because language is a poison and people who can speak are evil
I have noticed a vicious meme, in the original sense, which spreads through groups of friends and societies like some kind of nasty little thought virus. It is not a pleasant idea, it is a twisted and divisive idea, like so many of the most contagious and persistent ones.
There are other insideous little mental tapeworms, but they're usually associated with mental illness; like when you are depressed, and you rewrite history, much to the the frustration of those around you. Not only are you unsalvagably miserable now, you have also never been happy in your entire life. Outside of the depression you know this not to be true, but within it it's hard to imagine that you ever were.
The parasite notion that I'm thinking of here is not a symptom of mental illness that I am aware of, more of a social one. The idea is that if you can talk about something, you are not emotionally affected enough by it. Silence is considered, here, the sign of being truly overwhelmed, which is the only appropriate reaction to whatever is under discussion.
If you can articulate, if you make a point of articulating your rage, love, sadness, or awe, you don't feel it enough. I feel somewhat as though this meme devalues the effort people go to in order to share concepts and feelings with the rest of the social monkeys that make up our species; discussions with those who subscribe to it leave me disturbed by the vehement contempt in which they hold people who do "talk about things", which always makes me wonder quite what their intention is in sharing this venom with me in the first place beyond shaming me into silence since I am (fading, now, as I get older, but certainly not going away) a very conspicuous Talker.
Not a coherent one or an especially skillful one, but I do find that I prefer working through things - thoughts or feelings - at or with someone else, whether that's one person or an audience. Partly so that I can get corrections or redirections on potentially erroneous parts of the thought process (I know my mind is diseased, you see, and it can take me to some entirely fallacious places if I don't get a nudge back toward sanity), partly because even just a reaction from someone else can help me to figure out where I'm heading. And also because they might know more than me. There are actually a lot of reasons I prefer to work through things publically, but there are a lot of people who find this repulsive.
Not merely "something I don't do because I don't work that way", but actively repulsive, as if you were taking a shit in front of them, and there is no way to excuse this behaviour at all. It usually comes out smelling of disdain, and in a weird way sometimes I wonder if it's a species of misogyny. Talking About Feelings or Talking Things Through is seen, accurately or not, as a "feminine" trait, and it is afforded a considerable amount of loathing and revulsion for something so incredibly harmless. It should register as, at worse, "irritating and uncomfortable", but it seems to go so much deeper than that.
Now I like seeing people's thought processes because I have difficulty with understanding the mechanisms of human interaction and would be quite happy if the electrochemical ants nest of the mind was entirely transparent at least in terms of showing me how people get from point A to point B with their own emotional logic, but I understand that people value their privacy and don't necessarily want to tell you how they arrived at their carefully-considered conclusions or to admit that what sounds like an elaborately-examined answer is in fact a spurious ass-pull. That's fine. Frustrating at times, because I'm an invasive and inquisitve bugger, but people's personal preferences for how they experience and pass through emotions and thoughts are their own prerogative.
What distresses me is the censure for people who are out-loud thinkers or interactive ones. I have several theories about why it's apparently so repugnant but none of them are very complimentary and that's not what this post was supposed to be about. I will stop here.
There are other insideous little mental tapeworms, but they're usually associated with mental illness; like when you are depressed, and you rewrite history, much to the the frustration of those around you. Not only are you unsalvagably miserable now, you have also never been happy in your entire life. Outside of the depression you know this not to be true, but within it it's hard to imagine that you ever were.
The parasite notion that I'm thinking of here is not a symptom of mental illness that I am aware of, more of a social one. The idea is that if you can talk about something, you are not emotionally affected enough by it. Silence is considered, here, the sign of being truly overwhelmed, which is the only appropriate reaction to whatever is under discussion.
If you can articulate, if you make a point of articulating your rage, love, sadness, or awe, you don't feel it enough. I feel somewhat as though this meme devalues the effort people go to in order to share concepts and feelings with the rest of the social monkeys that make up our species; discussions with those who subscribe to it leave me disturbed by the vehement contempt in which they hold people who do "talk about things", which always makes me wonder quite what their intention is in sharing this venom with me in the first place beyond shaming me into silence since I am (fading, now, as I get older, but certainly not going away) a very conspicuous Talker.
Not a coherent one or an especially skillful one, but I do find that I prefer working through things - thoughts or feelings - at or with someone else, whether that's one person or an audience. Partly so that I can get corrections or redirections on potentially erroneous parts of the thought process (I know my mind is diseased, you see, and it can take me to some entirely fallacious places if I don't get a nudge back toward sanity), partly because even just a reaction from someone else can help me to figure out where I'm heading. And also because they might know more than me. There are actually a lot of reasons I prefer to work through things publically, but there are a lot of people who find this repulsive.
Not merely "something I don't do because I don't work that way", but actively repulsive, as if you were taking a shit in front of them, and there is no way to excuse this behaviour at all. It usually comes out smelling of disdain, and in a weird way sometimes I wonder if it's a species of misogyny. Talking About Feelings or Talking Things Through is seen, accurately or not, as a "feminine" trait, and it is afforded a considerable amount of loathing and revulsion for something so incredibly harmless. It should register as, at worse, "irritating and uncomfortable", but it seems to go so much deeper than that.
Now I like seeing people's thought processes because I have difficulty with understanding the mechanisms of human interaction and would be quite happy if the electrochemical ants nest of the mind was entirely transparent at least in terms of showing me how people get from point A to point B with their own emotional logic, but I understand that people value their privacy and don't necessarily want to tell you how they arrived at their carefully-considered conclusions or to admit that what sounds like an elaborately-examined answer is in fact a spurious ass-pull. That's fine. Frustrating at times, because I'm an invasive and inquisitve bugger, but people's personal preferences for how they experience and pass through emotions and thoughts are their own prerogative.
What distresses me is the censure for people who are out-loud thinkers or interactive ones. I have several theories about why it's apparently so repugnant but none of them are very complimentary and that's not what this post was supposed to be about. I will stop here.