{"id":337,"date":"2025-03-22T22:45:12","date_gmt":"2025-03-23T05:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/?p=337"},"modified":"2025-06-09T22:49:35","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T05:49:35","slug":"theres-no-point-in-asking-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/22\/theres-no-point-in-asking-why\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s no point in asking why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The mindset of the people dismantling our social and environmental protections is the mindset of people who go into National Parks and push over rock formations that took millions of years to form. It is a mindset that is incapable of awe, empathy, self-reflection, or vulnerability; that can only feel something when exercising power or control. There’s no point in asking why or trying to make sense of their actions\u2013they will say one thing one day and the opposite the next. The only answer is a mindset of greed, hatred, and ignorance.

We can overcome this mindset in ourselves, through practices that promote awe, empathy, self-reflection, and vulnerability, and so spread these qualities through our interactions.

One of the things that makes the current crisis so difficult is that this particular class of disruptors as a rule do not mix with people who cultivate awe, empathy, self-reflection, and vulnerability. They would feel quite uncomfortable to find themselves among such people. Once this corrupted mindset takes hold in a government or society, it really takes sustained effort, a grand gesture, to overcome it. What will this grand gesture look like? Will we recognize the moment for action when it arises? Are we capable of such a grand gesture?

If not in this lifetime, then in the next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mindset of the people dismantling our social and environmental protections is the mindset of people who go into National Parks and push over rock formations that took millions of years to form. It is a mindset that is incapable of awe, empathy, self-reflection, or vulnerability; that can only feel something when exercising power or … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-reflection"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paor1p-5r","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":852,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/11\/cognitive-centrism-missing-the-mark\/","url_meta":{"origin":337,"position":0},"title":"cognitive centrism: missing the mark","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"August 11, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a mindset I keep seeing\u2014in Buddhist sanghas, autism advocacy, establishment political discourse. I call it 'cognitive centrism'\u2014inhabiting a kind of middle ground, not because one felt their way there, but because they computed it. Like cognitive empathy: decode, then perform the answer. 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When a business is telling you they pay a living wage, 9 times out of 10 they either don't understand the term or they are gaslighting you. This is allowed to happen because\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":783,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/15\/know-what-youre-doing\/","url_meta":{"origin":337,"position":3},"title":"know what you\u2019re doing","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"June 15, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"there's no decolonization without dismantling the gender binary. the intersectional person is the one who binds community\u2014because they actually understand and empathize with everyone. countries and communities who stigmatize nonbinary identity and orientation are doing white colonizers' work: one-drop purity tests don't build you up\u2014they prove you're not good enough.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "chronicle"","block_context":{"text":"chronicle","link":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/category\/chronicle\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/img_1490.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/img_1490.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/img_1490.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/img_1490.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/ryk.groetchen.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/26\/framing-is-everything\/","url_meta":{"origin":337,"position":4},"title":"framing is everything","author":"Ryk Groetchen","date":"July 26, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Neurodiversity is the new (different! better!) cognitive frame. 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