I was thinking about a character in a TV show. He’s a Christian monk who is captured by Viking raiders and kept as a slave. He’s still quite young though. And while he has no freedom, he isn’t whipped or treated like an animal, he just lives as a very low status person. Eventually, after years, he starts wanting to improve his status with the tribe around him. Maybe he’s tired of being at the bottom. Maybe he’s just starving for some kind of human connection. When they come under threat, he asks to join the Viking fighting force. This seems like pretty clear Stockholm Syndrome to me - fighting for the people who enslaved you.

But is it really that different from waking up as a child in a certain culture and over time, absorbing its ways, and feeling the desire to grow your status in that society? How many people absorb their home culture’s ways because they think about them and deem them best? It’s a process of absorption.

So yes, while there’s always a little sass and irony in showerthoughts, I think there’s a connection here with pondering. You didn’t elaborate on your “yeah no” comment at all. Perhaps now you will?