winning at life. … Now, if I could only stop worrying about what happens when the axe eventually falls...
You may not know what it is, but surely you know what it’s not. ;-)
Isn’t unconditional praise empty praise? Is getting a trophy at “Everyone Gets A Trophy Day” meaningful?
No, but unconditional praise is not the same as unconditional love. (The latter seems to be closer to what PJ was talking about as parental pride, if I’m reading him correctly.) They are too often confused. Unconditional love is important, but unconditional praise is harmful, as is conditional praise that is predictable enough that the child learns to anticipate it and act based on it, praise that is given like a reward (a “status pellet”) rather than as a genuine expression of gratitude or impressedness. Alfie Kohn has written a lot of interesting things on this and related subjects.
This is reminding me of Branden’s idea of “primitive self-affirmation” which is prior to self-esteem. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything where he pursues the idea further.
It also reminds me of something I read when I was fairly young—it was advice to parents who have a kid with a fatal disease—to just enjoy the present with the kid. At the time, this seemed like reasonable advice, except that I had no idea of what it would mean in practice.
It may not be a coincidence that I have bad problems with akrasia.
Isn’t unconditional praise empty praise? Is getting a trophy at “Everyone Gets A Trophy Day” meaningful?
My parents were proud of my academic achievements. I wasn’t, not really. Doing very well in school feels more like something that happened to me, rather than something that I achieved. On the other hand, my parents don’t care that I’ve beaten Battletoads, or ascended in Nethack, or beat Space Megaforce on Tricky difficulty without continuing, but, dammit, I’m certainly proud that I managed to do it! (Unfortunately, as the saying goes, that and $3.99 plus sales tax will get you a pack of Magic cards—I have no way of making any actual money off of this.) For a long time, I’ve gotten at least some pride from sources my parents have disapproved of. On the other hand, I used to have peers to impress with my mad game-playing skillz. ;)
I’ve been arguing with my parents about the merits of video games since I was, what, twelve? My mom is still convinced the use of the word “boss” to describe the powerful enemy fought at the end of each level was a Japanese plot to make American workers less productive by making them unable to cooperate with their supervisors at work.
Um...
Thank you. I appreciate this. Really.
I have more to say in addition to the nit-picking I’ve already done in this comment, but I need to take a bit of a break right now, because I’m hungry and feeling a little down right now; I need to do something turn off the self-pity before I can start imagining myself into a different emotional state.
What you’ve just said is isomorphic to a theist arguing that their holy book is holy because it came from a god, and that they know this because it says so in the book.
Be a rationalist. How do you know what you think you know? You believe in this “empty praise” concept, because it’s part of your framework for SASS allocation, and your brain defends it for that same reason. If you want to know the truth, you need to be prepared for the possibility that it may shatter all of your premises.
If your parents had offered you a different worldview, you would currently believe something else than what you currently do. And plenty of less-rational people than you are winning more at life than you, simply because they received a slightly-more functional set of SASS allocation rules by an accident of birth.
And yet, just by having that argument, you had to have accepted the core premise that pride should be based on accomplishments stemming from personal effort—you were only arguing about which accomplishments fit this description. Other families might place pride in knowing things, being a part of the family, showing loyalty, outsmarting people, knowing the right people, or any of dozens of other possible behavioral categories.
Sociometer theory is somewhat isomorphic to the truth, but it’s lacking in important distinctions. It ignores the fact that there are people who pride themselves in being nonconformists, or the actions of people who practically beg to be persecuted, and then wear their persecution like a badge of honor. In order to make sense of such behaviors, you have to understand that your esteem isn’t really measured by other people, except to the extent that you’ve been imprinted to measure it that way.
If a kid picks on you as a child, and your parents stand up for you, you learn that what others think may not be all that important. But if your parent teases you for being a crybaby, or tells you to ignore the other kids (and implicitly dismisses your fear), or tells you that you should just learn to fight back… you learn that your sociometer needs to be calibrated more from the outside than the inside.
In principle, a fully-developed human being would not require SASS from others, but rather give SASS to others. “Natural” schools of PUA, and charisma trainers of most other types already know this: making others feel important, liked, safe, and entertained is the best way to receive these values in return.
And you can’t genuinely give any of those things to other people, unless you know how to give them to yourself.
Okay, now I’ve read it. Oddly enough, I don’t have too much to say. (The fact that it’s almost 4 AM may have something to do with that.)
I’m not so sure about that, mostly because I still haven’t figured out what it means to be winning at life. I don’t have a job, but at least I don’t have a job I hate. For a long time, I’ve been determined to avoid ending up living Thoreau’s “life of quiet desperation” or, to use a more recent metaphor, living in a Dilbert cartoon. And I’m not living in a Dilbert cartoon. I don’t want to be Dilbert, yet another cog in the corporate machine. I’d rather be Dilbert’s garbageman, the only person in the whole strip who isn’t stupid, evil, or a victim of someone who is. My brother currently works at Goldman Sachs, and he’s getting up early so he can spend all day putting numbers into spreadsheets and then go home and collapse into bed. I don’t know if I’d trade places with him. In the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, I sort of take the side of the grasshopper, or at least that’s what try to convince myself of.
Now, if I could only stop worrying about what happens when the axe eventually falls...
You may not know what it is, but surely you know what it’s not. ;-)
Not reading this one yet. Haven’t finished my reply to the other one yet.
No, but unconditional praise is not the same as unconditional love. (The latter seems to be closer to what PJ was talking about as parental pride, if I’m reading him correctly.) They are too often confused. Unconditional love is important, but unconditional praise is harmful, as is conditional praise that is predictable enough that the child learns to anticipate it and act based on it, praise that is given like a reward (a “status pellet”) rather than as a genuine expression of gratitude or impressedness. Alfie Kohn has written a lot of interesting things on this and related subjects.
This is reminding me of Branden’s idea of “primitive self-affirmation” which is prior to self-esteem. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything where he pursues the idea further.
It also reminds me of something I read when I was fairly young—it was advice to parents who have a kid with a fatal disease—to just enjoy the present with the kid. At the time, this seemed like reasonable advice, except that I had no idea of what it would mean in practice.
It may not be a coincidence that I have bad problems with akrasia.