I hate being right. It's a huge pain.

I mean sure, if I think it's cold outside and I put on a coat, that's fine. But you probably know that isn't what I mean.

Being right when other people aren't getting it is a burden.

It's what I do as a teacher, but in that situation, it's my job, and a student who comes to me for help usually isn't offended when that's what I offer.

Democracy needs a major update. A good amount of pop psychology even in 2021 is bogus. Groupthink is everywhere. Polarization is damaging. We have to understand each other.

(Those are some examples. I'm probably right about those things, vague as they may be. But we'll see!)

When I figure out a student's hangup with, say, a computer science concept, when it becomes clear to me why that student is confused, that does not make me any worse at computer science.

We have to stop thinking that by understanding others who we believe are on the wrong side, we are infecting ourselves with a moral contagion.

You will be no worse a person for understanding.

On the contrary, you will probably become a better person. (I know that's a bit presumptuous to say, but hear me out.)

Understanding a person hardly means approving of everything about them. Nor does it mean standing around watching them create havoc for others and doing nothing about it. Understanding means understanding. "Know thy enemy" does not mean "Help thy enemy destroy you." It means "The most effective, efficient, durable, and human solutions come from true understanding."

That should not have been confusing, but I try to understand why people are confused by it.

Most people still seem to be confused by it.

There's a difference between "closed-minded" and "winning this argument."

There's a difference between "defensive" and "critical of a criticism."

There's a difference between "being egotistical" and "putting the truth first."

When people get into arguments, they seem to rush straight into making all those mistakes I mentioned above, the ones from not noticing or not making sure to make those differences.

If someone's refusing to agree with you, it might be because their argument works when yours doesn't. They may see the overview with a level of detail and accuracy you haven't reached yet. That wouldn't be closed-minded.

Often people will end up saying it is closed-minded, but the curious thing is that their own closed-mindedness might be the issue. It's possible, of course, and even likely, for any person to think they're right simply because they're them and they aren't trying hard (read as "don't have to try hard") to process and verify alternatives. That tends to make you feel like you're right, even though it shouldn't. But the principle - this pattern, this flaw so common among humans - cuts both ways. Anyone could be failing to make the needed effort, whether they're calling someone closed-minded or being called closed-minded.

And it's similar with the other two I mentioned: "defensive" versus "critical of a criticism" and "being egotistical" versus "putting the truth first." You have to be careful not to be blind to the difference, when you're listening, and not to fail to make the difference, when you're the one talking.

Is it actually that difficult to look at things objectively?

Here's a trick I learned in a poetry class. You might be surprised. It's... amazingly useful outside of poetry.

When you read a poem, you're aware that there's figurative language - that is, you aren't supposed to take everything literally - there's "poetic license." So immediately, most people are guessing and second-guessing and anticipating and interpreting and reaching conclusions. What does it MEAN? Right?

You don't know what it means, and there's a good chance neither did the poet. Start by admitting that you DON'T know what it MEANS, and may never know.

Now, here's the fun bit. Read the poem perfectly literally.

See it as if every word must be taken concretely, no exaggeration, no metaphor, nothing. Imagine it all as literally and vividly as you can, no matter how bizarre.

When people say what they think, that's how you should listen. Refrain from leaping to conclusions about WHY they'd be saying that or thinking that, or what they REALLY mean. Suspend any paranoias about insinuation or condescension or insult or the right side or the wrong side. Listen to what they say, and evaluate it word for word, phrase for phrase, sentence for sentence. For each one: 1) Is that a fact? 2) Could it by some unexpected fluke BE a fact, maybe? 3) Would it make sense that this person BELIEVES it's a fact?

Quit trying to pin people to motives when they speak. You can pin dead moths to a corkboard. Don't pin people.

I'm not saying be unaware. No way. We'll get to that in a second. Just stop trying to catch people out by stabbing through them. Put the pins to one side. Pay closer attention instead. You don't know what the poem means, but you're reading it objectively.

The next thing you do after reading the poem perfectly literally is you start thinking about all that other stuff - reading between the lines. Once you know what's truly there, you are equipped to bring your own mind and heart to the scene and complete it. With a real person, you have the incredible advantage of being able to ask them point-blank what they meant and why they said it. Allow them to answer those questions. Don't try to answer those questions for them. At this point, you have done your bit and are free to read between the lines as much as you want. Great work!

But if you skimp on the first step, you'll probably find yourself quite lost, or reaching totally unsubstantiated conclusions.

So... assuming what I've described above is a process for being more objective, what do you say? Is this very difficult?

One thing to understand about me is I grew up in an environment in which everyone was always outraged.

When you get angry, I will do my best to understand why and do whatever I can that makes the most sense. (I like to solve problems.)

But understand that I find outrage unhinged. That isn't from lack of experience or exposure or coping skills. It's from an excess of those.

I differentiate myself from others by not being like that.

Maybe that isn't always best, but you know what? It often is.

And I am finite. I do not have to be the be-all end-all. It's ok for my take to be one take, and not fully complete in itself.

Everyone is given a job. I mean, did you pick this person you are?

You help the world along in specific ways that you don't entirely control.

Sometimes the thing you have to say is not the thing you want to say, or would prefer, but what you have. This is the thought I have. This is the change I make. It could be a few bits of information flowing. It could even be wrong. But here: it's what I have.

If you ever feel discouraged by how much more others are getting through or getting to, remember that for any kind of accomplishment you notice, that person had to make sacrifices. Usually that isn't the part you hear about. You don't hear about the times someone got furious with them because they didn't pick up the phone, or the times there was a deadline more urgent but less important and that thing blew up for several people at once as a result of neglect, or the legitimate doubts about the value of what they were doing compared to other life directions they might still take.

You don't hear about the arterial plaque that accumulated while someone sat many hours and days and months in a row grinding away to build this talent. You don't hear about the repetitive strain injuries that could have destroyed a career, or did destroy one before it started. You never hear about the books a person would have read while rereading a classic twenty times so impressively, or the lives they could have saved, or friends they could have made instead. I'm not trying to undermine accomplishment at all. Just remember that everything comes with something else. Usually you only know about one aspect or side of many.

It's easy to look around and see accomplishment everywhere and feel... overwhelmed, as if the average successful person were good at all of these things you are seeing, rather than one or two at a time (in a lifetime), and many, many, many sacrifices you don't see in order to get there.

We might call this notion the Mythical Success Savant, this feeling that a truly, respectably successful spirit-person hides behind the examples you see, and accounts for many of them at once. This idea that you're up against a many-armed, many-headed ideal - hello, Mythical Success Savant - that makes you endlessly not good enough. The CEO, the scientist, the painter, the hobby baker turning a side gig into a main gig. They aren't all the same. Each one is only one, a highly finite and imperfect person, and you are generally missing the warning labels, provisos, and other costs. Some traits and habits tend to facilitate success and translate across domains, that's true. But you can always learn and develop more of those. Nothing is stopping you from learning how to be more successful.

I don't like to follow overused maxims when I don't consider them wise.

It isn't that I don't care what people think. First of all, we all do on multiple levels, and second, we should. It's that I get tired of caring what other people think, and it occurs to me that some of it is uninformed at best (or downright stupid, to be blunt).

Also, no amount of caring what people think will ever make those people me, and I am the one who chooses my actions in the end.

TL;DR Care what other people think, but make your own choices.

People say the only thing you get for being right is being right. It can certainly feel that way. I think often we prioritize getting things right because we value truth and being practical, yet we end up hating the fact we're right, because it's such a nuisance - our hard work is not only unappreciated but makes people upset, they don't see it, etc. But being right isn't the only thing that comes with being right. You may also get:

• Practice
• (ie, figuring stuff out, verifying, communicating, persuading)
• All the potentials of knowing how this works
• (including surprise links to similar patterns)
• Respect, recognition, thanks, jobs
• (if people aren't too resentful, and see some value for themselves)
• Responsibility
• (knowing the truth can be a kind of burden, but a good one)

By the time someone can say to you "I hate that you're right," they're over the hump. But part of the responsibility - yours - is finding ways to get them over said hump without hating you for it. Still, it's a two-way street. People have just as much responsibility not to hate anyone for being right, or even just for being honest and trying. Hating someone because they think something is not great. But sometimes it's your role to be the ambassador and help them not hate you for thinking something.

The next time you're starting to hate being right, remember the above.

When you don't have faith in yourself, and you doubt everything, you will eventually notice something. There are things about yourself that you can doubt all day, but they don't budge.

There. You have an anchor.

You didn't have to invent anything, or talk yourself up, or con yourself, or brag.

There's this thing about you that's unassailable. It doesn't even matter whether you have faith. There it is.

I don't advise not caring what anyone thinks. It seems to be reactionary, or else the result of years of experience with people, rules unspoken and not, boundaries, rights, etc. If you don't have to care what anyone thinks because you know this is all within your rights and you can do this on autopilot - then good for you. But a child should not attempt to live on autopilot. And if your airline pilot is bragging about being on autopilot all the time, that would understandably make you nervous and perhaps want to use another airline next time.

What I do advise is self-compassion. Self-compassion means accepting how you feel and trying to understand it. Then you work with it.

This is what you want others to do for you, and if you're empathetic, this is what you want to do for others. But if you are self-compassionate, you do not need others to be doing this for you, or only very rarely. Generally you are content to understand yourself (and others) and adjust things as needed. You don't need other people to become yes-people, reinforcing all your upsets and suspicions, signing off on every emotion you feel as if it were the perfect response bar none.

Oh come on. Right? Emotions are rather primitive, at least at the core. Some are helpful. Others really aren't. Every emotion evolved for a purpose, but when they occur to us, they are imperfect approximations of that purpose and often entirely maladaptive. Adults need to learn to manage that and see there's a difference, and act accordingly, to the best of our ability.

If you are self-compassionate, you don't particularly need someone to validate your feelings. You already do that. It would be nice if they did, and if no one did, it could hurt your feelings. But you don't chastise yourself for this. It's perfectly normal. You understand and accept it. Even if it weren't perfectly normal, you would understand and accept it. And because you don't particularly need someone to validate your feelings, you don't act as if it's a crime when someone invalidates your feelings. It might be a little insensitive or rude, but so would lashing out at someone for it. And a person has the right to validate, not validate, or invalidate whatever emotion they want. They aren't at your beck and call that way. A person in a state of self-compassion doesn't even have to think this, they find it immediately and intuitively obvious. You do not need someone to approve of how you feel, and if they imply it isn't how you feel, or cannot be, that's their mistake, but not a crime.

It is, of course, far preferable if we understand each other.

But self-compassion already gives you an abundance of understanding, and you can extend that to others even when they don't extend it to you. That's a beautiful thing. Someone less self-compassionate and other-compassionate may feel this is akin to being cheated or used, but that is not so. Understanding it not a gift to others. It's first of all a gift to ourselves. Others benefit from the improved version of us in the world. But we are enriched at the source.

When you feel unappreciated, you could think, well, that's because what I'm doing isn't all that good. Or you could think, I'm not bucking to silent expectation and unvoiced, possibly imaginary rejection. I follow my light.

The funny thing? They're both perfectly legitimate reactions.

Don't let someone tell you it's straightforward to grok the difference between where one is needed ("what I'm doing sucks, let's improve this") more and the other is needed ("to hell with your judgments") more, unless they give you a straightforward method for differentiating, one that you can safely test.

Sometimes you need to up your game. In fact, that might not feel good, but it's almost always good advice. So follow your light, but also up your game.

Take the strongest, most powerful, most persuasive strongman in the world. Put him in outer space without a space suit. Don't really do it. Use your imagination for God's sake. Now let's ask ourselves whether "weakness" is objective or subjective. His lungs are a weakness. His internal pressure is a weakness. His need for a certain temperature is a weakness. Now almost everything about him is weakness. There is no way he'll survive if left to his own devices like this. Not even a few minutes.

The next time you're sure something about you is a weakness, imagine the dictator in outer space. "Weakness" is relative, often enough a value judgment, and definitely depends on context.

I used to stand in line to order herbal tea and try not to show I was hyperventilating, and when it was time to order, I couldn't get words out right, which was humiliating and got me some really disgusted and suspicious reactions. People absolutely look down on people who show too much social anxiety and may even think you're a creep, especially if you're a guy.

I worked with an older student with dyscalculia who would start pouring in sweat when he tried to count, from all the accumulated shame of schooling and working at a cash register and not knowing how much money he had or who was tricking him. That's social anxiety with an easily identifiable cause. After a few weeks working with me once or twice a week, he was relaxed, better at counting (by 1s and 2s and 5s and 10s) and simple math operations, and didn't drip sweat on the table anymore, or show any sign of that.

Nobody wants to feel socially anxious - or, in vague terms, "insecure."

We should pause before we use "insecure" as an insult. That isn't really fair unless the person is being a big jerk. "Insecure" is not an insult or even abnormal, and I'm not entirely sure that it's appropriate to see it as weakness, either.

Some people are going to look down on you, and most people will some of the time. It happens, right? There are moments when we seem less than we usually are.

IMO the best scenario would be to know that someone's looking down on you (you might occasionally need such information), but not really be bothered by it.

Looking down, looking up. They're just emotions. Curious to note. Not nearly as significant as our old monkey brains want us to believe.

Social anxiety has something in common with paranoia and schizophrenia. Your detectors are at full volume. You pick up on little signals that everyone else either can't see at all, doesn't notice, or chooses to ignore. Sometimes, these tell you useful, verifiable tidbits. Other times, you're just too high-strung, and you're picking up noise and reading it like tea leaves, seeing faces in the clouds.

There have been many times in my life when I've had an active imagination about what groups of people were saying about me to each other. Mostly it's a type of daydreaming, reflection, introspection, and brainstorming. It gives me ideas, both about the people and about what I could do to clarify things.

There are times I get delusions of self-reference - my mind interprets all kinds of little things as about me - people reacting to me, instead of to themselves or the environment - little details in my surroundings that feel like they were hidden there by a diety for me to pick up on and read as personalized messages and warnings.

I recognize that these mental states can verge on psychosis. But generally I know the difference between what I actually know, and what I only hypothesize, suspect, or fear. It can be very difficult to tell the difference sometimes, believe me. But all mental health professionals I've talked to have called my reality check "excellent."

One natural strength I get from social anxiety is reading people. That's something I've relied on in my tutoring work. And I've noticed something - I want to say this in a humble way, as it is decidedly not about me - but at almost every tutoring center I've worked at, the top tutor there had obvious social anxiety. We often have a superpower for reading people and understanding. Even if we don't know how to respond (we could be very anxious), we're often very good at picking up on little clues about how you feel and what you think. This isn't just a personal theory or an observation about coworkers - psychologists have found it true. 

Social anxiety and empathy are positively correlated on an emotional level, as well.

Another strength is that I'm very, very often running through possible conversations in my head. The easiest aspect of fiction for me to write is the dialogue. For me, writing a story means writing conversations between people, then filling in settings and actions. When I start writing dialogue, it writes itself. And I've gotten nice compliments on the realism.

I recognize that I write too much, and sometimes in a one-track or overly diffuse and hard to understand way, on social media. And I'm constantly acutely embarrased by it. Or ashamed, humiliated, worried, sometimes downright exhausted by all this. But... after all my efforts to be more normal, I feel like this is just kind of how I am and I hope people get it, and that I'm absolutely not trying to be jerk. The more words I type your way, the more that's a compliment... even if it doesn't seem to be.

Insecurity often has components of mental illness, or just not being quite normal. To hold everyone to the standard that we should all be equally confident, and be judged on how well we manage that - that is not good social or cultural policy in the end, I think.

I feel like talking about this today because I don't think public awareness of social anxiety is nearly as advanced as it is for introversion.

Many good, empathetic people suffer from a misconception. It's totally understandable that we have this misconception, but it's still a problem.

We've had experiences of someone yelling at us, and making us feel really bad, and maybe we were hurt or angry in that moment, maybe we felt it was somehow unfair, but we thought about it, realized they had a point, and incorporated their feedback into our lives, becoming better people.

Sound familiar at all?

Let me zoom in on a detail.

"maybe we were hurt or angry in that moment, maybe we felt it was somehow unfair, but we thought about it"

That's perspective-taking.

"making us feel really bad"

That's our own personal conscience, the other person's persuasive delivery, and our natural capacity for empathy.

When someone attacks you for what they see as an error you made, it takes empathy to redirect any hurt, frustration, anger, or sense of unfairness that rises up in you, and focus on connecting with and understanding that other person despite these feelings.

It takes empathy. And you are an empathetic person.

You forget that someone with less empathy will probably just feel hurt and angry (because attacked) and think you're a moron and their enemy. They are naturally missing the link you followed to your insight here.

They will not learn from you when you attack them. You will drive them further away from seeing.

Remember this. It will probably not change in our lifetimes. Not unless we reformat ourselves genetically for a new human nature. In other words, it will not change in our lifetimes.

If you didn't fully understand this before, now you're closer to understanding it. You're quite welcome.

Use what you know? Please, for the sake of the future of humanity.

When someone is angry with you, it takes extra empathy to see it their way, rather than as a vicious, unbidden, selfish, low, unfair attack from an enemy. Even very empathetic people can find it difficult not to get defensive or feel the person is being unnecessarily mean.

If you're angrily criticizing someone who has less empathy than others, and probably criticizing them all the more harshly because their behavior is probably worse, you're asking them to respond to you as if they have substantially more of what they have substantially less of.

You're trying to fix them by hitting what's broken.

This is one reason psychopaths/sociopaths often cannot seem to learn from punishment. The punishment seems like an attack from an enemy who pretends to be better than them (and pretends that this "consequence" is natural and inevitable and undeniably right, rather than artificially imposed and a bit of an experiment or crapshoot). The angry person pretends to be better but is, in the unempath's eyes, a sanctimonious hypocrite and no better, and probably weaker and more foolish. This sets them up to like you even less, listen to you even less, want to launch some kind of counterattack, and possibly turn against society at large.

That isn't really the thought process you want when you take someone to task. But it's what you'll likely induce when you attack someone who's too lacking in empathy.

(I know this from reading the experts, from dealing extensively with abusive people including standing up to them and influencing them, and also because I feel this way myself at times, and it's empathy that allows me to rise above it.)

To influence almost anyone well, you need them emotionally on your side, on some level. It's just a prerequisite.

Getting yelled at, feeling that was maybe a little mean but we get it, fixing our behavior because we've learned our lesson - this is what empathetic people do.

(Sometimes we then do unto others who are making similar mistakes, assuming that's what'll teach them. Ideally we'd be so kind and understanding we'd neither misstep nor need harsh words to recognize it and course correct, apologizing and making amends as needed. But even the most empathetic people have occasionally failed to see a thing fully until the pressure was slathered on with anger. Subsequently, we may find ourselves assuming this is what's needed when others aren't responding. Occasionally it is, but it probably works better the more empathetic the person receiving the intervention. And the more empathetic they are, the more they'll probably respond to gentler feedback, obviating the harshness and making it inefficient, gratuitous, or unskilled. This probably works best with normal people who have repeatedly not improved, maybe because they're distracted or less sensitive in some area, but who fully possess the empathy to eventually understand the criticism, the anger behind it, how to deescalate it, and what they can and should do to make all this better. But that person sounds pretty empathetic already, and it's quite likely the issue is a communication problem.)

One way empathetic people have often failed to understand others is that people with sufficiently impaired empathy probably do not work this way. They need a different approach.

I'm almost above all else a proponent of good, wise, balanced, constructive, curious, empathetic, open-minded criticism. Everyone's got stuff they're unhappy about. The world is full of hard struggles to take up as good causes. And when your toothache gets bad enough, you will inevitably start feeling that toothaches are just the worst and most maddening of all the kinds of pain possible. This might seem short-sighted or self-absorbed, and even might be, but pain reminds us to fix what's damaging us first, lest we lose our abilities or our lives. An infected tooth can after all kill, as would losing too many teeth have done in prehistory. The pain isn't there to make us wimps or selfish or moral or tough. It's there to save us.

Not every pain is an existential threat. Sometimes it's an existential threat, contrastingly, to let your pain distract or stop you. As the Serenity Prayer suggests, it takes "the wisdom to know the difference." And wisdom is not automatically available to everyone at birth in equal amounts. We're born slightly different and develop even more differently. We can and should expect to see some who are wiser than others, or wise in one way, foolish in another. Noticing this in the wilderness of daily living should not surprise us much.

By the time you feel it's important to admit and talk about some pain, whether it's medical or social or anything else, it's usually bothering you or someone you care about enough to make you a little frantic, and not necessarily as rational as you would be otherwise.

The stigma against speaking up and speaking out about what bothers you (especially you yourself: and this is why allies are so important) is therefore not only that 1) humans tend to automatically prefer victim blaming ("you must have done something wrong to bring this on yourself"; this belief allows me to feel more secure, because by the unconscious and rather lazy logic, I'm safe as long as I'm not an idiot making obvious mistakes like this "victim") and 2) the status quo magnetizes brains, distorting or damping out some of their perceptions, making it difficult to see/recognize the causes of others' pain even when we're told point blank and 3) people interpret others' victimhood in the frame of resource fairness, as an imposition on them and an unfair claim for special treatment or even an excuse, but also, crucially, that 4) when you're in pain, you're likely to speak in a way that's charged.

Exaggeration, simplification, cherry picking, magical thinking, emotional reasoning, defense mechanisms, and the whole range of human biases - these are no less likely in someone in pain. (Putting aside limited benefits like "depressive realism," which is the tendency to be in some ways more objective when unhappy - feeling threatened usually triggers our defense mechanisms, which, while they evolved to save us just like pain, are primitive biases and a factory of delusions.) You can expect a person upset to be about as irrational as others, and probably more so. They may be angry, and the anger probably isn't perfectly accurately, precisely, provably, reliably, undeniably, or even fairly directed. There will be some scatter; it may look/feel more like a sawed-off shotgun blast than a sniper bullet. They can also seem selfish or self-absorbed, for the natural reason previously mentioned - pain evolved to tend to collapse us in on ourselves, to focus us on our own problems so we can fix the situation.

Choosing to focus on others instead of your own pain can be a super useful way to deal with it; but the same tactic can also kill you. Expect people not to always know which is right.

The solutions we need most aren't always straightforward or visible at all. Not finding a way to repair in spite of all the pain and focus can exhaust us on every level. Sometimes we need to talk about problems not only for connection or protection, but to find out from others any factors and details and solutions we're missing. There's a conventional wisdom against giving unsolicited advice, but sometimes people fall into exhaustion and hopeless mindsets. Sometimes it might be your responsibility to risk being douchey and give advice where it isn't asked, because the alternative is watching a friend remain hopeless and gradually succumb or self-destruct.

People need to make effort for themselves, but a person who has lost hope may need your help. The risk of not helping them see from another perspective, and notice possible solutions or measures, is greater than the risk of seeming annoying or full of yourself for giving advice. Getting offended by advice is also rather childish; if it's bad advice or the person really isn't listening and is advising simply as a casual brush-off or put down, that's obnoxious. But I find it's important to recognize the good aspects of thoughts and efforts. Any kind of advice may qualify as some kind of attempt to help, and that's a thought that should count for something.

There is a presumptuousness in any person believing they know - or might know - what another person doesn't - ESPECIALLY if that person really needs to know it. A person not knowing something they desperately need to know - something others casually happen to notice - is a vulnerable and possibly pathetic picture. This in no way lowers the value of imparting that information, or trying.

Sometimes the best way to do so is with nuance and balance. Other times we've got to be really punchy. Yet other times we should wait for a good moment. Which is better when is not something anyone is born knowing the first thing about.

Good criticism essentially means "the wisdom to know the difference."