Posts tagged with "social commentary"

Un- Median 2 a

I’ve always been a per­son who, rather unfor­giv­ing­ly, either loves or hates some­thing. It does­n’t mat­ter what, it can be a movie, a per­son, a hair­cut, any­thing. There is rarely an in-between for me.

All the things I dis­like just make me appre­ci­ate the things I like more. The more I dis­like some­thing, the bet­ter the appre­ci­a­tion.

I once thought that this was a bad qual­i­ty, but now I actu­al­ly pre­fer to be this way. I know so many peo­ple who either enjoy every­thing, or can nev­er be pleased by any­thing. Every time I meet one of these peo­ple and ask for their opin­ion on some­thing, I can nev­er trust it.

It ends up being that I only trust the opin­ions of peo­ple who love and hate like me, Trolley for exam­ple. This may be the only bad part. I hate to think that I may be becom­ing more closed-mind­ed by exclu­sive­ly lis­ten­ing to peo­ple sim­i­lar to me. The only way that I can try to keep an open mind is by under­stand­ing that every­one has their own opin­ions, no mat­ter how much I do or do not respect the per­son them­selves. No one is ever right or wrong.

And it does­n’t even mat­ter if they agree with me.

My Congeniality Is Not Benevolence

I’ll always try to give every­one a fair chance when I first meet them. I assume the “gener­ic”, kind per­son­al­i­ty, which is pri­mar­i­ly used to make the per­son com­fort­able and open, enough to feel them out.

Unfortunately, some peo­ple mis­take this as friend­li­ness, when I real­ly could­n’t give a shit about them. All I’m try­ing to do is find out more about their per­son­al­i­ties and their lives because that’s what I’m always inter­est­ed in. It’s usu­al­ly the peo­ple who are social­ly dis­ad­van­taged who mis­in­ter­pret this, and believe that I’m inter­est­ed in friend­ship.

Usually when I sense some­thing I don’t like about some­one (which hap­pens more often than not) I’ll dis­tance myself from them and turn cold. This gen­er­al­ly means I have no fur­ther inter­est in asso­ci­at­ing with them. I’ll nev­er ini­ti­ate con­ver­sa­tion with them, nev­er state my opin­ion around them, nev­er show emo­tion to them. Most can sense this and step back, pos­si­bly sub­con­scious­ly, and eas­i­ly because most haven’t invest­ed any­thing in the rela­tion­ship.

However, some­times some­one won’t get the idea and cling to the ini­tial mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion. In these cas­es, I’m left with some­one who thinks I’m his or her friend. They’ll open up, tell me things, put their trust in me, when I don’t care (when I sense some­thing I dis­like, I lose all inter­est).

I’ve always won­dered if it’s just me being an ass­hole by wear­ing a kind per­son­al­i­ty sim­ply to sat­is­fy my curios­i­ty, or whether it’s the fault of oth­ers for mis­in­ter­pret­ing my expres­sions and actions. In the past I’ve always blamed myself and felt bad when some­one finds out that I’m not their friend, but I’m begin­ning to blame oth­ers. I’ve run into a few social­ly retard­ed peo­ple who just don’t under­stand any­thing about the dynam­ic set of social rules sur­round­ing them. I know now in some cas­es that it’s not my fault.

But this fact does­n’t alle­vi­ate the sit­u­a­tions.

No Wonder, Iago

Sometimes, some­one does some­thing…in char­ac­ter…and this sin­gle act can change my view of them. It’s as if this one thing is the last piece in the puz­zle, and once this hap­pens I fig­ure some­one out com­plete­ly. It’s sad that peo­ple can be so com­pli­cat­ed, and then sud­den­ly so one-dimen­sion­al. I’m not some sort of social genius by any means, but it sur­pris­es me how many times I end up feel­ing as if I know some­one through and through. It’s almost like being able to under­stand the mind of a child.

I think part of the rea­son is because of how many dif­fer­ent peo­ple I’ve been. I see parts of myself in these peo­ple, as so many types of per­son­al­i­ties I’ve had before. Once this hap­pens, a sort of con­nec­tion in my mind is made, and it’s almost as if I under­stand every­thing about them; their motives, their log­ic, their actions. Generally this means that I dis­like the per­son, since I dis­like so many of my past ideas and mind­sets.

I always won­der what it takes for some­one to change so dras­ti­cal­ly to me. With what sin­gle moment do I begin to under­stand some­one? I know that not every­one can be fig­ured out, only those who are relat­ed to what I used to be (which is only a tiny frac­tion of the peo­ple I meet). And yet, fair­ly often, some­one I know will end up being pre­dictable, bor­ing, and frus­trat­ing.

These are the peo­ple I usu­al­ly feel most com­fort­able around, since I know how to talk to them, their humour, what they want to hear, even how they want oth­er peo­ple to act. They’re also the peo­ple I gen­er­al­ly want to hang around the least. They remind me of how igno­rant a per­son I used to be, and offer no inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion (because I usu­al­ly already know every­thing they have say).

There are many more peo­ple I can’t fig­ure out, both ones I like and dis­like. I don’t pro­fess to be smart enough to under­stand any­one, and I cer­tain­ly don’t think that being able to do this makes me a more intel­li­gent per­son. It’s just odd to sud­den­ly come to such under­stand­ings some­times. I instant­ly lose respect for the per­son, and wish I had­n’t got­ten to this point.

In these cas­es it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter to be igno­rant.

I Think She's Cute

I find that I’ve become more attract­ed to uncon­ven­tion­al beau­ty late­ly. Well, that’s not to say that my past propen­si­ties have been com­plete­ly tra­di­tion­al. Aaron thinks that my whole speech imped­i­ment thing is just me try­ing to be a unique per­son. I’m not real­ly insult­ed by this (even though I’d nor­mal­ly be, espe­cial­ly since I have a great respect for Aaron’s opin­ions) sim­ply because I think that if he had any…inter­est­ing tastes, he’d under­stand.

I once had a dis­cus­sion with Trolley about the fact that almost any type of fetish made sense to me — hair, loli­con, necrophil­ia, rape, scat­ol­ogy, plucked chick­ens — except for foot fetish­es. I mean, most of these all have very deep-root­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. Sex with ani­mals, for exam­ple, may turn some­one on due to feel­ings of dom­i­nance over an ani­mal, or a belief that they are mak­ing some­thing feel bliss­ful plea­sure (per­haps as a com­pen­sa­tion for inse­cu­ri­ty in being able to plea­sure some­one). Most any sort of fan­ta­sy can be rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­ly jus­ti­fied.

Aaron and I were even able to find a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for bad teeth fetish­es, which is an inter­est­ing idea since I know so many peo­ple who can’t stand crooked teeth. He knows peo­ple who only date oth­ers who are “less attrac­tive” than them, and we take this as a sign that these peo­ple may be inse­cure about their looks, and are turned on when viewed as the more attrac­tive per­son in the cou­ple. Of course, this can be relat­ed to any sort of “flaw” that may be found in some­one.

I once knew a girl who was turned on by guys using cal­cu­la­tors, and I can eas­i­ly relate this to my “girls wear­ing glass­es” pro­cliv­i­ty, inso­far as being extreme­ly attract­ed to intel­li­gence, both being a sort of phys­i­cal (albeit pos­si­bly soci­etal) man­i­fes­ta­tion of an intan­gi­ble thing.

Feet, how­ev­er, I can only jus­ti­fy when relat­ed to the trib­al tra­di­tion of feet-fore­head touch­ing. Subordination is rep­re­sent­ed in the younger peo­ple touch­ing the feet of the elders with their fore­heads. Perhaps some­one may be attract­ed to the fact that they are brought to the lev­el of the toe suck­ing, sim­i­lar to the idea of dom­i­nance. It’s hard for me to even see foot fetish­es on a basic phys­i­cal lev­el, which is eas­i­ly done for breasts or waists, etc. unless one con­sid­ers the impact of soci­ety on what peo­ple find attrac­tive.

I can just see all the hits I’m going to get from inter­est­ing search strings now.

Most of my propen­si­ties can be eas­i­ly explained, although I get var­i­ous odd reac­tions when peo­ple find out, and most are either laugh­ing too hard or too weird­ed out to allow an expla­na­tion. Speech imped­i­ments are some­thing I just can’t seem to jus­ti­fy, although such an inef­fa­ble thing has allowed me to more eas­i­ly accept the quirks of oth­er peo­ples tastes.

So there’s this girl who works at Folio and she wears glass­es and turtle­necks and is there when­ev­er I buy some­thing and I doubt oth­er guys would find her as attrac­tive as I do.

The Experience of the First Classification

People in rela­tion­ships can be divid­ed into two cat­e­gories; those who love the self and those who love the oth­er. Every rela­tion­ship is dif­fer­ent, not just in the sense of a dif­fer­ent pair of peo­ple, but also in the idea of the same per­son with a dif­fer­ent girl­friend or boyfriend. Although some­one may be of a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry through one rela­tion­ship, they may fall into the oth­er cat­e­go­ry in anoth­er. Even cross­ing cat­e­gories through the same rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble, depend­ing on the dynam­ic of a cou­ple.

The lovers of the self care about the oth­er per­son, but only inso­faras their own vest­ed inter­ests are con­cerned. When the desire of this type of lover begins to out­grow what the rela­tion­ship can offer, the bond weak­ens and often breaks. The main con­cern of this type is what they are get­ting out of the rela­tion­ship.

The lovers of the oth­er are lovers in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. These are the peo­ple with an hon­est love, the ones who care most about whether or not the oth­er per­son is hap­py. This type of lover is the one least will­ing to break a rela­tion­ship, the one who is more will­ing to sac­ri­fice or com­pro­mise.

Relationships are based on match­ings of these two types. A rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the self will last as long as there is no con­flict involved. Once a dis­agree­ment is reached, nei­ther par­ty cares enough to make the rela­tion­ship work. On the oth­er hand, a rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the oth­er is the ide­al match, and gen­er­al­ly the longest last­ing. Both peo­ple are com­mit­ted and will­ing to work out any prob­lems that may arise. Usually, the only break in the rela­tion­ship may be from base con­flicts (dis­agree­ment on issues which are too basic to work out or com­pro­mise about, such as adop­tion).

The most com­mon type of match, how­ev­er, is with one lover of the self and one lover of the oth­er. At the end of such a rela­tion­ship one is left unaf­fect­ed while the oth­er is bro­ken-heart­ed, and the end of such a thing, in my expe­ri­ence, is inevitable. In cas­es like this, I’ve found myself on both sides of the coin.

And regret­ting noth­ing of either.