Haven’t finished the post yet, just reading the list of boundary violations that are benign to you, but I just have to say right now, holy excrement, absolutely none of those seem like they would be benign to me under any circumstances no matter how well I know someone! Like, just reading the list made me feel intensely uncomfortable.
I suspect that for me the concept of “benign boundary violations” essentially doesn’t exist; my boundaries are super-strict. That said, in some areas I do have boundaries that are far less restrictive than societal norms, but they’re mainly on the mental plane, rather than regarding physical behaviors. I have lots of other stuff to say about boundaries but I’ll edit and continue this comment after I’ve read the whole post.
Okay so… wow. Reading this post—just a bunch of text! - made me feel physically uncomfortable in much the same way I feel if someone tries to touch me. That never happens. To me it seems like all interactions with another person are opt-in, and the baseline should be “leave me completely alone, don’t touch me, don’t speak to me, don’t even acknowledge my presence.” I find basically all human interaction overwhelming and more or less boundary violating, and I didn’t realize until reading this post that my experience of life could be described that way. I mean, I knew I was unusually introverted, but I never thought to describe it in terms of boundaries.
On the topic of touch in particular: I was raised by emotionally abusive and neglectful parents, and I never experienced any kind of affection growing up. I was also (and still am) extremely isolated from other people. So I never learned to feel comfortable with touch or most other kinds of “informal” interaction. The only times I can remember my parents touching me were all unpleasant or even subtly violating. To others I probably seem somewhat stiff and overly formal, because I don’t know the social protocols (other people’s boundaries, I guess) and I wouldn’t feel good about doing things that seem normal to others but seem like boundary violations to me. So: to me, the idea that there exist benign boundary violations is… so overwhelmingly unintuitive, that I would never have thought of it. (Or, more accurately, I’ve thought of them many times, but only as something intrinsically sexual and kinky. Yes, even stuff like the ones you listed. And that’s a whole ’nother bucket of worms.)
I’ve been thinking for a long time about ethics and how people ought to treat one another etc, and I usually do it in terms of something like what you’re calling boundaries, only I assume they all would in an ideal world be explicitly negotiated: people say when they meet what all their boundaries are in all the relevant domains of life (which I’d like to enumerate), or even like trade sheets of paper on which all those things are written, and agree to respect one another’s boundaries. And of course if something comes up that wasn’t in the relationship contract, it is negotiated right then and there by asking, NEVER guessing.
That way all that frightening, confusing, complicated, implicit human emotion and relationship stuff that I don’t understand could be made explicit and easy for me to navigate with no uncertainty (and I am extremely, indeed probably pathologically, risk-averse, which may be related): just follow written rules! Even then, though, I probably wouldn’t do many things (like what’s in your list) that people accept. And benign boundary violations would not exist and be totally alien and unheard of in that ideal world of mine, since they rely on guessing which I Do Not Do, Ever, and it’s hard for me to intuitively imagine being someone who does do that.
When you said that the loss of these benign boundary violations is a loss of human intimacy… well, I’ve never in my life had human intimacy of any kind, don’t understand it, and am honestly frightened enough by it, apparently, that just reading this made my skin crawl a little bit. I guess I’m in a really high upper percentile of sensitivity… I don’t know what to do about this, but it’s probably important and it’s almost certainly damaging my life in some way. Thanks for inducing me to notice this in this way.
(I don’t have a proper, substantive response to this comment yet, but I wanted to note that I very much appreciate it and am grateful you took the time to write it in this depth and detail. Strong upvote.)
To me it seems like all interactions with another person are opt-in, and the baseline should be “leave me completely alone, don’t touch me, don’t speak to me, don’t even acknowledge my presence.” I find basically all human interaction overwhelming and more or less boundary violating, and I didn’t realize until reading this post that my experience of life could be described that way.
Is it just me or does this policy effectively leave no way to opt in?
If noöne can interact with you without violating your boundaries, only boundary violators will interact with you—an asshole filter.
Well, what I said was something of an exaggeration. There are acceptable means of interaction but I get “saturated” really quickly and want to get away after that.
I additionally wonder if you’ve read, and would be interested in your commentary on, meadow theory, as it relates to the above.
Especially:
That way all that frightening, confusing, complicated, implicit human emotion and relationship stuff that I don’t understand could be made explicit and easy for me to navigate with no uncertainty (and I am extremely, indeed probably pathologically, risk-averse, which may be related): just follow written rules!
… though obviously you have no obligation to read or respond.
Sorry I didn’t respond before, I didn’t notice your second reply somehow!
I just read the meadow theory post, and tbh, I find it quite opaque and it’s unclear what you’re trying to say. You started with a metaphor without really clearly expressing what it’s a metaphor for, and it has that “Eliezer using colorful pseudo-zen stories to try to sound deep and impressive so people will respect him more” energy which always irks me a bit (and which I have noticed others in this community have semi-subconsciously learned to mimic for follow-the-leader social credit points, which also irks me a bit). I basically agree with ambigram’s comment, in other words.
That said, I feel as if there is some value in it. I’m just… really not sure what. I can see why you think it’s relevant to that specific quote from me, but I’m not sure what to say about that. If I had to guess, the point here is that you think I’m (to use what I understood of the symbols in the post) not running around enough because I’m too worried about running into posts due to my being (or believing I am) comparatively more “blinded” than other people and not having a healthy parent / internalized parental image to point them out to me?
My sense was more “MSRayne has run into various posts, for a variety of reasons including people misleading them about where the posts are, and this is why it’s extremely sensible that they want very clear and unambiguous maps from other people about where those other people’s posts/boundaries are.”
Ah. Yes. It’s fun when your parent who protects you from posts, and the posts themselves, are the exact same entity. Growing up like that has probably permanently damaged my mental health and ability to function properly in human society, since everything that for them would be a surefire predictor of danger is totally innocuous in the majority of other people. My prior for humans is “narcissist pretending to be kind in order to get something out of me.”
Ah, and now I see what you meant about worlds. The thing is, the fact that we have differing life experience doesn’t actually provide me any evidence that I’m wrong. I’m not sure what evidence that I’m wrong there would even look like; my paranoia could explain away any amount of it.
I need to be careful though. Take anything I say about my own psychology with several grains of salt—it changes with my mood and everything I say about myself is a conjecture due to having basically no idea what is actually going on below the surface of my own brain most of the time. It’s entirely possible that I don’t automatically assume people are narcissists out to get me, but just think that I assume that when I’m already primed with the idea of paranoia. This is where I go into spirals.
Haven’t finished the post yet, just reading the list of boundary violations that are benign to you, but I just have to say right now, holy excrement, absolutely none of those seem like they would be benign to me under any circumstances no matter how well I know someone! Like, just reading the list made me feel intensely uncomfortable.
I suspect that for me the concept of “benign boundary violations” essentially doesn’t exist; my boundaries are super-strict. That said, in some areas I do have boundaries that are far less restrictive than societal norms, but they’re mainly on the mental plane, rather than regarding physical behaviors. I have lots of other stuff to say about boundaries but I’ll edit and continue this comment after I’ve read the whole post.
Okay so… wow. Reading this post—just a bunch of text! - made me feel physically uncomfortable in much the same way I feel if someone tries to touch me. That never happens. To me it seems like all interactions with another person are opt-in, and the baseline should be “leave me completely alone, don’t touch me, don’t speak to me, don’t even acknowledge my presence.” I find basically all human interaction overwhelming and more or less boundary violating, and I didn’t realize until reading this post that my experience of life could be described that way. I mean, I knew I was unusually introverted, but I never thought to describe it in terms of boundaries.
On the topic of touch in particular: I was raised by emotionally abusive and neglectful parents, and I never experienced any kind of affection growing up. I was also (and still am) extremely isolated from other people. So I never learned to feel comfortable with touch or most other kinds of “informal” interaction. The only times I can remember my parents touching me were all unpleasant or even subtly violating. To others I probably seem somewhat stiff and overly formal, because I don’t know the social protocols (other people’s boundaries, I guess) and I wouldn’t feel good about doing things that seem normal to others but seem like boundary violations to me. So: to me, the idea that there exist benign boundary violations is… so overwhelmingly unintuitive, that I would never have thought of it. (Or, more accurately, I’ve thought of them many times, but only as something intrinsically sexual and kinky. Yes, even stuff like the ones you listed. And that’s a whole ’nother bucket of worms.)
I’ve been thinking for a long time about ethics and how people ought to treat one another etc, and I usually do it in terms of something like what you’re calling boundaries, only I assume they all would in an ideal world be explicitly negotiated: people say when they meet what all their boundaries are in all the relevant domains of life (which I’d like to enumerate), or even like trade sheets of paper on which all those things are written, and agree to respect one another’s boundaries. And of course if something comes up that wasn’t in the relationship contract, it is negotiated right then and there by asking, NEVER guessing.
That way all that frightening, confusing, complicated, implicit human emotion and relationship stuff that I don’t understand could be made explicit and easy for me to navigate with no uncertainty (and I am extremely, indeed probably pathologically, risk-averse, which may be related): just follow written rules! Even then, though, I probably wouldn’t do many things (like what’s in your list) that people accept. And benign boundary violations would not exist and be totally alien and unheard of in that ideal world of mine, since they rely on guessing which I Do Not Do, Ever, and it’s hard for me to intuitively imagine being someone who does do that.
When you said that the loss of these benign boundary violations is a loss of human intimacy… well, I’ve never in my life had human intimacy of any kind, don’t understand it, and am honestly frightened enough by it, apparently, that just reading this made my skin crawl a little bit. I guess I’m in a really high upper percentile of sensitivity… I don’t know what to do about this, but it’s probably important and it’s almost certainly damaging my life in some way. Thanks for inducing me to notice this in this way.
(I don’t have a proper, substantive response to this comment yet, but I wanted to note that I very much appreciate it and am grateful you took the time to write it in this depth and detail. Strong upvote.)
Is it just me or does this policy effectively leave no way to opt in?
If noöne can interact with you without violating your boundaries, only boundary violators will interact with you—an asshole filter.
Well, what I said was something of an exaggeration. There are acceptable means of interaction but I get “saturated” really quickly and want to get away after that.
I additionally wonder if you’ve read, and would be interested in your commentary on, meadow theory, as it relates to the above.
Especially:
… though obviously you have no obligation to read or respond.
Sorry I didn’t respond before, I didn’t notice your second reply somehow!
I just read the meadow theory post, and tbh, I find it quite opaque and it’s unclear what you’re trying to say. You started with a metaphor without really clearly expressing what it’s a metaphor for, and it has that “Eliezer using colorful pseudo-zen stories to try to sound deep and impressive so people will respect him more” energy which always irks me a bit (and which I have noticed others in this community have semi-subconsciously learned to mimic for follow-the-leader social credit points, which also irks me a bit). I basically agree with ambigram’s comment, in other words.
That said, I feel as if there is some value in it. I’m just… really not sure what. I can see why you think it’s relevant to that specific quote from me, but I’m not sure what to say about that. If I had to guess, the point here is that you think I’m (to use what I understood of the symbols in the post) not running around enough because I’m too worried about running into posts due to my being (or believing I am) comparatively more “blinded” than other people and not having a healthy parent / internalized parental image to point them out to me?
My sense was more “MSRayne has run into various posts, for a variety of reasons including people misleading them about where the posts are, and this is why it’s extremely sensible that they want very clear and unambiguous maps from other people about where those other people’s posts/boundaries are.”
Ah. Yes. It’s fun when your parent who protects you from posts, and the posts themselves, are the exact same entity. Growing up like that has probably permanently damaged my mental health and ability to function properly in human society, since everything that for them would be a surefire predictor of danger is totally innocuous in the majority of other people. My prior for humans is “narcissist pretending to be kind in order to get something out of me.”
Ah, and now I see what you meant about worlds. The thing is, the fact that we have differing life experience doesn’t actually provide me any evidence that I’m wrong. I’m not sure what evidence that I’m wrong there would even look like; my paranoia could explain away any amount of it.
I need to be careful though. Take anything I say about my own psychology with several grains of salt—it changes with my mood and everything I say about myself is a conjecture due to having basically no idea what is actually going on below the surface of my own brain most of the time. It’s entirely possible that I don’t automatically assume people are narcissists out to get me, but just think that I assume that when I’m already primed with the idea of paranoia. This is where I go into spirals.