community dynamics

Hi Looby, Thank you for the work your doing elaborating on the people-care component of change making.

I live and work in a small rural intentional community and educational research cooperative in America. We take in a handful of interns and apprentices every year and provide a very intimate hands-on learning of core material and social skills necessary for people to become effective, self directed and engaged participants in the world.

Increasingly we are finding an increasing pattern of young people being unable to take responsibility for themselves, or to be autonomous self-directed responsible people, and having a positive pro-active attitude.

I believe this strongly tied to a few psychological dynamics:

intense internalized and subconscious sense of privilege (perhaps, that other people will figure out the problems around them, so they don't have to)

lack of self-worth (not valuing the life they have been given, and so being willing to waste it away)

pathological aversion to authority ("your not the boss of me" attitude, partnered with an inability to understand that some people inherently have authority in certain arenas of life based upon what they have accomplished.)

and generally, and inflated sense of their own importance (not believing that they have anything more to learn)

I would benefit greatly from your thoughts/experience on how to work with those who display combination of behaviour patterns. And how, perhaps to help them recognize how these patterns are not serving to benefit them or the people around them. How to transform them into other more proactive and positive characteristics to better enable them to be change makers themselves.

Andrew Schreiber wrote:
Increasingly we are finding an increasing pattern of young people being unable to take responsibility for themselves, or to be autonomous self-directed responsible people, and having a positive pro-active attitude.

I believe this strongly tied to a few psychological dynamics:

intense internalized and subconscious sense of privilege (perhaps, that other people will figure out the problems around them, so they don't have to)

lack of self-worth (not valuing the life they have been given, and so being willing to waste it away)

pathological aversion to authority ("your not the boss of me" attitude, partnered with an inability to understand that some people inherently have authority in certain arenas of life based upon what they have accomplished.)

and generally, and inflated sense of their own importance (not believing that they have anything more to learn)

Nicely put. I definitely notice these tendencies inherent in many people I come across on a day to day basis. I would suspect it has a great deal to do with the society we live in and the influence television has on young children as they grow up. These seem to be pretty common themes in television shows from what I have seen here and there over the years. I am interested in hearing some more thoughts on this.

Hi Andrew and Simon, and everyone

The following are some of my thoughts. It's not only young people, but many in our culture, irrespective of age, who find ourselves/themselves acting out of a sense of entitlement and what I call "victim consciousness".

A surfeit of fossil fuel energy and its mechanized use has made entitlement a common meme in domination culture. As a society, the developed nations have gotten use to feeding at the trough of cheap energy.

The ages-old hangover of authoritarian patriarchy and the myth of redemptive violence has encouraged and conditioned victim consciousness, as people are much more easily bossed around when we play victim. The disrespect of self, the numbing and denial of feelings, the roles of the Karpman Drama Triangle (victim, persecutor, rescuer), the denial of choice - all feeds an inner split/disconnection from core life energy, feeds emotional reactivity and discourages both the wiring of our brains/hearts for emotional regulation and the practice of secure attachment towards children which would facilitate that. It's deeply present in our violent language, our media, and our socialized sense of self. The violence of domination culture creates a lot of unresolved trauma in us, and this also feeds that inner disconnection and lack of integration. This violence originates in our civilization's fundamental disconnection from nature encouraged by the land-violence of agriculture. Hence, a desperate need for Permaculture, and re-connection with nature.

IMHO, one way out for young people is to make certain fundamental choices clear: self-betrayal, self-deception and blame; or self-respect, responsibility, and creativity. The rubber meets the road somewhere in everyone's life - and it is at that point where, as educators, coaches, challengers and creators, we have leverage in putting this choice to others. Another way out is just reconnecting with nature - with the flow of wildlife all around us - to bring us back home to ourselves. Given how far down the rabbit hole we've sunk, as a culture, as a civilization, it's a daunting task.

Because I think it has power to change the dynamic from victim consciousness to creator consciousnesses, and bring us back home to ourselves, I teach Compassionate Communication to help people get in touch with our core life energy, take responsibility for it, increase discernment and awareness, and avoid blame, judgment and abdication of responsibility.

thanks for this interesting post. Andrew you have clearly set out a set of tendencies apparent in young people, and these can become deeply engrained patterns that set us on a trajectory of behaviour. How to overcome this? well it is a big question - firstly as Simon points out the television and media have a lot to answer for these beliefs - so any way of limiting screen and media time will lessen the input. The next thing is to replace this with nature connection. And it sounds like this is what you are doing already - so is it working? The other thing is to bring awareness to people's patterns and beliefs and thinking - often we are oblivious to them - but we need to do this in a fun, non judgemental way. Games are a good way of doing this - i recommend the systems thinking playbook by Dennis Meadows.

I'd like to hear more about what has worked with you in creating shifts in the young people that come and visit.
thanks