American Piracy
I like kooky stuff. Not enough to move to Ubud permanently and make it my entire personality, but enough to go to ecstatic dance whenever I can. And if there is a mini festival on a reclaimed pirate ship a 10 minute tram ride away while I am on a self-imposed writing retreat in Amsterdam, I am happy to suspend work and take that entire weekend off. It’s good business—physically and spiritually.
Places like that are usually very fun for me as I get to enjoy just the right amount (and length) of people watching. More than just a few minutes or hours, but no more than a few days—ideal for enjoying other people’s stories for a bit without spoiling it by digging in too deep. I don’t have the bandwidth to do that anyways (unless I’m gonna wife someone up or something [there were no such candidates on the ship]), with two unfinished book manuscripts and a thousand pages of Spinoza staring at me from my to-do list.
On the last day, a casual lunch table turned into a cool conversation with one of the more wholesome people I met while there. The very first friend I made on the ship, with whom I did several partner activities, including trading massages at a Thai massage workshop. She was expressing bewilderment at how frequently men confuse non-sexual moments of emotion and vulnerability with a time to “make a move”. The bewilderment (with a good sense of humor) came from the fact that she specific example she gave was with a man who was clinical psychologist, which apparently boggled her mind further. I used Dr. K’s analogy and told her and one other female friend at the table how women commonly form non-sexual emotional bonds with others but men don’t get opportunities to practice such a thing, so, in their heads, getting fries and a coke ALWAYS requires a burger, while women understand the possibility of not getting a combo meal and compartmentalizing the fries and the drink apart.
I also explained how there are three types of therapists: deeply empathetic people who lean onto those skills and become excellent, other oriented counselors, who don’t get triggered or project their stuff onto their clients as they have successfully worked out their issues either before they became a therapist (or at least YOUR therapist); people who haven’t worked out their issues yet and they decide to help themselves BY helping others—which doesn’t mean they are bad therapists, they are usually good, but just have limitations since they frequently are prone to getting triggered by what they are still carrying within themselves and projecting onto clients—; and the last group is the less than empathetic control-oriented people who I get into it to hack the codes of something they don’t intuitively get, which frequently gets them to, well, bewilder, normal people.
This is where the conversation at the table was getting juicier, as evidenced by the gleam in the eyes of this friend. Yet somehow, the other woman at the table got up and left right at this peak moment (spoiler: she prefers the attention to be on her). This is where I confided in the friend that in most social situations, I see so much more detail and in particularly fine resolution that there is almost always a wildly disproportionate asymmetry in the information I have in most interactions. Naturally, her eyes got even wider (likely more a result of discomfort with what she was hearing [even though I was saying it with a smile]), and I immediately followed that with the reason why I was confiding in her with this, in that I find that asymmetry and the subsequent power uncomfortable, and I usually try to push it away—but, of course, there are lots of people out there who would make it their whole mission to develop such skills, merely for that power. I think I become involuntarily apologetic. Either on behalf of other men, or other psychologists. I’m not sure.
There actually was a moment, at the peak of my work in psychotherapy, where I’m juggling about three dozen people on a weekly basis, and I found myself constantly observing and analyzing human behavior. So much so that it felt like that gear was stuck, which makes sense, as I have the type of brain that can gain extremely high speeds if I stay in the same gear, but it is very costly for me to switch gears and my acceleration is slow. A lifestyle where I have to shift gears all the time—well, that’s a no-no for me. It simply does not work.
So it was almost an ontological shock for me when I realized at some point that I was sort of stuck in that “human behavior analysis” mode. It might sound like and exaggeration but, for real, while I wasn’t like “dead”, I wasn’t exactly alive while in that state either. I wasn’t living life. I was merely observing it. It was the position of an anthropologist observing living beings that he doesn’t belong with. After all, if he belonged with them, why would he be only observing? But I guess there is such a boundary—at least for someone with my type of brain—that I couldn’t’ eat my cake and have it too.
It took me a good 6 months of not doing client work and not being responsible for anyone, at all, anyone whatsoever, that my brain was finally able to leave that gear, and when I started “living” again. Not even intellectually, but physically, the feeling was an incredible sense of relief and relaxation. Looking back, it was a twisted form of anhedonia. To be only reading the code of the matrix and never tasting the steak. Too much thinking is bad business. And if you build a life and a career out of measuring emotions, you might ruin it for yourself.
Of course, it’s not just emotions though. It’s everything. Whenever something like this comes up, I immediately remember the story my favourite dramaturgy professor at Carnegie Mellon told us about his process for choosing what he wanted to study as an academic. He told us that while he dedicated his life to the role of a professor of drama, he loved movies more than theater—and that is exactly why he chose that path. In his words: “I always wanted to be able to watch Jurassic Park and go “ooooh, dinosaursss!!!””. He couldn’t bear “ruining” films for himself, so he ruined theater instead, by going too deep, and deconstructing it completely, until it was completely unenjoyable as a consumer, and only suitable for professional evaluation.
I didn’t want to professionally evaluate every interaction in my life anymore. And I didn’t even know if I could go back to being normal again. All I knew was that I just had to stop. I called it a sabbatical, at least to the clients, but I pretty much knew I wasn’t gonna come back. I had stopped taking new therapy clients 6 months beforehand, and spent that half a year just graduating people from therapy, making sure (and convincing them) that they had what it takes to move forward on their own going forward. I always did the work differently, in a way that intended for them not to need me in the long run (which a lot of therapists avoid doing, usually subsconsciously). Among my diminished caseload at the very end was also two therapists I was the therapist of. One of them had become more of a homie and a colleague. She took over the last few remaining clients and I was free.
Well, free to read comic books full-time and have lunches with my grandma three times a week so she could tell me the same old stories for the millionth time. Not free to yet to do other things with my life. The kind of toxicity you absorb slowly, insidiously, perniciously, doing this kind of work (i.e. listening to trauma and the worst the humanity has to offer week after month after year), well, it requires both triage and rehab. As mentioned, my acceleration is slow. What goes around, comes around. What accelerates, needs to decelerate. I had incredible amounts of professional and intellectual fun and made serious bank solving the complex interpersonal problems of wealthy people. The cost of doing such work is baked into the price. I’d like to think I was getting paid in advance for the recovery I was going to need to do in the aftermath.
I don’t know if I was able to assuage the fears I may have prompted in my new friend. I mean, I still make a lot of those observations, but I almost never talk about them, and sometimes even do a good job of not acknowledging them to myself too. I felt close to someone and I divulged something scary. Odds are, she mentally recoiled. After all, we were only friends for two days. Who wants to feel completely naked in front of strangers, let alone someone who is actually IN their lives?
That actually happens on dating apps a decent bit. I mean, I am proud of having studied psychology and neuroscience, and it is a big part of my identity regardless. So I do put that on my profile. And some women immediately start trauma dumping on me right after matching with me, because, I guess, I am the first emotionally available man they’ve met in a decade or something. So it just, starts gushing out—despite my protestations that: “just so you know, if you go this route you’ll be putting yourself into a completely aromantic and non-sexual box for me and I’ll either feel like your therapist, or your older brother”. Some stop, some don’t. And also some pretty much openly acknowledge that they will feel so very naked dating a psychologist, and they sort of run away, but also, not really.
They still wanna talk, and follow me on instagram, and stay in some amount of contact with me. And they sometimes do this without me even demonstrating any sort of actual value either. I truly don’t think I do anything of significance to arouse any sort of fascination—doubt a few pictures and a few prompts are enough to elicit that. And, to be fair, some have become proper friends. While some more became these weird people that I literally never talk to but still have been looking at every single IG story I’be been posting for years.
Now what do I do with these “skills” and “qualities” these days? What happens on a reclaimed vegan pirate boat with one dance floor in the belly of the ship and another one on the deck?
I get triggered by fucking Americans.
I had promised myself that I would stick to wholesome things in my public writing. That I wouldn’t talk negatively about people, as even the thought of any sort of gossip makes my skin crawl and makes me feel dirty. But, I guess authenticity matters more (than my comfort) and anything that can be done right, can be done correctly, and properly, and well. So let’s talk about how as soon as you introduce Americans into a hippy boat in northern Europe, they sort of contaminate the whole thing—however small or big—in a way that most wouldn’t notice, but unfortufuckingnutely I am sentenced to noticing that shit for the rest of my existence.
If I were to reduce Americans to their bare bones, I would go with: pathologically competitive, overly sexual, with a fetish for violence. You might ask: “why are you going with their worst qualities? Aren’t there any good things about them?”. Well, honestly, I don’t really care about their good qualities. Neither for the purposes of this essay, nor in the grand scheme of things, because I think the great American experiment has failed. 500 years elapsed and what they ended up with is a corroded culture that is rotten at its root so perniciously that its denizens are confined to watching that stillborn corpse flail around for a few generations with no meaningful healing to be realized anytime soon. Does it give me permission to be such a Debbie Downer if I wrote is belletristically and with panache? Yeah, a little bit. At least it gives me the requisite pressure to back up my words with evidence because I can’t stomach being someone who’ll just add to the negativity without contributing anything of value. The value, hopefully, is in the analysis—and also my patience.
There was an America woman who messaged the Telegram group for the venue before the event with the typical insecure American language trying to demonstrate value with excessive showiness to preemptively prove themselves—replete with a provocative butt picture. Europeans would be like “oh wow, that’s cool, good for you” because they don’t know my Americans the way I know them. I interviewed hundreds of them for thousands of hours. And to be fair TO ME, I still reserved judgment, and made myself say the exact same “oh wow, that’s cool, good for you” under my breath, but part of me, that I didn’t allow to get too loud, was like “ughhh, here we go again”.
The first time I got to interact with her in person I politely complimented her, as a response to which she proceeded to talk non-stop about herself, where I could occasionally get a word in edgewise. Unfortunately for me, one of the few words I could get in was a response to something she was saying something about Massachusetts, where I said “oh cool, I went to grad school there”; the answer to “where in Mass?” was “Cambridge”—the nail in my coffin. A few seconds of silence was followed by her swiftly ejecting from the conversation. Did I show up an attention seeking American on purpose? Actually, I don’t think so. I usually give people a lot of credit in my head and automatically think highly of them. It’s also possible that I spent a good portion of my life around overachievers who were casually doing the highest complexity things at the most sophisticated and advanced organizations in the world. So when someone says “I went to school in NJ” my genuine and automatic reaction is “Oh, sweet. Did you go to Princeton?”. Everyone projects what they think and feel onto others. I suppose I too am guilty of that and I just project the expectations I have of myself onto others. I’m almost positive that I do a good job of avoiding talking about my CV in casual conversation unless it is specifically (and discreetly) inquired about, but maybe I should talk even less and smile even more.
I can actually trace this specific behavior that I decided to adopt to a very specific event that happened. During Harvard’s graduation day, there are a whole bunch of different events that you attend throughout the day. Reception for your specific class or degree, a giant one for the whole school at the Harvard Yard where you might get to listen to a commencement speech by a Nobel prize winner, then a smaller departmental one where you listen to someone with less than a Nobel (maybe a Pulitzer)—thanks to a virtually infinite budget for the hedge fund with a country club (and also the university is there somewhere [my tongue is in my cheek]). And during one of these small events, the chair of something that my degree is supposedly under the umbrella of (whose name I had never even heard of during my time as a student) gave this god-awful speech that was unequivocally devoid of any self-awareness whatsoever. I was speechless at the speech.
The tagline for this parable was that: “Some people never get over the fact that they don’t get into Harvard, while some never get over the fact that they DID get into Harvard”. That’s the first thing this chair guy said. Well, after he told us to not buy school paraphernalia like mugs and such from the campus store and keep it around our houses or offices—all but saying that it is douchy.
From the get-go, this is fucking insane because the Harvard brand is easily the single most commodified educational entity I’ve ever encountered—and this is by design. There are multiple gigantic (and several smaller) stores that sell everything imaginable with the Harvard name and logo on it. It is institutionally encouraged and celebrated for people to buy this and that and represent the brand all across the world. I would constantly see Asian tourists buying stuff from those stores who definitely did not seem like they were degree seeking students.
And this fucker was apparently too cool for and was beyond all the merchandising. Okay, sure I’ll take it. So far it is coming off hella weird, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and let him finish his story.
The story he proceeds to tell takes place back in the day when he is an upperclassmen undergrad working with a professor as his teaching or research assistant or some shit like that. Apparently while he is at the professor’s office, a young freshman comes in (who has to be 17 or 18) all bright eyed and excitedly starts telling the professor of his accomplishments and interests and the things he wants to accomplish and how he wants to work under his tutelage. So apparently the professor not-so-politely gives him a “you’re getting too big for your britches” and sends the kid on his way. And afterwards, the professor turns to this chair guy and says:
“You see how this kid came in here and tried to list all his accomplishments thinking that it is good enough to work with me when he hasn’t even done anything with his life yet. As you can see, some people never get over the fact that they didn’t get into Harvard, while some never get over the fact that they did. This chap is of the latter”.
The story ends and I am fucking agog. I am trying to figure out if I’m getting punk’d. I’m frantically looking around, trying to catch a befuddled expression on anyone’s face. Did this really happen?
Did we really just listen to a supposedly didactic anecdote where a professor bluntly and rudely turn down an excited 18 year old—someone who is essentially a child in terms of life experience and maturity? Did he discriminate against a teenager who is ambitious and simply has an appetite for knowledge—who is also likely one of the more talented high school graduates in his state, if not his whole country? And then did he trash that poor kid to his barely older teaching assistant, insult him to a fellow student behind his back, and demonized that can-do attitude? And is this motherfucker telling this story as if it’s something to be proud of?
And, oh god….
This speech, felt practiced, while also a bit tired. Has this man been telling this same story year after year at the same departmental bullshit to countless graduating classes? Without realizing how awful and despicable and discriminatory and out-of-touch a story this is?
Does he not realize that HE is the one who never get over the fact that he got into Harvard, evidenced by the fact that he fucking never left, for maybe 40 years and is still sitting there in a sinecurial admin bloat position, relaying hollow platitudes of discriminatory adventures to new graduates year after year? While that doe eyed excited kid from the story probably left and did other cool things with his life?
No. Self. Awareness. Whatsoever. And visibly so many of the people at that ceremony (especially the other departmental people) were pumping that koolaid directly into their veins. I brought this up during the dinner we had with a bunch of my classmates (a group of 10-12 people) and after I described it to them (as I did here), most of them said “I felt uneasy during that whole thing, but I wasn’t able to quite put my finger on why. Now that you say it like that…—holy Batman.”
Now to be fair, Harvard is a gigantic place. There are all sorts of things happening there at any given time. Simultaneously, an 18 year old poor kid from northwest Arkansas is meaningfully contributing to cancer research as a freshman with his entire tuition paid for, Jeffrey Epstein is funding research units, or inept children of powerful people from all around the world attend easier versions of the same classes (it’s called Z-Class; look up Simon Rich’s interview with Neal Brennan if you’re curious). Honestly, in aggregate, I pretty much fully agree with the way the university is run, and I think the one invisible hand washing the other invisible hand is a good system, and is a net benefit to humanity. They are smarter than me. And it is a giant flock of those competent people who have been knitting that beautiful scarf in Cambridge for four centuries.
And part of the deal is that a significant amount of people who enter Harvard never leave. I think there are nuanced reasons as to why that happens. But the disease of getting stuck in academia-adjacent situations when you fail (or don’t have what it takes) to be an academic is real. And the more brand name the school is, the harder the pull—to find yourself a simple nook inside the brand and stay there. At this point I am getting a bit uncomfortable because I am making a blanket statement about a lot of people and I do know that there are also valid and honorable reasons why some do that (and those people taught me some of my favourite classes and helped me with my education in various ways). But the fact remains, I do know plenty of people who are Nth year PhD students who extending things indefinitely because their ego is too tied to their Ivy League identity and they literally don’t know how to exist in the real world. Their whole persona has been built on being a good student since day one, and—no judgment—the best decision for them becomes churning the same butter indefinitely, as long the employer who is writing your checks is the most recognizable educational brand in the history of human civilization.
And all this reaffirmed my belief that I never wanna get sucked into institutional identities, and my CV should never define me. I am good at going to school, big whoop. There are a lot of smart people out there. For real, there are geniuses out there who never fulfill their potential—and also people whose genius become self-actualized, but is not typically celebrated by the world. And don’t get me started on being born into privilege and the absurd advantages it gives you. I’m not ashamed of mine, but I’d be hypocritical not to acknowledge it.
That department chair guy creeped me out enough that I’ll never be anything even remotely like him, not even for a second. I’ll drink from my Harvard mug whenever the fuck I want. And I am also grateful for having taken Human Nature from Joseph Henrich, easily the best class I’ve ever taken during any part of my education anywhere ever. And that I really enjoyed both the Nobel prize flavored commencement speech I heard, and one of my favourite authors surprisingly giving me my departmental one. And some of the feelings I felt when I was exposed to greatness on a daily basis while I was in Cambridge, the absurdly conscientious humans working diligently toward honorable goals all around me, the awe inspiring environment hundreds of years of this work and an infinite budget have built—it’s something I’ll literally never forget. It’s fucking seared into my brain. And I’ll write about the douchiness that was a part of it once and move on, while never forgetting how the rest took my breath away. The past is the past, and chasing it forever would be diagnostic of the American disease.
There was another American germ that sort of contaminated the ship, a bit. But he also contributed some positives so he sort of gets a pass. I think he got somewhat competitive with me (as large males tend to get when they detect another large male in their vicinity). As uncompetitive as I am as a person, maybe even I got competitive with him too. After all, that alpha-male leadership testosterone battle is a pretty instinctive process. He was aaaalways making sure that he was pairing up with the most attractive women in all the dyad or trio activities, so when there was an opportunity for me to pair up with him for some emotionally intense pair activity, I took it. Silently staring at his eyes right above his perfect Captain America jawline for minutes at a time, while being present for each other—as the activity prescribed—I think we communicated to each other that we respected each other and despite our similar body compositions, we were different from each other and were not in competition. He was reluctant and stiff when I silently shook his hand as part of the activity, which I was completely expecting. One of those people who are incredibly good at one-on-one with women—maximum rizz—, with most of the identity built around that, and the walls that go up outside of those confines. Slightly diseasy American shenanigans, but ultimately not toon infectious.
The other activity we did later in that class required a trio. There was another American in that group, but he was great—no visible symptoms of the disease. An ex-pat who had already married someone of a different race while living in that country, and was having a European adventure of yet another expatriate experience with her lovely bride. Likely he was meant to (and built to be) healthy, so he did whatever he was supposed to, to save himself. He asked me to act out his “fear”, per the instructions of the activity, and only after we reconvened into a circle that I realized I sort of played a caricature of what fear out to be, because I have this unusually high threshold for fear and anxiety, so I sometimes need to be more mindful when I assume I successfully empathized with friends and loved ones when they express that they feel those emotions. I shared this with the group. People smiled, and affirmed. I made eye-contact and had a silent moment with the American expat who had given me the prompt.
And later that day, while everyone is lounging in a cuddle puddle on the deck of the ship, the American woman that I mentioned at the beginning spotted me from a few bodies over, leaned forwards, and very loudly, in a manner where everyone around us could hear, said: “Oh, hello there Mr. I’m better than everyone else because I don’t fear anything while you measly people are suffering from boring human challenges like anxiety or whatever”.
I guess she was sitting on that the whole day. Did she practice it in her head? Was she fantasizing about a chance encounter later in the day so that she could call me out for making her feel small? The mere existence of the guy who doesn’t get anxious and spent time in Cambridge was a threat to her well being. She really couldn’t stop comparing herself to others, to hypothetical versions of herself that she was frantically trying to become, and between all the judgment she was doling outwards and inwards, she was never good enough. And I guess one of the more convenient things to do was to doubt and try to disprove positive qualities in others, simply because her not having something that others did was cause for her suffering.
Everyone around us were more or less speechless. Thinking this way, and—God forbid—doing something about those twisted thoughts would’ve never occurred to the European mind. I humored her to keep it playful, and to defuse the insecurity bomb that appeared to be imploding. I said “Oh, absolutely. Remember yesterday during that conversation about psychedelics, you said something like how you are the creator of everything and this is your world and everyone is made in your image? I’m pretty sure I must’ve done the same strain at some point, because I understand how you feel. We are all very special in our own ways, aren’t we?”
And thus is a picture of the failure of the American experiment, and the disease that failure seems to be automatically trying to spread in its fallout. My long running theory is that the entire country has Borderline Personality Disorder as a collective entity, with parentless people who lacked a sense of belonging crossing the ocean and creating a civilization with weak family values—which are either loose or religiously twisted—with consequent broken families, rampant abandonment issues, and a culture that keeps telling everyone that they are special, without preparing them for the later years where have to face the fact that most people weren’t special after all. You neglect enough children, force them to build emotional walls up to survive, and then tell them they are entitled to amazing things—and have your culture sexualize and commodify everything in sight with a hint of constant violence in the air—what do you get?
You get a degree of insecurity, deafening in loudness, and grotesque in size, that me and a bunch of Dutch people on a reclaimed vegan pirate ship during an ecstatic dance festival were absolutely speechless about.
Get well soon ‘Murica. Although I’ll have you know, I’m not holding my breath—and you shouldn’t either.
Deep breaths….