THE PARADOXICAL DILEMMA -- DISAPPEARANCE OF THE ADULT

[This was the part that I left off "THE OVERVIEW" but changed my mind. Yesterday, here in Tampa, Florida a father shot his three-year-old daughter in the head, killing her, then shot his four-year-old son in the head. He called 911 (emergency number) and said he accidentally shot his son and carried the critically injured child out of the house to the waiting police.]

Never before in the history of man has the general population been better educated or the technology of the culture more sophisticated yet the individual in this population has never been less in charge. Money, power, politics, and influence remain in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Those in charge have abandoned the CRITICAL PARENT and have resorted exclusively to the NURTURING PARENT. We see this in the family, the church, the school, the workplace, the government, the media, the entertainment industry, and the culture.

Society has been reduced to comfort and complacency at the expense of contribution leading to a phenomenon not sustainable where everyone is in charge resulting in no one being.

Denial is common to every generation as is human nature. We are in an era that no longer has the sting that it once enjoyed as responsibility, accountability, failure, guilt, embarrassment, and consequence has lost their purchase. Surrealism is no longer a fantasy escape from reality it is now a lifestyle.

One hundred years hence historians will be at a loss to find that many grown-ups existed during the previous one hundred years as the ADAPTED CHILD that clung to patriotism, nationalism, Americanism, and Christianity faded into the dominance of the FREE CHILD where it did not only never to have to grow up but had no need to apology for its narcissism for it looked into the mirror and saw only itself.

That image has failed to be comforting for once the mirror is put down the FREE CHILD is met with only confusion in terms of sex role and personal identity, personal worth, and role in life which results in anxiety, frustration, boredom, and a sense of being stranger to oneself. The expectation was the utopian world of Paradise and the good life without pain or failure, disappointment or unhappiness, guilt or embarrassment.

We may conquer space but we are a long way from conquering our inner space and continue to run away from ourselves. It is understandable if we are reminded of how simple humanity is as it can be reduced to a series of insightful equations.

BELIEF + BELONGING = BEHAVIOR

We are far more other-directed than self-directed in our culture as we want to belong. Our identity, comfort, and satisfaction are predicated on belonging to something bigger than ourselves. Consequently, being accepted by others takes precedence over self-acceptance.

PAIN + FAILURE + RISK = GROWTH & DEVELOPMENT

We like to think that success is a linear curve in which success follows success without interruption. Growth is actually in strategic leaps followed by a gestation period. This is a period of trauma, retrenchment, assessment, and assimilation of past failures and disappointments, a time when the learner is not concerned about letting the group down, not having to appear smart, and a time open to risks and enduring the discomfort of pain, a period critical to success but could be called the “plateau of failure.” The linear curve is the “phantom curve” to success.

The evidence that we have reached a plateau is we become knowers not learners, tellers not listeners, punishing others with our knowledge reduced to the curve of “playing it safe.”

What is often considered growth & development is that we “compare & compete” to the standards of someone else, which is imitation rather than effectively utilizing our own inherent ability. Quantum leaps are periods of success but of little real learning.

As individuals. we gravitate to the work environment often with little regard to the business of fit. We are an organization within ourselves with history, culture, and experience that molds us into the person we become. Our identity is essentially accidentally acquired but is largely organized by what we do. Purposeful performance is thus reduced to a “motivational triangle”:

FREEDOM + TRUST = CONTROL

Small wonder we are more confused given work is more ambiguous. Workers tend to hide this confusion and yes anger in nonconfrontational passive behaviors as they are likely to be treated by management as the CRITICAL PARENT and by the organization as the NURTURING parent both of which relieve them responsible for their actions as either the ADAPTED CHILD or the FREE CHILD.

In this scenario, there is no place for the ADULT for in an attempt to do for others what they best do for themselves you weaken their resolve and diminish them as individuals. This paradoxical dilemma has yet to be resolved in the complex organization and society.

Indian author Anil Ananthaswamy addresses this dilemma in “The Man Who Wasn’t There: The Strange New Science of the Self” (2015). He points out where mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes famously says, “I think, therefore I am,” current neuroscience identifies specific regions of the brain that when they misfire the self can move back and forth between the body and a doppelganger, or to leave the body entirely. So where in the brain or mind, or body, is the self located? Recent research into Alzheimer’s indicates memory creates our narrative self by using the same part of our brain for remembering our past and for imagining our future.

The Man Who Wasn’t There takes us on an emotional and scientific journey to arrive at a visceral understanding of that which is not understandable such as the senseless horrific behavior of ordinary citizens toward each other. Sociologist Erving Goffman covered this subject a long time ago in “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” (1959).