Radical transformation

So I once wrote an essay here about the possible detrimental side-effects on the psyche of modern technological recording/documenting devices.

A few days ago, Timmy and I were having a conversation about music writing and the struggle to escape the 'please your teachers' mentality, the struggle to transform into a mentality where you strive to become yourself and please yourself without outside approval. Tim suggested that people have trouble making that transition because they are conditioned to please others in school and at home all through their childhood.

And a very radical idea occurred to me. I thought about the fact that, in the 19th century, all kinds of now-unethical methods were used in school and in the home to discipline and educate children. These children, though, managed (for the most part) to turn out to be fairly responsible, intelligent, self-directed adults. How can this be? What has changed between then and now?

My answer is psychology. 19th century society did not think about the effects of childhood discipline on the adult. The adult is not a direct outgrowth of the child. Now, however, we assume that everything we experience as children affects us as adults. We assume that our personalities are formed early on in our lives, that it resists change as we move into adulthood. But what if this theory is not exactly correct? We know that humans have imperfect memories - that our brains easily forget or misremember the past, even ourselves as we were in the past. What if we have been conditioned against allowing ourselves to forget, allowing ourselves to make a cognitive break with our past?

Certainly the modern prevalence of photo albums, family videos, and keepsakes/souvenirs tend to preserve our memories and keep them authentic, tend to remind us of our past, how we were in the past. What would happen if we stopped believing in the effects of our childhood on our current selves? Could that improve our chances of growing up, becoming self-directed, understanding who we are and who we want to be?

It's a radical idea.

Relationshipping: a sidebar comment

Fact of human existence #1: Self-care is the hardest work you will ever do.

I've come to accept that to love another person, to be in a relationship with another person, is to walk a fine line between caring for that person and caring for yourself. Sometimes self-care can be found in caring for the other person, but sometimes it can't. If you are lucky, or devious, or deciduous, you can find a person to love who also gives you the space and encouragement for self-care. But maybe I've been going about it the wrong way.

I used to think that ideally, people are the best friends when they want to help you get to the person you want to be, when they see that future you as clearly as you do, and when they can insert a relatively-objective 'game-plan' by which they can help you get there. But what does this really mean? How does it flesh out in real practical life?

I think of myself as something like a heroin addict. Not a real heroin addict, but the kind of heroin addict you see in movies - good heart, can't break his habit, needs a tough-love kind of friend to do some work for them, lock them in a room, be there through the recovery, etc. I tend to care for myself with the tough-love strategy, and I guess I thought it best to have someone who would do the tough-love thing with me. But the heroin addict, at some point, antagonizes the caretaker. There is something about him that doesn't want to change his behavior. This antipathy might be temporary, during the recovery process, or it might last longer. Is it right to risk this kind of reaction with a loved one?

And this is why we hire therapists - someone with whom we are not afraid to have mixed feelings, who will help us be more genuine to our ideal self. Therapists help us avoid putting our partners, our families, in the caretaker position. But what did people do before there were professional therapists? Certainly there must have been some reliance on family and friends for support.

But I also begin to think that this reliance on others for caretaking is not universal, and perhaps a detrimental character flaw. Maybe I am refusing to 'man up' and do the work of self-care myself, for fear of seeming selfish or rude. Certainly, the best self-caring I've ever done was when I was living with a person with whom it was a joy for me to be completely selfish. So maybe I should be that selfish, not feel guilty about it, and, partner-wise, be looking to find someone who is happy with my (inevitably enhappying) improprieties.

Now there is a selfish post if I ever saw one :)