Ideas & Opinions People Watching

[Dante]

Social Series, Post 1
Competitive VS Cooperative conversationalists
I have noticed that there are two types of conversational styles, Competitive and Cooperative, and that people tend to stick to their own style, I know this, because I am Cooperative, and my dad is Competitive, the result is always a very unsatisfying conversation.
When 2 people interact they can either work towards the same conclusions and ideas together, building on each other, and working together to explore concepts or they can contradict each others conclusions and try to correct and mould the other to compete over whose conclusions are correct. Different people prefer different styles. - cooperative tend to like to fully explore an issue and reach a shared conclusion, whilst competitive more enjoy the riff of the disagreements and compare and explore only the differences in opinion, tending to skip onto new topics if they agree too long.

Both have their merits, I have hard a competitive conversationalist describe agreeing as "not real conversation" it should be about exploring differences and seeing who is right, whereas, as a cooperative conversationalist myself (most of the time) I find 2 minds working together can find angles that neither would have considered and build a more complete image of things. Now not everyone is either one or the other, but we do tend to have a preferred style, and we vary as to how fiercely we stick to it, the most competitive loving to have a proper row, whilst the most cooperative tending to just agree and take on whatever anyone says. The real problem though is when you stick two opposites together, stick a Competitive and Cooperative in a long conversation together and the Cooperative will constantly be trying to build on shared ideas only for the Competitive to strike back in disagreement, will want to explore an idea thoroughly only for the competitive to change the subject, and it can be very frustrating, and I imagine the resistance a cooperative conversationalist would have towards disagreement and jumping between fresh topics would wear on a competitive conversationalist too.

Im not saying avoid anyone who has a different style to you, but I think it is important to be aware of it and throw the other guy a bone every now and then and let them have the conversation their way, as long as they are willing to do the same for you down the road.

 

[Dante]

Social Series, Post 2
Social Distribution
We all have a quota of social energies we need to expend or we will end up deteriorating. We need to be social, we are a social species, so however little social energies you need to spend, you will have some, the interesting part is the distribution of these energies.

Different people will have different preferred amounts of friends, some will like the widest circle possible, others will like a small group of tight-knit friends, this isn't to say that the person who likes small circles necessarily has less social energy, but rather that they put more of those energies into each individual person, they enjoy spending time more intimately with fewer people. There is no real wrong answer here, except of course at the extremes, putting very little social energy into each of an expansive social group can leave all the relationships rather shallow, and leave the person without any meaningful connection, this can become a problem after a while when they find themselves in need of a close friend, similarly someone who focuses their energies too tightly becomes overly dependant on those few people, which aside from leaving little redundancy in case friends are busy (or heaven forbid DIES) it also puts an enormous pressure on those few friends.

We assign a certain amount of our energy to each friend, and as long as that friend assigns a similar amount of energy to us we will have a good and balanced friendship, but if one is putting WAY more into a relationship than the other, it can become a burden to the one who isnt as invested, it can even become wearing and make them want to avoid the friendship altogether seeing the other as too needy, whereas the one who is investing more will see the other as undervaluing the friendship, these kind of relationships will soon become strained and in my experience, never last long.

 

[Dante]

Social Series Post 3
Social Synchronisation
We all have our own way of thinking, talking, acting, explaining things, identifying with concepts, our minds all tend to be quite unique, so when being social, sharing words and action and ideas, there is a potential compatibility issue, but we are a social species so we naturally have a way around.
When 2 people interact they subtly adjust their mothods of communicating, styles of speech, way of explaining things, and expressing themselves and even topics of preferred conversation so that they are closer in style to each other, this makes social interactions easier as they are operating on a more compatible level, most don't even notice they do it but if you pay attention it is pretty obvious, we dont talk the same way with our parents as we do our friends or work colleagues or partners, even when discussing the same subjects.
If 2 people are simply too dissimilar the conversation will be rather difficult, taking false turns and appealing to ideas in ways the other simply doesnt communicate with, for example, there is no point describing something to a person using fishing metaphors if they dont like fishing, no matter how much YOU may like it, so we make the effort to approach each other from a more mutual and neutral middle ground.
I think one reason it is difficult to speak to the older generation is that not only are they so dissimilar in their styles, mannerisms and context to us, but they often make little attempt to synchronise with members of the younger generations during a conversation, putting all the burden of bridging the gap on the other participant and constantly running little translations in their head putting the incoming ideas and stories into more familiar context.
On a final warning note, befriending people who dont make any effort to synchronise doesn't seem to bad at first, but it is taxing to always be bridging the gap alone.

 

[Dante]

Cumulative Erosion
The idea of cumulative erosion is a simple and well known one, any popular tourist spot shows it, the path walked by all those feet tends to wear down, each footfall doing almost no harm, but the effect of all of them even wearing through stone, in the same way cumulative input can have a staggeringly devastating effect on the mind.
Our minds could be likened to a poorly organised search engine, it is constantly making links between different bits of information and bringing up any information linked to current stimulus, functionally this means that when an event happens we instantly have any relevant information and memories at our fingertips, but it has another effect, any repeated stimulus grows with every exposure.
Imagine you put on a tiny bit of weight, then someone makes a fat joke, this isn't fun but not a serious thing, but then someone makes another fat joke, when this happens your mind brings up the previous fat joke, the emotions and situations involved and indexes this new fat joke with them. Then you get another fat joke, and your mind brings up the 2 previous fat jokes and associated emotion and context, indexing this new one along with the bunch. With each new occurrence of the same stimuli, you receive a larger and larger emotional impact as you are hit with ever growing amounts of memories of it happening as you brain links and indexes this new occurrence. This effect does diminish with time and distance from the stimulus, but it is difficult to remove a snowballed emotional response like that.
Personally I have an anxiety attack whenever I do the dishes now because for 2 years my housemates took the piss with the dishes so it would always be vaguely stressful, and after 2 years that feeling of stress grew to 170+BPM rapid breathing and dizzy anxiety attacks just from scrubbing some plates. It has taken 6 months for this to diminish, but I still dont enjoy doing the dishes like I used to.
This cumulative erosion of the spirit can be devastating to a person but also entirely invisible, even when asked why they are hurting they can struggle to say, and I have seen people become depressed and addicted just from mundane unpleasant stimuli repeated over and over for years until they simply broke from the cumulative weight of it all.

 

[Dante]

The Shame Threshold
When two people get to know each other socially they start off just feeling out each other's character and surface interests, seeing the depth of their compatibility as people and forging their first connections. "Oh, you like singing? Me too, do you want to do Karaoke some time?". A lot of the time this is where the process ends. Once a person has forged those first connections they have a stable "hangout buddy" who they can pass time with socially, and these people form the bulk of a person's social circle. You like each other, and share interests, but they arent the kind of person who would held you hide a body if you know what I mean. They are at a comfortable place where they can spend time with each other without awkwardness or a 3rd person providing a crutch to keep things social.

If these two hypothetical people continue to go deeper with their relationship (this seems to be the case for most types of relationship, be it friends, lovers, in-laws, etc) then they begin getting personal, sharing background that they dont usually go into, that doesnt just come up in passing, and the surface worries and aspirations, the beginnings of what makes them unique. This is all still relatively safe and you can get to a point where you can even rely on each other, talk about worries, call in favours, and even share some minor confidences. You have reached a point of shallow, but real, friendship. These people still wont help you hide a body (unless they are just that kind of person) but they are the kind of person who will let you hide out at their place for a while no questions asked, or make sure youre OK after a bad breakup. These are good friends to have and make up the core of your friend circle, the people you rely on to have your back within reason, and will notice if you arent at your best.

Now we get to the dangerous territory, the part where we open up our heart and soul to the other person; our REAL worries, our REAL aspirations, the darker side we usually try to hide from people, our weaknesses, and our craziness. We are all warped and messed up if we go deep enough, and letting someone see that is an investment in that person, but also a risk. Depending on how fucked up you are this is the point where you encounter what I call the "Shame Threshold" where you tell them too much, you let them see too deep into you, or simply unleash too much crazy and you worry that you have permanently ruined the relationship, that they cannot unlearn what they have learned about you. The only way a relationship of any kind survives this stage is if the two people are invested enough in the relationship, and have enough good feelings about the other that it outweighs any potential negative that they have learned. If you get past this point (which can happen over and over depending on JUST how fucked up you are) you can get to a level of transparency, you know the other person inside and out, there are no big secrets, and you trust each other to always have your back, always. These are the people who will help you hide a body, and these people stand outside of the social circle, sure they can be in your social circle, but they go beyond it, in years to come when all your friends have parted ways and only get together for a reunion or two every now and then it is these people who you can call 10 years later and meet and catch up and trust again without question.

They say the secret to any relationship is communication, and that is true to an extent, but you must be aware of whether or not the relationship you have forged is strong enough and mature enough to make it to the next stage yet. If you forge ahead too quickly you will reach the Shame Threshold and you will not make it through, and you will drift apart from awkwardness, dislike or distrust.

Of course SF is a microcosm which completely goes against the above in many respect, in SF we lead off with our deepest and darkest, and that can create warped but also special relationships, people reach out to each other already knowing that they dont mind the darkness and crazy in each other, they have already seen it and it goes well with their own, but we mustn't forget that just because we have seen SOME of the darkness and crazy in each other doesnt mean we have seen it all, so we must be careful when forging bonds to not overwhelm a burgeoning relationship too early, or once again, the Shame Threshold awaits.

 

[Dante]

Nested Bureaucracy
This, as I see it, is one of 2 major problems in all publicly owned and managed efforts and organisations in Britain (the other being wholesale money-grabbing corruption). Lets take the NHS for example.

We have a load of hospitals, then someone has the great and glorious idea to create a nationalised health service to encompass them all, each hospital will be paid by the NHS which will in turn be funded by the government, and in this way no one will have to worry about medical bills ever again. It was a great idea and with a few caveats (rules against bulk buying being one) it was a wonderful system and worked marvellously. There was a bare minimum of bureaucracy at the top keeping everything ticking over, and money trickled down to the hospitals where it was supposed to be, then things started going wrong, little things, at first, poor patient satisfaction at some hospitals, money mismanagement in a borough or two, over-use of the NHS across the board by people who dont understand a hangover isnt an A&E problem, and so extra bureaucracy was put in place to try to more closely manage the situations which were developing and keep everything going, and more and more bureaucracy was put in place in isolated areas only after issues had already arisen until someone eventually decided to "revolutionise the system and create new bureaucracy across the board, a higher level of unified management, and then more issues arise, and more restructuring, and more new ideas, each time adding more bureaucracy to the system to the point where the whole NHS is top heavy, as much money is going into monitoring and managing the whole thing as paying for the actual services, no one doing any of the actual WORK has had a pay-rise in years, wait times are through the roof due to understaffing and no one still sticking around seems to give a crap anymore because all the management and micromanagement has made it impossible for them to do their jobs even ignoring just how many time-wasters end up clogging the system.

So we have a top-heavy NHS full of paper pushers and committees and bureaucrats, all wondering where the money is going and deciding the nurses need a pay cut and so the people on top decide "we need to investigate this" and create a whole new committee to look into where the money is going. It is going, to that damned committee and all the others who weren't necessary from the start, but the only way anyone is ever going to prove this is by creating another committee to looking into the previous ones which are ALL still deliberating because they know that the moment they reach a useful conclusion the committee will be dismantled and they wont get paid anymore, so they just keep piling more and more committees onto the NHS payroll until one day, not too long from now, the whole thing will collapse under the weight of it all and a thousand damned committees will be left standing around wondering what the hell happened.

THIS is what happens to ALL government run enterprises, say what you like about the business sector (they usually deserve it) but they know where to cut the fat where its not being useful, a lesson that government has never and will never learn, because the moment they do, half of government would likely be out of a job.

 

[Dante]

The Abandoned Generation
It has become apparent to me that the current generation are especially thoughtless, they are the "I Want" generation. They want something, and they wont care if they should have it, if someone else NEEDs it, or if they cant afford it, they will steal it out of the hands of those with desperate need or put themselves in debt just to possess the latest random thing they decided to want, without a thought of how it affects those around them.

This lockdown is a perfect example, people are refusing to wear masks them screaming in people's faces when they are asked to be considerate, they are ignoring lockdown, the rich are grabbing ever more money, the politicians are setting up initiative after initiative to help those struggling and hen emptying the majority of the budget for these into their own pockets so what gets to those in need is worthless and causes more distress than help, and worst of all, all those lonely isolating at home are buying pets. Demand for pets has skyrocketed, so much so that people are going out and stealing other people's pets to sell them on for a profit, people are getting mugged for their dogs, and it is dogs which are a special focus in this, they are the most sought after companion in these dark times because they are simply so companionable.

Everyone has been buying dogs, so much so that when I decided to walk to the shops today I passed SO many people with dogs it was kind of surreal, maybe a 3rd of everyone out and about had at least 1 dog with them, and they were mainly young dogs, clearly puppies bought earlier in the pandemic. So this may look all nice and lovely, so many people housing so many dogs, but they are being bred now to meet demand, born and even stolen just to be bought and taken in by these lonely people. These tiny puppies are brought home to a loving environment and doted on and cuddled, and taught that their owner loves them and will always be there for them, it is a blessed existence, except that their owners only need them for the pandemic, soon enough (in England at least) we will be vaccinated, and life will return to normal, all those doting owners will go back to work and their dogs simply wont understand.

For its whole memory some adorable little dog has lived in bliss with its ever present caregiver, then one day, without warning, without it understanding, the owner will pop out the front door... and not come back. The poor little dog will be sat alone at home thinking something terrible happened to its loving owner, surely he would NEVER stay away this long if he had a choice, he never has before, and eventually its owner will come home and the dog will be overjoyed to see the owner alive and well, but the next say the same will happen, and again and again, and the dog will eventually think it has been abandoned, that it is no longer loved, no longer cared for, and it will try so hard to regain the love and attention of its owner, but it will never gain it back. The happy times it was raised to believe would always be, have ended.

Across the UK (and probably other countries too) tens of thousands of dogs are living in bliss, not knowing that one day it will change, that what they believe to be the way of things is just temporary, that they will be abandoned every day, left alone, and with no idea why it is happening, and have their owners stopped to consider this at any point? Probably not. An abandoned generation of dogs, taught the harsh lesson to never trust a good thing, because it can end all at once with no warning at all.

 

[Dante]

The Confidence of Experience
When we are born, lets face it, we are a pretty talentless lump, useless, but we slowly learn to do things like understand language, move around, converse etc. Every artificial attempt to mimic our ability to do such things used to be based on an attempt to make an algorithm to perfectly encapsulate all situations, but as times have moved on it has slowly changed to be about the sample sizes. Lets use a speech recognition algorithm as an example.

Speech recognition algorithms work across several steps
1) Adjust the sound
Speech is mostly just the tone of the voice, useless information, the actual useful information is the modulation and disruptions in that tone, occasional hisses of "S", pauses and sharp noises of "T" and "K" and so on, this is usually drowned out by the main signal, the tone, so the audio needs to be modified to emphasise the useful information and try to tone down the overall tone of the voice.
2) Apply the Filter Bank
An algorithm needs to cut up the sounds into what are suspected to be individual phonetic sounds, (i.e. the phonetic alphabet), then compare it to a filter bank with multiple examples of each letter in the phonetic alphabet. It chooses the closet and then stings it all back together
3) Finally a converter just needs to change the words from phonetic form to actual words.
4) I imagine there is likely some sort of auto-correction function in there somewhere for making educated guesses if a word doesn't come out as an actual word, but I really only briefly touched on this at Uni. Maybe the filterbank finds a weighted list of closest 3 and then uses these for each word to try to construct the statistically most probable real word? Who knows.

Now originally it was all about minimising the filter bank and making the best comparison algorithms possible, as there is limited storage on any device, but with the internet now we can have ever growing sample sizes and an insanely expansive filter bank covering more accents, more background noise, more voices, so that it is easier and easier to find, all running on some server, which is why a lot of digital voice assistants now stop working if they dont have internet connection, they may have plenty of the maths stored locally, but the filterbanks and heavier resources are all online.

Now cut to us, we followed the brute force approach from the start, we try something, then try again, and try again until we build up a sufficient sample size of experience on how our arms work, on what these sounds may mean, we have enormous databases of experience in our heads, which is why we struggle to understand new accents, we simply lack that section of our own filterbanks and need to build it up by experience. The problem (there is ALWAYS a problem) is that we learn what is SAFE or not from the same method.

Did this hurt me? No? Conclusion: Safe. Did this hu.. OUCH!! yes, yes it did hurt me... Conclusion: Dont do that again. As our skill at any endevour rises, our risk analysis also changes to the point where I noticed at work that I was happy to simply throw my phone from one hand to another. If I missed or fumbled it my phone would likely break, a very expensive mistake which could be avoided if I just passed it from one hand to another, but from my experience, I am confident this is OK. So I am now taking risks with expensive things because the vast majority of my experience says its ok, totally ignoring the smaller section of my experience screaming "NO DONT DO IT I LIKE MY PHONE!". This is all fine, if I mess up and drop my phone I will learn my lesson, but people are applying the same risk analysis to WAY more dangerous situations.

Anyone who has driven in London or worse places (Indian traffic is apparently a Darwinian nightmare) has had some idiot do something CLEARLY extremely dangerous, but they do this because they have done it before and everyone has swerved out of the way to avoid a collision, so the figure "Did I get hurt? No? Conclusion: Safe" so you get people pulling out into traffic without looking, swerving into others at 70mph on a motorway or driving along without paying attention at well over 100mph, you get people crossing the road intentionally making sure not to look in order to force drivers to stop, and so on, and people do get hurt, but the vast majority don't, not straight away, and this doesnt just apply to phones and driving. Data security "I havent been hacked yet, its safe", Home Security "Sure my door is made of CARDBOARD but Ive never been broken into so its safe", "Ive never had covid before, so its safe" (lol controversial) and so on and so on. We all take WAY too many risks in life and a lot of us end up getting hurt, and hurting others.

We need to exercise JUST a little pro-active paranoia, think "what if" rather than "hasnt happened before", you've never died from a bullet before but that doesnt mean you should laugh at a crazed gunman believing you are immune to bullets. Experience only gets you so far, intelligence gets you the rest of the way, something SO many people seem to lack in any significant measure.

 

[Dante]

The Merciless Gaze
There are 2 types of people, for in situations like grand explanations there is always an ability to say "There are exactly two types of people", and in this case the two types of people are those who seek to improve, and those who do not.

Those who dont seek to improve will look into a mirror (physical or metaphorical) and see only the things about themselves which they like, they will see all that is good with themselves as they dont seek any improvement so there i no point in focusing on anything bad, better to revel in the good you already have.

Then there are the other kind of people the ones who seek to improve, they are far greater in number, and though they may not always seek to improve anything worthwhile, they do still seek to improve. When one such as these look into a mirror their eyes are drawn to their flaws. Why focus on what doesnt need improvement, instead focus on what is faulty, what can MAYBE be fixed. This is admirable and all well and good except for 2 things:

1) When evaluating yourself, there is no need to hold back, as you would with other people, no need to be kind, we already know what we think, and no amount of diplomacy and platitudes will change that, so we give ourselves the raw unvarnished truth, no matter how much it hurts.

2) We spent entirely TOO long with ourselves, getting to know every tiny part of ourselves, every tiny flaw.

The result of the above is that when we look at ourselves all we can see is a myriad of endless flaws we have noticed over decades of study, like that old English teacher who could read ANY meaning into a line of poetry or prose, we can see the greatest of flaws where no one else can see anything but a mundane little detail, and for every one of those incalculable number of flaws which so overwhelm our minds that we lose the ability to see anything else, we have the harshest of criticisms ready and waiting to cut right to the core of our self confidence.

When we see others, we see a person in their entirety, no invisible details jump out, no overly harsh comments come to mind, but when we see ourselves we see a lifetime of accumulated study into everything that we believe needs fixing, a black stain of wrongness and self insult that has drowned out any virtue and makes it impossible for us to see anything else. Our own gaze is the most merciless of all, we will never appear to others quite as ugly or warped as we appear to ourselves, except in those circumstances when gazed upon by someone who needs no reason to hate, and thus no need to study a person to find flaw, they just "find" it where they decide to.

Maybe the truest gauge of what we are and how we are is a person who knows us, but has no great attachment, an impartial judge, or, JUST maybe, perhaps even someone who saw us, and got to know us, and decided upon closer inspection that our virtues far outweighed our flaws, and who chose to like us simply because what they saw in their impartial view was someone worth being partial to.

 

[Dante]

The Power of Worthlessness
I have struggled with low opinion of myself for as long as I can remember, even when I did feel good about myself part of me was always mocking my delusion and waiting for me to see the truth. At university I finally lost all sense of worth, but in so doing I found a strange kind of power. I am the kind of guy who will use anything given to me to achieve a goal, so when I find that nothing matters and neither do I, I find a way to make it work.

Expect Nothing:
This is probably the most common one, one that everyone already knows. If you have no expectation of anything good happening, if you intentionally embrace that rather than hating it, then every day can only be a good day, because very little will fall below your expectations. Having enough energy to actually clean half a room becomes a victory, receiving a genuine smile from a joke you told becomes a heart-warming moment, great things can be achieved with the smallest of moments.

Reverse Confidence
Confidence can be a real struggle, if you expect that you will always fail, then what there to be confident about? Well, if you instead accept the inevitable I have found something very interesting happens, I gain a strange kind of reckless confidence. If you go into any situation knowing you are doomed anyway, knowing that whatever you do, the worst possible outcome will happen, then nothing you do can make the situation any worse, so why not have fun with it? Tell that girl you like her, go to the party you're dreading, put on that suave demeanour you know you cant pull off, its all doomed anyway, so why not enjoy it, and strangely, when doing that, sometimes great things happen.

Meaningless Meaning
Quite simply, if nothing means anything then anything can mean anything. Put on some music and attribute any meaning you want to your actions, I just spent a pointless hour cleaning the bathroom which is only going to get dirty again, whilst listening to heroic music and imagining ever cleaned surface as another step towards cleaning up the world, making it right again. It was fun.

The Strength in Weakness
I live in a not-so-great area, its not terrible, but I did used to get uncomfortable passing some of the people living around there, until I learned what it felt like to honestly hate everything and everyone, and none more than myself, to want to die. That assuredness of "you cant hurt me any more than I already am hurting" and the willingness to take anyone down with you if they give you an excuse to die gives you a look which I have done everything in my power to remember even after the feeling diminished, because people dont mess with you when you have that look in your eyes, the "Try it, I will enjoy dying together with you" look.

When all you have is emptiness and pain, it is surprising how effectively you can cobble together power and confidence with those things. It is a warped kind of feeling, but if you have nothing else, it can be the power you need to continue, or even dominate your life, and once you have those tools, you can continue to use them long past the time when you have filled those empty spaces. If you ever find yourself lacking in confidence, or motivation or strength, that sudden hole allows you to use these tools once again.

 

[Dante]

For Men
When you see "For Men" on a product you envision a rough muscular outdoorsman brushing his teeth with a tree branch and bathing in a lake before catching and slaying a pig to cook over a rough barbecue for his dinner. No frills, no nonsense, just a basic and sturdy product right? Hehe... well...

As many people may have guessed, the dirty little secret is that "For Men" is usually a superior product that men keep to themselves so that they can look all super masculine and like nothing phases them. Men arent nearly as indestructible as we let on, in fact most of the time we can be rather prissy and delicate as we are used to "FULL MASCULINE POWER" and can feel quite vulnerable and weak without it (hence Man Flu), and this became quite hilariously obvious to me when I needed to replace my comb (Yes, singular, not all "MAN" myths are myths) and I ended up finding this brush "for men" which seemed pretty basic and fit my requirements so I bought it, and when I first tried it it was the perfect illustration of "For Men". It was sturdy, easy to clean (I use some clay sometimes to try to stop my hair curling after a wash) and strangely it doesnt snag tangled hair at all, you just brush and it slowly, painlessly works out the tangles. This is an IDEAL product for woman with long hair that tangles easily, and yet it was marked "For Men" and if you look through other mens product lines you find lots of the same. Sure many "For Men" products are much simpler, but in these cases it is more about simplicity and ease of use. My sister often complains that she has to buy mens shoes because they are simply superior, womens are made of cardboard and dont fit well, mens fit comfortably and LAST, made of sturdy materials.

I think "For Men" is a secret treasure trove of quality and support which helps men FEEL powerful and invincible and low maintenance by providing superior products that help them be that. I think men are so invested in this idea of the rugged outdoorsman bathing in lakes and punching trees down that they go to great lengths and what may be described as quite feminine products in order to pull it off, wrapping it all up in that leather and wood smelling concept of "For Men".

 

[Dante]

Inappropriate Talents.
It is a sad fact of life that sometimes you just arent good at anything you like, it happens, and when it does you simply have to work that much harder to achieve anything in that area, but what about the other way? What happens if a person has talents which dont align with their character, like a businesswoman who has a supreme talent for belly dancing, or a climbing instructor who is a acting prodigy, but never applied for a role, these undiscovered and unnurtured talents are a terrible waste, but there will always be some talents that get overlooked.

Then the final case, what happens if you discover a talent for something, but dont like it? Imagine that businesswoman gets a little drunk one night at a bachelorette party and tries belly dancing and finds out she is a natural, then once she sobers up rejects this talent? Or perhaps even imagine a mormon with a supreme talent for music?

If you have a worthwhile talent, and you discover it, do you then have an obligation to develop it, or is it OK to simply ignore it if you don't enjoy it? I know people tend to pressure the talented into displaying and developing their talents, so is this an affirmation of obligation to develop any talent you find, or is this simply encouragement? Im afraid I have no answers for this one, no poignant sum-up or lesson learned, I just noticed that people seem to think talents are special things which deserve to be developed and they spare little thought to whether the person in question likes it or not.

Do we value talent over individuality? Or do we simply see someone able to do something we cant and wish them to succeed in an uncharacteristic show of unselfish humanity?

 

[Dante]

The Power of Purpose
As ever, something I long knew has solidified in my brain and now is the time to put it down into words. We are remarkable creatures, capable of incredible feats and yet for the most part we limit ourselves, without realising it, without meaning to, and inspite of ourselves, we are always running at a fraction of our potential.

The first limit is protection, our bodies are capable of feats of strength well above what we currently put out, because when we reach a certain point our minds say "nope, no more, this is not safe" this is well known, this is what causes the stories of mothers turning over cars to get to their kids, quite honestly it may be possible, but it would have done some SERIOUS injury to the poor mother. Torn ligaments and muscles, cracked bones, etc, but this is just the obvious.

We also have mental limits, our minds will put contexyual limits on our focus and intelligence based on how unpleasant it thinks certain stimuli will be, the more passively unpleasant (bad, but not dangerous) the more your mind will learn to draw into itself to protect itself, thats why so many kids simply CANT focus on boring classes even if they try, their minds have already begun to shield them from something they simply cant stand. I had a similar reaction to my dad for a while, whilst I lived with him he would trap me into 2-4 hour lectures about hydroelectric power plants, variable pros and cons of different camera lenses on an SLR, or just whatever else you can think of that would drive someone who isnt interested in the subject to desparation, so whenever I found myself in the room with him after a while I found it impossible to focus on anything, my mind was shielding itself from what could be another 2-4 hour argument for suicide (not kidding you werent there).

The next limit is motivation. I have always found it difficult to focus on something if I have no clear goal, leaning a new skill is boring and aimless, give me something to DO with the skill and THEN I will learn it, give me a REASON to get in shape and I will try, give me a sport or activity to be active with and I will push myself WAY harder than I ever could otherwise. The reason is focus and dedication.

If you are doing a task simply for the sake of doing the task, be it running or learning to draw or tidying your house, these take forever and you have nothing to focus on but every tiny moment of the task, so you notice the moment you get bored or uncomfortable, and when it comes right down to it, you just end up weighing discomfort vs the task at hand, and usually end up sparing yourself the discomfort, so for instance after a little while running you will notice your breath getting laboured, your legs getting heavier and you will start weighing up the pros and cons, emotionally speaking, but if you see the last bus leaving and you wont make it in time, but you MAY be able to race the bus to the next stop, you better believe you will push harder and run faster than you ever did just for the sake of running (and yes, I caught that bus at the next stop).

We should never measure ourselves by our abilities when we are acting for the sake of acting, give us a purpose and we will show you are TRUE abilities, which is perhaps another reason why depression and self doubt are so damning, when you doubt yourself you give up before you try, and when you are depressed there is no purpose to anything, so when we point out our abilities they WILL be less than our peers, because we don't have that benefit of true motivation, of purpose, the drive to push ourselves not to the point where it becomes uncomfortable, but to the point where your minds and our bodies simply wont go any further. This is not a failing of yourself, but of drive, if you can find that drive again you will surprise yourself and everyone around you with how much you can achieve.

I have personally noticed this in my friends, my family, and recently in myself, every task is incomparably easier with the proper motivation, with a purpose in mind.

 

[Wonder]

Social Series, Post 2
Social Distribution
We all have a quota of social energies we need to expend or we will end up deteriorating. We need to be social, we are a social species, so however little social energies you need to spend, you will have some, the interesting part is the distribution of these energies.

Different people will have different preferred amounts of friends, some will like the widest circle possible, others will like a small group of tight-knit friends, this isn't to say that the person who likes small circles necessarily has less social energy, but rather that they put more of those energies into each individual person, they enjoy spending time more intimately with fewer people. There is no real wrong answer here, except of course at the extremes, putting very little social energy into each of an expansive social group can leave all the relationships rather shallow, and leave the person without any meaningful connection, this can become a problem after a while when they find themselves in need of a close friend, similarly someone who focuses their energies too tightly becomes overly dependant on those few people, which aside from leaving little redundancy in case friends are busy (or heaven forbid DIES) it also puts an enormous pressure on those few friends.

We assign a certain amount of our energy to each friend, and as long as that friend assigns a similar amount of energy to us we will have a good and balanced friendship, but if one is putting WAY more into a relationship than the other, it can become a burden to the one who isnt as invested, it can even become wearing and make them want to avoid the friendship altogether seeing the other as too needy, whereas the one who is investing more will see the other as undervaluing the friendship, these kind of relationships will soon become strained and in my experience, never last long.

Agree with most of the above, however I do think there is a differentiation to make between true friends and occasional friendship. My grandmother used to tell me that if you have more true friends than what you can count on one hand, you should consider yourself extremely lucky. I do believe she was right.

 

[Dante]

Instinctive Mirroring
I cant tell you how much I see this in my day to day life, people forgo their own decision-making process and simply mimic those around them, even ignoring the OBVIOUS one of "fashion" perhaps the most noticeable is old-fashioned building sign-in sheets. You enter a restricted site, like a building site or a small company or a school, somewhere they need to keep track of comings and goings but are less likely to have a computerised system, and you will be handed a book or clipboard with lots of rows of previous people signing in, and you look at the dates they signed in on. You will see yesterdays date following todays and then once in a while you will see someone had put down the wrong date, and EVERYBODY afterwards put down the same incorrect date, a lot of them KNEW the date, but simply copied the one above instinctively, without even processing the information.
Another example is traffic or pedestrians, one person goes, and everyone around assumes its safe, they see someone going and think "nows my chance" and go without any due care or attention to potential dangers, causing untold crashes or run-over pedestrians.
People are always doing this, if you show someone a jar of marbles or smarties and then a sheet to guess how many there are, and EVERY other person chose a SERIOUSLY low number, the next person will lower their guess to within the pre-set range.

There are a couple of potentials reasons I can see for this mindless copying behaviour.
1) Empathy. We all try to think and feel in ways others do and in a way end up mimicking them. If during a conversation with someone, you keep touching your face, they will start feeling compelled to do so too, in fact a complete absence of this mirroring response is part of a recognised test for sociopathic tendencies.
2) Developmental. We learn in our early years by absorbing and copying, and we never really lose that, if we want to learn to dance we watch someone doing it and try to mimic, if we see someone drawing, we watch their technique and try to mimic, if we see someone acting confident... the list goes on, we will attempt to mimic people who have or are what we want to have or be, it is an instinctual hold-over from our time as infants learning how to be a human by watching our parents.
3) Trust. We DONT trust others, to blindly trust others nowadays would be reckless and stupid, but we DO trust them to look out for themselves, so if we see someone behaving in a certain way we assume they have thought it out and come to the conclusion that it is safe or correct for them to do so, so to speed things up or simply spare ourselves the effort of evaluating the situation ourselves, we automatically accept their judgement and act.
4) Survival. Similar to 3, but more urgent. Did you know that you yawn as a reflex to try to take a deeper breath, to take in more Oxygen, we do this when we are tired because the extra intake of air will help give us a TINY boost in energy, but we also do this when there is very little Oxygen in the air, we will yawn even if we arent consciously AWARE that there is very little oxygen in the air, so when we see others yawning our brain think "Oh shit! Is there too little oxygen here and I missed it?? I dont want to pass out from oxygen deprivation, I better yawn JUST in case" and so we yawn too. We mimic certain patterns of behaviour in others on an almost anatomical level because certain things are warning signs of danger, like suddenly ducking or looking scared and running, and it doesnt hurt to mimic them just to be sure we are safe too.

There are in fact so many good reasons to just straight-up copy other people that we end up doing it all the time. We see someone looking good in a new type of clothes, ok, if we copy them and wear the SAME clothes, we will look good too right? We see someone getting attention by dancing, yea, lets dance too, we see someone come up with a great idea and getting admired, so we will pretend to have the same idea infront of OUR friends and say we made it up in order to get that same adulation, china sees a patent for a product a company is making and thinks "Yea, lets make that EXACT SAME THING TOO" :P

We turn into idea-stealing, trend-following unoriginal copy-cats, but at least we are safe whilst we do so.

 

[FlamingoWrangler]

Hey @Dante
I love your brain. Unfortunately I am not a great reader. Let me know when your cliff notes come out, because I know you’re a thoughtful person. 😁👏

 

[Dante]

Hey @Dante
I love your brain. Unfortunately I am not a great reader. Let me know when your cliff notes come out, because I know you’re a thoughtful person. 😁👏

Erm... these ARE the cliff notes....

 

[FlamingoWrangler]

Erm... these ARE the cliff notes....

Cliff notes of Dantes notes on Tape? 😬

thank you for sharing your thoughts. 💗

 

[Cariad_Bach]

I like the way you write and express yourself and a lot of these posts are really resonating with me. I'm sorry to hijack it but I'm feeling particularly self-absorbed this morning and...

People are Bastards

People are simply bastards, and YOU are the exception. You are the good one.

I'm not a good one. I don't want to be a bastard, but I can't seem to help it. I spend hours and hours of self- reflection trying to be the complete opposite of my bastard nature, to make myself a better person and a better colleague/friend/lover/family member, but I'm still a bastard. I even get resentful, sometimes, that other people can be bastards and seemingly accept themselves for it - be accepted by others despite it - and even expect me to make the personal effort not to be affected by them (I can't change others' behaviour, only my reaction - right?). But, I am a bastard and that is not acceptable. Not forgivable.

The Merciless Gaze

...for every one of those incalculable number of flaws which so overwhelm our minds that we lose the ability to see anything else, we have the harshest of criticisms ready and waiting to cut right to the core of our self confidence.

...when we see ourselves we see a lifetime of accumulated study into everything that we believe needs fixing, a black stain of wrongness and self insult that has drowned out any virtue and makes it impossible for us to see anything else.

And I won't ever see anything other than a bastard.

The Merciless Gaze

Maybe the truest gauge of what we are and how we are is a person who knows us, but has no great attachment, an impartial judge, or, JUST maybe, perhaps even someone who saw us, and got to know us, and decided upon closer inspection that our virtues far outweighed our flaws, and who chose to like us simply because what they saw in their impartial view was someone worth being partial to.

How could I sacrifice the good opinions of the people I love (or those I don't love but who might still be in ignorance) by passing the shame threshold to see whether they agree?

The Shame Threshold

...where you tell them too much, you let them see too deep into you, or simply unleash too much crazy and you worry that you have permanently ruined the relationship, that they cannot unlearn what they have learned about you. The only way a relationship of any kind survives this stage is if the two people are invested enough in the relationship, and have enough good feelings about the other that it outweighs any potential negative that they have learned.

Especially when previous experience has taught me that people will *deservedly* cut me off, avoid and evade, or even turn deliberately against me if I show them too much of me?

 

[Dante]

I like the way you write and express yourself and a lot of these posts are really resonating with me. I'm sorry to hijack it but I'm feeling particularly self-absorbed this morning and...

You're not hijacking anything, when I started this thread I kinda wanted it to be a place for everyone to share their observations on people, pool resources :P

I'm not a good one. I don't want to be a bastard, but I can't seem to help it. I spend hours and hours of self- reflection trying to be the complete opposite of my bastard nature, to make myself a better person and a better colleague/friend/lover/family member, but I'm still a bastard. I even get resentful, sometimes, that other people can be bastards and seemingly accept themselves for it - be accepted by others despite it - and even expect me to make the personal effort not to be affected by them (I can't change others' behaviour, only my reaction - right?). But, I am a bastard and that is not acceptable. Not forgivable.

A lot of good people think like this. We can ALL be bastards, no one is perfect, but you can tell if you're a good person by your standards. If you hold yourself to a higher standard than you hold others, you are a good person, but the people who can accept being a bastard hold themselves to a low standard, and then expect others to tolerate it for them, they are holding you to a higher standard than they hold themselves. That bastard nature you see when you look inwards is what a human looks like inside, every human (with some EXTREMELY rare and notable exceptions) it is the standards we hold ourselves to, our adherence to those standards and the standards we expect from others that makes us good or bad, and from your own description, that seems to make you a good person.

Yes you are a bastard, so am I, we are bastards because we are PEOPLE, we all have 1 overriding instinct, which is to look after our own wellbeing above all others, we only really have a drive to community and empathy because of safety in numbers and the need for stable group dynamics. It is the standards we choose for ourselves and others that counts, and YOU have chosen to be a better person than you expect others to be, how is that anything but good?

And I won't ever see anything other than a bastard.

You looked too deep and the dark side of true human nature, and now, because you want to be better than you are (a trait of good people) it is all you can see, because you only focus on what needs improvement, not on the things that are already good enough.

How could I sacrifice the good opinions of the people I love (or those I don't love but who might still be in ignorance) by passing the shame threshold to see whether they agree?

Yup, that is a strong limiting factor to relationships and I wrote that because I am limited by that too, infact I wrote that whilst terrified, ashamed and choosing to pass that shame threshold with a person for the first time in a LONG time, and by the biggest amount I think I ever have, so ... But guess what? Our friendship survived.

Especially when previous experience has taught me that people will *deservedly* cut me off, avoid and evade, or even turn deliberately against me if I show them too much of me?

Yea, I know this one too, but have you read "Compassion Deficit" I have had so many friends cut me off or decide I am not someone they want to know, but thats because we all have issues and things others will have to tolerate, but most wont be bothered to tolerate yours whilst expecting others to tolerate theirs, its right back round to what you were saying with regards to "People are Bastards", most people expect others to let them take, whilst expecting to never have to give, its a far reaching theme in society. Most friendships last because they deliberately avoid getting too close or simply find people so similar to themselves that its ok, that way they dont have to deal with putting any effort into adapting for their friend, but you do adapt which is why THEY always drop YOU first, because you are willing to put in more effort than them, and you are brave enough to let them SEE you, rather than pretend to be who they want you to be out of fear.


I have personally suffered from a lot of what you are describing, which is largely WHY I wrote about it all, to try to resolve it in my head, and convince myself as much as anyone else about what I wrote, and because beneath my issues and my fears, the cold and logical core of me I am so proud of KNOWS that what I wrote is true.