Anyone who tells a child “You are not the center of the universe!” is arguing against the most immediate self-evident truth. Only an “adult” could fall for such a lie.
What we should be saying is “You are not the only center of the universe.”
When the child is a little older we can say “Polycenter yourself.” And “Center yourself around your own experiences, intuitions, understandings an?d purposes, but do so in affirmation of others doing the same. At minimum respect this reality, and to the greatest degree possible, love it.”
If we demand that children stop being self-centered and decenter themselves altogether? in the name of altruism, what we are really saying is “Abandon your own center and join me in this centerless abyss in which I abide.”
In this time and? culture this abandonment of center is what “adult” means. We don’t believe in our own cognition because it’s biased. We don’t trust our own moral judgments because our moral sense is unconsciously self-interested. But boy do we ever trust expert consensus. We trust it automatically and uncritically. We even believe the expert consensus that whoever conforms to these beliefs is a critical thinker, an individualist and an anti-totalitarian.
If someone ever commands you to “decenter yourself”, you should firmly refuse.
The appropriate reply is “I have polycentered myself. You should polycenter yourself.”
This advice to “polycenter yourself”, however, means something different from the exhortation to the self-centered child, who needs to know that other people, like themselves, are the centers of their respective universes.
This “polycenter yourself” means “The nowhere in which you abide, is not the center of the universe, nor of anything. I will not join you in your centerless abyss.”
It means “Recover your center. Then develop a capacity to inhabit a polycentered universe.”
Qualitatively, we are neither infinity, nor zero. Alchemically, we are like One, in that we are one; yet, we are not One. We are neither God nor nobody. We should all polycenter ourselves together.