Ideas & Opinions People Watching

[Dante]

The Search Engine
I have noticed that many guys end up cheating, and the strange thing is that I have known a couple who do, guys with between 3 and 5 girlfriends on the go at once, and they dont actually seem like bad guys, and some do really seem to care about some of their girlfriends, which doesnt make sense to me, how you can cheat on someone but still care about them. but it was something one of those prolific cheaters said that got me thinking about the specific mechanisms behind attraction. He said: He really wasnt looking for another girlfriend, 4 was more than enough, but when he saw HER, he had to.

There is the neglect situation, where you are emotionally unfulfilled or unsupported in a relationship and where someone else is providing that emotional support, in that case you get close and cant help (sometimes) but develop feelings, in this case I would say it is at least partially the fault of the one not providing the support, but this doesnt explain the prolific cheaters who seem to have good relationships with one or many of their girlfriends.

So I thought about the this: Many guys I have known, and myself as well, seem to be constantly "on the lookout" for women. It isnt an active thing, and it isnt a creepy thing, but a single guy will always just be "aware" of all the possible single ladies around him, potential candidates for hook-ups or relationships (depending on what you are looking for). Without even thinking our minds will highlight potentials for us to consider and give them a quick evaluation, looks, attitude, approachability, etc, and depending on our personalities or our circumstances, we will either pine over them hopelessly, make a move, or dismiss the thought.

But the difference between cheaters and non cheaters, I think, is what happens when you enter a relationship. I have always found that when I become emotionally attached to a woman, like a girlfriend (or a woman I am pining over), that "search engine" in my mind turns off. I stop noticing the women around me as anything more than just people, but what would happen if that didnt turn off? You would be in a relationship but your mind would keep offering you potential candidates, and sooner or later your mind would offer you someone amazing, it would say "she is attractive, approachable, nerdy and lovely, are you going to let her slip through your fingers?" and you will resist because you are a decent human being, but if you were offered that temptation every day, all the time, how long until you break? How long until you see someone so special that you just have to? I think the difference between a prolific cheater and a non-cheater is that they keep looking, voluntarily or not, and so are always being tempted, and no one naturally is at odds with themselves so they will likely have build up a rationale around how its Ok, or just accepted it.

I think prolific cheaters will always be a danger, they will always be "on the prowl" whether they like it or not. They can resist if they have someone special enough, but given enough temptation, someone magical and special enough, can you really trust them not to? And in the same vein, those who are not cheaters will be very unlikely to stray, as they become almost blind to other possibilities when in a relationship, the idea of "someone else" is not something they even consider.

Its not that there are "good guys" and "bad guys" just those who stop looking, and those who cant.

 

[Dante]

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
This is an interesting saying, it seems to suggest many things.
1) That we can only appreciate someone when the leave. This is a common theme in fiction, the main character doesnt know how lucky he is to have his love interest until she leaves due to neglect or other problems, and he has to then win her back. This also kind of suggests that everyone is destined to be unhappy except in moments of extreme romantic gestures, which, though I will admit to not being entirely opposed to large romantic gestures, is sort of a sorry state of affairs which doesnt reflect my experience at all.
2) That we slowly delude ourselves over time. If we always seem to like someone more after they are gone, it can only be because we are slowly filtering out the bad memories and focusing on the good ones. This is probably true as any healthy individual would try to build a happy memory base to keep them going through harder days, so its always good to be able to look back with happiness, so when someone leaves, we will naturally begin making them part of our happy memories, that is until we see them again and remember why we let them leave in the first place.
3) The heart is blind. That we were always as fond as we ever were, but that we are so used to being fond of them and happy with them around that we take the feeling as a new baseline and thus take it for granted. This is similar to point 1 but different in that point 1 is about not being fond until you lose what you had and realise your mistake, and point 3 is about not realising how fond you are until you cant shower them with the affection you are accustomed to doing.
4) If you DONT grow fonder when someone is absent, they cant have been that great to begin with.

I thought of this because I have been absent, and I ended up wondering if anyone had grown fonder of me as a result, of course I THEN wondered what the perfect ratio of presence and absence and in what pattern is the best for producing maximum fondness in others, but there is no way to actually measure this without experimental testing.

 

[dandelions]

This is just a little random place for OVER THE TOP in depth thoughts about the nature of mankind, I have these occasionally and it felt wrong to just occasionally pepper them into random threads.
If anyone else has a similar level of overly-in-depth thought about the nature of people, feel free to message, or ask each other questions.


Programming the Mind
Your mind is programmable like a computer, but the code is stored in hardware, the structure and development of the neurons ARE the code, thats why it takes time or a huge life-altering event to change patterns of behaviour, because it takes time for new pathways to develop and old ones to atrophy, this is the basis of Neuroplasticity, and also the basis behind CBT, repetition of preferable thought patterns and behaviours and avoidance of damaging ones is essentially slowly programming yourself, thats why the longer you have been depressed the harder it is to undo.

My thought is that if we could speed up neuronal development by many times for a short period, we could far easier program ourselves into new behaviours, but if we were to speed up the process of old pathways atrophying in an attempt to wipe old ones it would mean losing skills, competencies and behaviours we don't actively use in the short "programming" period. Furthermore, if you develop any new pathway, it can strengthen or weaken, but any healthily developed pathway never seems to truly die, meaning as time goes on our minds get cluttered up will all sorts of "code" we either have no use for anymore or simply dont want, like a PC who's hard drive never gets cleaned out or defragmented. Its just interesting to me that unlike most things in life, our minds are a place where it is far easier to create than destroy.

I'm not sure I've seen this thread before Dante. I don't think I've made any replies yet.

I have been reprogramming my mind for about a year. I know I have a lifetime of negativity. the reprogramming I'm doing is positive affirmations. my intent is to recreate me as who I want to be rather than the dissociated person I've been all my life.

it happens that it is not an arbitrary choice. I believe that all my life I've suppressed the real person. I've identified that person and working on allowing this person to surface. I've been doing the affirmations for almost a year. but coincidentally someone here on SF - could even have been you - posted a thread about a doctor who was talking about affirmations (the specifics I do not recall) and suggesting that it's brainwashing. I agree. he suggested that this could be a good thing and not the stereotype of what might come up first in most people's minds.

my affirmations have been working for me though I know I have lots more to do. I suspect that such a thing could be done against a person's will for sinister reasons and could have similar and quicker results, but I know that my intent is good and in accord with who I believe I really am and my good personal values. my positive view on doing this - I think - makes it all the more a positive thing which will benefit me over time.

there was a time when I actually was doing affirmations that were designed to work against me. fortunately, I was not able to stick with that. I realized that I could fight my negative impulses with positive. I do have much lifetime negativity to overcome. I don't know the actual physiology of the brain but I do have a feeling that the old negative stuff never leaves. a person has to create new pathways that are positive and more dominant than the old.

it's lots of work that probably must never stop. at this point I am very certain it can be done. it definitely is reworking the structure of the brain. so yeah this is definitely reprogramming. I just think the old program remains. one also has to manage the clutter.

 

[Dante]

Self Fulfilling Prophecy
I have had the following conversation (More or less):

Them: Wow, I wish I was good at that.
Me: Why not try it?
Them: Because I suck at it
Me: But the only way anyone gets good at this is practice so until they try it, everyone sucks.
Them: I guess
Me: Then try it.
Them: But Im not good at it.

This reminds me somewhat of "hysterical strength". Our minds automatically stop us from pushing our bodies too far, it puts up barriers both consciously and subconsciously, so that we never actually use anywhere near our body's full power, because if we did push ourselves to the limit we could do a whole lot of damage to our bodies very quickly. Our bodies arent uniformly strong, and even if the strongest parts of your body can withstand their full power for a short time, it puts too much of a burden on the weaker parts, which will inevitably break under the strain. By staying comfortably away from our limits we dont get hurt, but if we were able to break past those limits we reach what we call "hysterical strength". Hysterical strength is usually only accessible in moments where our minds have gone off balance and survival has become a secondary objective, either from extreme provocation (mother protecting children) or mental illness, I once saw a video of 2 burley men entirely failing to overpower 1 scrawny guy with hysterical strength because he was mad and truly believed to the core of his being that what he was doing was more important than life itself.

Now, coming back to the topic, our minds also put limiters on our self-belief, what we are willing to try, so that we dont fail too often, as long as we stay comfortably within what we know we can do, we cant fail too badly and get hurt (emotionally), but this just limits us, it is far better to try things and find out what is possible, and inevitably you will reach a point where you will not be doing well and your mind will tell you to give up rather than continue humiliating yourself, but again, you need to ignore this and push on, and eventually you may end up with a finished result that you never expected was possible. I never thought anyone would like my poetry, or enjoy my writing, and I never expected I could draw, I didnt think I could make little wire models, and I abandoned a little robotics thought project I had going (virtual 3d model of robot down to how all parts would work including materials) because I thought I was just going to embarrass myself, but Im told by an engineer its pretty good (even though its just the arm so far). All these things are things I almost didnt do because I almost fell into the same trap the person mentioned in the conversation above did, avoiding failure by avoiding trying.

We put limiters on ourselves all of our lives, I do it, my friends do it, my family members do it, we give up on our dreams, dont pick up difficult hobbies, and we stop ourselves from trying anything really impressive because we are convinced we will fail so we hide behind the self fulfilling prophecy of "I'm not very good yet, so I wont even try to get good". Im only barely starting to notice my own hypocrisy in this regard and I have achieved more in the last 6 months after noticing it than I had in the 5 years before.

That being said, the limit exists for a reason, the pressure of trying too many new things at once, pushing through being rubbish until you get ok, then good, then great, but being rubbish at so many things at once, can be quite disheartening, so it has a purpose, but avoiding anything you arent already good at just means you will never grow or do something you can be proud of. Trying 1 new thing at a time should be enough to dissuade yourself of the idea that you simply "cant" without putting too much of a burden on yourself.

 

[Dante]

The Strength in Vulnerability

The title of this one is used in the lyrics of a song I was listening to today: "Something Else" by Gary Joules, a pleasant sounding track I heard first on the Scrubs TV series. The song itself is something of a People Watching post, in that it points out the shallowness of how people encourage each other to act and behave, like telling people not to lie rather than admitting that truth can be subjective, or telling people to deny rather than not to be ashamed. It could also be seen to be pointing out the fundamental defensive and superficial nature of people, dont see the deeper truth that means its ok, hide rather than face the truth and accept. Still, this is not the purpose of this post.

First lets look at the classical view of vulnerability, which is weakness, at someone elses (or everyone else's) mercy, the exact opposite of strength, however, lets look at strength instead. Strength can be seen as a measure of invincibility, to be unaffected by trials or challenges, or at least less effected than we perhaps should have been, to do this and BE this we need to make sure we are prepared for any situation, to walk in and dominate every situation, to be in control, but is that truly strength? Lets look at the so-called "Toxic Masculinity".

Imagine 2 men, 1 has trained his whole life to be as physically resilient as possible and is standing before the enemy sword in hand and clad in the thickest of armour, if it comes to a fight he will probably brush off any attacks whilst decimating his opponents, the 2nd man however is dressed in just jeans and a shirt, and faces the same enemy. If the 1st man were asked to face that foe without his training and armour he would simply refuse. So which of the two would you consider to be strong?

The classical male response to emotions is to put on a metaphorical suit of armour, to protect himself from all angles, to be able to brush off any and every harsh word or difficulty situation and never let any of it in, in short to be guarded and prepared, and this is held up as the ideal of strength, but ask that man to let his guard down for a moment and he wont be able to, he will refuse to lower his defences, but a man who will lower his guard, and walk with his heart held out before him, open to attack from all sides, having been attacked in the past and still willing to move forward unguarded, isnt that true strength? The willingness to take a hit head on without protecting yourself, knowing full well what it will do to you, that is a kind of resolve that few men have in any real quantity, and yet it is looked down upon. If a man were to cry in front of others, to show pain, to show vulnerability, he is immediately mocked as something lesser, when in he is braver than any of his peers.

Ultimately however, simply being vulnerable all the time is not exactly my idea of strength either, personally I believe strength comes from the choice. To have the capacity to raise your guard, to be safe and protected behind your metaphorical armour, but choose to lower it and risk a serious blow, to feel, to cry, to invest yourself in others, even if you know they may let you down, to admit fault or defeat, to ask for help from others, or to extend a hand of true friendship to a former enemy.

This brings up a whole new category of strength, the courage to be you. We all hide behind masks, partly to fit in, but also to hide who we really are. Vikings used to carry wooden shields painted in all sorts of bright patterns to obscure the true nature of their shields, or more specifically the weak spots between the wooden sections and the direction of the grain. By obscuring our true nature, we ensure no one knows were our weak spots are, no one can take a shot at the REAL us, just the mask, to bear all, to be yourself or follow conviction even when those around you disagree is an act of great strength, it may just be that the bloke skipping down the road in a dress with purple pigtails has far greater strength of character than the one covered in muscles hanging out with the lads, but then again, it is the ones who are hiding who have always been in the majority, and as we all know, the majority sets the standard.

So are we all going to continue to let the weak of heart define strength?

 

[Auri]

The Strength in Vulnerability

The title of this one is used in the lyrics of a song I was listening to today: "Something Else" by Gary Joules, a pleasant sounding track I heard first on the Scrubs TV series. The song itself is something of a People Watching post, in that it points out the shallowness of how people encourage each other to act and behave, like telling people not to lie rather than admitting that truth can be subjective, or telling people to deny rather than not to be ashamed. It could also be seen to be pointing out the fundamental defensive and superficial nature of people, dont see the deeper truth that means its ok, hide rather than face the truth and accept. Still, this is not the purpose of this post.

First lets look at the classical view of vulnerability, which is weakness, at someone elses (or everyone else's) mercy, the exact opposite of strength, however, lets look at strength instead. Strength can be seen as a measure of invincibility, to be unaffected by trials or challenges, or at least less effected than we perhaps should have been, to do this and BE this we need to make sure we are prepared for any situation, to walk in and dominate every situation, to be in control, but is that truly strength? Lets look at the so-called "Toxic Masculinity".

Imagine 2 men, 1 has trained his whole life to be as physically resilient as possible and is standing before the enemy sword in hand and clad in the thickest of armour, if it comes to a fight he will probably brush off any attacks whilst decimating his opponents, the 2nd man however is dressed in just jeans and a shirt, and faces the same enemy. If the 1st man were asked to face that foe without his training and armour he would simply refuse. So which of the two would you consider to be strong?

The classical male response to emotions is to put on a metaphorical suit of armour, to protect himself from all angles, to be able to brush off any and every harsh word or difficulty situation and never let any of it in, in short to be guarded and prepared, and this is held up as the ideal of strength, but ask that man to let his guard down for a moment and he wont be able to, he will refuse to lower his defences, but a man who will lower his guard, and walk with his heart held out before him, open to attack from all sides, having been attacked in the past and still willing to move forward unguarded, isnt that true strength? The willingness to take a hit head on without protecting yourself, knowing full well what it will do to you, that is a kind of resolve that few men have in any real quantity, and yet it is looked down upon. If a man were to cry in front of others, to show pain, to show vulnerability, he is immediately mocked as something lesser, when in he is braver than any of his peers.

Ultimately however, simply being vulnerable all the time is not exactly my idea of strength either, personally I believe strength comes from the choice. To have the capacity to raise your guard, to be safe and protected behind your metaphorical armour, but choose to lower it and risk a serious blow, to feel, to cry, to invest yourself in others, even if you know they may let you down, to admit fault or defeat, to ask for help from others, or to extend a hand of true friendship to a former enemy.

This brings up a whole new category of strength, the courage to be you. We all hide behind masks, partly to fit in, but also to hide who we really are. Vikings used to carry wooden shields painted in all sorts of bright patterns to obscure the true nature of their shields, or more specifically the weak spots between the wooden sections and the direction of the grain. By obscuring our true nature, we ensure no one knows were our weak spots are, no one can take a shot at the REAL us, just the mask, to bear all, to be yourself or follow conviction even when those around you disagree is an act of great strength, it may just be that the bloke skipping down the road in a dress with purple pigtails has far greater strength of character than the one covered in muscles hanging out with the lads, but then again, it is the ones who are hiding who have always been in the majority, and as we all know, the majority sets the standard.

So are we all going to continue to let the weak of heart define strength?

What a wonderful post! Everyone should read that. ^^

 

[Dante]

Spontaneous Kindness Generation

I have often wondered about kindness, people have such a capacity for kindness, almost as much as they have a capacity for cruelty, but it doesnt seem to be a taught behaviour, parents can try to bring up their children right and they can turn out to be monsters, and other parents can be selfish bastards and raise the kindest and most wonderful people you will ever meet. Its also not genetics or just inherent to the person as I have known people who have become kind or become cruel based on the events of their lives, so where is it that kindness comes from? These are answers that I can see.

1) Good Upbringing
I said that kindness doesnt seem to be a taught behaviour, but that is not 100% true, it CAN be, and I know 1 family who managed it, but it seems to require everyone that the child is exposed to also being kind people (at least in their formative years), both the parent and kids of this family are the kindest and most innocent people you will ever meet, but they are a blip in the statistics, not a trend, and certainly not something I believe can be repeated at will.

2) Pain
It is sad to say, but I believe pain is the main source of kindness, that and an appropriate evaluation of others' worth compared to your own, pain on its own is perhaps the most potent force of change in the human experience, but on its own it can cause all sorts of aberrant responses, usually an entitled sense of enmity to others, a "me or them" mentality you see in people way too often, but lets just focus on the pain for now.

Pain is the most basic pre-requisite for empathy, to empathise with others in pain you need to be able to feel what they feel, which means you need to know what it feels like yourself, so how are you supposed to empathise with someone who has lost someone dear to them if the worst pain and loss you have ever felt was when someone accidently deleted your playstation scores? The greater the suffering the greater your capacity to empathise with others, but as I said, this alone is not enough, you need to want to empathise with others, it is all too easy to turn a blind eye, so the thing you need on top is to value other people.

Valuing other people can come from multiple sources, it can be from bereavement, the knowledge that people do leave, that they do die, that at any moment someone can be taken from you or others, and that makes them precious, that means you cant take them for granted because you will never know when or how they will just suddenly disappear from your life never to be seen again, another, perhaps more familiar to anyone who reads this, is low self-esteem, if you value yourself lowly, then you must value others highly by comparison. Low self esteem also tends to come from pain, but usually a more sustained and antagonistic type of pain than bereavement.

If you value other people, then you will want to empathise with them, and if you have the capacity to really feel their pain, then you will naturally wish to help them avoid it. You will be generous, you will be selfless, you will do what you need to to help them avoid the thing that so scarred you in the past, and that makes you kind.

So there you have it, my formula for kindness, Pain + X, where X is either loss or low self-esteem, and this holds true for every kind person I know (except for that one family who fall into category 1, "Good Upbringing"). This conclusion also works in reverse, if you look around SF, there isnt one person here who hasnt felt great pain, or suffered a loss of someone close to them or of their self-esteem, so there isnt one person on SF who hasnt got all the elements necessary for great and selfless kindness. Sure we can be defensive at times, or reclusive, it comes with the territory, but this place in particular is filled with some of the kindest people you will have the good fortune to meet, and if you're reading this, you are likely no exception.

 

[Dante]

A Change in Format
It has been suggested that not many people would bother reading a thread called "People Watching" where every post is a daunting essay, but that at the same time, some of these are worth being read, so I will be changing the format a little bit. I will no longer be posting all of these as info-dumps in 1 forgotten thread, but instead each as their own thread and posting links to them here as a sort of glossary.

I will also attempt to spare you my horrendous blunderbuss punctuation by getting at least some of them proof read by my partner in crime.

 

[Dante]

The Composition of Precious Moments
A look at how the fleeting nature of things, and our lack of control over them is the very thing that makes them valuable.
https://www.suicideforum.com/community/threads/the-composition-of-precious-moments.171801/

 

[Dante]

How you find what you're not looking for.
A look at the paradoxes of how expectations are ultimately self-defeating and how looking for something makes it impossible to find.
https://www.suicideforum.com/community/threads/how-you-find-what-youre-not-looking-for.171868/

 

[Dante]

Every Pain Matters
My own personal realisation that calling anyone a "snowflake" just shows you don't understand them. That if something small hurts a lot, its not small.
https://www.suicideforum.com/community/threads/every-pain-matters.172680/

 

[Sunspots]

I hate the term snowflake.

 

[Aves]

I hate the term snowflake.

Me too, and I also think what’s wrong with being a snowflake anyway? They’re unique and beautiful so to use it as an insult is confusing to me.

 

[RageAgainstTheDyingLight]

I just discovered this thread this morning and am really looking forward to reading all the posts. I love it when a new ongoing thread appears. Will post more later.

 

[KM76710]

I have never had as much a problem with the word snowflake than how it is applied, but you ask someone to define it and you may get different answers. To me the word indicates more of a person who feels so entitled in life that anything they want should happen everything must go their way and then they have a meltdown when it doesn't happen. What I hate more is how it is mostly used to describe younger people and/or based on political leanings at least in this area while a snowflake can be any demographic and it is BS to just think in terms of age or ideology. I had a big laugh at a courtroom clip of a woman who fit snowflake description. She was going to run how things went in the courtroom, or so she believed. The judge was patient, very patient over a length of 5 minutes or so in trying to administer the oath which the woman just kept refusing. The judge then told the woman if she wanted thing her way to go to Burger King. The woman continued pushing her luck until the judge said 93 days in jail criminal contempt of court, take her away, and oddly the lady thought she had done nothing wrong and that was so unfair. LOL

 

[Dante]

I have never had as much a problem with the word snowflake than how it is applied, but you ask someone to define it and you may get different answers. To me the word indicates more of a person who feels so entitled in life that anything they want should happen everything must go their way and then they have a meltdown when it doesn't happen. What I hate more is how it is mostly used to describe younger people and/or based on political leanings at least in this area while a snowflake can be any demographic and it is BS to just think in terms of age or ideology. I had a big laugh at a courtroom clip of a woman who fit snowflake description. She was going to run how things went in the courtroom, or so she believed. The judge was patient, very patient over a length of 5 minutes or so in trying to administer the oath which the woman just kept refusing. The judge then told the woman if she wanted thing her way to go to Burger King. The woman continued pushing her luck until the judge said 93 days in jail criminal contempt of court, take her away, and oddly the lady thought she had done nothing wrong and that was so unfair. LOL

In a way this kind of "snowflake" is just another form of pain, they are so maladapted to the world at large due to bad upbringing and entitlement that they cannot function in the world, it is like a developmental disability, except one of nurture rather than nature. Because they were ill-prepared to process their surroundings as a human adult they are now unable to adapt and see the whole world as hostile and attacking. Its sad and it too is a form of pain, a strong sense of injustice that no one else shares, because their very idea of justice is so warped they cant understand it anymore.

Though I still agree with the 93 days, she will never learn otherwise, and thus will never get better.