“Impressive displays of ‘civil inattention,’ seemingly innocuous dodges in the moment, collectively add up to a behavioral pattern that stymies social interaction before it begins.” — Gillian Sandstrom (2022), psychologist
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Frustration and Self-Confidence
I have been spending my time on my physics project which would be interesting to those who understand it, and of no interest to everyone else. The irony is that those who could understand it won’t look at it because they don’t want to believe the conclusion.
This presents an interesting opportunity to advance my self confidence. On the one hand, I have to educate myself to better understand the objections held by people more experienced than myself.
When you try to learn a subject about which you’re skeptical, you see your skepticism avoided everywhere you look! If you read a religious text but doubt the existence of God, you won’t find any argument for God’s existence. Similarly, if you read physics literature but doubt a fundamental concept, you’ll find little explanation of it. Physics does a better job of explaining itself than religion, but many fundamental beliefs hinge on flimsy evidence and unresolved conflicts. For example, you’ll find no succinct explanation of a particle.
This has led to my needing to do a ton of reading of original material that is dense and poorly written. For further explanation these works refer me to earlier, less informed, more technical, and more poorly written articles. Either that, or they refer me to more presumptive, less technical, less detailed, and less satisfactory text books. Text books typically tell the reader what they’re supposed to believe and how to present it, but not why or why not.
On the other hand, it’s an opportunity to see that many of the most experienced people I encounter are uninformed, biased, and out of date. Physics is like plate tectonics, it changes slowly but significantly. Most physicists get stuck with the old knowledge, accepting the established consensus without question. Those who have played a part in defining yesterday’s consensus believe their authority cannot be questioned.
Authorities who wrap themselves in authority lose their authority. Asking these people questions is only slightly better than asking questions of an A.I. whose answers simply reflect what has been said in the past.
The conclusion you reach when you’ve mastered a subject is that there’s much more that you don’ t know. The few truly brilliant physicists I’ve known did not present themselves as authorities; they were not full of answers, they were full of questions. Unfortunately, these people are no longer around.
Sexuality, Personality, and Society
I don’t know how people think. I cannot believe what people say in casual conversation, and have little desire to listen to them. The people who come to me for counseling are not speaking casually, and they’re not representative of how average people think. They’re taking things to a different level and they have interesting views of reality.
The irony is that the deeper you go into another person’s mind, the more authentic information you’ll get, but the less understandable it becomes. You get to know the characters in the story but no one seems to know the plot. Therapy, in its essence, is making up a plot that makes sense and is heading in a positive direction.
Unless you’re a teenager you won’t talk that much about sex. And if you are a teenager, you won’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe I should become a sex therapist in order to learn from people who have different experiences of sexuality. I’m leaning in that direction, but I’m not yet comfortable with the topic. To help those who struggle you have to be interested in their failures and their failed points of view, and I am not.
I like topics I’m not comfortable with, but with regard to sexuality I’m unsure of what to make of all the ways it’s construed. Sex is important and it provides a doorway to deeper aspects of personality. It goes well beyond gender behaviors, culture, fashion, prejudice, and pornography. It has the potential to be a spiritually creative act but, aside from the Eastern Tantric tradition, no one I know of understands it that way.
I was in the checkout line two days ago behind a truly beautiful young woman. My guess is that she was 23. I wondered why I see so few people like this? Do they hide away? Do they let their parents do the shopping for them? Do they only come out at night? She didn’t seem to be wearing makeup, but she could have been a master at cosmetics.
I was particularly struck by her obviously beautiful presentation, though she seemed to make little effort, and her complete obliviousness to my presence. I expect that she was in a constant state of surveilling the environment for social opportunities. I was on the opposite end of the interesting spectrum in all regards. Yet the vibe of my nonexistence in her world made me feel like we inhabited different dimensions.
“People are remarkably pessimistic about the prospect of talking to strangers.”
— Gillian Sandstrom (2022), psychologist
Risks and Opportunities
People who are seen as exceptions need to be careful in reacting to their environment. It is a natural tendency to project our feelings onto others, and it’s the exceptions in our environment that draw our attention. Road rage is a salient example of how some people project their illusions on things that disturb them, but even background noise will make us angry if we’re in an annoyed state of mind.
Similarly, we are reminded of our needs and frustrations by situations that stimulate us. We are reminded of what we lack by seeing it in our environment, and then our relatively one-track minds orient us in that direction. Seeing this woman made it hard for me to think of anything else.
I suspect this person is subjected to unwanted attention, though she plays a role in creating it. This problem of knowing how to engage with people is partly one of personal boundaries and partly one of controlling your environment. The mistake we make is to feel we’re not responsible for the roles we play. Because of that indifference we fail to learn how to better perceive, control, and interact.
“We tend to learn more than we expect to when we talk to strangers. It brings novelty into our life, makes our life richer.” — Gillian Sandstrom (Suttie 2026)
The only way to learn something is to engage with it. The understanding we achieve by thinking alone, without engaging our perceptions and emotions, is an understanding of a thin and fragile sort. While this does not mean you should go out and engage everyone, it means that without some form of feedback you will just recycle old ideas. Most of which are not yours, many of which are flawed, and some are actually dangerous.
This disconnection from others is typical of White Canadian culture. Here in Western Canada people rarely make eye contact or greet each other. This is more extreme than any other culture I’ve been in, except perhaps Switzerland. Even in New York City people are more personable.
In some places, like the Caribbean, strangers are downright friendly and casual interactions are often exuberant. The benefit of disconnection is that order is maintained. The downside to disconnection is that order is maintained.
In this city, everyone has an emotional seeing eye dog. Their dogs are interested, congenial, and receptive and we always greet each other. Dogs have a transhuman ability to read meaning in every scent. Everyone in this city has a dog but they don’t seem to be learning anything from them.
I’ve lived in many distinct national cultures and professional microcultures. People gravitate toward the mores of their micro environment like moths to a flame and then, to continue the metaphor, they get attached to those attitudes like flies to flypaper. This all happens without people knowing what they’re doing or have done. The downside of following your intuition is that it isn’t yours; it’s an echo of what other people think and what you’re afraid of.
Depth in a Relationship
I’ve continued thinking about this checkout encounter, reflecting on my past experiences. Even at those stores I frequent, where I’ve seen the same employees a hundred times, there has never been anything beyond the minimal interaction. This makes me appreciate the authenticity of my therapy clients.
Having an attractive stranger make you feel transparent is disturbing, but what’s more disturbing is having people you know well make you feel transparent. Since I charge clients money to talk to me, I can understand why they don’t call for casual conversation. But my ex-wives, siblings, and old friends have also slipped into their own universes. I resent feeling cast off.
I believe that all of these people—with the exception of my clients—either never established a meaningful connection or never appreciated the connection we had. I think about these people quite a bit but I know they don’t think about me. I know this because on the rare occasion I’ve reestablished old connections they have little memory of our relationship.
I believe it’s a reflection of our generally shallow relationships, even with people who have been our closest partners for decades. We do remember each other at some level. Our past relationships reappear in our dreams as strangers who we no longer recognize. I find the degree to which we forget people to be shocking.
Consider the intellectual discussions you’ve had. They are limited in scope, topically focused, and come to a conclusion. That tends to be the end of it. The importance of these discussions quickly fades with time. If you consider those memories that have stuck with you, you’ll notice they’re all emotional.
Consider the emotional situations you’ve had, both good and bad. Many of these have been serendipitous and unexpected. Their importance has been relative to the circumstances at hand and their impact unpredictable. Few, if any, have been inspirational. Trauma and near death experiences can be spiritual and enduring. We can have positive enduring experiences.
Positive experiences are rarely the result of other people’s actions, but one would hope they involve the important people in your life. These experiences tend to be related to our families—both positive and negative. One of the most rewarding aspects of travel and exploration is the creation of inspirational, positive experiences.
We’d like to have such experiences with our partners, and the lack of these experiences might be the reason marriages fail. The crucial question is whether the lack of enduring, positive, connecting experiences is the fault of the relationship or our personalities. You can’t change a relationship by yourself, but it’s possible to change your personality.
I believe the lack of being able to create enduring, positive experiences is an attachment disorder. I see this in my clients. Most of the people I’ve known have this disorder. I don’t think I have this disorder because I easily attach to people. I have the opposite disorder, which would be attaching too easily and remaining too attached. I’m not sure this is a disorder but it creates grief and frustration.
To go a step further, I believe people with over-attachment tendencies are attracted to people with under-attachment tendencies. That’s not because it’s good for them, but it’s what they’ve become accustomed to. If you’ve become used to being emotionally undernourished, then this becomes your habit. Such situations are both familiar, safe, and redemptive. They also are sure to fail.
Intellect, Emotions, and Association
Sexuality doesn’t fall into either of the three categories of intellect, emotion, or association. Like genetic ability, sexuality transcends them. I won’t ignore sexuality or genetics, but I will set them aside. While we don’t have intentional control over our sexuality or genetics they play a foundational role and we should not disregard them.
We feel we control our intellect, emotions, and associations. We do have intellectual control, and we sometimes have emotional control. We almost never have associational control. We arrange these aspects of our experience in the order of what we can control, intellect first and associations last. We pay attention to them in that order.
The reality is they control us in an opposite order. That is, it is the associations that come into our minds that guide our emotions, and our emotions guide our thoughts. The control we presume over what we think is an illusion. We devote our thoughts to what’s on our plate, on the radar, or placed on the front burner, and it’s our associative mind that presents these topics.
I wish people were more self-aware, more aware of how ideas came into their minds, and took responsibility for them. Consider the average American voter. These are people who are increasingly in debt and who are increasingly disinterested in their impact on the world. The debt I’m talking about is not just personal debt, it is national and ecological debt. To quote Homer Simpson, the problem is not that people don’t understand, it’s that they don’t care.
Meaning Making
If you’ve established a significant relationship, then you’re responsible for the time you’ve invested and the time that’s been invested in you. You cannot “blow it off” and start over. Even if you’re a 23 year old woman in a checkout line, you are responsible for the role you play. A big part of becoming mature is knowing your power and effect, and being responsible for them. Being responsible means you’re always testing.
There was a time when people were more self-sufficient, and in those times people grew to maturity earlier in life. When you know you’re responsible for your family’s future you learn the necessary skills. Literacy was almost 95% in Colonial America in the late 17th century. People read the bible and could write in cursive. Currently, only 45% of the US population is literate above a 6th grade level. They read less than one book a year and cannot write in cursive.
Literacy may be a poor proxy for emotional maturity, but there are some parallels. Divorce was almost unheard of in Colonial America. This was complicated by social attitudes and reflected the difficulty of surviving as a broken family. This did not make for happy marriages, as that’s another matter, but it made people present themselves, and present themselves more carefully.
My experience in being alienated from people in my past is related to our social flexibility. Old relationships would be less likely to whither if there were greater consequences for discarding them and fewer opportunities for building new ones.
There are less opportunities than we’re led to believe. You cannot easily leave your history, and you’re not easily welcomed into the histories of others. The mindset you develop as you grow through childhood and adolescence becomes your personality for life.
The benefit of a stable personality is that order is maintained. The downside of your stable personality is that order is maintained. This order is overrated. Engage strangers.
“Sometimes we’re responsible for things, not because we’re culpable but because we’re the only ones who can actually change those things… Every moment of your life is a moment of meaning-making.”— Lisa Feldman Barrett (Boag 2025), psychologist
You might be interested in Gillian Sandstrom’s new book Once Upon a Stranger: The Science of How ‘Small” Talk’ Can Add Up to a Big Life, available from Amazon at:
Once Upon a Stranger: The Science of How “Small” Talk Can Add Up to a Big Life
References
Boag, Z. (2025). “Getting Emotional.” New Philosopher, June-August: 80. https://www.scribd.com/document/969112212/New-Philosopher-June-August-2025
Sandstrom, G. M., Boothby, E. J., and Cooney. G. (2022). “Talking to Strangers: A Week-Long Intervention Reduces Psychological Barriers to Social Connection.” J. Experimental Social Psychology 102; 104356. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103122000750
Suttie, J. (2026 Apr 7). “The Hidden Power of Talking to Strangers.” Greater Good Magazine. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_hidden_power_of_talking_to_strangers
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