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Yesterday I had my doorbell ring. I rushed out, and opened the door.
It wasn’t my landlord, as I expected, it was a young man with a clipboard. He started to talk before the door was even fully open… It took me some time to distinguish the words through fear, I guess.
Anyway, I spent about half an hour with him, while he took care of what he was sent to do… Took care of it on MY cell phone… and I had to answer questions I didn’t understand… Something about solar power…
It was a victory of trusting, I say. Trust is one of the cornerstones of my soul correction.
What I really want to share is our conversation, or more like what I saw as I was sharing with a live person who is not a client of mine, and therefore doesn’t HAVE TO listen… lol.
He asked why I said the world is in trouble. Humanity.
The order of things, we expect, is to things get better and better. But it’s going in the other direction.
On the surface we have more… but when it comes to looking long enough, we are more and more wretched.
Having just finished Lee Iacocca’s autobiography really helped me see much wider than I would have, having just my clients to deal with.
I would say that the seed level of the problem with today’s humanity is on the level of the genes.
There are two genes in the human DNA that are useful for a while, and then become harmful.
I am talking about the entitlement genes… or baby genes.
When the child is small, without those genes they would not be manageable by the parent, they would be, like any teenager, know better, headstrong, and want to do things their way. And they would predictably hurt themselves or die… or even more predictably make a parent’s life hell.
So these genes were needed in early childhood.
Surrendering, allowing, was needed… or the species will die out.
But then the child needs to learn to learn. Needs to learn to do. Needs to learn to be independent.
And for that the baby genes need to turn off.
But parenting has a big role in that.
My parents hired a live in maid/nanny, because both my parents worked, and my mother was also going to university… to make up for not being able to before the war. So for the first nine years of my life my parents didn’t parent me. And a stranger did a better job at not enabling me to keep the baby genes, than any parent would.
I watched my next door neighbors
I watched my next door neighbors, two PhD candidates, cater to their child’s every whim. By age three the child was a sociopath.
I just read what Mr. Google says about sociopaths, but I tell you what I say… A sociopath has one or both of their entitlement genes still active and they are, they behave, they are innately guided to act entitled to do what they want, to have what they want, and if needed to turn on the charm, superficial charm. To act on impulses. To have poor or no emotional control. And be OK to behave in illegal, immoral, or violent ways.
That is sociopathy on the ‘yes’ side. On the ‘no’ side
On the ‘no’ side they don’t see, and never learn, never accept that they actually need to do anything. Anything like putting out, earning their keep, learning to match their knowledge and skill level to their demand of compensation by life, or by other people.
A sociopath rarely puts out any real effort they sustain, because they don’t see that they have to.
In the news I see George Santos who is the most visible as a sociopath. Muscletest says that all of them are, all who are in the Congress, and the House of Representatives.
If you look carefully and attentively, the tendency to consider one’s story as the truth is a sign that one is entitle… meaning: one or two of those pesky entitlement genes are still active.
Tellers of conspiracy theories: ditto. Flat earth? I say so and therefore it is true.
These are the people who demonstrate, publicly, and very visibly the behavior, the attitude that still having the entitlement genes on causes.
Is it conscious? No. Not at all. They are not bad people. Their baby genes are still on…
Regular people are the same…
I have had, over the years, thousands of students and clients.
I have, thus far, have only had one client, a woman from Singapore, who had her baby genes off. Both off.
One of those genes is supposed to turn off at age three. Why then? Because that is a crucial time for the child to start learning. Learn to control their bowels, and their behavior.
The second gene is supposed to turn off at the age when children go to school. So they can start learning mental, intellectual things.
I first went to school three days before my seventh birthday. I knew I didn’t know how to read or write.
Today parents think that children should to learn early. They never have a chance to be children. And therefore their second baby gene doesn’t turn off when they suddenly go to school and have to develop self-discipline.
Here is another interesting thing: I have two brothers.
- My older brother, two years my senior, had a lot of permission from my mother. His second baby gene never turned off.
- My younger brother is six years younger than me. He was born into a world of television. Neither of his baby genes ever turned off.
- I was lucky. I wasn’t babied. Wasn’t even considered. In fact I was treated like a weed… and both my baby genes turned off.
Neither of my brothers values learning, hard work… so they don’t do it. They rely entirely on their innate smarts… not work.
I was lucky. Everyone knew I was stupid, so I relied on work. Practice. Diligence. Focus. Sticking-to-it. Consistency, tenacity, assiduity.
Without those the world is in the state as it is: people don’t have skills, people don’t have values, people don’t work because they ARE entitled to more money, shorter work week, and can’t see that without work it won’t be possible.
Now, can you turn your baby genes off? Yourself.
Muscletest says yes. You first need to commit to some result, some project, and do it as if your life depended on it.
One of the things I see is this: an entitled person may have long range pie in the sky ‘vision’, but is unwilling, or unable? to commit to a project.
A project is short. A few days long. A long range accomplishment can be broken up to hundreds of projects, all leading you TOWARDS the end result.
Without a project you can NEVER succeed.
Projects, in a way, are like experiments… Finding the path through experiments that fail.
Every single successful person got to where they are through experiments that failed.
An experiment is a project. It has a beginning, a middle and an end.
It has a who, a what, a how, a by when, and it aims at success… When the success doesn’t come inside the allotted time, the experiment is evaluated for the learning it can provide. And on the rule of the ‘strait and narrow’ it takes a person closer to success.
An entitled person doesn’t want projects. Doesn’t want anything that can end in failure. So they boast of a high vision, and no projects with a measurable result in time.
They live off the hook. But, alas, the only place happiness lives is ON THE HOOK.
What does living on the hook look like? Simple. You have a project and you are working on it. One project. One outcome.
Here is a project I suggested to one of my clients who came to the Human Condition class on Sunday.
Find the entitlement behind and underneath of calling how you are/have been wrong. The measurable result she can expect is to actually see that her saying that is the visible sign of entitlement. Seeing is a lot more than saying so… Most of my clients have mastered saying ‘it is not wrong… it is just what is‘, but seeing that and saying that is not the same, and they still SEE wrong, and act consistently with what they see.
Timeline? For me, for the 20 years ago me, it would definitely take a week or two. So I’d set the deadline to Halloween… and extend it if the project is not complete.
If I didn’t succeed
If I didn’t succeed, I would look what previous ‘boulder’, what bigger boulder I haven’t handled, and create a project to 1. either see it/find it or if I see it 2. handle that as a project. So what could be a boulder that I missed?
My hunch would be that I missed that I have been fancying myself smart, despite that I am playing in the minors, and the challenges I manage to solve are kindergarten level. That being able to talk and talk and talk, or even write aren’t signs of smart… What you say and what you write are more relevant to smartness than the activity itself.
That gap between your imagined IQ and your actual IQ is the gap that invading parasitic cells fill.
So what would be the specific, measurable result of that previous boulder project? Well, saying: ‘I see I am not very smart’ isn’t enough. You actually need to see it through your actions: less talking, less writing, more effort to get some knowledge, to see, to understand, to own.
Something that others would be able to see… not hear you say and claim. Claiming will not make it so.
We handled much of this in a workshop not so long ago, the Prison Break workshop.
Entitlement is a prison! Break out!
