A difficult question for me to answer. It comes tied up with other realisations and beliefs:
There is no God, no rules for Right and Wrong written down in the fundamental nature of reality, no external standard. I need not bend my beliefs of what it it right and wrong to do and, more importantly in this instance, feel to anyone else.
There is no ‘fair’, no ‘justice’, except to the extent that I or other people who share similar preferences make it so. Other people may get away with insisting that what they are doing is Right, with the implication that you do not have grounds to be angry. They may be able to socially enforce the suppression of anger at their actions with clever reframing or outright force. But you need never subject your own feelings to their demands. You don’t need permission to be angry.
I have anger for a reason. It’s there to tell me when the outside world has hurt me in some way. When we choose to suppress anger it can deny us knowledge of what we want or need in a situation. For all but the most self aware individuals emotional instincts know more about what they really want than conscious beliefs.
Letting my anger be my own, rather than trying to insist it match an external tribal consensus frees me from attachment to things I can’t control. Other people can be F@#&$ if they want to, and I can be angry about it if it serves my purposes. Sometimes it does.
Anger makes me think better. I am more focussed, extremely strategic and much harder to manipulate. It isn’t a long term option but in the short term anger is damn helpful for me. It gets me out of bad situations and opens my eyes to all sorts of opportunities that I may otherwise have been too nice to acknowledge. (Contempt, on the other hand usually just gets me into trouble!)
Once I start allowing my anger to work with me rather than fighting it it doesn’t have a destructive influence on me. It is like a trusted military advisor that cooperates me. I don’t always follow its suggestions but sometimes I do. Once the instincts that can be considered the ‘angry part’ of me are properly integrated with the rest of me they come to trust that the rest of the brain will cooperate to meet its goals. It will not then be tempted to sabotage the goals of the rest of me.
I hope this answers your question at least partly.
Did you come to these realizations by thinking about philosophy, or by some other means? If it was by thinking about philosophy, how did you make the transition from abstraction to emotional change?
Did you come to these realizations by thinking about philosophy, or by some other means?
Having the philsophy there in the background helped, but only in as much as it allowed me to better guide the emotional development that was happening at a more instinctive level. More to the point it allowed me to develop an alternative to the bullshit philosophy that was taught to me as a child. Since my hypocrisy muscles are weak that deveopment is vital.
Let me be clear that some of the thinking that prevents healthy emotional development is that same thinking that would condemn PUA. You may disapprove.
If it was by thinking about philosophy, how did you make the transition from abstraction to emotional change?
Swearing helped. Seriously. But that is me. I am male and all that testosterone pumping around in my blood makes a huge difference in how I go about emotional change. I also never lacked for what I’ll call ‘righteous anger’, for lack of a better term. I could always get angry, and proactively so, with both bullying and bullshit. What needed to change was the suppression of selfish anger. The ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘unconditional love’, ‘humility’ kind of stuff. Since realising that is the sort of thing is actually bullshit used to bully people into compliance it qualified as a trigger for the outrage that I already gave myself permission to have. From there the process of expunging the undesired emotional habits was just a matter of time, counselling, hours in the gym and some martial arts practice.
Your path is probably a different one to mine. I could tell you to watch ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Fight Club’ a half dozen times each but that is more of a male-typical approach.
The recent thing which convinced me I have a problem is that area was feeling very upset for maybe half an hour for slamming the phone on a fundraiser whose project I strongly disagree with.
It wouldn’t have been awful if I’d said no thank you and hung up. It wouldn’t have been crazy to lay out my point of view a little. But I didn’t owe him a goddamned thing, and I don’t think it made sense for me to beat up on myself for showing some spontaneous anger.
I’ve seen Fight Club—it seemed like such an unhappy movie that I’m amazed it was inspirational for anyone. On the other hand, it’s been a while. Did the Fight Clubs actually make those guys’ lives better?
Would it help explain the PUA thing if I tell you that one of the things I need to work on is not being too concerned for guys’ feelings if I turn them down?
Would it help explain the PUA thing if I tell you that one of the things I need to work on is not being too concerned for guys’ feelings if I turn them down?
It does, and to be honest that (with girls’ substituted) is still not a strength of mine either. I do it because I must, for my sake and theirs (if I couldn’t say ‘no’ then I clearly couldn’t say ‘yes’ to monogamy or even bigamy!) But it takes effort.
The ironic thing is that PUA tactics are optimised for girls with strong boundaries in that area. That is, most of the techniques suggested are ones for dealing with the fact that attractive, highly socialised girls are habitually biased towards rejecting rather than reverse. (Even so, I can understand your wariness.)
This means that just because other people can get away with insisting and socially enforcing that what they are doing is Right and that you do not have the right to be angry about it.
There is no ‘fair’, no ‘justice’, except to the extent that I or other people who share similar preferences make it so. Other people may get away with insisting that what they are doing is Right, with the implication that you do not have grounds to be angry. They may be able to socially enforce the suppression of anger at their actions with clever reframing or outright force. But you need never subject your own feelings to their demands. You don’t need permission to be angry.
A difficult question for me to answer. It comes tied up with other realisations and beliefs:
There is no God, no rules for Right and Wrong written down in the fundamental nature of reality, no external standard. I need not bend my beliefs of what it it right and wrong to do and, more importantly in this instance, feel to anyone else.
There is no ‘fair’, no ‘justice’, except to the extent that I or other people who share similar preferences make it so. Other people may get away with insisting that what they are doing is Right, with the implication that you do not have grounds to be angry. They may be able to socially enforce the suppression of anger at their actions with clever reframing or outright force. But you need never subject your own feelings to their demands. You don’t need permission to be angry.
I have anger for a reason. It’s there to tell me when the outside world has hurt me in some way. When we choose to suppress anger it can deny us knowledge of what we want or need in a situation. For all but the most self aware individuals emotional instincts know more about what they really want than conscious beliefs.
Letting my anger be my own, rather than trying to insist it match an external tribal consensus frees me from attachment to things I can’t control. Other people can be F@#&$ if they want to, and I can be angry about it if it serves my purposes. Sometimes it does.
Anger makes me think better. I am more focussed, extremely strategic and much harder to manipulate. It isn’t a long term option but in the short term anger is damn helpful for me. It gets me out of bad situations and opens my eyes to all sorts of opportunities that I may otherwise have been too nice to acknowledge. (Contempt, on the other hand usually just gets me into trouble!)
Once I start allowing my anger to work with me rather than fighting it it doesn’t have a destructive influence on me. It is like a trusted military advisor that cooperates me. I don’t always follow its suggestions but sometimes I do. Once the instincts that can be considered the ‘angry part’ of me are properly integrated with the rest of me they come to trust that the rest of the brain will cooperate to meet its goals. It will not then be tempted to sabotage the goals of the rest of me.
I hope this answers your question at least partly.
Did you come to these realizations by thinking about philosophy, or by some other means? If it was by thinking about philosophy, how did you make the transition from abstraction to emotional change?
Having the philsophy there in the background helped, but only in as much as it allowed me to better guide the emotional development that was happening at a more instinctive level. More to the point it allowed me to develop an alternative to the bullshit philosophy that was taught to me as a child. Since my hypocrisy muscles are weak that deveopment is vital.
Let me be clear that some of the thinking that prevents healthy emotional development is that same thinking that would condemn PUA. You may disapprove.
Swearing helped. Seriously. But that is me. I am male and all that testosterone pumping around in my blood makes a huge difference in how I go about emotional change. I also never lacked for what I’ll call ‘righteous anger’, for lack of a better term. I could always get angry, and proactively so, with both bullying and bullshit. What needed to change was the suppression of selfish anger. The ‘turn the other cheek’, ‘unconditional love’, ‘humility’ kind of stuff. Since realising that is the sort of thing is actually bullshit used to bully people into compliance it qualified as a trigger for the outrage that I already gave myself permission to have. From there the process of expunging the undesired emotional habits was just a matter of time, counselling, hours in the gym and some martial arts practice.
Your path is probably a different one to mine. I could tell you to watch ‘Gladiator’ and ‘Fight Club’ a half dozen times each but that is more of a male-typical approach.
Indeed. I’m already capable of swearing.
The recent thing which convinced me I have a problem is that area was feeling very upset for maybe half an hour for slamming the phone on a fundraiser whose project I strongly disagree with.
It wouldn’t have been awful if I’d said no thank you and hung up. It wouldn’t have been crazy to lay out my point of view a little. But I didn’t owe him a goddamned thing, and I don’t think it made sense for me to beat up on myself for showing some spontaneous anger.
I’ve seen Fight Club—it seemed like such an unhappy movie that I’m amazed it was inspirational for anyone. On the other hand, it’s been a while. Did the Fight Clubs actually make those guys’ lives better?
Would it help explain the PUA thing if I tell you that one of the things I need to work on is not being too concerned for guys’ feelings if I turn them down?
It does, and to be honest that (with girls’ substituted) is still not a strength of mine either. I do it because I must, for my sake and theirs (if I couldn’t say ‘no’ then I clearly couldn’t say ‘yes’ to monogamy or even bigamy!) But it takes effort.
The ironic thing is that PUA tactics are optimised for girls with strong boundaries in that area. That is, most of the techniques suggested are ones for dealing with the fact that attractive, highly socialised girls are habitually biased towards rejecting rather than reverse. (Even so, I can understand your wariness.)
I’m strongly biased towards being nice or not giving a clear no, not towards accepting.
Heads up—I failed to parse
That makes no sense. Edited to: