I like what David Gerrold wrote. I'm quoting it below:
"I'm going to share this, even though it's probably going to get me in a lot of trouble.
Looking back at various situations in my life ... the people I've met, the people I've kept, the people I've left behind, the people I've learned from, here's some of what I've learned:
All of us are crazy. Choose whatever word you want. Deranged, neurotic, off-balance, eccentric, looney-toon, whatever.
Most of us have learned to channel our particular quirks and idiosyncrasies and fetishes into healthy outlets. I write. Others paint pictures. Or sing. Or act. Or cook. Or knit. Or not. Whatever. Some of us are two kittens short of a crazy cat lady. It doesn't matter. Most of us have learned how to get along enough to be part of whatever community accepts us and we do our best to support that community's survival.
And we call that life. And for most of us, that's a very comfortable comfort zone.
Actually, there's no such thing as a comfort zone. When you start measuring the conditions of your comfort zone, you find it isn't comfortable, it's cramped. It's really the zone of resignation, the zone of denial, the zone of what you are willing to settle for. It's where you gave up. Results come from the discomfort zone, the zone of risk. But most of us only go to the zone of risk when the alternative is even more uncomfortable.
Living in the comfort zone is actually impossible, because it's a zone of retreat -- and when you retreat from life, life pursues you anyway.
Along the way, somewhere on the journey between screaming one's way out of a comfortable vagina (the last real comfort in life) and the last rattle before the inevitable grave, usually in the first part of the journey but not always, bad things happen to us and we make a decision "never again" and we shut down that part of our soul. If enough bad things happen to us, we get hammered into post-dramatic stress-disorder.
Sometimes we can't help it. Sometimes it's chemical. Sometimes it's hardwired. Sometimes it's a physical trauma. Sometimes it's just because the anvil fell on us. And sometimes it's because we fall into a victim racket, a martyr narrative, a self-centered narcissistic view of life. (That latter one is one we all suffer from, we just express it in different ways, everything from humility to arrogance.)
And sometimes, some of us, get so far down that path, that we fall prey to the lunatic variation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
The Dunning-Kruger effect (paraphrasing here) is that some people are so stupid they don't know how stupid they are. Or, to put it another way, ignorant people are confident and assured in their ignorant beliefs. Educated individuals know enough to be skeptical and doubtful about absolutes and certainty. Ignorant people assume that the expressed doubts of an educated person, the cautious willingness to consider other possibilities means that the educated person is wrong and that their own confident assurance proves that they're correct in their ignorance. It's scary to see this in action.
The unnamed lunatic variation of the Dunning-Kruger effect (and this is one syndrome I truly do not want my name attached to) is that some people are so crazy, neurotic, insane -- or just bat-shit crazy -- that they cannot tell just how crazy, neurotic, insane, and bat-shit crazy they are.
Example: Several years ago, my son had a friend -- no, that's too cozy; let's call him an acquaintance -- an acquaintance who was severely bipolar. At the top of his cycle, he would tell me how much he admired Sean, what a good person Sean really is. At the bottom of his cycle, he would tell me the most horrific stories about what a dangerous monster my son is. (I know what kind of a monster my son is, I raised him.) What we were seeing in action was that his perceptions changed with the rise and fall of his cycle. At no point was this man ever aware that his own bipolar condition was affecting his ability to perceive what was happening.
Another example, from longer back: A woman I knew had her own set of issues -- very complex. Not just issues, subscriptions. No, a whole library. She could be charming and usually was. She was literate, passionate, and intelligent. She fancied herself a defender of the downtrodden. Of course, that played into her own martyr self-image -- she continually ended up in situations where others were happily nailing her to a cross and she was screaming about the injustice of it all. She never noticed how vindictive she was, and when it was pointed out to her, she always (self-righteously) pointed how how the victims of her wrath deserved it.
I could list a few other examples, but I don't want to fall into the trap of creating anecdata -- extrapolating the whole from one or two instances.
But what I've noticed -- and this is the lunatic version of the Dunning-Kruger effect -- is that some people cannot step back and look at their own behavior and the effect it has on others.
Here's a clue -- think about every problem you've ever had in your entire life. They all had one thing in common. YOU were there. The problems you have are the problems you chose, the problems you created by the way you chose to experience the situation. A problem is any situation you are putting up with or trying to change. A problem is created by the simple declaration: "I can't handle this." Because if you could handle it, it wouldn't be a problem.
But there are people on this planet who cannot look at themselves in that larger context -- possibly because it would mean giving up the victim story, possibly because they are simply unable to step back and open up that fabled "third eye" we call insight. Inner sight.
And that's the point of this essay. A person who cannot look at himself, cannot change. When you discover you have a person like that in your life, if he or she is going to stay stuck, you're going to stay stuck with them. And if the stuckness is particularly annoying, particularly damaging, particularly appalling, and if we are not trained to recognize the clinical elements of the condition, then the easiest description is "bat-shit crazy."
Fortunately, I have not had too many people like that in my life. Usually, I've been pretty good at keeping them from getting close enough to do much damage. Either I learned it early, or I have a natural reticence. (Would you believe I used to be painfully shy?) Whatever, there's a reason the moat around Electric Davidland has both piranhas and crocodiles.
You cannot have a healthy relationship with bat-shit crazy, with the bat-shit crazy variation of Dunning Kruger.
And that's really what we're all looking for in life -- healthy relationships.
Werner Erhard once said to a person having difficulty with a relationship: "Kill it or cure it."
As horrific as that sounds on first hearing, when you think about it, it's the only rational advice. If you cannot cure the relationship, why stay in it? Kill it.
And if that person is bat-shit crazy, well ... that's a pretty good indicator of what's possible and what's not.
If you're my friend, you've passed the test. Fortunately, most of the people on this planet are NOT bat-shit crazy. The nice thing about bat-shit crazy behavior is that it's almost as good as a warning sign.
Okay, here's the sidebar. Having said all that, it might seem like I am being harshly judgmental about the truly mentally ill. Actually, no. I have sympathy and compassion. I know that professional help, good therapists, and good coaches can make a profound difference.
But I'm NOT qualified or trained to be a therapist. And ... beyond that, even if I were, I would not be obligated to take on any client I chose not to, for whatever reasons.
The same applies to friendships. We choose our friends because they contribute to us and we contribute to them -- that's the healthiest relationship, true partnership. Giver/Giver. Any other variation, if there's a taker on either side of the equation, that's not healthy.
I say that a person's first responsibility is to take care of their own well-being. Otherwise they have nothing to give to anyone else. And that means monitoring and maintaining the healthiest relationships possible.
A realization I had recently and have begun sharing is this one: You are not in it for you. You are in it for the others. When you get that, all of your relationships shift. (I realized even before I adopted my son that the family I was creating wasn't for me, it was for him. That was the first inkling of the larger recognition of the nature of partnership and community.)"
