John Siracusa’s Inner Troubled Teen

I used to work in a group home for troubled boys, many of whom were survivors of unhealthy families or environments, or sometimes of the corrections system. As part of my initial training, I learned a set of concepts and techniques developed at Cornell University and collectively known as Therapeutic Crisis Intervention (TCI). TCI training emphasized the importance of understanding the “Conflict Cycle”, which goes like this:

A Stressful Incident -> The Young Person’s Feelings -> The Young Person’s Actions -> An Adult’s Response

In plainer terms, a young person in crisis (and all residents of a group home can broadly be understood to be in crisis at nearly all times) will experience a stressful incident or situation. If they cannot successfully manage their feelings in response to that trigger, they will act out in unacceptable ways. The adult(s) responsible for the young person will then respond to the unacceptable behavior.

If the Adult Response is successful, the unacceptable behavior will end, and the young person will learn better skills for coping with stress or painful feelings. If the Adult Response is not successful (that is, not therapeutic), it will constitute a new Stressful Incident that will retrigger painful or unmanageable feelings in the young person, beginning the cycle anew.

I thought about the Conflict Cycle as I listened to the most recent episode of Reconcilable Differences, a podcast by John Siracusa and Merlin Mann in which they discuss the development and expression of their two disparate personalities. I highly recommend it, and if you want to skip straight to the content I discuss, the 1:06:25 marker is a good place to start.

As the main topic of the episode, Merlin interrogates John about the processes by which he maintains the primacy of his critical faculty, for which he is renowned. In a particular corner of the nerdosphere, invoking John Siracusa is a well-recognized shorthand for the ability to identify and analyze a shortcoming or flaw in reasoning or execution. Merlin references this reputation in asking how John developed the skill of detaching his own ego and personal feelings from his analysis of even highly-charged issues. In response, John detours into discussing what he refers to as his “Mental Model”.

My brain has two parts. It has the rational part, and it has the other part. And the rational part of the brain—everyone can relate to this, I think—something happens that is significant, or upsetting, or traumatic, or exciting, or whatever it is: a significant event. 25 years pass, and you look back on that event; you have a better perspective on it, because so much time has passed that, hopefully, a lot of the trauma or the excitement or whatever has drained out of it, and you can look back on it, and you can engage with that event in a way that you could not when you were sort of in the heat of the moment, right? That is my attempt to explain what the rational part of the brain is… So that’s one part of the brain is the rational part, and the other part is all the parts with the feelings and the reactions and so on and so forth. And I use this mental model because I’ve always felt that the rational part of my brain—probably since mid-to-late adulthood—massively dominates the other part of the brain. That I’m able to engage it very close to the heat of the moment, like within hours or days, or sometimes immediately, and sometimes pre-emptively: engage the rational part of my brain to win over the other part… This is the tool I use to manage myself. Something is super-upsetting, or whatever; I engage the rational part of my brain to try to bring myself down, to try to say, “Look, I know you’re upset, or whatever, but let’s try to think about this, and not do something stupid.” Or, “Think about what we did: what really happened there? I know you’re angry at this person, but were you actually the one who was at fault there?” It is super-important to me that the rational part of my brain is the part of my brain that has control.

Note: my transcription is edited for brevity and clarity, but I feel I’ve represented John’s thoughts accurately.

In his description of his Mental Model, John almost perfectly adapts the Conflict Cycle, except that instead of an Adult and a Young Person, he substitutes what I’ll call “Rational John” and “Everything Else John”:

A Stressful Incident -> Everything Else John’s Feelings -> Everything Else John’s Actions -> Rational John’s Response

Rational John’s response sometimes results in a de-escalation of Everything Else John and an opportunity for Everything Else John to learn better coping skills. Or, more frequently—as John clarifies later in the podcast—Rational John fails to successfully de-escalate Everything Else John, who proceeds to wreak some harm upon a relationship that Rational John values

To aid group home workers in responding therapeutically, TCI instructs them to ask themselves Four Questions when confronting a young person in crisis:

1. What am I feeling now?
2. What does the young person feel, need, or want?
3. How is the environment affecting the situation?
4. How do I best respond?

Based on John’s description of himself, Rational John seems to have about the same success rate I had when I worked with troubled teens. I never performed particularly well at responding to young people in crisis, because I could get through Questions 1-3 fairly well but would usually fall apart at Question 4 and end up responding only neutrally, not therapeutically, to the client. Often I completely forgot to stop and ask myself the Four Questions before responding, and this usually accounts for my frequent failure to successfully respond to my own non-rational self as well. Much like Rational John, Rational Ryan often doesn’t even get a word in until Everything Else Ryan has already steamrolled forward into relational disaster. In that case, Rational Ryan just comes in to do the “mop-up”, as John refers to what I would call a “post-crisis interview” with Everything Else Ryan.

In the remaining hour of the podcast, John and Merlin discuss how this Mental Model can apply not only to preventing or mitigating harmful personal behavior but also to the pursuit of greater clarity of thought and belief. Merlin briefly refers to another set of techniques I practiced with similarly mediocre success in the group home: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. John—consciously or unconsciously—adapts those concepts to his own goal of constantly self-correcting his own erroneous beliefs to achieve a better grasp on reality. It’s a jam-packed hour of wrestling with the flawed mental processes that guide our ideas and relationships, and well worth your time and consideration.

Don’t Conflate Policies and Values

Content Warnings: poverty, worker abuse, human trafficking

The idea of raising the minimum wage from its current value of $7.25 per hour to between $10 and \$15 per hour has received a lot of coverage in the political and economic news lately. Some argue that such a raise is long overdue, as the minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, and that those currently making at or around the minimum wage are being needlessly kept in poverty. Others believe that raising the minimum wage will shortly produce higher prices that lower the buying power of both the poor and the middle class. Some even oppose the very concept of a minimum wage, while people at the other end of the spectrum think we should institute a Basic Guaranteed Income. Proponents of every viewpoint make what they feel to be very reasonable and compelling arguments, and many outspoken pundits attribute to their opponents either ignorance, ill will, or both.

Let’s say (because it’s true) that I believe a dramatic increase in the federal minimum wage will actually result in workers being worse off in the mid- to long-term future. Even though I agree that it doesn’t make much sense to let inflation grossly outpace the minimum wage, I’m also not too sure a federal minimum wage is such a great idea in the first place. I worry that if we increase the minimum wage, workers like me who make only a little more than \$15/hour will demand a similar increase in wages from our employers, which will ratchet up the whole system, once again pushing the lowest-paid workers far to the bottom of the heap in quality of life, while leaving unaddressed the other systemic problems in our economy that perpetuate the income disparity.

A strong proponent of increasing the minimum wage would disagree with my position and all, or nearly all, of my reasoning. We could agree, though, on the value that I hope I’ve done a good job of positioning as the basis for my opinion: the desire for an increase in buying power and quality of life for lower-income workers.

Unfortunately, very few people (at least the kinds speaking loudly on the internet and cable news) appear capable of making such a distinction. Most of us have so tangled our values with the policies by which we think those values could best be achieved that we assume anyone who doesn’t agree with our policies must not adhere to our values. Why doesn’t Ryan think we should raise the minimum wage? He must hate poor people; that’s why he wants them to continue suffering such injustice. At best, we can assume that Ryan has little concern for poor people. Maybe he doesn’t wish them harm, but he doesn’t wish them well, either.

Of course, phrased so baldly such reasoning sounds a little silly. I don’t hate poor people, and I certainly do wish them well. I suspect that most people would like to see poverty mitigated or erased, so the second I realize that my repudiation of someone’s stated opinion on the subject boils down to “this jerk hates poor people”, I know I need to take a step back and consider whether I’m confusing a disagreement about policy with a mismatch of values.

To take another issue as an example: Even though for religious reasons I believe that prostitution is immoral, I think legalized prostitution is probably the best way to decrease trafficking and abuse of sex workers and help keep women and men safe when they sell or purchase sexual services. At the very least, I believe we need to decriminalize sex workers so they feel safe seeking help from authorities when they suffer abuse. Plenty of people disagree on both counts. Do those people hate sex workers and want them to suffer? Maybe a few do, but I’ll bet that most just don’t think my policies would result in a net gain for society as a whole or sex workers in particular. Some would probably even argue that my policies would cause greater harm to sex workers in the long run. Still other people would tell me that even my religious objection to the act of prostitution itself taints my opinion with toxic sentiment, making me, on the whole, a harmful force in the battle for sex workers’ rights. Do such people hate religion or religious people? Again: maybe. Or maybe they just care more about the welfare and rights of sex workers than about coddling the opinions of well-meaning but moralistic Christians. It would be a massive mistake on my part to assume raw anti-religious sentiment on their part, just as they would be unfair to depict me as nothing but a hypocritical and judgmental religious bigot. Someone’s policies or opinions can be wrong or harmful even if that person means well and espouses worthy values.

I believe that most people do have worthy values, even if they don’t always express or embody them well or even understand their own opinions in such terms. I’ll go one step further and assert that most people hold values that match or at the very least align well with everyone else’s. Most of us want the same sorts of things: for as many people as possible—especially those closest to us—to have food, clothing, shelter, education, freedom from oppression, and the opportunity to do work that gives meaning to their lives. Some people add values of spirituality or religious devotion and attribute some or all of our values to a divine source, but we do not therefore jettison the aforementioned values shared by the rest of the world. The more consistently I recognize this fact about the people with whom I disagree, the less cynical and hostile I make myself, and the more optimism and comradeship I can feel toward my fellow humans.

haniemohd:

To that brilliant, snarkiest and sharpest of mind - Goodbye Sir Terry Prachett. Words cannot convey how much joy his writings has brought me all these years.

We can combat painful pleasure only with pure pleasure. — Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth

Numbering My Days

Sometimes, at the end of the weekend, when the advent of Monday morning begins to steal the last few hours of Sunday evening, I feel the weight of my accumulated days dragging at me. I lie down to sleep fighting the urge to count the remaining weeks in the calendar year, as if the fear of another December come and gone will lend some urgency to my choices.

I can stave off this dread by making some sort of vaguely-defined meaningful “progress” on one of the creative projects by which I have come to measure my own self-worth. Even writing this post indicates a final desperate attempt to end the weekend on a higher note—to brand the fading memory of Sunday with a sense of accomplishment rather than futility.

“Teach me to number my days.” The more I internalize this, the better I get at choosing to spend my time in ways that will make me feel hopeful, empowered, and alive.

’Cause you can make your life look good\ You can do what Jesus would\ But you’d be surprised what you can do with a hard heart\ — Derek Webb, “Ballad in Plain Red”

Army of Dolls stole your reflection\ Army of Dolls stole all your perfect imperfections. — Delain, “Army of Dolls”

hannakdraws:

teenage catwoman doodles. her hoodie is actually cerise but the camera turned it pastel

I accept.

rfkelly:

This person’s posters are pretty amazing.