Home is where the Bubble is

Gamma Parenting Teaches the Fundamental Importance of Courage

So far, it appears personal, practical posts work better than purely abstract themes. Writing from the personal is unfamiliar - the Band and other online activities are always externally focused. It does raise things I haven’t thought about in decades. And hindsight attention brings up connections that weren’t noticed at the time. That’s where the current day practical value comes from. For example, Gamma parenting has been mentioned in passing a few times. But it took understanding SSH profiles for an incomprehensible history to make total sense. Bizarre attitudes and motivations become coherent. Looking back, a lot of useful observations and traits came from having to react to that.

The SSH was so instantly compelling because it crystallized things I could see. It’s obvious once pointed out although that doesn’t stop opposition Objections to the SSH follow two staged triggers. The first is that people fall into predictable patterns. Comes from the same place as being triggered by the NPC meme. For the same reasons. That part was already obvious - my entire ORR unintuitive social process was built on it. The second is that there are only six real categories. The thing is, is you don’t think through ego, it bears out observationally. It’s like a behavioral substructure that manifests individually depending on context and personality.

I was aware of recurring patterns, but my the family boomer didn’t seem at all like the tedious smart boys at school. Successful, aggressive and quick to rage in the home… What I missed was the sub/superstructure relation. Only looking at superficial personality and contextual details, not the identical base profiles underneath. The purpose of the SSH being to understand and navigate others is not an exaggeration.

Substack posts aren’t the place for deep personality analyses. Better to look at one Gamma aspect and how that drives outcomes. For the Gamma and non-Gamma alike. Children have no control over the people and contexts that imprint their emerging consciousnesses. Emotional response patterns are internalized before self-awareness. Parents are initially trusted as universal authorities. When the culture in the home is a projected extended delusion bubble, this is inopportune. Social reality is either weirdly frozen or spasmodically incoherent. Emotional incontinence and outright lying are common. Projection means you’re never seen objectively or empathetically. Solipsism means they don’t really care. This easily bleeds into resentment or even dislike. Endless sub-topics, so start with a big one…

Courage. Or lack thereof.

A central Gamma pillar is fear. Lack of courage is the better way to put it, because they aren’t always consciously fearful. Some probably are, but successful ones can control their immediate environment enough for moments of security. At least temporarily. Even there, they’re drawn to cortisol triggers from beast media or Pedowood. Anyhow, what defines them is failure to overcome fear - to act courageously - in big moments. Real significance is irrelevant, just where it falls on the personal all-consuming emotion scale. In any context - physical, social, professional, personal, whatever. What matters is that when it counts personally, they, to quote Piglet, blinch.

This must be psychologically awful. The delusion bubble is in part to protect the ego from facing the wages of cowardice. One recurring tactic is to always pose as blameless. Any and every failure is always on someone else. But all the different tricks point in the same direction. The upside is that hesitancy, lack of boldness, credulous comfort, and all the other Gamma choices get less damning explanations. The downside is that the freedom from psychic pain comes at the cost of reality awareness. If failures aren’t correctly assessed, there’s no way to grow from them. There’s not even conscious recognition that there’s need for growth. No way not to repeat the same unproductive patterns. So the bubble just thickens. In the family case, one driver appears to be friction between [awkward social paralysis + system reverence] against [desire to be “cool“]. A particular boomer form of Gamma, where the cool that was never attained is forever defined in juvenile terms. But the options are endless.

Trapped by fear in an endless vortex of never-changing discontent and fantasy sounds like a circle of Hell. A delusion bubble is a fake smoke screen - either for others or the self. In that innermost just gotta know core, there’s a void. And the fear-stasis-delusion matrix ensures it’s never filled. Laid out like that, the breeding ground for resentment for those more adroit is obvious. Growing up with rabid hatred for confident men with Alpha or Sigma traits shouldn’t have surprised. Nor the exception being those smooth and savvy enough to curry appropriate favor. It fed two sporadic projections onto a child.

The maddeningly unshakable assumption that the Gamma’s pathologies all apply to you

and

The expectation to do/be specific things the Gamma blinched at.

I was totally opposite. A socially clueless outlier with some significant innate abilities and insatiable curiosity. The lack of instinct gets presented as a negative because it presented a considerable social obstacle. But the small upside is lack of contextual inhibitions. If I don’t stand out negatively for some reason, there’s no inherent sense that I “don’t belong” somewhere. I may soon find out empirically, but natural reluctance to enter scenarios has never been there. The upshot is I’m pretty socially fearless. Everything is just patterns of obstacles and opportunities to navigate and I got really good at that. I wouldn’t have had the experiences I’ve had were more intuitive. Of course, none of this is noted by a Gamma. Even trying to explain triggers accusations of lying or talking nonsense. Existence is as a figment in the overlap between projection, delusion, and solipsism.

To be fair, the need to observe before acting could look like fear or insecurity on first glance. A couple [minor in reality but felt big at the time] social traumas taught the importance of figuring out landscapes. There’s still hesitation when thrown into something new. This care triggers the first wave of Gamma projection - absence of courage. The false assumptions are a) you must be feeling the same social anxiety the Gamma feels and b) they must rage and try and shame you to “overcome” it. Rational or empathetic connections are impossible because they involves learning. Which the fear-stasis-delusion matrix blocks.

Obviously ORR socialization has the exact opposite intention.¹ Lack of courage avoids taking part. ORR discovers ways to make taking part possible. Once the read is done, social action follows. Which was the intent all along. And proceeding from understanding means already attuned to the tone of the room. It’s easy to spot new opportunities from inside. Learning and performance curves are steep.

James Ward, Ignorance, Envy and Jealousy, 1837, oil on canvas

This triggers the second wave of Gamma projection - resentment. There’s no evolving coherence in Gamma thought because it’s either frozen bubble or sudden trigger. Forget pride in your kid figuring out and overcoming. There’s no noticing. Every success and accomplishment - on your own terms - appears as a shocking unprecedented development. That lights up all the Gamma’s past failures of courage and things they didn’t experience. The cruel irony is that prioritizing performance was a response to the Gamma criticism. That’s the thing about living in dishonesty - you don’t know when or how, but it will bite you.

Even the Gamma’s terms and parameters are skewed. Constant obsession with how they think you all look to “others”. To me, the idea of social fear seemed bizarre. A category error. So they laughed at me. Yes it sucked. But I survived, and I learned not to do that again. What is there that’s frightening? Unpleasantness is not worthy of “fear-inducing”. Pay attention and don’t be self-absorbed. Anyone who develops high-status socialization patterns through empirical learning will have boatloads of ghastly failures. Paralytic fear is objectively far more painful than some faux-pas. One you learn to shrug off with a self-depreciating joke and note not to repeat. The other twists your reality into something fake and unfulfilling.

Stick to what you know you can do and drift into the maybe zone strategically. What can’t isn’t worth considering. Avoids things like obsessing over the news in lieu of making things better where you can. Obviously use situational awareness to sidestep dangers, and when there’s no other way out, go down swinging. You never know when something can turn. Fear doesn’t fit anywhere.

The tl,dr is there are problems when the domestic delusion bubble collides with social and personal realities. The imprinted formative perspective you bring into the world is a Gamma one. And if you’re not Gamma, there’s a sort of cognitive dissonance that doesn’t help lack of social intuition. it can feel vaguely psychotic as home nonsense is contradicted by observation and experience. But since there is no possibility for the rational, objective, or empathetic engagement that would improve things, three lessons are leaned in succession.

First, move carefully.

As much as possible be silent and traceless. Keep motivations and movements opaque. Take your shots when you can get them, but generally minimize being around. Have places known only to yourself. And sweat the details. Dot all i’s and cross all t’s to keep the logical high ground.

Miniature from Saint Augustin, De Civitate Dei, French translation by Raoul de Presles (1316-1382), parchement, Bibliothèque nationale de France, f. 370r

Second, judge for yourself.

The starter package is faulty and the updates and patches make it worse. When home advice is consistently tone-deaf and unhelpful, there’s no choice. If everyone else is consistently unreliable and you’re right sometimes, going with you is the logical play. And practice → improvement. Stay objective and high-performance is possible.

Third, stop caring.

No one exhibits any care about who you are. If the resentful kibitzing is constantly contradicted by empirical realities, who cares what it says. Without truth value, it’s rhetorical noise. And we all know what to do with rhetorical noise.

Peter Max, Discovery, 1992, serigraph in colors on paper.

The truth is it does take a while to get there and it’s not an easy slog. Unintuitive outlier != sociopath. Children embrace parental wisdom because of a deep imprinted trust that’s probably biological. Even when disinterest and rejection are fully accepted intellectually it takes time for the emotions to shift. But what’s the alternative? I can see a lot of different ways Gamma parent breaks really badly, and no scenarios with no damage at all. Internal self-reliance and what has been called “pathological” autonomy seem relatively mild. They’ve actually proven very useful socially. But even they have downsides that are obvious in my posts. The larger point is that the Litany is right. Fear really is a mind killer. And it is a choice. Not everyone is highly courageous or physically formidable, but life is filled with small moments of decision that aren’t dangerous. Gamma failure of courage is totally disconnected from threat assessment. And a life defined by it doesn’t just corrode the lion’s psyche.

It’s a real load for the kids.

Alexander Averin, Children Playing at the Beach, oil on canvas

1. Dying on retarded hills is another Gamma constant. There’s an inflatable punching dummy aspect to [incapable of learning]. For a child, repeated insistence on something inapplicable is the fastest track to winning total disregard. Quicker even than terrible social advice because it’s also murderously infuriating.