"When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." Twain / "I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of these contradictions out for myself." Montaigne / "I write because I have found no other means of getting rid of my thoughts." Nietzsche / "Writing is an integral part of the process of understanding." Arendt / "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." Asimov.
Attachment theory is part of the vernacular now. Even the Norwegian show Porni mentions it, and the dramatic eldest daughter blames her mom for her “relational damage”! We’ve largely accepted the questionable idea that mom’s attentiveness in childhood creates our attachment patterns for life — the gist of the theory as it’s largely understood, but what’s usefully generalizable from the actual studies? There are many criticisms of the theory, yet some university psych courses applaud it without reservation. I’m dubious about it, but I also don’t want to entirely throw this baby out with the bathwater.
This is a huge topic, and I’ll hardly do it justice here. There are a few excellent books on it, but part of the problem with how we understand the studies might be that the most nuanced books seem to be the most academically written, and likely the least read. As it morphed into popular consumption it may have strayed further from the original intention. On top of the reading, I went to a couple workshops on attachment to find the magic solution to all our relationship ills, and my big takeaway is this (for free!): if you’re a bit distant, consider being open to getting closer, and if you’re a bit clingy, try to step back a bit. It’s good advice to notice and change patterns that are a problem, absolutely, but I’m not sure it merits the number of workshops, courses, and self-help books that it’s provoked. At worst, some books actually counsel people to avoid any “avoidant or disordered people” as if there’s no saving them from their dastardly origins. Therapeutic discussions of childhood misconnections definitely have helped people better understand themselves, but I think this theory produces such volumes of celebration and condemnation because, in difficult relationships, it feels like the answer, but to parents, it feels like blame.
Attachment Theory Criticisms
Heidi Keller’s The Myth of Attachment Theory (2022) is an extremely thorough takedown of the theory. If attachment notions make you feel like a crappy parent, this book is vindicating. She explores the offense of putting it all on moms both because of the narrow focus on a single person as well as on singular causation, but her best work is in exploring the creation of a norm of interaction from upper-middle class, western assumptions around what it means to be sensitive to a baby’s needs, an analysis that was made at the time as well:
Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ, was originally published in 1995 but there's a more recently updated in a 25th anniversary edition in 2020. It's not quite updated enough, though.
He added a new introduction, but no study or concept in the book was updated despite huge changes in our lives since then and tons of new studies with updated technology. It's kind of refreshing to read a book about the problem with kids today without a single mention of phones, but it feels a little sloppy. Goleman is a science journalist without a clinical practice in psychotherapy as far as I can tell. While his book is about how to be smart according to the front cover, it's also being used in psychotherapy. It's a fast, engaging read, but I have some concerns about the content and application.
The book outlines the need for emotional intelligence (EI) to be overtly taught to children, explains the psychoneurology of EI, argues for the primacy of emotional intelligence for success, adds in the need for emotional supports, and ends with a call for parents to be better educated as well. The principle underlying Goleman's text is that there are four specific domains, adapted from Salovey & Mayer, that emerge from the activity of our brain circuits that have more of an impact on our general well being than does our intelligence: self-awareness, self-management (formerly motivation and self-regulation), empathy, and skilled relationships. Goleman explains that people will be better off emotionally, relationally, and vocationally if they develop their emotional intelligence to identify and understand their feelings as they happen, manage them effectively, understand other people's feelings, and relate to others more positively. With a calm mind, people can make better decisions, which positively affects all other aspects of their life. Goldman has used these domains to help to develop educational programs to teach children Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) in the schools through the CASEL organization. I feel like it goes without saying that being able to manage our emotional experiences helps in other aspects in our lives, so I'm all in at this point.
He received the Order of Canada, profoundly helped many people with addiction on the streets of Vancouver, and is much loved and admired, but some of Dr. Gabor Maté's claims feel like they don't hold water. And some claims might actually be dangerous if blindly accepted.
I've encountered Maté in a few courses I'm taking, and have been strongly encouraged to watch his newest film and read his book several times now; I opted for the former. One follower was excited to tell me, with great confidence, that ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) is caused by a specific trauma and that everyone is carrying unresolved trauma which, if resolved, can heal physical ailments like cancer. Okay. I have some reservations that I've kept to myself until seeing so many in academia wholeheartedly promoting some poorly substantiated claims.
While Maté has some excellent techniques in the work he does, the way he presents and explains the material provokes me to look up research studies to try to corroborate many of his ideas.
I gobbled up his books twenty years ago, and there are some useful analogies and treatments in there, but even then there were parts that gave me pause.
I was forwarded this 47 minute podcast with Brené Brown on 1A, and some of the ideas she has are remarkably similar to Timothy Snyder's views in On Tyranny(e.g. connect with others in real life, speak truth to bullshit), so I bought her newest book, Braving the Wilderness. I was sorrily disappointed. She has done a bit of useful research, but it's written in such a self-helpy way that makes it all seem so dubious: anecdotes from childhood, some forced acronyms, lots of repetition of ideas, a slightly bigger font than most books, the sort of thing that feels questionable but likeable. She's very popular. She's a TED Talker, which can also boost popularity but detract from credibility in equal measure (see here, here, and here). Luckily, I found her original research (but just that one journal article), which is a much better starting point.
I'm interested in her findings but also concerned with some ideas left out of her analysis. Granted I haven't read all her books, but I think I get the gist of her ideas.
I've been watching lots of movies and thinking about this bit from Aristotle:
"But we get the virtues by having first performed the energies, as is the case also in all the other arts; for those things which we must do after having learnt them we learn to do by doing them; as, for example, by building houses men become builders, and by playing on the harp, harp-players; thus, also, by doing just actions we become just, by performing temperate actions, temperate, and by performing brave actions we become brave. Moreover, that which happens in all states bears testimony to this; for legislators, by giving their citizens good habits, make them good; and this is the intention of every lawgiver, and all that do not do it well fail; and this makes all the difference between states, whether they be good or bad....
Again, every virtue is produced and corrupted from and by means of the same causes; and in like manner every art; for from playing on the harp people become both good and bad harp-players...for if this were not the case, there would be no need of a person to teach, and all would have been by birth, some good and some bad. The same holds good in the case of the virtues also; for by performing those actions which occur in our intercourse with other men, some of us become just and some unjust....It does not therefore make a slight, but an important, nay, rather, the whole difference, whether we have been brought up in these habits or in others from childhood" (Nicomachean Ethics Book II, Chapter 1).
If it's the case that watching shows regularly can influence our actions towards others (as I suggested here), would it not follow that it's even more influential to act out the actions in the shows regularly?
It's not uncommon for actors in films and shows and plays who are playing the part of lovers to actually fall in love. It could just be the case that two people working together fall for one another through proximity alone, but then why don't more actors fall for the camera operators or stage hands or secondary players. I think there's something about saying the lines to one another over and over, or even just staring into one another's eyes, that creates the feeling.
But I'm curious about more villainous and harmful acts - more harmful than a new attraction ending an old relationship, and how Artistotle's ideas connect significantly with recent findings on neural pathways in the brain.
The brain gets accustomed to our typical activities and changes when they stop or when new activities start: “neurons seem to ‘want’ to receive input….When their usual input disappears, they start responding to the next best thing” (29)....Once we’ve wired new circuitry in our brain…’we long to keep it activated.’ That’s the way the brain fine-tunes its operations. Routine activities are carried out ever more quickly and efficiently, while unused circuits are pruned away” (34).
The key difference in current brain science and Aristotle's contemplations is that we now believe that childhood isn't the end all and be all of brain development. We can alter the pathways through our behaviour as adults. There is ever time to change, albeit it can be a more difficult battle to change the pathways than to create them in the first place.
In Birdman, the play inside the film ends with a suicide. As a theatre piece with a long run, the actor would be shooting himself in the head every night. Does that repeated act on stage make it easier to carry out in real life? In Nightcrawler, Gyllenhaal altered the way he moved, his facial gestures, and his speech to become utterly creepy. How well does he turn that off when he's not on the set? How quickly does the creepiness re-enter in inopportune times when his ego's depleted, like during an argument. After many childhood dance recitals, when asked to ad lib a dance for an audition (a lifetime ago), I reverted immediately to a collection of moves from past dances. The body memory had created a pathway that was easiest to find in a pinch.
But the actors in our lives who, for instance, pretend to be nice for their own gain, they don't become nicer over time. Their pretending is part of the action to the point that their nice-act becomes hard to stop. It becomes difficult to be authentically kind or thoughtful. Is it the case, then, that stage actors have a harder time turning off the pretending, than turning off the current characters they're embodying for part of each day?
As a teacher, I have developed certain traits that have spilled over into my "real" life, but many of these are useful. I stay calm and can often diffuse a situation when others are arguing angrily. I listen patiently to the least-interesting conversations. But then I also really want to impart information wherever I go, and tell others what to do and when to speak. These are habits I actively repress outside of my job - and not always well. However, during my classes, I'm not actively pretending to be a teacher. I'm behaving appropriately as a good role model of behaviour, which, I think, is what Aristotle suggests we do. We should act kindly and courageously as if we're role models for the world to follow. And sometimes pretending to be kind and acting on it, not for self-gain, but as a means of practicing, can create an authentic kindness.
It's a similar problem found in self-help books that encourage us to think happy thoughts. While smiling can actually make us feel a little happier, focusing on acting happy can have the reverse effect because somewhere inside we know it's an act.
The implications of all this isn't just a watchful eye over the behaviours of our children, but of ourselves, of our smallest actions that can get embedded as habits. And if it's the case that pretending is attached to the action being pretended, then it seems to follow that we can allow sword fights with sticks, or water gun fights, or teasing when it's very clear that it's a game (and not just a consequence-free passive-aggressive act of anger or retaliation). And our actors won't be unduly corrupted by their actions. But only if it all starts with the right attitude towards the good.
"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster." - James Baldwin
Thus begins Chris Hedges' Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle(2009), a collection of five independent parts that lead to the same place. We're in denial - thick and deadly. It's similar to Jane Jacobs' Dark Age Ahead, but I can't, for the life of me, find my heavily annotated copy of the book. So I'll skip the comparison except to say they both suggest we're in a similar cultural place that many empires were just before collapsing. What Jared Diamond did with environmental degredation's effect on the fall of empires, Hedges does for cultural illusions. The problem with this fall is that it will be global. There will be no area of the world that can rise up afterwards. There will be no area of the world.
Here are some of the main points in brief. It's a quick read though, so go buy it!
I've never liked Eckhart Tolle. My primary arguments have been that he stole from other places without giving credit, and that the people he stole from were better writers and thinkers in the first place.
On the first concern: Maybe it's because I'm a teacher, but I'm all about primary sources. Yet don't we all steal from one another, re-work it a bit, then call it our own? I'm not sure it's really that big a deal that the ideas he espouses aren't at all new. Maybe it bothers me just because I've done the work of reading the original sources, and I feel like people are cheating by relying on Tolle. But maybe that's a bad argument.
On the second concern: This one has more merit. Years ago I found a site comparing Tolle quotations to a philosophers - but I can't remember the philosopher (Aristotle? Plato? Lao Tzu?), and I can't find that site. But suffice it to say that in a quote-to-quote comparison, Tolle falls short by a mile. His axioms are pithy and often of little substantial meaning. And he falls into a few serious fallacy traps. Essentially, he presents information not in a way that we can contemplate and deliberate, but in a way that makes it impossible to disagree. One blogger called this the "three cards 'mindfuck' trick." I can't find the originally author (anon), but I found the following here:
"(1) The Higher Level Card (i.e. Sorry, it's just over your head). Sorry, but you're just not smart enough to realize I am smarter than you, because you're on a lower (less divine) level.
(2) The Projection Card (i.e., I know you are, but what am I). By criticizing me, you are really just criticizing yourself, because any problem you see in me is just a projection of a problem in yourself.
(3) The Skillful Means Card (i.e., it's all your own fault, dickhead). The most potent card of all! It's not abuse; it's not pathetic or ridiculous or wrong; it's a crazy-wise teaching. You know, like Zen stuff. So when I call you a dickhead, it's not because I'm a dickhead, it's because you have a dickhead-complex that you need to evolve past, and I'm here to help you see that.
They are designed to end all discussion, and they are used only when folks know the actual substance of their beliefs has run, or is running, dry.... In other words, these 'cards' are used to create a situation where actual problem solving, critical thinking and good philsophizing... cannot be done."
From comments on many Tolle-philic sites, it appears he suggests we all work towards enlightenment, but doesn't say how. If you can't do it, you're doing it wrong, but he won't say what's wrong. Maybe it's just not in you right now to do it.
The thing is, in other writings written hundreds of years earlier, there are specific techniques you can use to have a happier, more peaceful life, the type of like Tolle suggests you could have by reading his books. Check out what Montaigne has to say:
* Try to stay in the present (cultivate mindfulness) by maintaining an amazement at each instant of experience both outside and inside yourself. He did this by writing, in detail, about everything around him and contemplating his thoughts. Writing forced him to pay attention, but anything that keeps you involved in what's happening right now will work. Some people need to be hit with a stick from time to time. Whatever works. He says,
"When I walk alone in the beautiful orchard, if my thoughts have been dwelling on extraneous incidents for some part of the time, for some other part I bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, and to me."
* Don't let the world bring you down. If you're upset, keep in mind how much worse it could be. If your kids are irritating, imagine you just got a call that they all died in a tragic accident in order to shift your perspective so that you're suddenly grateful for their annoying little lives. If you're tired of your stuff, imagine having nothing, and how happy you'd be to have it all after contemplating losing it all in a fire. If the kids complain about dinner, remind them of how bad it would be if they lived in an impoverished country. They should be overjoyed to be eating spaghetti yet again. These are old tricks my parents taught me, but Montaigne suggests them too. You can talk this further to imagine that this is the last hour of your life. What really matters, and what can you brush off now?
* Keep in mind how insignificant you and your problems are compared to the grand scheme of things. Seneca said,
"Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity."
Another advocate of this view in the Monty Python organ donor skit (starting at 3:45 in particular):
* A lot of Montaigne (and Tolle) is reminiscent of the Tao Te Ching, particularly when he suggests we would be better off contemplating ideas than memorizing facts. This one is a real relief in an age where there just seems too much to know. Montaigne says, "Forget much of what you learn." And Lao Tzu says, "The more you know, the less you understand." Facts aren't as firm as we give them credit for being. Suspend judgment on all these facts thrown at us. Who knows what's real.
* To keep me in mind of morality, my mom always said, "Don't do anything you wouldn't want published on the front of the newspaper." Seneca and Epicurus and Montaigne all suggest finding someone admirable and acting always as if that person is watching us.
* Distract yourself from what bothers you, particularly what you're unable to control. If that jerk at work makes you nuts, don't carry the annoyance home, but leave work with a mind to do something entertaining that will help you forget your troubles. This is a welcome break from the idea that if someone bothers us, we should delve deep into why it's such a problem for us, often going back into family of origin crap to determine if we're projecting our stuff on him, until the jerkiness is no longer so bothersome to us. Whew! I like that distraction idea much better.
Montaigne, and several older philosophers, say that generally, the secret to happiness is not to let your emotions get the better of you. These are ways to help you do that: Pay attention to right now, compare yourself to those worse off to feel better, keep the big picture in mind, don't obsess over details, act as if your idol was watching you, and distract yourself if you start losing it. The trick is, these are things to think about not just one or twice, but all the time. But, it is inevitable we will be sucked back into the drama of human desire and suffering surrounding us. That's okay. Just get back into it next time you remember and you'll feel much better.
You can't do the pure-being-ball-thing all day (from I (Heart) Huckabees):
