The Rantings of Eric Nehrlich

Who am I?

You can look at my home page for more information, but the short answer is that I'm a dilettante who likes thinking about a variety of subjects. I like to think of myself as a systems-level thinker, more concerned with the big picture than with the details. Current interests include politics, community formation, and social interface design. Plus books, of course.

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Tue, 27 Jul 2004

Height Study Redux Redux
Several months ago, I ranted about a height study that I thought was kind of bogus. Then I ranted about it again. And I just read a New Yorker article that is the article I could only wish I'd written, if I had, y'know, a research budget and stuff, instead of just my rantings. In particular, he supports my theory about childhood nutrition correlating with height.

Biologists say that we achieve our stature in three spurts: the first in infancy, the second between the ages of six and eight, the last in adolescence. Any decent diet can send us sprouting at these ages, but take away any one of forty-five or fifty essential nutrients and the body stops growing. ("Iodine deficiency alone can knock off ten centimetres and fifteen I.Q. points," one nutritionist told me.)

What's also interesting is how I found this article. This week's New Yorker had an article about gifted education and nerd camps that sounded interesting to me (I have a previous interest). Unfortunately, it wasn't available online except for this interview snippet with the author. So I googled the author, looking for other articles, and found the height article. Wacky. It's like he's writing the articles I'd want to, if I were more than an Internet hack. Never fear, I did end up with a copy of the nerd camp article the old-fashioned way, by copying it from my friend's dead tree edition.

posted at: 17:08 by Eric Nehrlich | path: /links | permanent link to this entry | Comment on livejournal

Harshness
One of the things that always surprises me is how gentle other people are around each other, and how fragile some people's self-image is. There have been a couple occasions over the past few months where I asked for somebody's opinion, and they prefaced their comments with "I know this is going to sound really harsh, but..." After hearing what they had to say, I didn't think their comments were harsh at all. I felt that they were an accurate description of what I was doing. They were a negative assessment, sure, but I'm self-aware enough to know that I'm not perfect, and in those cases in particular, I was aware of my suboptimal behavior. So that got me wondering what makes a comment harsh. Is every negative comment considered harsh? Do we live in a world where only positive feedback is desired?

I don't get it. I really don't. I want to be criticized. I want to find out what I'm doing wrong. How am I going to get better otherwise? I'm secure enough in myself to know that I do some things well, and some things poorly. I don't need continuous affirmation from others to make me feel good. I also tend to be pretty hard on myself, so I am generally not surprised when other people share their "harsh" assessments of me. If they criticize me unfairly, I can generally make a case for why I think they're wrong. If I can't, then it's time for me to do some deep thinking, and some self-analysis, to figure out why I can't convince them.

But most other people don't seem to be that way. They have some self-image of themselves that is unflinchingly positive. I guess. So any criticism is an attack on their whole image of themselves and must be fought with every fiber of their being. And they're so insecure that they want unabashed praise for everything they do to make themselves feel better. I think. Again, I don't really get it.

I'm going to continue along this line of reasoning to get myself really in trouble. Because you know what the next step is. If people are looking for uncritical praise and love, that's not something they are going to get from other people. Because, well, we all get annoyed with each other occasionally. So where do you get such a thing? Jesus. Religion, and Christianity particularly, is designed to fill this need for uncritical love. What are we told as children? Jesus loves you, no matter what you do. Jesus will always forgive you. No matter how much of a screwup you are, no matter what you do wrong, Jesus loves you. And that's a comforting, warm feeling. It's nice to think that there's somebody who's always on our side, who will always praise us.

But I feel that it's an empty sort of praise. As I noted in my review of Moral Politics, I hate being praised for things I don't do well. I don't want affirmation. I want praise when I do something well, and I want to know when I do something poorly. Some of this is my "Strong Father" upbringing (using Lakoff's terms), I suspect. Earned praise is really satisfying. Unearned praise feels like an insult. Self-satisfaction is something I don't understand. I'm always striving to improve, to get better, to learn more. I'm not always successful, of course. Sometimes I'm just lazy. But I don't ever get the feeling, "Wow, I'm great where I am. Nothing left to work on." I don't know if other people feel that way, or if that's my unkind projection. But it's certainly consistent with a naive reading of the New Testament.

Anyway. Rather than dig that hole any deeper, I'll move on. I've been struggling with this question of harshness because it's come up several times in my life recently, both at work and socially. I feel like I can't address the real issues, because people would react negatively to the criticism, and we'd never get to discuss the issues. But avoiding the issues and trying to apply band-aids to avoid giving out that criticism doesn't seem to help either. So I don't know what to do. I guess I need to learn to couch my criticism in a way that the recipient is going to be open to. That sort of finesse is definitely a skill I do not have. I can generally see the problems, but don't know how to handle the discussion of the problems in a useful manner. I don't know. I remain extremely thankful that I have found a group of friends with thick skins who are secure and self-confident enough that I can tell them the "harsh" assessments and have them help me figure out more diplomatic ways of handling the situation.

I'll end here with a great quote from Interface, by Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson). Interface has some incredibly insightful ideas about how politics and media interact in this country. Or maybe they're not insightful - I just happen to agree with them. But it's fascinating to me how I can go back and read Interface and find the seeds of many of my political rants. So, without further ado, another quote expressing this idea about harshness far more succinctly than I managed:

This that I am saying to you is not abuse. It's the truth. It's just that sometimes the truth is so harsh that when people hear it spoken, it sounds like abuse. And one of the problems we got in this country...is that everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say the things that are true.