My Life In the Bush of Ghosts

[nyuanshin]

Here is an illustration of the manifold costs of ressentimentWhile sitting in a coffee shop reading, I overhear some guy sitting behind me running his yap about how "people who think there's a cure for cancer don't understand what it is" and how, apparently, it just happens like death and taxes. (Actually, it was worse: he threw in more painfully

Comments

[queueball]

I have a sudden and strong suspicion that the profound change in the way I choose to engage with people (or not) since college, including the " humanity" categories I've been driving at, are post-hoc reasoning for the thought process in your last few paragraphs. It's a re-categorization of a huge portion of inputs into the "not my jurisdiction, nevermind it" category, carried on at an other-than-conscious level. (I could read the same into my similar religious-grade aversion to do-gooding that developed a few years ago after a handful of very bad experiences.)

Turning "it's not serious, it's just the passing scene" into a religion has done wonders for my attitude, my rationality, the background super-high level of deadly stress hormones in my blood. Yet the value of this would be hard to explain to someone who hasn't had to make the adaptation. It fits.

[nyuanshin]

Having do-gooding blow up in my face repeatedly over the years apparently hasn't extinguished the urge, though my capacity to throttle it has increased markedly.

Up to now I've had reservations about going full bore in the direction you allude to, but I suspect now that it might be the only way I can eliminate this problem -- by marking it all "not serious". My body needs to know it's "just a game" before I can learn to play it competently.

[queueball]

Apropos of nothing, I think it has increased my sensitivity to things that matter and virtually eliminated my concern with several classes of things that don't. It's not a particularly fine-grained recategorization, but it doesn't have to be: so much of what gets your blood boiling on a day to day basis is noise that very little signal is lost if you redefine huge portions of it. It used to be that if I got upset over something, all I knew is that one of my buttons had been pushed. That wasn't very telling. Now, if I get upset over something, it points to something that really matters in the outside world, to an inner demon I need to deal with, or both. That alone is very useful data. When an innocent grandmother gets Tasered by drug warriors, I still get pissed off; when a net-nut libertarian and a net-nut leftie argue about it (or their equivalents at a coffeeshop do so next to me), I'm mostly unaffected by their bickering. The passion remains where it matters.

[nyuanshin]

This bodes well.

[ferrouswheel]

"people who think there's a cure for cancer don't understand what it is"

Well, even if I don't believe his supposition that it's like death and taxes, I suspect the above is kind of true... particularly if you through in "a single cure for cancer" which might be what he's referring to.

I only say this, because it's something I might have said on occasion due to being frustrated when people, like the press, treating cancer as just a single disease, where it's really a whole host of different problems with cancerous growth as the symptom.

I'd be curious if you think this is incorrect and if so why that is...

[noneuklid]

I'm with this. There isn't a cure for cancer any more than there's a cure for virus or a cure for insane.

[nyuanshin]

It becomes increasingly clear to me that what the world really needs is a cure for overconfidence.

[queueball]

This.

[colinmarshall]

Did this dude sound like he was pushing the old "we'll never cure cancer because it's a direct result of our fallen society's dependency on electricity/chemicals/toxins/McDonald's" line, or what?

[airstrip]

It's the Lord's punishment upon our sinful people for not respecting His divine directions.

[nyuanshin]

It was even worse than this: there was no God in the picture, just his dice.

[airstrip]

And you'll lick them, if you know what's good for you.

[noneuklid]

Another possibility, although one difficult to adapt into: change your nonverbal cues so people interpret your feelings of anxiety as feelings of energy or interest.

[nyuanshin]

Haha! I actually do a bit of this unconsciously sometimes, so it's funny that it hadn't occurred to me use it in this context. Good idea.

[csn]

Restraint is the mark of maturity.

That's almost become a mantra for me lately. I get better and better at this, but I still slip on. Zanshin, zanshin. Especially a reminder that when you care about someone, it's more important to be compassionate than it is to be right.

Would love to talk to you again soon, life has been kind of crazy lately. Good overall in terms of experience, just intense. When abouts are you free?

And just to round things out, as the great Leo Kottke once said, "Resentment is taking poison and expecting the other guy to die."

[csn]

And now that I think about it, this is really just a subset of a larger mantra: Don't React.

[nyuanshin]

How's Sunday afternoon for you?

Nice quote, too.

[csn]

I'll likely be available late Sunday afternoon, with some possibility for earlier on.