My own experience was more like "don't worry little one. I won't let us get in trouble. I'll adapt our language to new contexts and have ready an appropriate self-defense. Easy."
I've got plenty of anger and misery happening, and I can tie it to specific things, but it's not that shit.
And I don't feel pressure to be miserable coming from the ambient culture--indeed the opposite.
There's not really social ostracization just because a certain group snubs you, so the only concrete effect would be job loss (I don't think they're putting people in jail yet). Except in very specific jobs (and you may be in one), that's just a technical problem. "How to play this role." And there are always other jobs.
Thank you so much! I find that role playing results in a specific "difficult to relate" kind of mental exhaustion. For example, when I was young I saw this weird hidden camera show that tested people's morals (something along these lines, thinking back I can't believe the show existed and I think it only went for one episode). Anyhow they hired this woman to be a "fat woman" and sit on a park bench all day. They then hired some teenagers to stand there and heckle her, calling her a fatass, etc. and laugh at her. Then they recorded people walk by to see if they would intervene. Some people did, some didn't. But that's not the point. The point is that at the end of the day the actress sitting on the bench couldn't stop crying. They interviewed her, and I remember her saying, "I know they were acting, I know I was acting, but after awhile I couldn't tell the difference." She kept apologizing.
I just think at a certain level, your brain has to put in some extra juice to keep up the charade, and there are some parts of the brain that can't tell the difference between acting and real-life. So even if I get away with it, I know it still exacts a toll, though I'm not always sure where. I guess my point is that it's good to be aware of that charade and properly vent my anger rather than letting it swirl inside me and - eventually - consume me whole. I'd rather direct my dark energy into grilling a really good steak or knocking around a punching bag then just walking around all day feeling trapped by culture. Culture doesn't care about me, by all accounts I am culture.
The "ready an appropriate self-defense" also hit me in a sweet spot, I often feel that most of my arguments are against myself, and most of them happen in the shower. Do you feel that this causes you to be hair-trigger with some arguments sometimes? What I mean is that do you think it causes you to perceive disagreements that aren't there because you have pre-conditioned yourself? Not sure if this happens to me, but I do wonder and felt good to read someone else reflecting that behavior back to me.
It doesn't make me hair trigger as much as just too careful up front, which is what I notice a lot of people do, and it's a little clumsy having to preface statements with qualifiers. But that's mostly like a form of manners, like holding a door open for someone, just a form of necessary politeness.
I was once called a "grammar bigot" in an online discussion for pointing out how confusion can arise using singular "they" and was taken aback.
I grew up in the semi-rural Deep South in the 1970s. Our schools were newly and partially desegregated and things were tense. Race was *the* issue, and we worked through it. There was no such thing as an "out" gay person even though I was friends with a couple of gay people who were honest with me.
I was "woke" decades before it was a mainstream concept, and I had to take a breath and remind myself that I was speaking to someone who was probably college age.
So I've run the "grammar bigot" discussion by other people and come up with a better explanation about it (although I'll probably never need it).
So yes, just from that tiny episode, I can see how it could be mentally taxing. I've been called a lot of names, but "bigot" was new and it stung enough, even from a stranger, to send me thinking.
If I were in a circumstance where shit like that came up a lot, I don't know how it would affect me, but as is, I go forth on the assumption that people aren't offended by anything I say, and I'll be able to talk my way out of whatever trouble I get myself into.
"So as in the body, so too in the body politic: as we continue our mission of social sanitization and elimination of interpersonal friction, our ability to handle those inevitable pain points decreases. We become less resilient, to the point in which even the slightest insult or derision becomes a cataclysmic offense." I feel and think this same way. I feel as though in the last 3-4 years the social environment has moved beyond "anger is bad; frustration is bad" to an even more insane place of "asking for an explanation is bad; seeking clarification is bad". What used to (10 years ago) be the boundary of discourse, which was anything that causes anger, frustration, sadness, or unease is verboten, has morphed. The boundary has become smaller, so much that now anything with the POTENTIAL to cause those emotions in others must be avoided. This pain tolerance is decreasing in real-time and shows no sign of stopping.
I think in other words, many are like you and your other kielbasa eating neighbors: if the boundary for aPpRoPrIaTe DiScOuRsE is getting smaller and tighter, then most will experience a moment where they shrug their shoulders, stop trying, and say "nah fuck off"
(I cannot figure out hypertext / italics / bold, if I could I'd have a lot less Boomer Capitalization.)
I have been reading a book on shadow work by Robert A. Johnson (Owning Your Shadow), and a point he keeps coming back to is that if you don't find structured, adaptive, healthy ways to "pay your shadow its due," then it will collect one way or another. One of the mistakes that humans make is to push too far into their ego, aka "saintliness" in order to deny the shadow any cognitive real estate. They think they can marginalize the shadow to the point of vanquishing it, yet this just causes the shadow to go subterranean and manifest itself in tricky, destructive, terrible ways.
I couldn't stop thinking about our own society, with its very codified lists of heroes and villains, the belief that being "all good is possible," that the shadow exists elsewhere in others. This denial only lasts so long until it surfaces again. Without programmed "valves" in place, there is not telling where this can go. And with pain tolerance at an all time low, who knows how extreme the reaction can be.
The flip side of this reduced pain tolerance in one's self is a reduced threshold for the expressions of pain of others, especially your enemies. I am always amazed at how pain of some groups is foisted as maximal, even if just a small cut, while the pain of others is denied to the point of gaslighting, i.e., "your pain is imagined while mine is real." The net result is a perceived total divorce in lived experiences, no matter how similar those lived experiences may actually be.
This is an excellent essay.
My own experience was more like "don't worry little one. I won't let us get in trouble. I'll adapt our language to new contexts and have ready an appropriate self-defense. Easy."
I've got plenty of anger and misery happening, and I can tie it to specific things, but it's not that shit.
And I don't feel pressure to be miserable coming from the ambient culture--indeed the opposite.
There's not really social ostracization just because a certain group snubs you, so the only concrete effect would be job loss (I don't think they're putting people in jail yet). Except in very specific jobs (and you may be in one), that's just a technical problem. "How to play this role." And there are always other jobs.
Again, great post.
Thank you so much! I find that role playing results in a specific "difficult to relate" kind of mental exhaustion. For example, when I was young I saw this weird hidden camera show that tested people's morals (something along these lines, thinking back I can't believe the show existed and I think it only went for one episode). Anyhow they hired this woman to be a "fat woman" and sit on a park bench all day. They then hired some teenagers to stand there and heckle her, calling her a fatass, etc. and laugh at her. Then they recorded people walk by to see if they would intervene. Some people did, some didn't. But that's not the point. The point is that at the end of the day the actress sitting on the bench couldn't stop crying. They interviewed her, and I remember her saying, "I know they were acting, I know I was acting, but after awhile I couldn't tell the difference." She kept apologizing.
I just think at a certain level, your brain has to put in some extra juice to keep up the charade, and there are some parts of the brain that can't tell the difference between acting and real-life. So even if I get away with it, I know it still exacts a toll, though I'm not always sure where. I guess my point is that it's good to be aware of that charade and properly vent my anger rather than letting it swirl inside me and - eventually - consume me whole. I'd rather direct my dark energy into grilling a really good steak or knocking around a punching bag then just walking around all day feeling trapped by culture. Culture doesn't care about me, by all accounts I am culture.
The "ready an appropriate self-defense" also hit me in a sweet spot, I often feel that most of my arguments are against myself, and most of them happen in the shower. Do you feel that this causes you to be hair-trigger with some arguments sometimes? What I mean is that do you think it causes you to perceive disagreements that aren't there because you have pre-conditioned yourself? Not sure if this happens to me, but I do wonder and felt good to read someone else reflecting that behavior back to me.
It doesn't make me hair trigger as much as just too careful up front, which is what I notice a lot of people do, and it's a little clumsy having to preface statements with qualifiers. But that's mostly like a form of manners, like holding a door open for someone, just a form of necessary politeness.
I was once called a "grammar bigot" in an online discussion for pointing out how confusion can arise using singular "they" and was taken aback.
I grew up in the semi-rural Deep South in the 1970s. Our schools were newly and partially desegregated and things were tense. Race was *the* issue, and we worked through it. There was no such thing as an "out" gay person even though I was friends with a couple of gay people who were honest with me.
I was "woke" decades before it was a mainstream concept, and I had to take a breath and remind myself that I was speaking to someone who was probably college age.
So I've run the "grammar bigot" discussion by other people and come up with a better explanation about it (although I'll probably never need it).
So yes, just from that tiny episode, I can see how it could be mentally taxing. I've been called a lot of names, but "bigot" was new and it stung enough, even from a stranger, to send me thinking.
If I were in a circumstance where shit like that came up a lot, I don't know how it would affect me, but as is, I go forth on the assumption that people aren't offended by anything I say, and I'll be able to talk my way out of whatever trouble I get myself into.
this is my favorite piece of yours yet.
"So as in the body, so too in the body politic: as we continue our mission of social sanitization and elimination of interpersonal friction, our ability to handle those inevitable pain points decreases. We become less resilient, to the point in which even the slightest insult or derision becomes a cataclysmic offense." I feel and think this same way. I feel as though in the last 3-4 years the social environment has moved beyond "anger is bad; frustration is bad" to an even more insane place of "asking for an explanation is bad; seeking clarification is bad". What used to (10 years ago) be the boundary of discourse, which was anything that causes anger, frustration, sadness, or unease is verboten, has morphed. The boundary has become smaller, so much that now anything with the POTENTIAL to cause those emotions in others must be avoided. This pain tolerance is decreasing in real-time and shows no sign of stopping.
I think in other words, many are like you and your other kielbasa eating neighbors: if the boundary for aPpRoPrIaTe DiScOuRsE is getting smaller and tighter, then most will experience a moment where they shrug their shoulders, stop trying, and say "nah fuck off"
(I cannot figure out hypertext / italics / bold, if I could I'd have a lot less Boomer Capitalization.)
Thank you for this comment!
I have been reading a book on shadow work by Robert A. Johnson (Owning Your Shadow), and a point he keeps coming back to is that if you don't find structured, adaptive, healthy ways to "pay your shadow its due," then it will collect one way or another. One of the mistakes that humans make is to push too far into their ego, aka "saintliness" in order to deny the shadow any cognitive real estate. They think they can marginalize the shadow to the point of vanquishing it, yet this just causes the shadow to go subterranean and manifest itself in tricky, destructive, terrible ways.
I couldn't stop thinking about our own society, with its very codified lists of heroes and villains, the belief that being "all good is possible," that the shadow exists elsewhere in others. This denial only lasts so long until it surfaces again. Without programmed "valves" in place, there is not telling where this can go. And with pain tolerance at an all time low, who knows how extreme the reaction can be.
The flip side of this reduced pain tolerance in one's self is a reduced threshold for the expressions of pain of others, especially your enemies. I am always amazed at how pain of some groups is foisted as maximal, even if just a small cut, while the pain of others is denied to the point of gaslighting, i.e., "your pain is imagined while mine is real." The net result is a perceived total divorce in lived experiences, no matter how similar those lived experiences may actually be.