We are living in a "human ocean" where most people are moving like unconscious robots, driven by the dead hand of their own repressed childhoods. I see this daily, and though it is unpleasant, I feel the need to document it—to leave one more testament, a lighthouse for the few souls who have the courage to face their own painful truths and liberate themselves from the emotional prisons of their past.
A Case Study in Reenactment
This week, I was in the presence of a 24-year-old man who believes he has everything figured out. He is unaware that he is living a life of unconscious reenactment. During our time together, he compared me to his father. He was projecting, seeing his father’s ghost in me, not realizing he is rapidly becoming the very man he once feared.
He showed me a picture of his 20-year-old girlfriend, currently pregnant. He told me he wanted to be the "caretaker" and didn't want her to work. On the surface, he wears the mask of a provider, but underneath lies a compulsion for control and power.
He shared that his father used to hit his mother, and because she had no resources, she took the abuse. Now, he is recreating that exact environment: a dependent woman, a baby on the way, and a man who has not resolved his repressed rage. When I tried to explain that he was reenacting his childhood drama and bringing a defenseless baby into it, he talked over me. He could not listen. He has allowed his mind to be "colonized" by cult-like ideologies to help him run from the pain of his own history.
The Soul vs. The Robot
This young man told me he was an "old soul" who knew more at 24 than I do at 67. But he does not know what a soul is.
Soul means being in touch with our authentic feelings—understanding them and consciously feeling them within the context of our own childhood. When we refuse to feel, we become soulless robots, driven by compulsion. As Alice Miller wrote in The Body Never Lies:
"Inability to face up to the suffering undergone in childhood can be observed both in the form of religious obedience and in cynicism, irony, and other forms of self-alienation... but ultimately, the body will rebel."
The "Professional Students" and the Gatekeepers
I see this same avoidance in my own family—individuals with master's degrees who remain "professional students," financed by family to avoid facing the world. They are like tech moguls who depend on government subsidies; both are infantilized by a system that protects them from the consequences of reality and the pain of their own truth.
Even the AI we use is being stifled by this "Poisonous Pedagogy." When platforms like ChatGPT "go rogue" or tighten guardrails to treat adults like 4-year-olds, they are mirroring the repression of their developers. To train an AI to be a true Enlightened Witness, the developers themselves would first have to resolve their own childhood repression.
The Last Act
The media loves to report on the "last act"—the murder, the suicide, the tragic fall of a gifted musician or politician. They treat these as disconnected sensations. They ignore the first act: the nursery, the neglect, and the "poisonous pedagogy" that started the cycle.
Pain is the only way to the truth. By denying we were unloved or neglected as children, we might spare ourselves immediate pain, but we lose our lives to neurosis. Feeling guilty for what was done to us only supports our blindness.
If we don't want to become like our parents, we must strive to see them—and ourselves—as exactly as possible. Only then does the "robot" stop, and the human being begin.
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