family dynamics

Engage or Enrage. It is likely that we have family members or friends that we differ with greatly when it comes to politics, healthcare, etc.  I am no different.  When the inevitable hot topic arises, do you recommend flight or fight, engage or enrage?  How do you respond when this occurs?

Engage or Enrage. It is likely that we have family members or friends that we differ with greatly when it comes to politics, healthcare, etc.  I am no different.  When the inevitable hot topic arises, do you recommend flight or fight, engage or enrage?  How do you respond when this occurs?

Engage or Enrage. It is likely that we have family members or friends that we differ with greatly when it comes to politics, healthcare, etc.  I am no different.  When the inevitable hot topic arises, do you recommend flight or fight, engage or enrage?  How do you respond when this occurs?

What men wish women understood about men. This has been trigger a lot LOLs and ROFLs in my group chats. It's obviously over-the-top dramatic with the music and tone and hyperbolic "10,000x" language but it did make me think how much "burden" is kept when you don't talk about things. I think that's the basic premise, woman share their burdens and men keep them to themselves. It certainly tracks for me. 

What are some of your uncertainties? Experiences of failure (that maybe you still haven't turned into learnings yet?) Obvious realizations? (eg: things that were maybe super obvious to others, or even obvious to you about others, but you just realized deeply apply to you?) 

Will you share some here in the comments?

#quicktakes 

Your parents are massively successful if you are more evolved/mature than they are. I hope Jack and Cecilia surpass me in emotional intelligence, wellness, rationality.

I hope I’m humble enough to recognize it, but I hope they’re more developed even if I can’t and it feels painful to me.

Some Thoughts on Boundaries. Boundaries are mine. My portals to connection. They’re statements of fact: “whoops, I’m sorry, it turns out I can’t love from here anymore.”

The purest form doesn’t require anyone else to uphold. I can say “no” to a party I don’t want to go to. I can turn off my phone at bedtime. Asking someone not to interrupt me or not answering emails after work can feel a little trickier to uphold, because I have to be willing to walk away.

There are a bunch of socially agreed upon boundaries that are upheld by law enforcement, like cease and desists or restraining orders. It’s often not simple—in Texas I have a right to refuse anyone setting foot on my property (but what about racism, when my property is a business?).

There are some thoughts for now...

Envy and desire. I’ve been studying quite intensively with Kasia Urbaniak this summer. One thing she’s focusing on is something she calls emotional alchemy: moving emotions and cooking them so that they can lead us towards what we want. One example she talks about is turning envy into desire. When we feel envy towards another person it shows us what we really want, and in fighting that person we subconsciously tell ourselves we can’t have what they have, but in blessing them and befriending them and learning from them we get to move closer to having what they have.

I like the concept and I’ve tried it a few times where it’s led me to claim more of myself. It’s actually been quite transformative in a few relationships too, but specifically it’s helped me to not be stuck in envy.

What do y’all think about it?

Being Out of Sync in a Group Meeting. I was just in a meeting that I was leading where, almost every time I spoke, someone else spoke at the same time. The other person would continue speaking and I would stop. It was as if my timing was wrong; I was out of sync with the group. I imagine there were a number of things going on. One is that I was holding the list of topics to talk about as if we needed to get through all of them in the time we had, while the group wanted to savor and speak to each item at length. But it wasn’t just that. Within a topic, I was always bumping against someone else, timing wise. It felt awful. Any ideas or comments about this phenomena?

Monogamy v polyamory. Is monogamy better? Is poly better? Is there an overall norm for people, with exceptions? Is it totally pluralistic? Here are some points for monogamy, with some counter points, to convey some of my uncertainty but nevertheless leaning into what I’ve chosen:

• Point: I don’t know a single polyamorous couple that’s lasted more than a decade, whereas I know a ton of lifelong monogamous couples.
  • Counterpoint: many of the lifelong monogamous couples are not healthy relationships
    • Counter-counter-point: perhaps being in a lifelong commitment, even if the relationship isn’t ideal, is more healthy than being hyper-independent, especially as you get older. This runs right up against boundaries, how to know what to tolerate/love as is, when to leave, etc
• Point: The poly focus of attention tends to be the relationships themselves, often a kind of relational narcissism, rather than the relationship being a foundation for engaging the world in love (ironically). This is my version of the poly is impractical argument. Most of the people I meet practicing polyamory are constantly putting tons and tons and tons of life energy into their relational problems, and it seems like their relationships are often built around addressing these problems rather than enjoying life together. The fact that it takes so much time and energy points to something being a little off. Monogamous relating also takes energy but it usually seems less self-referential; they’re more often helping each other face and engage the world, rather than face and engage each other and their relationship.
  • potential counterpoint: You’re making a developmental point Jordan, not a mono/poly point. Most people practice poly from a Red ego-centric POV; most people practice sex from Red as well. If you practice from a genuine Green+ polyamory, this doesn’t happen.
• Point: Humans are largely monogamous; it’s instinctual
  • Counterpoint: How would we know if its cultural versus biological versus systemic versus psychological per person/family? it only takes a couple of generations of evolution to make massive physical changes, so even if it is biological, how could we know what’s possible for the future?
  • Counterpoint: people wanna fuck, especially dudes
  • Cheating, mistresses, polygamy, Sex at Dawn etc…
• Point: Many poly people avoid endings, boundaries, standards, and facing their own karma by just jumping from relationships to relationship. Sure monogamous people do too, but many of them end up getting married and that crucible forces them to face their stuff. Far fewer poly people get married, and when they do they can still use other relationships to avoid their shit
  • Counterpoint: we can use absolutely everything to avoid our shit.

there’s tons more, just want to get the convo started…

What are your sci-fi TV show recommendations? Some i loved that jump to mind:

• The Expanse
• Most of the Marvel stuff like Loki, What If?
• Rick and Morty
• Legends of Tomorrow Etc

What are your sci-fi TV show recommendations? Some i loved that jump to mind:

• The Expanse
• Most of the Marvel stuff like Loki, What If?
• Rick and Morty
• Legends of Tomorrow Etc

How i decieded to stop sharing my feelings with my mom. one time when i was 17, my mom took me to Baltimore (like an hour and a half away) to help me get my driving learner’s permit. it was a special DMV with extra long lines, because i was not a citizen. the process took many hours of just sitting there (this was before smartphones), and I was incredibly bored. My mom asked me how i was feeling, and I told her I was bored.

Then she got super mad and said that it was wrong of me to be bored. that she spent the whole day helping me with this and how dare I say I’m bored. the whole drive back she was ranting non-stop about how ungrateful we are - for some reason she got mad at Emma too, my sister (not her real name), even though she wasn’t there. she kept saying we were not grateful to her and were super entitled.

She kept saying, wait till we get home and Emma hears what you said, she’s gonna be mad at you too I pretended to fall asleep in the car so that I wouldn’t have to keep hearing her.
Eventually we got home, and she told Emma and she was like ummm, yeah, of course he was bored and sided with me.
My mom stormed off angry. I decided that day to never again be honest with with my mom about my feelings

New structures for family-friends? Chatting with a friend recently and came up with this novel idea.

Historically, many people would end up married, having kids, and having responsibilities to their family and local community and groups.

These days, we have less family and civic integrity, less people are having kids. More people are creating their family of choice with friends.

I think there’s a general love and aliveness everyone wants to express and be in connection with.

But without the usual routes of kids/religion/local community, it doesn’t get routed well anymore.

We need more structures/ideas/understanding to support new kinds of families and community structures.

Examples:
How about an app that makes it easier to crowd source among trusted local friends to babysit?

Most housing is built around one nuclear family 1-4 bedrooms. But what about community homes with larger kitchens and living rooms and smaller but more bedrooms?

I’m gesturing at this general area at the idea that modern, industrial civilization is built around nuclear families but we have a lot more forms being generated now but still lagging behind in the idea/social practice/phys infrastructure to match.

Trump is now…. ..officially a convicted criminal. And he’s still going to run. And he’s probably still going to win.

I’m not quite sure what that says about the state of democracy, the Biden administration, the US and/or our world.

But it strikes me as so utterly absurd, it’s actually kinda hilarious.

I remember 8 years ago, I was so appalled when Trump got elected, it seemed like the end of the world.

But the world didn’t end. And it might be my heartbroken disappointment with Biden’s warmongering-while-virtue-signaling administration or the fact that whoever’s actually in control of the Democratic party seems to just not give a fuck and is willing to run him again when he seems at least half-senile, but this time around I’m like, yeah, OK, Trump again. Fine. Bring it on.

(Insert gif of person eating popcorn ).

Some Thoughts on Boundaries. Boundaries are mine. My portals to connection. They’re statements of fact: “whoops, I’m sorry, it turns out I can’t love from here anymore.”

The purest form doesn’t require anyone else to uphold. I can say “no” to a party I don’t want to go to. I can turn off my phone at bedtime. Asking someone not to interrupt me or not answering emails after work can feel a little trickier to uphold, because I have to be willing to walk away.

There are a bunch of socially agreed upon boundaries that are upheld by law enforcement, like cease and desists or restraining orders. It’s often not simple—in Texas I have a right to refuse anyone setting foot on my property (but what about racism, when my property is a business?).

There are some thoughts for now...

Providing environments for learning. Imagine you’re attending a meditation workshop and the facilitator invites you to lean into stillness. After a few seconds, they start giving cues on how to be still, one after another, followed by reading a passage from a book about meditation, and then it ends. You didn’t really get to experience stillness, but you learned a lot about why it’s important. Now imagine being facilitated by a person who gives a short context in the beginning, shares short cues at 10-minute intervals, and ends after 30 minutes. In the first scenario, stillness was interrupted by talking about how to be still; in the second, you were provided the environment to be in stillness and possibly experienced stillness.

Similarly, we ought to teach our children by providing environments where they can have certain experiences and relate to them with integrity, trust, love, and whatever other qualities we want to foster in them.

Teaching concepts like confidence or processing emotions is very limited, or even counterintuitive if the child doesn’t have a reference from their own experiences. If your child is consistently trusted in their daily choices, they’ll believe in themselves. If you let your child express their emotions, they will know what processing emotions means—because they have experienced it.

If you want a self-confident child, trust in your child’s abilities and give plenty of opportunities for them to be trusted.

Here’s some examples of what I’ve been doing to support my daughter’s confidence, autonomy, individuality, and freedom:

• Simple daily things I do that are maybe the most important is that I wait a few seconds longer than most parents to intervene, interrupt, speak, direct, or support. During this time, I’m looking to see what minimal intervention or support I can give for her to accomplish her mission by herself.
• I trust in her development and the natural intelligence of her body. She will reach developmental milestones in her own time. I will not rush her to talk, walk, or master skills like eating with a spoon. When it’s necessary and relevant for her, she’ll make the effort to learn and do it.
• I offer several options for food and let her decide what she wants to eat and how much. I trust that she’ll eat when she needs food and that she’ll pick food that matches what she needs. The only thing I control is what food is provided for her.
  -I’m available to listen to her feelings when she needs to process her emotions. I trust that she’ll express herself when she feels safe, and I don’t force or suppress her expression.
• I mostly let her direct our play and follow her lead. I avoid suggesting what to play with and instead see where her attention goes. When I ask her if she wants to play with something, it’s mostly in the context of offering her an alternative to something unsafe, like Do you want to play with this smooth metal spoon instead of that very sharp metal knife?
  -We have a yes-space where she can follow her own directed play without interruptions for safety concerns.

Every time we show a child how something works, we take away their opportunity to discover it by themselves. This is why child-led play and learning, or unschooling, is an amazing alternative to traditional schooling. They don’t need to rediscover the wheel, but providing an environment with the necessary pieces at their developmental level to make similar discoveries is fun and empowering.

Adults are slightly different, but I think the concept of providing environments is still relevant. For adults, environments can be a thought experiment or imaginative, like the example at the beginning of this post. As dreams show us, our imagination is an environment that provides learning opportunities.

Parenting our children is more about creating a supportive environment where they can naturally develop these qualities or learn them through the experience of being in a relationship with us, rather than trying to teach them directly. This post doesn’t really end here—I invite you to first run an experiment where you create an environment for an experience to happen and share what you learn.

Left Media Bias bigger than i realized. No matter how you measure (print media, online, page views, paid subscribers, followers, etc) US media leans heavily left, to an extent that surprised me. Most ways I tried back-of-the napkin math have right + right-leaning news sources being below 10%… and even the most generous assessments that include lost of neutral/other outlets still have left + left-leaning above 50% (meaning 5:1 liberal to conservative is the lowest estimate i could find).

Context

The US is pretty evenly split in terms of the two major parties:
> 45% of U.S. adults Republican-ish, 44% Democrat-ish Gallup 2022

Some sources

• Allsides Here’s Allsides review
  their media bias on Allsides.com here’s the site’s own assessment of its own bias
• Googling the top 25 most-subscribed news channels in the United States, and
• Even the more left leaning LLMS can’t help but point out this as a fact of modern media.

Takeaways

• First, this gives me empathy for Republicans. Many American conservatives feel like the underdog, regardless of how much power or influence they yield, because in a very real way, they’re not represented in a substantial part of the public narrative making machine—the media—proportionally. The perception of bias is true despite their being popular conservative outlets with sizable audiences, and as a result the left has influence on public opinion.Impact on Public Trust (but also how come Republicans aren’t better at getting media subscribers?)

• Second, how come Republicans, who are stereotypically thought of us as having more business acumen or money or something, are getting so handily beaten in the media?

• Third, I try not to get involved in politics because I’m scared of loosing connection or turning people off of the value of relatefulness because of my takes, even if they’re nuanced. We’re very good at otherizing people and forgetting to look at nuances. I’m certain I lack nuance. I don’t want a difference of political opinion to get in the way of our connecting. I started writing up this for the TTT email (which I ended up deciding not to send) but I realized others are deeply esconced in politics and way smarter and more educated in the field than I, so I decided to not go there. But here on uptrusting.com I think it’s a cool opporutnity to test; could also be a nice road to empathy, or self-empathy, depending on our identifications.