Whoo boy, am I in a ranty mood again. Doesn’t really help given the recent climate, both natural and social. Breaking my barrier and being more aware of certain things in social space of course has me witness some unsettling thought processes and frankly, it’s tiring. It’s draining to see the insanity of people shouting loudly about who’s the next best thing. It’s infuriating to watch people being used as tools and tokens to bolster one’s self-perceived power and reach.
Been a while since I got into writing. And we’re back with the “unlucky 13”. I’ve lately stumbled upon some folks talking in public about their life struggles, ,venting their issues with other folks which caused them grief and how to apporach this. Often we get into a point where we “hold a grudge” if that trauma is massive and any reminder throws us back into the time we were experiencing the “torture”. This not only fuels our PTSD but can develop further into something worse. But when someone starts talking about forgiveness, we immediately go on full defence because we’re taught “forgiveness = everything’s fine, let’s start over”. However, that’s not true. Not at all, my dear reader. Forgiveness can in fact have a completely different form. Let me show some of them and as usual, we start with a quote; a short one and very much on point:
Pure, innocent, cherished, protected; but also painfully sincere, sometimes clumsy and savage. That’s basically kids in a nutshell. Carefree, unburdened by the social happenings, just living their lives as fully as they can. And we, the adults, look back at those times that felt simpler and joyful and we try to experience some of it while having our minds burdened by the requirements of life and doing the most to protect our little treasures and prepare them for their future.
And yet, in our goal of protecting our most precious, we often stumble horribly and even fail utterly miserably. And then we wonder why there is so much evil. Why are the little ones unhappy? Why do they rebel so much? What did we do wrong? It’s for their own good.
We all like to improve. We like to get promotions at work, getting better in games, getting better in sports … we like improvement in general and we someitmes go to great lengths to chase it. Improved tools, new trainings; all the things that make that sponge in our heads bubble with action and sometimes our muscles ache from all the gains. But is it all we should do? And how to do this in a healthy manner? How to, using the popular quote, “Check ourselves so we don’t wreck ourselves?” In today’s chapter I’m going to look on two thoughts that I keep close to myself regarding personal growth and improvement. Now, I’m not offering advice on how to grow, I’m not a life coach. My goal instead will be to look on things that could make the growth mindset actually do more harm than good and what to do to not step into that trap.
I must not fear. Fear is a mind-killer. Fear is a little death that brings total obliteration …
By borrowing the inital verses of Litany Against Fear, known these days mostly through the Dune franchise, we’ll take a peek into today’s perception of fear and how it makes people do really bad decision in long-term. And also how it’s extremely weaponised by the manipulative and/or hopelessly naive.
Been a little ranty lately so let’s dive into something calmer for a change. And as you can probably guess from the headline, it’s going to be a bit more personal (yay, you get “rewarded” with having my brain picked). Some of it will also relate to my relatively recent post about the myths about autists and you might find out that I can relate to some of their struggles despite not being diagnosed as one. Hence why I’m learning to answer “I can’t say for certain.” when anyone asks me if I’m autistic. So, here’s my brain on the table. Let’s poke it.
Something that’s been grinding my gears from time to time and now I have the space to let it out. This could also fit into the self-mentoring series but there isn’t really any “mentoring” part.
Ever heard someone being called gifted? Have you been called gifted yourself? Maybe you’re great with art or sports. Or you’re really smart when it comes to certain field so you start delving into science. Me personally, I’m quite a quick learner and despite my already “advanced age“ (yes, I’m joking about being old despite being just above level 30), I can still pick up a skill and get into to it quite easily or gain knowledge with little effort. Would that put me into a “gifted” category? It probably did when I was a kid. Are all these beneficial? From practical standpoint, sure. From mental standpoint however, that’s a bit of a different story.
Oh dear, I’m already at ten of these “drops of wisdom” (take with a train load of salt). And with this one, I’m about to do another kick into a hornet’s nest. Why? I dunno, probably because I’m a fan of weird kind of self-flagellation (don’t take this out of context >:3). But this one’s probably going to be short because the idea is rather quick to grasp.
Absolute freedom is impossible. Because for freedom to be truly absolute, you must allow for someone else’s freedom to be taken away.
We all have seen some really cool sci-fi movies or series and/or played sci-fi themed games. And in all of them we have these cool gadget with voice controls, various panels of vehicles with super responsive touch screens or holographic interfaces that you can pretty much “carry around”. Like, remember first Avatar movie where one of the main characters LITERALLY grabs a file and puts it into their tablet? Cool as hell. Or Tony in Iron Man 2 where he “disassembles” the expo model to find the proper element for his mini arc reactor? Amazing spectacle to watch.
I bet some of you were thinking “how amazing would that be in real life”? To have, for example, an interface for designing where you project your model into real space and be able to toy with it? Or have a computer screens floating around and you could move them anywhere you wanted. Sure, you can do both in VR these days but it’d be better without having to wear specialised glasses, right?
Oh dear, this is something we see every day. Every single day we see and hear people screaming “My freedom is being attacked! I’m oppressed!” Now, there’s of course a significant group of people that is in fact having their freedoms under scrutiny, be it racial minorities, sexual minorities etc. And no, just because they’re not being lynched doesn’t mean everything is fine. It’s not fine at all and if you try engaging in some genuine perspective taking, you’ll start taking off your rose-tinted glasses. Why am I saying this? Because this text isn’t aimed at these people and calling them out for “whining'“. Not at all. The post I’m writing here is very much aimed at people who start screaming “My freedoms!” whenever they get called out at their miserable behaviour. They know they’re doing something bad and they got spotted. Well, my dear, “free-dumbs” (I’d use harsher language but … let’s keep, how we’d call it back then, some “institutional culture”), take a comfy seat, grab your favourite snack and listen. For I’m about to show you how you’ve become your greatest tyrant and how to get out (gosh, I’m getting reminded of the first post in this series).