Jag Bhalla shares a pretty mind-blowing observation:
You are by nature self-deficient. Your constitution guarantees it, initially, chronically, and inalienably. Biology defying individualistic ideas now hide these once self-evident truths.
What does this have to do with the subject of this blog? It speaks to a bias that is likely to turn up in a lot of scholarly work.
Many “professional” thinkers haven’t properly digested that initial self-deficiency, “you could read 2,500 years of philosophy and find almost nothing about children,” observes Alison Gopnik.
. . .
Too much “professional” thinking ignores that our only options have long been co-thriving or no thriving.
Does this explain the anti-AA bias among many professionals and experts? How about the the libertarian (individualistic) bias among many policy pundits?
I think your’e on the money here. Maybe one of the reasons 12-step offends so many is that it undermines the hairy-chested, uber-he-man machismo of the Western myth of the autonomous, self-sufficient Individual – that the most noble human existence is one that is free of the need for other human beings ie. self-control, self-efficacy, self-will, self-this, self-that, self-yadda yadda. As the author points out, someone who dedicates their life to freeing themselves from needing other people risks becoming a person no-one needs.
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