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Deviation Actions
1) Why is it taken as a default that everyone is loved by their family?
First of all, maybe they aren't. There ARE families out there with internal conflict and disagreements going on. Some people out there simply aren't best friends with their parents, siblings, or relatives. And it's okay. It happens. Nobody can actually choose where to be born, after all. (This is why I like to call my close friends "chosen family", by the way. The feelings people expect to be present within a family are much more present with them than with my own blood. Dunno how and why this happened, but it did, and denying it ain't gonna help a thing.)
And secondly, especially if we're talking about a person of legal age - why does it even matter if they are loved or not? They are adults. They make their own decisions. And to me, trying to order someone around, or acting like you knew them better than themselves, family or not, is NOT a sign of love anyhow. It's a sign of insecurity and/or selfishness. Love is accepting, not controlling.
Finally, maybe love is not enough. It can't buy or replace some of the things a person might need. Such as a given skill, or food, or a plane ticket, or a new leg if you lost one. Love is a nice thing...but not the final answer or solution to absolutely everything. And there is nothing wrong with that, either. That's just how things work.
2) Why is it taken as a default that it's "weakness" to not be a part of something you don't want to be a part of?
Social convention is a powerful thing. Most people have the urge to conform to it. And if your urge to conform to it is somewhat less prominent than theirs, or something else (a sense of fairness, or maybe even simple logic) suppresses it in a given situation, they assume that you are just too shy, or sick. In other words, that you aren't being yourself.
In some cases, they are right. But in others, they are completely wrong. What if being yourself, following your dreams, fulfilling your desires MEANS you don't want to be a part of their game? It's like how some people can't handle rejection. I have met this type. Some people (most often men, but really, it could be anyone) literally believe that if you reject their sexual advances, you must a) hate their gender, or them personally, b) have suffered a trauma in the past that makes you afraid of sex, and c) you are unhappy with yourself. Again, that assumption MAY be true in certain cases. But what if it's not?
A lot of times, I need to be reminded that other people aren't like me, and society does a hell of a job in reminding me of that in the most irksome and/or painful ways possible. But it seems that other people need this reminder as well, and they don't get it (or not so often), because they are the majority. The result is assumptions like the one I just described - and to assume only makes an ASS (or at least an angry person) out of U and ME!
3) Why is everyone expected to fear death?
I get it - evolution shaped human emotions in a way that a fear of death is likely to develop once you grok the concept of dying. It can be overcome, though. And in any case - why reinforce it? Why reinforce ANY fear, for that matter? And why turn it into collective denial? Seriously, why does everyone act like it either won't happen (which is plainly idiotic), or that it's "something in the far future" (which might be true, but it's not nearly as universal as they think)? And to gauge just how distant said future is, most people simply use the number of years you have already lived. Granted, statistically, on average, that is right. On average. NOT universally. (Duh!)
Related to this is the equally annoying assumption that people have no choice in the matter. "You never know" when it happens, how it happens. And you haven't even the slightest possibility of influencing that, to make decisions about it. Right? HELL NO. A long while ago, a good buddy of mine (
) made this poster to get the point across, and I still can't put it into better words than this:
Pretty obvious, once you get the hang of it, right?
First of all, maybe they aren't. There ARE families out there with internal conflict and disagreements going on. Some people out there simply aren't best friends with their parents, siblings, or relatives. And it's okay. It happens. Nobody can actually choose where to be born, after all. (This is why I like to call my close friends "chosen family", by the way. The feelings people expect to be present within a family are much more present with them than with my own blood. Dunno how and why this happened, but it did, and denying it ain't gonna help a thing.)
And secondly, especially if we're talking about a person of legal age - why does it even matter if they are loved or not? They are adults. They make their own decisions. And to me, trying to order someone around, or acting like you knew them better than themselves, family or not, is NOT a sign of love anyhow. It's a sign of insecurity and/or selfishness. Love is accepting, not controlling.
Finally, maybe love is not enough. It can't buy or replace some of the things a person might need. Such as a given skill, or food, or a plane ticket, or a new leg if you lost one. Love is a nice thing...but not the final answer or solution to absolutely everything. And there is nothing wrong with that, either. That's just how things work.
2) Why is it taken as a default that it's "weakness" to not be a part of something you don't want to be a part of?
Social convention is a powerful thing. Most people have the urge to conform to it. And if your urge to conform to it is somewhat less prominent than theirs, or something else (a sense of fairness, or maybe even simple logic) suppresses it in a given situation, they assume that you are just too shy, or sick. In other words, that you aren't being yourself.
In some cases, they are right. But in others, they are completely wrong. What if being yourself, following your dreams, fulfilling your desires MEANS you don't want to be a part of their game? It's like how some people can't handle rejection. I have met this type. Some people (most often men, but really, it could be anyone) literally believe that if you reject their sexual advances, you must a) hate their gender, or them personally, b) have suffered a trauma in the past that makes you afraid of sex, and c) you are unhappy with yourself. Again, that assumption MAY be true in certain cases. But what if it's not?
A lot of times, I need to be reminded that other people aren't like me, and society does a hell of a job in reminding me of that in the most irksome and/or painful ways possible. But it seems that other people need this reminder as well, and they don't get it (or not so often), because they are the majority. The result is assumptions like the one I just described - and to assume only makes an ASS (or at least an angry person) out of U and ME!
3) Why is everyone expected to fear death?
I get it - evolution shaped human emotions in a way that a fear of death is likely to develop once you grok the concept of dying. It can be overcome, though. And in any case - why reinforce it? Why reinforce ANY fear, for that matter? And why turn it into collective denial? Seriously, why does everyone act like it either won't happen (which is plainly idiotic), or that it's "something in the far future" (which might be true, but it's not nearly as universal as they think)? And to gauge just how distant said future is, most people simply use the number of years you have already lived. Granted, statistically, on average, that is right. On average. NOT universally. (Duh!)
Related to this is the equally annoying assumption that people have no choice in the matter. "You never know" when it happens, how it happens. And you haven't even the slightest possibility of influencing that, to make decisions about it. Right? HELL NO. A long while ago, a good buddy of mine (
) made this poster to get the point across, and I still can't put it into better words than this:Pretty obvious, once you get the hang of it, right?
Just some thoughts on the mental health scam
Here's an email I sent as part of an argument. *** No, I'm not letting this go. Let's be real, people don't do or feel things for no reason. What most likely happens is one of these: - "I'm not telling you the reason because I'd be punished for it or at least heavily embarrassed": this is especially true for people who are still owned by their parents (legally and/or financially). In certain households or schools, coming out is not safe; silence is safer, even if it might lead to the adults thinking that you're crazy. Confessing to something illegal is not safe, therefore you protect yourself by not doing it. (Miranda anyone?) This also applies to protecting a friend, and potentially enduring the consequences on their behalf. - "I told you the reason and you denied it": my own example would be cutting - apparently "because it feels nice and costs nothing, and also helps me remember numbers and dates" wasn't a good enough reason for the people in charge, and therefore the conclusion was that "it must be an illness because I don't understand it". (In philosophy this is called an argument from ignorance.) - "I know something you don't, but can't access convincing evidence (yet)": this could apply to "hearing voices" or "seeing things", i.e. sensory information/experience that is not accessible to the interrogator for whatever reason (for example, the subject having unusually acute senses or just being "at the wrong place in the wrong time"). (It's a damn shame this book is not available in English. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2617221-le-syndrome-copernic - I have read it in Hungarian and it changed my mind big time on the potential veracity of "hallucinations".) But this could also apply to deduction/expertise; for example, due to my extensive knowledge about 20th century history and the sometimes terribly dark interrelationships between ideology and science, also law enforcement and public health (combined with my observation that the common, optimistic belief of the '90s that "history is linear, everything gets better the further ahead we go" is absolutely false), I tend to recognize patterns and similarities in policies and events before these become obvious to the general public. (This is not a bragging point; it's more like a curse. "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it, while those who do study history are doomed to watch helplessly as it's being repeated.") And the simplest one, also common in younger people: - "I know my reasons, but don't have the vocabulary yet to explain them." This can be seriously frustrating and it's also probably the reason why poetry and art exists (a lot of teens try their hands at these, even if they abandon it later). Think about how many new words around gender and sexuality were coined in the past 3 decades. Or new technology words. All words are made up by people, and before there is a word for something, it's hard to pin that something down and thus communication about it gets confusing. And of course, when people (especially people with authority) get confused about something, they scramble desperately to resolve the confusion by putting the thing in a box (such as a diagnosis). Even if that box is wrong. "For no reason" is intellectual laziness. Throwing pills (or electric torture, or any other form of punishment and coercion) at someone instead of finding out where there might be an incompatibility between them and their environment* is laziness combined with lack of empathy. If there's "no reason", find out the damn reason. Or just do nothing, let the person figure it out on their own - like I wrote to you before, the micromanagement and monitoring that comes with an accusation of mental health issues can in itself induce immense stress and dread. *: Yes, I still think that sadness, rather than being an innate "chemical imbalance", is a sign of being in the wrong environment. (If a flower withers, do you blame it or give it more/less sunlight and water according to its needs?) Why do I think this? Because when my environment changed, the despair and exhaustion went away with it. And before anyone comes at me with "but I tried that and it didn't work" - the "bad environment" can also include existence itself. Stop treating that as if it wasn't an option.
life be like
1. Once you get over the sense of impending doom, the best way to find your way in a city is to get lost. I mean, that sense of impending doom is gonna be there anyway, because not knowing where you are has an uncanny similarity with being late, but if you are able to ignore it, there is no end to the wonders and treasures you may find. Of course, this doesn't apply if you actually have to find something in time - that's where the combination of crying in front of locals and, where applicable, hooking up to free wifi comes in. (One of the advantages of looking female is that the crying evokes sympathy, rather than disgust or alarm. Most of the time. I would recommend using it sparingly, but that also depends on how close the appointment is in time, and thus the intensity of the panic.) Given no time constraint, getting lost is actually not that bad. Most cities have a somewhat recognizable center, which can be used as a recalibration point: just get on some kind of public
Take on race relations
Legal aliens and love. What is love? "To love is to value", but what does THAT mean? She also said, "People are unhappy because they are unappreciated, not because they don't receive enough alms." I got told I have debts to pay back for crimes someone else committed, and that can't have ancestal wisdom because my kind only can destroy. But my ancestral wisdom is staring at me right there in the fridge - a delicious scurvy and hangover cure called sauerkraut. Everyone is an alien somewhere. I learned how to nixtamalize, and I appreciate you putting it online to teach me. I can teach you this pickled stuff. Trade can be love.
I know poetry ain't your thing, but...
Don't tell me it's wrong to want love in a shape that my core recognizes - not the shape of the iron reins of parental 'love', nor the vague shapelessness of adolescent cravings, nor the well-choreographed dance of puppets on a narcissistic string; no, something simpler, older, and so real that the media can't show it uncensored. I have braided this into my stories before - these pieces of me that I cast into the noise hoping to hear their echoes return to me like a dove with an olive twig. Usually the twigs I get back are false promises, but they are at least a pretty green - for a while. Don't tell me it's wrong to want something so pure and simple as a warm hug and a scalding bullet, just because you're afraid to admit that you want it too. If nothing else, let's pretend you don't hate me as much as every other human does. At least try to act like you accept me as a more transparent reflection of yourself. I know you're only coming back out of an aged loneliness and a morbid
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Oh my god, yes.