“I am the one who knows!” - Starhawk, Guardians of the Galaxy
In the scientific spirit of replication, this may make a redundant case, but my experiences of late beget an explanation. People, please, agree or disagree. There is a difference between feeling something and thinking something.
Of course, even I immediately throw up protest given that our nervous system runs throughout our body and I’ve read fairly persuasive arguments for considering the tips of our fingers as mini-brain-adjacent agents. Your gut may prove correct time and time again, but it is less reliable than a study of all guts and the degree in which they conjure general human intuitions. The distinction is perhaps more to do with speech.
It’s perhaps one of the few things I feel dangerously proud to claim I know. Closely related to it is body language, as they tend pair fairly well. Moreover, without really realizing it, in some ways, we are all veritable professionals. It speaks to why we speak and other great apes don’t. What you may not have been keen to do is dissect our language and bodies down to the minutia. You may not know the patterns. What strikes me as a red flag you may regard as “that’s just that person.”
I know that I know because I write. When I write, I punctuate points I make with my experience of your language. When I get into an argument or hear about some relationship squabble, I’ve already written about how it started, why it failed, and why it won’t get fixed. I can point you to the academics with the professional versions of my explanations. This is no less true when it happens in my personal life. In order to find this perch from which to assess our perfunctory language, I’ve had to exercise better precision in the use of my own.
Essentially, I end up with “different” definitions for words. A general pattern of behavior evokes the general language needed to describe what is happening. I’ve dissected or done away with many words this way: love, progress, friend, hope, hate, lie, truth, or often the colloquialism we, by definition, take as so common and appropriate as to actually describe what we mean. The difference isn’t that I’m inventing something new as much as trying to peel away the intuition that would defend more merit than is due.
So when I call you a liar, what do I mean? I allow for it to mean the full breadth of its usage. You can lie by accident. You can betray yourself with the very words you hold to be more truthful than you’ve ever been. Whenever you’re dealing with the veracity of a claim, there’s an appreciable nuance for the degree of thinking and feeling like you think. Consider your average Baffler reader verse Trump supporter. Who would you wager harbors the most feels? I’d say it’s a tie. Who’s likely patient and responsible enough to work through and think about their feelings? I don’t think it’s the racist catch-phrase crowd.
As a condition of existence, we’re constantly lying to ourselves. We have to protect our sense of self-worth. We have to play games in our social and work lives to maintain a semblance of order. If I’m remembering one survey correctly, a majority of Americans, or American teens perhaps, rated themselves as more attractive and intelligent than average. As someone who considers himself attractive, intelligent, and a bit of a whore, even anecdotally, I don’t trust that I want to fuck most people, if the disparity in our capacity for reason wasn’t stark enough.
Where it matters, to me, is when we get an opportunity to translate our ideas to the page. We can pounce on each other, and I think we should, and I think it’s a good thing. I write so I can catch myself. I write to remind myself. Do you have any idea the amount of things I’ve felt about myself? You probably certainly do. Do you have an appreciable measure for how much of it is complete dogshit that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny? Here I think my blogs are evidence of having you beat.
I know you feel like you’re telling the truth. I know you think I’m not listening. I know you think we can’t be friends. I know you think I’m a smug self-satisfied sociopath who’s openly proclaimed how it’s all just a game to him. What none of my knowledge speaks to is the responsibility you should have for yourself. In the abstract space of the mind, I’m absolutely every inch of everything I’ve said in a blog. In, what I refer to as reality, I can make appreciable claims about who I am or want to be that struggle to resemble drunk ravings or teary-eyed and desperate professions as a teenager.
I’m as predictable as you, but you have made no appreciable effort, that I’ve seen, to respect and listen to my style or type as I have yours. Frankly, I’ve just run out of patience. I know literally every time I talk with a “feeler” we’ll have the same argument, they’ll use the same accusations, and they’ll walk away feeling the same things. I am not persuaded they should be handled with kid gloves. I am not persuaded I’d rather live in what I find a very compelling and destructive lie waiting to explode than burn it all down. It’s why I know how to cope with it when it does explode. It’s why I already had a postmortem written for a fight I didn’t have until 3 weeks later. People with less experience would rather carry on like it wasn’t coming.
The struggle for me is how much is enough? What lies do I let keep a lot of mediocre relationships going? Am I underselling my potential for experience because of my inability to find the inherent worth of just accepting people? Here I think my pretension kicks in. I want the best. I want something I can rely on. Long term emotional and financial investments are made based on these conflicts between thinking and feeling. I can only expect out of a partner, in any respect, what I expect of myself.
And that’s this. To actually try and not feel like I tried so hard but it all failed so blaaah! Let you into my “intimate” fights and check my potential bullshit against the date. In a way, I’m not even asking you to trust yourself capable or worthy of evaluating anything than my simple argument in service to what I claim to know. Also, this game converts into a few neat party tricks if you ever catch me talking to the newly drinking initiated.
When you truly figure out “change” doesn’t equal “growth” the vast majority of “new” conversations and people will reduce to the embarrassing blight of the modern imagination. It’s why even as a quasi-whore I’ve turned down a fair amount of opportunities because the biggest sexual organ is the brain. Much as I find no respect for myself picking off the immature and self-loathing, I don’t want to encourage in my friendships and conversations the level of the predictable lowest commoners. It certainly happens way more often than I’d like to admit, but if there’s greater evidence of my sympathies and not being a sociopath, I challenge you to find it.
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