Book Review-The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

Sometimes you have to zoom way out to see what’s right in front of you.  It’s not easy to see patterns that span centuries, but by zooming out the lens, Robert Putnam shows us a pattern that has evolved over the course of a century.  In The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again, Putnam explains how the self-focused society of the 1920s became a community of people in the 1960s and how we’ve returned to our self-focus.  He adjusts the perspectives from Bowling Alone on how factors like television might have shaped our trajectory because when the perspective is wider it seems that the impact is smaller.

Individual and Community

At the heart of our struggles, Putnam believes, is a struggle between community and individual.  Neither is perfect.  Each has their own challenges.  In times when we’re focused individually, we miss out on our fundamental human need to connect and to be a part of things.  When we’re locked into tight communities, we have no room to express our individuality and our unique spirit.  The argument isn’t for one or the other but rather for finding a sense of relative balance, where we can get the greatest value from community while making room for our individuality.

The metrics that Putnam uses to evaluate the degree to which we’re “I” focused or “We” focused are broad, and the trends over the course of the century are strangely consistent.  There’s an inverted U that starts from the early 1900s, when we were very I focused, to the 1960s in a time of toxic conformity, and back to today, when we’re struggling to find and form communities that matter (the kind that he spoke of in Bowling Alone and, particularly, Our Kids).

In times of community, we feel as if we’re all in this together.  We believe that we’re all fighting towards a common enemy instead of fighting each other to get ahead.  In times of our individual focus, we believe that we can do anything to get ahead.  We can earn “the American dream” even if it means trampling others.  While this sounds morally objectionable when framed that way, we live our lives in the struggle, and sometimes we don’t realize the impact of our actions on others.  We feel justified in demonizing those who believe differently than we do instead of having a logical, rational debate on the issues.  (See Mastering Logical Fallacies for more on why character attacks are bad.)

Common Good

When we speak of community, there are benefits in terms of a focus on the common good that balance the challenges of conformity and the lack of acceptance for individuals who are different.  On the one hand, we have the kind of lack of tolerance that led to LGBTQ+ people remaining “in the closet.”  Even late into the cycle of I-We-I, After the Ball caused a stir as it sought more acceptance for gays.  On the other hand, we know that working towards the common good – cooperating – makes groups more competitive against other groups.

Reviewing the work from Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, the work of Robert Axelrod in The Evolution of Cooperation, as well as SuperCooperators and Does Altruism Exist?, we see that sometimes the genes and ideas that replicate best are those that are the most cooperative even beyond kinship lines.  Even Adam Grant in Give and Take acknowledges that those who are out for themselves fill the middle of the success ladder, while givers – those focused on cooperation and sharing – are at the bottom and the top.

Equality and Growth

There’s a debate that rages about the impact of income inequality, with some believing that growth isn’t possible during times of relative income equality, but history doesn’t bear that out.  We see economic growth both in times of income inequality and in times of relative equality.  However, it’s a hot topic that finds its way into a number of thoughtful works – including Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.

Following the same pattern, income equality was large during the 1920s and shrunk through the 1960s with a return to historic highs of inequality today.  A specific change that deregulated the financial services industry has been estimated to make up 15-25 percent of the impact on inequality.  The financial meltdown of 2008 didn’t teach us enough about the dangers of an unregulated financial industry.  (See The Halo Effect.)

Progressive and Regressive Taxes

One of the factors that helps to mitigate the income (and wealth) disparities is a progressive tax system that increases as people earn more.  Generally speaking, our income tax system in the United States operates this way with higher levels of taxation at higher levels of income.  However, there are many problems with this system including the definitions for active vs. passive income.  Overall, however, progressive taxes shrink the gap between the high earners and the lower earners with systems like ours allowing the lowest earners to not pay any income taxes at all.

However, not all taxes in the US are progressive taxes.  Our social security tax, which is a part of payroll or self-employment taxes, is a regressive tax.  That is, it taxes more those people who earn less.  The actual mechanism in place is a cap on earnings for the tax.  After the cap is hit, no further taxation happens – thus rewarding the high earners with some income free of this tax.

Across Party Lines

Why We’re Polarized explains some of the movement away from working together, as does Going to Extremes, but Putnam’s argument is much more broad reaching and subtle.  Here, he’s talking about the broader societal forces that push us away from the idea that we should try to find a way to work together.  Instead of accepting people as having valid but different views, we’ve fallen into a trap of vilifying others in ways that prevent any meaningful cooperation.  We’ve left with tentative compromises that seem to fall apart quickly.  We’ve forgotten that “the other fellow might be right.”

Sociability in a Box

The rise of clubs connected with a growing desire for connection and community, as our moves toward cities and ultimately suburbs disrupted the rural communities that we came from.  Organized clubs offered “sociability in a box.”  That is, they contained a framework for the group from mottos, slogans, and procedures that could be applied quickly and easily.  It was, in a sense, the Industrial Age for the development of groups.  Groups could be mass produced just like “modern conveniences.”

However, this trend didn’t survive well after 1956.  For organizations with members, the average fell from 111,000 to just 13,000 in 1998.  What we found was that there were more organizations – but each with fewer members.  Organizations like Greenpeace drove huge memberships with a large direct mail program but hemorrhaged membership when the organization decided that such mailings weren’t consistent with their values.  Their membership plunged 85 percent within three years.

Not only were we joining less – but we were attending less.  In 1976, sixty-four percent of Americans had attended a club meeting in the preceding year.  By 2005, the number was slightly more than half that, at thirty-three percent.

Churchless

Much has been made of the decline in church membership and attendance, including coverage in Churchless and The Great Evangelical Recession.  However, Putnam points out that our belief that everyone in revolutionary times were members of church is a fallacy.  The curve of church membership and attendance seemed to follow the broader societal changes which led to a greater sense of “we” in the middle of periods of “I.”

One of the complicating factors is that one of the drivers for church attendance and membership is forming a family and having kids.  Young adults are delaying both marriage (see Anatomy of Love) and having children.  These delays appear to be further impacting church membership and attendance.

Replicating Asch

It’s a famous experiment where Solomon Asch was able to demonstrate the power of peer pressure on our perceptions.  He engaged collaborators to incorrectly select a second line of equal length to the first.  The result was that the actual participant seemed to change their mind to conform with the group, even though there was no doubt that the lines weren’t the same length.  Subsequent research with the aid of brain scanning seemed to indicate that the person didn’t have conflict, they really saw the answer the others gave as the answer.  It had warped their perception.  (See Unthink and The Data Detective for more.)

However, other, more recent work has seemed to show lower levels of influence indicating that Asch’s ability to influence perception was a side effect of high levels of conformity during the 1950s when he was running his experiments.

Narcissism

Thomas Gilovich explains, in How We Know What Isn’t So, our propensity to believe things that cannot be true.  Whether evaluating professors or students, more than 50% of us believe we’re better than average – which isn’t statistically possible.  We’re wrong, but we’re able to keep our beliefs.  Putnam uses the answer to a single statement, “I am a very important person,” to highlight the change in perceptions.  In 1950, only 12 percent of people identified with that statement; by 1990, 80% of people identified with the statement.  In the space of 40 years, most of us had decided that we were, indeed, important.  Some of this may reflect generational differences (see America’s Generations), but the change is striking.  While we may not be narcissistic, we are moving in that direction.

The Cycle

In the end, we should recognize that this I-We-I represents just a part of a cycle where we oscillate between our need for individuality and our need to be in the community.  We hope we’re at the bottom of the cycle and we can start The Upswing.

Book Review-Translate this Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan

Christiana Morgan is an unlikely person to have such an impact on psychology.  The path that she took was neither short nor straightforward, as Translate this Darkness: The Life of Christiana Morgan shows.  This isn’t the first time that I’ve encountered Christiana Morgan’s life.  Love’s Story Told focuses on the life of Henry Murray, and their lives cannot be separated.  Their love affair was not a secret to their spouses nor to many around them.  Christina’s path until she met Murray was separate and different and substantially converged after their meeting.

Granddaughters

It’s important to share that my initial interest in Murray and Morgan’s work was driven by the challenges of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).  It’s a test that was (and is, in some places) widely used as a personality test.  The problem with the test is that it’s not reliable.  It falls below the federal standards of evidence but was used in a custody evaluation with my family.  (See The Cult of Personality Testing for more.)

More than that, Edward Shneidman, the father of suicidology, was a student of Murray’s.  In one of his books, he mentioned that suicide darkened Murray’s door – and I began to get curious about what insights might lie behind Shneidman’s interest in suicide.

During my research, I learned more about the pair and their work – and lives – together.  It led me to wonder what became of the “tower” that Morgan built, which was the location of many meetings.  I stumbled across the Tower of Dreams documentary created by Christiana’s granddaughter, Hilary.  After watching it, I reached out to Hilary.  She’s been a kind and compassionate human who has answered my strange questions as I juggled thoughts of how to prevent suicide with curiosity about a relationship that I didn’t understand.

I would have given up on my exploration of Christiana’s work much sooner if I hadn’t seen a special light in her granddaughter, who had done so much to honor her.

Youth

The recount of Christiana’s early life includes her mother’s disappointment that she wasn’t a son, a frustration with her fretfulness and colic.  Punishment was described as occasional spanking and, more frequently, being locked as a baby in a dark closet.  Later, Christiana would “spend hours punishing her various dolls by putting them in the closet one after another.”

Her parents, William and Isabella Councilman, were reportedly in relatively constant disharmony.  It created a gap between the life at home and that of the couple living opposite them, who seemed to Christiana to be romantic.  Torn between allegiances to her mother and her father, she clearly wanted peace.

Though the Councilmans were less well off than their peers, the family helped them in small ways, including purchasing party dresses for Christiana and her sisters.

Attachment Styles and Patterns

In hindsight, Christiana’s first serious relationship with Billy Stearns became the template for her other romantic relationships.  Described in today’s terms, she’d likely be described as having an avoidant attachment style.  (See Attached.)  If Billy got too close, they’d fight and grow distant before Christiana would begin to pursue him again.

Women of that time were taught to not allow boys to know that they liked them.  The result was a dance that was complicated by more than individual attachment styles but also by the social conventions of the time.  (See How Good People Make Tough Choices for more.)

The Dances

At the time, the expectation was that girls in their social circles would go out to dance parties.  It bored Christiana.  She didn’t want to say the same things to the same people night after night.  She longed for deeper conversations and a more intellectual peer who could help her grow her knowledge, intellect, and wisdom.

Lucia Howard

Lucia was Christiana’s older friend who was probably lesbian.  Her relationship with Christiana deteriorated substantially when she became seriously involved with and married Bill Morgan.  Still, Lucia showed that women could be intellectual.  Lucia would say the two real forces of human nature are religion and sex.

Christiana, under Lucia’s tutelage, would read 35 books in 1916.  What today are important classics were the subject of intense study.  Though she married Bill Morgan, her diary entries imply that she didn’t find him the intellectual companion that she had hoped for.  She’d known him for less than five months, but she said yes to his proposal delivered less than a week after arriving in Maine, where Christiana’s family was vacationing.  Maybe it was seeing him in his uniform as he was about to head off to war.  They’d delay their marriage, but they’d be betrothed.  Christiana’s father was not supportive of the arrangement.

Bill Morgan

During the war, he’d see trauma.  In addition to the traumas at the death of Bill’s entire platoon, he and Christiana’s small social circle would mourn the loss of twenty-five close friends, including Christiana’s first boyfriend, Billy Stearns.  War had cost the sensitive Morgan.  He’d struggle with the traumas of war for the remainder of his life.

Christiana had served as his lay-therapist, giving him a way to organize his thoughts and share his pains to a willing and supportive ear.

In addition to his mental scars, he’d carry tuberculosis, contracted through the war, and die fifteen years after the war ended.

Lovers

Reports of Bill and Christiana’s sex life are that Bill often left Christiana aroused but rarely fulfilled.  Bill and Christiana spent much of their lives in different cities, even after their marriage.  After a while Christiana’s curiosity had her begin to take lovers.  One of those was Mike Murray, Henry’s younger brother.  Mike was married himself but discovered that “he did not love his comradely student wife.”

Mike wasn’t the only love that Christiana had.  However, at the same time, and without knowledge of the lovers, letters from Bill insisted that Christiana’s passion was derived from and belonged to him.  Instead, Christiana began to take ownership of her own sexuality.  She recognized it as uniquely hers.

It was at this time that Henry Murray would come into Christiana’s life through Mike.  It was a confusing time, as Christiana would continue to invite Mike as a lover despite her relationship with Mike’s wife and her interest in Henry.

Henry and Jo

Josephine Murray was told by her husband to travel the south alone, see other men, and write Henry about her imagined adventures as a way of curing the couple’s inability to conceive.  Perhaps this would increase Henry’s desire for his wife.

During this time, Jo and Christiana became friends.  The couples were in England together, and it didn’t seem prudent to create discord when they were all they knew across the pond.

Jung

Christiana had been enamored with Jung’s writing and even asked Henry about it during their introduction.  The opportunity to be seen by him was a welcome opportunity.  Henry was also grateful for the opportunity to the point where he began to discuss his feelings for Christiana.

Jung himself kept a mistress, Toni Wolff.  She was a former patient and was known by Emma Jung.  The two would accept – or yield – to Jung’s desires to have both in his life in different roles.  Henry was encouraged to pursue a similar set of relationships.

Jo was not amused.  She blamed Jung for the future that would have her sharing her husband with Christiana.  To be fair, Christiana didn’t seem enamored with the prospects at first, either.  However, in the fullness of time, Henry and Christiana would be lovers – prior to and after the deaths of their spouses.

Other Loves

Both Christiana and Henry took other lovers as well.  Christiana even continued her occasional affairs with Mike.  However, for Christiana’s part, they were secondary to Henry.  Henry pursued others as well, though it’s not clear how entangled he might have become in these relationships.

One of Christiana’s lovers, Ralph Eaton, provided the second thread that connected me to her and Murray’s work.  Eaton wanted to become central in Morgan’s life; realizing this wasn’t possible, he put his life to an end in the woods.  This was one of the suicides in the life of Henry and Christiana – but was one of the most impactful, as Christiana felt responsible.

Coherent Life

While there was an interest in the work at the clinic and her professional contributions they got very little coverage.  Even her relationship with Henry Murray and the productive output of it in terms of art and writing received some but not extensive coverage.  (Oddly, the coverage in Love’s Story Told is more extensive.)  In pondering the book’s title and the life of Christiana Morgan I’m struck by the work with Jung and the trances that Christiana used to try to better understand herself and the world.  It seems like she spent the second half of her life trying to Translate this Darkness.

Book Review-The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World’s Most Beloved Neighbor

The actual source of my memory is lost to the sands of time.  We lived in a few houses during the first few years of my life.  I can remember seeing Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood – but I can’t remember which home I was at.  I never knew Mister Rogers as a Presbyterian minister.  What I missed in my early experiences was The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers: Spiritual Insights from the World’s Most Beloved Neighbor.

By Actions

There are only a few books that I remember where I was introduced to them.  Heroic Leadership is one of those books.  That plane ride and the simple Iowa woman who was studying seminary introduced me to a different way of Christianity.  I’d grown up going to church, and I thought the only way to share Christ was through preaching.  I learned what Saint Francis of Assisi already knew: “Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.”  In other words, embody what it is like to be Christ (as best as a human can) and don’t worry about preaching, your actions will do that.

For millions of people, Fred Rogers was that: the embodiment of love and acceptance.  Of course, no man is perfect, and his family could see his foibles and might see things differently.  But, for the countless children who watched the show, there was a person who cared.

The Accuser or the Advocate

Both the accuser and the advocate expose problems.  It’s not exposing the problems of the world that is inherently good or bad but rather what you do about it.  Criticizing someone without a framework for how to make it better makes you the accuser.  Even an inkling of how we might move forward and past the described limitations changes the conversation completely.

In Think Again, Adam Grant shares a framework from Phil Tetlock.  (See Superforecasting for more of Tetlock’s great work.)  The framework is of the preacher, the politician, the scientists, and the prosecutors.  It’s best summarized by the graphic from Think Again:

The accuser, in Tetlock’s framework, is either the politician or the prosecutor – attacking the other side.  In Grant’s view, the best person to be is the scientist.  However, just because one is a scientist doesn’t stop someone from being appropriately critical of things that are wrong.  Richard Feynman explains that sometimes this isn’t easy particularly when the error of another is considered fact.  It’s a slow, painful process with many steps.

It’s appropriate to challenge the slow, measured, simplistic style of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and expose the limitations – which led it to be what it is.  Rogers was often criticized for his pace and focus on feelings, but Rogers kept leaning in on the research and trying to be an advocate for children even when others criticized him.

Hope

For a two-to-five year old (Rogers’ core audience) who didn’t have anything stable in their life, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was an alien world.  There wasn’t any yelling, fighting, throwing things, or even unpredictable anger.  Fred Rogers lived his entire television life in one home.  A child learning more about attachment bonds could see that stability was possible – even if it’s not possible in their circumstances.  (See Attached for more on attachment.)  This awareness could give them hope.

Rick Snyder in The Psychology of Hope says hope is a cognitive process that is built on two components.  The first is waypower, or knowing how something could happen.  The second is willpower, or the force to make the necessary changes.  Often overlooked in this model is the truth that these both operate internally and externally.  Seeing a world that existed without the day-to-day fear that some children were subjected to instilled hope in them by showing that other people knew how to create these environments.

Where Sesame Street was focused on intellectual learning, Rogers was focused on emotional learning.  (See “G” is for Growing for more on Sesame Street.)  Rogers knew that his work needed to be measured and clear so that young minds could absorb it.  More importantly, he wanted to instill the ability to self-regulate emotions, which takes skills and the space to practice them.

Internalization

Deep into the research on attachment theory and secure attachment is a concept of internalization.  It’s a concept where the people that you’ve lost leave imprints on you in such strong ways that you can continue to retain a relationship with them after they’re gone.  For Rogers, this internalization included toast sticks.  A kindly old neighbor in Latrobe would make him toast and cut it into sticks.  One day not long before she died, she taught the five-year-old Rogers how to make the toast and cut them.  He was able to take that new skill with him – and to think about her every time he made them.

We internalize people partly by what they teach us but also by learning how they would react to a situation.  We can predict how they might behave whether they’re present or not.  (See Mindreading for more on our predictive capacity.)  This internalization allows us to become the best of the others that we encounter in life.

Space

The thing that Rogers created for himself and others was space.  From the intentional, slow movement through the program to the routine that had him up every morning, he knew how easy it is to get distracted in a world full of noise.  He inherently understood the value of reflection.  (See Quiet for more.)  While a television personality himself, he rarely watched television.  Mostly, he preferred to read.  Though he didn’t say it, in those days, television was live, which doesn’t create an opportunity to pause and reflect.  Obviously, he had no inherent problem with television, it just wasn’t the way he chose to spend most of his time.

I’m not sure what Rogers would make of the ever-increasing pace that has come since his death.  In the two decades since his passing, we’ve moved in ways that annihilate silence and venerate noise.  Everything has been tweeted or turned into a TikTok reel.  We can select our noise – as long as it’s not selecting silence.

Relationship

The essence of prayer is relationship.  It’s a relationship with God.  More specifically, the literal meaning of the language of prayer is the exchanging of worries for faith.  We’re engaging in a relationship with a benevolent father, who takes on our worries and fears and responds with simple assurances that he is present.  Relationships are built through talking.  They’re built through sharing experiences.  Relationships form on the basis of a desire to understand and on understanding.  As we pray, we open ourselves up to relationships with God – and to hearing what God has to say.

Sometimes the person we’re relating to on Earth is a “cornball” – one of the ways that Rogers is described.  We all have our quirks, and by all accounts, so did he.  His idiosyncrasies left him slightly out of step with the world – in his case, perhaps in a way that endeared him to the children he sought to serve.  Perhaps by demonstrating he wasn’t perfect, he made it a little easier for children who watched to accept their imperfections, too.

Feelings Matter

There’s a tendency to validate whether a fear is rational or reasonable given a set of circumstances.  Our brains evaluate emotions and judge their validity in ourselves and others – and it’s not one of our better features.  What feelings need is acceptance, not judgement.  If we accept a feeling as real – irrespective of the reality – we can move forward towards working through or with the emotion.

Richard Lazarus in Emotion and Adaptation and Lisa Feldman Barrett in How Emotions Are Made help us to understand that there are cognitive processes, often operating below our conscious awareness, that are designed to keep us safe.  Because they’re protectors, we should respect them – even if we don’t always listen to them.  They deserve to be recognized.

Is a fear of heights rational?  From an evolutionary perspective, yes.  The risk of falling was largely unpredictable and represented a threat.  Is it rational in a skyscraper?  Probably not – but by acknowledging the roots, we can understand how it makes sense even if the current conditions don’t match the need for fear.

One of Rogers’ key beliefs was that public television had the power to educate children (and adults) that feelings are mentionable and therefore manageable.  He believed that feelings matter.

Mendable

A broken arm is mendable.  The trauma of almost – but not actually – losing a sibling or child is mendable.  We will, given time and the right support, grow past the traumas and perhaps even into stronger versions of ourselves.  (See Posttraumatic Growth for more.)  However, there are some situations which aren’t mendable.  False accusations create a sense of doubt and fear around a person which aren’t fair – and they’re non-repairable.  Cardinal Bernardin was falsely accused of sexual abuse of a college student, Steven Cook.  While the accusations were ultimately proven false, they left a permanent mark on a good man.  Still, the Cardinal proved what Dr. Orr, one of Rogers’ mentors, had said long ago about the only thing that evil could not stand – forgiveness.  Bernardin forgave Steven Cook and showed that even broken hearts can be mended.

Perhaps if we need to know that we’re mendable and that we can be mended, we can find assurance in The Simple Faith of Mister Rogers.

Book Review-The Mister Rogers Effect: 7 Secrets to Bringing Out the Best in Yourself and Others from America’s Beloved Neighbor

There are probably neighbors you have today – or you’ve had in the past – whom you don’t want to emulate.  They’re the people you didn’t click with and didn’t form relationships with.  However, most of those who grew up with Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood would love to understand The Mister Rogers Effect: 7 Secrets to Bringing Out the Best in Yourself and Others from America’s Beloved Neighbor.  Fred Rogers seemed to have that effect on us – bringing out our best.  How he did it was a mystery, but the fact that it happened would bring us warmth.

The Principles

A simple question led to the identification of seven psychological principles that were embodied in Rogers’ work.  The author, Anita Knight Kuhnley, trains counselors.  She found that Rogers resonated with her students – even before she was able to articulate the principles:

• Listen First
• Validate Feelings
• Pause and Think
• Show Gratitude
• Develop Empathy
• Practice Acceptance
• Establish Security

Listen First

“Can you hear me now?” is a famous quote from Verizon commercials.  It speaks to the telephone connection between two (or more) parties.  It speaks to the problems that we have in communicating with others – framed in the limitations of technology.  We take for granted that the person we’re speaking with – across the room or across the globe – can hear us.  We expect that the words we use will be converted to pressure waves that they can decode.  More than that, we assume that the words we use will mean the same thing to them that they mean to us.  We expect that the other person will hear and understand.

Unfortunately, we’re so overwhelmed by communications (see The Organized Mind) and notifications from our technology (see Alone Together) that the assumption of listening is shattered before we even enter the realm of the other person’s mind and the distractions that occur inside their head.  (See Motivational Interviewing.)

Though we assume listening exists and expect it, we know that it takes focus and skills.  Motivational Interviewing and The Ethnographic Interview both focus on the ability to listen to others as the foundation, but it’s hard.  It’s hard to shut off the torrent of thoughts and ideas to be present enough in the moment with the other person to listen carefully.  (If you speak with children, you may want to look at How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk as well.)

Listening isn’t really the goal.  It’s the first step, but the real goal is to understand the other person, to understand the way they view the world and process the things that happen to and around them.  Listening is just the tool we use to achieve that understanding.

Validate Feelings

“Don’t cry.”  It’s a sentence uttered by parents everywhere.  While intended to bring comfort, it belies a simple truth.  The parent isn’t comfortable with the child’s emotions.  In the land of learning, children are taught that emotions are scary to others, and they should be kept to oneself.  Rogers’ perspective is that feelings should be mentionable and manageable.  We shouldn’t hide our feelings under a rock.

Some parents believe that they should be there to protect their children.  If their child is feeling pain (even psychological pain), they should be able to solve it.  The fact that this is an unreasonable and unnecessary burden doesn’t make it any lighter.  We know that chicks need to break their shells and sea turtles need to fight their way to the water, because if they don’t, they won’t survive very long.  (See Posttraumatic Growth.)  Struggle is a part of the animal kingdom – all the way up to humans.

There are two key issues with the failure to validate feelings.  First, it will drive people away from secure attachment towards insecure attachment with the corresponding impacts.  (See Attached.)  Second, we have an innate need to be understood.  (See The Righteous Mind.)  When someone cannot or will not understand our feelings, it can lead to loneliness.  (See Loneliness.)  Even if you can’t reach the level of understanding, simply being willing to sit with someone to help them feel less alone can be immensely helpful.

Pause and Think

In a world of rapid swipes on our phone to send away new stories, videos, and people, we’ve almost engineered a world in which we don’t want people to pause and think.  We’ve encouraged people to fill every moment of their day.  Newspapers struggle, because people have every form and topic of news at their fingertips, so they need not spend an instant of boredom or encounter a moment where they might have to think.

Even at home, people often have a television on generating a constant stream of noise to block out the potential to stop and think.  Today, it seems like we’re more afraid of what thoughts that we might have if we paused to think than we are of being in an accident.  Why are our thoughts so scary to us?

In a conversation with Chuck Underwood (author of America’s Generations), I was struck by the different in the way we processed information.  To be the kind of scholar that Underwood is, you must pay attention to the news, making clippings and notes of the events that may shape a generation.  Conversely, I rarely look at the news.  I spend more time diving deep into the current books about a topic – and, quite frequently, going back to their sources to understand how the author’s perspectives were shaped.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in The Little Prince, says “One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”  (Translated from French.)  Rogers had the original French version on the wall of his office.  The surface things that we see when we’re going so fast through our days aren’t really the full experience.  Finding our way to the heart of the matter takes time for us to pause and think.

Show Gratitude

There’s value to looking for the positive in things.  Rick Hansen in Hardwiring Happiness focuses on what we can do to generally think about things in a more positive way – including the addition of gratitude.  Dan Richo in How to Be an Adult in Relationships explains the value of appreciation – that is, gratitude for other people.

Develop Empathy

Empathy isn’t as complicated as people make it out to be.  Empathy is “I understand this about you.”  It can be cognitively, understanding background, hobbies, or aspirations.  It can be – and is most frequently used in conjunction with – understanding how another person feels.  Empathy is sometimes confused with sympathy, which is substantially different.  Sympathy doesn’t express understanding of the other person, but rather it understands their undesirable situation – “It sucks to be you.”  (See Sympathy, Empathy, Compassion, and Altruism for more.)

Sometimes, even empathy gets a bad reputation.  However, as Against Empathy explains, it’s not empathy itself that’s the problem, it’s what people do with that empathy.

Practice Acceptance

The Dalai Lama is known for compassion – which is appropriate.  (See The Dalai Lama’s Big Book of Happiness for more on the Dalai Lama.)  What most people don’t realize is that acceptance is an important raw material for compassion (see An Appeal to the World).  You can understand someone, but until you accept them, it’s hard to desire to resolve their problems.  That’s why it’s not just empathy that’s required, it’s acceptance as well.

In After the Ball, we learn that acceptance is a pathway towards eliminating fear and hatred.  If we can practice acceptance, we’ll be less likely to find reasons to divide.  Rogers is well known for showing himself and a black actor playing an officer putting their feet into the same kiddie pool as a sign that the race inequality wasn’t right.

Establish Security

We can’t exist fully as humans unless we can feel safe.  When people are driven with fear, they don’t operate at their best, as Amy Edmondson explains in The Fearless Organization.  If we want to experience the best that humanity has to offer, we need to create safety.  Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone speaks to the erosion of social capital that has decreased our overall sense of safety.  (He continues this line of thought in Our Kids.)

One of the greatest things that we can offer to others are the principles of Fred Rogers to extend to them The Mister Rogers Effect.