Sunday, November 23, 2025

Generational Healing

History is crammed full of societies suffering traumas and swiftly healing. They're back on their feet in no time, seen through a long lens.

I've written extensively about the psychological ravages of Covid quarantine. For example:
If someone is explaining astronomy to you and gets stuck remembering a term, and you fill in “gravitational lensing”, there is 0% probability they will stop their spiel, look freshly at you, and declare “Oh! You know astronomy!”

Pre-Covid, it was more like 60%.

They will continue their explanation - their performance - without hesitation. You have nothing to do with it. It’s like you’re not even there.
These lingering quarantine effects are seldom noticed because they involve a ratcheting up of narcissism, and it's difficult for narcissists to distinguish gradations of narcissism (they'd need to pay empathic attention to other people's internal life—the very thing they have trouble with).

It's not healing, either. A generation has been spoiled. And their children, raised by a spoiled generation, will be spoiled as well. And their children will be somewhat spoiled, third-hand. But, of course, in a few generations, we'll have more or less repaired. Toxic ripples will remain, but much of humanity's spice comes from residual rippling, for better and for worse.

So this generational span will seem, to posterity, like nothing at all. We were back on our feet in no time!



I used to be appalled by reforestation practices. Driving past large stands of trees planted stupidly in grids, I'd complain that these were no forests. They were more akin to farms.

It took me a long time to realize that the second generation of trees would seem more natural. And from the third on, it would be nothing but forest, through and through.

No comments:

Blog Archive