The people who ask the hard questions and engage deeply are the ones shaping the future. Leadership isn’t just about titles—it’s about thinking, challenging, and pushing conversations forward.
I thought we (white liberals) are propagating racism when we try to push conversation forward on the subject, according to what you were saying about DEI forums and such in the last part of your presentation. Should we or shouldn’t we? What would you have us do?
You’re not in a contradiction—you’re in a reflex, a pattern. The white liberal instinct to ‘push the conversation forward’ isn’t about reckoning, it’s about retaining control. The burden of proof, of explanation, of discomfort, always lands elsewhere. The conversation is only valid when it moves at a pace, in a language, within a framework that feels legible to whiteness.
I said leadership isn’t about titles, it’s about asking the hard questions. But leadership isn’t just about asking, it’s about knowing when the questions aren’t yours to steer. That’s the part that destabilizes. The expectation that the terms of engagement will always be structured around your ability to act, your ability to understand, your comfort with what happens next. The panic comes when that assurance dissolves. When ‘should we or shouldn’t we?’ is no longer a meaningful question because the real question is: Why does the conversation only count when it plays by your rules?
So no, the issue isn’t whether white liberals should ‘push the conversation forward.’ It’s why the conversation only seems to exist when they do.
…discussion group starting a revolution…I laughed out loud with this brilliant analogy. Just when I feared my growing suspicions were a paranoia alone in the forest comes the crash course of your thought-provoking voice. Thank you.
Nate, you’re not debating—you’re managing your self-image. You’ve spent this entire conversation doing rhetorical gymnastics to ensure that nothing—no critique, no contradiction—can actually touch you. You started with an unchallengeable claim about your self-perception, doubled down by insisting that any contradiction must be a misunderstanding, and now you’re trying to “switch” the conversation to me so you can exit the field without ever addressing the original critique. It’s not clever, it’s just obvious.
And I already know your next move. You’ll say this is another misinterpretation, or that I’m avoiding engagement, or—my personal favorite—that I’m projecting. Because, of course, in your world, everything is a projection except your own worldview, which is somehow immune. That’s the beauty of the system you’ve built—it protects you from ever having to risk being wrong.
But here’s the joke: if perception is projection, then your belief that I’m wrong is just your own projection. So really, you’re just arguing with yourself. At this point, I’m just watching you wrestle with your own reflection, waiting for you to tap out.
Hey Ayoto, I just wanted to let you know, I wrote an article on attachment theory. It’s now on my substack if you’re interested in reading another perspective. I hope you’re having a nice weekend.
I’m not feeling victorious. I’m feeling disappointment that you’re not interested in clarifying what you’re saying. You’re assuming that I’m feeling satisfied with victory by default, but I’m not. That’s why I continue to push this conversation forward
Nate, is this about clarity or protest behavior? If you were certain, you wouldn’t still be circling, waiting for me to hold your interpretation in place. You’re not seeking truth—you’re seeking reassurance through engagement. But what happens if I step back? Can you sit with your own reading, or does the absence of my response feel unbearable? If your self-perception is so intact, why does my refusal shake you? Be honest—you don’t want my beliefs, you want my presence. And you’re not going to get it.
Let’s see what happens when you step back. If you step back. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I wrote this next thing on microsoft word, while I was waiting for your reply, so I’m just going to copy and paste it
I would also like to point out that I keep sharing curiosities with you, wanting to hear a clarification of your belief system and your intentions in writing these articles. You haven’t engaged with any of those questions so, by omission, yes, the conversation has been mostly about my belief system. Since it appears that you have an estimation of me that I don’t share, I don’t need to defend my self-concept. I just know that you are wrong. If you share your beliefs and your intentions with me, I swear that I will not question whether you’re saying what you believe. I will assume that you know better than I do what you believe. So let’s switch the conversation to you telling me your beliefs.
Nate, you’re not debating—you’re managing your self-image. You’ve spent this entire conversation doing rhetorical gymnastics to ensure that nothing—no critique, no contradiction—can actually touch you. You started with an unchallengeable claim about your self-perception, doubled down by insisting that any contradiction must be a misunderstanding, and now you’re trying to “switch” the conversation to me so you can exit the field without ever addressing the original critique. It’s not clever, it’s just obvious.
And I already know your next move. You’ll say this is another misinterpretation, or that I’m avoiding engagement, or—my personal favorite—that I’m projecting. Because, of course, in your world, everything is a projection except your own worldview, which is somehow immune. That’s the beauty of the system you’ve built—it protects you from ever having to risk being wrong.
But here’s the joke: if perception is projection, then your belief that I’m wrong is just your own projection. So really, you’re just arguing with yourself. At this point, I’m just watching you wrestle with your own reflection, waiting for you to tap out.
Hi Ayoto, I'm not planning on tapping out anytime soon. I am getting a little lost in the conversation since it's happening in several different places, but that was my doing. I'm not managing my self-image so much as I am making a counter-argument that attachment theory is neutral. Just like natural selection is a neutral phenomena. I'm curious to hear if you think so too. I agree with you that eugenics was a horrendously distorted perspective on natural selection, which happened because had pre-set beliefs in their own superiority (on the basis of their skin color alone). Those beliefs are problematic but does that make natural selection problematic? Natural selection is one of the forces that informs whether there's more melanin in your skin or less. It can't be racist at the same time. Or can it? I half expect you to say yes it can, and I half expect you not to answer. I don't expect you to tell me anything more about your beliefs. I just have to find it in your articles, which I am reading.
Of course I'm projecting on to you. And I'm owning it. Are you willing to own it too? I guess it is logical that if my worldview is that perception is projection, then technically, that world view stands outside of projection since it is about projection. If we agree that perception is projection, then yes, we're all just wrestling with our own reflections. That's what I'm trying to point out. If your worldview is centered on the idea that you are being oppressed, then yes, you're going to have an experience of being oppressed. Realizing that would be the ticket to freedom, but most of us, who are feeling guilty and undeserving, don't actually want that freedom. Whether we believe things because we see them or we see things because we believe them, will probably not be settled for a couple more centuries and perhaps never. We do still have flat-earthers around. I do see more and more people everyday who are waking up to the fact that they see what they believe, and as I support them in grappling with that realization,
I love watching as they begin to feel how empowering it is. They have something they can do now to change their lives for the better; to change the world they see for the better. I just tell them to watch their thoughts like a hawk, and if they see a grievance
thought, a judgment thought, a guilty or blaming thought, a scarcity
thought, or a limiting thought, practice shooing it away. It requires a lot of
time, 18 months in my case, but your brain eventually does get rewired if
you're persistent and consistent with the practice.
Now my worldview has come to a place where I see the entire world as
neutral. There's nothing measurable in it until the observer comes along to
measure it, to assess it, to judge it, and in some people's case, to condemn
it, in some people's case, to forgive it. You're not likely to change the minds of the other 8 billion people on this earth, but you can change your own mind and that is enough.
I understand ‘reflex patterns’ and how that is destabilizing. I’ve played that role unintentionally since I was 21. (Now I’m almost 30… so 9years of working in mental health systems) have taught me that if I can shift my questions to include my awareness of the systemic issues as well as pair them with what is known legislatively, I can directly speak to the legal teams of the organization through my line of questioning. However, that skips a lot of steps and places me in a position of steering when, I am actually not compensated appropriately for that and end up placing myself at risk for exploitation. While I am comfortable with that, I also have to acknowledge that social economic status has more privileges and there are moments that even when I know better, I can’t do better due to my own financial freedom limitations. And also, I’m working to resolve that barrier!
You articulate something crucial here, that the people who actually understand systems most intimately are often the ones least resourced to change them. Organizations are more than happy to let underpaid workers navigate, diagnose, and even repair their structural issues, so long as they don’t have to compensate them for it. It’s not just about expertise, but about who gets to profit from it.
And this is where your last point cuts deep, that 'even when I know better, I can’t do better due to my own financial freedom limitations.’ That’s the mechanism of control, isn’t it? The people closest to systemic breakdowns are the ones most economically trapped within them. Knowing the rules doesn’t mean you get to rewrite them, especially when knowledge itself is a site of labor extraction. The barrier you describe isn’t just about money, it’s about the gap between what is seen and what is structurally allowed to matter. How do you think about navigating that gap while protecting your own energy?
Totally the mechanism of control. I’ll confess that navigating this gap is entertaining for me… I’m preoccupied with drama (hence the vocation in family systems.) and, systems are so simple. There are so many simple solutions available if organizations would consider a long-term sustainable profit distribution. It does take a long time to get action… unless you learn the ‘buzzwords’ of the field. Protecting my own energy has been difficult. I have to remind myself not to personalize the systemic issues. Then I have to allow myself to ‘solve the problem’ because my mind just works like that… and then, I breathe and reflect and focus on what I can control. I take a lot of ‘life lessons’ into consideration and hold on to family values that are nature based as a source of inspiration to protect my energy. I’m starting to trust my energy differently and becoming more curious and willing to listen to myself. Which has been a much needed self-evolution.
I hear the tension in what you’re saying—between seeing systems as simple and yet exhausting to navigate, between enjoying the game and feeling drained by it, between solving problems instinctively and needing to remind yourself to breathe. You seem to be oscillating between mastery and disillusionment, control and surrender, intellectual distance and emotional investment. You understand the mechanics of power, yet you still feel its weight. That contradiction is interesting.
You say that organizations could implement “simple solutions” if only they considered long-term sustainable profit distribution. But what does it mean when we recognize solutions as obvious, yet the system resists them? Are we assuming that rationality and ethics are primary drivers when the dominant logic is power and extraction? If change takes a long time, is it just inertia—or is delay itself a mechanism of control? You mention that learning the buzzwords speeds things up. So is it really about solutions being simple, or about language acting as a gatekeeping function?
I also wonder about your relationship to drama and family systems. You say you’re preoccupied with it—do you think that preoccupation is a neutral interest, or does it structure your way of relating to power? If you enjoy navigating the gap, does that mean you unconsciously rely on gaps, inefficiencies, and delays to maintain your role as a solver? If the system were truly “fixed,” would you still find it entertaining?
You speak of protecting your energy, which makes sense. But what does it mean to “not personalize systemic issues” while still taking them on as problems to be solved? If your mind naturally tries to fix things, can you fully detach without feeling a loss of purpose? You say you’re beginning to trust your energy differently—what does that mean in practice? Does trusting your energy mean letting go of control, or does it mean refining how you exert it?
There’s wisdom in knowing when to act and when to let things be. But there’s also a danger in treating detachment as an escape hatch when systems become too frustrating to engage with directly. You’re in a moment of self-evolution—but is it evolution toward something bigger, or toward a form of retreat? What would trusting yourself more radically look like? If you weren’t navigating drama or analyzing systems, where would your energy naturally go?
I am wrestling with all of that! Yes. Language as a gatekeeper… for certain! I still like to think that the solutions are simple… even if the process is complex. I tend to romanticize rational and ethical reasoning as the means to make a situation right. The relationship I have to family systems and drama is as a partentified child. I took on a protective role and deescalated a lot of fights in my family. So, it totally structures how I interact with power. I try to find neutrality or a way to acknowledge the power structure. I do rely on gaps in systems because that seems to be the most consistent. I should specify that don’t enjoy being the ‘go-to’ or the solver, that’s the role I’m placed in by others and sometimes the role I’m willing to play because it is familiar enough. I’m so used to being scapegoated, I know how to protect myself from the scapegoating process. And it is exhausting… the preoccupational problem I’m trying to rectify. The act of navigation or negotiating within these gaps is what I find fun. The entertainment factor is definitely how I attempt to deal with the impact it has on my own psyche, as well as how the gap impact people I work with clinically. ‘Dark humor’. I think it’d be peaceful to not be troubled by a system… but if we know the rules, and we know the rule that protects the most vulnerable… there is rarely a peaceful moment. Trusting my energy differently is a refinement process right now. Detachment is a place I get to integrate with my own sense of self… I also have experienced and observed the danger of detachment and agree with your statement. I feel like this phase of life for me is leading to something bigger and also a retreat. Usually those two things are one or the other, life situations has me entering both at the same time. My energy naturally goes toward nature and people. Systems of sort. I like to be playful with both. Choosing to enter the field of psychology seemed to be a way to work with my energy… I wasn’t expecting to interact with such a gaping hole of lack. It’s placed me in a position to check myself.
Janey, I appreciate the depth of your self-reflection here. You’re not just naming contradictions—you’re actively living inside them, holding together competing forces: neutrality and engagement, detachment and responsibility, mastery and exhaustion. You describe playing the role of ‘solver’ not as a conscious desire, but as a survival strategy, something inherited from childhood, something that systems recognize and exploit. And yet, you also say you find the navigation itself entertaining, that it offers a sense of play even within its weight. That’s an incredibly sharp paradox: does the enjoyment come from agency within the system, or from the illusion of agency?
I hear you when you say that you don’t enjoy being the ‘go-to,’ yet you know how to protect yourself from scapegoating and can predict the process before it happens. That’s survival intelligence, but it’s also a form of conditioning—not just reacting to power, but anticipating it, bending with it before it bends you. I wonder if that’s part of the exhaustion. You’re not just working within gaps—you’re shaping yourself to them. So what happens if you stop? If you refuse to navigate, refuse to play the role of the one who sees the openings? Would the system actually collapse around you, or would it just reveal what was always missing?
You say trusting your energy differently is a refinement process. What if it’s not just about refining how you move through systems, but about trusting that you don’t need to? You mention that life is leading you both toward something bigger and toward retreat. But what if the retreat is the bigger thing? What if pulling away from a system built on lack is the real movement forward?
You weren’t expecting to enter psychology and find a gaping hole. But now that you have, is it something to patch up? Or is it pointing you somewhere else entirely?
Your conversations don’t exist or don’t count unless there is a white person present? That’s an unfortunate perspective isn’t it? I don’t share it with you. I certainly hope that all your conversations have meaning in them and as a melanin-deficient person, I would not wish to deny the meaningfulness of your conversations. That has never been my intention. I’m very sorry for your experience but I can’t take responsibility for your experience. If you take responsibility for your experience then you are your own decider. You’re not at the mercy of other narratives.
Nate, I don’t believe you misunderstand me. I believe you resist what this conversation requires of you. And that is something deeper than just knowing, deeper than just engaging. You have asked me, should we or shouldn’t we, but that question assumes that the conversation, and by extension, justice, only moves when you do. That is the part that must be surrendered.
In Matthew 19:16-22, the rich man approaches Christ, asking, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?" He is sincere, he has followed the commandments, he wants to know what else is required. And Christ answers, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." But the man, though righteous in his own eyes, walks away sorrowful, for he had great wealth.
Understand what Christ is saying here. It is not just wealth in the material sense, but the security, the power, the certainty that comes with it. The man wanted to know what he could do while keeping his footing, keeping his frame, keeping his security. But Christ tells him, the question is not about what more he can do, it is about what he is willing to let go.
And that is the question before you now. You said, "I can’t take responsibility for your experience." But that is not what is being asked. The real question is, why does your responsibility mark the boundary of the conversation? Why must the dialogue be structured around your ability to enter and exit at will, your comfort in participating, your sense of agency in deciding what is valid?
Nate, was it not the patient and deliberate Matthew who wrote in 11:15, "He who has ears, let him hear"? He wrote to those who thought they already knew, to those who wanted to follow but hesitated at the cost. Not just to hear the words, but to receive them, to let them unsettle and reshape what feels familiar. If there is resistance, let it not be a closing of the ears, but a recognition that change is always costly. The question is not whether you hear, but whether you are willing to listen in a way that asks something of you.
“You have asked me the question, ‘should we or shouldn’t we?’ but that question assumes that the conversation, and by extension, justice, only moves when you do.”
Rather than responding to anything you said after that, I just want to point out an error in this statement. I don’t assume that the conversation abbout race only started when I began to engage with it. It sounds to me like you are assuming that is my orientation to all conversations. Please clarify, if I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying.
When I walk into a room and observe a conversation taking place, I don’t assume that the conversation can now begin since I am here to engage with it. I assume they were having the conversation before I entered the room. That’s what I believe. So, Ayoto, I’m simply informing you of something that you don’t already know. I don’t believe what you’re telling me I believe. In knowing this, I know that your premise is wrong because your premise stands on the assumption that I believe something that I already know I don’t believe.
Can you and I agree that you know the contents of your belief system better than I do, and that, likewise, I know the contents of my belief system better than you do? Is that not a safe assumption to make? If we can agree on that, we might be able to communicate effectively. If you can’t imagine that I have a front seat view of my own belief system, then nothing I say will be believable to you. Your view of me will trump my view of me and nothing I say will have any meaning to you. Your estimation of me will trump my own estimation of myself. That’s a nonstarter for communication in my view.
Nate, you keep telling me what you don’t believe, what you don’t assume, what you don’t do, but none of that addresses the point. It’s a clever maneuver—positioning yourself as the authority on your own beliefs and then insisting that any critique which contradicts your self-perception must be based on a false premise. But you’re doing something here that I need you to see.
The conversation wasn’t about what you personally think about justice, about race, about when discussions begin. It wasn’t about whether you consciously believe that your presence dictates movement. It was about the function of the question you asked. “Should we or shouldn’t we?” That’s what you said, and in saying it, you made movement—justice itself—contingent on your action. You didn’t ask, “What is happening?” or “What should be done?” You framed the stakes around your decision, around the extent to which you and those like you will or won’t engage. That’s not a question about justice. That’s a question about your willingness to participate in it, as if its validity depends on you.
And now, instead of engaging with that, you’ve retreated into a performance of epistemic self-defense. You’re trying to make this about what you believe rather than how your framing functions. You insist that I’ve assumed something incorrect about you. But if you’ve already decided that nothing I say can contradict your own self-perception, then what exactly is this conversation? You’re not responding to the critique. You’re preemptively shutting down any critique that requires you to reconsider yourself. That’s not engagement. That’s positioning yourself as an immovable object and then calling it a misunderstanding when someone points it out.
So let’s get to the heart of it. Do you think belief is the final arbiter of action? Do you think that if a man says he doesn’t believe in hierarchy, that means he isn’t participating in it? Do you think that if a corporation says it believes in sustainability, that cancels out its material impact? Do you believe that if someone knows they are not racist, then their actions—no matter how complicit in racist structures—cannot be interrogated? Because if you do, then you are arguing that the world operates on self-perception alone. And if you don’t, then you have just dismantled your own position.
And what’s more revealing—what’s even more glaring—is that this entire exchange has been about you. Not the discourse of justice. Not the structural critique. Not the history of how conversations like this are framed and who gets to determine movement. It’s been about what you believe, what you assume, how you feel when your self-perception is challenged. And I have to ask, what exactly is at stake for you? What is this defense protecting? What do you think will happen if you step back from your own certainty for a moment and actually engage with the argument? If you’re as committed to meaningful dialogue as you claim, then what are you so afraid of? Because right now, it looks a lot like you’re not defending an argument—you’re defending the right to never have to change your mind.
It isn’t an assumption on my part that I am more aware of my belief system than you are. It’s just something that, with logic, I know.
“You insist that I’ve assumed something incorrect about you. But if you’ve already decided that nothing I say can contradict your own self-perception, then what exactly is this conversation?”
Yes, I do insist that you’ve assumed something about me that is incorrect. That something pertains to my belief system, which I am very aware of. I’m also aware that you’re not aware of my belief system. You can contradict my self perception, you just can’t be correct when you do.
“Because if you do, then you are arguing that the world operates on self-perception alone.”
To settle the paradox that you are assuming I’m in, I have to clarify a nuance. I don’t believe that the world runs on my self-perception. I believe that the world I SEE runs on my self-perception. I believe that is a universal truth which applies to all human beings. Perception is projection. What you believe is what you’ll see. That is what I believe, and if you insist I don’t, I can safely state that you are incorrect.
Nate, I love this. Truly. The sheer elegance of the escape act. You’ve created a reality where no one can ever tell you you’re wrong—not because you’re necessarily right, but because your framework is structurally incapable of receiving contradiction. It’s like you’ve built yourself an epistemic fortress with walls so thick that even you can’t get out.
And yet, here we are. You, confidently insisting that no one can possibly know your beliefs better than you do. Me, wondering how it is that people misinterpret themselves every day, revise their identities, have midlife crises, go to therapy, change religions, fall in love with people they swore they never would. It’s almost as if the human mind is not a perfectly transparent, self-knowing entity but a mess of contradictions, blind spots, and unconscious motivations. But no, not you. You, of course, are the one exception. The fully self-aware, perfectly rational subject in a world of deluded projections.
And yet, what’s funny—really, hilariously funny—is that for someone who claims that perception is projection, you seem deeply committed to ensuring that your own perception is never projected back at you in a way that forces discomfort. Because if your own beliefs are self-evident, untouchable, and beyond critique, then why exactly are we talking? What is this, if not a performance of self-defense? What are you defending, Nate? If you’re so unbothered by the idea that I could be misperceiving you, why do you need to correct it? What is this desperate need for my agreement, for my recognition of your internal clarity?
And that’s where I see the real joke. You’ve built a system in which you can never be wrong, but in doing so, you’ve also made it so you can never really be right either. Because to be right, you’d need to be capable of risking something, of engaging in an argument where you could actually lose. But you won’t do that. You need this perfect escape hatch, this little intellectual panic room, where you can say that nothing I say can ever truly apply to you because you already know yourself too well. That’s not winning, Nate. That’s just making sure the game never starts.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe this was never about truth, or debate, or perception, or projection. Maybe this is just your way of making sure no one ever really gets to you. And I have to admit, it’s impressive. It’s almost airtight. Almost.
But you do realize what this means, right? If your logic holds, then the only thing left for me to do is agree with you entirely while also completely ignoring you. Because if perception is projection, and all belief is self-contained, then truly, nothing you say to me has any bearing on what I choose to see. And with that, I step out of your fortress, leaving you to pace the halls, forever the sole authority in a kingdom of one.
How does this become a required discussion forum for world leaders??
The people who ask the hard questions and engage deeply are the ones shaping the future. Leadership isn’t just about titles—it’s about thinking, challenging, and pushing conversations forward.
Thanks for reminding me of that truth
I thought we (white liberals) are propagating racism when we try to push conversation forward on the subject, according to what you were saying about DEI forums and such in the last part of your presentation. Should we or shouldn’t we? What would you have us do?
You’re not in a contradiction—you’re in a reflex, a pattern. The white liberal instinct to ‘push the conversation forward’ isn’t about reckoning, it’s about retaining control. The burden of proof, of explanation, of discomfort, always lands elsewhere. The conversation is only valid when it moves at a pace, in a language, within a framework that feels legible to whiteness.
I said leadership isn’t about titles, it’s about asking the hard questions. But leadership isn’t just about asking, it’s about knowing when the questions aren’t yours to steer. That’s the part that destabilizes. The expectation that the terms of engagement will always be structured around your ability to act, your ability to understand, your comfort with what happens next. The panic comes when that assurance dissolves. When ‘should we or shouldn’t we?’ is no longer a meaningful question because the real question is: Why does the conversation only count when it plays by your rules?
So no, the issue isn’t whether white liberals should ‘push the conversation forward.’ It’s why the conversation only seems to exist when they do.
…discussion group starting a revolution…I laughed out loud with this brilliant analogy. Just when I feared my growing suspicions were a paranoia alone in the forest comes the crash course of your thought-provoking voice. Thank you.
Nate, you’re not debating—you’re managing your self-image. You’ve spent this entire conversation doing rhetorical gymnastics to ensure that nothing—no critique, no contradiction—can actually touch you. You started with an unchallengeable claim about your self-perception, doubled down by insisting that any contradiction must be a misunderstanding, and now you’re trying to “switch” the conversation to me so you can exit the field without ever addressing the original critique. It’s not clever, it’s just obvious.
And I already know your next move. You’ll say this is another misinterpretation, or that I’m avoiding engagement, or—my personal favorite—that I’m projecting. Because, of course, in your world, everything is a projection except your own worldview, which is somehow immune. That’s the beauty of the system you’ve built—it protects you from ever having to risk being wrong.
But here’s the joke: if perception is projection, then your belief that I’m wrong is just your own projection. So really, you’re just arguing with yourself. At this point, I’m just watching you wrestle with your own reflection, waiting for you to tap out.
It was beautifully written though
Thanks, I love you too Nate.
Hey Ayoto, I just wanted to let you know, I wrote an article on attachment theory. It’s now on my substack if you’re interested in reading another perspective. I hope you’re having a nice weekend.
Have you heard of the 7 hermetic principles?
I’m not feeling victorious. I’m feeling disappointment that you’re not interested in clarifying what you’re saying. You’re assuming that I’m feeling satisfied with victory by default, but I’m not. That’s why I continue to push this conversation forward
Nate, is this about clarity or protest behavior? If you were certain, you wouldn’t still be circling, waiting for me to hold your interpretation in place. You’re not seeking truth—you’re seeking reassurance through engagement. But what happens if I step back? Can you sit with your own reading, or does the absence of my response feel unbearable? If your self-perception is so intact, why does my refusal shake you? Be honest—you don’t want my beliefs, you want my presence. And you’re not going to get it.
Let’s see what happens when you step back. If you step back. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t. I wrote this next thing on microsoft word, while I was waiting for your reply, so I’m just going to copy and paste it
I would also like to point out that I keep sharing curiosities with you, wanting to hear a clarification of your belief system and your intentions in writing these articles. You haven’t engaged with any of those questions so, by omission, yes, the conversation has been mostly about my belief system. Since it appears that you have an estimation of me that I don’t share, I don’t need to defend my self-concept. I just know that you are wrong. If you share your beliefs and your intentions with me, I swear that I will not question whether you’re saying what you believe. I will assume that you know better than I do what you believe. So let’s switch the conversation to you telling me your beliefs.
Nate, you’re not debating—you’re managing your self-image. You’ve spent this entire conversation doing rhetorical gymnastics to ensure that nothing—no critique, no contradiction—can actually touch you. You started with an unchallengeable claim about your self-perception, doubled down by insisting that any contradiction must be a misunderstanding, and now you’re trying to “switch” the conversation to me so you can exit the field without ever addressing the original critique. It’s not clever, it’s just obvious.
And I already know your next move. You’ll say this is another misinterpretation, or that I’m avoiding engagement, or—my personal favorite—that I’m projecting. Because, of course, in your world, everything is a projection except your own worldview, which is somehow immune. That’s the beauty of the system you’ve built—it protects you from ever having to risk being wrong.
But here’s the joke: if perception is projection, then your belief that I’m wrong is just your own projection. So really, you’re just arguing with yourself. At this point, I’m just watching you wrestle with your own reflection, waiting for you to tap out.
Hi Ayoto, I'm not planning on tapping out anytime soon. I am getting a little lost in the conversation since it's happening in several different places, but that was my doing. I'm not managing my self-image so much as I am making a counter-argument that attachment theory is neutral. Just like natural selection is a neutral phenomena. I'm curious to hear if you think so too. I agree with you that eugenics was a horrendously distorted perspective on natural selection, which happened because had pre-set beliefs in their own superiority (on the basis of their skin color alone). Those beliefs are problematic but does that make natural selection problematic? Natural selection is one of the forces that informs whether there's more melanin in your skin or less. It can't be racist at the same time. Or can it? I half expect you to say yes it can, and I half expect you not to answer. I don't expect you to tell me anything more about your beliefs. I just have to find it in your articles, which I am reading.
Of course I'm projecting on to you. And I'm owning it. Are you willing to own it too? I guess it is logical that if my worldview is that perception is projection, then technically, that world view stands outside of projection since it is about projection. If we agree that perception is projection, then yes, we're all just wrestling with our own reflections. That's what I'm trying to point out. If your worldview is centered on the idea that you are being oppressed, then yes, you're going to have an experience of being oppressed. Realizing that would be the ticket to freedom, but most of us, who are feeling guilty and undeserving, don't actually want that freedom. Whether we believe things because we see them or we see things because we believe them, will probably not be settled for a couple more centuries and perhaps never. We do still have flat-earthers around. I do see more and more people everyday who are waking up to the fact that they see what they believe, and as I support them in grappling with that realization,
I love watching as they begin to feel how empowering it is. They have something they can do now to change their lives for the better; to change the world they see for the better. I just tell them to watch their thoughts like a hawk, and if they see a grievance
thought, a judgment thought, a guilty or blaming thought, a scarcity
thought, or a limiting thought, practice shooing it away. It requires a lot of
time, 18 months in my case, but your brain eventually does get rewired if
you're persistent and consistent with the practice.
Now my worldview has come to a place where I see the entire world as
neutral. There's nothing measurable in it until the observer comes along to
measure it, to assess it, to judge it, and in some people's case, to condemn
it, in some people's case, to forgive it. You're not likely to change the minds of the other 8 billion people on this earth, but you can change your own mind and that is enough.
I understand ‘reflex patterns’ and how that is destabilizing. I’ve played that role unintentionally since I was 21. (Now I’m almost 30… so 9years of working in mental health systems) have taught me that if I can shift my questions to include my awareness of the systemic issues as well as pair them with what is known legislatively, I can directly speak to the legal teams of the organization through my line of questioning. However, that skips a lot of steps and places me in a position of steering when, I am actually not compensated appropriately for that and end up placing myself at risk for exploitation. While I am comfortable with that, I also have to acknowledge that social economic status has more privileges and there are moments that even when I know better, I can’t do better due to my own financial freedom limitations. And also, I’m working to resolve that barrier!
You articulate something crucial here, that the people who actually understand systems most intimately are often the ones least resourced to change them. Organizations are more than happy to let underpaid workers navigate, diagnose, and even repair their structural issues, so long as they don’t have to compensate them for it. It’s not just about expertise, but about who gets to profit from it.
And this is where your last point cuts deep, that 'even when I know better, I can’t do better due to my own financial freedom limitations.’ That’s the mechanism of control, isn’t it? The people closest to systemic breakdowns are the ones most economically trapped within them. Knowing the rules doesn’t mean you get to rewrite them, especially when knowledge itself is a site of labor extraction. The barrier you describe isn’t just about money, it’s about the gap between what is seen and what is structurally allowed to matter. How do you think about navigating that gap while protecting your own energy?
Totally the mechanism of control. I’ll confess that navigating this gap is entertaining for me… I’m preoccupied with drama (hence the vocation in family systems.) and, systems are so simple. There are so many simple solutions available if organizations would consider a long-term sustainable profit distribution. It does take a long time to get action… unless you learn the ‘buzzwords’ of the field. Protecting my own energy has been difficult. I have to remind myself not to personalize the systemic issues. Then I have to allow myself to ‘solve the problem’ because my mind just works like that… and then, I breathe and reflect and focus on what I can control. I take a lot of ‘life lessons’ into consideration and hold on to family values that are nature based as a source of inspiration to protect my energy. I’m starting to trust my energy differently and becoming more curious and willing to listen to myself. Which has been a much needed self-evolution.
I hear the tension in what you’re saying—between seeing systems as simple and yet exhausting to navigate, between enjoying the game and feeling drained by it, between solving problems instinctively and needing to remind yourself to breathe. You seem to be oscillating between mastery and disillusionment, control and surrender, intellectual distance and emotional investment. You understand the mechanics of power, yet you still feel its weight. That contradiction is interesting.
You say that organizations could implement “simple solutions” if only they considered long-term sustainable profit distribution. But what does it mean when we recognize solutions as obvious, yet the system resists them? Are we assuming that rationality and ethics are primary drivers when the dominant logic is power and extraction? If change takes a long time, is it just inertia—or is delay itself a mechanism of control? You mention that learning the buzzwords speeds things up. So is it really about solutions being simple, or about language acting as a gatekeeping function?
I also wonder about your relationship to drama and family systems. You say you’re preoccupied with it—do you think that preoccupation is a neutral interest, or does it structure your way of relating to power? If you enjoy navigating the gap, does that mean you unconsciously rely on gaps, inefficiencies, and delays to maintain your role as a solver? If the system were truly “fixed,” would you still find it entertaining?
You speak of protecting your energy, which makes sense. But what does it mean to “not personalize systemic issues” while still taking them on as problems to be solved? If your mind naturally tries to fix things, can you fully detach without feeling a loss of purpose? You say you’re beginning to trust your energy differently—what does that mean in practice? Does trusting your energy mean letting go of control, or does it mean refining how you exert it?
There’s wisdom in knowing when to act and when to let things be. But there’s also a danger in treating detachment as an escape hatch when systems become too frustrating to engage with directly. You’re in a moment of self-evolution—but is it evolution toward something bigger, or toward a form of retreat? What would trusting yourself more radically look like? If you weren’t navigating drama or analyzing systems, where would your energy naturally go?
I am wrestling with all of that! Yes. Language as a gatekeeper… for certain! I still like to think that the solutions are simple… even if the process is complex. I tend to romanticize rational and ethical reasoning as the means to make a situation right. The relationship I have to family systems and drama is as a partentified child. I took on a protective role and deescalated a lot of fights in my family. So, it totally structures how I interact with power. I try to find neutrality or a way to acknowledge the power structure. I do rely on gaps in systems because that seems to be the most consistent. I should specify that don’t enjoy being the ‘go-to’ or the solver, that’s the role I’m placed in by others and sometimes the role I’m willing to play because it is familiar enough. I’m so used to being scapegoated, I know how to protect myself from the scapegoating process. And it is exhausting… the preoccupational problem I’m trying to rectify. The act of navigation or negotiating within these gaps is what I find fun. The entertainment factor is definitely how I attempt to deal with the impact it has on my own psyche, as well as how the gap impact people I work with clinically. ‘Dark humor’. I think it’d be peaceful to not be troubled by a system… but if we know the rules, and we know the rule that protects the most vulnerable… there is rarely a peaceful moment. Trusting my energy differently is a refinement process right now. Detachment is a place I get to integrate with my own sense of self… I also have experienced and observed the danger of detachment and agree with your statement. I feel like this phase of life for me is leading to something bigger and also a retreat. Usually those two things are one or the other, life situations has me entering both at the same time. My energy naturally goes toward nature and people. Systems of sort. I like to be playful with both. Choosing to enter the field of psychology seemed to be a way to work with my energy… I wasn’t expecting to interact with such a gaping hole of lack. It’s placed me in a position to check myself.
Janey, I appreciate the depth of your self-reflection here. You’re not just naming contradictions—you’re actively living inside them, holding together competing forces: neutrality and engagement, detachment and responsibility, mastery and exhaustion. You describe playing the role of ‘solver’ not as a conscious desire, but as a survival strategy, something inherited from childhood, something that systems recognize and exploit. And yet, you also say you find the navigation itself entertaining, that it offers a sense of play even within its weight. That’s an incredibly sharp paradox: does the enjoyment come from agency within the system, or from the illusion of agency?
I hear you when you say that you don’t enjoy being the ‘go-to,’ yet you know how to protect yourself from scapegoating and can predict the process before it happens. That’s survival intelligence, but it’s also a form of conditioning—not just reacting to power, but anticipating it, bending with it before it bends you. I wonder if that’s part of the exhaustion. You’re not just working within gaps—you’re shaping yourself to them. So what happens if you stop? If you refuse to navigate, refuse to play the role of the one who sees the openings? Would the system actually collapse around you, or would it just reveal what was always missing?
You say trusting your energy differently is a refinement process. What if it’s not just about refining how you move through systems, but about trusting that you don’t need to? You mention that life is leading you both toward something bigger and toward retreat. But what if the retreat is the bigger thing? What if pulling away from a system built on lack is the real movement forward?
You weren’t expecting to enter psychology and find a gaping hole. But now that you have, is it something to patch up? Or is it pointing you somewhere else entirely?
Your conversations don’t exist or don’t count unless there is a white person present? That’s an unfortunate perspective isn’t it? I don’t share it with you. I certainly hope that all your conversations have meaning in them and as a melanin-deficient person, I would not wish to deny the meaningfulness of your conversations. That has never been my intention. I’m very sorry for your experience but I can’t take responsibility for your experience. If you take responsibility for your experience then you are your own decider. You’re not at the mercy of other narratives.
Nate, I don’t believe you misunderstand me. I believe you resist what this conversation requires of you. And that is something deeper than just knowing, deeper than just engaging. You have asked me, should we or shouldn’t we, but that question assumes that the conversation, and by extension, justice, only moves when you do. That is the part that must be surrendered.
In Matthew 19:16-22, the rich man approaches Christ, asking, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?" He is sincere, he has followed the commandments, he wants to know what else is required. And Christ answers, "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." But the man, though righteous in his own eyes, walks away sorrowful, for he had great wealth.
Understand what Christ is saying here. It is not just wealth in the material sense, but the security, the power, the certainty that comes with it. The man wanted to know what he could do while keeping his footing, keeping his frame, keeping his security. But Christ tells him, the question is not about what more he can do, it is about what he is willing to let go.
And that is the question before you now. You said, "I can’t take responsibility for your experience." But that is not what is being asked. The real question is, why does your responsibility mark the boundary of the conversation? Why must the dialogue be structured around your ability to enter and exit at will, your comfort in participating, your sense of agency in deciding what is valid?
Nate, was it not the patient and deliberate Matthew who wrote in 11:15, "He who has ears, let him hear"? He wrote to those who thought they already knew, to those who wanted to follow but hesitated at the cost. Not just to hear the words, but to receive them, to let them unsettle and reshape what feels familiar. If there is resistance, let it not be a closing of the ears, but a recognition that change is always costly. The question is not whether you hear, but whether you are willing to listen in a way that asks something of you.
“You have asked me the question, ‘should we or shouldn’t we?’ but that question assumes that the conversation, and by extension, justice, only moves when you do.”
Rather than responding to anything you said after that, I just want to point out an error in this statement. I don’t assume that the conversation abbout race only started when I began to engage with it. It sounds to me like you are assuming that is my orientation to all conversations. Please clarify, if I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying.
When I walk into a room and observe a conversation taking place, I don’t assume that the conversation can now begin since I am here to engage with it. I assume they were having the conversation before I entered the room. That’s what I believe. So, Ayoto, I’m simply informing you of something that you don’t already know. I don’t believe what you’re telling me I believe. In knowing this, I know that your premise is wrong because your premise stands on the assumption that I believe something that I already know I don’t believe.
Can you and I agree that you know the contents of your belief system better than I do, and that, likewise, I know the contents of my belief system better than you do? Is that not a safe assumption to make? If we can agree on that, we might be able to communicate effectively. If you can’t imagine that I have a front seat view of my own belief system, then nothing I say will be believable to you. Your view of me will trump my view of me and nothing I say will have any meaning to you. Your estimation of me will trump my own estimation of myself. That’s a nonstarter for communication in my view.
Nate, you keep telling me what you don’t believe, what you don’t assume, what you don’t do, but none of that addresses the point. It’s a clever maneuver—positioning yourself as the authority on your own beliefs and then insisting that any critique which contradicts your self-perception must be based on a false premise. But you’re doing something here that I need you to see.
The conversation wasn’t about what you personally think about justice, about race, about when discussions begin. It wasn’t about whether you consciously believe that your presence dictates movement. It was about the function of the question you asked. “Should we or shouldn’t we?” That’s what you said, and in saying it, you made movement—justice itself—contingent on your action. You didn’t ask, “What is happening?” or “What should be done?” You framed the stakes around your decision, around the extent to which you and those like you will or won’t engage. That’s not a question about justice. That’s a question about your willingness to participate in it, as if its validity depends on you.
And now, instead of engaging with that, you’ve retreated into a performance of epistemic self-defense. You’re trying to make this about what you believe rather than how your framing functions. You insist that I’ve assumed something incorrect about you. But if you’ve already decided that nothing I say can contradict your own self-perception, then what exactly is this conversation? You’re not responding to the critique. You’re preemptively shutting down any critique that requires you to reconsider yourself. That’s not engagement. That’s positioning yourself as an immovable object and then calling it a misunderstanding when someone points it out.
So let’s get to the heart of it. Do you think belief is the final arbiter of action? Do you think that if a man says he doesn’t believe in hierarchy, that means he isn’t participating in it? Do you think that if a corporation says it believes in sustainability, that cancels out its material impact? Do you believe that if someone knows they are not racist, then their actions—no matter how complicit in racist structures—cannot be interrogated? Because if you do, then you are arguing that the world operates on self-perception alone. And if you don’t, then you have just dismantled your own position.
And what’s more revealing—what’s even more glaring—is that this entire exchange has been about you. Not the discourse of justice. Not the structural critique. Not the history of how conversations like this are framed and who gets to determine movement. It’s been about what you believe, what you assume, how you feel when your self-perception is challenged. And I have to ask, what exactly is at stake for you? What is this defense protecting? What do you think will happen if you step back from your own certainty for a moment and actually engage with the argument? If you’re as committed to meaningful dialogue as you claim, then what are you so afraid of? Because right now, it looks a lot like you’re not defending an argument—you’re defending the right to never have to change your mind.
It isn’t an assumption on my part that I am more aware of my belief system than you are. It’s just something that, with logic, I know.
“You insist that I’ve assumed something incorrect about you. But if you’ve already decided that nothing I say can contradict your own self-perception, then what exactly is this conversation?”
Yes, I do insist that you’ve assumed something about me that is incorrect. That something pertains to my belief system, which I am very aware of. I’m also aware that you’re not aware of my belief system. You can contradict my self perception, you just can’t be correct when you do.
“Because if you do, then you are arguing that the world operates on self-perception alone.”
To settle the paradox that you are assuming I’m in, I have to clarify a nuance. I don’t believe that the world runs on my self-perception. I believe that the world I SEE runs on my self-perception. I believe that is a universal truth which applies to all human beings. Perception is projection. What you believe is what you’ll see. That is what I believe, and if you insist I don’t, I can safely state that you are incorrect.
Nate, I love this. Truly. The sheer elegance of the escape act. You’ve created a reality where no one can ever tell you you’re wrong—not because you’re necessarily right, but because your framework is structurally incapable of receiving contradiction. It’s like you’ve built yourself an epistemic fortress with walls so thick that even you can’t get out.
And yet, here we are. You, confidently insisting that no one can possibly know your beliefs better than you do. Me, wondering how it is that people misinterpret themselves every day, revise their identities, have midlife crises, go to therapy, change religions, fall in love with people they swore they never would. It’s almost as if the human mind is not a perfectly transparent, self-knowing entity but a mess of contradictions, blind spots, and unconscious motivations. But no, not you. You, of course, are the one exception. The fully self-aware, perfectly rational subject in a world of deluded projections.
And yet, what’s funny—really, hilariously funny—is that for someone who claims that perception is projection, you seem deeply committed to ensuring that your own perception is never projected back at you in a way that forces discomfort. Because if your own beliefs are self-evident, untouchable, and beyond critique, then why exactly are we talking? What is this, if not a performance of self-defense? What are you defending, Nate? If you’re so unbothered by the idea that I could be misperceiving you, why do you need to correct it? What is this desperate need for my agreement, for my recognition of your internal clarity?
And that’s where I see the real joke. You’ve built a system in which you can never be wrong, but in doing so, you’ve also made it so you can never really be right either. Because to be right, you’d need to be capable of risking something, of engaging in an argument where you could actually lose. But you won’t do that. You need this perfect escape hatch, this little intellectual panic room, where you can say that nothing I say can ever truly apply to you because you already know yourself too well. That’s not winning, Nate. That’s just making sure the game never starts.
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe this was never about truth, or debate, or perception, or projection. Maybe this is just your way of making sure no one ever really gets to you. And I have to admit, it’s impressive. It’s almost airtight. Almost.
But you do realize what this means, right? If your logic holds, then the only thing left for me to do is agree with you entirely while also completely ignoring you. Because if perception is projection, and all belief is self-contained, then truly, nothing you say to me has any bearing on what I choose to see. And with that, I step out of your fortress, leaving you to pace the halls, forever the sole authority in a kingdom of one.
Thank you, so brilliant. As a non physicist interested in the quantum perspective, you nailed it for me.
I'm happy that it brought you some ideas and thoughts.