Go easy on him. Most "gifted" kids are children of narcissists, ending up with schizoid/schizophrenic or CPTSD-style presentations. The "prodigy child" narrative is there entirely to flatter the parent. Or at least this was true for my cohort. It's really hard to get out from being on the wrong side of this. Narcissistic parenting is insipid and in many ways contagious. If you don't end up with that batch of problems, you end up being a narcissist yourself.

It's huge in tech too-- plenty of people interview at companies whose names are effectively magic spells which will make them "good enough" for their parents stories to their friends.

And he's sorta right about the travel thing-- you can buy a lot of people's esteem by buying a plane ticket and being coddled by hotels and tour guides for a couple weeks. You can even call it an "adventure" and nobody will correct you. Narcissists are crazy about signalling their status with travel, so children of narcissists tend to hate it for that reason.

My parents were the antithesis of pushy, but were definitely narcissists - “why can’t you just be normal” was the standard refrain, as believe me, they hated being hauled up in front of the headteacher or being sent dismal missives over my behaviour just as much as I did. I made them look bad, as academic achievement was not important to them - popularity was. They’d organise absolutely agonising social events for me in an attempt to fix me, which just drove me further into the woods.

No narcissism here, mostly just self-loathing.

I've studied this a lot. Narcissism and self-loathing are the same thing. The trick is that the self is malleable and can include others (family and close friends).

It's a pay-it-forward system where the kid gets stuck in the vice, with nobody in the system below him/her to pay it forward/downward to (you might have heard this as "shit rolls downhill").

So for the kid it's actual self-loathing, since there's no other candidate in the extended self to disqualify with high standards (like "just being normal"). This kid (it's usually just one of the kids) is called the scapegoat.

Read Pete Walker's book on cPTSD. I bet it will rock your entire world.

Interesting - and yes, watching the disparity with my equally intelligent 7 year junior sib was a particularly galling experience - she was forgiven for her actions, I think mostly as our parents had given up caring by that point - and she has a similar but different set of traumas.

I’ll read it, thanks - perspective is always very welcome. Just read the synopsis and that alone speaks to me.

> smoking a few tons of carbon

That’s the point of hiking. I travel overland almost exclusively, and only fly when there’s absolutely no alternative, and the journey is one of time sensitivity and necessity.

And yes, walking off the beaten track opens your eyes to far more than a beach holiday.

I am nothing but humble in my daily life, and my friends come from all walks of life, but I thought that sharing this experience might be insightful or helpful for some.

Don't apologize for sharing your thoughts. This is not a platform where people are easily offended or needlessly oppositional. You're not offending anyone, I think I speak for most people when I say we'd like you to be better. Even if I don't believe what you wrote is the truth in your heart, the system has failed you.

To add, travel is significantly inferior to embedding yourself completely in a state for at least six months. Travel can not replicate such experiences. I would never count my travels - no matter how off the beaten path - as experience comparable to living in a different cultural framework. Those instances, especially during formative years, are much more valuable.

Re: travel, indeed - context is king. I’ve lived in six countries for years at a time over the years, and am now six months into a new one - still learning the language and getting to grips with everything, but it’s great, even if our house flooded and our car washed away - escaped with our lives from the raging torrent, so it’s just been an exercise in patience, mopping, and masonry.

We travel for long periods, ambling around a corner of the globe - the last few years have seen four months in Uruguay, six months in the stans, six months in the Balkan states, and six months pottering about the indochinese peninsula. This is why I view most people’s idea of travel with some disdain - showing up somewhere and banging around the sights isn’t travel, it’s stamp collecting.

I find it helpful, as it all provides context - and the different biases and beliefs people hold are just fascinating - particularly when you find them beginning to rub off on you.