Power, Testing, Love, Suicide, Many things....

So I just checked google for Jack Mayer. My new page on him is top on the list. Then I checked John D. Mayer. Again my page is top on the list. I said to myself, "It is even higher than his page!" (which is now number two.)

So I started wondering, has my site become too powerful?

And am I using my power.... what's the word? Wisely? But what does that mean really? Am I helping people or hurting people more with my site, with the power of it?

This is a very strange position to be in. To have power and not know whether you deserve it or whether you are using it to help people. Or even if you are using it in ways that you want to use it. I guess it is entirely possible someone could have good intentions and misuse their power. I suppose we could say this is what parents do all the time. And maybe we could say this is what the USA is currently doing.

Maybe it is good that what's his name, Emmerling, has tried to reduce my power and presence on the net a bit, or a lot. My site visitors seem to be dropping in the past few days, is this because of Rob's heroic efforts? Or is it unrelated? Or is it because people are losing respect for me and my site more because I am talking too much about Rob and the EI Congroup? Or EI Consortium, whichever you want to call it.

I don't think I will put any links on this page. I think I will just let people do a little more reading or searching if they are curious. Tonight will be just a little free-flow writing. With no particular goal except to help me sort out some of my own thoughts. I also like to keep people informed of my thoughts and feelings as related to EI, and just about everything else to be honest. I am still searching for understanding. Both to understand and to be understood.

I was thinking about hate. Wondering if it is really a helpful emotion for humanity. When I looked at my site statistics and saw them dropping I started to feel hate for Rob E. That's cute. Rob E. As in Robbie. He is quite young, but then so is this "field." Anyhow, I started feeling hate for him and then I remembered that I could take some responsibility. I remembered my saying that "Accepting responsibility releases resentment." And the brain chemicals started to change and I felt instantly more peaceful.

I am afraid I am looking like quite the hypocrite. I advise not to label and I label. I call Rob a prick for example. I advise that we should try to help people and I am trying to hurt him. Ok so it is fair to label me a hypocrite. But is that helping me or hurting me? Why do we label things? Why do we give them names? Does me calling Rob names help humanity in any way?

About the only thing it does is help me feel better temporarily. Kind of like cutting does for my teen friends.

Does labeling something help us understand that something? Or where that something fits into the rest of the world? What does it really mean to say someone is a prick, for example? What does that tell us that is useful to know?

I am not really sure. I think maybe it tells us that the person who is calling the other person a prick is feeling a lot of resentment. That might be the most useful thing it tells us. In my case, it is probably more useful in terms of helping me take a look at myself than in trying to understand Rob.

I really wish I didn't have so many bitter, toxic, poisonous feelings. I probably am causing myself a lot of trouble now by letting little things like that slip out. It might be kind of hard to forgive someone once they have called you a prick in front of pretty much the whole world. So what am I doing now? Feeling empathy for Rob, even though he hasn't shared any of his feelings with me?

I have a big mouth. Let's face it. I talk a lot. Sometimes I probably say something useful accidentally if not on purpose anyhow. This reminds me of the joke that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

So where do we go from here? Where do I go? This is really mostly about me. I'll be honest. I am struggling, scratching, clawing, crying my way to somewhere from somewhere. I know more about where I came from than where I am going.

Do I even know where I want to go? Or do I just want to stop my pain? I wish people would understand my pain. But not many do. Seems only 14 year olds do. Thirteen and fourteen seems to be about the age of greatest emotional understanding. Sounds strange doesn't it? But that is what my own private "research", if you want to call it that, is seeming to show me. Or I will just say that I have felt more understood by 13 and 14 and 15 year olds than by anyone older than that. I still felt understood by Nicole when she was 17 and 18. But she is 20 something now and I no longer feel very understood. I am still watching to see what happens with Sarah. I feel mostly understood but not very cared about anymore. She has other things she is more concerned with. So are my personal experiences worth anything to anyone? I would like them to be. I think they are or I must think they are or have some instinctive need to share my life I guess, or otherwise I wouldn't write so much about it.

I suppose this is a healthy sign in a lot of ways. We do learn from others' experiences. I hope that people will learn a lot from my experiences so they won't have to suffer as much as I have suffered.

I just read my own sentence again. That 13 and 14 seems to be the age of greatest emotional understanding. I feel scared about what David and Jack are going to do with their so called youth version of their so called EI test. And even more frightened by what Reuven is doing. He evidently has a youth version to. Testing testing. There is lots of money in testing. Well I say fuck testing. That is pretty much the simplest way to express how I feel about it. I could say I feel this and I feel that, but "fuck testing" seems to sum it up pretty nicely.

So I am being a hypocrite again I guess. Now I am starting to feel a bit more sarcastic. I was feeling more contemplative before.

But I wanted to say something else about 13 and 14 year olds. Females at least. I believe they really know what love is. I believe they really know what love is about. Some of them anyhow, if they haven't already been corrupted by the adult values of grades and clothes, looks and money etc. I was talking to one the other day and I asked her if she would go on if the person she loved were to kill himself. She said, "No, I would kill myself instantly." I thought of Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was still thirteen, two weeks before her 14th birthday when the play starts. And if I understand it she killed herself before she ever turned 14.

Why did Juliet this? And is this something which is, what do I call it, a positive role model?

I really am not sure. In some ways I say yes. It is a positive role model. We want love to be so important that without it there is no reason for living. Or do we? I really am not sure. I remember once I told someone that maybe it was better if we killed ourselves so we wouldn't have to suffer so much pain. I am not sure if I believe this or not. It gives me a lot to think about.

When is the "right" time to kill oneself?

I think it might be when no one understands us. When no one cares about us. When no one is trying to help us.

If for example, I loved someone and she killed herself, I think I could go on if there were one more person in the world who I felt understood and cared about by. Maybe this is the reason we have families. So when one person dies, the others serve this role and they can go on, instinctively trying to keep the species going.

I don't really like the survival instinct. I was thinking of killing myself just yesterday actually and was wishing it was easier to do.

I was talking to someone who said she carries a knife around with her. She said something like, I take it to bed with me. I can't sleep without it. I understood this as soon as she said it. But now I think there might be another explanation which I didn't see at first. But for now I will stick to the first understanding I had. This was that the knife gives her a sense of control. A sense of power. But mostly control I think. Control over her pain. I think the knife represents to her that she has the choice of living or dying. That it is always her choice. She is forced to do most of what she does during the day. She is forced to put on a uniform, go to school when she is "expected" to, obey all the adults once she gets there, then obey her mother and father when she gets home. Her mother used to hit her so even if she doesn't hit her now, there is already the fear that it could happen again. When her mother shouts, it instantly triggers the emotional memories.

So the knife gives her this sense of control which is missing. She's told me she has thought of going to a field and killing herself. I am learning more about how a young person thinks, or let's say how they have been taught to think. I see again that an intelligent person learns lessons more quickly and when they are emotional lessons, an emotionally intelligent person learns them even faster.

So what happens when the lessons you learn are that you are stupid, selfish and useless?

I understand very well why teenagers are killing themselves. I understand it so well that it hurts me. Sometimes I start to think that my mission in lif is to suffer. To feel the pain of these teenagers. The ones that some people say I am trying to exploit and prey upon. I feel resentful about that, but then again, we can go back to the AR3 principal: accepting responsibility releases resentment. I wonder if anyone has used that anywhere else in the world. I suppose I could be quite wealthy by now if I were to write books and call myself an expert in emotional intelligence and try to get huge consulting contracts. But I would have to kiss up to people who I don't respect, or who I even despise.

So I just did a check to see if anyone had copied my AR3 principal. I found one site in Jamaica. They copied a lot of stuff from my site without giving me any credit. So I am going to write them a letter in which I will say this

hi

i was just doing some searches on google and found your page on EI and EQ

it looks like you have borrowed quite a bit from my site and I would ask you to please give me credit.

thanks

steve hein
webmaster eqi.org

Then I found a page from them on testing, so I took a look. I found this bit from that page

--

Why Use Psychological Assessments?

The Cost of Hiring Mistakes

--

This made me think a little more about tests. I thought, okay, there is some truth that if a company wants to hire someone, a test could be helpful. Let's go with a typing test for example. If I really wanted someone who could type quickly, would I just ask them if they could type quickly or would I want to see it for myself? Well, I've been in this position and I can tell you I would rather see it for myself. But this is because I don't know the person. And this is my main reason for writing this bit of my ever expanding (like cancer, till it kills the food source?) site. In other words, we have tests because we don't know the person very well.

I've seen this in schools. Take an English class. I've been frustrated more than once when I see how stressed the kids and teens get when they have to take an English test. And I ask myself, "Is this necessary?" And my answer has pretty much always been, no. It's not necessary because if the teacher were doing his or her job well, they would already know how each student was doing. I have heard people say the reason for tests is for evaluating progress or something. Well if I know my students well, I know their progress anyhow. I see it day to day. This reminds me the entire educational system, by design, is flawed. It simply does not work to put a large number of children or teens in a room with one adult and force one to "teach" and the others to "learn." Well, of course we have to define what we mean by "working". I have a brother in law who would say, "Well I learned to read that way, so why change anything"? So there is some learning going on, I have to admit that. But my brother in law lacks a lot of knowledge which would have made him a better father and husband. Not to mention human. Not only does he lack the knowledge but he lacks some of the emotional ingredients to a happy life. He's had a productive life, but it could have been a happier one.

Let's think about how a child learns to speak. There are no tests needed. This whole "No child left behind" crap which is going on in the USA now is bothering me more and more. It is going to destroy more of what is left of a child and teen's emotional intelligence.

This reminds me of something I read on the ETS site. They used to be called Educational Testing Service. Now they seem to want to just be ETS. Who knows why. Anyhow, here is a statement from

But back to knowing a person.

We get to know someone by spending time with them, and by listening to them. Which reminds me of Katia. She and her friend said that what they wanted most from their fathers was understanding and time. And these are very poor people I am talking about. Yet they didn't say, "more money to buy things."

This reminds me of something else. When I first started working with Katia I showed her a list of the things I thought would help us work together. On the list was "Ask me how I feel." But since then I have seen that a person has to do more than ask. A person has to also care and be able to show caring in a way which is helpful. Which reminds me of a letter I got from someone recently who seemed to care about me but didn't show much understanding. I wrote about this somewhere and said this could be unhelpful at best or hurtful and dangerous at worst. But back to Katia. It became clear to me that my feelings were not very important to Katia. This is representative of a general problem in Peru, and in the world. People here are so desperate to just survive, they don't have much capacity for caring about how someone else feels. They are all trying to meet their own basic survival needs. And I say even those in the so called rich countries, when measuring the material things, are trying to meet their basic emotional needs. I say that a lot of psychologists and people with PhD's and PsyD's are still trying to meet their teenage and childhood emotional needs. I've read a lot and haven't seen any better explanations.