Author: TheThoughtFlare

Most people tend to have teeny, tiny lil’ attention spans.

They only can take in bits and clips of things before they get bored or distracted by something else.

Part of this is basic human limitation. Most people can’t process or contextualize much before their brains overload and tap-out.

But on top of that things now are moving so fucking fast that even the sharpest can’t adequately process them. Combine inherent limitation with this furious speed and you have a perfect storm of social disease…an attention span epidemic.

What’s worse, many people, driven by hubris or dark magic I don’t know, use that dime-deep exposure to then confidently share their un-nuanced, largely-ignorant judgments about what’s “right” with the rest of the world.

…WTF?

No.

These are tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[Fist-bumps Shakespeare, then tells MacBeth to lighten up]

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion… but that doesn’t necessarily make those opinions any sort of realistic or valid.

New Rule: If someone TL;DRs (“Too Long/Didn’t Read”s) something but then adds some kind of opinionated comment to it, that opinion doesn’t count.

Yeah I said it.

TL;DR as a standalone comment is valid. Brevity is the soul of wit, and over-writing is a common flaw of authors. Saying a piece of writing needs to be streamlined is fine (and probably true). Saying the most with the least is writing’s true art.

…But if you can’t be bothered to at least read all of something before making your thoughts on its contents available for everyone to see, you have less than no business making your opinions of it public.

Until you fully-read and at least legitimately try to understand something, shut the fuck up about it. Seriously. You’re an insult to thought and evolution.

Let’s up the quality of public discourse. Its lack is stoking moral absolutism and destroying civility. Like I said, a social disease – one which typically leads to bullet-based problem-solving.

Let’s stop the devolution.

A predatory tactic for “winning” arguments is the aggressive interruption of the other person before they can finish their thought (or sentence). This is commonly followed by an emotionalistic, childish badgering of them into submission, disengagement or hostility.

Use of this tactic means that the conversation isn’t actually a conversation – it’s rhetorical bullying. A dark-age show of psychological force meant to manipulate and dominate. A non-physical form of violence which creates the need for its physical form.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

The disturbing frequency of aggressive interruption reflects an ongoing degeneration of dialogue… and by extension of civilization in general. Fueled by a perfect storm of epidemic immaturity, unjustified confidence, inadequate attention to detail and a fanatical/nigh-psychotic competitiveness, the stage is set for something truly terrible.

Interrupters by their very nature cannot be wise or right any meaningful portion of the time. Their childish over-excitability causes them to consistently miss critical masses of information that would otherwise allow them to have any sort of complete, contextualized, enlightened understandings. Their interruption of others marks them not only as socially-diseased, but as some of the last people in the world anyone should ever listen to or take seriously.

People who argue by interruption are and need to be recognized as socially dysfunctional. They should be isolated from society and matured, educated in the tenets of listening, patience and reciprocity. Until that happens they represent real, fundamental threats to social stability and ultimately evolution itself.

These are the people who need cancelling. This is behavior we need to grow out of ASAP to create a better world.

New rule: if someone is constantly interrupting and badgering the person they’re in a discussion with, their opinions are invalid and the discussion is over until they calm down and grow up.

Most of our fun and authenticity comes from the stuff we’re not supposed to be doing.

Standout memories rarely revolve around responsible, “smart” things like studying hard, paying bills, working long hours and using logic. They’re born of envelope-pushing, risky, emotion-stirring things. Most of what makes meaning and shapes us as people happens when we’re outside the box, pushing limits… not doing the safe, sensible, “smart” thing.

It’s weird because society constantly shouts at us that this sensible stuff is what “wins” in the end. That if you’re “smart” you’ll preempt life by trying to get out in front of it. That by sacrificing enjoyment of the present to improve your potential future things will eventually just all work out on their own, and when they do you’ll end up better off than most. That this thinking is somehow wisdom – the natural end point of maturity after enough life experience.

…But not really. That’s one-dimensional thinking. It’s not that it’s wrong per se… but it’s not really right. It ignores stage of life context and skips a lot of important steps – the ones that create a fully-realized individual who’s more than simply the sum of their work and knowledge.

The sensible approach is great for the logistics & requirements parts of life. Obviously you gotta take care of business to pay the bills and fuel the fun. But this stuff is merely life’s enabler. It sets the stage, but it isn’t what delivers the performance.

There’s a legit danger here. Only having your business handled without delivering the performance = boring = social death. This is the sad fate of millions who’ve made the mistake of over-emphasizing the logistical parts of their life. They’ve checked every box society’s told them to, so on-paper they’re great. Yet often something’s just… missing.

What’s missing is their ability to be truly present in the moment. The realness and depth that viscerally draws other people to you regardless of wealth or status. The street cred that comes from walking on the wild side.

The real value-add of a person to most other people is their ability to create fun and stimulation at any time, in any place and under any circumstances. This usually comes from the accumulation of entertaining stories and a deep, honed social skill set resulting from the fun experiences that created those stories. And most of these come from vice-fueled adventures.

Think about it: Would you rather go to a dinner or party where people talk at length about their jobs or logistics like errands and home maintenance? Or a dinner/party where people are talking silly-but-mood-elevating nonsense and interspersing it with crazy stories that involve emotion-stoking, thought-provoking details?

Exactly.

There’s a reason a majority of characters in media are colorful, flaw-focused characters. Media’s produced by the entertainment industry, and the core purpose of all forms of entertainment is to elicit emotion. Good, safe behavior tends not to do that.

So goes social value in real life.

Most of us are trying to do way too much, way too fast.

So much of our lives are spent frantically jumping from one obligation to the next, just trying to keep all our plates spinning. There’s little (if any) room in this for reflection or enjoyment – it’s all we can do to get our shit done. It consumes the best of our time and attention.

There seems to be some sort of weird societal fetishism for this kind of frenetic busy-ness. A warped “understanding” that always being in motion and constantly trying to do more are somehow implicitly noble things that automatically signal you as worthwhile and make your life better.

Bullshit.

Being THAT busy is a problem. A serious one.

Productivity’s one part of life… not all of it.

People need free time and calm to reflect on themselves and their lives. Time to play back events to see if they come to different (and better) conclusions than they did in the moment. Time to ponder who they are in relation to what’s happened. Time to breathe and actually enjoy the fruits of their labors (or else figure out why they aren’t).

Time to hear themselves think… and feel.

You’re not going to meaningfully grow as a person living life late for the next thing. That’s juggling – light-touching a bunch of things without paying quality attention to any of them. Your focus is always distracted by what’s coming, so it’s never fully in the moment. Quality and presence in the moment are what give life meaning.

Living like this isn’t living. It’s existing.

Your relationships will suffer. You won’t be able to meaningfully evaluate what happens to you. The only thing that’ll get your quality energy is your work – and work without greater context makes you a hamster on a wheel. An indentured servant.

Make good time for reflection. Make sure you live… not just exist.

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

Yeah…no. Not at all.

That thinking’s a cynical, fear-driven childishness born of a paranoid, unrealistic worst-case scenario. It assumes everyone is bad…which they’re not. Most people are good. If most people are good most people will keep their sight.

But the wrongness of it empowers the wicked while hamstringing their victims – makes being bad OK as long as you take the initiative.

Whenever someone does something bad to another, the canned “wisdom” you get is something along the lines of “don’t stoop to their level, don’t retaliate…just let it go and be the ‘bigger’ person. Just you wait: people like that get their comeuppance/the universe tends to unfold as it should/blah blah blah.”

…but wait a minute: that’s saying to not retaliate against someone who’s wronged you because one of their past misdeeds will eventually come back to haunt them and (hopefully) make them pay for their bad behavior. But THAT means that one of the people wronged by the smaller person’s bad behavior will decide they’re not OK with just letting it go – that they’re going to take action to punish that bad behavior by channeling the anger and frustration it’s imposed on them back onto its original source.

…Which means the entire crux of the strategy is that one of the smaller person’s other victims will NOT be the “bigger” person. That they’ll punish the smaller person by directly or indirectly retaliating against their shitty behavior.

…which means that the canned “wisdom” of letting it go and being the “bigger” person is based on a self-defeating illogic.

Following the “wisdom” of just letting it go when wronged forces a victim to internalize the resulting frustration and anger, making bad feelings that aren’t their fault their responsibility. And it forces this undeserved, ongoing psychological pain onto the wronged while protecting their aggressor(s). It’s a mindfuck – kinda like not removing a burst, septic appendix.

Worse, if that undeserved pain and frustration don’t get constructively vented (and they rarely do), they build up to a point where they hurt too much to keep bottled up inside… eventually exploding onto an innocent bystander. This leaves two innocent victims confused and damaged… while the original source is left alone.

This is shit rolling downhill in the worst of ways – like telling the wronged to swallow acid then smile. It’s backwards morality. Wrong, counter-evolutionary thinking that’s literally the opposite of what it should be.

The only people left blind by true eye-for-an-eye justice are the victim (which sucks but is unavoidable due to them being hit first) and the aggressor (who deserves and needs the retaliation in both principle and practice).

Leaving the aggressor “blind” has 3 powerful, world-bettering benefits: (1) It directly punishes them for their bad behavior, which is the definition of justice and a progressive, evolutionary act; (2) If done effectively, it can diminish (or eliminate) the aggressor’s ability to behave badly in the future; and (3) It has the potential of educating the aggressor against future bad behavior by forcing them to endure and hopefully fear its repercussions. True, they may not learn…but they *definitely* won’t learn anything if their behavior is simply tolerated without incident. Trying to change them is better than not trying.

Contrary to popular belief and “wisdom,” two wrongs can and DO make a right *IF* the second “wrong” is in direct, targeted service to the first. This is the definition of justice and an evolutionary correction in action. Allowing an aggressor’s wrong to stand without retribution is immoral: a failure of human thought and society.

At this point many say something along the lines of: “Well of course you retaliate…by going to the proper authorities and having them punish the aggressor.”

True: this should always be the first course of action taken whenever available. Sometimes it works.

… But sometimes it doesn’t. Authority is often constrained by lack of material evidence and resources, red tape, outside manipulation, incompetence, corruption, and/or any number of other inadequacies that prevent it from doing what it’s supposed to. The sad truth is that humanity is generally-bad at governing itself and reliably, effectively serving justice. It’s part of why history’s gone the way it has and why we’re still in the “same-shit-different-day” we can’t seem to get out of.

It’s at this point one of the most stunted, regressive statements ever conceived is dismissively uttered: “Life’s not fair. Deal with it.”

Understand: this is inherently wrong. Fairness is the key measure of human social progress. Saying “life’s not fair” is weak laziness born of the bother of having to hear about someone else’s suffering. It’s an admission that power is achieved by those who do bad best. Sure, it’s technically true…but also totally dismissible. It signals to the victimized that the only justice they’ll get is the justice they make.

Essentially, fuck anyone and everyone who says it. It helps nothing and inflames suffering. If you’re tempted to say it, please, just say “that sucks” instead, or just say nothing. Seriously.

Forgiveness is NOT divine when it punishes victims and emboldens bad. In these cases, it makes the world worse. In these cases, forgiveness is wrong.

Why What and How We Teach Needs to Change

Childhood education needs a fundamental rebuild.

The current system’s not just unviable – it’s socially regressive.

It’s demanding far too much, far too early in life. Demanding it at a time when the last thing kids want or need is a pile of academic obligation. When having it does them far more harm than good.

Kids want and need the freedom to explore and connect without the pressure of college admission constantly weighing on them…without having to sneak childhood in between transcript-building activities.

They need free time to hear themselves think. To meet and get to know more new people. To get guidance in the development of social skills and awareness that’ll be vital in ALL areas of life, not just the technical. To be able to focus on regularly practicing those skills and expanding that awareness in organic, real-world situations (not just contrived theoretical scenarios). To be able to realize their strongest talents, and what speaks to them personally. To get bored enough to want to take their own initiative, which, ultimately, is the only way they’ll learn or pursue anything effectively.

Right now, it’s simply understood that the “smart” thing is to prioritize studying and college-friendly extracurriculars over things like unstructured free time, exploration and socializing. Winning comes first – you can have fun later, after you’ve succeeded.

Unfortunately that’s not how life actually works. If you work really hard in school in order to eventually get a high-powered job, that job will likely demand a lot. Chances are you’re not going to have the time, energy or attention leftover from doing that job to be able to have lots of fun. You’re working hard early in life to eventually work harder later in life. It’s a nasty catch-22.

And it’s getting worse. Each passing year sees the obligations of college prep increase, which in turn intensifies the competitive pressure that’s consuming more and more of childhood.

This pressure puts enormous stress on children who’ve not yet had the time or experience to develop the maturity and skills needed to handle it. Over time, this exposure usually ingrains anxiety and depression into the fabric of a child’s personality, fostering chronic feelings of unease and inadequacy that they’ll carry with them for life.

What’s worse, most of what children are paying this horrible price to learn is worthless (if not detrimental) to their growth as human beings. After taking the test or submitting the report they’ve crammed knowledge into their brain for, they’ll likely never use that knowledge again…so it’s quickly forgotten. Or, if they do happen to remember/reference it in a social situation, it usually makes them look awkward, silly or uncool. Either way it’s a terrible cost-benefit.

This is not, despite education’s stated mission, making people better, more enlightened, more aware or more complete human beings. Knowledge only enhances people when it stays with them – when they can actively draw upon it in their lives either for their job, for deeper wisdom or for social connection. This is not what happens with the majority of what’s taught in childhood schooling.

What’s worse still: that unwanted knowledge-cramming does its own social damage. Academic learning is an isolationist, intensely left-brain activity that requires focus on reason, numerical logic and rule-based frameworks (especially in the increasingly-popular STEM subjects). As such it requires the suppression of right-brain activity, which centers around feeling, creativity and socialization. Basically the stuff that defines the soul, underpins civilization and gives life meaning.

Unfortunately, outside of academic and professional circles, left-brain thought tends not only to be unpopular, but punished. It’s considered uptight and boring, is routinely mocked, and more often than not is viscerally-disliked in social situations. This is especially true in dating and the formative parts of romantic relationships.

It makes sense: the last things people want to hear about when trying to have fun or socially connect are those rooted in reason, logic or technical knowledge. More than enough of life is already obligated to that constructive-but-boring stuff as it is. What’s the point of handling those obligations if you can’t get to the passion, creativity and connection that make life exciting, fun…truly worth living?

What’s weirder still is that even in the professional world, where left-brain focus is supposed to win the day, it often goes unrewarded. Many with superior technical and operational knowledge routinely get passed-over for promotion by those with better social presentation and connection skills.

To suppress a child’s ability to regularly indulge in right-brain activities in their formative years is to stunt their social development. They are what allow personality to develop and a sense of self to be built, which in turn are what enable their ability to connect with others. The less right-brain indulgence that’s allowed in childhood, the worse a person becomes at creativity and connection…and the more they’ll become an accumulation of knowledge without personal context. Much like a robot.

Let me be absolutely clear: I am NOT criticizing or condemning left-brain thought, technical knowledge or logic. It goes without saying that they’re all essential to human peace and productivity. Without these things civilization would quickly fail, and the result would be a waking nightmare.

…But technical knowledge can be learned successfully at any point of life. And learned far more easily when done in the right personal context…when a person is truly ready for and wants to learn it. Usually that’s after having had a certain amount of fun and building an adequate social life.

This is absolutely not the case with the learning and development of right-brain-centered creativity, social awareness and interpersonal skills. These have to be learned and cultivated from infancy all the way through young adulthood, as a person is developing and discovering themselves. They have to be internalized as different social situations present themselves. They have to become organically-, authentically-ingrained into someone’s personality and vibe. They need to be focused on and practiced when a child is immersed in organic social access and can easily interact with new people.

Once adulthood hits and jobs are had, this kind of social access diminishes. For many it disappears, with all that’s left being work-social (which is risky) and what they themselves create. Even in the era of meetup and dating apps, if a person isn’t adequately socially-developed they won’t be able to regularly turn this limited access into real connection. Unless they get lucky, this usually means leading an unconnected, lonely life – one with all the costs of adult responsibility but few of its benefits. In fact it happens a lot, and is a big part of our current loneliness epidemic.

In other words, if someone’s right brain hasn’t been adequately developed by the time they reach the adult world, they’re fucked.

So instead of an educational system that emphasizes ruthlessly-competitive individualism and technical knowledge, let’s build one dedicated to creative, social and emotional development.

The first part of this system is simple: give kids more unconstrained, genuinely-free time by forcing less academic obligation on them. The modern approach seems to think that interpersonal development can be scheduled in between transcript-building activities (and sometimes with them)…but that’s not really how it works.

Kids need genuinely-free time…not just scheduled free time. Time to interface with more people for more and varied social interaction. Time to expand and maintain bigger social circles. Time to be with their friends for prolonged periods…to go on random adventures and get lost without it torpedoing their grades (and potentially hurting their futures in the process). Time to explore things on their own. Having scheduled time constraints on any of these hamstrings their experience…and in turn their development.

This even includes time to watch movies and television shows. These have traditionally gotten a bad rap as mind-rotters, but they do provide templates for and insights into human social dynamics and behavior. They are, at least, a social reference point. While they obviously shouldn’t be the focal point of social education, they do provide valid insights into different aspects of human thought, feeling and nature. Screenwriting doesn’t work when it doesn’t resonate with reality.

More importantly, they also present a valuable opportunity to enable a more focused, effective type of learning.

Modern education is overwhelmingly non-consensual. It’s education by force. It forces people to learn material they mostly don’t want to learn in order to get into a (good) college or get a degree. Human nature tends to resist that which is forced upon it. Learning something you don’t want to learn is a frustrating, uncomfortable, sometimes even painful process.

But if a topic of interest comes up in the context of a piece of media that’s interesting or intriguing someone at that moment, and they stop to research that topic at the precise moment they’re captively-interested in it, they’ll learn about it easily. And not just easily, but with greater completeness, retention and long-term recall than if they were simply told to learn it without context. Because in that moment, it’s unforced – they genuinely want to learn it. Not only that, but this has the happy side benefit of allowing the person to learn topics related to it with similar ease and superiority.

Of course, certain technical classes are still necessary. Reading, writing, basic math, basic technology and other universal life skills obviously all need to be learned by everyone.

And of course, classes in all subject matter need to be accessible any time a student wants to learn something specific. If they’re ready to learn something, they need to be able to instantly start learning it (while they’re captively-interested).

But the other mandatory classes should be ones that directly address all practical aspects of social interaction and emotional development. It’s ONLY when these things have been sufficiently developed and internalized that a person should be expected to focus on and develop their professional/technical contributions to society.