Freedomain Radio

I deal with my emotions better than most people, I think.  But I do suffer from a lot of 'scar tissue' as Stef has called I wanted to kind of put my thoughts out here because I really need to deal with a lot of this before I get any older.  Because I certainly want to spend as little time as possible not understanding myself.  I ask a lot about the psychology of other people and now I'm wanting some explanations of my own.  In no particular order here are some problems, perhaps symptoms, that I notice in my own behaviour.  I dislike some of them but find it difficult to stop, perhaps because I don't know exactly why I'm doing it.  For me treating dealing with logical fallacies is easy, and I have no problem converting when I have made an honest error of thought.  But much of my problems are motivational and more difficult for me to work out, at least with my present understanding of psychology.  I may post some more later.  I don't want anyone to be afraid of hurting my feelings or really getting into the guts of it, I'm okay with answering questions.  I want an outside source for questioning and ideas, too, because I can usually rationalize my behaviour better than most people.  The fact that so much of it has to do with questions of value and motivation, rather than objective relationships and conceptual facts, means that my usual scrutiny is not only mired in fog but also easy for me to turn into a tool for false self-justification.  I know I have a false-self, and I really do want my internal ego and core desires to rule instead of stupid reactions that fail to get me what I really want.

1. Why do I argue with people who aren't worth arguing with and why does it bother me so much when they make blatantly wrong statements, especially accusatively?  In other words, why is it that I would bother arguing with someone who is totally impolite and who doesn't have anything worth saying.  My objective judgement would be that's pointless, I'm not required to inform anybody much less pricks.  Is it because asking questions and the fact that I never fell in with 'the party line' exposed me to a lot of unjustified hostility?  If so, why I am I still feeding into it?

2. I believe a lot of my views are justified with certainty.  I think that the errors that exist are largely honest, and I am certainly open to their modification.  I am capable of intellectually justifying a lot of views I will use in arguments.  So why do I often feel really lazy about actually making these arguments to people?  A feeling that it would be a waste?  A frustration with ignorance?  I know I have come off as condescending or arrogant to some people from the following scenario: 1. I posit a statement, summarize argument or make a link; 2. They make a counterargument; 3. I see immediate flaws in the counter-argument, flaws which indicate they don't even understand the bones of the subject.  Anarchists certainly know what I'm talking about in these arguments; 4. I fail to post or fully articulate a counter-argument despite knowledge that this would best serve my purpose and also how I would like people to act.  I make statements which I hold to be justified, but by failing to justify them come off to someone even neutral to my claim as being hostile or condescending.  I want to stress that I really don't 'feel superior' to people because I have some ideas on economics (for example), but I feel irritated with them because they hold opinions which they ought to know they can't justify.  I feel helpless because their very ignorance in this area means a 10 part lecture that they might not comprehend or care about (or misunderstand).

There are more, but these two are probably the most frequent that come up, and since I really like talking to people worth talking to I need to figure out how to work out both these problems so that I can avoid wasting my time as well as avoid alienating people who might be somewhat productive to communicate with.  I need to get rid of it so I can stop feeling pangs of regret for doing something I knew was lazy or very open to misunderstanding.  I need to know that I'm not scaring off some fantastic guy who'd appreciate me and how I work because I come off as hypocritical or mean.

There is no other message board in the world where I estimate the intellectual understanding of reality (on an average) highly enough to hope for good advice coming from a broad perspective.  The opinions and habits of the other would leave subject to non-productive scorn.  I have learned not to be hurt by that directly, but it does indirect harm by promoting the very sorts of issues I have been discussing here.  I have too much empathy and joy to either be locked up away from people or to be squandering on those who will try to bring me down for daring to feel it.

 hey vichy.    Just from your posts i've read i think your probably one of the smartest people I've encountered on the internet.  Reading your posts seriously make me feel like i'm reading some incredibly deliberated, well done, well composited college thesis or something.  You seem incredibly talented and capable so any problems which you encounter are probably in no way self inflicted but but by products of the past somehow.  Anyway i'll try to give my opinion

For your first problem with talking to people who continuously demonstrate a complete lack of grasp on reality.  I would think the repitition of fuitle conversations must stem from some feeling that you don't want to accept that theres very little you can do to help some people who have been too pumped full of propaganda to think straight.  Since as you said you could easily refute any open minded truth valueing statist, your probably smart enough to figure out within seconds of reading a post wether or not the person your talking to is at all open to alternative ideas.  If they are great, but if they aren't theres not much anyone who can do anyhitng to help those people except themselves.  So i'm thinking there could be something in your past where you were given responibility for a task unfairly and said task was fairly impossible  just as it is impossible to open a closed mind.  Because you said people who are jerks have a lot of effect on you, but there actions are in no way your fault and changing their actions are in no way up to you.  If they want to find the truth they could. 

I'm not sure.  It seems like your frustrated with blaming yourself even though you know you shouldn't be 

Hey Vichy,

I'm a little confused by your post.  Going by your title, I thought there'd be some emotional content to the post, and perhaps I just missed it, but I didn't see anything resembling any emotions.  Just to give you an idea of what I, and many others around here, mean by emotion, it's really just the basic 4: happy, sad, angry, scared.  Of course there are variations of those, but to keep it simple, perhaps you could reply with the emotions you feel in the situations you described and we could go from there.

Also, what do you mean by you "deal" with your emotions better than most people?  Could you give me an example of what it would mean to "deal" with your emotions?

Thanks!

hey vichy.    Just from your posts i've read i think your probably one of the smartest people I've encountered on the internet.  Reading your posts seriously make me feel like i'm reading some incredibly deliberated, well done, well composited college thesis or something. 

Thank you.  You tend to see my best side because you and others on this site discourage debate both logically and philosophically.  And aside from morality, you almost all agree with me on fundamental levels.  This makes conversation actually-interesting to me possible while eleminating the really bogus arguments (theism, irrationalism and statism).  So I'm in a better mood, less required to go into certain things while being more willing to.  When in other environments, though, the popular delusions go up while etiquette goes down.  This causes me to get angry at many people who are pricks and come off in the way I described before even to people who aren't hostile to me.  I don't flame people, but I can get quite curt and dismissive when exposed to vehement and judgemental nonsense.  Not a problem in itself, but it is a problem when I don't stop talking to those people and when I care about their stupid little opinions.  Being subjected to an obviously fallacious argument delivered with dismissive and pejoritive tones or content bothers me not because it is true, but because it is false.  A misguided desire to make them understand, and to clear my name of any erroneous smears, pulls me into the discussion while knowing this is a waste of time (they wouldn't have been pricks if they were open to argumentative refutation).  Their continued prickish behaviour drives me more and more into anger and frustration which disrupts my ability and inclination to be precise, bringing in a new host of attacks (and attackers).  I need to stop doing this.  I want to stop doing this.  Ultimately I'm the one who has to stop.  I was hoping to understand why these reactions form in the hopes that a more thorough grasp will help me strengthen my resolve and more effectively deal with (and prevent) such issues.

You seem incredibly talented and capable so any problems which you encounter are probably in no way self inflicted but but by products of the past somehow.

While I hold myself as ultimately responsible for my actions, I know a lot of it comes about as a reaction to the way other people behaved towards me.  It's not my fault or choice to have been born and lived in a society where lies and distortions are said even when they are not believed, just as it is not my fault that others engage in emotional bullying when confronted with 'scary' ideas.  But it is ultimately my action and decisions which are going to determine how I deal with this.  But I think I am mostly free from the feeling that something is 'wrong' with me, or that I am somehow 'broken'.  When I feel anxiety over how someone might feel about my ideas, I never consider changing the ideas to suit their prejudices.  I do not feel anxiety because I think I am bad, I feel anxiety because they will think I am 'bad'.  But, when exposed to strong and non-trivial emotions my intellectual control's don't always work, I end up suppressing more than dealing with.  Not because I am afraid to deal with it, or because I deny its existence, but because I don't know what to do with an emotion which arises from life-and-death scenarios and gets triggered by an idiot making a snarky comment.

Anyway i'll try to give my opinion

Appreciated as always.

For your first problem with talking to people who continuously demonstrate a complete lack of grasp on reality.  I would think the repitition of fuitle conversations must stem from some feeling that you don't want to accept that theres very little you can do to help some people who have been too pumped full of propaganda to think straight.  Since as you said you could easily refute any open minded truth valueing statist, your probably smart enough to figure out within seconds of reading a post wether or not the person your talking to is at all open to alternative ideas.  If they are great, but if they aren't theres not much anyone who can do anyhitng to help those people except themselves.  So i'm thinking there could be something in your past where you were given responibility for a task unfairly and said task was fairly impossible  just as it is impossible to open a closed mind.  Because you said people who are jerks have a lot of effect on you, but there actions are in no way your fault and changing their actions are in no way up to you.  If they want to find the truth they could. 

Oh god I know, but as I said above I have emotional responses and reactions - some learned and some evolutionary, I suppose - that lead me in directions precisely contrary to this.  Thinking of this now perhaps I do understand why people get into 'blankouts' about statism and other cultural norms rather than risk the ire of the group.  But in me it makes me angry.  It is probably the single most frustrating experience I commonly deal with.  I have this great desire to tell the truth to the point where I want to argue with people when they use words in an incorrect technical sense in casual conversation and explain obscure points of quantum physics when customers talk to me about glass.  By nature I'm not angry about it - I find it fascinating.  I wish everyone did.  But this desire is a part of the problem when it drives me to argue with people even when their statements are gibberish.  Because I want to show their statements are gibberish.  For me understanding, thinking and speculating is the greatest joy, it's what I usually do with my friends.  But there is a class of people out there for whom 'argument' means 'fight' and 'know' means 'accepted by my social peers'.

So I agree with you pretty much totally.

I'm not sure.  It seems like your frustrated with blaming yourself even though you know you shouldn't be 

I don't 'blame' myself, at least I know I shouldn't.  But I am casually responsible; I need to stop doing what I know is hurting me and be able to just say, "No".  It was nice having someone to talk with, I have a hard time talking about this stuff to a lot of my friends.  Not because I believe they would react poorly, but because I am afraid they would react poorly.  On top of that my friends are often uncomfortable talking about their own feelings, especially the guys (a majority) who laugh when I tell them some idiotic argument or nod their head if I say something pisses me off but seem to get a little autistic if I want to deal with social anxiety and genuine concern about the anger and helplessness I feel sometimes.  I can not express my firm distaste for a design which causes my chest to seize up because I think some nice guy doesn't like my choice of restraunt, despite the fact that I know he doesn't care and even if he did not dire consequences would follow.

'm a little confused by your post.  Going by your title, I thought there'd be some emotional content to the post, and perhaps I just missed it, but I didn't see anything resembling any emotions.  Just to give you an idea of what I, and many others around here, mean by emotion, it's really just the basic 4: happy, sad, angry, scared.  Of course there are variations of those, but to keep it simple, perhaps you could reply with the emotions you feel in the situations you described and we could go from there.

I think my reply (above) did so.

Also, what do you mean by you "deal" with your emotions better than most people?  Could you give me an example of what it would mean to "deal" with your emotions?

Two things.

1. I believe I am able to productively assess my emotional states better than at least some people I know, and I believe that due to a difference of history, temprament and so forth that I am not affected by many social phenomena that other people are subject to.  More of my motivations and responses are correctly related to facts about myself and external reality.  Most of this comes from having my intellectual house in fairly regular order.

2. I am also able to not-feel/suppress.  But this is really not a solution, I need (at minimum) to train myself to avoid contact with people who are just going to bring negative emotions up.  But the things which are very important to my life are precisely those in which I am most likely to pursue despite logical objections about the person I'm pursuing it with.  Most people have it with relationships.  I still can't think straight around someone I find attractive.  I have the same problem with ideas, but much worse.  I have argued with lots of people who, for their part, were just trying to needle me for upsetting their prejudices.  I recognize that as a bad relationship is pointless so is a bad debate, but I haven't habituated myself to stop arguing with every dolt who pretends to make statements.

 On top of that my friends are often uncomfortable talking about their own feelings, especially the guys (a majority) who laugh when I tell them some idiotic argument or nod their head if I say something pisses me off but seem to get a little autistic if I want to deal with social anxiety and genuine concern about the anger and helplessness I feel sometimes.  I can not express my firm distaste for a design which causes my chest to seize up because I think some nice guy doesn't like my choice of restraunt, despite the fact that I know he doesn't care and even if he did not dire consequences would follow.

Right so usually when trying to find out why you feel a certain way, or why your feelings contradict logic, despite the fact you obviously have a firm grasp on logical issues, you want to see what in your past has established a precedent to trigger some emotion.  So be it the dire consequences you feel in more or less cases of personal preference in relationships,(i.e. what restraunts you like, what music ) or your feeling that you need to explain abstract ideas to people who may not be interested, it probably comes from some need or desire not met in the past. 

Were your parents receptive to your ideas when you were a kid?  I have no doubt you learned numerous things as a kid that were interesting and fascinating and helped your grasp on intellectual pursuits, just because that is how you are now.  So did you any form of a thoughfull outlet who would help you process the logic and be suportive and helpfull and make you feel like you were really accomplishing something important?  Because if you didn't that might explain some frustration.  If you were emotionally cut off from others when you were learning as a kid then you might have learned that associating logic and understanding and emotional tenderness with other people was not such a good idea as it tended to to at least be ignored or undervalued, while the smaller things were more acknolwleged then your expounding intellect. 

Like for example you might be trying to explain something important to your parents but their more interested in where your going to dinner that night or something.  That could effectively have "taught" you to associate others with inpenatrable and arbitrary coldness that you really want to break through or seems impossible.

Thats just how i usually feel.  When i feel helpless and ostracized usually without reason i have this feeling that anyone i encounter has just as much of a chance of punching me in the face as laughing at a joke or something.  Certainly noones going to try to connect with me in the least.  But that precedent was set by parents as most of there actions towards me were arbitrary and illogical.  Somtimes i could say things and they would just laugh or ignore me while other times i could be in the same mood saying close to the same thing and they would become incredibly volatile or hit me or break stuff.  So pretty much i started to embrace illogic and chaos because that was an established action by my parents. 

Vichy,

I can identify with what you term as 'laziness,' and I think a lot of it has to do with with what the podcasts talk about as the vengeance of the slave. I feel like the anger towards these people that you interact with could possibly come because these people are not actually ignorant. None of us on this board or even in the greater mass of general humanity would take aggressive action against a child who was having difficulty learning to read, for example, and none would withhold knowledge against a fellow truth-seeker without cause. Rather, we become angry with these people because they are capable of seeing the obvious flaws in statist/religious arguments. Our rage is, on this level, perfectly justified because they are putting us in an unwinnable situation by playing the dumb card whenever we get near any truths that threaten their defenses. If they throw out some immature argument that you can disprove in two seconds, their defenses are saying "look how dumb I am, I am an innocent victim, how dare you attack an innnocent victim, you monster!"

If you then deliver the 10-page lecture of sparkling, grammatically perfect and logically sound prose, they will just see you as an arrogant elitist who is trying to batter them into submission with your intellect. They will start to gravitate into foggy areas like 'tone' which they can use to justify dismissing your arguments. We cannot win this type of argument, and lose face with out opponent whether or not we withdraw.

To get past the justified rage at this manipulation from others, I find it helpful to try to imagine the sheer scope of the of disgusting, soul-shaking cruelty that it must have taken to transform what must have once been a rational, brave, and fully complete human child into a broken propaganda-bot. There is a temptation to view ourselves as intrinsically more intelligent then these people and feel irritation towards them, but I think that most of us escaped being crushed by a hair's breadth due to raw chance; a slightly difference family configuration, place of birth, or chance encounter with another person could have rendered us so afraid of attack we come to spout pure nonsense and generate fog all day. This is not to discount the heroism of the FDR group, but
 to engender more empathy with these poor propaganda-bots. Many(most?) people need to be reassembled emotionally before they will even be capable of sustaining rational debate, and some of them may unfortunately be too shattered to save. Thus, I recommend the approach of going for the emotional stuff first as it will help you get an immediate survey of the damages and help to determine whether a person is worth talking with.

Kudos for your courage in facing these issues. I get the impression from your post that you alternate between feeling that the world is full of manipulative assholes and feeling that the world is full of total imbeciles, which makes it a very lonely and threatening place. Seeing the world as full of beaten slaves isn't the most uplifting thing you could do, but it at least makes the world a bit less lonely/threatening.

Were your parents receptive to your ideas when you were a kid?

I would think that my relationship with my parent(s) was mostly one of confusion on their part, thankfully they weren't complete assholes (at least my mother wasn't, I was more or less raised by her) and were aware that I was smart and that was generally a good thing.  But bad parenting ideas and the general veil of ignorance that lies on everyone put me into frequent conflict with my mother; sometimes violent but I ever got seriously hurt.  She seemed to prefer, rather than confrontation, to just let me do what I wanted.  This has its drawbacks, but I must say I prefer her passivity to the sort of authoritarianism I see in a lot of other's people's lives.  When I was younger and talked to people at school I always had the impression that if my 'parents' treated me that way I'd feel inclined to either kill them or run away.

Thats just how i usually feel.  When i feel helpless and ostracized usually without reason i have this feeling that anyone i encounter has just as much of a chance of punching me in the face as laughing at a joke or something.  Certainly noones going to try to connect with me in the least.

Yep.  And it's funny because real human interaction which is personally relevant to us would only take a dozen or a couple hundred not-screwey people to satisfy the emotional and intellectual desires they have.  Unfortunately, between us, there is an ocean of humanity which refuses to step out of the jungle mentality.

There is a temptation to view ourselves as intrinsically more intelligent then these people and feel irritation towards them

I often hear 'most people are stupid.   Since people are really the only thing we have for reference to intelligence it would follow that the average person is of average intelligence. 
Moreover, while I do consider myself at least some ways to be more intelligent than your average biped, no one who can repair a car can fail to basically grasp the laws of logic.  And there are lots of fairly dumb people who can fix cars, so there is clearly more at work here than brainpower.  What it is, I think, is the will to think.  Refusing to learn does work, one reinforces negative connections between reality and emotions while solidifying connections that cause him to spout whatever he thinks other people agree with.  One of the downsides of how the brain works is that, put under sufficient selective pressures, our neurons can form very strong links which bear no relation to reality.

Seeing the world as full of beaten slaves isn't the most uplifting thing you could do, but it at least makes the world a bit less lonely/threatening.

My biggest problem with the masses of the human race is that I don't have somewhere else to go.  If I did, I could look at them the same way I look at Ethiopia, that sucks and I'm glad it's not going on here.  It's also obnoxious when you realised that all the things they hate so much are the only reason any of them are alive.  The only reason people can argue about politics is because it makes up so little of our actual life.  Otherwise we'd all be tribal jingoists with a 19 year lifespan and a 70 word vocabulary.