Games People Play
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Quoting fdrake
Quoting fdrake
In terms of books that can help you find bad coping mechanisms, I'd recommend 'Games People Play' by Edward Berne. There are loads of cheap copies of it on Amazon. Other than that, if you have no trouble with helping others emotionally - or at least find it easier than helping yourself - try to think of yourself as another person and ask how you'd try to help them... Then do it, as best you can.
Comments (366)
Cool mention. I tend to blend the adult/parent/child paradigm with 'the medium is the message.' I mean the idea that often this adult/child/parent roleplay 'behind' the ostensible message is what's most important to those involved. But this thread is not about that, so ...
Games People Play
Joe South
Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean
And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers
In the back of a black limousine
La-da da da da da da da
La-da da da da da de
Talking 'bout you and me
And the games people play
Oh we make one another cry
Break a heart then we say goodbye
Cross our hearts and we hope to die
That the other was to blame
Neither one will give in
So we gaze at our eight by ten
Thinking 'bout the things that might have been
It's a dirty rotten shame
People walking up to you
Singing glory hallelulia
And they're tryin to sock it to you
In the name of the Lord
They're gonna teach you how to meditate
Read your horoscope, cheat your fate
And further more to hell with hate
Come on and get on board
Look around tell me what you see
What's happening to you and me
God grant me the serenity
To remember who I am
'Cause you've given up your sanity
For your pride and your vanity
Turns your back on humanity
And you don't give a da da da da da
[quote= Wiki]
Transactional analysis (TA) is a psychoanalytic theory and method of therapy wherein social transactions are analyzed to determine the ego state of the patient (whether parent-like, child-like, or adult-like) as a basis for understanding behavior.[1] In transactional analysis, the patient is taught to alter the ego state as a way to solve emotional problems. The method deviates from Freudian psychoanalysis which focuses on increasing awareness of the contents of unconsciously held ideas.
[/quote]
Asking for help from strangers can itself be one of the games people play, which is not to say that I think it should be discouraged. Sometimes it's sincere, but it's natural to be on the lookout for:
Yes, But...
http://www.theemotionmachine.com/3-games-people-play-to-avoid-taking-responsibility/
The games make sense without much of the theoretical background. Adult/child don't have to be interpreted as features of the psyche with a rich structure, things still work with the approximation that adult = the responsible, fettered one and child = the irresponsible, free one. Most of the games take on the character of responsibility shifting, disavowal or branding.
Second this. Something that helped me immensely was looking at my self-talk, and then imagining saying the same things to someone coming to me for help. Holy moly.
Another method is to imagine you and your friend who needs help having a conversation. Maybe you've found a quiet warm-lit place in a room away from the rest of the party. And then someone mean-spirited walks in and starts berating your friend. You wouldn't argue with this person, because he clearly just feels like being mean. He'll twist your words one way or another, even if you make a valid point. Engaging won't help. Instead you'd just help you friend ignore him while you offer him your advice.
One last approach. Imagine that the person who walks into the room is drunk and confused. He thinks there's something dangerous out there, but he's afraid to tell you what it is. He wants to keep your friend safe, to make sure he doesn't leave the room, but the only way he can think to do it is tell elaborate tales of the danger, and how your friend would never be able to deal with it. You can then recognize his good - if confused - intentions, but nevertheless disregard them. 'Thanks man, we got it' then turn to your friend 'he means well, he's just confused, he does this all the time, now back to what we were talking about'
For me these adult-child-parent roles aren't about deep structures. They are more like modes. In 'mansplaining,' a guy plays 'all knowing daddy' with a woman whom he wants to see as a child. As I see it, the parent role is a huge and dominant temptation for intellectual types. One way to interpret savage flair-ups on forums, for instance, is in terms of two big daddy-egos trying to parent one another. Neither 'omniscient father' will cede the other the phallus-conch, so the ostensible 'content' is thrown away and the frustrated desire to humiliate-parent is vented in 'castrating' insults. The ostensible content does matter, of course. But I think this role-play is quietly very important.
Of course Games People Play doesn't go into all of this, but this is one of the ways I used the basic idea. In my view, some of the key things said in public are hidden in the footnotes or margins. Also for me 'footnotes' includes the general tone of respect of disrespect, openness to learn as opposed to an excessive eagerness to teach.
Oof, hits close to home. Think you're right tho.
It's a relief to hear someone else relate to this perspective. For whatever morbid or self-incriminating reason, I'm especially interested in this kind of head-butting or patriarchal posturing. I put on my labcoat before I grab the popcorn. Sometimes, in real life, I find myself being the opinionated ideology-critquing A-hole among other A-holes. The women vanish as if by magic. They don't give a queef, in my experience, about what they perhaps perceive as some kind of constipatedly homoerotic ritual. (And if Camille Paglia is right, there is a misogynistic flight from the mother in the deadly-serious nobody's fool pose.) Of course all this soft 'psychoanalytic' stuff is vulnerable to critique and gets sucked into the same game. I do think that I am currently openheartedly trying for an adult-adult conversation (certainly in our case), but god knows it only takes a little condescension to tempt me into a mirroring condescension --or a pseudo-indifferent feigning of infinite loftiness maybe.
Unless it's actually a matter of S&M. That sort of thing can be a source of creativity. Its more likely to be destructive if its unconscious.
Even bringing it up is a kind of saturnine thing to do, but men and women were on the scene in the discussion.
Sure, and I'm far from being a prude.
Quoting frank
I agree. And I am far from being a man-hater. I just don't want to alienate women. Basically it's just bad form or failed style I have in mind. If the women wants to play 'child' to my 'parent', that's something else. And despite being out of fashion in the collective consciousness, I think it's a big part of actually existing [s]communism[/s] heterosexuality. You tell her she's the prettiest, and she tells you that you're the smartest. All is right with the world.
Quoting frank
Ah, well I always thought of philosophy as a pretty saturnine enterprise. Don't mean to offend of course. There's the danger of offending on one side and the danger of saying nothing interesting on the other side.
I remember once watching two men 'battle it out' at work in a way where one tried to prove to the other that they knew better about a subject and yet both didn't actually know what they are talking about. What astonished me in the experience was the tone, the body language, the attitude of confidence as though such behaviour represented 'truth' over the very content itself. I said nothing, but in my head I thought both of them were idiots because I knew the answer to the problem and was watching them fumble around with irrelevant dialogue but speak with an aura of professionalism. This same agitation I experienced can be paralleled to those types of people who talk and talk and talk but they are not really saying anything, that whole 'what the fook is your point?'
It happened on here too between Agu and someone else, I think it was Vagabond and they both looked just as stupid as the other, writing massive essays without contributing intellectually at all. When I said that they should stop and actually talk about the problem in the OP, I got 'no, we have to do this.' Women back away because we know we get brushed aside during this weird Alpha display. There is no problem in condescension as you may genuinely disagree with the content of the response you receive, but it should be as a critique and with adequate solutions the problem.
Constipatedly homoerotic ritual? :lol: :lol:
Thank you for jumping in! That part I underlined above pretty much sums up the 'magic' of Trump, I think. It somehow worked! Never apologize. Never show shame. Never show humility. All that really matters is maintaining the pose of superiority. 'Total war! And those fools who have some other goal than this empty victory verily have their reward. ' It's terrifying, really. Of course there were other off-topic factors in that election, but I feel like that's the basic magic. Enough people were just impatient with figure skating and just wanted to see the Hulk leap from the top rope.
Quoting TimeLine
Ah, yes, that's a great example. 'We have to do this.' Compulsive once the fire is lit. It's embarrassing, but I've been there. It's probably good in some ways as a learning experience. I don't think a person learns much without 'sinning.' Still, it doesn't feel good at the time.
As far as women backing away, this is something I've discussed with my girlfriend. As I understand it, she can just feel that the tone is bogus, that it's not real conversation. I think she finds a kind of small-hearted meanness in it, and I think she's right. Of course I don't want to fall into the trap of seeming self-righteous here. I continue to wrestle with and make sense of this stuff.
:razz:
Yeah, and the problem is just the constipation and not the homoeroticism. :halo:
Yeah, those men. Ha, ha, ha, ha. LOL. So funny. Ha, ha, ha. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:
I hear you but I also think it depends on why are these comments being made. So Syntax initiated this line of thought, but did so in response to pretty specific thing: games people play. I haven't read the book, but I understand it to be something like a taxonomy of ritualistic 'games' that let people maintain certain identities at the expense of their well being. Fdrake had brought up that book as a means for identifying bad coping mechanisms and, in that light, I think the post about male egos fighting for the authority-position made sense. I liked Syntax's post because I recognized myself in it. Since reading it, I've been much more cautious not to fall into that kind of pattern (1) because I recognize I'm prone to (I got bitter-mean at Streetlight a few months back, for no good reason, very much in the vein of that 'game,' and am still embarrassed) & (2) because it hurts me. It's a bad coping mechanism. I resort to it when I feel defeated for one reason or another, and want to symbolically assert myself somewhere else. It's good to see the dynamic spelled out. Next time I feel myself tending that way I can think 'oh man, this is just like that thing from that post.'
But I also think that, sometimes, this kind of thing can be done for this reason: To try to undermine the importance of an issue a male raises. Some guy might bring up something difficult for them - they may even do so in questionable language; not all of us were lucky enough to get properly socialized about male/female issues - and then 'oh, men, lol' with a certain tone or expression just utterly delegitimizes what they're talking about. Which isn't good. Because that problem doesn't go away. Instead they retreat back to the safety of [wherever] and nurse their problem until it maybe metastasizes into something worse (misogyny, misanthropy etc.)
I'm guilty of doing this kind of thing to people too, in different ways, so I get the urge. I don't think - I'm not sure - that Timeline and Sytax have done this (tho maybe the 'calm yourself' response is bordering on it.) I do think certain ways of tackling this thing are profoundly damaging, even if they feel justified and good in the moment. But I also don't think these kinds of discussions are bad tout court
I have had men do it with me on a number of occasions, because I have a strong presence but I am actually very gentle inside so it was difficult for me to tolerate without getting hurt. It is easy for them to just use the platitude 'what would you know?' or project their own irrelevant assumptions often of an indirectly misogynistic nature by claiming that I simply do not understand the subject at all, even if I say that 1+1=2. It is commonplace in philosophical and scientific circles to have that behaviour forced on you as a way to silence your voice. 'This is what you are' rather than listening to what is actually being said. It is not pleasant neither is it welcomed and when I was studying political science, the faculty was overrun by such a dominant masculine presence that consisted of constant ridicule, meaning that only a few women managed to survive before the faculty realised that it was actually discriminating and even violent behaviour and began a process of changing the culture.
This is the same in the workplace and such 'masculine' behaviour is a tool to push bad men up the chain by force despite having no talent in the workplace and no capacity for leadership. Sexism is merely one such method or a tool to achieve this, as is other methods of bullying like insulting appearances (height, weight, age). This is often done by underachievers with little talent who use force as a tool to hide that fact and as a way to remove competition.
I know the process and I can participate, but I find it exhausting. I would rather develop a respectful culture of equals and I am actually changing this in my workplace; I have successfully discussed the possibility of removing bureaucracy from the chain of command because we each have our own separate skills and capacity and being 'higher up the chain' does not suddenly permit authority without respect. We are all in this together, basically, and it is about the result that the business is seeking and not about individual egos.
First of all, I'm not upset or offended. I really do think it's funny. But I'll say it again, this isn't a thread to discuss men/women issues. It was a request for reading material on depression.
I would really like to discuss men/women issues. I don't think it is done often or well on the forum. We are overwhelmingly men. @Antaus started one a week or so ago and I couldn't find a way to fit into it. It definitely is an area where I have unexamined assumptions that could stand to be pulled out into the open. But ....I really like men. I am one. Facile disrespect raises the hackles on the back of my neck.
Very much so. My advice to the OP (about depression) would have been to go lean up against the wall near the 100-200 section of the library and wait till your eye randomly settles on a title.
For sure. Don't get me wrong: I love humor. Some of my best friends are humorous.
But humor is a double-edged thing. It can be cathartic if it's a shared thing: the virtue of stand-up comedians is that they can deliver, on stage, to a crowd, a version of the same thing that crowd experienced but was too nervous to talk about it. There's a release.
There is another sort of thing that goes by the name 'humor' but is really just [lets treat this thing this person said in a humorous light so its not taken seriously]. I'm focusing on this type of humor, just because I think it syncs up with what tclark was talking about.
There are a billion and a half forms this can take. So talking with Tclark I identified one. It's a way of deflating someone something brings up because that same comment, in a broader perspective, can be seen as [dumb male being dumb]. This isn't the only form of this tho. There's plenty of misogynistic variants of this as well. In a [serious men discussing serious problems] context, the serious men might respond to a good point brought up by a woman as [rolls eyes, of course she'd say that. Typical woman, am I right?]
All of which is to say: humor isn't just humor. There's a whole jungle of things that are brought under that one umbrella.
tldr: I think you're absolutely right, what you said, but its complicated. Humor can be helpful, but it can also be harmful. It all depends.
My beef was that, when the discussion veered into this area, it immediately started ragging on those wacky men. @TimeLine brought out her experiences in the office, which she's discussed before. @csalisbury says "Oh, no, I'm just like that, I feel so guilty." :joke: @syntax chimes in with what his (I think you're a guy, right?) girlfriend says. :razz: . As I said, I like men. It appears to be easy to make them look ridiculous. I don't like that. I'm perfectly capable of making one particular man look ridiculous if that's what's required. I'm at a disadvantage. I don't have stories about wacky women to contribute. I don't think they're wacky.
So, if this is really a discussion about games people play, have at it and I'll butt out. If it's "look at the funny men", I have some thoughts. If it's "men/women, what's up with that," that would be better from my point of view.
And I don't feel bad because I'm a male. I think it's a game men are prone to play, but I think women are prone to play equally problematic games. I wrote a paragraph explaining why I think your frustration was valid, and what I saw in it. And I meant it. I like men too.
Geez, I put in an emoji! It's even called "joke." It's that humor thing - the good one. You know.
More seriously, I think talking about "typical male behavior" lets men off the hook. If I show disrespect for someone, it somehow lessens my responsibility. I generally know when I've done wrong. If I don't, tell me. It's not because I'm a man. I can face facts and take responsibility for my actions. I'm not that easy to get along with unless you are pretty tolerant. The tolerance of my friends is a gift I am always grateful for.
Depression is sometimes a symptom of blocked growth. Finding the open door might require putting aside assumptions about how things should be, such as that we should be mature enough not to engage in social dominance the way our ancestors would have out under some African sky.
But with social dominance, which is common among socializing mammals, conflicts rarely arise between males and females. Males compete with males. Females compete with females. When a conflict arises between the sexes, something other than just social dominance is going on.
Interesting. I'm kind of skeptical. How much of that is because part of social dominance is keeping people tied to their gender roles? I've always been struck how girls in traditional conservative societies open up when they are given a chance to go to school, work, and participate fully in society. They really don't want to go back. For me, that is probably the biggest thing that puts the lie to gender role stereotypes. When given a chance, women want to be autonomous and productive. I think it's probably harder for men. Even sensitive new age guys like me have a hard time surrendering our stereotypical masculine roles.
I objected to the narrative :razz:
Strongly disagree. It's a sign of disrespect and sloppy philosophy not to take the OP seriously.
Some of us, like me and thee, are old enough to remember when Transactional Analysis was the latest fad to make the rounds. As old Sister Gloria put it, "It's another lingo to learn. Every few years another fad comes along and there's another whole new batch of lingo."
Wrong. I was being playful. I look in my heart and see I wasn't trying to put you in your place. I was trying to start out the discussion in a friendly, collegial way. I looked in my heart before I posted to make sure that was true. As I said, I don't play games much. If it bothered you, I'll be more careful in the future.
When I was a freshman in college in the 70s, "The Primal Scream" had just came out and I was a psych major. Seemed like a good idea. I went around screaming at my roommates and neighbors. They didn't like it much.
I would suggest a better approach to depression is Social Psychology--studying ideas that place us troubled individuals (males and females alike) in a broader social context. Authors like Erich Fromm do this.
Fromm places individual problems in a social context (thinking of The Sane Society by Fromm). It isn't just you. We live in a society that drives people crazy, because it is, basically, a crazy society. Yes, YOU feel depressed and that's a big issue to you because, well, you feel what you feel, and it's hard to put that into the larger context.
To Nazgul, It is quite likely that you feel depressed, not out of any personal flaw, but because you live in, interact with, and are immersed in a lot of craziness not of your choosing. What kind of craziness? Well, the incessant messaging to buy stuff, the many messages that we get that we are inadequate and only XYZ PRODUCT will fix our deficiencies. Because a good share of society (school, work, the media, the government, the corporation--all that every day stuff) really doesn't care about us. If we aren't a means of making money for somebody, then we are of no use whatsoever. All that crap.
I suggested to Nazgul that he check out Escape From Freedom and The Sane Society. If you like those, there are a lot of other books by Fromm.
Fromm says, "Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."
My point was that we can't really look to nature for a rudimentary form of male/female conflict (as latter day sexists would have us believe). Among socializing mammals, that kind of conflict isn't about building social hierarchy. It's something else.
If you're a baby boomer, the patriarchy is probably a permanent part of you.
Quoting T Clark
Sloppy philosophy? LOL.
Well, maybe I was. I was caricaturing your position as a way to lead into my point. Is that what you meant? Is that a bad thing.
Yeah, well. I'm not a baby boomer just because I was born in 1951. I don't care what they say. You're thinking of @Bitter Crank. Saying "patriarchy" is just another way for me to avoid taking responsibility for my behavior.
I don't think its a bad thing, necessarily. Caricatures help sharpen the edges and make the point more palpable. It can be a good thing. But if you caricature to make a point, you have to falsify what the person you're caricaturizing was actually saying. That's ok, but they might have legitimate complaints about being fit into that mould.
For example: Take men. [quote=tclark]It appears to be easy to make them look ridiculous. I don't like that[/quote]
None of us do!
The baby boomer thing was serious, but automatic. There is no baby boom. It's just a phrase people use to make themselves feel significant. To make themselves sound as if they know something. The patriarchy thing is more important. If someone from the outside wants to say I'm subject to the patriarchy, I may argue about it, but knock yourselves out. If I say it, it's a lie and a cheat.
If a caricature is not true to what it is describing, it loses its point and its power. If your point is that, in this particular case, it wasn't an effective literary device, fine. I thought it was. I don't think I really misrepresented what you said, I slanted it for my own rhetorical purposes. And I thought it was amusing without being disrespectful. If you thought it was disrespectful, I will be more careful in the future.
I hope to see that your discussions with TC is enough to understand why I responded accordingly; I have been frustrated on many occasions with people where it can be hard to tell if they are genuinely being unpleasant or being humorous, but my relationship with TC over the last several months has enabled me to understand that he has a good nature and is insightful with a sense of humour. We built on that, it took time and communication for that to form. It also took trust and that sometimes we need to have faith that adequate dialogue can be achieved and that we can manoeuvre that dialogue into the right direction if we take the responsibility with maturity.
I use humour as a balancing act, to build on culture and strengthen friendships so that when we have discussions, we learn to overcome the rigidity of impressions that causes unnecessary tension. My humour serves as a reminder that we are just people and there is no need for egos to interact aggressively, that I am just a girl who travels, works in a great job and bakes cakes. Dialogue is not pure logic, it is about recognising the humanity behind the content and I softened this aggression in others - including people that hated me - when they realised I was not a sword-yielding Amazonian with massive breasts that I use to suffocate men.
That being said, there is a time and place for it and sometimes my fellow jokers post humorous repertoires on posts that I take very seriously. Bad timing. Is that the fault of being humorous where people no longer take what you say seriously, or is it a nasty way of shutting you down? I smile and laugh and have fun, but it is not all the time. I can be serious, and dedicated or committed to a project, deeply philosophical and passionate about justice or righteousness too. Sometimes jokes are used as an underlying passive-aggressive nastiness, but you can always tell.
I've been thinking about this more. It is true, I was ridiculing your point, I thought in a gentle and friendly way. Teasing is a rhetorical device I use often. That doesn't seem like the bad kind of humor to me. If it does to you, I'll at least plead nolo contendere.
That means a lot to me.
Quoting TimeLine
I can't separate the humor from the seriousness. My serious philosophy is playful just as much as my joking. My joking is just as serious as my philosophy. I think if you look at the substance of my ideas, you can see that. I can't say what I believe without humor, even when I am being deeply philosophical and passionate.
I'm rarely intentionally disrespectful. When I am, it's almost always a mistake. I've started using emojis even though I do hate them because I don't want to be misunderstood. I am significantly more careful about what I write than I was when I started on the forum a year ago.
It's ok. & Actually this might be an fortuitous thing, one way to get at this. So I wasn't personally offended (or, ok, maybe just a little) but I saw that you were offering a certain view of things that I didn't agree with, and wanted to counteract it. I got frustrated when the response to my version was that you were just joking. Going over this, I totally believe you, that that's how you saw it.
My experience was something like: He's saying I'm doing this to make a point, or to bolster a point already made. but when I say I'm not, he says he's just making a joke. So what moves are left me? I think this is kind of the same experience, right, that we're talking about?
For instance: Someone could respond to what you're saying by: we’re just laughing, wacky men etc. it's a joke and so forth
So I think we both kind of have a common place to start from: what is it about that 'wacky men' thing that irks?
That dude is awesome. Never heard of him, but that song has a way of making you take a hard look at yourself. Thanks for that.
I am really interested in talking about how men and women interact in our societies and the world. It's something I've thought about a lot, but not something I've discussed much. I need some reality checking. Here's my starting position:
I live in a middle class community in a liberal state in the northeast US. Most of my friends are middle class and liberal, at least socially. Most of the women I know work. Most of the couples I know both work. A lot of, but not all, the women are nurses. The men are engineers, geologists, doctors, accountants, etc. Pay scales of men vs. women are comparable. Since I became an engineer 30 years ago, I've worked in offices which were about 50/50 men and women. Most of the engineers were men, most of the scientists were women, almost all of the admin staff were women. I have had men and women bosses. I have worked for men and women project managers. I have worked as project manager with men and women project staff.
I look out over the landscape of my life and I don't see the that, in general, women are treated with less respect than men. No one I work with or live with would tolerate it. I don't think there are fundamental issues of fairness. I do see differences between women and men in life roles which seem pretty natural. My wife has worked half-time since my first child was born 36 years ago so she could be at home all but two days a week. I've always worked 40 hours. I do feel the weight of my wife's and society's expectations of me in terms of how I act as a man and husband. Sometimes its very hard for me to deal with. I'm sure she feels the weight also, although I think she buys it more than I do. I do not always fit the ideal vision of what a man is supposed to be.
That's enough to start.
Oh, right. Left out "wacky men." To me, because of the differences in roles between men and women, it is acceptable to treat men with less respect than women without justifying it. I think our society dislikes and distrusts men. That bothers me.
I was born and raised in a solid middle-class family. My parents got divorced when I was about 14 and things fell apart. Lots of social stigma (we were catholic) + dad made most of the money, so now we were poor, really poor. Actually, I'm not sure how much that matters. Because I spent time at both well-established and not-established friend houses all throughout my childhood. Just more, after the divorce.
Gender differences are real, super real, in non-middle-class families. It's hard to put it into words. It's just woven into the texture of the house. I hesitate to even call it patriarchal - the wife has tons of power. It's just --- i don't know, its this palpable unspoken thing.
One thing I noticed, shuttling back and forth between these communities: the middle (or upper-middle) class guys, a lot of them, seemed dimly aware of some.... we lived in a small town, everyone ran into each other at town events: the 4th of july parade etc. There was a lot of class criss-crossing, just because of how small the town was. The wife of so-and-so had her [x] repaired by [y] and why couldnt her husband have done it. etc.
Classes weren't separated geographically, like they are everywhere else.
So: The wives of the middle class men had a sort of nuclear weapon, which they would use. I saw it. In my own mom many times, but also with others. If the husband stood up for something then: 'oh tough guy can't even [x] like [y]'
I think this is a mean-spirited move. I don't see any benefit to it. But I've seen it happen many times. And I think it's unfair. Deeply, i do. Because the thing goes like this: If two men compete for who can do this meaningless task --- the wife looks on and says 'oh men, fighting over who's best at this stupid task"
but then in a different moment, woman and husband alone, the wife asks her husband to to do task [x] and he struggles and he says: I'm looking up how to do it. 'oh of course, he has to get the manual' the wife says, or something like that, and now it means 'you can't do it right, like the other guys can' and suddenly this meaningless thing which can be laughed at as 'oh, just men' has been elevated into a hyper-meaningful test of masculinity.
And the worst thing is when you get caught in between. Taking something seriously (because you know you'll be appraised on it seriously) but judged for it because, right now, the game is something different, where what you're doing is seen as just goofy.
I am like this at home and those who live with me or who come and visit me always feels comfort and warmth because my personality is playful as much as it is inquisitive and serious. I got busted by my housemate the other day in kitchen acting like Elvis and I sing the weirdest songs in the shower, like Michael Bolton or some other weirdo I heard on the radio. My home is my happy place. But, that is my home, my world where I get to be who I am and who I am is someone that loves life.
I need to understand, however, that everyone is not like me and I need to be relativistic and respect that how they think and perceive the world could be vastly different to me. I haven't always been successful in doing this because I have a lot of trouble finding any common ground with people who are aggressive, but this is the point about eliminating ego and analysing the content just as much as it is about seeing the humanity or the person behind the post.
Can you explain this difficulty a bit further, in what way for instance? I have much to say on the subject, but I thought I would do you the respect to first explain this difficulty.
Well, I have a friend who sings to magpies, at least you're not that bad.
Quoting TimeLine
It's true. It is not unusual for me to be misunderstood. I am aggressive and my humor is aggressive. I remember how shocked I was when I started working in a professional situation that I could be intimidating. @csalisbury - please know this - what you see before you is what I have accomplished in more than 50 years of learning to act normal. Not an excuse now and never has been. People who know me trust me and tolerate my foibles. I hope you will too.
This is really the first time I've sat down and tried to articulate my own feelings on the matter, so I'm not sure how to express it. That's one of the reasons I want this conversation. In your writing, I think you are more articulate on the subject than I am. Although you have a focus on the way women are treated with disrespect in your own life and your work, I've always liked that you recognize that the weight of society falls on men as well as women. You have always been very evenhanded.
If you have things to say, please go ahead. I'll try to come along. Unfortunately, it's after 1 am and I have to work tomorrow. I'm going to take a shower. I'll check in again when I'm done and then I'm going to bed.
Well-said, for sure.
You seem very smart and well-poised, so I want to challenge you - you can handle it. I read your post and I have nothing to say. It's all quite right. It's all exactly the thing to say. The more I try to respond, the more I slip. There's nothing to disagree with. It's all quite perfectly said.
So: I feel like I'm looking at a linguistic photograph of yourself, one you took. I go to respond to you, and I find there's no one there. But I do know there's someone there. Still: I'm confronted with a criss-cross rhetorical net of the 'right thing to say.' I know this could quickly make me the bad guy in the convo, but, w/e, its a philosophy forum:
What are you saying? I legitimately don't understand. You're talking about your posts, and how your posts, but I feel like --- it just feels like a platonic..post. I feel like I'm lacking nutrients.
Indeed, another lingo to learn, another toy to unwrap. If there is freedom from being stuck in any particular lingo, I think it depends on an exposure to lots of lingos.
My background - Middle class family. Money was never an issue. Two brothers, one 2 years older, one 7 years younger. My mother was stay at home. She died when I was 12. My father married again, but not until after I had left the house for school and life. My mother's death certainly had a big effect on my life, although I'm not really in touch with how. I'm not sure how many of the problems I've had in life are because of that and how much are just me. My younger brother had it much worse. My father was a pretty good father, but he was a stereotypical engineer. He was not touchy feely at all. He just didn't get it.
I lived in small towns so hung around with middle and working class families and children. I can't say I ever noticed any sex role differences. It's not the kind of thing I would have noticed. After I dropped out of college, I moved in with my then girlfriend, now wife, and did what I called "work for a living" for 14 years - ice cream store worker, warehouse worker, cabinetmaker. Then I went back to school and got my engineering degree.
I acknowledge my social experience is pretty limited to my middle class town and friends. That's one of the reasons I want this discussion. I want to test my understanding with a broader scope. Other communities, other countries.
I'm in a weird mood tonight --down for any outside analysis, however brutal.
I went back and checked to remind myself how we got to where we are. We started out talking about games people play. Immediately, almost everything being discussed was how men behave. Not in a very complimentary way. In a way that made them seem ridiculous. My interpretation at least. It wasn't just you, it was everyone. That's what I reacted to.
I will tell you all a deeply embarrassing thing. I used to watch "Full House." Not the one that's on now, the original. I guess 25 years ago. It was the story about a widowed father, his three daughters, their uncle, and a good male friend. The opening credits showed all of them in the park; the baby and two young girls and the three men, having a picnic. Playing with each other. Laughing. It used to bring a tear to my eye to see men portrayed that way. I wish I could say it was a wonderful show, but it wasn't. It was dumb, poorly written, and poorly acted. Terrible.
But what could be better? :smile: And I think there's some 'adult/adult' games happening, which is nice.
Quoting ?????????????
Can't tell if you're playing, but I'm curious.
Yeah...well.....no. Not ready for that. For goodness sake, I told you about Full House. What more do you want from me. :meh:
That's certainly not how it feels to me. We can talk about it more later. I have to go to bed now.
Five Tips For Being Married To Someone ( Its Ok Even Though Its Been a Long Time, We Love Each Other But Sometimes Still..)
Hey, I've seen that show. I even watched one of the new seasons on Netflix. I love when stuff like that brings tears to my eyes. Oh what a sweet pleasure. (I never cry for myself. I suffer now and then in the frozen shit where Dante planted the devil, too damned mean to cry. :cry: ) But yeah that tenderness you mention is a beautiful thing. And I've had that at times, especially where drugs and music helped dissolve the usual hangups.
The background is great, and I think it matters. I grew up in a small conservative town. Working class.
Lots of stupid meanness at my school. Orphans for the local orphanage were mocked (once) by literally hundreds of people at the same time. Total mob mentality. And lots of fights. Everyone loved a fight. I was in some of them, and I wasn't always the 'innocent' party. The worst insults (the fight or lose face insults) were homophobic. At some point I started to think that this homophobia was a fundamental block or enemy of ideal male consciousness. A truly 'manly' consciousness wouldn't deny itself anything. Dare to know, etc. But I only wanted to love other men as equals , very rare and mostly theoretical sexually asymmetrical thrillseeking aside.
I feel a strong 'male' identity. On a gut level I believe in the Marlboro man, nevermind Brokeback Mountain. I'm not superstitious about body parts. These body parts were just dominant symbols for that small town culture, so I wove them in to my negative theology. And I love the idea of women sharing this kind of consciousness with me. Camille Paglia gets it, in my book.
It definitely wasn't true of you, obviously, but many men and women absorbed images of gender roles where men were central to society, but peripheral in the home (emotionally anyway). Women were peripheral in society, central in the home.
Confusion followed the disintegration of those images. You don't realize the point of rigid social roles unless you've lived without them. Everything is trial and error.
It is not like we are talking about a groundbreaking theory here or getting nitty gritty about Kantian transcendental idealism or some such subject. I just like jokes, yo.
Nevertheless! To work in unity with ya'll speaking all personal, well my dad was a violent man because he was raised in a culture that afforded men such privileges to act out against women and even promoted violence as being parallel to 'masculinity' and my mother was reared to accept that as a cultural reality and a lifestyle that women cannot escape. She developed mental health issues but survived his ordeal - as we did - because of this 'normality' to such behaviour, something that perhaps works in contrast to your experience where your familial situation stood outside of community expectations, but I was a sensitive child and profoundly intelligent and aware so much so that though I was afraid of men and had trouble forming relationships with them even till this day, I was conscious enough to see that the paternalism was wrong, something no one else could see. I essentially had no mother or father because of his behaviour but I was successful in learning to become independent. I was very poor and worked with my family as a child so my problems [s]aren't really first-world bullshit daddy didn't care stuff[/s] were rather difficult, but I see the problem beyond me, something cultural and social.
I found relief in high school with my friends where we would make videos or mockumentaries about the shit we were going through and this helped us because I was from a very low socio-economic background and all my friends pretty much had the same problems as me. This enabled me to articulate the seriousness of our experiences without the emotional pain that comes with it, on the contrary it promoted a sense of understanding or relief that worked as a conduit to make the experiences superfluous; the violence at home was a joke and it no longer hurt. Der Witz in Freudian terms, a release of those suppressed feelings that causes anxiety and depression that we instead paint our experiences in an easier way to swallow and digest, just like writing fiction or painting. It is a conscious strategy to access the unconscious, the emotional and turn it on its head. Humour also violates that aggressive seriousness of the ego or that absurdity where our expectations - such as this puffed up alpha male expectation that he will beat his opponent to the ground - suddenly appears pointless, silly even and makes you recognise a part of you that is, well, laughable.
Whenever you tell a person that they are 'wrong' or 'bad' they immediately go on the defence and within that lies the hostility; they will find excuses, they will attempt to make you look bad and therefore incapable of accuracy in your judgement of them, claim your arguments are bullshit and all because they do not want to appear inferior. Humour can free you from this defensive mechanism, a type of abstract thinking. While there is nothing intelligent about the joke itself per se - although there is strong correlations between humour and IQ which in contrast probably makes sense for why ass-holes tend to be idiots - but rather the purpose of joking is to challenge the rigidity of our ideas and make you see points of view that you would otherwise not see.
To me the disappointing play is maybe the rule. When things get real (good play), wheels start to spin in this old heart. Working all of this out feels like an extremely deep kind of play. The play becomes conscious of itself. The play includes an attempt to unveil itself, or many such attempts. Intoxicating. I find it hard to turn it off once the wheels start spinning. I want the forum to be good, but I'm neglecting my responsibilities to write this.
I still have your dolmades recipe, pal. Those hairy arms are burnt into my memory. So, nah, not a total failure.
Yeah, and just for clarification: I don't think it's play all the way the down. I 'believe' in something like final vocabularies. Our empathy and understanding have their limits. All play analysis can hope to do is maybe to knock down some fake limits. Or just help one develop style and charisma. Roughly speaking, I have a fantasy of the philosopher as a type of person who intentionally lives willingly and greedily in a tangled mess of ideologies and even enjoys surfing on the cognitive dissonance (endless 'foundationless' enrichment, aesthetically justified). But even here I think a fundamental faith in that fantasy has to be fixed. I have to unironically believe in being an ironist (which is also tied up for me with a notion of 'being a man' [freedom, godlessness]). So there is a foundation, but it is understood to live largely in the dark.
Yeah, awkward moment. :meh:
Quoting T Clark
I am glad you see that I believe in men. Because I do. I believe women also have problems and it is entirely unfair to claim either of the sexes to be more wrong, but you also know that I studied international human rights law and that global numbers verify the exponential differences between the suffering of women at the hands of men, from rape to sexual slavery to domestic violence. There are a lot of bad men that act out against the vulnerable. This is therefore a cultural, socioeconomic and even a political problem much bigger than we would like to admit. The concept of masculinity and gender stereotypes that people act on enables a continuity of such aggression, because much of what we are is conditioned and only education and self-reflective practice can really allow us to transcend these prejudices.
In saying that, men are under a tremendous amount of pressure because of this concept of masculinity and many men do not really understand how to form that independence and a separateness from the emotional impact such expectations can have. Concepts of masculinity allow some such men appear weak and inferior providing people with the very opportunity to bully them; as I said earlier, you can bully women as being intellectually inferior by default of being a woman, but a man who does not present himself with such a rigorous, intellectual confidence and aggression is 'feminine' or 'like a woman'. It becomes a tool for Othering, bullying and controlling.
So men end up believing that in order to be a 'man' they must display such masculinity through either violence physically, verbally or even intellectually; as I said about when I was studying political science, intellectual 'masculinity' was a tool and my supervisor attempted to coerce me to Marxism because the latter was the masculine approach, when my methodology was too 'feminine' (human rights is apparently feminine). Their interpretation of what a 'man' is and what a 'woman' is becomes textbook artificial stereotypes just as much as what 'masculinity' and 'femininity' implies; as a woman, I am not supposed to speak back to a man, but be all gentle and fluffy and say you are amazing ( :roll: ) and ultimately these men form an identity that believes such faux "ideology" stereotypes to be accurate representations of themselves and others, their perceptions of the external world are given to them rather than formed independently.
What hurts me about this is that there are so many good men out there that become trapped because of the threat of being different. I respect men as equals and admire them for their qualities, but these concepts don't allow people to see men for who they really are but compare them to these stereotypes. It is sad, actually.
Tried to sleep. Couldn't.
As I intimated, I recognize my life has been pretty protected and my experience limited. I've been wanting to test my understanding of the women/men thing for a while with people who've had significantly different experiences.
Thanks for the opportunity to quote on of my favorite poems. As always, Robert Frost. "Two Tramps in Mud Time."
[i]But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.[/i]
Beautiful poem. Frost is great. And that's how I feel. [s]Doing philosophy[/s] good conversation just feels like really living to me (the deed being truly done.)
Quoting TimeLine
I relate to being tough on the outside and gentle on the inside. The violence for me is more or less internally sublimated in critical thought. Fixed ideas get shredded. The new part of the self is born from the death of an old part of self.
I think that you are maybe like me in having little fear of ideas as long a basic human respect is in play.
The tricky part (and I think you know all this and will agree) is that identities are intimately tied up with fixed ideas. Moreover, the language of 'private' thought is always potentially public. That means that as I brew up the death of one of my own sub-selves, I am also brewing up what others could experience as the deepest kind of poison to their currently sanity-sustaining word-sense of self. Anyway, I find myself loving a kind of fierceness of thought in myself that also scares some people away. I tend to stay loyal to that fierceness though, with occasional flashes of guilt (?) just for having personality. I think guilt of having personality is related to but different from the guilt of being a man. Men are the scary gender, the violent gender. Women are no angels, but I know the eerie possibilities of the male soul more intimately. (I do know a particular woman very well, and her meanness potential is cute by comparison. An exaggeration? A fantasy? ) I also know or just believe that personality is a city built on a sleeping volcano. Sometimes that volcano will sleep through an entire life, but one eruption is enough to change or erase everything.
It's all pretty twisted, because this 'fierceness' of thought is trying to strip away false personality in one sense (get to simple mammalian love and joyful embodiment as 'true' Christianity and Tao) and attain a kind of ('masculine') statue-like invulnerably. And also crank out memes, be a successful poet-comedian-philosopher, even if all the ideas are old. A civilized version of this is basic recognition of sharing the 'big' secret with others (that there is none, maybe, or that it's sub-intellectual) and engaging in a generous competition on the creative level (the creation and exchange of little secrets.) But (dark thought) I don't think it's automatic that one feels that another person is a full-fledged peer. We arrive at a party and look around for the people that we really like. We have our favorites, and the best one can do (?) is be gentle and minimize the 'guilt of having a personality.' I mention this because I don't want to be mistaken as more sentimental or unrealistic than I think I am.
All hail the eternal psychological triangle.
Two horses and a charioteer - Plato.
Id, superego and ego - Freud.
Child, parent, adult - Berne.
Identity is division, as what I am and what I am not. And to reflect upon that is to externalise it again, creating the third as analyst/observer.
Quoting syntax
If I point out that this is the primary characterisation of Cancerians in astrology, it is with the intent to disrupt the relation - as being too comfortable, too universal. Rather as "a good sense of humour" is. But that is an aside; I want more to draw attention to the triple nature - "I" relates to "my outside" and "my inside".
Quoting syntax
Hang on, I thought you were gentle inside? But no...
Quoting syntax
What you relate is the opposite of what you relate to; you relate being hard on the inside but perform it gently on the outside.
I'm sorry to pick on you, it's only that you were conveniently at the end of the thread when I came to it -nothing personal. What I want to get to through this triple nature of psychology is something that has been both demonstrated and expressed in the thread, that a psychological theory is always itself analysable psychologically through a meta-theory, or through itself. The transactions of a a thread on transactional analysis are being analysed. Curiously, or not, this does not require a fourth element, but merely takes the superior position of adult/analyst/observer/ charioteer, to comment on the interactions of the participants, just as I am doing here. Personally, I don't much like Berne, his theory is just an emasculated version of Freud, with the gloss of capitalist universalism as rational, or perhaps irrational self-interest.
There is no end, and thus no real progress to analysis, and by analysis, I mean to include neuro-behaviourisms etc as much as the psychoanalytic tradition. There is a continuous stepping out of oneself to look at the division created by stepping out of oneself. I prefer to stay with this gentle violence overflowing from inside to outside.
I find it very exciting - I could even call it pleasurable - when someone destroys my argument and I realise that I was thinking the wrong thing. Similar to the time I thought I first fell in love, it was the first time I became conscious of myself, my body and my place in the world and that overwhelmed me because at the same time I realised just how oblivious I was to a number of intellectual and sexual feelings that I never actually knew was possible. :fire:
What I fear is not intellectual, on the contrary I try my best to make it intellectual and I am aware of my limitations as there are some outstanding minds on this forum that I am no match with but who I wholeheartedly respect, StreetlightX standing out like a quasar here. And being aware of my limitations, I ensure - to the best of my ability - not to believe that everyone is out there to get me and I am rationally capable of ascertaining my faults and accepting criticism where it is due.
I strongly believe in my values because it is important to me; sometimes my values are not aligned to others and they see that as a threat to their beliefs whereas I am just simply articulating what I believe without judgement or hostility. My fear is the "mind games" that people play with me and it hurts - both in a sad way but also in an angry way - when people use stereotypes and categories as a way to shut me down and silence me, to say that I am a woman immediately makes me incapable and the worst part about it is that it is believable, deliberate because it is largely acceptable. I am a normal person who desires learning and seeks to improve and it is not possible to achieve this if I am afraid to speak about topics that generate hostility and if I am too busy deflecting insults. Its exhausting and its hurtful.
Quoting syntax
Intellectual development is linear as it is intimately connected to the arrow of time and as such evolutionary where we are constantly developing and improving; even memories are consistently changing since our interpretations are, but those that remain 'fixed' or stuck are really those that are delusional where their belief-system is ideological. Neo-nazis represent this madness clearly with holocaust denial. You cannot ever have an argument with such a person, it is impossible, so immovable in their position that they resort to delusional answers to resolve any inconsistencies in their beliefs.
Quoting syntax
Some women are very bad, indeed they can be very manipulative to a point of turning good men into very bad men and still come off appearing to be a caring and innocent woman. They have mastered appearances but underlying that is nothing but a vicious creature tricking people to think otherwise. Sorry, both men and women are scary and violence need not only be physical. It can be psychological too. The scales are tipped when we look at the outcomes of the aggression, however, and that is largely a result of our cultural and sociological attitudes to masculinity and the fact that men are physically the stronger sex making them more capable to act out aggressively.
I'm down with that, so long as the roles are kept as transitory states which are adopted and not permanent mental archetypes. Someone can be an 'adult' at one point and a 'child' at another.
Since people are sharing games, I'll share a few little ones.
From the book 'Why Don't You Yes But'. People are trying to help someone and are suggesting things for them to do (why don't you...) and the person who is being helped refuses every proposed solution (yes but), and seeks no novel solutions themselves. The purpose of doing this is because remaining in the problem gives them an emotional payoff - perhaps they're 'the responsible one' and good at dealing with problems, perhaps its a means of expressing frustration with their partner (who is the problem), perhaps they're trying to show that they're beyond help while asking for it. How to avert the game is by asking them what they're going to do.
@TimeLine
Humour has another pathological use as a coping mechanism. It's like Zizek's laugh track, it laughs so you don't have to engage. Only it is you. It downplays all problems and stops resolutions by posturing yourself as already not needing help. Particularly cunning depressions seem to be able to use humour as a means of self alienation, which behaves like the former, only humour is used to fill the hole flattened affect (generalised low intensity of feeling) leaves. I laugh so that I don't have to feel.
Edit: I forgot to include a personal example, 'Why don't you just' - this crops up between people who live together, partners and at the work place. Someone makes a demand and downplays the effort required to satisfy it by saying 'Why don't you just' - refusal to 'just do it' paints you as a bad worker since you can't 'just do' a simple task. If you do do it, you take on a rather annoying or circuitous task which has been downplayed. (and perhaps the fucker who 'suggested how to do it to you' will take the credit).
Between cohabitants, it crops up through chore allocation and responsibility disavowal of it. Living communally with n people means (just for demonstration) (n-1)/n of the rubbish is not yours, so everyone appears messy. 'Why don't you justs' usually allocate extra cleaning duties to housemates, asking them to clean up more than their share.
Between partners, it can crop up a lot of times. It's usually used in some kind of posturing where the person who says it has an emotional attachment to a particular way of doing something - 'why don't you just... do it this way'-, and not doing it that way would be stressful for them.
How to avoid the game 'why don't you just' depends on the context, as that tells you how you can affirm the difficulty of the thing you're being asked to do. Between cohabitants, 'why don't you just' for household task responsibilities; ask if the person would like to help you do more than your fair share, as the mess is mostly everyone else's anyway.
At work, 'why don't you just' can be resolved by simultaneously affirming that you want to do the task, but that you are already busy and would need to sacrifice X Y Z to do the task, or if you're not already working overtime, you could work some overtime you demand compensation for.
With a partner, I don't have any general advice for avoiding it. Still working on that one. ;)
Zizek is speaking of an artificial laughter done in a way where - if humour is used as a tool to play this game - then laughter is given to us. So, in the instance where a woman is insulted, if there is an underlying and generally accepted misogyny, laughter is given to the audience where the woman is instantly the joke. This is not humour, though, not authentically where people are laughing mutually and are being playful.
Humour can also be used to make the difficulty of reality or a very real experience easier to face; just as the unconscious or 'repressed' part of the psyche exists to put away experiences that we are unable to confront, as a method of gently interacting with the experience - just like drawing/painting, or writing, or even psychotherapy - jokes lighten the emotive as one begins to see that the experience is not as serious as it feels. I laugh because I don't need to feel.
Do you think humour is necessarily part of mutual amusement and play? I'm not sure this is right, it seems broader to me. Mockery and rebuking are humorous but neither are reciprocal play.
I've seen someone be very playful with how much they like to cut themselves and how worthless they think they are. It was something like 'hey it doesn't matter if I cut myself if I'm worthless right? At least it's something I get to enjoy now and then!'. Structurally, a joke. It was sort of funny in the 'man hanging himself by his own belt and then his trousers fall down' way. Also coming home to an ex mid suicide attempt (vodka + pills) 'What are you doing?' 'I'm thirsty'.
I mean, humour isn't just this generator of positive feelings, it can easily be repurposed for all kinds of dark shit.
Edit:
Yeah, I think this is good. If someone really is beyond feeding a compulsion or depressive circular thinking, most of the time anyway, laughing about it might be a signal that they're doing ok and a way of ensuring that they're doing ok.
The laughter evoked by non-humorous jokes underlined by a passive-aggressive hostility or Othering can be amusing to bullies; when I think of this young girl who was taunted by several men, they found it funny and it evoked laughter, yet it is clearly not humour. Humour is ambiguous because it can reflect several different conditions and even then to categorise can be an oversimplification. So, I look at humour from a functional angle rather than attempting to ascertain why we find some things humorous and see that playfulness is an important part of human cognition and can bring us joy.
It might be silly being chased by your partner as you avoid his kisses, but it is pleasurable and makes you laugh because underlying that experience is a sexual playfulness. Chasing to tickle a child makes them laugh because of playfulness. This humour lacks the seriousness or underlying hostility or mock aggression you get in mockery and one needn't even laugh, it could simply just bring joy or positive feelings and the benefits are well known both physically and cognitively.
Quoting fdrake
I would not call that humour. If it does not generate positive stimuli then it is something else. Being incongruous characterises some form of amusement because it challenges and shocks a person, like shit jokes, but the function is not to demean or dissolve significant concerns but to draw insight and improve.
The deeper question I'm seeing is about the naturalness of competitive behavior that sometimes spills over into violence. Is it natural and so to love men is to accept that aggression? Or should we see violent behavior as always pathological and so prime stuff of ridicule (when despair is maybe bottomless?)
Are we talking about "play" with two different meanings? Three if we include Frost:
As for #2, yes, it is play all the way down. Or turtles. Or playing turtles. "Final vocabularies," if I understand what you're saying, are play. The Tao is play. We, in our nobodiness, are playing. Good playing. I guess playing for mortal stakes, so 2 and 3 are the same.
Sorry, I just flagged your post by mistake.
I really like what you've written. Flexible, searching, playful, serious, dedicated, honorable. Hey, wait. This is one of them metanarratives, isn't it!!!? In some ways really different from my experience of myself. You'll be someone fun to talk to.
As I said previously, this is the first time I'm trying to articulate these issues, so I haven't got myself together. I think this paragraph summarizes some of what I'm thinking about. Although I'm a very aggressive person, I don't intentionally hurt people - physically or emotionally. I'd say "never" but that's not really true. I've tried, but it doesn't work. I can't do it. I have almost never used violence to try to get what I want from someone. I've never threatened, implied, intimated, violence. But women are afraid of me. And I don't mean women on the street. I mean my wife, who's known me for almost 50 years. That's not unique. I know other women in long-term, non-violent relationships who feel the same way toward their husband, boyfriend.
On the other hand, women can be very violent emotionally. I think women underestimate how much men are afraid of them, of their scorn.
With some trepidation, I propose an in-class exercise. Here's a joke. I think it's very funny. I laugh every time I tell it. Every man I've ever told it to thinks it's funny. Women I've told it to, all of them, think it is not funny. They're not really offended. The women I hang around with are not easily offended. They just think it's very, very not funny.
Q: What food makes women lose interest in sex.
[hide="Reveal"]A: Wedding cake.[/hide]
Discuss.
One way of looking at it is that our strengths are our weaknesses. Humor can be a very useful and valid way of dealing with your life. We use the tools we have, so it can be self-destructive too. It's certainly true of me.
Humor, ridicule, can be a very powerful, aggressive, valid tool. Weapon. I think of political humor. I always think of Steven Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents dinner in 2006 or 2007. George Bush was at the dinner and Colbert's speech was brutal and very funny - all at Bush's expense. He did not think it was funny at all, as you could see when the camera panned to him.
You can probably still find it on the web if you're interested.
I pretty much feel that demands on maleness and femaleness are like this -- roles that anyone can plug into and re-interpret, within the bounds of the script and to reaction (not necessarily pleasure!) of an audience.
But then there is also an aspect of identity where someone feels like a [gender] which doesn't fit into this. But such feelings don't seem to fit the game archetype to me.
I have no problem with how you've characterized this, but it wasn't really my point. I was talking much more personally, how it makes me feel when men are treated contemptuously. As a practical matter, if men are as violent as it is claimed, contempt seems like a pretty ineffective weapon to wield.
Quoting frank
Aggression and violence are not the same thing, although they are certainly related. Part of what I love about the forum is the opportunity to compete. To put my ideas in the ring and let them duke it out with others. Good athletes want to win, but they also want to play against the best opponents they can. Philosophy is the only sport I've ever played on the first team varsity.
The kind of play that 'doesn't go all the way down' (what I had in mind) is 'ironism.' All I mean by that is that I think everyone in non-extreme states takes some things seriously. I mean that a person can have a metanarrative that emphasizes play and looseness of identity, but that they only really have this metanarrative to the degree that they take it seriously. Sometimes it hurts stay open, for example, a person who prides themselves on staying open (takes it seriously) endures that hurt.
Thanks for the kind words. It is indeed one of those metanarratives. I'm a knight of self-consciousness in shimmering armor. I agree that we'll have some fun conversation.
Totally agree. Modes. I think in sexual relationships this fluidity is especially evident.
Beautiful. Yes, there is a deep kind of pain-pleasure for me in these little deaths.
Quoting TimeLine
I like this analogy. When I really get into a new thinker, it's like an intellectual version falling in love. And of course actually falling in love for the first time is just paradise on earth.
Quoting TimeLine
I completely relate to you on this. I try to universalize trauma, learn from it, convert disaster into opportunity. As I see it, we become big dark listeners or listenings.
Quoting TimeLine
I can relate here too, though I haven't had to wrestle with being dismissed as a 'silly woman.' I tend to try to talk to women as equals and sometimes bump into being an 'evil man.' And I don't mean I open up to man-hating women, but that even the women who love men (and me in particular) are sometimes put off by a critical tendency that they find too heartless and abstract. I think some men make sense of this in terms of being the 'father' who must harden his heart to face danger. (In safer neighborhood or more civilized communities, this heart-hardening doesn't look good.) And there's also the 'paternal' role of just being an emotional rock, of never losing one's cool, of being able to give a freaked-out sensitive women an 'authoritative' assurance that she is good. I do not assume that all women need or want this. For me it's just part of actually existing heterosexuality. Incidentally, I've known women to be freaked-out or angst-ridden over their feminist 'duty' (as they understand it) to be more 'like a man.' They can start to feel ashamed that they can't hold back tears at work, or that they enjoy a 'paternal' tenderness. In other words, there are messages in the culture that they understand to shame them for their 'reactionary' love of the (loving) semi-traditional man.
Quoting TimeLine
I agree.
Quoting TimeLine
I agree. And I do know some 'evil' females who just drip (in their bad moments) with a dangerous brew of resentment and self-righteous sentimentality. If they are not as frequently violent themselves, they manipulate men into violence against other men or even against themselves. Obviously a man should not lose his cool and strike a woman. But then reality is teeming with things that should not happen.
Anyway, I wonder much of the violent potential of men is cultural and how much is biological/hormonal.
I'm not sure that having reflexively assumed roles is usually a good thing in relationships. If both people know what's going on and are OK with it, sure, but I don't think this happens as much as its converse. Games played are usually bad, or at least worse than an alternative.
Couples probably have the greatest need to play games with each other because they're the most vulnerable and exposed to each others' actions. I believe they therefore owe it to each other to find out where games are played and whether they should continue play upon being revealed.
Having your vulnerabilities bared while resisting becoming a victim is difficult. Becoming dependent upon your victimhood is another popular game.
@TimeLine
[quote=Timeline]The laughter evoked by non-humorous jokes underlined by a passive-aggressive hostility or Othering can be amusing to bullies; when I think of this young girl who was taunted by several men, they found it funny and it evoked laughter, yet it is clearly not humour. Humour is ambiguous because it can reflect several different conditions and even then to categorise can be an oversimplification. So, I look at humour from a functional angle rather than attempting to ascertain why we find some things humorous and see that playfulness is an important part of human cognition and can bring us joy.[/quote]
I've been a bully before, one of the things I remember most acutely about it - or rather remember as conspicuous in its absence - is that cruel actions aren't seen as cruel to the target. Their humanity is suspended in the decision to belittle them. The target becomes part of the narrative of jokes surrounding them. Their needs were silenced and the dissatisfaction of those needs is their only voice, spoken in my terms; as hilarious weakness. Formally, they were not excluded by my (and friends') actions because they were already excluded from any empathy as a prerequisite to bully them without cognitive dissonance or bad faith. Truly authentic cruelty. If it wasn't so funny we wouldn't have all laughed.
We were absolutely playing and infinitely playful - the target had no recourse, anything they did was interpreted as part of the game we made of them. It was play all the way down, only it was indifferent to them all the way down. Really - how funny, to suffer.
No problem. I welcome it.
Quoting unenlightened
Yeah, this sounds right.
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Well let's not get tangled up in context-dependent language. I choose my words with a sense of my conversation partner in mind. For you, I'd clarify things this way. I have a strong desire to love, believe, adore. I want to be the child with stars in [s]his[/s] her eyes. I use 'her' symbolically. 'She' becomes lovingly immersed in the beautiful object, the beautiful person. For that reason, 'she' is the eternal fool, subject to manipulation and betrayal. Her unpretentious enthusiasm is maybe even the primary target of the 'mean daddy,' who envies and despises her simple trust and love. He wants her to be believing enough to not see around his edges and yet shrewd enough to appreciate why he really is #1. (This 'he' is the non-gentle 'inside' that is sublimated intellectually. )
But only another 'master' can really appreciate his artistry from the inside, and the problem here is that the other masters-for-themselves are his rivals. Friendship is the 'magical' solution. It is homo- or same-erotic. The bros are a wolf-pack (maybe just a group of bookish idealists) with a distributed identity. They can believe in and be tender toward one another, though usually not to point of sucking one another off -- since sex acts are loaded with power metaphors and irrational/dependent tendencies that would threaten the primary objective.
The group narcissism vents aggression outward to those 'fake masters' who aren't in on the group secret. This 'secret' might be some hip new theory or something more ineffable like style or sex appeal or a pure heart or manly courage or political-ideolocial purity, etc. It doesn't have to be explicit, but intellectuals are likely to exceptionally explicit, since their mastery is 'decadent'/civilized and sets itself above a might that sneers at the 'pussies' who need reasons to feel superior. I think you can see this pure inarticulate pride in economically disadvantaged young men. They know that they don't know the fancy words, but they also understand a passage of Hegel without having read it. The willingness to risk and bring death to avoid humiliation is the naked essence of mastery.
'Hardness on the outside' is just moving in the public world with a readiness for a more or less sublimated kind of war. 'Softness on the inside' is a complimentary tenderness that manifests in safe spaces like the home. Workspaces vary. Some of them are gentle or sophisticated enough so that one can be charming and warm. I do realize that many educated men (usually from different backgrounds and perhaps with different body types) are less in touch with this dominating, negative energy.
Quoting unenlightened
I strongly agree with the underlined part. Theories are just tools, bluffs, fragments in the whirlpool of a unstable identity. I think of this 'ironism' as a late manifestation of mastery. It absorbs the earnest theories of others without losing itself in them. By clinging to nothing but dis-identification itself, it offers a small target while simultaneously forbidding itself no weapon.
What I mean is that sometimes lovers are equal partners dealing with the business of life. At other times one lover wants to show off and be admired by the other ('I'll be the child and you be the impressed parent.') Of course the unpleasant stuff is one partner trying to parent the other oppressive. Or trying to play the child when the partner is in the mood either for adult-adult conversation or are themselves impatient to be the adored child.
In my experience, a (successful) couple gets better at reading the right moments for the right roles.
These were my thoughts. It's sort of male caricature talk, supported by personal anecdote, and sort of off-putting, as I'd imagine a woman might feel if men sat around the cooler talking about how women were this and that. Some insights might be true, but stereotyping doesn't help with individual situations.
It's like men are purely worried about protecting their fragile egos at all costs. I suppose that describes the bahavior of those with fragile egos, male or female.
Boy. This is hard to read. I'm trying to think of myself in similar situations. The only times I can remember having a reaction similar to what you're describing is the contempt I have sometimes felt for people, usually boys or men, acting, being weak, vulnerable, pitiful. Thinking back, it's probably always boys or men. Not a good feeling. Looking back on it from many years in the future, I came to realize my feelings of contempt happened because I recognized the same weakness in myself. It was shame. Is that what you're describing, or is it something else? Is it purely social behavior - something you do with a group of friends - or would you do it when it was just you?
Absolutely - I've heard women talked about in a similar fashion and I don't like it, but this is more personal. It's me they're talking about. Worse, it's a whole class of people I value. I like maleness. I'm comfortable with it. It's me. I like being around men.
I think you and I have really different ways of looking at this. This discussion, and the metanarrative one, have been eye opening to me.
It's funny, but I could see that being described as the food that makes men lose interest in sex. Or as a joke on the tendency for relationships to be become less thrilling (but hopefully also warmer. )
????????????? said the same thing. I think maybe it's the difference between married men and unmarried ones. It is a fact, or at least a stereotype, that sexual activity decreases when people get married. It is a fact, or, again, a stereotype, that it is not because men want sex less frequently.
I think you nailed it. I know this contempt. It's all there in the word 'pussy,' which in a crude vocabulary serves as both the primary kind of sinner and the officially sanctioned object of desire. A rough theory would be that men repress their vulnerability and find it again at a safe distance in a woman (in the heterosexual case.) He is the shell. She is the shameful but delicious goo inside.
I'm curious to see what @fdrake has to say. I have a feeling there's more to it than that. From previous discussions, I think @TimeLine sees it differently too. I'm walking in unfamiliar territory.
If social norms designate certain conduct for anything, whether it be boys not cry, that you applaud at a play, sit silently at a funeral, or whatever, your contempt or disapproval at the violation of the norm is a normed social response in order to reassert compliance. If your contempt is excessive to the point of bullying, your cure was worse than the disease.
And so our norms have changed to where men are no longer expected to be John Wayne and women not expected to faint when offended. My own view might be antiquainted, but I do still think we need John Waynes, and I might not be as accepting of traditional female behavior on a man. I think we lost something when we stopped celebrating masculinity.
I've had this theory for a long time, and I'm not sure if anyone has ever found it all that palatable. I see similar theories here and there in certain philosophers, but it's still never been a popular theme in my experience. It's subversive, corrosive. I'd also say liberating, but 'freedom isn't free.' For me, it's a view that evolves because or from that contempt for weakness. Fixed identities are targets not only for others but also for the self that wants to expand and consume perspectives and experience. I think of 'finite' personality as a stuffy costume that the 'god' in us wants to rip off. But this is one part of us ripping off another part of us, so it hurts. Yet it's ecstatic, too. (Love's Body gets this kind of scary-nasty-deep.)
What's funny is that I read this as a non-assertive, non-masculine response, as in "stop telling me you're nervous and anxious about being in the deep end of the pool, fucking jump in and swim." True story. Ironic I spose
Yeah, well, no. Not with me. I pay attention. It's more personal. It's not social control, it's hiding from my shame. As I've said, I like men and masculinity. I'm not sure we need more John Waynes, but it's nice to at least talk to someone who knows who John Wayne is.
Don't understand. Is it my response that's non-masculine and non-assertive? Am I the one that's supposed to be nervous and anxious?
I've been finding the discussion disturbing. I find myself wanting to turn away from it. I guess that means I find it stressful.
Indeed. I tend to enjoy this kind of thing, but not without a sense of danger. That's the 'saturnine' aspect mentioned above. It's sweet hellfire. For me all of this self-consciousness leads toward a 'contempt' for words that reaches for words nevertheless in order to share and flaunt itself. The friendly aspect of this sharing/secret-handshaking is the genuine desire to for a mutual recognition of this transcendence of words in another 'master.' A possible unfriendly aspect of this sharing/flaunting is a gloating over those who still think the message is the message.
And all of that babble of mine above is more spirit-meat for the ideology grinder?
We have entered the dragon. :fire:
If it ain't disturbing/thrilling, then it's just algebra?
You qualified your post at the end by saying you were in unfamiliar territory, hedging a bit. It struck me as less than bold is all.
Take your time, I am just on a train ride travelling between locations for work but I will say that I am proud you are making an effort to peer into the dark and I look forward to reading your posts tonight.
I appreciate this, fdrake. I have been bullied. I am quiet and small in stature and he was a very big man and profoundly aggressive and because I did not respond to his sexual advances he resorted to true authentic cruelty. It was horrible being a joke to them because my humanity was taken away from me and those who followed him and believed in him appeared as though they were allowed to treat me that way. That laughter at the so-called 'weakness' is pretty shocking. The worst part about it was that I thought he was a good person, I really wanted to believe it.
I think we could give examples for both the bad and the good to humour, so I am unsure how to proceed. Are you suggesting that perhaps humour is too ambiguous because it is an oversimplification?
Honestly, I'm feeling pretty bold in this discussion. Boldly going where I haven't gone before. Boldly expressing my lack of boldness.
It gives you power, right? What I get from your post is that you were coming from a position of powerlessness. That's where I came from too. Humor and philosophy, both, provide a sort of power. Words too. They're a kind of mesh, if you can access it, that lets you pull yourself out of whatever you were in. People respond to this as well: If you can can master these tools right, people will take you at your word. This is a weird thing: If you're sufficiently smart, able to do things with language, people will believe what you tell them.
Yes, but...It can itself become a kind of defense mechanism. I'm not trying to knock humor, by any means, but ---maybe you can relate to this: home-life is a bust. Just bad news. However: you find that if you can make people laugh, then they're on your side. If you can make people laugh and also make people think - then you're in the money. That's the positive aspect.
But every good thing tows its shadow behind it. Here's the shadow: If people get too close, then you can use the same tools. Anything perceived as a threat gets automatically linked back to the ur-threat. This is a state of emergency and justifies whatever means. Humor, intellect etc - aimed like a laser. If you've survived something horrible, its natural to fall into this.
The hardest part of all this is that what you do may not fit well with who you think you are.
The same tools of humor and intellect you used to defend yourself against a legitimately horrid world are repurposed in order to represent yourself to yourself. I did this for a long time. I was so good at talking that I could talk to myself about who I was and convince myself, in the same way I convinced others.. The better you are at this, the harder it is to stop doing it.
I mention all of this only because I think I relate to what you're doing. But [cards on the table] I don't always believe the stories you tell about yourself. I think some of your self-summations sit unquietly with the body of posts you're trying to sum up. I'm trying to figure out who I'm talking to here. I don't buy a lot of what you say about yourself. I think you're probably much more interesting than how you self-present (which is, frankly, boring.) I think the qualities that attract people (and posters) are ones you cover up when you talk about who you are.
Man, Nature, God <=> Philosophy, Psychology, Religion <=> mind, body, spirit <=>Good, evil, Judgement.
You may not like this much, but I think it is worth going into a bit. Religion is the form of expression that externalises the analyst, the master, and allows the conflicted relation to develop. Adam and Eve is a story told by God, as the story of the bully and the victim is a story told by the therapist.
But you are familiar with the patriarchal trinity. Allow me to introduce the Old Religion.
The triple Goddess has the aspects Maiden, Mother, and Crone, and her colours are white, red and black, respectively. Birth, life, and death, geddit? We males worship her in the aspect of the maiden, The White Goddess, for obvious reasons, and this gives us a limited view. However, there are in the remnants of mythology hints of a genuine second order reflexivity, unlike the cycling we indulge in here whereby each post of analysis is made an object of analysis by the the next.
It would require a high priestess to explicate in the unlikely event of her being willing, so I will simply note that the muses and fates are ninefold, thus there is in the poet's relation to his muse, or a man's relation to his love, though it is but one aspect of three, still the same triple played out within it - attraction, fulfilment, rejection.
Those who are constitutionally unable to use the religious to momentarily dethrone the analyst, might have recourse to poetry, and I suppose it is the patriarchal poet who writes this, expressing something of his sense of loss, and rage against the tyranny of the analyst. But I do commend to you the Robert Graves linked here; at the least, it outlines a better game to play.
This is interesting, actually, because it explains the dichotomy of how humour can be used as a mechanism to affect both coercive and rewarding feelings of power, however power itself is ambiguous and it also fails to clarify power relations and the sharing of joy. I am still rather determined to believe that humour is not intended as a tool for control and abuse - just as some people think they "love" and yet are violent and abusive to their partners; it is not love, it is something else - feeling empowered does not mean some indulgence of evil or a lack of empathy, but rather to counteract that evil. To say that one is not inferior and that there is a joy and beauty in life. It is like non-violent protesting, a gentle resistance to the cold and almost brutal landscape where efficiency overwhelms our humanity.
Everything, including words, can be used as a tool to exploit the vulnerable and mockery is a type of manipulative tactic that devalues humour itself and disorients the audience and the victim without appearing responsible for the cruelty. "I was just joking!" Humour has a function for joy, but the dimensions of this function are accessed and exploited by a manipulator to coercively influence authority. Essentially, it is all about intent and our individual motives and the culture or social conditions must provide the platform that is conducive to good behaviour as much as it is responsible for the bad. There are bad people making bad jokes, but we do not eliminate jokes to eliminate the bad. We challenge the motives.
Quoting csalisbury
You're the first person who has picked up on that. I tell people that you can never really know who a person is when they write online, and to be honest, sometimes it feels like a threat when someone becomes interested without first forming a friendship with me. I like distance. I need to observe. It takes time with me, which is why friendship is paramount. We build walls to protect ourselves and we protect ourselves because we know how terrible it can feel when our trust has been betrayed. I give hints here and there, but the question is what exactly do you want? And why from me? Do you say the same to your male counterparts or are you suggesting that I need to give you more than just the words that I write? In saying that, I am nevertheless brutally honest about my past. It has no power over me because of it.
"Unsettled hearts promise what they can't deliver". I was once like this, but not anymore. The clarity of my motives is aligned with my actions because I know who I am. When I had no respect or love for myself, what I did never really reflected the person that I was, torn between pleasing people and doing what I wanted, feeling guilty and feeling angry. I feel none of that now.
Embracing your vulnerability is a sign of strength. "To be able to bear provocation is an argument of great reason, and to forgive it of a great mind. Ignorance and inconsideration are the two great causes of the ruin of mankind."
I imagine we're making much the same point in different vocabularies. You're emphasising the adaptability of roles, I'm emphasising the adaptability of persons. The only difference is going to be how much people are seen as a series of games. Maybe that's a big difference in worldview, but it's a small difference in conduct here, I think.
I don't think the reason I obtained remorse or even stopped is because I saw myself in the target. Some of it was that I couldn't get away with it any more; I did find more socially acceptable cruelties which took a lot longer to stop; some of it was humanising the target. One of the rationalisations - well, it was true at the time for me - I had to vindicate the bullying was that since the target was a member of no social groups, and the social group I was in allowed him a limited amount of autonomy. Remember, only insofar as he was forced to be the unwilling jester, the sad clown. Him being bullied was a social contract of inclusion as much as it was a series excluding and belittling actions. Every skilled bastard fosters codependence and feeds off it.
Maybe the only similar thing I've seen, which isn't usually identified as similar, is that guy at work. That guy hangs around, everyone thinks he's a bit of an asshole, everyone thinks he's annoying. But nevertheless he's formally included in your group because it's impolite to exclude him. The condition that allows the members of your group to keep him there? Continual mockery behind the back, two-facedness, crocodile smiles. A smorgasbord of passive aggression.
I don't think it's surprising that a self identified male social group would have a derogatory term for women as a mark of exclusion. But, I don't agree with the symbolism - men aren't hollow, women aren't without restraint. Men aren't aligned with cosmic order and women aren't aligned with chaos.
The extent I agree with the symbolism is: insofar as maleness is seen as the regulative ideal of identity, femaleness looks like a shadow cast from that regulative ideal. It's a bunch of tropes; ideological machines; that people struggle against, and I don't think it's helpful to regurgitate their stereotypes. We can all chew.
On a more abstract level, feminine identity shouldn't be aligned with the negative while male identity is aligned with the positive. You end up with gendered dyads like (negative/positive = female/male generates) passive/active; subservient/masterful; non-assertive/assertive; weak/strong; emotional/indifferent; petty/generous. It isn't exactly a metaphysical truth to assert this dyadic opposition, it's a conceptual generality of the tropes we live in.
I find sexual aggressiveness and shaming due to non-consent pretty disgusting. But I can try to bend myself into the role a bit. I very much doubt that your abuser saw himself simply as bad, if he did he probably wouldn't have continued behaving like that. Perhaps he was unreflective and regurgitating things he's seen before, perhaps he knew what he was doing was wrong but continued anyway because, at least, he knew what he was doing was wrong. Perhaps he was frustrated because you'd shown him the limitations of his power; and how humiliating that a simple 'no' suffices to destroy a persona.
Did you take actions to avoid being bullied or did you allow (he made?) his bullying to become a twisted intimacy between you?
I'm trying to demonstrate that humour isn't aligned with positive or negative, it isn't inherently good or bad, what matters is how it's used.
I think this is a function of your stance towards the thread more than anything. It is a very unusual thread, a nauseating psychological hall of mirrors. Is it possible for you to see yourself as one of the reflections? In it rather than beyond it.
I wonder what came to be to make this thread how it is. Very strange.
I think we all can agree with the platitude that we should strive towards civility, not bully, be polite, consider the views of others, respectfully disagree, and move about with grace and honor. And should we fail in these lofty goals, we should contemplate our failures and allow our conscience and the ensuing regret and remorse to redirect us.
All of that is very true, but not all too human. We can be rude, crass, obnoxious creatures, quick with a cutting remark, occasionally hitting a nerve and feeling some sense of enjoyment. Knowing that, we must grant allowances to others who fail to be proper diplomatic statesmen. The point being, we cannot be too critical of others who are occasionally too critical of us. People judge, get pissed off, fuck around with each other, ignore one another's emotions, and a necessary coping mechanism is to permit it, accept it, and embrace it as just ordinary and actually meaningful interaction. That is to say, I guess I've been bullied and I've been the bully, but being a victim is sometimes a state of mind. I do believe, as politically incorrect as it is to say, that striving toward political correctness does not make for a better society. There is profound virtue in turning the other cheek, dusting yourself off, and stepping forward for the next round. While I can sympathize with the victim, there's nothing particularly admirable about him. The guy who dusted himself off, yeah, I can admire that guy.
So, no, you shouldn't mock the guy at work who is socially inept, but should you mock him and he overreacts, that much is on him.
There is a boldness in honesty, but now you need to be actually bold. It sounds uncomfortable for you, so I now give you permission to say whatever sarcastic, mean spirited, and awkwardly honest thing you want to say about me. Go ahead. It'll be a growing experience.
This reminded me of this: https://youtu.be/RlTbJZ64sVM. It's really funny if you have a few minutes to watch it.
I don't see anything to disagree with. It doesn't really address the points of difference between ribbing and long term abuse or bullying, or being chronically that guy. The cynic in me says that precisely because your response is so reasonable it positions non-reasonable responses as always unwarranted - implicitly worthy of understandable scorn. I understand why Andy would want to punch through the wall, it probably makes sense in the context of being chronically that guy and a target of institutional bullying. Sure, he over-reacted there, it's pretty understandable why he would. A pox on both their houses.
If you've ever been the target of a sustained campaign of bullying, every single instance becomes reminiscent of the whole thing. The belief that the target's highly emotive responses are over-reactions is as much another condemnation, another reason to permit and retroactively justify your actions towards them, as it is just being sensible.
I think you're missing that the middle ground is always contested territory.
I think that's probably both of our points, which is that the middle ground is terribly vague, which makes it hard to navigate. The solution then comes from both directions, which is that we ought be more cautious than we currently are because we don't know the sensitivities of others and on the other side of the equation, we should be more tolerant of others because we don't want to be overly sensitive and read malice where there is none. Both are difficult to do because they require a change in personality and interaction, and at some point people are no longer truly connecting. If I watch everything I say to you for fear of your being sensitive and you feign acceptance of me when I annoy you, then there will be a superficiality to our relationship where it will not go beyond being professional to one another.
And maybe that's the real solution, which is just to admit an incompatibility when you realize that your sensitivities don't match up. That is not a "let's all get along" attitude though, but more of an admission you don't get each other, where the sensitive person is always feeling wronged and the less than sensitive guy feels like he's always having to apologize. It'd be tiring for both of them. But, it does abandon the idea that one side is more right than the other, with it being no more correct to yell "bully" as it is to yell "pussy." As long as both have the ability to successfully interact in their own worlds apart from each other without conflict, then maybe that's the safe place to stay.
I don't think this is always the solution. If it can be the solution, generally the stakes are very low. Like professional tolerance of coworkers, or different opinions of acceptable topic for smalltalk.
Advocating this solution resigns all parties involved to a neutral, non-dependent ground; where their moods and personalities are seen as independent and reactive to their other's actions. This is resigning both parties to a calculated but essentially impossible indifference to the other. We have a problem, let's agree to ignore it. Another wrinkle is only one side of the emotional/rational dyad, the personas in the conflict, will see calculated indifference as a solution; the one who sees the engagement as a triviality to begin with. The world would look a lot different when you see yourself as a problem - the problem in this case.
Linking this back to more philosophical themes, indifference to the other renders ethical conduct towards them impossible. How can something be negotiated when one party puts themselves beyond the bounds of negotiation? The answer is simply; it won't, they refuse.
So when you say:
it engenders a kind of agent-agent ethical decision in which one party is radically indifferent to the other; so much so that 'let's agree to disagree', in all its reasonableness, acts as a principle to ignore yourself as a thorn in another's side. When they can't, by assumption, see it like the triviality it is. Gentle ribbing is usually done precisely by people who have a broad sense of triviality in interaction, and we shouldn't let ourselves seize the middle ground purely out of our own sense of reasonableness; the tyrant (edit: or the bureaucrat) is the model of such self justification.
Actual ethical decisions are opportunities for self transformation - a leap of faith into a new sense of what is reasonable and what isn't. Which isn't to say reasoning frameworks should be jettisoned in making ethical decisions, on the contrary, it echoes the etymological root of reason - ratiocination, to consider rather than to impose as already decided.
You point out here that I've advocated conflict avoidance. Quoting fdrake
A description of what it means to avoid conflict. One area where I'd disagree is that the conflict that is avoided is not wiped away as trivial, but it is avoided precisely because it's seen as critical and unresolvable. I appreciate this description might be my own neurosis, but it's nonetheless personally truthful. That is to say, if you are very leftist and I'm not, we could get along quite well as long as we made our dispute a trivial part of our relationship. That is, we must declare not to personally care about that difference because it isn't trivial. It's critical, and if we allow it to remain in the forefront of our interaction, we are not be able to get along.
I dated a very liberal woman once, and I told her that nothing she believed offended me, that she was entitled to all she believed, and I even truthfully stated to her that I liked it that she held passionate views, despite I disagreed with her in very large part. And she had trouble with me, saying she had trouble divorcing her personal opinions from our relationship, although she finally came to terms with it. The challenge was hers far more than mine because I have no problem avoiding conflict. She did. God did she (but that's another story).
The point being that there are unresolvable differences and they have to dealt with somehow. Either you're going to enjoy sparring over your differences (where all the world is The Philosophy Forum), you're going to compromise to find middle ground, or you're going to have to watch in different rooms when your favorite team plays their favorite team.
Perhaps, but this is over generalized and non-contextualized. It is possible the person was just joking. In The Office video posted above, those in the office were truly joking, and the real response they were looking for was for Andy to have played along, to have thrown back a figurative punch at them (not a literal punch into the wall). It was playful, non-malicious wrestling to them. To Andy, it wasn't. I'm not declaring who gets to decide the truth here, as both confidently have their perspectives, but mean humor is a thing, but it's not meant to truly be mean. It's meant to be funny. Know your audience I guess.
If agreeing to disagree becomes the middle ground mutually and easily, it's definitely a way of dealing with the conflict that preserves both people with little effort. If a calculated, mutually, indifference like that isn't able to solve the conflict clearly the mutual recognition that it is irreconcilable is one outcome with its own consequences, lots of other strategies of reconciliation are another.
Quoting Hanover
I think this warrants an autobiographical response. A lot of the arguments I've got into with partners have been rooted in when I see something as trivial and they do not, or vice versa. These are differences in what is cared about, how that care is expressed, and the intensity of caring. My immediate response to conflict is to understand why it's come about, ask questions etc. This was troubling to one ex who had difficulty putting their feelings into words, so in my view most of our conflicts were suspended until a later date; that is, still ongoing. For her, she'd express herself by being moody or quiet and distant until the conflict had resolved itself in her head, and that was the way of dealing with it. We never came to some compromise on a way of dealing with conflicts and that was one of the reasons, I imagine, that we eventually broke up.
But, contrary to you saying she finally came to terms with it, I had the opposite response and didn't position myself as the one who didn't need to change; I tried very hard to limit introspective conversation, and to meet her at her halfway (middle ground). It was a difficult middle ground for me to occupy, and it showed. For me, self expression and coming to an understanding was a trivial given for any interpersonal conflict. She, however, neither needed nor wanted to develop such an understanding. Just like I neither needed nor wanted to deal with sustained negative expression until she felt better.
The point here is that the means by which to decide who's right and who's wrong in circumstances like that is internal to the decisions made, not an external factor which conditions them. There's no system of forms to register complaints, and no legal framework for evaluating what's right and what's wrong; the schema is the precedents set and lived within by both agents independently. Which, therefore, has to be changed through mutual effort. Otherwise such a resolution is no negotiation or compromise.
This isn't to say that such mental and behavioural gymnastics are required for all decisions regarding others, most decisions regarding others are largely irrelevant so long as they are within usual social and ethical parameters. That is to say, most decisions are already made for us in a reasonable way.
The change in perspective brought on by seeing how you think of things as part of the problem is uncomfortable, and can't (shouldn't?) be sustained long term. It could engender being an extreme doormat as much as a faithful and considerate partner. So it should be contrasted with seeing how they think as part of the problem too.
These are the dimensions that make it difficult to ascertain what is funny and at what expense; thinking about bux parties and other pranks. A couple of guys that I know posted this black and white picture of themselves at the gym looking all serious and beautiful with a philosophical quote attached to it. The quote was completely unrelated so it was obvious they missed the point about what it meant and I found that Instagram caption thing hilarious and tedious at the same time, so I responded humorously with a quote from Dracula. It was a joke, but underlying it was an intention to explain that I found them funny and to undermine the seriousness of the picture. They were seeking praise and I refused to give it to them but I used humour to articulate that to avoid the sensitiveness and hostility that could arise if I were to explain what Aristotle meant and why it is irrelevant and why on earth do they have this black and white picture of themselves looking all serious and beautiful at the gym, affording me protection so that in the instance they pick up on the fact that I am actually mocking them, I can simply say "I'm just joking!" I actually was, but there was an underlying reason behind it.
Both you and Michael did the same thing when I chimed in about BMI age. It was not meant to be mean in anyway, but the intention is to downplay the seriousness and to expose the ridiculous. The point is what you find ridiculous and whether you have any right to say anything. You're video was not a joke, it was a problematic interaction just like those terrible singers who go onto a singing show and are told they are terrible singers only to flip out and start getting all defensive and attacking the judge for being a fool. It is malicious in the instance where the person does sing well but is told by a bully that they have a shit voice, just as much as it is funny when jokes are said about weirdo princesses singing to magpies. The audience is irrelevant, it is isolating the intent.
True, but intent is complicated because you're assuming sufficient empathy and understanding of the audience is in the equation when the joke is considered. For example, if I posted what I thought to be a serious quote with a picture of myself at the gym and a friend of mine explained to me how I misunderstood the quote, that I was a dumbass, and carried on about how I was a pompous buffoon, I might think it pretty funny. I'd then respond by insulting his children and making inappropriate comments about his wife and it would degenerate from there, with some of the insults being truly personal and abusive, making it all the more funny. My intent would always be to be funny, but some people who I might expect to get it, won't, and they'll be like "fuck you" and I'll be like "doubly fuck you" and I'll be joking, and they won't, and then no amount of splainin works.
Quoting TimeLine
Of course, because Michael tends to get it, as does Sap and Baden, but others not quite as much. So if I tell @Baden I accidently had sex with his stupid fucking dog last night thinking it was his mom, he'd respond in kind, whereas if I told some other people that, they'd be sort of pissed off, like why is this moderator telling me he fucked my dog and is insulting my mother. I'm proud of that example of a good joke, by the way. Quoting TimeLine
Yes, the magpie song. I'm reminded of this:
I think he was embarrassed at himself or his approach towards intimacy that he resorted to aggression because this feeling emasculated him, so he was on the defensive only because of his ego and he was telling himself that I was worthless to avoid the emotions. Indeed, I am intelligent and you could see he was trying to 'beat' me and you could see him trying to overpower me in a number of ways, but this stemmed from his perceptions that men ought to be better, stronger, authoritative over women and equality defies masculinity. I don't think anyone who does a bad thing is aware that they are doing bad and that is why I wanted to help him see that, to feel remorse and to become friends with me (showing me the respect I deserve).
I think this thread exemplifies just how uncomfortable men are talking about themselves, as though emotions are vulnerabilities that are a weakness and instead post highly articulate and factual ideas that defines perfect intellectual masculinity. It is not weakness, but they tell themselves that it is and so avoid it. Many bullies themselves were bullied and so they became that way to protect themselves from becoming the object of ridicule and are likely more emotionally invested then they attempt to convey and covert the emotion by pretending it is not there. If it was not there, one would not be compelled to act.
Quoting fdrake
I think he may have thought that, which is why I continuously articulated that I hate playing games, but I did care for him because I could see the conflict he was experiencing and the emotional mess that he could not contain. I caught him pulling out paper I threw away from my rubbish bin once and in his mind he probably wanted to believe he would find some useful personal information about me, whereas I saw a strange moment where a man was going through my rubbish bin and pulling out an irrelevant piece of garbage. I tried everything I could, from being kind to being dismissive, to helping him and to ignoring him, but such men are one dimensional and as I said to Hanover, think they have a right or some sense of entitlement to behave badly and as such kindness is seen as a weakness or being firm to them gives them entitlement to be aggressive. The problem is the psychology of the bully.
This is no different to Othering, those that dehumanise people based on skin colour or religion or gender that ultimately makes it justifiable to ridicule and hurt. When I was in Israel, I went to the holocaust museum in Jerusalem and obviously there was a lot of disturbing content in there, but one thing that struck me and very deeply too was a before and after image of a Jewish woman standing rather frightened surrounded by German soldiers all of whom were laughing, and then the same Jewish woman after she was raped by them. The person no longer existed, she was just an object of amusement and I think this lack of empathy vis-a-vis the right to be vicious gives immorality a means to act. She deserved it. How is that any different from bullies like yourself that seemingly think you have a right to ridicule? Why is it that if you don't like something or someone - which is normal - that you feel justified to act out as though seeking a social means to enable reasons for behaving badly? There is clearly an ego here but also a sense of entitlement that stems from a lack of empathy.
Hm. I suppose this is part of blaming the victim for how they're treated. Responsibility's absolved from me because they deserve it, or are somehow asking for it. I don't actually think there's much reason for it, at least when I've done it. It's like identifying as a cat playing with the baby bird, pushing it around on the ground until its legs buckle, wings snap and it eventually bleeds out. That I could catch someone in a moment of weakness that I created legitimated feasting on the all the horror and inner torment I caused. It was certainly fun.
Really though, I can think of three types of bullies:
(1) ones like the unthinking cat pouncing on weakness out of nothing but childish predatory instincts.
(2)Those who are aware that what they were doing was wrong, but that they didn't care for one reason or another.
(3) And those who are convinced that what they are doing (or did) is justified.
All three have the capacity to be rooted in something deeply psychological or traumatic. Or perhaps they aren't. At times I've been (2) and (3), and oscillated between them depending on how self-righteous I felt. The three have distinct but overlapping means of dehumanisation.
(1) thinks of it as somewhat a-priori, a given right. The target's concerns cannot be relevant no matter what.
(2) thinks of it as permissible, something with extenuating circumstances (at least for the bully). It is permissible since it's a bit of fun, not serious, sustained gentle ribbing of a 'friend' on an exposed ribcage. Disavowing their own actions also disavows the target.
(3) thinks of their actions as a matter of moral necessity or necessary for their identity to persist as is (those two things are usually the same in my experience of people). they're exacting vengeance for some perceived slight, or some personal symbolism the victim has to them.
Your problem person sounds like a particularly nasty mix of (1) and (3), and that's a lost cause. Someone who's right no matter what they do and an asshole at the same time. Their actions are in a continued state of exception and never aggregated into their persistent sense of identity. You are a thorn, they are pulling it out. You are a crawling ant, they will destroy you without a thought.
They're probably never going to integrate a recognition of their cruelty towards you into their identity, just like I'm not going to listen to one of the ants infesting my house when I crush them. The house must be in order, and of all the opinions I'd listen to, why would I listen to the ones I've already decided are whining noises?
That is not the kind of person to martyr yourself to for any apparently philosophical ideal.
The justifications only arose when passions inspired them to. If I really felt what I was doing was ok, or ok enough I kept doing it without looking at any reasons associated with it. It was its own end, so the victim is just a means.
We all can act without knowing why and in this instance you may genuinely believe that you are simply joking back, but what you are really doing is responding or reacting rather vindictively with the intent of hurting their feelings. They hurt you and you are reciprocating, but you think he was joking when he showed that you're a dumb-ass and so you are doing the same, only it is not about tolerance or a threshold to these jokes but rather he was exposing a truth in a way he knew you may least be offended with and you were not. It is just a misunderstanding of the intent. Those guys, by the way, reacted negatively to my joke, deleted it and stopped talking to me for a while; how dare I not tell them they are beautiful, amazing people, two men doing what millions of men do in a machine called the same shit as everyone else. They quickly regretted their reaction because I am awesome and I know a lot of people at the gym and everyone who read it thought it was funny and thought the guys were overreacting jocks, so they're all be like sniffing around me now and saying nice things about my hair and clothes, and I be like whatevs.
Quoting Hanover
They prolly in a bad mood. You're so sensitive. In saying that, I sometimes intentionally disregard your jokes not because I didn't laugh or I didn't find it funny, but because I cant be fucked since my only chance to be on here is late at night when I am sleepy and in bed. You're so exhausting, always 'TL TL, look at me look at me, pick me pick me" I be like whatevs.
However, it also does open potential discussions about power-relations here, too. My dismissal of your jokes, for instance, is a type of power over you, a mode of discourse intended as a rhetorical strategy to control for my own benefit. I transform a joke into a truth and in doing so make you directly responsible; you are now committing bestiality and our children need to stay away from you because you are bad person. Likewise, people use 'serious' attitudes intended to overpower those who have a sense of humour by reducing their intellectual aptitude to a lower class as though their lack of seriousness purports a lack of intelligence. It is only because they seek power.
See, this is just that you don't get guy humor, having not a Johnson. Good example, I have this friend and he was accused of inappropriate conduct with a subordinate, and he was truly innocent as the facts did show, and you can imagine the stress he went through during the investigation, as he really is an upstanding guy. Let us assume his false accuser's name was Sally, and so it has been a pretty funny joke to ask him if he Sallied any more of his subordinates, and one can certainly be creative in using Sally as a verb as you might imagine. I happen to live in a glass house myself, so stones are thrown right back and me, and it's mean as shit from an outsider's perspective, but it can be crazy funny to hear someone joke about the most sensitive events in another's life. And there really is no vindictiveness. It's actually a display of friendship to have no boundaries, to make light of really heavy burdens, and to let the other person know that there is nothing to hide and be embarrassed about.
What does it say if I joke to him about Sallying others? It means I don't for a minute think he ever Sallied anyone, that the prospect of that occurring is absurd, and that he doesn't have to feel there is some hidden doubt in any of our minds that something really did happen. We're all decent folks, so we'd never joke about his having done something terrible.
If I have such support for my friend, why don't I just say it instead of hiding it in jokes, you might ask? Cuz I'm not gay. Quoting TimeLine
What you don't say dear Princess is that you felt bad about what you did and so here you try to pretend they sort of deserved it. You fretted about it and kind of wished you didn't go there, but you didn't, so you try to justify it. How do I know this? Cuz I know all. What happened see is that guys react differently to girls ragging on them than when a fellow guy does it. A guy punches another guy in the arm, he can hit him back. Not so when a girl throws a punch. They thought you were telling them they were stupid and that you meant it. You prolly did. They sounded stupid. You weren't joking. You were putting them in their place. Damn straight. Quoting TimeLine
And dare it is. These jocks thought they could be smart with their philosophy and shit? Hell no. That shit is your fuzzizzle. You needed to let them know who the boss was and maybe get their attention. Now they're looking your way, so you look the other way. One of those boys is gonna catch up to you one day Miss Playa. And btw, I say you got raggedy ass clothes and musty ass clumped up whore hair, so don't think your sass is gonna change my tune.Quoting TimeLine
So if you got this complex play book, why open it for me? Is it because your love now is so deep it's time for the big reveal or perchance you have abandoned it for a new playbook, like maybe if you talk all silly hip and drunk and shit maybe you can get Hanover to do the same. Hellz no you can't. Shit don't work wid me no way.Quoting TimeLineThere was this girl at work. I'll call her Megan because that's her name. She tole me this story after we got to know each other later on. She would walk by me in the hall and say hi to me and I'd not say hi back. She then started not saying hi and just staring at me to teach me a lesson. I still didn't respond. She thought we were in this big standoff and that she was getting the best of me. Once she got to know me, she realized I had no earthly idea of the battle that had been waging.
So what we got here apple dumpling is your having ignored me and taught me a lesson in your head, not mine. But what you did reveal is that you were responding to my jokes each and every time, hanging on my every word, but thinking you'd get more a reaction from me by being silent than by say "Oh my sweet Hanover, oh how you spin a story." Now go comb your hair.
These are attractive men, they have muscles in places I never knew existed, popping out everywhere like a balloon full of walnuts, the type of guys who iron their shirts while they are wearing it. In our culture here in Australia, these 'jocks' are not visibly nasty because society contains and controls their behaviour; they get tattoos, pretend to care about some charity to make themselves appear moral, paste "the thinker" type photos all over Instagram with some ridiculous quote (some women do this face where one of their drawn-on eyebrows are raised and puff up their lips with a slight nose flare and write some feigned story about self-love), and yet underlying all that remains this hostility, this sense of entitlement and superiority. It is all games that people are playing with each other. There is no substance, they offer nothing that is real. I did not anticipate their reaction and was genuinely surprised because my joke quoting Dracula was hilarious, but in doing so kind of revealed who they were that has thus enabled me to write this. So, no, I did not feel bad at all and they are only really nice to me because I knew more people than they thought I did and that made them look bad (society contains and controls their behaviour).
Quoting Hanover
No, I don't think you are bestial and should stay away from children you malignant twat, it was a pretend example to verify my point about humour and power-relations. There was no lesson in my head. Weird, how is it that you write what she was apparently thinking if there is nothing in your head, hmm? Bet you got your kicks into provoking her, the type of guy who tries to make his girlfriend jelly by flirting with other women.
Quoting Hanover
*Files nails.
Hang on, if you were banging my dog, who—or what—was I banging? :grimace:
The Aristocrats.
What I can tell you is that he is miserable and my unhappiness gave him pleasure even to a point of giving him meaning as he compared my weakened state as evidence that his life is so much more better. There was no honest pursuit or attempt to form a bond with me and he made sure that his decision to do this was the right one by making me appear crazy and worthless. I was just an object he wanted for a few weeks to then discard and go back to his actual life (he cared nothing about me as a human being, my identity, my values) and since that did not manifest, like an angry child who did not get the toy he wanted in the store, he lashed out.
His aggression helped relieve his misery and strengthened his relations with his girlfriend who joined in following his slanders; he made it out like I was chasing him, and he would ask me to come into work early or lure me in other ways so that he can pretend to others that we had some secret thing going on while protecting himself by constantly talking about his girlfriend. He had a secret. He really wanted me despite having a partner and so he was at risk of being caught; he used it to his advantage and got her involved instead.
He created the whole thing all by himself, influencing others, indirectly threatening me, everything was created in his own mind and such was his persistence. I just could not get him to stop. I did not want to believe that he was a lost cause, but again and again and again until I gave up. I still wish you are wrong, my loving nature really wants to believe that he could feel remorse or something, to try and be a friend. It is almost like his ability to achieve this would make me believe in humanity.
Quoting fdrake
:yikes: If I don't need to help good people, then isn't he the kind of person you try to help? In the bookThe English Patient, it said: “If you take in someone else’s poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you.” That is what happened. I am no martyr, though, I am lot smarter and well equipped than most think. Hence why accessing your vulnerabilities and articulating your emotions is actually empowering.
Quoting fdrake
This is about you not about them because your actions is a type of relief for you. People who self-harm find relief in such behaviour as a coping mechanism for the emotional pressure that they feel, only in your case it is projected outwardly as though the animal that you torture is an inanimate object inasmuch as the person that you bully has been dehumanised. Just like when one clenches their teeth and becomes physically tense that aggression and violence helps relieve that tension, words can be just as violent as it damages a person psychologically. Violence does not need to be physical; ostracising, slandering, threatening (particularly indirectly) are all forms of violence, as well as the whole bystander/gang behaviour where the more people you have your side, the more justified your actions become is a form of aggression. What better way to get people to side with you when you make a joke of the person.
You would not act if you felt nothing and so you are imagining weakness as a tool in as much as thinking there are threats and insults that are prompting the necessity to retaliate. You would believe anything that would enable you to act and all this is caused by your own emotional volatility. You intentionally seek the vulnerable because you are assured control over the situation, because being vulnerable implies a lack of control, and aggression is a way of rehabilitating those vulnerable sensations within.
Those who have Borderline Personality Disorder - whilst lacking in empathy - have embedded deep feelings of insecurity and the ego responds against these intense feelings through impulsive and aggressive behaviour. There is no switch in the brain to feel empathy and it likely has developmental beginnings where there is an absence of any conditioning to recognise the responsibility of their own behaviour. That is, they are completely oblivious of how others perceive them and cannot relate because there has not never been any communication fostered or interpersonal relationships as a mechanism to develop healthy patterns of social behaviour.
Quoting fdrake
It does not need to be rooted in something deeply traumatic, but that most of our behaviours and responses are conditioned and thus bullying behaviour is fostered and formed from a very young age. Romanian orphans that were left in the same place and never felt the warmth of affection neither had any adequate sustenance and play actually had profound physical and cognitive effects. Parental styles such as using threats, ignoring behaviour that often goes unchecked and a lack of interpersonal interactions such as having friends can have a negative impact on a person' behaviour.
Look at you checking out the scenery. Sounds like you were getting busy at the gym. And by "busy," I mean preggers. Quoting TimeLine
H8r.Quoting TimeLine
Either they changed their behavior towards you because they realized they had insulted Miss Australia or they simply felt bad for having made fun of the apparent teenage transsexual rocking in the corner laughing to hirmself while quoting obscure passages from 19th century literature onto an even more obscure philosophy forum.
Oh yeah, I done brung it.Quoting TimeLine
You're sounding a bit jelly yourself. I didn't know that jelly came in so many flavors.Quoting TimeLine
Look at me damn it. I'm doing funny things. Look at me!
Yeah, the way I used weakness in the previous posts is probably a retrojection. A better summary might be that targets are contemptible. Or perhaps they become contemptible because of the series of decisions to victimise them. At that point it makes sense to brand them with weakness, since they're victimised. That will get fed back into the bullying feedback loop, something like 'your responses are over-reactions and will be met with understandable scorn', to reference a previous comment to @Hanover. I'm pretty sure that the target has to respond in a certain way to make themselves a tempting victim for continued psychological assault. This isn't to blame them, it's to say that only certain responses would be a turn on.
Certainly sometimes I've profited from others' vulnerabilities. I used to do palmistry (cold reading) as a hobby, one of the things I noticed was that the more traumatic the details exposed during the reading, the more accurate the reading would be remembered. Further, the less I said new things and the more I rephrased what they said provocatively, the more accurate a reading it was remembered as. Put these two together, and there was a big satisfying payoff whenever I was able to get a punter to relive something horrible; then they'd remember it like I'd seen into their soul.
I'm actually very emotionally stable. Most of my friends think of me as a rock. Furthermore, even if they're very mentally resilient they usually want to talk to me about their problems. Hell, they even find it helpful, and I get a lot of satisfaction from it. Generally, what I do if I sense that someone's currently suffering from some vulnerability or insecurity is ask them if they're suffering from it in a low-key way, then try to help them with it if I can. People trust me and I've very rarely abused that trust.
As much as it's tempting to paint me black all over, a person who is constantly predatory and looking to be cruel, I'm a lot more compartmentalised than that. I imagine most people who have been bullies are compartmentalised in this way. It'd be difficult to maintain a positive self image if there weren't some extenuating circumstances or means of forgetting. Most people have done (or neglected) things that are difficult to square with their sense of identity. And, pace @unenlightened, you have to find a convenient fault-line to elide (both senses simultaneously) to have an identity to begin with. Example, you can be a workplace bully and a great partner at the same time; and not in the Screwtape sense of praying for your partner's soul every evening after you've assaulted them.
This sounds pretty familiar. I had a friend (guy) who sexually assaulted another friend (girl), there were a lot of witnesses, but the guy denied doing it repeatedly, he couldn't handle that he'd done it because it just doesn't square with his identity. So he made an elaborate story up and got his friends involved over it. Ironically, because of the way our social group was composed, the people who asserted that the guy had sexually assaulted the girl were stigmatised.
Sounds pretty similar, in terms of the mental states of the aggressor. Girl's life was a lot better when she never had to see the guy again, stopped feeling like she needed to apologise or redeem him, and stopped feeling sullied; and equating the thing which removes the sullying with the redemption of the guy. I'm imagining that you're in a similar situation to the girl. I don't have a freakin' clue why you feel like you need to redeem him, and I imagine it would help a lot if you stopped.
[quote=TimeLine]Essentially, it is all about intent and our individual motives and the culture or social conditions must provide the platform that is conducive to good behaviour as much as it is responsible for the bad. There are bad people making bad jokes, but we do not eliminate jokes to eliminate the bad. We challenge the motives.[/quote]
I agree with the point about motives. I hesitate to talk in terms of bad and good people. I don't mean this as an ivory forum thing where I get to pretend I'm above all condemnation and take in all the world in an understanding embrace. In real life I get caught up in this stuff all the time, and online sometimes too. It's just that I've learned, through bitter experience, that if I get too used to characterizing stuff in absolute moral terms, and sort of look out and see people through that lens, then I'm strengthening a sort of moral/emotional muscle, Condemnation+Shame, which works fine until I find that I've slipped up, again. Then - bam - that same muscle I've built up is now turned against me.
My posts certainly had some good/bad connotations, which I wish I had softened a bit. I may have contributed to introducing that good/bad chill into the thread. I think fdrake's posts about bullying exemplify the approach I would like to take: a kind of objective, nonjudgmental look at how this stuff functions. With the intent to stop engaging in it as much, of course, but without making its uses symptoms of an inherent badness. More like unfortunate patterns that we all get caught up in from time to time.
Yeah, I like distance too. Or, I don't know if I like it, but I certainly have trouble functioning without it. I'm not sure what I want. I've been on a kind of boundary-shaking tear these past few months, at least on here. Not just you, by any means: I've been doing the same kind of thing, in different ways, on quite a few threads, with quite a few different posters (male posters, I'll add!). It doesn't feel all that good and it all really caught up to me the past two days and I've just felt gross about it. I have lot of recent discussions here, about people not confronting stuff, about presenting their selves falsely, about approaches that try to neatly organize the world at the expense of real life - certainly all seems to point to something I need to address, I just can't quite figure out exactly how to. I stand by most of what I've said in this thread, but I don't think my last post was really necessary.
its been dizzying to me. It feels kind of like what I felt the first time I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though I couldn't quite say why. It's hard for me see reflections in general - I'm trying, but it keeps sort of slipping away
Call the game 'analysis', or 'theorising', or 'psychology'. It's a game people play of theorising the games people play, that involves the analysis of what is a person. It requires that we can distinguish a person from a player. Sometimes I play this game, and sometimes I play another game, and the sense of being a person is that the same something plays this game and that game.
I am seeking the person who is playing the game of seeking the person, by playing the game of seeking the person who is playing the game of seeking the person, by playing the game of ...
Quoting csalisbury
Unsurprisingly, I end up lost in the game, and perhaps it is tempting to conclude that the person is the persona, and there is nothing behind the mask, nothing playing the game but the game characters.
Because even if I play the game of not playing the game, I am still playing the game; it is just another persona. And yet the sense that I am not the mask I wear, the game I play, persists - it is an experience, but it is unanalysable.
Let's make a rule - one that is unbreakable: whereof one cannot analyse, thereof one must not analyse.
Call it 'the mystical', and allow that though it cannot be defined it can be manifested, (manifested through the relations of masks in the game, as the unsaid indications 'between the lines').
I bailed out of this discussion a couple of days ago, although I've been reading the posts. There's a darkness here that resonates with a darkness and dread inside me, although I haven't articulated it the way you and the others have. It's not hidden. It's always there, but I don't bring it out, dust it off, and look it over very often. The way I think about it doesn't really fit in with the theme of this thread, at least not the nominal theme, but I'm wondering if there isn't something deeply male about it. It's not part of the games we're discussing. It's under the games. Behind them.
Since the scripts aren't written with our well-being in mind the shelf is usually the best place to put them -- to be read and discussed, but only played out for the fun of it and with a full understanding that this is just a play, and not who I am really.
But who am I really? Well, you'll find out in time, the more time we spend together. The script helps in looking for analogies, but they aren't anything other than fictions, with the possibility of some truth. And the answer to the question doesn't have some kind of final answer, or even a right one. There's no meta-analysis which will resolve the question of who we are. We are what we are: a multiplicity, a depth, an answer, a being. We are everyone's Other, and everyone is Other to us. And isn't the Other actually a mystery, anyways? Wouldn't they know better than the script?
You may be a hopeless romantic falling in love with the daughter of an enemy, and I'd point out that you're playing the part of Romeo. But, all the same, you'd still be csalisbury, and it would only help in orienting you to point out said analogy -- you wouldn't be Romeo, just as you wouldn't be any character trope (Male, Father, Analyst, Priest, Teacher, Female, Mother, Child, Patient, Sinner, Student).
I was of the impression that the priming of interpreting responses as scripts was the thing which set the self recursive meta-scaffolding off to begin with. I'm not sure what created the priming in the thread though.
The analyst is also such a script. Including it as a script among many is what sets off the vertigo. Everything said is starved of expression but simultaneously too much. The role of the analyst is the usual affective standpoint posts here come from; creating a schism between what's read then reacted to and what's identified with. To play the game of the analyst here is, partly, to see yourself amongst the impersonal ideas the analyst judges from a distance; and so people playing the game find their voice stolen from them by identifying with themselves as another impersonal idea; as one among many.
Encountering yourself within the play of signs in the thread is to hold yourself in suspension; as public property; which destroys the impersonality we usually afford to the role by affirming it as a property of ourselves.
It's like coming home and finding your doppleganger in the bathroom.
Great image! But also using your towel, and demanding to know what the fuck you are doing barging into his bathroom.
And then...
[quote=Robin Williamson]Poor as the birds but to give their songs away
Gathering possessions 'round to make a bright array
Dark was the night, praise God the open door
I ain't got no home in this world anymore
I ain't got no home in this world anymore
I ain't got no home in this world anymore
Farewell sorrow, praise God the open door
I ain't got no home in this world any more.[/quote]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvVNcttXoX8
Though I didn't mean to say that every response is a script, too. I just meant these sorts of cliche's -- the analyst, for instance.
A response, though, is just a response from you to me. It's something I listen to, rather than analyse. It is not a script, but what you are saying to me -- to interpret it in the frame of the script is to forget that the script lies on the shelf, rather than who you are.
That's kind of what I was trying for at least. Does that make sense?
I think this makes some sense. At least, the sense I made of it was trying to play about with the analogy of shelf and script to see if it compares well to the sense you made of it. Then I decided to expand on the analogy because it was inspiring, difficult to look away from like my doppleganger.
I think you see it something like, there's a vast library of scripts available for each person, people can play about with the scripts and commensurate themselves with them by playing along with a selection; always their selection in regardless of how agency is attributed according to a script. These two things; commensuration with scripts and selection of operative scripts; are rendered equivalent through actions. In this respect, people are the librarians of this vast library, a personality is simultaneously a pagination of each book and a library classification system (like Dewey Decimal) of the scripts.
Generalising:
In this library, somewhere near the back, there are scripts for 'commensuration with scripts'. The Analyst lives somewhere in there, so does The Histrionic. Both of these are genre demarcated like the selection in a book shop, little tags above the scripts given by the general pagination/classification system which keeps the library in order. However, some of the subsections when selected have their own way of paginating and classifying the whole library. The Analyst has to do this, exploring the terrain again before deciding what kind of map to draw; which scripts are chosen (again, indifferent to agency) to navigate the terrain.
Perhaps, when the librarians have sufficiently similar scripts and the Analyst would tell them the terrain has the same landmarks, this is what is meant by following a rule and what gives such an amorphous denotation retrospective definiteness. The Analyst would also tell them that there's nothing of which they couldn't, in principle, speak because making way for the sense of things is always-already a pagination and classification system for the Analyst. The Analyst doesn't notice he does this while finding the scripts which have already made sense of things. One of the Analyst's principle tricks is forgetting that he's commensurated with the librarian itself, which is how he appears to edit the other scripts. Another way of saying it, nonsense is anathema to the Analyst, which is funny, as it's how he makes sense of things. He reaches underneath the shelves, finding fragments of scripts in the direction of the unwritten. Forgetting, as a matter of necessity, that it is the librarian who lends his body for such navigation.
His is only an intellectual joy, a reappropriated ecstasy, felt only in the hole behind the librarian's eyes. Feeling so strongly is quite remarkable for something which never quite exists.
Then there is The Analyst, a character in a script but also there are analysts who commensurate with said script and select it as an operative script, thereby acting the part of analyst -- creating and analyzing a dewey decimal system of the library. The Analyst can see all, for The Analyst has perused the library and knows where to look. But, as you say, this borrows from the body of all of us librarians - which the person who plays the analyst is also one such body, but in the playing of the role can forget that there is a body in a library reading scripts and playing.
In highlighting the (per?)scriptive nature of our roles I'm trying to draw attention to this body in the library, and the doors the library has which we can step out of. We have books, but we are also something other than the books -- that which the books are about.
I think the fungibility of being a character in a script, commensuration with scripts, and being a script in its own right is something pretty unique to the Analyst script. (Almost) All the scripts have to be put on a level playing field in order for the Analyst to work as it does. Since It clusters them into meaningful islands of relevance (commensuration over scripts) borrowing operations from them (commensuration to a script) to push on the boundaries of those isles and shape them for the terrain (as provided by the librarian's adoption of the role, proclivities from histories). It meets the librarian in their shared activity of fumbling towards the next unwritten. The embedded interplay of
[ (script<->librarian)<-world] terminates and orients us to that world, adding a librarian->world relationship to that composite through enacting the role. The interplay of all these things is being the Analyst, including (librarian<-world) as the present unwritten/unexpressed and (librarian->world) as accommodating to what was not already determined (scripted).
Contrast this to the similar role of the Agony Aunt, which requires [(script<->librarian)<-external agent] to advise. Or the Flirt, which is [(script<->librarian)<-external agent] to seduce. Only the Analyst problematises itself, in some senses it is the discourse of problematisation, which is spoken mostly in other voices merged with the silence beneath them. Which is to say
[(script<->librarian)<-analyst]->analyst
is within its scope, a picture of the hall of mirrors generated in the thread.
The arrows are supposed to convey the direction of the relationships without specifying their nature. The brackets are supposed to convey a unity of the contained terms.
Echoing your concerns, I hope this makes some kind of sense. It's difficult to find words this far back in the library.
Yes, but the subjectivity of playing the game of what call you not, is removed from the analysis in game theory. The mounting ethos/sentiment of this thread, as unfortunate as this may sound, is that people are egotistical swines. Is that too much to handle?
I don't think it is at all, it is assumed from the beginning without question.
That guy I mentioned had some deep resentment to his mother, but he could never admit that. How can anyone, you are not allowed to have those feelings. She left his father and his father eventually passed away and I remember him telling me how he would go off into a shed and beat a boxing bag until it ripped apart. She still seems to control his behaviour and decisions and he does what he is told and adheres to them, including the people he should associate with and so he has never learnt to think for himself, to take responsibility for his own behaviour. It is like he is safe from that responsibility as long as he does what he is told, resorting to aggression for this deep and unknown resentment because of his impaired understanding of his own emotions. He was angry with me because I was his mother, an anger he could not give to her.
In his heart, he probably wanted to get close to me but did not understand the emotion, the affection that he probably felt. It was his and he has no clue of who he is. He felt like he wanted something, but in his mind - being impaired - he could not separate the him with what he is told to do and so could not understand how to change his life based on what he wanted. His partner has the approval of his mother and I have seen her feed him this strange emotional control by telling him that he is happy with her, that he thinks this and thinks that as though she is telling him what to think but in a manipulative way. He doesn't want to make her unhappy or garner her disapproval, so it meant that he could only be himself without their knowledge as though I was a part of his secret world, a world that shouldn't actually be a secret because it is real, him, the person he was not allowed to be. And, obviously, because I am a human being with thoughts and experiences, as part of healthy interpersonal relationships, it was something I don't want; I don't want to be a mistress, I don't want to be hidden and seen as a temporary object, but he took that as rejection considering his inability to understand his own responsiveness to his emotions. He doesn't understand me.
This falls back onto the fact that while he may not feel empathy and it is parallel to extreme narcissism, his pathological inability to connect with others vis-a-vis atypical reactions and responsiveness to his own feelings of distress is mostly because of some deficit in understanding his own emotions characterised by some dysfunction in interpersonal relations stemming from childhood. He was told what to think that he does not know how to do it on his own, and in that forms a kind of 'numbness' that as he gets older and his cognitive capacity gets more mature, a conflict arises that he just simply cannot understand.
So, because I understood him and what he was going through, I forgive him. I just could not tell him and guide him to this understanding because he was too aggressive and frightened me that I was left trying to protect myself rather than trying to help him.
Quoting fdrake
I am thoroughly surprised that so many people find this thread to be distasteful because, like your friend who could not accept - despite the clarity - that he committed a serious wrong, it is as though our self-defensive mechanisms initiate a subjective fear that forces us to turn away from our vulnerabilities.
As children we are taught that if we are honest after we have done a wrong, we will be punished, some consequence will occur and so we need to protect ourselves from this consequence. I find that to be immature and lacks reflective practice that stems perhaps even from a type of cowardice. The worst kind of person is one who openly accepts he is a coward to ensure continuity in his self-deceit rather than honourably face the punishment. That is why one of my favourite movies is Dead Man Walking.
Despite the fact that much of what you say has disturbed me, your ability to articulate your past as a bully has given me insight into my experiences with one and that is how change or improvement can be made, as well as forgiveness. You could have bullshitted your way through this by portraying yourself in a more morally acceptable light as is often the case socially, but you didn't and while it is brutal in its honesty, I am one of the very people out there that wants that and not the whole 'people play games'.
Well I'm glad going into the role of the bully was helpful. The brutality of my delivery was probably game like, a facsimile of approaching such things with integrity (both senses). I'm interested though, and want to admire my hair in the mirror, what did you find disturbing about it?
I think most of all I was sad because I have - and still do - hold onto the hope that he would feel remorse and find the courage to be honest, which I think you showed to be impossible. It breaks my heart that he and I will never be friends.
I saw him through you, a glimpse into what he was thinking and feeling (or the lack thereof) and that made me uncomfortable as it made sense of why I thought he was dangerous. You were very cold and calculated. Your descriptions of killing a bird, perceptions against weakness, and your friendships with the wrong kind of people brought to mind a book I read on the nature of violence where young men with high testosterone levels associating with deviant peers themselves become conduct disordered. It made me feel hopeless as though nothing was going to get through to you because of the solidity of your perceptions and your almost robotic identification with the external world that lacks any responsiveness to the cultural and creative, that you have no joy enough to see humour as pointless save for it being a tool to hurt others, that I would need to watch what I say so that you don't get offended or retaliate with aggression, everything that I was feeling with him several years ago, but that I never really understood.
Our understanding and cognition is evolutionary and thus our interpretations of our past and memories are continuously changing as we are. A person who loves - as I do - attends to her past by accessing and attempting to analyse the emotional responses that I have and why I am having them, which then leads me to a network of possible past experiences and physical causes that could have propelled this reaction and piece together a number of possible factors that leads to that aha! moment. I am being brutally honest too but my disposition is highly empathetic and loving. I see virtues of loving-kindness and respect to be paramount to the human condition. Someone like you is calculated and logical, seeing emotional responses as devoid of any rational substance and so analyses the past as though it were an irrelevant document to be filed away.
Thank fuck you are approaching this with a game-like stratagem :lol:
Thanks! You never actually offended me by the way. Not that it felt particularly safe to engage with you in that way, but I didn't feel particularly at risk either since I've had similar conversations before. I felt a little bit like a tour guide. But also like a mirror, I never felt like you were actually talking to me, only me in the abstract or a projection.
You still love him. Notice the period at the end of the sentence. He occupies your thoughts. Get him out of there. He doesn't love you. Commit to dedicating as much of your day thinking about and ruminating about and writing about him as he does you. Zero.
Dare I say that sometimes reviewing our past relationships and figuring out the reason they failed (which always takes two as the relationship starts with two and ends with two) educates and highlights the reasons why for us, so we are not doomed to repeat them.
I have witnessed one woman, marrying three men, all of which if you set up a profile on are all the same. The only difference is their names and faces.
The reality is that the antagonist in our story is better positioned for future happiness because he lacks the emotional baggage. Likely he has moved on and is well on his way to the 2 kids, picket fence, and happily ever after than what we have here.
I don't love him like that (that would be fucking weird) but that I am a loving person. When I say that I still have hope or wish we could be friends, it is because friendship is the enabler of empathy, it draws one away from narcissism and teaches self-reflective practice through our interactions. I believe in higher virtues, in humanity and I see in him that brutality and coldness you see in war. I want to believe in peace, that people can change and improve and so I am sad because I know now that "zero" thoughts about me exist on his part, that he likely does not feel remorse. Also, when one is repeatedly threatened - even if they are empty threats - it can have some pretty profound psychological aftermaths and I was very much confused for a long while that articulating it and making sense of it was necessary for me.
Possibly, but there is only one heart that knows that for sure and as the heart heals, so we grow.
[s]We grow to take a chance on another dude who presents himself as the stable, well mannered mature man who does not allow a fur ball to run his life and has a cool new antique clock.[/s]
Quoting Hanover
Reread that sentence. Do you really think a guy with his attitude is going to achieve happiness that lasts forever after?
Stop romanticising this. He's not war and famine that needs your loving kindness to set straight. He's just an immature guy who broke your heart (and that is a big deal in its own right), and you want to make it right somehow in your mind. There is a word that describes the empathy and altruism you express for his well being. It's called love. And no, it's not a universal love for all of mankind you feel like you're trying to say. You don't care about your neighbor's break up like this. He's the guy on your mind.
This post sounds mean, but it's not. You sooo need to just put him out of your mind. I suspect one day you'll reread these posts and see how down in it you were.
He's as capable as any of us are. It's all about finding the right person. My bigger point is that whatever his problems, they are his, and not his ex's to worry about. He'll be fine, or not, but let it go.
I get that, there is no romanticism because this thread is about the games we play, that lack of honesty or authenticity and a bully is cold and lacks empathy. He is calculative and unable to relate to people and I want to get inside his mind and find out what motivates him, what makes him act in such a brutal way, whether there is a chance to feel empathy for others. I would appreciate you stop with this 'this is what you think' because I know what I think and I think about him because he had a profound effect over me and not because I want to squish up next to him in bed. It is a universal love, but his presence overwhelmed me in particular because he also did a lot of wrong. I don't want to reiterate that explanation again.
I agree with you that they are his problems, no one else's but that goes for all of us. Frankly, when I dissect a relationship that has not ended the way in which I wanted it to, I focus on if I want to change the way I approach it next time. Sometimes I need to change, other times it is their work to do.
I can see how you would feel that way Timeline. Ironically, I see it more as a future self trying to advise a current self.
I missed this but it does deserve highlight. Anyone who is a victim of any kind of abuse is only a 'victim' until they realize they are being abused. It is at that very moment, that instant in time, that the person being abused, can choose to become a'survivor' and begin to work their way out of the toxic relationship, until successfully discontinuing all interaction with them. Or in that same instant, that person who was a 'victim' can chose to become an 'enabler' by letting the abuse continue in any form.
Do you agree with the poster I mentioned, or me?
I missed that. Which post is it?
No that's not normal. It's fucked up.
Can you link me back to the context it was said in?
Quoting Hanover
I agree with you that fearing your spouse is fucked up but I cannot say that it is "not" normal. I can say it is not "healthy" nor would I expect much positive to come from such a relationship but I cannot say that it is uncommon because it isn't. Especially if you examine the finer details and the inner workings of "Games People Play" I think you might find fearing your partner more common than you realize.
This is the quote:
I don't really want to talk about the person who wrote this. I just wanted your view of the idea expressed. If a woman is afraid of her husband, doesn't that usually mean there is either physical or psychological violence on the scene? Women aren't just typically afraid of men, are they?
I would think that that fear ought be addressed somewhere other than on this board in order to alleviate it, whatever the cause.
You'd probably get more insight by asking the person who said it, rather than inviting us to talk about it.
I am not sure Hans is entirely aware of just how offensive it is to tell me that I am in love with a man who treated me so badly and that speaking of him and trying to understand him equates to having those feelings for him. The rhetorical landscape that we find ourselves traversing may ultimately lead to some errors in communication or misunderstandings - particularly when I speak of love which I see as moral consciousness and not romantic or sexual love, to be morally aware and care for all people - and being told that I am romanticising my understanding of moral consciousness is clearly a misunderstanding of who I am. In addition, people often project their own experiences and feelings and forcefeed it to others claiming that this is what you think rather than actually attempting to understand what they are trying to say. I am aware that what he said to me was completely wrong, so I can only conclude that he is the one feeling that way.
Maybe he is having a hard time moving on?
Fair enough. You have provided enough information for me to express my opinion, just understand there are factors that are at play such as how old is the relationship, has there been previous out bursts of anger that have not been addressed and what is the overall health of the relationship. After 50 yrs of knowing someone you know the good and the bad and all of us have both, good and bad in us.
Quoting frank
Not necessarily. I for one am fearful of men because I have witnessed abuse of my Mom by a step father and even though I have done years (2.5 yrs to be precise) of one on one therapy to figure out what the fuck happened. It is because of my history that I am fearful, not the situation I am currently in. Although when things get heated and I keep pushing, I worry he will push back so I don't get physical.
For anyone else? A man raises his hand ONCE to you and you should be gone. For me I know the level of anger that can be reached within my partner before he will get physical. So logically, I then know where the line is that I would need to cross for him to respond physically and know not to cross it. Does that make me fearful of men? Does that make me fearful of my husband? And if I should be fearful, what if I am not? Am I being blind? Do I need an intervention because one day he might get physical? After being married almost 25 yrs, it would have been a waste and maybe a deal breaker so I am glad I am trusting of his knowing where my line is as well. However, being a woman, I made the line verbally clear as to what it would take for me to get physical, if I would at all or if I would more than likely calmly walk away from him and the drama he was seeking/struggling with.
Quoting frank
For the most part I would say deep inside, being brutally honest here, that yes many women are afraid of letting a man into her inner self.
My feeling is that once I meet someone, from that moment on, I have a relationship with them, shallow or deep, long lasting or just a "Hi" in passing, they are now part of my life experience. Not all become close to me, in fact I let very few people in life close to the real me, because those I allow close have an ability to toss a question into the heart of who I am and I am eager to entertain that thought and if it is someone I trust, they can challenge who I am fundamentally. Those close to me make me look inward, when I thought the answer was within another or my failure to not have what it took to make the relationship work.
My point being that my relationship with my exes are just as much a part of who I am as those who choose to be around me today. Even if I swear to never speak to someone again, that is a relationship, one that needs resolving but that would be for another day. Relationships exist once they are formed, we meet someone and our energies mix with theirs and if we are lucky there is synergy created between the two of us. That synergy needs nurturing and attention or it will fade away, not completely but just out of view. As soon as I pay attention, good or bad, to that synergy, it thrives. The best I can do is make peace with what I have invested in the relationship and hope it is reciprocated but only if it is freely given.
Quoting TimeLine
Like I said, relationships morph over time and circumstance but I cannot "move on" or act like it never existed because I gave my love and I will never regret that. I may regret whom I give it to and who I trust but that will not stop me from giving the next relationship a fair shake.
I could really only answer from my own experiences which are as sorted as the next gal's. Much more of a generalization than a specific answer.
So is he physically afraid of his wife as I was asked?
This is fantastic and I agree (some of this should go on FB :wink: ) but I see friendship as an activity that is invaluable to this parallel between us and the external world because we mirror special duties that we must possess in order to form mutual meaning and respect, some teleological behaviourism that characterises a harmony where we hold responsibility for sustaining our friendships that we communicate objectively. The ethical dimension vis-a-vis the patterns of purposive responses is the root or beginning of our understanding of moral value and thus where empathy is formed. Our capacity to feel love is rooted in the activity of friendship, a combination of personal choice and social implications where we consider others or they hold an important concern for us and yet there is no reciprocal necessity (although there are some tensions here as to the distinctions between the pleasure it can produce and virtue).
Sexual relationships (as distinct from friendships) on its own is only sex and economics, thus to maximise the pleasurable and meaningful experience of sexual intimacy one must form an honest friendship, as an absence of which would make it this bleak capitalistic transaction with false "games" or social requisites (hey, i'll buy you chocolate on Valentines day, that must mean I love you :roll: ) in order to play 'house' or pretend that there is some meaning other than it being sex and economics. Friendship between two lovers makes the relationship real, it generates the conditions that produces a consciousness of ourselves and our place in the world, or what meaning and goodness is through the interpersonal experience.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
I once tried to joke with that guy and he glared at me with this vicious look like I was the stupidest thing he had ever seen. A friend does not do that, you laugh even if the joke is stupid or you muck around with them and tell them they are silly because there is a lovingkindness and gentleness in this interaction, an absence of that coldness and calculated responses.
This is why I said that I wish I could have been friends with that guy because what that would mean is that he would have had that 'switch' turn on, that he would not have been so cruel and callous but rather he would have stopped and become conscious of me and how his behaviour is hurting me. The love in friendship is what makes one understand and care without any ulterior motives other than wanting them to be happy. He did not have any empathy and friendship enables empathy or moral consciousness, that 'switch' that makes one understand others and ourselves, the importance of our behaviour and our responses.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
I am not afraid of men, I am afraid of some men, the type of men we have been communicating on this thread about who lack empathy. You cannot reason with them. This is purely instinctual, that such men have the capacity to hurt and we are naturally afraid of what can hurt us. If such threats occur in intimacy, it is unequivocally fucked up, no woman should ever feel fear of her partner, it is a bond, a connection and not a Master/Slave relationship.
Your response is making me examine my own time line of how things came about from my being single to being 'in love' with someone and which came first, the horse or the carriage. I think many times it is easy to fall in love with the idea of being 'in love' but the newness wears off, the work begins and one of us would bail. It seems like how that work/attention (on the growth of the synergy) is silently delineated between the two people but never verbally expressed that causes a lot of hair line cracks, that over time shatter the relationship. If I never express to him how I feel, how can I hold him accountable for not fulfilling my expectations about the chores or my desires in the sexual realm? I shouldn't have held him accountable but I did even though I never verbally expressed my wants to him.
From this I learned that I am the only one I can set expectations for and truly be disappointed in for not reaching. I try REALLY hard not to set up expectations for anyone else and I am rarely disappointed and often gently surprised with others actions. If I am disappointed by someone's behavior, I look back over where it was that I formed and placed an expectation on who they are, how I think they should behave and analyze why I allowed that expectation to creep in and how to keep it from happening again. I am hardly good at it but at least I keep the control to do something about it, in the only place where I can do something about it, in my wheelhouse, not theirs.
Quoting TimeLine
In a way, I wish you could have been friends with that guy too but honestly, I don't know that friendship alone would have made the difference. I would like to think that I am friends with my husband but even we know how to be cruel to one another and when times get bad, those bad habits can come out. It doesn't always feel wrong and maybe that is where I need to do some work, maybe I should feel bad for having feelings or anger that is unwarranted but regardless I can acknowledge that they exist.
I don't wait anymore if I feel something about someone, good or bad, I am pretty quick to express it directly to them. It frees me up to move onto the next feeling that is heading towards me and how I will express that one. I admit I can be a long day when it comes to interacting with me and my stream of consciousness. I am not everyone's cup of tea but I like who I am and that is what truly matters. I need not tell you that you need to love yourself completely before you can love another but since I already typed it, I'll leave it.
This is an idiosyncratic idealistic view of romantic relationships that has merit but is not universal. I will acknowledge having had friendships with those I have been romantic with, but those friendships were not like non-romantic ones. Romantic relationships are complicated by deeper dependence and there is a pragmatic conditionality to them, which requires fidelity and specific contributions to continue forward. There are also firmer commitments in romantic relationships where the notion of breaking up exists in a far more real capacity than exists in non-romantic relationships, where there are less distinct beginnings and endings.
The exchange of Valentine's Day gifts is not a good example of a meaningful condition for the relationship to continue forward, and I would doubt many real relationships end for failure to remember the day. A real example would be an expectation that your partner share dinner with you on occasion, from time to time contribute to the household chores, to help care for the children, to make efforts to earn money, to not have romantic relationships with others, and so on. These contributions are both pragmatic and evidence of love and friendship because it would make sense that if one didn't help the other, the other might interpret that as uncaring. And that is precisely why a partner might be upset at not getting Valentine's Day chocolate, not because they were unable to buy as much chocolate as they wanted for themselves, but because they felt that a caring partner would remember them on a date set aside for remembering them. It is the thought that counts after all.
But the point is that all this required interaction and expectation goes far beyond what you would expect to see in a very close friendship between roommates, and it's entirely possible that a very close friendship between roommates would be a closer friendship than exists between a married couple and yet the marriage would be entirely satisfying to both.Quoting TimeLine
I agree that fear is a negative emotion that shouldn't exist in a relationship, but egalitarianism need not exist in a relationship for it to be in all ways successful as long as that is consistent with the expectations of those involved. I know you didn't suggest otherwise, but there are all sorts of consensual relationships out there that appear fucked up beyond repair from my perspective, but somehow they seem to work.
I decided I wouldn't participate in this thread anymore but I decided to come back. I had been following and enjoying all your shenanigans. But, in the words of that great American philosopher, P.T.S Mann, "That's all I can stands, I can't stands no more.” So, yes, I am the mysterious "Somebody," "the Poster." Looking back on what I said, I think I could have been clearer. I'll try again:
It is my observation that relations between men and women are strongly affected by fear. I think I gave the impression I was only talking about people in intimate relationships. That's not what I meant. I think relations between men and women in general may be affected. I meant to use my relationship with my wife as an extreme example. Even women in long-term, intimate, non-violent relationships may be physically afraid of their partners. I was not clear enough in my language. I also went on to note that men may also be afraid of their partner's scorn, but I didn't expand on that.
Note - I didn't say the situation was "normal" or "common." I said my situation was not unique. On the other hand, I do think it is common.
[Text deleted by poster]
Frank: I realise that you decided to avoid mentioning T because you wanted to avoid a shit-storm. Nevertheless it makes sense that T responded strongly with an insult, considering that what you wrote was easily interpretable as a thinly veiled insult to him, his wife and their marriage.
T Clark: I know that you were very insulted by Frank and felt the need to defend yourself/wife/relationship. A better approach than responding with insults might've been explaining why the interpretation was wrong.
It'd be a shame if the thread devolved into shit-posts. I'm surprised it hasn't already to be honest, considering how personal most of the details are. Chin up, dealing with the otherness in yourself hard.
As I said in my PM, I will not let this discussion devolve. At least not based on any further contribution from me. I appreciate your measured response.
Fair.
This is a philosophy forum after all. Maybe we should refocus our efforts there. I think @fdrake is partially right, but I really don't need to hear how you're really a good guy and good husband. I trust that's true and have moved on.
Let's talk about Kant or something we really don't anything about now.
I don't feel any need to say more along the lines of what I wrote in my post. In the beginning, I had hoped that it would be a philosophical discussion of the relationships between women and men. I think something like that could legitimately end up including a lot of personal information. I also think it could be an interesting discussion from a philosophical perspective. You're right, it took a sharp turn toward the psychological, which is why I stopped participating until now.
I stand by my judgment that what you said to TL was deeply disrespectful.
I think I have answered you're question with my own words, so there is no need to generalize what I said from a personal perspective. If it is enlightening to you, than I am glad I shared my view, gained from my own personal experiences.
However, let me be crystal clear, I had no idea who made the quote you asked me to address and I don't regret being brutally honest with you. I do however feel as though I have been slighted by myself for not reading back to who said it before I answered. I would never want to hurt someone for being honest and this is a place that I am just now reconsidering a "safe place" to share and for that reason I offer my apologies to @T Clark for not researching the quote.
I wouldn't have changed my response but I would have, WOULD HAVE addressed my honesty with him in a Private Message. Why? Because I care very deeply about how vulnerable we have to allow ourselves to be, in order for us to grow as lovingly as we can, when we are examining/extracting something that doesn't come from the most beautiful place in who we are as humans.
I trust that we are all adults here and can continue on this thread, respecting each other for who we are and what we have attempted to rise above within ourselves. Sharing, unfiltered, is the only way to live. Otherwise? We are wasting time playing games with one another.
A man says: "I'm just not the person for this. I'm just a little puny when it comes to this sort of thing." He's speaking the truth, but he's defying patriarchal norms. Some people in the bus think less of him for it.
A woman says: "((( exactly what the man said )))"
She's speaking the truth, but she conforms to patriarchal norms. Nobody really thinks any less of her.
This is how norms influence events. The man has an extra push to overcome his fears and get on with it. Benefiting through his life from this kind of push, he gets used to stepping up. In fact, when the bus driver leaves, the guy thinks, "I'm going to have to drive the bus. Great."
So what this is really about is Peterson. I had been thinking it was all naturalistic fallacy crap, but the post of two people in this thread have had me rethinking it. It's not about nature, although those less likely to think things through might think that. It's about patriarchy. I think at one point we thought it was a social construction and we were so smart we could just think our way out of it and create a different world. Maybe we hadn't noticed that if we think of it as a life-form, patriarchy is at least 5000 years old. Do I see signs in my world that it's dying. I've got to be honest: no, I don't.
So to Peterson I go to pay closer attention.
And T-Clark, I'm more than happy for you to be insulted by what I said. It was totally in earnest and I really wanted Tiff's response to it. I wasn't trying to insult your wife.
I hope I was clear in my post whom I consider responsible for the episode. I know how careful you are of others. And as I said, I'm grateful for your response.
At the moment I am horrified with myself but I am honest, to a fault at times, but not this time. I am glad you can feel the words and the spirit in which they were spoken for they speak for themselves. I do trust you and those here attending this thread or I wouldn't share. Nothing in my opinion of you or anyone else here has changed except for a deeper understanding of us all. :heart:
I am comfortable with my relationship with my wife and my marriage. If I say I wasn't insulted, perhaps you will think I'm rationalizing, but I've stood up for others on the forum when I thought they were being treated with disrespect. It would be foolish and out of character for me not to stand up for myself.
And so what is the pragmatic solution? Do you rise up and give the woman the chance to drive the bus in order to create a better future for better prepared women, or do you offer it to the man who already has been groomed for this moment and is for entirely unfair reasons better prepared for the dangerous task at hand and will provide a greater likelihood of success?
You agreed with T-Clark, that women are sort of generally fearful of men. There are some who would say you're supporting an essentially sexist view of women. I don't think you mean it that way, though. You're just saying that in your experience, women in general do harbor fear of men.
That's an opinion I needed to hear. As for the sordid politics of this forum, I'm not interested in that.
Well Edgar is an alcoholic. He's going to crash the bus into a ditch in the middle of Nowhere, whereas Melissa actually has amazing eye-hand coordination, nerves of steel, and could fly an F-15 if she wanted to. Edgar gets up because he thinks he's supposed to. Melissa sits there for the same reason.
I don't know that there is a solution. I've just been thinking lately about how it's not in any particular person's hands. There are large social tectonics and work.
What's your answer?
I honestly appreciate you asking my opinion. I am sorry that I have been unable to convey it to you in the personal manner in which I am expressing it for you insist on making it into an untrue generalization.
[quote=C.S. Lewis]“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”[/quote]
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Shall we say then, that a relationship without fear is a relationship without investment or commitment - a complacent relationship?
Yeah, but this attacks the hypothetical, which is that the unfair advantages afforded certain people provide them long term benefits of success. The way you've interpreted it, the social limitations are just artificial protections for power. It would seem reasonable to believe that those with wealth and influence would be afforded real advantages for success (like better schooling, better training, etc.), so I would in fact rather have a surgeon from the US than from Timbuktu. Maybe the US surgeon is a spoiled undeserving bastard, but he's still a better surgeon. But to use the US surgeon perpetuates a prejudice against Timbuktu surgeons, who, through no fault of their own are worse surgeons.
And as you didn't ask, I am also afraid of her. It's part of the electricity of life; we can hurt each other, and we sometimes do. I call it vulnerability.
Social norms cultivate talents and strength in one population and spray herbicide on another. Our efforts to create more fairness may have limited success and be short term, not because we don't see the problem, or that we don't care, but that we don't have ultimate control of the social forms we inhabit. That's what I was trying to say. Do you agree with that?
I agree that the unfairness is all manmade and is truly unfair. I'm not trying to suggest the man ought to drive the bus because men have that God given right. I'm just saying that if the man through no credit of his own is a better driver, I'd rather him drive. The pragmatic question is how painful we will allow the transitional period to be where we afford less qualified people to become more qualified. I think the society that invests now will be in a better position later when all its members are then as fully capable as the rest, but for those living in the here and now, it could be a painful process.
Does this extend to all relationships?
But how is it for you?
Phobos is necessary company in one's morality.
That's not the kind of thing I'm talking about, the kind that damages relationships can kill love. Not some sort of sacred fear.
There is no recipe to follow. We're just making it up as we go. I think that devotion to the basic principle is pretty strong, but we would at some point need to accept that the world is never going to be perfect. I have no idea how that would look, though.
You mentioned the other factor: wealth.
I'm all done for now. Maybe I'll start up another discussion at a later date..
Oh my!
You realize, of course, this means constipated and ritualized homoerotic war!
Perhaps it is a uniquely male theme; we measure ourselves against one another to appropriately divide reproductive access to the females...
This might seem counter-intuitive, but this selection isn't entirely a one way street in humans, which is why human males have - and are - the biggest dicks of any primate species.
Men are fighty, women are picky, and I'm risen here to combat your peculiar sexual conservatism that would mock these ancient and sacred games we play...
"Did you hear that!?", Vagabond ejaculated. "Irony's afoot; I sense it all around us...".
*grabs popcorn*
Quoting T Clark
Well this is what I'm talking about. You ask an intimate question, seem to want an honest relationship, and when you get a response, walk out. It's a very small thing here, of no importance. But let's not dismiss it as mere spirituality.
I am suggesting that intimacy demands honesty, and honesty involves vulnerability. There might be a love that is invulnerable, that we could call spiritual, but whenever you are offered it, it is almost invariably not that, but bullshit. Normally, I offer you a little piece of my heart, trusting you that far, and fearing that you are not trust-worthy. And as you have proved the latter, I retreat, as you see, into abstraction.
It's not the fear that kills love, it's the running away.
Women are not picky. We are confused, mostly wondering why all of a sudden that guy at the gym is flexing his chest muscles as he stands in front of us to try and get our attention, doing some random groin stretch where he thrusts his crotch about before getting up and walking away in slow motion, his arms protracted out like he is carrying two sheep in between them.
Call me peculiar, but I like a guy who makes me laugh. As in with them, and not at them.
I was responding to what Tiff wrote which included a comment about a violent intimate relationship that ultimately resulted in a great deal of difficulty for her. I think you are confusing the profound psychological and emotional fear one has when threatened with violence with some type of fear you have disappointing or saying something that may offend an authoritative figure, the interpersonal checks and balances that makes us conscious of our behaviour.
I believe in equality through and through and the idea of someone controlling me makes me swell up, but despite this men do have that authoritative presence. I want to impress him, I want him to like me, so I watch how I behave. When I say that I am not afraid of most men, it is because most men do not have that authoritative presence over me (a kind of respectful indifference) and my eyes light up into flames of rage when a man attempts to impose that authority over me. O hellll no. However, if such a man attempted this and had no empathy, that the more I responded the worse he became, a man without a conscience and no consciousness of his behaviour, his aggression and ego becomes dangerous and even life-threatening. That is when I stop and feel fear.
You are supposed to feel safe at home, your partner is supposed to protect you and admire you so this little jab at me is really your silly little ego, and being my virtual uncle I am sure you know that I know you are an emotional little mushy thing if ever there was one.
Valentine's Day has zero value other than economically. It is just an archaic exchange of objects that is largely borne from a self-interested obligation and not because there is any authenticity in the exchange. Society tells you 'this is how you show your love' and people oblige thinking that buying a box of chocolates proves some romantic unity. How is this love between you both unique and real if you are doing what everyone else is doing? Valentines Day reeks of globalisation. It is economics.
I would rather a guy buy me breakfast and tell me he is only doing it because he knows I like porridge and wants to shag me later. This is what friends would do. Whereas without friendship, there would be this awkward tension as though if the guy forgot Valentine's Day then that shows he does not love her and he has to apologise and make it up to her or whatever the fuck people do in these strange rituals, because their relationship is just sex and economics and such activities keep them facing the fact that there is no genuine love between them.
There are real ways of loving someone and expressing that love and Valentine's Day is not one of them.
Quoting Hanover
I understand that but these special conditions that make this love and bond authentic has nothing to do with society or other people. It is distinct and personal. The contributions that are required is a mutual understanding, that deeper love and inner need to have that person near them as well as trust. Love is not an enlarged egotism where one loves only because they are loved, neither is it forming attachments and feeling dependent because of a deeper loneliness and fear of being alone.
Just like we meet person after person in our day to day activity until we suddenly meet that one person who we 'click' with and friendship, laughter, sharing all seems natural, that is what we should be seeking. It should be effortless and known.
“When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.”
:up:
Note to self...
Quoting TimeLine
I mean, whatevs. Valentines Day is just Valentines day and you can celebrate it with an obligatory box of chocolates or not. If it pisses you off for some great big serious reason, then fine, the guy can pour some gruel all over you and bang away. Pouring the gruel on you was my idea. Quoting TimeLine
Says you. Maybe I've had some lovely Valentine's Days that I didn't overthink and turn into a day of Marxist revolution. Quoting TimeLine
This is very romantic and lovely actually (and I'm not being sarcastic), but it is very idealistic and may not really reflect the goings on in a long term relationship or marriage. A lot of love is what happens among spouses, close friends, and family members where there's a lot of day to day stuff where all these lofty ideals really aren't so much considered, and it's perfectly fine to admit to yourself that your attachment to someone isn't just loving affection. Your views are like a Disney movie. If that was mean, I take it back. Quoting TimeLine
I agree, totes, but I'd change "talk" into "bang."
This is a little perplexing. Are you saying you don't like it that I'm not hanging around now that you've responded? Well, it's ironic that we are finally talking about the things I wanted to talk about all along. You know "Women, Men, What's up with that?" Problem is, this thread feels corrupted to me. That has nothing to do with you. I'm really ambivalent about continuing.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't disagree with any of this, but it's not exactly what I'm talking about. Although I used an intimate relationship as an example, the point I was trying to get at is more general - Relations of all sorts between men and women are complicated, undermined by fear on both sides. Everybody? Of course not. How many? I don't really know, but I think it's probably a large percentage. A majority maybe. I brought this forward as a hypothesis based on my own experience hoping for a reality check.
I've never been talking about "profound psychological and emotional fear." I'm not talking about abused women. I'm talking about more or less regular, more or less normal men and women in their everyday lives. I'm talking about feelings that affect more or less regular, more or less normal human relationships. That's what I always wanted this thread to be - As I said previously - "Men, Women, What's up with that?"
So, no, there is no confusion on my part.
Quoting TimeLine
As we say in the US, "Well, duh." You're talking normative, I'm talking the way (I think) things are. See, I said "normative." A year ago I would have been embarrassed to use that kind of word. Now, I only should be embarrassed.
He finks your hot.
I have a woman friend who feels the same way you do. If her husband bought her flowers on Valentines Day, she would not respond favorably. I, personally, don't care about Valentines Day at all, but I know my wife does and really loves flowers. Why would I not spend half and hour and a little money to make her happy? Why is this some kind of big principle for you. Pick your battles somewhere else.
Why is it perplexing? You ask a fairly personal intimate and specific question, and then are bored with the answer. Let's talk honestly - well actually let's not bother. That's not irony, it's a feeble manipulation.
Quoting T Clark As others have said, it is exposing, and corruption is exposed along with other stuff.
________________________________________________________________________________________
I am quite surprised that people want to be safe in relationships - like having a pet with benefits. Or a discussion forum where we talk about the weather. For better or for worse, life on the line, climbing the mountains, is a relationship, and there is only safety is the grave. Which ones not mean I am not cautious about who I throw caution to the wind with.
I still don't get it. I just went back and checked 1) I talked about fear between men and women 2) You responded saying that intimacy makes us vulnerable and that can be frightening. (I do agree with that) 3) I respond that isn't the point I was trying to make. I'm not talking about fear in intimate relationships. I'm talking about a generalized fear that exists between men and women that poisons their attitudes towards each other in a broad range of situations.
I don't find what we're discussing now particularly intimate, painful, or frightening. I think that's why I'm having trouble figuring out why you are upset.
Snap! Crack! Zing!
'I like small titties... (Big'uns too...).
But it depends on how she's sellin em'.
In all living memory, summary mammary mummery is sexual gunnery; summarily skull-duggery; flim-flammery for jiggery-pokery :D
Quoting TimeLine
Women are individuals, and some of them are picky as hell! (same goes for men while we're at it)
But there's also valid evolutionary cause that may be responsible for an evident trend of 'pickiness' among females, on average, when compared to males.
Reproductively, evolutionary, pregnancy necessitates massive investment on the part of the female whereas in some situations the only cost to the male is the energy spent on a single orgasm. Pregnancy is a very big deal for women, and hence there's a selective force which chooses "pickiness" because the mothers with the foresight to choose the right partner and at the right have tended to be more successful. The same logic also applies to men, but there is an additional option which is not open to women: men can go around and impregnate many women without directly contributing to the rearing and therein achieve reproductive success through sheer strength of numbers.
Sexual dimorphism in humans is actually quite varied, but there are definitive differences between men and women that result from our biological history. We can find examples of women who are more masculine than the average man, and vice versa, but on average there are measurable differences of many kinds. Without getting straight into "intelligence" it's quite easy to see why when it comes to reproduction women have incentive to be much more selective than men.
I can accept that you aren't picky, TimeLine, (though experience seems to contradict this :)) but it's an undeniable fact that men, on average, will basically take any opportunity for sexual gratification while women employ a much more rigorous checklist.
Quoting TimeLine We're all confused; life is complicated, but I would even say that on average men are more confused than females. Women have a more rigidly defined biological role than men, or at least, the reproductive function women perform is a limiting factor for success of the species as a whole. Evolutionarily speaking, this has caused women to converge toward forms more ideal for child birth and rearing, while men have been diverged in many other directions (fighting other males, doing physical labor, hunting, etc...). To speak metaphorically, evolution knows that women need hips of a certain ratio and a reduced penchant for violence if they are to be good child rearers, but it doesn't always know what the best strategy for males is, and so, it rolls more dice with the male form, sometimes producing 'pair-bonding' homologous mates who can both raise children well, or, heterologous 'sexually dimorphic' mates where the male is suited to an environmental niche of some kind (or many) and the female more closely to the reproductive niche.
A real world result of this is that the bell curve distributions of traits for women are generally tighter grouped around the human average, whereas men exist in greater populations at both extremes of the curve. This is why there are more genius males than there are genius females, and also why there are more mentally incompetent males than there are mentally incompetent females; sometimes communities need geniuses and sometimes they need ditch-diggers, but they always need functioning wombs and mothers; fatherhood is secondary beyond sperm donation.
Men are more confused because we're more varied in general (unless 'confusion' is a paradoxically ideal for motherhood). We're less picky on average, but more universal plugs are attracted to more sockets which makes us thralls to our sexuality more easily than women.
Tabula rasa was misguided; environment isn't everything. Your biology does play significant role in determining who you are, who you will become, what makes you happy, what kind of games you like to play, but there's some good news: you aren't defined by the average genetic makeup of your gender or ethnicity because you have your own individual genetic makeup. Women can be successful geniuses and unsuccessful criminals too! But if we ignore the biological reality of the way many people just are - the strutting peacock, the shrinking violet, the red-assed baboon - then we might have a hard time trying to understand why they are unhappy or unfulfilled.
Diversity and divergence is a natural evolution-endowed feature of humans, and while many of us do not conform to the emotional and cognitive average of our species (we look on in our clean white lab-coats, amused, bemused, fascinated and disgusted) the conclusion that the bulk of what appear to be absurd and sometimes homoerotic rituals shared between developmentally constipated monkeys are in fact among the highest expressions of their nature. To interrupt these rituals is sacrilegious, as it is into and for these rituals which people inexplicably pour and sacrifice the contents of their finite life and existence, usually in some real or fictitious pursuit of happiness.
I do feel I am roundly misunderstood by many, and I accept my share of the blame, so by way of apology to you, please accept my continuation of what appears to be comic-tragic-erotica. It's experimental of course (isn't everything?) but hopefully it can offer you relief of some kind!
Quoting TimeLine
[i]whispered TimeLine, in her familiar hushed, mousey tone. Suddenly, he turned.
"If you want to laugh just have a look at those abs of yours." he said, with a condescending smile.
"What is going on?" she thought. "What the hell does this gu-"
"If you want me to get you into it..." he said while approaching her and flexing his calves like some super-star bus-driver, "I can show you some things.".
" Uh....". The gap between them narrowed; a bed's length; an arm's length; ten inches. He stopped, and through the musk of confusion that then engulfed her the only other discernible scent was the odor of absolute confidence, peppered with inexplicably accentuated bulges and impossibly coiffed garnishes. "Wha...".
A haze descended.
At a glance, the fully dilated and blank expression on her friends face alerted and informed that back part of her mind that was still aware of what was happening, but the well-tapped mix of conflicting emotions which had usually kept her sharp in these situations was being washed away by this new flood of feeling.
"Well?" he said, offering his hand.
Her face was smiling and her hand reaching for his before she could gather the courage to reply "Alright.". The instant their hands touched, a she felt another wave of sensation rush through her body; her hair stood up; goosebumps. Her eyes and smile widened... Her chest, stomach and thighs tightened... She farted..."[/i]
Damn you were doing so well, I almost suggested you pen personalized soft porn and will make a mint but then reality crashed thru the fantasy. Surely you could edit that out for the printed rendition. :up:
Indeed! But in the genre of erotic tragic comedy, the fantasy-crashing contrast reality provides is like a happy-sad-sobering bucket of water in the face. We're jolted awake from a sweet dream and left with the hilarious and bitter pill of our own human peculiarities and the taboo mystery of what might have been. A spoon-full of sexy sugar helps the ironic absurdism go down!
P.S. Do you really think it's well written? I've never been roused to write anything like this before, but its obvious satiric element aside, I do hope it struck a pleasing note. I'm anxious to hear back from my muse :D
I remember a friend who was punishing her partner for not getting a Valentine gift and he spent over a week grovelling and trying to make it up to her and the entire thing just made me nauseous. It is an unwritten game they are playing with each other to prolong ignoring whatever is wrong with their relationship; there is no actual communication and they rely on these designed activities to declare something they are unable to do within the intimacy of their mutual understanding (or lack thereof).
The point about Valentines day is a declaration of mutual affection and this declaration should be intimate since love is a decision that we make as one individual to another. Do something randomly, not on a specific day with specific things. What the heck has it to do with anyone else? A wedding is different and I understand that since it occurs only once you want to share that celebration but in an intimate backyard setting with some close friends and family and not by spending $50,000 and inviting people you don't really know.
People are disingenuous and they need these inauthentic practices to maintain the game.
I know, which is why you need to reconsider how you articulate your position as the ambiguity led to misunderstanding as though you were some monster. You are about as monstrous as my pair of fluffy hedgehog slippers. The fear you are speaking of is that discomfort one feels when they need to check what they say, maybe stay silent or feel otherwise unable to be themselves and that is just personality differences, like how an extrovert has a forceful presence that could make some people feel uncomfortable, or maybe even just an indifference like I can't be stuffed wasting my energy on this person. The fear that one feels when they are threatened or coerced is completely different.
Quoting T Clark
I like flowers, I love flowers. But why buy it on Valentine's day or where there is some reciprocal reward for this gift exchange? Why not give me flowers some random day when you simply just want to see me happy, or a way of telling me that and not because of any underlying motive where you benefit.
Quoting unenlightened
:heart:
I wish you were younger, and maybe not married.
What exactly did you expect to get from me? The post that I wrote against you was about this very thing where you and Agu where writing page after page of nonsense. Sorry to break your heart, but dude. :mask:
It doesn't surprise me you and @unenlightened are engaged. You clearly have been getting together privately to discuss ways of driving me crazy by completely ignoring what I'm saying.
Quoting TimeLine
I would reconsider except I am, as everyone acknowledges, very articulant...articulous....Me talk good.
Quoting TimeLine
Why the fuck not buy them on Valentines Day? It makes my wife feel good.
Next year I'll just get her a card. It will say "I would tell you I love you, but I realize you know I only rely on these designed activities to declare something I am unable to do within the intimacy of our mutual understanding (or lack thereof). Also - no flowers this year."
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.
Alas, my love, that you should own
A heart of wanton vanity,
So must I meditate alone
Upon your insincerity.
If you intend thus to disdain,
It does the more enrapture me,
And even so, I still remain
A lover in captivity.
Thou couldst desire no earthly thing,
But still thou hadst it readily.
Thy music still to play and sing;
And yet thou wouldst not love me.
I bought thee kerchiefs for thy head,
That were wrought fine and gallantly;
I kept thee at both board and bed,
Which cost my purse well-favoredly.
They set thee up, they took thee down,
They served thee with humility;
Thy foot might not once touch the ground,
And yet thou wouldst not love me.[/i]
Quoting TimeLine
Page after page? Guilty.. But nonsense? Nonsense?! Nonsense!...
Post-length is the mark of true passion; I appeal to it openly! I do in fact put effort into the things I write. If you are truly interested in serious discussion, there are very serious elements in my post(s). I try to make them Barnum style: something for everyone. You may find many of the games I play tedious or repugnant, but I don't, just as I may find the games you play ironic and challenged, while you find them honest and straightforward. Do you not want to play honestly and openly?
In fact I think I have been far more honest and straight-forward than you give me credit, and I've done nothing but reciprocate your advances. Yes: I'm crass; I beat around the glorious bush; I'm necromancing the "tome-format"; I use semicolons with reckless abandon, but I'm honest.
What I hoped to show you is that you think you're refusing to play, but it's inevitable in any engagement. Casually stepping on others in anecdotes to beget further interaction is the kind of game each of us intuitively plays without even realizing it. When it comes to sex (the content of my and Aug's intellectually bankrupt massive essays) the games are obvious and unavoidable. Mocking the peacock is easy but it takes balls to strut, and mockery is an essential part of the game. It can even conceal flattery (ex: "he thrusts his crotch about before getting up and walking away in slow motion, his arms protracted out like he is carrying two sheep in between them.").
We don't like petty superficial games, we share that, but there's no avoiding emotional games of some kind. Try to avoid them all and you'll only wind up losing. Instead, imbue them with meaning and purpose; make them fun. Games are supposed to be fun after-all. And so to avoid the risk of making this particular game even more un-enjoyable for you, I'll end it here.
[i]Ah, TimeLine, now farewell, adieu,
To God I pray to prosper thee,
For I am still thy lover true,
Come once again and love me.[/i]
Yeah, awkward moment.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You are not a peacock. If you were a peacock, I would be mesmerised, your feathers would attract me to a dizzying point of hypnosis and I would be compelled to give you all that you desire without even knowing why. Right now, all that I desire is to eat a hazelnut sundae in a massive bowl with chocolate sauce and wafer and crushed whatever sweet thing I can find in the cupboard before crying myself to sleep.
You're more like a shaved bird sitting awkwardly in the corner chirping.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Ok, bye.
Alas, in my dotage I have confused you with the perfidious @frank, and you have become innocently swept up in my hostile environment. My humblest apologies, and please ignore my last few comments to you which I unreservedly withdraw. No wonder you have been perplexed!
But please, I am not responsible for @Timeline's coquettish improprieties, and our contacts, such as they are, have at all times been both public and well chaperoned. Young ladies are sometimes prone to flights of fancy, which should not be taken seriously, or repeated as if they are factual.
As Jane Austen once said, 'The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.
I see it sort of as @unenlightened here. You did, intentionally or not, make a provocative statement, namely that your wife feared you. We, not knowing a whole lot about you and absolutely nothing about your wife, asked the sort of expected questions, like "why?" Could it be she's timid or that you're overly aggressive or are you just making a generalized comment that you've noticed in all relationships where there's a fear factor. There were even posters who tried to read your post very generously, by suggesting that maybe what you were saying was that everyone feared their partner at some level and did things to be sure that fear wasn't aroused. You clarified that you didn't mean that, leaving us still to wonder what you're specifically referencing.
And so this conversation is left so vague that all we can do is offer platitudes like: No one should live in fear, open communication is the key resolving conflict, everyone has the right to certain boundaries, and on and on and on.
I'm not trying to goad you to reveal the personal details of your life and would be perfectly satisfied if you made up some details and presented this as a hypothetical, but I truly don't know what sort of fear you're talking about that exists between man and woman that you've noticed that you believe violates stated norms but exists pervasively nonetheless.
I disagree. What you're telling us are your expectations in a relationship and the sort of behavior you find appealing and that which you find revolting, but just because that's how you feel doesn't mean the rest of the world does or even that it ought to. There are actually couples who find Valentine's Day a wonderful day filled with meaningful gestures of caring and who are not otherwise suffering from communication breakdowns. You might find those folks morons (testing, 1,2, 3, moron, moron, moron), but morons might legitimately be expressing their love in a very deep and meaningful way when they give one another flowers and chocolates on Valentine's Day.
Quoting TimeLine
Alright, let me write this down... Timeline doesn't like the societally imposed Valentine's Day game, but she likes the random day of the week game. If you wish to play the game with her, buy her flowers not on Valentine's Day, but do it for a different time, like right after she has had a bad day, the day she got a promotion, or just a Wednesday. Let me listen to her and figure out the rules to her game and not the rules dictated by the Hallmark Card company.
My point is that it's all a game. You haven't transcended the game playing just because you insist upon writing your own rules. As long as the intent was to make the other happy, how is that a bad game?
What you're missing is that the guy who buys you the Valentine's Day gift is just as much trying to make you happy as the guy who buys them on a random day. It's just that second guy has figured out your rules better.
How universal do you want to get? If every interaction is a game, then 'game' is just another word for 'interaction'. If one can never unmask, then a mask is just another word for a face.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
Alright, some serious literary criticism:
Your story was (1) lame, (2) creepy, and (3) not absurd. It was (1) lame because the first part attempted to sincerely paint a romantic and sexually tense moment, yet it didn't. It was (2) creepy because it felt like you were truly trying to woo someone with your comments but they were (1) lame. The punch line (the fart) was (3) not absurd, but simply a faux pas that could actually happen.
Don't take this the wrong way. I'm trying to be helpful.
In terms of (1), that's the hardest thing to correct because that will require actual literary skills in conveying a truly romantic moment. If you wish to draw from your past, like actually tell us about a precious moment with you and someone else, to where we really believe you're conveying a important event in your life, you're well on your way to a pretty good punch line when you fuck everything up with an absurdity.
In terms of (2), leave that part out. It truly gave me lame chills down my spine.
In terms of (3), absurd isn't a fart, it's a penguin flying into someone's vagina and pecking through their cervix to extract their 12 year old son who's annoyed because you disrupted his poetry reading.
Lemme know if you need more help.
I'm satisfied as saying that if it's sincere, then it's not a game, but that fails under @TimeLine's description because she attempts to impose an objective standard on what is and isn't a game, with Valentine's Day being a game but flowers when it feels right not being a game.
Unless TL is willing to admit that it is unfathomable for her to believe someone could actually get something sincere from a Valentine's Day card, and that for some reason such gestures are per se insincere, we're left with games being whatever violates TL's idiosyncrasies.
But to you, do you think buying a Valentine's Day card is a game if both find it a meaningful gesture that truly expresses love?
Reminded me. From @TheMadFool
No problem. It's a relief. I'm used to having people pissed at me, but I can usually figure out why.
Young? Lady? I thought you knew. TimeLine is really a 53 year old, male didgeri farmer living 300 kilometers (2.5 miles) east of Perth in the part of Australia known as "The Shit Box." It got that name from the fact that it's a box full of shit. Digeri doo. Little known fact - If you visit there and ask where you can take a crap, they'll tell you "Out back." That's where that name came from.
Yes, almost always it is a game. I agree with your criterion of sincerity; if I buy a card to please, it is a manipulation, and therefore a game. Hallmark does not know how I feel, or when I feel it. So now that you know, your random flowers to TL would also be a manipulation, and if she is likeminded, unappreciated. You should have sent some earlier.
All ladies are forever young, and the details of their toilette are not a suitable topic of conversation unless like Hanover, it is the sincere expression of your love.
I did. I addressed them to "Timeline of Australia or some such shit." She should be getting them soon. You'll notice when she gets them by her happy change in demeanor.
Have I not mentioned in the last decade the word chocolate once or twice to you guys? :roll:
It's like a pony keg of beer for you all...
It used to be flowers and chocolate, but my wife has lost a lot of weight over the last five years, so it would be insensitive for me to give her much. Our anniversary (41) was on Monday. I got her a case of a very nice, not expensive Sauvignon Blanc I know she likes. Along with the flowers. Are anniversaries "designed activities to declare something I am unable to do within the intimacy of our mutual understanding (or lack thereof)?"
That's much more relationship glue than bought goods, but presents can serve as expressions of love in the sense of deeply felt affection or ritual significance. It's really just a question of how comfortable you and your partner are of using such bizarre social norms, under the aspect of eternity, to signify shared feelings. Put another way, it's a question of how you and your partner feel about using norms to express feelings for each other. We do that all the time while speaking, a gift can be as much a signifier as a good, and as much a compliment as giving praise.
An ex of mine thought Valentine's day was very strange, so I gave her a bunch of roses with a tube of bacon flavoured lubricant gaffer taped to the side of the bouquet. She enjoyed that it was a symbolic representation of the strangeness. Neither of us enjoyed the bacon flavoured lubricant though.
We’ve been talking about fear. Let me try, again, to state my position as clearly as I can. In my experience, women are physically afraid of men and men are emotionally afraid of women. As I’ve been trying to explain, I’m not just talking about intimate relationships. I’m also not primarily talking about people who have been the victims of actual physical violence. I’m also not making any judgment about the reasonableness of those fears – whether they are rational or irrational. I’m talking about the way I think things are, not how they should be.
Ok, longing. I’ve read some Freud and I see value in it, at least in a broad sense. I’m not claiming my understanding is based on a Freudian analysis, but I see that people’s attitudes, feelings, and behavior are strongly influenced by their experiences as children. I really like Christopher Lasch, although I haven’t read his books in a long time. He’s a social philosopher with a Freudian slant. I guess he would be considered conservative. In one of his books, I can’t remember which, he talks about how, over history, changes in family structure have changed the structures of our minds, including our understanding of human relationships. In turn, changes in family structure are strongly related to changes in the structure of the economy, e.g. farming versus industry. I found his discussion plausible.
Oedipus complex or whatever you call it, people come out of their childhoods with something missing, lost. There’s a longing to find it again. Maybe someone else has thought this through better than I have. If so, help me out. Because of that longing, we bring a lot of expectations to our relations with the opposite sex. Obviously, these show up most strongly in our intimate relationships, but I think they have a more general and pervasive effect also. Our desire for sex and mature human intimacy is all mixed up with a childish yearning for surrender. For someone to find us and give us back what we’ve lost. Take care of us. The fact that the people we relate to can’t, shouldn’t, don’t want to, don’t know they should, don’t know how to give us what we want leads to incredible resentment, again, most strongly in our intimate relationships, but also more generally.
These observations are based on my own experiences, although I think they have more general validity. I think you can see I’m just working this out for myself. As I've been writing, it struck me we should talk about how these factors affect and are affected by gender roles. Maybe later.
This is my best shot. I’ve put a lot of thought into it, but I’m bringing this out here because I want to examine it. As I said long ago back in the thread – everything I write is based on my own experience in a limited social, intellectual, political, and class environment. Be fair. I’ve shown I have insults and bitter vituperation ready and I’m willing to use them if I feel that I’m being mistreated. :ambiguous sneer:
Clever reference to anal sex that most would have missed, but fortunately we're both on the same wavelength so that your humor is not lost.
I actually didn't think of bumming. Thank you for the insertion.
I'm just more meta than you s'all.
I edited my response. I forgot to mention he's a man.
They may be valid for others that are like you.
Quoting T Clark
It's great that you're working things out for yourself.
Quoting T Clark
Assuming you're not joking, do you think this is an adult position to take?
As I said, I think the factors I'm discussing have a broad application, not just to me. Everyone? I assume not. How many? I don't know. Some? Many? Most? Large majority? Even if you're right, that this only applies to people like me, it's social consequence is probably a lot broader.
Quoting praxis
I was referring to an earlier episode. Also, I don't always feel the need to act like an adult, although I've promised @fdrake I will behave.
Because people like you are socially consequential?
Quoting T Clark
Men who are emotionally... let's say underdeveloped, must have problems when dealing with all emotional situation that exceed their development and not just situations involving women, right? If this is the case, then we might conclude that people with low EQ are emotionally afraid of people with high EQ. On the other hand, people with high EQ, if they actually do have high EQ, should be able to succesfully put an emotionally underdeveloped individual at ease.
I guess that I don't know what you mean when you say that men are emotionally afraid of women. Can you explain?
Quoting T Clark
There's more than one kind of 'surrender' and it isn't exactly clear which you mean, although you do mention being 'taken care of' and a 'childish yearning'. I can relate to the desire for the carefree days of boyhood and having no responsibilities, if that's what you mean. I know a couple of adults who seem to want to be taken care of in this way, as though they were children. It's pretty uncommon, in my experience.
Another sort of surrender is transcendent. You can kind of lose yourself in sexual intimacy with someone you love. I wouldn't call that a childish yearning. I do believe it's a deep yearning that we all share though.
No, but if a significant percentage of the population have experiences similar to mine, it would probably have an impact.
Quoting praxis
Is EQ emotional intelligence? I talking men and women, not general social difficulties. I don't think women are more "developed" than men or vise versa.
Quoting praxis
People in general care what other people think of them. They want to be regarded with respect and affection. More specifically, more strongly, I think men care very much what women think of them. It's tied in with longing. Men want women to love them and take care of them. That gives women a lot of power over them. They have the power to hurt them with their scorn and that is frightening.
I think the same is true for women, maybe less strongly. I'm not sure about that. On the other hand, with women, there is an added dimension of fear of physical violence. Women don't trust men. There certainly are rational reasons that might be true, but I don't think the primary reasons are rational, especially in women who have not been abused.
Quoting praxis
Hard to describe. It definitely feels very vulnerable, childish. It's not a willful, adult feeling. You give yourself, surrender your will and desires to the other person in the hopes, expectations they will be close and intimate with you. That they will love you, hold you, protect you. I sure hope someone else will come along who can be more articulate about this than I am.
The transcendent surrender you talk about sounds similar to what I'm trying to describe. I think they're different, but probably come from the same place. One is mature and healthy, the other is childish and self-centered.
Tense, yes, romantic, no. I was going for more of a lust portrayal. Lame is something I associate with all erotica so I've hit my mark here. Though, if it did appear sincere I really didn't do so bad. Satire is better if it feels authentic.
Quoting Hanover
:chin:
Hmm...
Perhaps if improperly read this can be seen as a genuine attempt at literary seduction, but the tone was supposed to be light and comedic ("flexing his calves like some super-star bus-driver", "inexplicably accentuated bulges and impossibly coiffed garnishes"). Her description of the man in the gym seemed... Descriptive... I decided to imagine what could happen if the man was more insistent that she return his serve. I tried to keep it appropriately silly without destroying the narrative (until the end), perhaps in failure.
I had hoped that the implicit barriers of time, space, and anonymity would have prevented anyone from questioning my motives so it could be read in it's proper context. Rest assured the aforementioned relief this was meant to provide was of a comedic nature... TimeLine does like a man who can make her laugh after-all!
If by "comments" you mean anything I've said outside of the gym scene, that would indeed creep me out as well. Lest I protest too much, please point them out :yikes:
Quoting Hanover
Quoting Hanover
I think penguin-play is a third chapter theme at the earliest.
The whole point of my attempted discussion with TimeLine was to criticize her ironic game-like rejection of 'the games we play' as if she has ascended to inhumanity. See seems to dislike how un-serious it all is; petty sexual games are highly superficial and over-played. They're silly in her view; absurd. A narrative in which she is compelled to play is therefore funny to me.
And absurd can go two ways, generally, tragic or comedic. Penguins mixed with cervices isn't so funny, so it must be sad. Succumbing to a universally silly human biological function in the middle of quasi serious moment is, however, relatable and funny, and it illustrates my point that we are the games we play; the games are unavoidable bodily functions. The more one buys into the scene until then the more absurd the ending becomes. By trying to force TimeLine to at least pretend-to-imagine herself in such a situation I had hoped that she could begin to see the games we play as fun and funny instead of sad and pathetic (a view which she is somewhat less than reluctant to dip her brush in). I was trying to make light.
I do appreciate the criticism, but I think your expectations for a 50 word satirical imagined excerpt constructed from an out of context fragment and contrived to be a comedic anti-thesis to the described behavior of TimeLine, are a bit too high. I often find myself trying to write less rather than more, but I think you would agree laying the groundwork to create a genuine feeling of romance would not be prudent for a discussion. If it genuinely seemed creepy, either it's not silly enough or it's too long. I did attempt to mimic the style of erotica, so there's some unavoidably innate creepiness there, but I don't think your second objection helps me at all, as I am not the male peacock in this narrative (the actual man in the gym referenced by TimeLine is), a point which I'm now left to wonder might be lost on my muse herself.
I've taken your advice on board though: scratch cheap romance, go straight for lust; Keep it silly rather than creepy (penguins for instance); and acquire actual literary skills!
Why all the hand wringing, rationalizing. TL has made it pretty clear she doesn't find it welcome. Does anyone interpret her response differently than that? What more is there to say?
I am not a peacock, no, just a humble illustrator, but the man you recalled from the gym was, and while you were not taken with his strut and plume, you recalled him so vividly and described a classical situation of sexual rejection as if to reminisce about a previous victory. Appraising the man as you did, also reminiscing about it, is a part of the same game I described in fiction. No I'm not talking about a game between you and me, but the games you play with yourself and everyone else. You can't not play. How you perceive yourself is a game, how you present yourself is a game. Human interaction is lousy with unavoidable games. Not playing - stoicism really - is just another way to play.
So I implore you to give them a chance. Make them fun, interesting, and challenging. Get your hands and ego dirty.
Quoting TimeLine
Homoerotic ritualized constipated war my friend. Within it all is fair.
I've been quite careful not to cross any tangible lines though, and satire is one of the ways I enjoy expressing my ideas which in this thread have been nothing but relevant and justified.
I think TimeLine can speak for herself about whether or not "it" is welcome, but perhaps you misunderstand. "It" is an earnestly expressed defense of my ideas, which are relevant to the thread, and which have been specifically shat upon by TimeLine in this thread well before my entrance here.
I'm hand-wringing because I enjoy cheeky dialogue, and rationalizing because evidently I'm of imprecise wit.
What more is there to say? Given that the straightforward and serious bulks of my posts have been ignored, I don't know. It's all nonsense so far, which might help explain the disparate or desperate facets of my approach.
I did put effort into the however brief satirical scene on page 13 and wanted to know if anyone else was entertained by it. Did it actually make anyone uncomfortable?
It's 2018 people...
I guess that I didn't understand your phrasing. Fear is an emotion, so it's redundant to say "emotionally afraid." That being the case, I though you were saying something to the effect that men were afraid of emotions in relation to women. Anyway, difficulties between men and women is social and rather general.
Quoting T Clark
Fear of appearing worthless is basically insecurity. You appear to be making the general claim that men are insecure.
A two minute search shows that in Western industrialized countries, according to research published by the American Psychological Association, men generally have higher levels of self-esteem than women.
Self esteem and gender - apa.org
Quoting T Clark
I don't claim to be particularly mature now, but I do recall this sort of feeling when I was younger. Having said that, I should admit that in the relationship with my wife, she is far stronger and more capable than I. She's smarter, better looking, more willful and social, better educated, and she makes more money than I do. So maybe I've secured my childish yearning (to be loved and taken care of) and therefore no longer feel its influence? I know that I'm more dependent than I should be, and not entirely in a romantic or in a subsistence kind of way. Maybe that's what you're referring to.
I read it as she's majorly into him. Stop interfering.
Nope.
I am guessing you are speaking tongue in cheek as most "erotica" satirical or not is still dipping into the inner sensual pool of others.
Which is why I made the comment about penning personalized erotica. Written erotica, especially for women, is some of the most favored form of sexual self arousal. As a result inserting someone's name or nickname into the written story increases the connection between the reader and her inner being that she often keeps protected from being put into vulnerable positions.
The fantasy that is created in the mind by words read, can rarely be matched by a partner in bed. :wink:
Emotionally afraid as opposed to physically afraid. Afraid of cruelty, unkindness, withheld love and attention.
Quoting praxis
Yes, in my experience, men are insecure in their relationships with women. I think women are also insecure in their relationships with men.
Quoting praxis
What is the significance of that fact in this context?
Quoting praxis
I don't know exactly how the experience you're describing fits into what I'm talking about. Also, I don't expect that everyone experiences the relationships we are discussing the same way I do.
And this is how I learn how my name has been demeaned and used for a cheap thrill?
:rofl: I'm sorry Hanover. I would ask for your forgiveness but not before coming completely clean and informing you that you are also a fire fighter. :up: :halo:
It's very true that the fantasies we construct amidst mystery are generally more appealing than the reality behind the drapes (they grow and change along with our personal and changing desires, perceptions of perfection, etc..).
These social games we play with one-another are cerebral pleasures in the same kind of way. The anticipation/anxiety, the second-guessing, the mind-games: they're personalized and idealized emotional thrill rides.
I don't have the studies on hand, and this at least holds true for rats (the best known analogue for humans), but the more well and healthily stimulated by environmental and social interaction we are (the more we drink the psychoactive cocktail of human emotion), the less prone to depression and substance abuse we will be, on average. It's in our nature to seek stimulation.
Not all games (or players) are created equal, that's for certain, but what some see as diverse and natural others see as aberrant and dangerous or broken (progressivism Vs. puritanism). At times it seems so silly and arbitrary, so absurd. Perhaps it's down to the inability of most individuals to really appreciate the scope and scale of difference and diversity that exists between us all.
That is why she is your wife and I think she depends on you too because the love between two people is not about those things but about the people that you are and how compatible you are. I really liked a man who was younger than me and I did not care if he was less educated or whatever because I liked him, the very person he was and his presence made me want to be a better person. You need to admire who you want to be with.
The toxic concept of masculinity has strong causal roots that prompt many young men to suicide - or at the very least experience major depression - because these men parallel their identity to socially ingrained concepts like being the breadwinner or being professionally better or even more intelligent and women are often used as the tool to enable this. Men who like women that are older or better educated are suddenly small in comparison because of these stale, archaic concepts of masculinity, they become "whipped" or whatever derogatory overtones are implied by others to force them to conform.
So, instead, these men are often surrounded by people who are not as professional or intelligent than they are, partners who are socially acceptable because of age, attractiveness, popularity etc, but there is actually no love between them at all. The dependence is more social, like a pat on the head would suddenly make them a 'man'.
I'd need a cite for this because it makes the specious claim that traditional male role modeling is objectively unhealthy.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/boomers-deaths-pnas/413971/
There are a plethora of studies that indicate a connection between male suicide mortality and masculinities.
Here is one and another but I am on my phone so access is limited.
Seriously? Fantasy is better than the real thing? We're talking about sex, right? Nothing is better than the real thing.
Really interesting. Disturbing. Puts the lie to those who sneer at people who voted for Donald Trump. We got what we deserved.
Our fantasies generally depict idealized forms and features. In the personal amphitheater of our own minds and imagination we magnify and focus on whatever we fancy.
The real McCoy is quite good but often it fails to exceed expectations, anticipations.
We chase the fleshy dragon in reality, but we can only ever catch it again in our dreams.
Because the Trump administration will benefit this demographic? Deregulation will effect their health and well-being negativity, and will probably provide marginal job growth. There’s more potential growth in renewable energy than there is in coal, for instance. Health care will most likely become more out of reach. The new tax cuts may effect social security negativity.
Trump isn’t reviving the American Dream, he never had any intention to. His kind only seeks wealth and power.
Indeed. The act of seduction and its anticipations is so stimulating that some, I believe, sabotage every stable situation resulting from successful seduction to repeat that initial excitement. As you imply, that excitement is founded on projection and therefore ignorance. Successful monogamy seems to me to involve a trading of excitement for security.
And we might also ask about the degree to which fantasy invades actual sex. I've known some who claim not to fantasize at all during sex acts, but I'm inclined to believe that many supplement the sensual happening with an imaginative frame.
On a more general note, I think becoming wary of one's projections is a large part of the maturation process.
edit: actually, nvm, i think hes saying something different
Yes, there is some difference in our positions. I can't speak for everyone, but I think idealizations during the sex act sometimes help prop up monogamy. There's an old country song ('Don't Close Your Eyes') that speaks to concerns about this. And there is the old way of marketing porn in terms of a 'marital aid.'
Interesting. I find that the orgasms in a smoothly functioning monogamy are pretty reliably great. On the other hand, the anticipation and pre-orgasm sex act aren't on the same level as the first few acts with a compatible new partner. I can't think of a better experience than that first unveiling and 'possession' of an enthusiastic participant who is exactly one's physical/visual type.
For me, fantasies are needed when real is not available. Nothing is better than real. Fantasies are soggy paper. Real is well....real.
I like the rule, it's a good one, and I agree to adhere. But as soon as I set to implementing the rule, I confront this: 'whereof one cannot analyse' - & then I'm not sure. If I can't analyze, then I won't, because I can't. If I can analyze, then I can, so it doesn't break the rule.
I'm right where I began.
But this is approaching the rule in bad faith, and if i approach it this way I'm basically just acting like a too-clever teenager. I know what it means and am acting like I don't. Where we speak from, what we speak out of - that can't be itself spoken. It remains [beneath, outside of, permeating, within etc].
What gets me scared, or sad is: I don't think a lot of people are playing the game, or at least playing it to the point that they would immediately agree, like I did, that not playing the game is itself a way of playing the game.
short, tightly, tensely wrapped sentences that don't flow so much as skip: one to the other
like a rock skipping across water - the first undermines the second which undermines the third and that's the point, and the point is there's no point, or it would be if that wasn't a point too.
but i feel like the syntax or style is doing the work we once wanted the semantics to do, before we lost faith in its capacity to do so. Now the syntax (grammatical and conceptual) is
what's pronouncing the truth, or what is. And yeah, maybe now its showing, instead of pronouncing. but stilll: what did @syntax say? its a conch, its a [this is how and I'm the one who hold it]. I'm conching now. Let's conch at each other
I wasn't writing in support of Trump. I was only saying, as the article you linked to indicated, working class people are dying because we have let them be left behind. They would be stupid not to vote for him. What do they have to lose? What have we done for them.
I may vote for Trump next time.
I want to have a truth telling rule - "tell the truth". But here in the psycho-web, there is only telling, and never showing; nobody has to put their dick where their virtual mouth is. So the distinction between playing the game and playing another game cannot really be made, and there is a retreat to scientific citation to support generalisation.
Quoting fart
How am I to understand this, for example? Is it a general fact about most relationships (see Funk and Gabble's excellent paper)? Is it a universal psychological fact, that applies to me, and denies the truth of what I have been saying about my own unsafe monogamous relationship, as wishful thinking? Or is it itself a rationalisation of a personal fear of the depth of a commitment?
Here is the real danger, I'd say; that one can live a whole lifetime according to such aphorisms without even beginning to find the substance of them. One can live as if either excitement or security were somehow available by arrangement of one's life, and as if one can ever know the road not taken.
But I have already objected to this binary thinking of Mars and Venus, as if one has to maintain a gender dichotomy for fear of latent homosexuality. Other planets are available.
What do you mean by trading excitement for security? Do you mean between the two people in the monogamous relationship? Or do you mean something else?
Quoting fart
I agree with "some you have known" that the best sex acts with another achieve a state of nothingness in the mind. It takes a LOT of distraction to get the thinking mind lost on physical sensations and vulnerable enough to allow another to carry their sense of control, to the degree that allows for that blank minded orgasm to occur. Maybe it is a female thing? Maybe it is a 'thinker' thing? Or maybe it is just a "Tiff" thing? Regardless of how many of us there are, it makes for a challenge to clear the mind in a society that always has us thinking.
Quoting T Clark
They feel left behind certainly, and Trump is manipulating that feeling to his advantage. That's why they're sneer worthy, because they're letting themselves be manipulated.
It would be stupid for people like Trump to not support Trump, because they're in the best position to receive the benefits of his administration, assuming that, like him, they too are primarily interested in wealth and power.
From what you've said, I feel more sympathy and responsibility for the people described in the article than you do. I don't mean that as a criticism, just a difference in our attitudes.
This book helped me in trying to understand them.
Someone else told me about this book recently. I don't remember if it was on this forum or elsewhere. This is something I've been thinking about, so I'll put it on my list.
Ordered it on my Kindle. Ain't technology wonderful.
All of this of course assumes the cynical approach, which is that love is not the motivator for monogamy, which really seems a real motivator for most. Even rock stars find that special someone. And most don't discard their monogamous partner when they get sick or otherwise cause greater insecurity than singlehood. Isn't that the whole point of "for better or for worse..."
This is because people are vulnerable, reality is scary and while spatially we are sharing our experiences, ultimately we are alone and this separateness can inspire an inner anxiety that we are programmed to avoid since our motivations naturally prompt us to pleasure. Anxiety is not pleasurable, but the consequence of consciousness or our awareness of things that we try not to be aware of through various layers of communication.
For instance, from a hermeneutics angle parables attempt to highlight our moral responsibility using fictitious stories that are intended to teach us about our own behaviour yet without it being directed specifically to us, because most people are self-defensive. They automatically react when you tell them that they are wrong or that their thinking is wrong. We formulate alternate exemplums that communicate the same intention - to tell a person that they are wrong - without prompting their defensive reactions. Symbols or non-verbal forms of communication also inspire comparisons as long as it is not specifically about them.
Pretend for a moment that I am aware that you have borderline personality disorder and that you therefore lack empathy, present almost pathological symptoms of severely low self-esteem and social isolation that makes you resort to self defence mechanisms that are hostile and aggressive. You may not be aware that your reactions are causally linked to these distorted psychological responses, which perhaps even further is caused by your upbringing and social environment, but I can use my awareness of your condition to try to work within the game to enable you to understand these responses. It is a tool to communicate.
The problem, however, is how these vulnerabilities can be used for the wrong reasons, from a socioeconomic perspective marketing and social behaviour capitalises on these broadly influenced notions of beauty or masculinity, telling us what to think that our motivations - being pleasure (popularity and power is a type of pleasure) - prompts us to parallel our behaviour to the faux notions that therefore makes us want to buy tonnes of make-up or drink steroids or crush people on our way up to the top. There is an absence of moral substance, a lack of awareness of this 'game' as though one is instinctively driven and when people are not playing along with this game (they do not look a certain way for instance) vulnerabilities are given to them. You can suddenly threaten someone not because you actually want to but because the fabric of society enables you to since you seek power and popularity.
For possible Trump (dictator wannabe) insights, I recommend adding The Dictators Handbook to your reading list. It explores the selectorate theory of government. I don’t know any good books on right-wing populist theory.
God I hope so as I have no desire to start over.
But you'll get complete control over the remote.
The concern i had in response to un’s post - one i voiced a little too flippantly - was something like: self-consciousness coupled with a desire for authenticity makes all the world a game - and its a game thats like a trap, and the sorrow of it is that probably not everyones fallen prey to it, so that anything you can do to try to connect, from within the trap, to people outside it, will be expressed from within it, and pass silently by the people you want most to hear it.
[un’s approach is authentic inauthenticity. I get it but dont buy it is the thing]
That means there is something of value out there, so you cant make the “game” part of the human condition, and allay anxiety that way. To say ‘everyones in the same boat, masks among masks’ - i dont think so. Some people are just living it. Or, at least, they are capable of donning the masks only as long as the situation requires. The trap comes only when you never can take of the mask. Masks are everywhere; only certain types of people (including me) cant take em off.
You wont ever get through, is the fear. The mask is plastered forever. You fell in the trap and others havent and theres no way to think yourself out of that state of affairs. More than anything it was a post that said: im sad, and i think you get why, im pretty sure, but im skeptical that what youre selling helps.
I still feel that way.
I understand your response to start by saying something like this: this aloneness is the human condition and its very painful and thats why we have to talk in cautious symbolic speech.
The bpd ‘parable’ or ‘game’ was a good choice (more on that later.) You began by saying ‘pretend you have...[etc] which fits this snugly within the parable frame you introduced. Its plausible, at this point, that youre simply illustrating a point rather than directly communicating something. Ensues the description of what this pretend scenario would entail.
Here’s the tell:
The game and its object have been conflated. You’re using what game to tell me of what condition? The bpd game to explain my bpd? The levels collapse here: youre saying, simply, i think you have bpd and this is what that means.
And thats ok, but own it, or at least hide the tells.
I dont have bpd but i have something close enough. (You picked up on good/bad talk yes?)
Society and all the rest - makeuped girls, testosteroned men - thats all part of the same self talk that characterizes bpd and its cousins. Kardashians and The Rock - theyre the [vague threat] which has to be defended against (against abandonment.) the bigger you make the threat, the larger abandonment looms and the more you play the same game (while decrying it elsewhere.) society is much less monolithic than Society, especially a personally inflected Society.
Quoting csalisbury
Hello Sad, I'm Frightened. Two classic masks of that theatre for which 'all the world's a stage'.
Quoting TimeLine
Hello Alone, I'm Frightened.
Ever been to a Quaker Meeting? A bunch of people still and silent together with intent. As if one needs a witness to be alone. As if to be sad or frightened or alone, one has to step out of it and name it as a witness to oneself. As if one is not real without a name.
Meet Authentic. Authentic, this is Sad, and Alone, and I'm Frightened. Unfortunately, Authentic does not know her own name, which makes conversation confusing at times. But she is beautiful, isn't she?
I am unsure of several aspects to your argument here, in particular whether self-consciousness is this self-awareness (transcendental apperception) or whether it is that doubt and constant preoccupation to ourselves that is largely formed because of society (Rousseau)? In addition, why would people desire authenticity? They are being authentic the moment they desire authenticity since the latter is a state of mind, self-reflective empirical psychology or the way that we approach the contents of our cognitive states.
This dichotomy appears to be combined into a coherent whole by our imagination, where we associate and reproduce representations that satisfy our understanding and identification with external experiences. Ideology is rooted in this same imagination, in fact, we socially construct communities in order to believe that there is some unity in our understanding, a shared belief that you and I have the same opinions and this establishes a coalition and enables mobilisation. If nations are imagined, does that make everything that we understand of society unreal? No, it is real. When Foucault speaks of discourse and power, he claimed that it produces an efficient network that can also be positive despite the almost unethical dimension that enables it to function.
Let us take that to an individual level and pretend you have deep feelings of insecurity that make you follow and do everything your partner does. It takes away your responsibility to make your own decisions, you are saved from your emotional instability and feelings of worthlessness because your are getting someone else to think for you and thus artificially enabling a sense of security. You tell yourself that you are not copying, that in fact you do have your own identity and personality, but your imagination comforts you with this to overcome the sorrow of being unable to be authentic about your motives. If it takes away this self-consciousness and preoccupation or doubt - thus the anxiety and unhappiness - is this discourse between you and your partner not a positive thing?
I have always said that no one can see me for this reason. If they are trapped in the game, if they are capable of lying even to themselves, how would they see me? They can't even see themselves.
Quoting csalisbury
This is too fatalistic for my taste, it concedes into a state of 'oh well' like someone who admits 'yep, I am a coward!' when they are proven to be wearing a mask. Why or why did I not take the blue pill? You can get through the fear. How? There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
Quoting csalisbury
The threat itself is overcome through society; when a person is told that they are wrong, they immediately go on the defensive to this 'threat' and usually try to mobilise other people to take their side. It comforts them, takes away that insecurity and heals them from the terror that the collapse of their own narcissism would cause. Someone like you would distrust what I say since what I say hits home in a very uncomfortable way. So, I must be wrong.
Sup.
Quoting unenlightened
This sounds more like a funeral to me.
Quoting unenlightened
The only answer to this problem is Sad marries her and he is no longer Sad.
I wouldn't dignify it with the term 'argument', and what the fuck 'transcendental apperception' is when it's abroad I have no idea. But it is a mere observation that quite often people do feel inauthentic, that they do feel trapped in a role, if not in a hall of mirrors where their sense of their own unreality is disquieting. Perhaps this is authenticity, but it doesn't feel like it.
So my theory, such as it is, is that there is a process of identification whereby one separates oneself from one's condition in order to name it, describe it, analyse it. So when I identify myself as frightened, I have split into a frightened self and an identifying self who is not frightened but critical. In this way, self-consciousness is always necessarily a fragmented condition - and in saying that, I am taking the third position of analyst, or God. What I think people feel the loss of, is what I have called authenticity, which is a whole-hearted, un-reflective condition which does not name itself, and does not perform itself in the sense of conforming itself to an idea.
Quoting TimeLine
'Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. ' Whatever get's you through the night.' What's positive in relation to where we are pretending I am, is something I'd want to judge from there, not from here. But the real difficulty is that 'there' is anyway a conflicted place, in which what is positive for one fragment is negative for the other. So perhaps I stay with my wife, but come to hate her, or perhaps I resist following submissively and end up in arbitrary contrarian assertiveness. Or something else, I don't know.
I present authenticity as 'that which cannot be performed' - not that people don't pretend to it, but that to claim it is to repudiate it. So it can only be theorised as other, because to make it an identity is to betray it.
:up: One reason we don't like being in lifts with strangers. We almost have to talk and not talk to them at the same time.
It's not how I usually use conversation, except when I want to be manipulative. But you bring us neatly back to transactional analysis - I'm ok, you're ok.
You open with a cheeky nod upon entering the lift. But make it a nod of such subtlety that they cannot be sure if it was indeed a nod. If they return the nod then you respond with a friendly "Hi", which instantly puts them in their place. If they make the correct move and stare at you blankly or confusedly for 1-3 seconds instead of returning the nod, don't worry: you've entered the "mid-game".
Instinctively people have no clue what to do with themselves when standing in a moving elevator with other people, and so they tend to behave like hypnotized chickens by staring mindlessly at the floor indicator as it counts down the time remaining on their sentence. This is where we make our next move.
Instead of staring at the floor number display like a trained monkey, we cleverly fish some kind of knick-knack out of our pocket and pretend that we have important business with it. They will either look at your knick-knack (classic submission) or they will double-down and begin staring at the floor indicator with the force of 1000 suns in an attempt to deflect the knick-knack's existence.
If they look at your knick-knack, you simply smile and pop your eyebrows at them (the emotional equivalent of being physically eviscerated) and rest on your laurels. If they don't look at the knick-knack, fear not (we have them right where we want them!). Depending on how devoted to the floor indicator they are (strongly and positively correlates with the shininess of the knick-knack) we now must execute some variant of the comedic "double-take". Generally I prefer a slow motion single take, but as sir Patrick Stewart demonstrates in the following video, there are many variations
If they don't react to the comedy-take, then you've demolished them and can fart or cough -whatever- without fear of reproach.
Now, if they react to your comedy-take, and especially if eye-contact is made, then you're dealing with a grand-master. The end-game is much harder to train for as it is both seldom reached and highly circumstantial. I've only entered a handful of end-games myself, but luckily all my opponents immediately reigned by mentioning the weather. Good thing too. Lord knows what I'm capable of when backed into such a corner...
I don't think that's quite what he meant, though a certain kind of manipulation -
I think what you're talking about - can definitely be an outgrowth of that. I think it would be expressed better like this: a conversation is a way of two people trying to be ok in one another's presence. He included silence in that as well, so maybe its a loose meaning of conversation. Trying to be ok was probably the wrong way to put it because it also includes just being ok. But naturally there are unpleasant ways this kind of dynamic can play out as well.
It does sound fatalistic, but its just meant to sketch the fear itself, which includes the fear that the trap of fear is perfectly constructed, and so inescapable. I'm an optimist, usually, but a very beleaguered one. Part of the beleaguered thing is a wariness of solutions. Solutions have a structure like this: If you do this, or change your way of thinking thusly; then the problem will go away. I think this structure is broken, but I keep returning back to it, as if in spite of myself. My guess is Un wasn't actually suggesting something like this, but I read it that way - I've become so wary of solutions my ears prick up when I sense one lurking.
Perfect love - well it sounds like a 'solution,' in the sense I'm talking about. Of course your quote is about religious love. I think that's a good thing to hold onto on a personal, spiritual level. The ideal of an absolute unconditional love is, imo, a crucial ingredient for getting you through the really hard times. But locating this sort of love in something (or someone) worldly can make things worse, I think. For the simple reason that there's basically no such thing as perfect love on earth. Especially, perfect love meant to drive away fear. Because with this sort of [worldly x exemplifies perfect love] the fear hasn't been driven out, really. Instead, its been tamed, temporarily, by the presence of something (or someone) we've imaginatively endowed with the omnipotent ability to ever-tame it. So when a shadow of a doubt about the love's perfection emerges (which it will) all the fears come rushing back.
My feeling, right now, is that staying with the fear might help more. The more you can stay with it, the more you see that it passes. It shouts and shakes and screams and rattles and [much worse things that can't be put into words] but it always passes. It's temporary. It's just such a good shaker and screamer, its hard sometimes to remember, in the moment, that its temporary. I try to think of my fear like a rhino stamping and snorting and running around, a dumb rhino that will do its ground-trembling thing for a while, and then eventually retreat.
If there is something that approximates 'perfect love', I think it can only come about when each participant in that love has learned to weather their fears, rather than seek a force to drive it away.
But here you've done a thing where you've already identified any disagreement I might give as due, essentially, to my own shortcomings. It feels like you suspect I'll disagree but want to control that disagreement before hand, by giving a pre-narrative about what any disagreement must consist of. (I have irl friends - as surly and erratic as I seem on here, I'm not as isolated as I think you might think) But you are right that I have narcissistic defenses - everyone does, to some degree. I probably have them stronger (but I'mm not npd, just as much I'm not bpd. I'm another cousin, and even then that diagnosis is just one (very young) doctor's tentative diagnosis. DSM is embryonic, still, and has its gaps.
Aside:
[ bpd, for instance, is still very much a 'garbage bin' diagnosis. Its what you diagnose when the way the patient presents doesnt fit snugly with the easier diagnoses (depression, anxiety, bipolar etc.) Especially (alas) if the patient is female. In many ways its a: 'too strong emotions, wont work with us in the right way, so:" diagnosis. Doesn't mean it doesn't accurately sketch the contours. Its a good x-ray, oftentimes. But it can only identify very specific aspects of that which troubles, and very specific habits of avoiding those troubles ( tho I do think the idealization/devaluation thing really *is* a common denominator.) but, in any case: it leaves a *lot* out. It's like a mental health placeholder that forgot it was a placeholder. Which I find tragic. So many people get labeled with bpd (or other personality disorder x) and told its a life-sentence with no cure, maybe dbt if youre lucky. I don't believe it. ]
What I wanted to say was something like this: the 'threat' [kardashians, the rock - i.e. hyperidealized whatevers] is much less threatening than it seems to be. No doubt there are communities in which the failure to live up to an ideal equals ostracism. I was playing with Society (capital S) and society (lowercase) to try to point out that there is no such thing as Society. There's a billion little communities comprised of people who form real connections, even without living up to those ideals. They still value, and dont abandon, one another. But its hard to integrate yourself into a community like this if the threat is looming in your mind. (i.e. don't these people, too, ultimately value the Society values? are they lying to themselves? What if someone with Society values came into the room. Wouldn't they think I'm worth nothing?)
Once more:
I'm not sure if you're valorizing or denigrating this kind of mobilization. Community helps, every time. Mobilizing people to defend against the threat is maybe something different. It depends on what you mean, and I'm not sure what you mean.
Bet you're fun around the dinner table.
Vaga's mum: "Can you pass the salt, please?"
Vaga: *Consults "The Prince". Schemes furiously over next move.*
Manipulate as in handle, not necessarily unpleasant. It is how most people go on most of the time, giving each other little strokes - 'good boy', 'who's a clever boy then'. 'Have some flowers and chocolates', 'have a nice day', thank you very much and the same to you' . It's what passes for an eduction system. Sometimes it is actually dangerous not to play. Verbal grooming.
I ran a village shop for a few years, back in the day, and my life was filled from 8AM to 6PM with endless pleasantries. For years afterwards, people would greet me as if I was their best friend; as if the automated patter was intimate conversation. I think I know well enough what he and you mean, and there's a lot of nervous chatter about, a lot of filling the void. Which is why a Quaker meeting is a revelation.
If I had my way, use of this phrase would be a banning offence. Sometimes you have to handle people, but you don't have to glue the handles on.
On the contrary, that parallel exists because of authenticity, our ability to become conscious of the inauthentic through our experience of the world. When we fall in love, suddenly we become conscious of our behaviour, of our body and appearance because we begin to see ourselves through the eyes of another and start to value affection and kindness or the suffering one feels when they are hurt by the people that they love, thus inspiring empathy and compassion. Friendship takes those emotions and makes it more separate and objective, thus loving-kindness is formed. It is not disquieting, it is beautiful.
But we have automaton responses that prompt us to avoid feelings of anxiety and the unknown can make us feel anxious - that we have the ability to form our own thoughts and are responsible for our own lives - but our avoidance is against something we already know but that we have yet to learn how to articulate. We just don't know how to think for ourselves, to separate ourselves or cut the umbilical cord; we don't know because we have never done it before. It simply takes time.
The saddest thing for me is when people give up and absorb themselves and it is easier and easier within our capitalist society to get carried away with the things of this world, Kardashians and physical appearances, being an ass or drinking yourself away. We shut it off and thus shut ourselves off.
Quoting unenlightened
There are clear limitations in authenticity because there are clear limitations in our autonomy; but it is not about a complete separation but rather embracing a togetherness between individuals, a kind of amalgam between Kant and Schopenhauer. Can we call something sincere when our desires have no longer stained the result? If you fall in love with a girl that has all the wrong qualities and that everyone you know thinks is wrong for you and appears to be an all round wrong person, but yet you feel she is right, you trust that above all else. We move up and away from thinking what we are told to think to appreciate our personal feelings and responses. Otherwise you are safe, but miserable.
This is how can we differentiate between a person who blindly follows the masses but pretends to individuality with a person who honestly attempts self-reflective practice. I see our actions in our lives as representations of our state of mind, that we become alienated from ourselves because of society but that psychologically we have the capacity for self-awareness.
Perhaps we are talking about different things. I mean something close to real as opposed fake. More of an on-off thing.
Could be that you're wrong and they're right but you're drunk off the emotions of love. Quoting TimeLine
Or maybe your confidence is reckless and you've got a great big helping of misery on the horizon. A lot of time friends don't tell you they think your significant other sucks because they don't want to alienate you, and then when it all falls apart they say "yeah, I knew she was a train wreck," and you're like, "why didn't you tell me," and they're like "because you wouldn't have listened" and you're like "true." So what I'm saying is that there is a degree of maturity in listening to others and hearing them out. Other people can bring a perspective you don't have, and it's not an abandonment of individuality to listen to them.
Sometimes that little birdie in your head steers you wrong.
Quoting unenlightened
I am saying that authenticity is a state of mind, only you are writing in your usual cryptic way that forces me to try and decipher what your point is. Sometimes I wonder whether that is just a rhetorical tool to covert that you probably don't know what you're talking about.
That's the point. It doesn't matter, you follow that gut instinct especially if it stands in contrast to what people would like or approve because then you know it is your decision. Many people follow, they have their token partner and approval from their parents, environment, culture, religion etc and thus live in that quiet desperation. As long as it is your choice, it doesn't matter if it is a mistake or not.
Quoting Hanover
There is a lot of maybe this and maybe that and of course there is nothing wrong with listening to friends, but ultimately you know more, you have experienced an intimacy that far outweighs what anyone else could offer and it is your life that you put at risk. Sometimes rationally you could think a thousand things of why someone is wrong, but your gut still tells you otherwise, that gut feeling is yours. It is not yours when that person is perfect and your life perfect, but you are deeply miserable. There are always risks in experiencing life, but at least you experience.
There is no such thing as religion, it is socially constructed and as there is something static in beliefs, the only belief one should hold is the somewhat Cartesian dualism; in your own existence and God, the latter being a representation of our goal toward moral perfection, that is, to be loving. Love itself to me is merely moral consciousness, you become conscious of yourself, of your responses and begin to feel empathy through this shared experience.
Love is a choice, an application, a way of thinking and not some spontaneous given. In my opinion, is authenticity, motivating us to be honest and since our will is what drives everything about us, the mechanics of our cognitive states driven by moral consciousness teaches us to rethink our decisions and mirror values and ideas, to think twice. We can then contrast ourselves with something that enables us to self reflective practice.
To which I see your "nod" and raise you one more level of the "elevator" game.
Just as the elevator door is closing, with no eye contact, move your body close to the another passenger, invading their personal space and see the response. Many will stop the doors from closing, exiting quickly without explanation. A few will mumble about forgetting something before departing the elevator.
Once in a blue moon I will get someone who does exit the elevator, does not stare blankly at the wall but rather smiles brightly and says "Hello".
Grand Master Level :cool:
:up: Excellent read
I cannot tell you how many times I have been the person not saying anything because they would never hear me...until they are ready.
Likewise, I have selectively shared times of rough waterz in my marriage with two friends, one of whom has confessed that they knew but didn't say anything to me. The other friend here in the forums, is able to bring a perspective to the situation people who have been together for decades can posses and are willing to share.
I don't think I'm being particularly cryptic, so probably, I don't know what I'm talking about. Nevertheless, I am fairly clear that authenticity is a state of congruence between state of mind and behaviour. And this aligns with the authenticity of a work of art, if it actually created by the person it is purported to be by, rather than a forger. So my smile is authentic if it is an expression of my happiness or amusement and inauthentic if it is a cover for my anxiety or anger, or whatever. Thus the inauthentic state is a divided state between what is portrayed and what is felt, whereas the authentic state is wholehearted.
On the face of it, such authenticity is not hard to achieve, but as one finds it necessary or convenient to be inauthentic, one tends over time to lose contact with ones own feelings, to the extent that one sometimes needs help to make contact with oneself.
If your reason for deference is because you seek approval, then it's a bad decision and an abandonment of your right to decide. It's possible also that you have noticed a rather poor ability to decide, like if you seek out the same crazy every time and thereby experience the same predictable results, then maybe you should listen to others. Isn't that the purpose for a therapist to some degree, to gain some perspective and objective feedback to try to avoid the same mistakes or limitations?Quoting TimeLine
Aren't the prisons filled with people who made bad mistakes that really did matter? It might be better that I not ride a motorcycle without a helmet at 100 miles per hour, even though the rush I get from having my pony tail flowing in wind is so freeing.Quoting TimeLine
Sometimes you know more about some things but not about other things. It just seems like with all decisions, they are no better than the information upon which they are based, and I'd think your gut is but just one piece of data, and you'd be wise to judge evaluate your guy based upon how well it has served you in the past.
So you don't, but you do, don't, maybe?
Quoting unenlightened
So we're on the same page but you are using coloured crayons. Memories are not static, but are continuously changing because as we further understand and develop, our interpretations of those experiences also evolve. Authenticity is thus a type of ideal or interpretative tool used to explain how we relate to others and language becomes the aesthetics that transforms our capacity to articulate reality and make sense of our emotions forged by our early experiences. The latter for me is a type of unconscious language, that triptych you initially spoke of that while distinct interacts as a regulator that communicates between the inner self and the mind along with our experiences with the external world. It is us, our identity, the 'real' us and authenticity is a name that explains our ability to decipher this 'I' within these external influences.
The problem is that an ideal itself is a painting of something not exactly real, as mentioned ideology or nationalism, religion and communities, all these are imagined, concepts that we have created. It does not imply that they are unreal, in fact it produces a Foucaultian dynamism that activates these dormant cognitive features, but I am skeptical of consciousness ever forming as something that is independent of psychology or the mind itself. So, how does this 'I' form if indeed it even exists? It is not about what the world gives you and because language is socially developed, how we interpret and articulate the world is based on these shared experiences. The point of transcending is to use our brain and language as a tool since we have the capacity to give rather than receive, unlike when we are children.
This is why love or moral consciousness stands as that medium that initiates this process of awareness of our mental states. It is not about receiving love or the accolades of others as one would when the blindly follow the masses, but about giving love to all things - God - and thus forming that perfect love. What is felt is often this 'I' speaking through what we are told or taught to believe is true.
"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence." In the case of love between two people, I would say never listen to others.
If you want to spend a rampant weekend with some relatively unknown woman of obscure origins and your friend tells you that is a mistake because she might have an STD or the moral dimensions are problematic because you have a family, then yes, listen to your friends. The purpose of love - namely that of moral consciousness - as I have iterated earlier is that it works as a tool that enables authenticity, so if you doubt yourself and are insecure to such a degree that you follow others and do what you are told, you are automaton and no longer exist and often such people end up spending rampant weekends in secret to try and escape from their own misery. There is no authenticity in their behaviour.
When a person experiences an inner anxiety or subjective discomfort, that is the inner 'I' telling them that something is wrong, an intuitive awareness explaining that they are conforming to their social environment but they are not consciously aware that their choices in life is really them seeking approval and as such live in this quiet desperation.
When you follow your own feelings - even if it is a colossal mistake - you actually learn from it and so it is yours rather than given to you. That is what shapes your capacity to understand the world, forming that contrast and prompting the mind to start thinking for itself.
Quoting Hanover
Yeah, you are clearly having some trouble understanding the purpose of this thread. I am attempting to explain it using sophomoric language but perhaps epistemology is a bit beyond your scope?
Another, more uncomfortable, version of this is I have a thing where I’ll find myself in a room with someone I’d only met a few times and they seem to have some kind of bond with me that takes me aback. I’m only starting to understand whats going on (I think.) My default position is usually a severe “I’m not ok” which means anxiety and not wanting to be “seen.” At some point I realized, instinctively, that getting people to talk about themselves, and just ask directing questions, takes the focus off of you. So i’d do that, and people would open up, and since I’m playing kind of neutral sounding-board - i think given the oppurtinity to open up they’ll project onto you whatever they need you to be, and usually, if theyre actually opening up, that means they’re projecting something very personal. Meanwhile I’m just over here only thinking about how nervous i am. I’ve started to understand this better and not do it so much, but old habits die hard.
I know what you're saying, but what I'm saying is I don't care what you think. I don't mean that in a mean way, but in a philosophical sort of way, like how is it persuasive for me to hear what you kind of think I ought to do? I just know for a fact that you can love the wrong person, but you say in an underlined way that I should never listen to others when they tell me not to jump off the metaphorical cliff because I'm going to land really hard. They've been right. You just don't know what recklessness is I don't think and what sort of consequences result. Quoting TimeLine
It is not self doubt that runs people head first into brick walls, but it is an unwavering certainty of indestructibleness. The guy who no longer does that but who listens to others perhaps is now showing a sign of maturity.
I do think we're talking past each other because what you seem to be talking about is a lament, like a regret someone would have if they allowed self doubt brought upon by social pressure to push them away of doing what they knew was right and instead of having had the experience, they had only the regret and the not knowing what could have been. I say sure, there's that, but there's the flip side of the coin. In fact, what you said has a really humorous sarcastic application, like if I were about to jump into something pretty objectively stupid and I told my friends I just had to do it because I couldn't deny myself my right to live authentically. Quoting TimeLine
This is a bit of psychobabble isn't it? I mean, sure, denying oneself happiness because you feel a need to conform could be one reason for anxiety, another might be that your risk taking has resulted in great uncertainty and changes in your life you aren't ready to deal with. I suppose there are also many who find comfort in fitting right into the middle of the pack. The best we can say is that their existence seems sad and wasteful, but maybe it's not to them.Quoting TimeLine
Either I just can't understand what you're saying despite your kindly dumbing it down for me, or else it might just be you sorting shit out in your head in a way that has profound application to you, but (as I've sort of been trying to point out) it simply does not have universal application. Sometimes following your heart is stupid as shit. It just is. I wish it weren't. I'd have a hell of an omniscient inner guide if it weren't.
You've made a good point on this thread, a few times - the point that references Foucault. I understood your point to be something like: though a thing may not have some substantial material core, it can nevertheless really exist, by being realized by the people through whom it exists. There's a theological tradition that deals with the Holy Spirit in similar terms. There may be no such thing as religion, I mean, but still there is such thing as religion when its understood, if you like, in Foucauldian terms.
But I feel like this is in stark contrast to this
[quote=Timeline]the only belief one should hold is the somewhat Cartesian dualism; in your own existence and God, the latter being a representation of our goal toward moral perfection, that is, to be loving.[/quote]
& plus you then say:
But this is confusing, because there is nothing in what you've said, in that paragraph, to which 'shared experience' could refer back to. Everything you'd just been talking about was a single person and that person's representations. I am all on board with the idea of God qua a way of opening up a space for the infinite within the finite (ala Descartes), a way of self-bettering....but it feels like what you're talking about, at least provisionally here, is something like Grace. & Grace requires community.
But, then, I'm not sure if you really are talking about Grace, or if, instead, you're maybe just tailoring your response to mine, for rhetorical effect, or deflect.
For instance:
When you say this
[quote=TimeLine]Love is a choice, an application, a way of thinking and not some spontaneous given[/quote]
& this
[quote=TimeLine]since our will is what drives everything about us, the mechanics of our cognitive states driven by moral consciousness teaches us to rethink our decisions and mirror values and ideas, to think twice. We can then contrast ourselves with something that enables us to self reflective practice.[/quote]
but then also say:
[quote=TimeLine]If you fall in love with a girl that has all the wrong qualities and that everyone you know thinks is wrong for you and appears to be an all round wrong person, but yet you feel she is right, you trust that above all else.[/quote]
To me it feels like you're using love to mean two very different things. Not that there's not a potential for some kind of synthesis here.
One thing the comes to mind is: if you really feel badly about the world (Society etc.) and the way it impinges upon people, and damages them, and blocks them from communicating, or being with who they should be with, then there's the danger that that gut voice, the one that would lead you infallibly in matters of romance, may also smuggle with it a kind of romanticized self-destructive impulse. This is one the quintessential romantic themes, right? ( From Tristan and Isolde to Sorrows of Young Werther to Kierkegaard up to Blue Oyster Cult & Thelma and Louise & Love In A Hopeless Place) or this song and video (below) which lyrically seems to say a lot of the things you're saying while visually, saying something else. But I think they're maybe saying the same thing, and in some ways the imagery is conveying the unspoken truth of the lyrics :
[
[Verse 1]
I don't know
Where this world is going
For all this life is showing
Breaks through
The paper chains that hold you
They hold me
You know I try and stay sober
But the feeling is over
Life in this coma
It's hard to stay sober
In this life
Alone, the struggle seems wholly worthless
So find your friend
In defiance, show we are no longer helpless
[Chorus]
You made me forget myself
Until the moment I found I was something else
My heart is good
But believe me I could
Watch these heads go blow
I am so alive I can barely feel fear
And I won't let go
Of this life I'm going to free myself
I don't want to know what your baby say
I will pull the trigger come judgement day
And I don't hear what your baby say
I'll bust this head for a funny game
[Verse 2]
I have no apology for these words
And understand that I can't escape
I have no more love for this world
If you hear me then let's break away
So people come on, people come on
The world that held you now has gone
Together the wolves will lay together
Alone, the wolves will play
[Chorus]
[Bridge] (x8)
To the powers of old, to the powers that be
You have fucked up this world but you won't fuck with me
[Outro]
"In a state of enlightened anarchy each person will become his own ruler, they will conduct themselves in such a way that the behaviour will not hamper the well being of their neighbours. In an ideal state there will be no political institutions and therefore no political power."
]
There's a raw and overwhelming power to this sort of thing, sometimes, but the sheer power of it can blind you temporarily to what that power is leading you to do. So: Self, God, but also a third thing - which is community (grace, holy spirit) & my hunch is maybe when you talk about mobilization you're not really talking about community. But I'm still not totally clear on what you mean by mobilization.
The dinner-time armistice accords were signed out of necessity on all sides following the battle of the bloody steaks. :) (there's something sacred about sharing food...). Humor is a universal seasoning however!
I do find the consistency with which people mindlessly stare at the the floor number display quite amusing though. I cannot be arsed to strike up a 20 second conversation with every stranger (and likely they feel the same) and so out of mutual respect everyone generally remains silent. Silence isn't pleasant though, and so their eyes go searching for something stimulating (which in a cramped 4x6x8 room happens to be a two digit LED number display).
Why do they keep staring though? Are they waiting for a miraculous event? Are they practicing their numbers? Are they just staring into the flames and day-dreaming?
Elevators are like inter-dimensional portals that for brief moments transform us into unwillingly caged animals instinctively awaiting escape. Silence becomes a bulwark against the riffraff, and pleasantry a mutual non-aggression pact. Something about being trapped together causes us all to become more judgmental...
Quoting TimeLine
But think of how tragically uninteresting it would be to have a child who is average in every way. Their life marked by unremarkableness and inglorious standard... I cannot recall meeting a significantly intelligent person who wasn't "weird" in some way!
I have good news though! We're all weirdos in one way or another; it's downright inevitable to be surprised by one's children. Good thing too perhaps, as there's no way of knowing which current 'weirdness' will turn out to be tomorrow's 'greatness'. In order to improve on the omelette, you have to do some percievably weird things to a few thousand eggs (and granted you're bound to find some stinkers).
Humans are experimental, and whether you're at the top or bottom extreme of the bell-curve, you're "weird" by definition.
I'm ready to roll those dice.
Quoting ArguingWAristotleTiff
Ah yes, direct combat!
In a territory with many floors and only two elevators (one of which breaks down constantly) it is too precious a resource to risk that level of escalation so I've not yet employed it (although once I almost lost control of a nuclear warhead :) )
No, we're not on the same page at all. We are radically at odds, which might explain why you find me cryptic.
Variously attributed.
Here is a Gordian knot for authenticity as an ideal. One conforms to, ie copies and performs an ideal, well or badly, so whatever one achieves can only be a likeness of authenticity, which is the betrayal of authenticity, as I said earlier. And the pinnacle of achievement in this direction is to manage to fool oneself. Then one is truly lost.
And this is why, when I introduced Authenticity as a character, I was at pains to point out that she does not know herself as such. And it is why whenever you hear people going on about how they 'really mean it, honestly and sincerely' you can take it for granted that they are lying toe-rags.
It really is hard to tell, particularly when you said this previously:
Quoting unenlightened
If we are radically at odds, how exactly does the above-mentioned differentiate from my saying that authenticity is thus a type of ideal, including my position on God and moral consciousness as that ultimate ideal toward moral perfection. In addition, I assume with your Thrasymachian quote on politicians that ideals are merely a painting of an actual reality and therefore a likeness, which I also stated, but this likeness is inevitable as there is no possibility of divorcing our cognitive states into something mind-independent, where one can be entirely conscious of the contents of your thoughts; these are the epistemological barriers that we can never escape.
As a consequence, authenticity - as a state of mind - may not ever know herself, but she can see a reflection of herself in the mirror. That reflection may not be real, but it is there - just like nations and communities and religions - and love or moral consciousness is the mirror itself that reflects back intentions, motives, the subjective replies that enables self-awareness and self-reflective practice. Authenticity, like love, is a practice.
And sometimes when you think they're ready, they're not. They're just in a moment of being pissed off at their significant other and so they enjoy the validation you're providing, but then they work things out (at least for the short term) and they're both pissed at you because they see you as someone who they now interpret as having created a wedge between them.
I really do think it takes real maturity, understanding, and the right objective temperament to listen to people when they tell you what they see. It's not like you have to agree with them, but if it's someone you trust, it's foolish not to want to tap into what another set of eyes and ears has perceived. Sometimes having a co-pilot assist in the navigation is wise, although that doesn't mean you're not still the captain of the ship and the one who ultimately decides.
Well aside from the explicit denial in my last sentence, hardly at all. I am inauthentic, because I am fragmented. So on the one hand I am irritated that you cannot see what is as plain as day on the page, and on the other, I am conforming to an ideal of patient explanation. And on the third hand, I am performing authenticity by laying out the conflict. This is the mode of being of philosophy, and from this fragmented mode, it is not even possible to say what would constitute an authentic response, if I was not fragmented.
But this is not it. This is just that performance of an ideal of non-performance that is a performance and not the ideal, which is not a performance.
[quote=R.D.Laing]They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.[/quote] (Knots.)