Joe Epstein on Youth
More on our overconfident kids from a thoughful essay by Joseph Epstein:
So often in my literature classes students told me what they "felt" about a novel, or a particular character in a novel. I tried, ever so gently, to tell them that no one cared what they felt; the trick was to discover not one’s feelings but what the author had put into the book, its moral weight and its resultant power. In essay courses, many of these same students turned in papers upon which I wished to–but did not–write: "D-, Too much love in the home." I knew where they came by their sense of their own deep significance and that this sense was utterly false to any conceivable reality. Despite what their parents had been telling them from the very outset of their lives, they were not significant. Significance has to be earned, and it is earned only through achievement. Besides, one of the first things that people who really are significant seem to know is that, in the grander scheme, they are themselves really quite insignificant.
I really enjoyed the Epstein article and right after I finished e-mailed it to my own folks.
A.S. (a hikikomori from Russia), if you aren't doing so already, start reading the Antinatalist Blog.
I feel some kinship with Doug S. (especially his minimalist conception of "the good life" or "the necessities") but I think if I were in his situation I'd hate myself.
I think there is significant genetic variation unrelated to Executive Function specific to hunger and satiety signals.
When my brother hit puberty he started to spend most of his discretionary waking hours working on cars and in woodworking shops, and my Mom was constantly reminding him to stop to eat.
When I hit puberty I started to spend most of my discretionary waking hours with source code and mathematics, and in college many times I worked from one end of the day to the other without stopping to eat.
My brother and I have always been rail thin even though neither of us seem significantly above the U.S. mean in Executive Function.