It’s always crucial to look in the mirror. It’s always the hardest thing to do to look in the mirror.
Someone raised an excellent point to me about my previous piece on my big pet-peeve, which is irrationality. They noted that my second sentence in the piece could be re-written to say:
Irrationality bothers me a lot, but I think that I have an irrational fixation on it.
That’s perfectly true, and it shows my blindness to my own irrationality. So I hope to participate as little as possible (in the future) in a fixation on others’ irrationality that’s itself irrational.
This was a real blindspot on my part. I want to sincerely apologize. It was very hypocritical, very irrational, and very ridiculous for me to not see my own irrationality.
After this blindspot was pointed out to me, I thought about these four questions, all four of which I hope to ask psychologists about in future articles:
Why is it such a prominent feature of humanity to be unable to self-reflect?
Under what circumstances is it ever rational to invest attention in political things, or invest emotion in political things, or get worked-up about political things?
Why do people invest attention in political things, and invest emotion in political things, and get worked-up about political things?
Why do people get so worked-up about irrationality/injustice to the point where they get irrationally worked-up about these things, like I do?
I have no idea about any of these, but I hope to interview psychologists and find out the answers.
Politics is a special domain that I get worked-up about. Hence the second question. It’s hard for me to think of a non-political form of irrationality that would bother me today. (I used to get worked-up about religious beliefs, but that was years ago.)
The fourth question presumably has two aspects:
(1) why some people get so angry about irrationality/injustice
(2) why some people express anger that others would have suppressed
Russell Barkley gave a comment that might shed some light on (2), though I await expert comment on this (I added hyperlinks):
ADHD is not a mood disorder. It’s a failure-to-regulate-mood disorder. It’s a self-regulation-of-emotion disorder. The emotions the individuals are having are quite normal. But most people would have suppressed them—would have inhibited, moderated, self-calmed, self-soothed, and then brought those emotions in-line with their longer-term welfare in that situation. That is what the person with ADHD cannot do as well: inhibit, self-calm, self soothe, contemplate, and moderate that emotion.
So if you’re an adult with ADHD you may find yourself sitting in a business-meeting where you’ve just been insulted. You are much more likely to leap across the table and throttle your supervisor. And you will be fired. Everybody else felt as you felt, thought what you thought—and summarily suppressed it. In their mind, they throttle the supervisor. But it is not released to be expressed through the spinal cord into real behavior/action. And now you understand the difference. The mood is the same. The expression of the mood is not. There is no stopping to self-regulate the emotional state.
So we now know that emotional impulsiveness/dysregulation are just as much a part of adult ADHD as are inattention, poor working-memory, poor time-management, and impulsive decision-making. And now you know why. It is the inability of this anterior cingulate to govern that limbic system. So that emotions, once provoked, get expressed without the top-down management that other people would be doing: using the frontal lobe to reach in, take hold, and fine-tune the limbic system so that it is more appropriate for social goals.
I haven’t looked into this, so I can’t comment on how accurate this idea is.
I want to interview Amy Arnsten if at all possible, since she’s a fascinating expert on the prefrontal cortex.
Disorders cause us to grapple with the concept of personal responsibility. In Barkley’s above example, someone throttles their supervisor and gets fired for it. Are they responsible? Morally? Legally? Look at this image that Barkley’s comment was based on (I haven’t looked into this yet, so please be cautious):
I want to be very clear that I haven’t vetted this yet, so please take this with a massive grain of salt until I’ve looked into it.
But if you look at the image on the left, something appears to activate in the normal controls that doesn’t activate for people with ADHD.
I have a diagnosis of autism, as well as a diagnosis of ADHD. I will definitely write about these two fascinating disorders in future articles.
But there is a very profound point to be made. I have a tendency to view myself as not being responsible for X/Y/Z on account of my disorders. When people blame me for my behavior, I think about how unfair/cruel/ignorant they’re being. But I need to look in the mirror on this point and ask: “Am I also unfair/cruel/ignorant when I blame others for what their brains do?”
It’s a two-way street. I can’t suggest that others are being unfair/cruel/ignorant for blaming me for what my brain does and then turn around and get furious at them for what their brains do. That’s complete hypocrisy, and I need to make sure not to fall into that trap.
I don’t know what sort of neurological facts would delineate who’s “responsible” and who isn’t. But I need to always look in the mirror, going forward, and try to make sure that I don’t shield myself, irrationally, from self-criticism.
If it’s unfair/cruel/ignorant when they do it, then it’s unfair/cruel/ignorant when I do it.
Great article! I too have a lot of these same issues. It takes a lot of humility to admit this kind of stuff and I applaud you for it.