Posts tagged with "vent"

The Modern Grushnitsky

Let’s see…what’s on the hate plate today?

I hate it when peo­ple, sequa­cious, super­fi­cial, pre­ten­tious, igno­rant peo­ple express false emo­tions. I hate it when peo­ple feign the extent to which their emo­tions take over them, for what­ev­er rea­son. This is all ESPECIALLY true when the per­son hap­pens to be my age or old­er.

I sup­pose I’m over­sen­si­tive to things like this. I see fake emo­tions almost as a mock­ery of any true ones that I have. I hold my emo­tions as an impor­tant part of my life, and try to expe­ri­ence each one with grav­i­ty and appre­cia­tive­ness. It’s rare that I can be affect­ed by things so much that my emo­tions take over me, so I don’t take hap­pi­ness or sad­ness light­ly, espe­cial­ly when some­one else pre­tends to expe­ri­ence them. I’ve lived too long as an unfeel­ing being, as some­one who cared for noth­ing, to have some idiot pre­tend to appre­ci­ate what has become an essen­tial part of my life.

Some peo­ple nev­er grow up.

Respect Through Self-Understanding

I real­ized a lit­tle while ago that I respect self-under­stand­ing much more than self-con­fi­dence. It’s such a pity, because many peo­ple I know have much more of the lat­ter than the for­mer. I use the words self-under­stand­ing in an almost con­tra­dic­to­ry man­ner, though one can be both. I see it as an under­stand­ing of one’s faults and one’s lim­its. I use these words in this man­ner because I find that one whom is blind to one’s faults is some­one who has lit­tle or no self-under­stand­ing.

When some­one has lit­tle self-under­stand­ing, it almost angers me. The igno­rance involved is a very dif­fi­cult thing for me to com­pre­hend. If some­one refus­es to admit to his or her faults, or per­haps is aware of them but refus­es to change them, then I see them as being very child­ish. And child­ish­ness, of course, is some­thing that both­ers me great­ly.

I usu­al­ly find that an open-mind­ed per­son is very aware of his or her faults. Perhaps I sim­ply asso­ciate a lack of open-mind­ed­ness with self-igno­rance, though I haven’t seen much evi­dence to the con­trary.

My expe­ri­ence with this idi­ot­ic char­ac­ter­is­tic has made me bit­ter. I seem to have lost much faith in the human race, some­thing that I real­ized even longer before this. It has left me alone, with few peo­ple I can tru­ly feel com­fort­able with, or respect.

Maybe it’s bet­ter this way.

STFU

I found out about a book called Soul Mountain by a man named Gao Xingjian. I read the sum­ma­ry, and found out that it had won a Nobel prize for lit­er­a­ture in 2000. I was very inter­est­ed. Apparently it’s an œuvre in which he explains many facets of his life, which I imag­ine has much to do with per­se­cu­tion in China. I would very much like to read it, but I still have Moby Dick to fin­ish, and the Moonstone to start. I’d also like to get through The Glass Bead Game, which is also a Nobel lau­re­ate, but a book I once found too dense in vocab­u­lary to com­pre­hend. Many of the reviews I’ve found about the Glass Bead Game say that it’s a book which has changed peo­ples lives, and from what I can tell, it’s a book which not many can sort through (i.e. pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als can’t use it as a phan­tom sym­bol of their supe­ri­or knowl­edge).

Speaking of intel­lec­tu­al poseurs, I was in con­tact with one just the oth­er day, though on friend­ly terms. She did­n’t say any­thing that made me think of intel­lec­tu­al super­fi­cial­i­ty, but as I had­n’t spo­ken to her in a while, and her being one of the few that I know, I was remind­ed of this strange com­plex. I feel com­pelled to write about it.

I’m not quite sure what it is about this aspect of a per­son that makes me go mad with frus­tra­tion. Perhaps it’s the fact that they don’t tru­ly under­stand things which I may find beau­ti­ful. All I can think is, “You’re miss­ing the mes­sage!”, or “Who did you get that opin­ion from?”.

Of course, I under­stand that peo­ple may see beau­ty in dif­fer­ent ways, and inter­pret an artists mes­sage quite dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­er peo­ple. I sup­pose that it’s not in their opin­ion that I see shal­low­ness, it’s how they come to that opin­ion.

Take American Beauty, for exam­ple. The pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­als that I know enjoy that movie because they find the sym­bol of the ros­es to be so deep. The think that the image of the plas­tic bag is so mean­ing­ful. They don’t real­ize that all of the sym­bols, all of the imagery is just hand­ed to them. All they see is a char­ac­ter who thinks intel­lec­tu­al­ly in the film and they think, “Wow. This movie is so deep”.

I guess it’s bet­ter than an igno­rant per­son say­ing, “I did­n’t like Magnolia, it was try­ing to be all weird and stuff”. At least the poseurs are try­ing to be smart. Of course, I even know com­plete idiots who say that they enjoyed American Beauty because it “made them think”.

I sim­ply wish that a pseu­do-intel­lec­tu­al would try to actu­al­ly com­pre­hend some­thing, instead of using pop­u­lar opin­ion, or believ­ing that some­thing is mean­ing­ful sim­ply because there is a mean­ing­ful ele­ment. Or that they would have no opin­ion on a piece of art they don’t under­stand, instead of dis­lik­ing it for the fact.

Of course, I would­n’t appre­ci­ate the tru­ly intel­lec­tu­al peo­ple I know with­out them.

I’m just not sure if it’s worth it any­more.

Black Nails

I don’t real­ly know what to say. I’m just gen­er­al­ly feel­ing shit­ty. I can’t con­cen­trate on my home­work, I’m slack­ing off at work, and I have lots to do. I did­n’t know I had an assign­ment due today, so I hand­ed in some rough work of about a quar­ter of the assign­ment. I actu­al­ly had the whole thing done, but I did­n’t bring it to class. Then I have a mid-term tomor­row, for which I’ve only stud­ied about an hour, worth 30% of my final mark. I just can’t seem to con­cen­trate on any­thing. So I paint­ed my nails black today.

People some­times ask me why I do it. Whenever I tell them, they nev­er under­stand, which would­n’t both­er me so much, if they would actu­al­ly try to under­stand. But peo­ple just judge, and nev­er ques­tion. Fuck.

Ignorance, Humility, And The Need To Be Understood

This is such a grand top­ic for me that I don’t believe I will be able to go into suf­fi­cient depth today, but I will try.

Ignorance is some­thing that pains me. When some­one is igno­rant, I can usu­al­ly deal with it. After all, what can one expect of the world? However, when some­one tries to push their igno­rance on me, not only by patron­iz­ing me, but by being so zeal­ous in their beliefs as to not accept any­thing else, then it trou­bles me. Well, first it enrages me, but when that sub­sides, I am trou­bled.

I always ask myself, “How can you be so igno­rant? How can you under­stand noth­ing, and yet be so firm­ly plant­ed in your beliefs? How is it that oth­er­wise, you’re a lik­able per­son?”.

Something that comes into play is my need to be hum­ble. Humility is some­thing that is very impor­tant to me. I believe in only stat­ing my opin­ions when they’re asked of me. That’s prob­a­bly because it’s very rarely that peo­ple accept my opin­ions, and usu­al­ly I’ll see it as wast­ed time when I try to explain some­thing, and some­one will refuse to see it.

My tita­ni­um ring serves as a reminder. Whenever I feel the urge to speak out, I’ll sub­con­scious­ly adjust it on my fin­ger, and remem­ber that speak­ing out is not a good thing. It’s a very sim­ple ring, with­out any designs or pat­terns, except for a pale gold band in the mid­dle. It cost me a cur­rent months salary, due to the dif­fi­cul­ty in forg­ing tita­ni­um in an oxy­gen free envi­ron­ment, but seems as sim­ple as a mod­est band. A sym­bol in itself.

When some­one just aston­ish­es me with their stu­pid­i­ty, the need to speak can be very over­whelm­ing. I find that I can con­trol it now though, that my patience has increased. It would be great if peo­ple could under­stand me. There are only a few peo­ple who tru­ly do. It would make my urge to speak sub­side. I believe this urge stems from a cog­ni­tive need to be under­stood.

Instead, I have to deal with igno­rance, peo­ple not accept­ing any­thing past their expe­ri­ences or past their own fal­li­bil­i­ty. It’s some­thing that once cost me a sta­ble rela­tion­ship.

But it was worth it.