People, if you are in the mood to read a long and brilliant article on Black Lives Matter, here it is. It’s seriously brilliant. 

People have been telling me for years to read Richard Russo’s Straight Man. I resisted because I don’t like the genre of academia novels and I especially dislike humorous novels. Finally, however, I gave up and read the novel and, as much as I tried not to, I fucking loved it. I didn’t find it funny, though. I found it terrifying because it hits too close to home.

Just the other day, somebody was telling me on Facebook that professors who lead no intellectual life, do no research, and only teach some recycled intro courses don’t exist. Russo’s novel was written 20 years ago and it’s precisely about this kind of professors. And yes, it’s the 1980s and the 1990s that gave us this model and it still won’t die. Seriously, are there any academics reading this blog who haven’t seen what happens to their colleagues when they stop living the life of the mind, stop reading, stop writing? We all know the problem is ubiquitous but we don’t like to say it because it’s politically inconvenient. 

This is a risk we all run. Intellectual stagnation can happen to anyone. And when it happens to really smart people, they go nuts like you can’t imagine. But you will be able to if you read this great novel. 

I want to put my response to the question of “How can it help to cure the problem just by understanding it?” in a separate post because many people don’t even know that it’s possible.

My friend, you are right, it is like magic. I have no idea why the magic happens but it does.

Imagine a person who has an addiction. It’s a serious addiction, it’s been going on for years, and it’s getting worse. And then the person goes into psychoanalysis, talks, figures it out and. . . He’s cured. Addiction is gone.

Imagine a person with 3 addictions, 5 self-destructive behaviors, and all central bodily functions compromised (eating disorders, sleep disorders, etc.) And then all of a sudden, it all begins to fall away and she can lead a normal life. No addictions, no self-destructive behaviors.

That’s how it works. And I wouldn’t have believed it had I not experienced it myself. I have no idea why understanding the problem has such potency but it does.

Of course, it all begins with a person wanting to get better. And as you say, if they don’t, that’s all there is to it.

Mind you, though, you can’t do it on your own. It takes professional help. It’s like dentistry. Tooth hurts like a sad m-fucker, you go to a dentist, she does something, tooth doesn’t hurt.

A very informative article on UK’s terrorists. I’m speechless, folks. 

In Canada, a dark-skinned woman speaks against high school classes on “white privilege” because everybody else is too chicken.

The desire of some servile Canadians blindly and stupidly to imitate Americans is sad to watch.

The best productivity trick I have right now is to forgive myself for not doing enough. Ideally, the forgiveness should happen every day or I will be eaten alive by feelings of guilt for not doing as much as I should. The summer is at fault because I don’t have to be at work and feel like I need to be doing an insane amount of things to make use of the free time.

I have a notebook that I use every evening to go over all of my daily achievements to stave off the guilt. It works but not as great as I’d like it to.

So what are these famous stages of separation? Here is a quick list.

Stage 1: by the age of about 18 months, a child should become comfortable with the idea that Mommy leaves sometimes and then comes back. If every time Mommy leaves the room, the child collapses in hysterics, this isn’t a sign that he really loves Mommy. All kids love their Mommies. It’s a sign that something is not going right.

In adulthood, failure successfully to go through this stage translates into clinginess in relationships. abandonment issues, anxiety, depression, and when it’s coupled with feeding issues into eating disorders, smoking, alcoholism.

Stage 2: by the age of 3, a child arrives at a complete realization that Mommy is a separate person. This is a moment when he begins to experiment with asserting his will. He says no to everything, rejects food, insists on his own clothing choices, throws tantrums. 

If this stage is thwarted, in adulthood this is somebody who is uncomfortable with leadership roles, has trouble speaking in public, feels judged, finds it hard to carry things through.

Stage 3: by the age of 5, a child begins to confront the role of “the excluded third.” She figures out that Mommy and Daddy are a couple and learns to deal with the trauma of that realization. She begins to say things like, “Mommy, when will you finally die so that I can marry Daddy?” She begins to cling to Daddy and tries to disrupt the activities that the parents do as a couple.

If this stage is thwarted, in adulthood this is somebody who recreates triangular situations and feels rejected.

Stage 4: at around 6-7, the peer group displaces parents from the center of the child’s life. Simply put, friends become more important than parents. A child becomes defiant, loves to contradict, criticizes the parents, rolls her eyes. When this begins to happen, many parents feel sad and think they are doing something wrong. But it’s the exact opposite! They are doing everything right and should feel very proud. (If this happens a bit later, at 8-9, that’s fine, too.)

Stage 5: there is a wider range here because different kids approach puberty at different speeds, so this is a stage that is around ages 9-13. This is when the most important thing becomes being a boy or a girl and developing an interest in boys or girls. 

Stage 6: this is a loooong one. It’s the transition to adulthood and it will take as long as the enormous hormonal transformations are occurring. This shit is very individual and it takes place between 13 and 18 years of age, approximately. This is the final stage of separation where a child needs to come into his own as a fully separate human being. He does this by rejecting everything about the parents. Even the sound of their voices becomes grating. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his parents. Of course, he does. But he needs to position himself as a separate human being, and the only way is to declare his difference from his parents.

I have a colleague who says, “My teenage son is so rebellious. He locks himself in his room and doesn’t even want to talk to us. He is always angry at me. He is secretive, and I don’t even know who his friends are. What have I done wrong?”

And I’m like, “Lady, you’ve done everything right, and this is your evidence. Go buy yourself a gift and throw a party. You did good with this boy.” She doesn’t believe me and thinks I’m trying to be nice. Which is patently silly because when did I ever try to be nice?

The really sad thing about this is that it’s precisely the good parents who do everything right and let their children separate that feel guilty because their children don’t conform to the stereotype of a “good”, permanently polite, obedient, and convenient child. As if a thriving individuality could ever arise from obedience, politeness and convenience.

And to conclude the endless post, I want to remind you that a famous psychoanalyst once said, “The most important role a parent can play is preparing a child to the parent’s eventual death.”

The worst cases, though, are not the ones where there is not enough love going from parents to children. Those cases are bad, of course, but not the worst because these are children who have a chance of healing in adulthood.

The worst cases are the ones where parents clearly love, adore and cherish their kids yet fail to fulfill the most important role of a parent. And that role is letting children pass through all the stages of separation successfully and in a timely manner. The damage done to them is enormous but it’s so invisible and so hard to identify that they can never figure out what’s wrong with them. And they spend their lives feeling guilty for constantly failing at things and not even knowing why it happens.

“The upper middle class families have become greenhouses for the cultivation of human capital. Children raised in them are on a different track to ordinary Americans, right from the very beginning,” he writes.

This is all ridiculous, just ridiculous. Have people lost their powers of observation completely? Why do they write such crap?

The most successful, happy and content people are the ones who were fueled by the greatest amount of love as children. There’s nothing else that works. The fuel of success is childhood love. Prep schools, tutors, it’s all a joke. 

This is why the discussion of, say, the genetical component of intelligence is a waste of time. Of course, intelligence is passed down genetically. But who cares? That genetic heritage will go to waste if the person isn’t propelled by the only thing that fuels success. 

If you want to give your kids opportunities in life, shower them with love, unconditional acceptance and adoration. 

So I decided to relax by scrolling down my Facebook feed. Item #2 was an ad from Audible titled How to Build Self-discipline. The worst part was that I immediately started an inner monologue about how I had worked all day and had only opened Facebook a second before and I’m not really lazy. Finally, the guilt became too much and I closed Facebook. 

Fuck you, Audible.