(no subject)
1. Do you think there is ever a healthy form of jealousy? if so, how do you think it would be expressed?
No. I think envy can be healthy, but not jealousy. (I distinguish the two concepts by saying envy is wanting something someone else has, and jealousy is wanting something and not wanting anyone else to had it.) I think jealousy is therefore definitionally selfish, whereas envy is not. I think there are lots of ways to express envy that are healthy; even just the basic "I wish I had that, too" isn't bad until it becomes a whine instead of a statement.
2. What are your views on Monogamy? Polyamory? (Each as a general rule. not a comparison)
I think my overarcing imperative is that people should do what makes them happiest in relationships. I don't believe people should make compromises on things that will bother them in a relationship. To me, a relationship should exist at it's... "most natural" level, I guess it what I'd call it.
Having said all that, I therefore think that monogomy is fine as long as it's how two people naturally behave. If someone and their partner both naturally have physical relationships only with their SO, that works for them. Obviously, this makes it important for the people in question to discuss what their idea of monogomy is, and what they want in the relationship.
From a more clinical standpoint, I tend to feel that mongomy is *usually* a social construct that goes against, rather than with, natural instinct. I also feel that definitions of monogomy that place an emphasis on physical intimacy are implying that physical intimacy is the most defining and important factor of a relationship, which I think is generally unhealthy.
On the downside for polyamory, I think it's often difficult to successfully juggle multiple relationships. At least some of the people involved have to be willing to be the non-primary, which is hard for most people. Depending on how often the polyamorous group works as a unit, rather than a set of two-person relationships, there's also a greater potential for interpersonal friction to cause problems.
Boy, that was alot of response, and I don't feel like I've done the topic justice.
3. Do you think you have found your "calling"/goal/niche/place in life?
I found my place in life at a young age... probably around 13-14. It hasn't really changed much since. It has, in many ways, defined my life, and the perceived plusses and negatives of that life, the entire time. It's probably fairer to say it found me, rather than my finding it, considering that I wasn't really looking for a purpose at the time.
4. Would you rather have a major debilitating physical deformity, or a severe mental handicap?
I suspect either would lead to me committing suicide, really, but I've always preferred physical handicap to mental handicap. I don't think my psyche or ego could handle a mental handicap that I wasn't born with, knowing that I used to be so much more mentally than I had become. It's one of the major reasons I fear senility, because that has the added possibility of not realizing what I've lost.
5. Which do you think is more harmful on a persons mental/emotional stability? Sexual abuse,physical abuse, or emotional abuse?
I don't think I've studied enough research data to back this up, but my instinct is that sexual abuse is almost alwaysa combination of physical and emotional abuse, and therefore tends to be worse than either one by itself.
6. Have you seen Rent(the movie yet) yet? and how do you think it compared to the musical?
I saw "Rent" two weekends ago in Rockville, MD, with rislyn. (She and rmoigneirndbt were the only two people I'd've been willing to go with, both due to emotional connections I make between them and the show.) Sound-wise, I enjoyed it a great deal more than the original broadway cast. Most of my dislike of the show originated in its sounding rough and unprofessional. I still didn't like Adam Pascal or ANthony Rapp particularly much, but I feel the songs that highlighted them sounded less rough.I definitely preferred the voice of Rosario Dawson to Daphne Rubin-Vega by a mile. Idina Menzel still made me want to stuff cotton in my ears. Jesse L. Martin still makes me want to be a gay man so I can really fall in love with his voice. Wilson Jermaine Heredia didn't do as much for me as the ANgel that came to Blacksburg, but then, Angel gets a lesser role in the movie.
Plot-wise, I'm still with Adam: a story about people who got AIDS through unprotected sex and heroin doesn't tug at my heatstrings. Having said that, the movie did a better job of getting me to sympathize with the characters than the recording or the broadway show did. In the tour's defense, however, that may be due to how the screen puts the characters and their faces closer to me than when I was in row X.
7. How do you think you affect the people surrounding you?
Literally, I affect the people around me by interacting with them. I think I am often more cognizant of the effect I have on others than many people are; while I don't think that makes me more responsible for my effects, I suppose it means that I'm definitionally more manipulative; I've just never through manipulation, when honest and open about it, is bad.
I think how much I affect people is generally proportional to how much they care about me. As far as I know, I've never ruined the life of anyone who didn't care about me.
The general process that I notice is that I start off with people in a slightly negative way that builds to a moderate to high positive, and then crashes into some sort of big ugly negative. The biggest variance occurs in the aftereffects of that. In a very few cases, it stayed at that negative point and never raised. In one or two, the cycle occured a second time. In most, however, there eventually forms either a more stable slightly positive effect or an overall seperation.
But that was all in terms of magnitude. In terms of type of affects... I think I often make people feel cared about. I think that's usually followed by making people feel that I've stopped caring. I often make people think about things they wouldn't otherwise think about. I'm usually frustrating, occassionally infuriating. Based on testimonials, I seem to occassionally increase people's desires for and tendencies toward blunt honesty.