(no subject)
There are certain things that annoy me. Most may be easily summed up as "willful ignorance." I know of myself that I am not particularly tolerant of low intelligence. I volunteered with mentally disabled teens and adults for a while and ... if I can avoid it I never shall again. In the case of the mentally disabled there is no fault and even for most people ... the level of intelligence they have is not something that they can generally control. You can study all you want but if you're stupid you always will be stupid. Just a little bit better informed than someone who does not expend the energy.
So perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that I dislike when people don't even try. I'm more likely to be genuinely interested in a person if they are of above average intelligence, but they do not de facto earn my ire unless they make no effort to self-educate. At the moment I'm primarily pointing the finger at the Tea Party. I do not like that they are extremists, but extremism in and of itself is only indicative of an incomplete world view on the part of the observer. My problem with them is that they categorically refuse to educate themselves and restrict themselves to Tea Party literature. Thus the majority of the tenets they support are factually unsupportable. Tea Partiers are largely at the mercy of a certain journalistic company that appears to take glee from spreading misinformation, but if they would simply objectively read or even watch anything else they wouldn't hold these ridiculous beliefs or behave in such an irrational manner. And they do have the autonomy to manage that. So there's no excuse.
However I also hold similar disdain, although considerably more muted, towards people who fail to succeed in their own hobbies. This is perhaps slightly more complicated, but if you enjoy doing something enough to spend money and considerable time on it, it follows you should be skilled. And yet I routinely meet people who do various things for years and still suck. Again, there is such a thing as physical intelligence, so perhaps if it's a sport they simply don't have that. But what really pisses me off is when people who suck ... blame me for it. When I've not even met them. People get pissed at me for being good at a number of things. Rational intelligent people don't usually get bitchy, but it does happen, and there are a lot of irrational and/or stupid people out there. There's these two guys who hang around where I practice and practice something similar. I've been very polite to both of them. I've even ceded part of the area. One of them will intentionally blunder into me and the other just glares and then walks off sits down and pouts. And they're both older too. I actually took some time to watch them myself in an attempt to figure it out. I think one of them is just a total douche. It's not my skill that he doesn't like, it's that I'm not kissing his ugly ass. The other one though ... pretty sure he hates my skill. His style is closer to mine but he's ... bad. It's nothing a few well placed strikes couldn't fix, but he tries to teach people so he probably thinks he's far better than he is or at least spent enough time at it to believe he should be. My issue with him is that he so clearly has an issue with me. My skill does not preclude anyone else from being skillful.
The other thing is I don't really understand why people stop improving. I imagine it's because they went for the abstract or cool stuff before mastering the basics, but it is actually possible to succeed when you take a running start. I feel like the reason such people dislike me is I have succeeded where they have failed and neither of us knows why. I'm actually perfectly fine with people hating me because of precisely this sort of thing, but there's also not much I can do about it. Really, if you hate me then you should try to be better than me. Don't bother with the "be a better person" crap because to an ethic nihilist like myself that's an utter load largely arbitrary and subjective in nature. Get better than me at what we have in common. Do that and perhaps you won't hate me as much.
But again, if you're going to hate someone do it for a decent reason. Do it because they shot you for fun, or think you're crazy for insisting on being a human and not an object. Do it because they took something real from you. Don't hate just because you're jealous. That's boring. Really boring. It gives me nothing to work with. I don't necessarily want to be immured in long battles for dominance of one pointless art or another, but if you're going to hate me for being beautiful as it were at least be kinda cute yourself. Honestly, I don't hand out reasons to hate me. I've ... got an annoyingly persistent honor code. Usually those who hate me do so because they're scared of me or because they're a little bit crazy. But, if I killed your brother you'd have reason to do everything in your power to hurt me. Despite all the people who hate me ... I've never done anything like that. I think the worst thing I've ever done is give a guy a really bad bruise when he was trying to prove that he was stronger than me. Put that up against the guy who broke into my car, the several who threw punches at me for refusing to sleep with them or their friends, the guy who forged emails, the several who stalked me, the guy who raped my friend, and the numerous people that tried to mess with my career. And all of those cases above they did because some girl (usually but not always me) said no to them or their buddy or because I was better at them at something. See ... at least when I do something extreme I have a good reason. Give me something to work with guys. You don't have a good reason to hate me myself. Hate my views all you want, but while I accept that you may hate me, that's on you. I did nothing to deserve it. And if you're going to decide to feud with me ... I want a worthy opponent. If I can down you with an askance look, there's nothing in it for me. Now ... my improvement is crazy fast. So unless you're about as good as me anyway, you really shouldn't be trying to challenge me. But if you are good enough ... well generally you won't want to start nothing, but at least it will be more fun for me.
I was abused as a kid so ... I can deal with negativity. I can even use it to my advantage. I'm not terribly thrilled about all the negative psychological side-effects but there are few people who can bring it quite to the level I can. If you didn't have it at least as bad as I did and aren't at least above average intelligence, you can't beat me in a hate war. So just don't do it. Be happy, you might have a chance. But if you just want to hate me ... trust me on this one ... it only works if you were trained to survive in that sort of environment. And that only comes from pretty nasty trauma. Not the sort of demons you want in your life. Leave the hate to those of us who know how to harness rage.
So perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that I dislike when people don't even try. I'm more likely to be genuinely interested in a person if they are of above average intelligence, but they do not de facto earn my ire unless they make no effort to self-educate. At the moment I'm primarily pointing the finger at the Tea Party. I do not like that they are extremists, but extremism in and of itself is only indicative of an incomplete world view on the part of the observer. My problem with them is that they categorically refuse to educate themselves and restrict themselves to Tea Party literature. Thus the majority of the tenets they support are factually unsupportable. Tea Partiers are largely at the mercy of a certain journalistic company that appears to take glee from spreading misinformation, but if they would simply objectively read or even watch anything else they wouldn't hold these ridiculous beliefs or behave in such an irrational manner. And they do have the autonomy to manage that. So there's no excuse.
However I also hold similar disdain, although considerably more muted, towards people who fail to succeed in their own hobbies. This is perhaps slightly more complicated, but if you enjoy doing something enough to spend money and considerable time on it, it follows you should be skilled. And yet I routinely meet people who do various things for years and still suck. Again, there is such a thing as physical intelligence, so perhaps if it's a sport they simply don't have that. But what really pisses me off is when people who suck ... blame me for it. When I've not even met them. People get pissed at me for being good at a number of things. Rational intelligent people don't usually get bitchy, but it does happen, and there are a lot of irrational and/or stupid people out there. There's these two guys who hang around where I practice and practice something similar. I've been very polite to both of them. I've even ceded part of the area. One of them will intentionally blunder into me and the other just glares and then walks off sits down and pouts. And they're both older too. I actually took some time to watch them myself in an attempt to figure it out. I think one of them is just a total douche. It's not my skill that he doesn't like, it's that I'm not kissing his ugly ass. The other one though ... pretty sure he hates my skill. His style is closer to mine but he's ... bad. It's nothing a few well placed strikes couldn't fix, but he tries to teach people so he probably thinks he's far better than he is or at least spent enough time at it to believe he should be. My issue with him is that he so clearly has an issue with me. My skill does not preclude anyone else from being skillful.
The other thing is I don't really understand why people stop improving. I imagine it's because they went for the abstract or cool stuff before mastering the basics, but it is actually possible to succeed when you take a running start. I feel like the reason such people dislike me is I have succeeded where they have failed and neither of us knows why. I'm actually perfectly fine with people hating me because of precisely this sort of thing, but there's also not much I can do about it. Really, if you hate me then you should try to be better than me. Don't bother with the "be a better person" crap because to an ethic nihilist like myself that's an utter load largely arbitrary and subjective in nature. Get better than me at what we have in common. Do that and perhaps you won't hate me as much.
But again, if you're going to hate someone do it for a decent reason. Do it because they shot you for fun, or think you're crazy for insisting on being a human and not an object. Do it because they took something real from you. Don't hate just because you're jealous. That's boring. Really boring. It gives me nothing to work with. I don't necessarily want to be immured in long battles for dominance of one pointless art or another, but if you're going to hate me for being beautiful as it were at least be kinda cute yourself. Honestly, I don't hand out reasons to hate me. I've ... got an annoyingly persistent honor code. Usually those who hate me do so because they're scared of me or because they're a little bit crazy. But, if I killed your brother you'd have reason to do everything in your power to hurt me. Despite all the people who hate me ... I've never done anything like that. I think the worst thing I've ever done is give a guy a really bad bruise when he was trying to prove that he was stronger than me. Put that up against the guy who broke into my car, the several who threw punches at me for refusing to sleep with them or their friends, the guy who forged emails, the several who stalked me, the guy who raped my friend, and the numerous people that tried to mess with my career. And all of those cases above they did because some girl (usually but not always me) said no to them or their buddy or because I was better at them at something. See ... at least when I do something extreme I have a good reason. Give me something to work with guys. You don't have a good reason to hate me myself. Hate my views all you want, but while I accept that you may hate me, that's on you. I did nothing to deserve it. And if you're going to decide to feud with me ... I want a worthy opponent. If I can down you with an askance look, there's nothing in it for me. Now ... my improvement is crazy fast. So unless you're about as good as me anyway, you really shouldn't be trying to challenge me. But if you are good enough ... well generally you won't want to start nothing, but at least it will be more fun for me.
I was abused as a kid so ... I can deal with negativity. I can even use it to my advantage. I'm not terribly thrilled about all the negative psychological side-effects but there are few people who can bring it quite to the level I can. If you didn't have it at least as bad as I did and aren't at least above average intelligence, you can't beat me in a hate war. So just don't do it. Be happy, you might have a chance. But if you just want to hate me ... trust me on this one ... it only works if you were trained to survive in that sort of environment. And that only comes from pretty nasty trauma. Not the sort of demons you want in your life. Leave the hate to those of us who know how to harness rage.