Sunday, June 20, 2010

Good and evil part 2. Experiences, and how differing experiences causes problems.

Yeah i know i'm kind of jumping parts but whatever.

At the end of the first part, i did conclude that wisdom is knowing that what you know is only the perception you've taken on due to your experiences. These experiences end up shaping our being and turn us into who we are today. I guess in a sense you can't really blame people who lived in poverty for being assholes as a result, but that get's into a whole different tangent about discussing whether the ends justify the means. In any case, these experiences end up shaping who we are, and most of the times, the character that's created ends up being what separates our personality from someone else's personality. Of course, from these experiences, there can be various different reactions to them. For example, a child that is abused by other children for being a minority (i have experience with this), may either turn into a major cynic or become a really good person who tries to help people. From a psychological standpoint, the second result may seem to make no sense, but if you think about it, there are people who experience the good side of living along with the bad for long enough to realize that they don't want others to suffer the painful part of life. The closer you get to fully experiencing both sides of the world, the more knowledge you'll have (although we have already established that knowledge isn't real, but for the sake of this discussion we'll coin knowledge as a realistic concept that actually exists). What people decide to do with this knowledge, of course, changes based off experience. Going back to the example with the child, if no real love is shown for that child, then the chances are greatly escalated that he/she will become cynical and hate life, but there is also a chance that at least one person will come along with the kindness to "save" that child (i am reluctant to use the word save because it honestly isn't necessarily a bad thing to be a cynic. Again, these are all perceptions that have been burned into our head by propaganda and stereotypes). In that event, the child may either see that person as their idol and try to live up to them, or take his kindness to heart and live based on that mentality. In both situations, the pain suffered from the childhood life will probably linger on, expressed in the child's personality every once in a while, which is normal, most experiences tend to have an impact on a person's life. Oh, and while we're on the topic of how experiences and propoganda affect our personality, everyone is racist. Get over yourself and look past those differences because they honestly won't mean anything in the long run of a friendship/ relationship.

I'm sure that the most common thing that you'll ever hear from anyone who's ever suffered depression or is emo is "no one understands how I feel!" followed by what seems like childish rant about what may seem like either actually problematic things or just stupid pointless things that really aren't a big deal. Most of the time, we'll brush this off and tell the child to suck it up and be a man, but is that really the best advice we can give? Probably not. The major problem we have with dealing with people like this is that the feeling of lackluster existance is not something that everyone has experienced, and for the people who have experienced it, its probably the only thing they ever really pay enough attention to to care about. One of the reasons i'm writing this chapter is because recently (at least relatively recently to when i was writing this) I experienced that feeling of "no one understands how i feel." for myself, and after pulling myself out of it (with the help of friends who said more than just "deal with it," mind you), i realized that its not the problems that induce the sensation of "no one understands," its the emotional trauma and pain that causes that feeling. Just telling people to be proactive and make new friends won't help, either because that's not the main reason for the problem, or because you're probably giving the same stupid advice that everyone else already has. If you get anything out of what I'm saying in this chapter, realize that whenever someone talks to you about anything regarding their problems or their pains, its because they want YOU to do something about it, not some "stupid" (in their eyes) advice that they've probably heard a million times. The response "I'm sorry, what can I do to help you?" is so much more meaningful to that person than "well, I'm sorry but you have to grow and deal with it", even if that you end up thinking of nothing to do for that person, due to the key reason that putting yourself on the line for that person shows that you care so much more than just directing them to someone else or themselves. To my experience "make more friends/find better friends" doesn't really seem very different from "get off my back, man." Although, since I've bashed at you enough, i would like to point out that i do think people who say "no one understands" are pretty stupid because they tend to fail to realize that there are plenty of people who go through the exact same thing, and also because when they complain to other people who can actually relate to their experiences, instead of receiving comfort, I notice that they tend to just reinforce this feeling of lack of understanding, such as with the response "yeah, people are just so fucked up because they don't get us at all," versus the comforting message mentioned above. (I'm starting to wonder about the interconnectedness of emo society...) Humans differ through experiences, and the biggest problem is that our experiences always tend to be so one sided, we can never really offer the advice that we should to people, because we haven't experienced their side of the pain to know what they want. (note that the "no one understands" example is only one example of various similar situations.)

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