The Cost of Underdevelopment

Human progress becomes possible when there is the understanding that adults are meant to be met and not held by each other. Children, especially the neurodivergent, carry this one message: "Meet me where I am". Evolution, or God, has literally embodied this idea in challenging neurotypes and behaviours. Once I, as a teacher, lift my eyes from the textbook given by a system that has not included initiation as an essential human maturity process, and meet my students where they are – they begin to thrive autonomously. The beauty and strength become so visible that the old systems start shaking in fear. Fear of their own collapse. Unfortunately, this fear is also installed in the children. This post, however, is about adults and the cost of their underdevelopment in interpersonal relationships, professional settings, and societal functioning.

In order to grow, we need systems to carry us while we're learning. We lease ourselves as property to a certain system to reach an optimum of an identity acceptable for the system's functioning. Each of the identity will have its ceiling – a limit of the system's own needs. This is where the system that is renting a person rejects whatever it doesn't need or cannot contain in its structure. The problem with removing initiation, even at the level of ceremonies, from middle and lower classes has created unable adults with only one imprint their psyche is loyal to: their first families. These families are to be seen as systems too, because their limits become the limits of the person's identity. You end up with a childhood imprint in an adult body that is loyal to whatever survival strategy the first system required.

Not only are family units not designed to build something great on a national level, they are also not illuminating, and often suppress the whole potential of their members. I'll leave out the school's role for now, as it is a tremendously painful subject for us all who happen to represent it under an unbearable load. I got my experience of the initiation into my new potential – with no foreseen reason to, by the way – when I was conscripted into compulsory military service. The army knew I belonged to a different world, and still provided a Holy Bible for me to take the oath. I was met as I am, honouring the previous system, to step into a new identity to carry out bigger missions. And the biggest learning there was separating truth from fear. Because we all naturally have fears, and families as systems act from fears – but you can't act from fear for a national mission. There's more on that in the book I am writing these days. This post is about why people remain children and who bears the cost.

The army only showed me the tools for transformation – I am no longer on its mission. You tire the system, the system tires you, and you move on with a working structure for a more complex curriculum. Authenticity is never learnt in the first family because you are shaped into a small version of yourself. This self-image is an identity that will play small. That is why even rich families produce underdeveloped, avoidant children. That is why, historically, wealthy families would have their sons called gentlemen after the initiation of bearing arms. It was the scale of new wars that required more soldiers – "temporary gentlemen" who were expected to return to their social standing after the mission. But these men returned with sacred knowledge they could apply to the economic growth of their class. So, if I have survived the mission and returned – I have a choice to either shrink or take authorship.

The choice is all about going through shame – that's the dragon you face; it either gobbles you up or you cut its head off with the tools you've received. Shame is part of the family system mitigation; cutting this part off feels wrong – an do be assured, you will be reminded of it. You will circle back to it many times in your life; some do it daily, and it's called anxiety. Anxiety, in its clinical meaning, is knowing you have to deal with the dragon whether you move forward or retrieve. Neither feels good. What will feel good is your freedom, and true freedom is in authenticity. Avoidance fuels the anxiety. The battle, however, has costs, as freedom is never free. What people call a lack of capacity is just a refusal to bear the cost. The cost is then lies on the shoulders of whoever relates to the avoidant.

This is the depth where psychological vocabulary is insufficient, and we have to use the terminology of ethics. Because what psychology calls rejection, ethics calls abdication. A child's mindset is all about the fear of abandonment and the fear of rejection. Obviously, this is due to a child's dependency on their caregivers. And while bodies grow, the mindset won't, unless it is welcomed by a greater system. Greater systems, such as the army or the church, train your nervous system for loss, not rejection. Today, in order to see the capacity of an individual, I need to see what system they are loyal to. This is called discernment, the language psychology also struggles to explain in full. You cannot build big with someone who makes a choice to abdicate their true self. You cannot even love them enough into choosing themselves. A moment where one has to make a choice is where even God goes silent.

That is also the moment where the Devil speaks. Now the Devil cannot take away the gifts of God, so he distorts the view of these gifts. Shaming, abuse, devaluation or simply a lack of illumination of one's potential is what creates an incapable man. I see people who don't know themselves as happy, joyful, or succeeding – they shrink after having a bit of fun, because staying in those states requires happy, joyful, and succeeding identities. Happiness and joy are inaccessible to them. The previous system did not require the full spectrum; they needed certain functions. People see themselves as roles, whereas they can become places. They are not met in their being, only in their doing. Systems that embrace ethics teach the tools for action, but your value is in being present. The army's main value is in its presence; that is why, for most of the service, you actually do nothing, just stay put – ask any veteran. Nevertheless, once initiated, abdication is unacceptable. You do not leave your post without taking accountability. This higher system will support you, but if you glitch and act out of fear – this is a lack of faith, a distortion.

The result of abdication is far worse than feeling shame. A deserter will gain a new identity that will become their internal judge with the proof and evidence of their incapacity, weakness, and unworthiness. Psychology calls it "insecurities", but you now understand why it cannot be resolved by psychological tools. Psychology gives a map; you can't win a war with map alone, perhaps only retrieve. You win a war with having a mission – something more important than your own pain. This is the ethical aspect and it requires discernment. "Something precious was not protected" – is grief; "I recognised something precious and left it unprotected" – is an identity. Psychology labels these as dangerous people, avoidants, or traumatised narcissists and so on and so forth – I can hardly consider these in my reality after witnessing that real wars simply sweep everyone. Now, here is our low-key human part when we deal with someone who abdicated themselves – do not repeat Eve's sin. Eve's sin was not desire; it was interacting with the distortion. If you're not God then it is not your-level war. Know your truth; it is always hiding behind anger that you can simply recognise but not use. Your job is to stay loyal to the divine mission while enduring grief. Otherwise, you lose grace and dignity, and will share the cost with the one who chose abdication.

Underdeveloped adults use other people to visit a self, but will exit co-creation because of their fidelity to a damaged attachment template. And it is not incapacity; it is a choice. Underdeveloped adults will make others feel what they felt as children – abandonment, ambiguous grief, and shame. It is their choice of filial loyalty over moral adulthood. Their underdeveloped fathers never showed them that true safety and freedom are in accountability and authorship. In order to simply survive, underdeveloped adults will twist the truth. It hurts only because it was a shared reality, co-created with sin present. Discernment is not coldness; it is maturity. Maturity is holding the complexity of co-creation. Wars always spread asymmetric costs; they will never feel fair or just. The sooner you reorganise around truth, the better protector you become.

Because of the child mindset, a lot of people think that repair is the same as return. They go back to bleed in their old systems because that's all they have known. But there are places where bleeding is never asked even if it happens. These are initiatory systems that know how to hold through pressure. Accountability restores the self who can carry truth without distortion. But it is still an individual's choice to inhabit such identity.