My thesis is that a plurality of families bring up children with suppressed personalities that can easily spiral into destructive patterns when faced with certain environmental variables such as stress, profit/money, loss, or loneliness.

We see a few of these explosions publicly (Elizabeth Holmes), but most are private affairs that are easily justified, yet rarely fully explained.

As a child, I remember my extended family having an argument about the merits of Blank Slate Theory, the modern version of which was introduced by John Locke:

Let’s suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? … To this I answer in one word, from EXPERIENCE.

This concept of a tabula rasa, meaning clean slate, can be attributed to Aristotle at the earliest, though it is present in most philosophies, ranging from Ibn Sina in the Muslim world and St. Thomas Aquinas in the Catholic world. It may sound obvious that infants are not born with a wealth of knowledge, but Aquinas faced fierce opposition in his time from Platonic philosophers who maintained the theory that the human mind came down from the heavens to join the human body. Throughout the Enlightenment, then, we see the discussion of what the implications of these theories lead to. Are we born as Noble Savages, as claimed by John Dryden and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, or as naturally warring, true savages, as claimed by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan? This then informs the methods we use to raise children, manage society, and plan for the future.

While I don’t remember the full conversation, this is probably what my family was referring to in their discussion of how to parent my younger cousin. A rambunctious and mean-spirited child, we needed a strong solution, and the particular school of slate theory one believed in would heavily influence the parenting decisions made. If some (or most) kids are presumed to be natural troublemakers, the goal of parenting would be to suppress and control those instincts. If we are instead born as empty slates, the goal of parenting would be to ensure those slates are filled with positive influences, experiences, and opportunities. As you can see, if one believes in this dichotomy, then getting it wrong (reversed) would have disastrous consequences.

My family picked the violent suppression option, and he turned out brash, boastful, rude, and violent. I think many children end up a similar way, though obviously not as extreme and perhaps more delayed (aforementioned environmental factors). It’s not groundbreaking to suggest that harsh corporal punishment results in maladjusted children. Rather, I think this pattern of behaviour suppression as a primary form of parenting was more common in North America than popular culture suggests, and since the negative effects appear in early adulthood, are not tracked as accurately. My cousin’s fine now, but he no longer talks to most of the family, including me.

My point is that I think many parents choose the more logical choice out of the false dichotomy, that being the suppression of bad behaviour. Obviously, we should stop our children from doing certain behaviour such as stealing or wanton violence. However, this is not enough. It is probably true that children possess a degree of natural troublemaking but also a degree of blank slate. Behaviour suppression needs to be met with the right kind of positive influence, experiences, and opportunities to do good (positive shaping).

I bring all of this up because for far too long I have seen friends and peers seemingly lose themselves when faced with extreme stress, profit, loss, or loneliness. I don’t claim to be a psychologist, and I don’t know each person’s personal life. But time and time again, it feels as if people’s “true” personality has been fragile all along due to a lack of positive shaping, and only hidden for years due to the suppression of antisocial behaviour in our controlled society for youth (pressure to be nice, pressure to follow the law). Explained more simply, I think crash-outs start early and the final straw breaks the camel’s back around early adulthood when someone is first exposed to things like gambling, startups, 300k TC packages, and radical social circle changes.

There are more subtle examples, but to demonstrate what I’m talking about, I think we all know someone who got into crypto/NFTs/forex/real estate and goes off the deep end. My hypothesis is that these folks have middle or upper middle class parents who’ve imbued their professional methodologies and mindsets onto their kids, either intentionally or unintentionally. This is fine amongst adults, but you cannot use software (professional mindset) as firmware (core personality). It will be buggy, dangerous, and unpredictable. Again, I have nothing wrong with passing down the grindset to your kids. But install it as software, not firmware.

To summarize, I think one of three explanations should explain this pattern of people seemingly breaking down (crashout) in early adulthood:

1. People are naturally antisocial/sociopathic. This probably isn’t true, at least at a high level.
2. I’m overly sensitive to behaviour that falls outside of normal anglosphere norms, and most agentic people are not. Things like hitting and running[1], shoplifting[2], fraud, and illegal labour practices. This has a high chance of being true, but I’m writing this essay in the hopes that I’m not surrounding myself with sociopathic people, but people who just needed more love and positive shaping early on. This is explanation 3,
3. Many parents believe that correcting bad behaviour is sufficient, with little priority put on positive shaping.

I’m not some herald of “good parenting.” Rather, I believe that we can be so much more effective and altruistic if people had better positive shaping in childhood, with a strong constitution and a desire to do good and protect the weak. Bad things happen in life, and it’s okay to break down. I hope that one returns from such challenges with an even better resolve to do good.

[1] I once got jeered at by my friends for trying to alert someone that their car was hit by another car in a parking lot. A bit of a reality shock.

[2] There is research suggesting that adolescent shoplifting is a sign of child maltreatment (Thronberry).

References https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/pinker/files/the_blank_slate_general_psychologist.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759451 Thornberry TP, Matsuda M, Greenman SJ, Augustyn MB, Henry KL, Smith CA, Ireland TO. Adolescent risk factors for child maltreatment. Child Abuse Negl. 2014 Apr;38(4):706-22. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2013.08.009. Epub 2013 Sep 24. PMID: 24075569; PMCID: PMC4056983.