God damn you, spawn of satan.
Nothing like a conversation with Toxie to ruin one's day.
To answer your question about what effect broadly social condemnation would have on me, I think I know now.
Shame creeps in unbidden and insinuates itself into the internal conversation. Soon, it has everyone in a panic. "We are criminals!" they cry, and then all agree to run and hide.
I feel like ironically this journal, intended to be in part the tearing off of shame and the exposure of all secrets, now has given me a terrible secret with which I will mark myself as impure.
I've met these people: The people who seem all smiles and charm but whom are gossiped about--the ones of whom it is said "They are ok, but..." then something scandalous. From then on you face them with your guard up. Everything they do is tainted the expectation that behind it lies some depravity.
I feel kind of like this, like I am now one of the Bad People, that now I should become a fugitive and consort only with other Bad People who gather around smoky campfires and snarl at each other throughout the night.
All this without the slightest intervention of rational thought. All this because of the belief that, based on the three or four people we talked about, I feel like nobody will ever be able to understand or forgive or sympathize with me. All without ever speaking to them--isn't this absurd? Do you understand why you are the Toxic Element? Because no matter what you mix yourself with turns poisonous.
Congratulations: you are, as ever, the voice of the herd.
(Nietzsche acts as if the herd instincts are ones that can be overcome, psychologically, through a strong enough act of will. This sort of chronology, like the chronological interpretation of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, must be misleading if the theory is to have any merit at all. The herd instinct is omnipresent--I'd say it is part of the endowment of human nature--it cannot, I don't think, be beaten at a moment in time after which one just ubermenches with glee. It's as nonsensical as the idea of a single moment of sacrifice atoning for all subsequent sins--if mankind has properties, like sinfulness, we have had, have, and will have them here and now and every day, forever, barring some crazy transhumanist shit.)
I need friends who are honest enough to walk up and tell me to my face if and when they hate me.
EDIT:
Toxie objects--he says that he did not say anything like "that," where "that" means...this? I suppose the fourth-to-last paragraph?
I think that's fair. This is an account of my subjective reaction to our conversation--I didn't actually attribute any words to him, and I retroactively deny any intention to imply that he meant to cause me to feel criminalized. And even now, that I've blown off some steam, I feel much better. But that doesn't make the words above any less true.
To answer your question about what effect broadly social condemnation would have on me, I think I know now.
Shame creeps in unbidden and insinuates itself into the internal conversation. Soon, it has everyone in a panic. "We are criminals!" they cry, and then all agree to run and hide.
I feel like ironically this journal, intended to be in part the tearing off of shame and the exposure of all secrets, now has given me a terrible secret with which I will mark myself as impure.
I've met these people: The people who seem all smiles and charm but whom are gossiped about--the ones of whom it is said "They are ok, but..." then something scandalous. From then on you face them with your guard up. Everything they do is tainted the expectation that behind it lies some depravity.
I feel kind of like this, like I am now one of the Bad People, that now I should become a fugitive and consort only with other Bad People who gather around smoky campfires and snarl at each other throughout the night.
All this without the slightest intervention of rational thought. All this because of the belief that, based on the three or four people we talked about, I feel like nobody will ever be able to understand or forgive or sympathize with me. All without ever speaking to them--isn't this absurd? Do you understand why you are the Toxic Element? Because no matter what you mix yourself with turns poisonous.
Congratulations: you are, as ever, the voice of the herd.
(Nietzsche acts as if the herd instincts are ones that can be overcome, psychologically, through a strong enough act of will. This sort of chronology, like the chronological interpretation of the distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori, must be misleading if the theory is to have any merit at all. The herd instinct is omnipresent--I'd say it is part of the endowment of human nature--it cannot, I don't think, be beaten at a moment in time after which one just ubermenches with glee. It's as nonsensical as the idea of a single moment of sacrifice atoning for all subsequent sins--if mankind has properties, like sinfulness, we have had, have, and will have them here and now and every day, forever, barring some crazy transhumanist shit.)
I need friends who are honest enough to walk up and tell me to my face if and when they hate me.
EDIT:
Toxie objects--he says that he did not say anything like "that," where "that" means...this? I suppose the fourth-to-last paragraph?
I think that's fair. This is an account of my subjective reaction to our conversation--I didn't actually attribute any words to him, and I retroactively deny any intention to imply that he meant to cause me to feel criminalized. And even now, that I've blown off some steam, I feel much better. But that doesn't make the words above any less true.