1: The generals of the First World War were “educated as cadets in the age of the cavalry charges,” David Brooks writes in his book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen.
As a result, the models of warfare they knew were appropriate for the era of horses and rifles.
“But decades later, after they had become generals,” David notes, “they found themselves leading troops in the age of machine guns. Only they hadn’t updated their models. Year after year, they sent millions of men charging directly into machine gun nests, and to their deaths, because they couldn’t see that their models were obsolete. It was mass slaughter.”
2: Conceptual blindness is not limited to World War I generals. It can happen to all of us.
Specifically, “the lessons we learned about how to survive childhood are often obsolete by the time we hit adulthood,” he observes. ” But we continue to see the world through these old models; our actions are still guided by our old models.”
This inability to update our conceptual models helps explain “why very smart people can sometimes do phenomenally stupid things,” David notes.
Ideally, we’d be able to repair ourselves on our own. David writes: “In theory, it should be possible to understand ourselves, especially the deep broken parts of ourselves, through introspection. But the research clearly shows that introspection is overrated.”
All too often, it leads to rumination, where we “revisit the same flaws and and traumatic experiences over and over again,” he observes, “reinforcing our bad mental habits, making ourselves miserable.”
3: The question then becomes: If introspection isn’t the best way to repair our mental models, what is?
The answer: Communication.
Which is where friendship comes in. ” People trying to grapple with the adult legacies of their childhood wounds need friends who will prod them to see their situation accurately,” David notes.
We “need friends who can provide the outside view of us, the one we can’t see from within,” he writes. We “need friends who will remind us, “The most important part of your life is ahead of you, not behind you. I’m proud to know you and proud of everything you’ve accomplished and will accomplish.”
The bottom line: “We need people who will practice empathy,” he states.
“Empathy is involved in every stage of the process of getting to know a person,” David writes. ” But it is especially necessary when we are accompanying someone who is wrestling with their wounds.”
Many people believe empathy is an easy emotion. We just open our hearts and experience the feelings the other person is feeling. ” I feel for you,” we say.
“But that’s not quite right,” David explains. ” Empathy is a set of social and emotional skills. These skills are a bit like athletic skills: Some people are more naturally talented at empathy than others; everybody improves with training.”
Empathy is comprised of three related emotional skills.
Which we will explore further this week.
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Are there any lessons I learned about how to survive childhood that are no longer serving me?
Action: Talk to a friend about it.
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