The Curse of Knowledge: Are You Helping To Create Parasitic Youth?

By Lindsay Walton (as published in the latest edition of the Association for Challenge Course Technology's publication "Parallel Lines").

Many baby boomers comment on the attitude of youth and young adults today, shocked by the way the younger generations choose to behave.  But the rudeness, aggression, indifference or entitlement they perceive doesn't always find its root in a bad attitude.  More often than not those behaviors find their root in anxiety.

We live in the age of the 'twixter', a term used to refer to young adults who have not developed the life skills they require in order to be able to support themselves and in turn give back to the families and communities to which they belong.  Rather than becoming independent adults, these twixters have a parasitic relationship with their societies, draining resources without giving back, and this isn't just localized to North America.  The Japanese refer to these individuals as 'parasite singles'.  The German refer to them as 'nesthockers', a term for baby birds who have just hatched from the egg and are completely helpless.  The Italian culture is facing a challenge right now in preserving their heritage because Italian women are not currently interested in marrying Italian men.  The reason?  Because so many have grown to become "bambocionni" or "big dummy boys".

There are many factors that can contribute towards youth growing to be twixters instead of independent adults, including disengaged parents (whether by choice or due to work hours) who did not pass on the needed life skills, having parents who do not have the skills themselves and are therefore unable to pass on the lessons, lack of parent intervention and boundaries when their child refused to learn and perform the skills growing up, and sometimes a genuine deep-seated laziness.  However the twixter got there, the results are often the same.  Repeated experiences of failure in life and without an understanding of why it keeps happening.

We are often familiar with the concept that "you don't know what you don't know", but on the flip side of the coin, you don't always know what you know either.  Chip and Dan Heath in their book "Made To Stick" refer to the Curse of Knowledge, the psychological tendency we have as human beings to assume that if we know something then obviously everyone else must know too!  It shoots us in the foot when we are trying to market products, services and ideas to an audience because we make inaccurate assumptions about the foundation of knowledge they already have for us to build on.  The Curse of Knowledge is also incredibly unhelpful when it comes to working together as a family or community unit to make sure youth and young adults have the knowledge and skills they need to become independent and contributing members of society.  If we consistently look at people wondering how they could be such an idiot for doing what they just did, or such a jerk for saying what they just said, then we have a bad habit that we need to break.  Without ruling out the fact that some youth have been taught the knowledge and skills they need and have chosen to ignore or reject it, we need to stop assuming that this is always the case.  Stop looking through the lens of what you know (the Curse of Knowledge) and do your family and community a favor by assuming that the young adult you just saw mouth off to their boss, or take money from their grandmother's purse, who has rotting dishes stacked on their kitchen counter or Mom doing their laundry when they are 35 is not making a conscious choice to live this way despite knowing a better way.  Start assuming that a critical piece of life knowledge or a critical life skill is missing or incomplete and see what can be done to fill that gap.

Let's explore a couple of the examples mentioned earlier and see what critical life knowledge or skills might need some tuning up.  The youth who just mouthed off to their boss should know that will just get them fired right?  Wrong!  That's the Curse of Knowledge at work.  Their current understanding of the world may be that it is their right to speak their mind and their employer's responsibility to make the workplace an enjoyable environment where the worker feels motivated.  What life knowledge is missing?  That both the employer and the employee have rights and responsibilities?  That the employee is paid to perform certain duties whether they enjoy them or not?  What life skills are missing?  Communication skills?  Conflict resolution skills?  What can be done to empower this young person with the knowledge and skills they need in order to maintain consistent employment and not be fired repeatedly throughout life?

Think your grandkid is a 'lazy thief' for digging twenties out of your purse?  Back that train of thought up!  Has anyone actually said plainly to them at any point in their life that you should never take another person's money without asking?  Wondering why they don't just get a job?  Do they know where to find job opportunities?  How about how to successfully write a cover letter and resume?  Do they know how to successfully present themselves to an employer during an interview?  Once they have the job do they have the ability to keep the job?  If you're thinking to yourself everybody knows how to do that then the Curse of Knowledge has struck again. 

We do each other an injustice when we watch a person struggle or fail and decide that it's none of our business or even worse, just judge them.  While it may not always be appropriate, where an opportunity does exist, take the time to pass what knowledge you have regarding how to be successful in life on to others.  Put yourself in the shoes of the person who doesn't have the knowledge or skills that you have.  Imagine experiencing repeated failure in life, missing out on achieving your goals while at the same time having people get angry and frustrated with you, telling you you're an idiot or looking at you like you're one over and over and over.  How would you react?  You would likely continue to get by in life the best way that you know how while developing a sense of having to be aggressive and fight for what you want.  Anxiety and a sense of being on edge would take root because the world would seem a much harder place that feels out to get you, and then develop a tough skin because otherwise the consistent anger and criticism you face would just cause you to break.  It would just be easier sometimes to be indifferent than to look and feel stupid after trying and failing again.  In the context of facilitation we have an amazing opportunity to address life-giving team and community skills that will benefit our participants in many life contexts, and possibly to empower them in other areas as well.

Remember that more often than not a participant who has just pulled out of a challenge grumbling about how stupid it is is actually saying "I can't find the solution, I feel stupid, and I don't like it".  That same anxiety fuels their reactions to life's challenges of getting a job, navigating school or a significant relationship, raising a child, etc.  Take a moment for a reality check.  If you didn't know what you know now, you would probably be doing the same things as the youth and young adults who leave your jaw hanging open sometimes with what they've just said or done.  Don't let your knowledge be a curse.  Let it be a gift, and pass that gift on.  The world will benefit if you do.

To learn more about our Independent Living Skills workshops visit our website at www.opendoordevelopment.ca.

Raise the Bar, Come to Life

The following article written by Lindsay Walton, Lead Facilitator of Open Door Development, was published in this month's Parallel Lines, the newsletter of the Association for Challenge Course Technology (ACCT).

We live in a society where the bar has been set pretty low. Life has itʼs challenges, hard hits and tough times, but in the sense of having something to strive for, a higher goal or standard to push for, the challenge it seems has been set to the side in favor of self-indulgence.

Many have forgotten how to fight for things, have forgotten how to persevere or be patient with themselves and others while mistakes are made and lessons learned. Many have settled for being entertained rather than being stretched, have settled for convenience rather than accomplishment, have settled for having their own way at the expense of the health and strength of their broader community.

It is a great thing to celebrate a teamʼs success and there is a sense of comfort for a facilitator in knowing that their clients are happy, enjoying their time and feeling good about themselves. A happy client is one who will hopefully return and pay for the experience again in the future. It makes for a more straightforward and stressless day as the person running the program. However, if all of your clients are happy and smiling throughout their experiences, I would like to suggest that something is not quite right. There is an Opportunity being missed. I would like to offer a life clue, one that if you grab hold of it may alter how you approach facilitation, business, and life.

Human beings at their very core desire challenge. That desire is built in to the human body. When we examine physical fitness it is a general principle that the more you sit the more you are going to want to sit. The more you sleep, the more you will want to sleep. However the more you are active, the more you will want to be in motion. The more you are challenged and see the pay-off, the more you want to push yourself. As we move forward and increase our activity we gain more ability to enjoy and engage in life. Increased range of motion, reduced pain, improved health, higher self-confidence and more. What is fascinating about this principle is that it is not confined to our physical selves.

Our inner beings, something deep in our core, responds the same way. The more we are indulged the more we demand to be handed to us. The more we focus on our wants and needs the more angry we get with others who we perceive arenʼt letting us have it. But the more we work for things, the more we push our character and see ourselves grow and strengthen, the more we want to push on and to be pushed.

Did you know that to challenge someone is to say “I care about you”? When offered out of a sincere desire to see someone grow and be healthy, independent and strong enough to face lifeʼs storms, humans perceive challenge as a sign of love. This is most obvious in young children who thrive when their parents challenge them by laying out boundaries, saying no, and disciplining them when they sink in to dishonesty, selfishness, greed, apathy or other qualities that will not serve them well in life. While making for some very hard days, weeks, months or years at times for the parents, their children display higher levels of self-confidence and ability to navigate life as a healthy and independent adult because somebody loved them enough to push them rather than indulge them. This is a gift from our parents we often donʼt learn to be grateful for until
much later in life.

What is critical to understand is that the need to be challenged doesnʼt fade away as we grow older. As adults, we are still drawn to people who call us to something higher. People who empower us, sometimes by sharing insight so that we know how to move forward and other times by making us work for it so that we figure it out ourselves. Either way, this person who we find so attractive usually accepted us as we were at the time, but didnʼt allow us to stay that way. They called us to face the challenge and empowered us in some way by pushing us, and we are attracted to that. People are attracted to Life and challenge is so very much a part of that. It is in being challenged that we truly learn how to persevere and not give up. It is in being challenged that we truly learn what it means to practice honesty, to be a person of integrity. It is in being challenged that we learn our strengths and identify our areas for growth, and develop hope that we can always move forward and always have the ability to be the change we want to see in the world around us.

I place the challenge to you as a facilitator to allow your participants to be stretched. Call them to something higher, something greater, and allow them to be frustrated while they figure it out. Examine yourself and identify when you are handing a group a clue to a challenge because they have earned it versus when you are handing out clues to relieve your sense of discomfort with their frustration. Examine yourself and identify when you are modifying challenges or letting participants get away with things not because it is better for them, but because you feel safer when everyone likes you as the facilitator who entertained them. Push yourself as a facilitator and know that there will be a payoff. You will grow as a professional, able to handle more difficult and complex team and community issues as they present themselves. Your business will grow because in the long-run people are more attracted to challenges that made them think than to entertainment which allowed their brains to turn off.

And because we know that participantsʼ experiences with us in our programs do have the ability to impact their broader lives, take inspiration and motivation from this thought. Your challenge to persevere may save a marriage. Your challenge to participate rather than sit on the sidelines may lead a parent to take a more active role in their childʼs life. Your challenge to stop taking shortcuts or looking for the easy way out may save someone from a criminal record. Your challenge to encourage others and point out their strengths may prevent a suicide.

If you are facing difficult life challenges and are being given the advice to listen to your feelings because then youʼll know what to do, ignore it. If you are giving this advice, quit it. Our feelings and emotions are clues, not an answer. It is what we know about hope, integrity, honesty, perseverance and more that will guide us through tough times and lead us to take actions that we will be proud of and that will give us peace in retrospect.

Allow yourself to be challenged. Challenge yourself. Challenge others. And Live.

Lindsay Walton is the Lead Facilitator of Open Door Development, a company that exists to build strong teams and healthy communities through team building, conflict resolution training, leadership development and more. You can contact her at info@opendoordevelopment.ca.

What New Services Would You Like To See? Join the Conversation!

In response to insight and requests from clients we are exploring adding two new workshops to our curriculum:  Anger Management, and Healthy Sexuality.

Many of our clients confess to struggling with anger issues and they are looking for solutions. Course participants also share on a regular basis stories of how their choices regarding their sexuality have impacted their lives painfully. Consequences have included unexpected pregnancies, being cheated on or abandoned, having their heart broken when a significant relationship involving their sexuality came to an end, or contracting a disease.

What makes us excited about offering these courses is that we have the knowledge and training to be able to equip participants with Anger Reduction training which would not focus on how to manage your anger, but on how to address it at its roots so that it begins to go away.

We also have the ability to create a Healthy Sexuality workshop that focuses on the value of the individuals and empowers them with the facts about their bodies and internal emotional workings that truly equips them to make informed decisions about their sexuality. This content is not covered in health class!

In order to provide the best service to you, whether a current client or a potential future client, we are looking for your feedback and insight. Please take the time to provide your comments below with answers to any or all of the following questions:

1. If Open Door Development were to offer Anger Reduction ("Management") training and a Healthy Sexuality workshop would either of these services hold interest for you?
2. What information would you like to see covered in the curriculum? What questions would you like to see answered?
3. What is the ideal time frame or length of training that would best fit your schedule when you are looking for any kind of training? 1 hour? 3 hours? Full day? Multiple days?
4. Knowing that Open Door Development exists "To build strong teams and healthy communities", are there any other courses or workshops that you would like to see offered that we do not currently advertise?

If you are unfamiliar with all of our program options please visit our website at www.opendoordevelopment.ca! Thank you for your time and insight. You are a part of helping Open Door Development grow!