I like to engage with people of differing opinions! Why don't others elsewhere?

submitted by SpeakPeasy from self.Introductions

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[–]rman 4 insightful - 3 fun4 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 3 fun -  (7 children)

I wish and at the same time do not wish for everyone to experience what I can only call the “ego death” of what I’ve had to endure - I spent 14 years of my life dedicated (18-32), trying to please a woman who I married young (we both were 18) that never really loved me (she was very npd), but boy did I love her and was determined to have her feel the same way towards me... going beyond what one should, trying to earn her love to the point of debasing and attaching my self-worth to a metaphorical sinking ship and let trying to please this person become everything of who I was, that when it was finally over, and two young daughters later, I was nothing, my entire sense of who I was, shattered. I lost my dream job because of this, unable to cope with myself, unable to bring myself to care about anything — everything was so meaningless... at my darkest time you could have put a gun to my head and I would have shrugged and said “do it or not makes no difference to me” - I felt like I was worthless and felt blame for why my children cried so much with so much pain asking me why I can’t just make up with mommy and not divorce ... but what I learned at the bottom of that deep dark barrel of despair, the thing that finally allowed me to climb out of it, and why I’m even mentioning this to you in relation to your response is this: We ARE nothing.

As dark as it sounds I turned it into a source of strength for me, it let me accept our true place in this universe, to step away from my meager opinions and fragile self worth, to not attach myself to sensitivities I maybe once had... it was a painful process no doubt, and to be honest sometimes easy to still forget, but in the end I realized we all live with some kind deep desire to matter, to be heard, to be liked, to be desired ourselves, and to be denied any of these types of things IS emotional pain and turmoil. But when one can let go of these “needs”, you’re suddenly free, and paradoxically, things matter again, but differently: You’re free to put value into things you want, change your mind, and not ruminate over what that makes of you, because in the end none of it matters anyway and you are free to take the pleasures in life how you see fit, no longer bound by some sense of fitting in for approval or some checkbox to prove you matter.

Me writing this long ass post to take forever to tell you how this relates at all to what you said can now bring me joy regardless of what you think of it. And since I can now feel empathy for how much pain the most of us struggle with everyday (because I no longer have to focus on my own as much) trying to find purpose, if I help just one person find joy in their life again it brings me joy too.

So when I hear you say real life is upsetting enough and people can’t handle some truth, racism or to have their special bubble popped I just hear pain in all directions of everyone’s struggle to be heard or to matter and blame for why they have so much pain — and it makes me hope to be able to help them move beyond it to see the real evils in this world that deserve our wrath.

Society will tell you you’re special and you have value - and we’ll spend our entire lives trying to prove our special and unique nature to be true, stressing about it every day, and feeling deep pain every time anything threatens to disprove this delusion. But when I finally made it out of that house of mirrors, I felt a deep sense of personal freedom to make meaning of everything, and to find value everywhere.

Why would I even care if I hold such a dark outlook you might ask and the simple answer is that I like to be good, it feels good to help others, and the meaninglessness lets each of my interactions with people strangely matter more to me because I choose to put value into them rather than hope for some value out of them.

So TL;DR I guess: I think the world is full of needless pain and misdirected anger due to it, that bubbles we build for ourselves are delusions that aren’t healthy for us because though they alleviate pain somewhat - in the end they cause us to stunt our personal growth

Agree, disagree, think I’m an idiot or otherwise, if you made it this far, thanks for reading. :)

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

That was so good I read it twice. I think you make a lot of great points. Our world is what we make it, in a lot of ways. But if we let the world sweep us away, then we can become a slave to it and to our false desires, and become very unhappy as a result. It's so easy and gradual we hardly notice it happening. True freedom, as you note, is having the depth of consciousness to notice these bad patterns when they begin to arise, and to skillfully prevent yourself from getting ensnared in them.

[–]rman 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

well thank you :) and it definitely is always a constant self improvement, I'm certainly no sage, I get caught up in things too. I just always try to come back and remind myself "nothing matters," and that it's a liberating thing - because then things can begin to matter again for the right reasons.

I'm about to soapbox for a second if you'll humor me, but its the biggest issues I see in society today, its very relevant to these topics here, and I catch hints of everyone here starting to catch on I think: One big reason its so easy to forget what's important I'd argue is that the entire society we live in is completely focused on dragging us back into me, me, me, what I want, why I'm special, why I'm unique, and the big joke of it all is that they advertise that same message to everyone so they all run out and go buy the same clothes (consume consume consume). It's emotionally unhealthy and honestly a relatively new phenomenon (historically speaking). To make matters worse Social Media is a poor replacement for human interaction, because the algorithms are there to upset you, but then relieve you before you get too fed up and leave the site. They'll suggest you to be friends with your ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend just because they know you'll get neurotic and keep swiping wondering what they are up to, or show you that controversial lefty cousin or altright uncle post that you are just going to HAVE to "correct," knowing you'll sit on the page waiting for a reply, all just to show you more ads, they could care less about what that does to your mental health, your relationships. And if your first thought was, well my leftist-altright brother-in-law was going to post that anyway and they deserved it, stop and think, why did you just post some possibly controversial statement? Was it because you somehow perhaps became threatened by some meme, post, news article, etc that was shown to you and just need to let everyone know where you stand? hmmm "When a product is free you aren't the customer, you are the product" - has never been more true. I highly suggest watching "A century of the self" BBC documentary (Adam Curtis) (easy find on youtube as either a single video of all the episodes together or as individual episodes of the series) that goes through the history of propaganda(marketing) in the united states and how closely tied together the two (propaganda/marketing) really are (Its amazing how old and spooky accurate it is).

I used to be a huge tech/science guy (background in cyber security), always wanting the new gadget, always looking for the next tech, to the point I took a career in it (if you want to know my dream job from my last post was that I was a CTO of a tech company, not a huge company, but it was my dream). But at some point in the last 20 years or so I would argue we've started to "out science" ourselves, combining the science of human behavior and advanced predictive analytics based on huge pools of data to slowly but surely group everyone into what everyone calls echo chambers, but really all that means is that you've been grouped with like minded individuals you're comfortable with having the sole purpose of predicting, and nudging your behavior, as a group more easily. The only thing that was stopping this before was computing power and the ability to use all the datapoints together. There is SO MUCH readily available science on this too, theres a reason why you can't turn on the news today without seeing 500 reasons why you should be scared (it keeps you watching), and why your phone is eerily good at predicting that thing you were just talking about and giving you an ad for it, the truth is creepier than what most people think, most think our phones are eavesdropping with the microphone, but actually (or should I say more often) the algorithms are just that good (super creepy). It honestly blows my mind that we are so busy trying to slap each other in the face over what politician "slammed" who on twitter (slammed is a word known to make you click a link more often - theres a science on what gets clicks too), when what we should really be doing is taking a good hard look at what we've done to ourselves/allowed to be done to us (and vote out both sides tbh, they're all the same suit with a different color tie). The worst thing is I think is that I can't even really start to dive into this stuff without starting to sound crazy because thats how pervasive and generally accepted this is in our society.

My rant is basically over, but the more I study and read about this (decent primer: https://crackedlabs.org/en/networksofcontrol - this is actually a well done research paper on corporate surveillance, feel free to investigate the site for reliability etc, https://crackedlabs.org/en - happy to link more papers from different sources as well) the more I think that we are allowing ourselves to become manipulated into believing that we all can't actually get along, yet, in my day to day, wherever I've found myself, I've not found it difficult to make meaningful connections and find common ground with people who believe very different than me.

hope you all have a wonderful day.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I could not possibly agree more. I found myself starting to type out a reply to add on to your thoughts, but you addressed it all so perfectly. You understand!

Now it's just a matter of amplifying this type of message, because people are starting to understand. Another benefit of this process of grouping people online in to similar-thinking communities, is that it allows complex and subtle thoughts to flourish in spaces that actually host genuine discussion and debate. And furthermore, this is accessible to anyone, if they look for it. As far as I see it, it's just a matter of time till people understand the world we live in with fresh eyes. There's no putting that cat back in the bag, even if a lot of people are sleepwalking. Once seen, it cannot be un-seen.

I am hopeful. Thank you for your insights.

[–]rman 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Me too :) thanks for all the kind words - I honestly hope to just help make this place great for everyone here - I know it’s been around a while but I just found it the other day and it’s been a breath of fresh air

[–]kokolokoNightcrawler 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Heh, I'd like to think people were quite happier b4 the online sharing of their own filth and degeneracy. We've removed ourselves from the Holy word and attached ourselves to outrage porn inside these echo chambers. I think people were much better to one another before video sharing became the mainstream. Now we actually know there is no hope in humanity and that others are looking for ways to become more godly only in scripted movies, not IRL. I doubt you can really help anyone bear their own cross ,friend, because the pain is the direct result of our own imperfection, our sin.

[–]rman 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Well in some ways I think you’re right - ultimately it’s on ourselves to find our way be that through religion or not. For example, you can never pick someone up out of a depression but you can certainly come sit next to them, give them company, talk to them and point out that ladder next to them they can climb, but only they can climb it. It would be prideful and honestly quite narcissistic of me to think I can ever with a single message or online chat change someone’s mind, including yours :) but I think that there’s a chance to expose someone to new ideas an inquisitive mind might consider given time and appropriate respect.

When it comes to the ideas of sin/sinful natures and someone’s personal journey toward whatever lay ahead for them, I agree that there is certainly a lack of morality in many ways I think we have certainly lost if not outright encouraged online and it’s easy to find pretty much anywhere regardless of the banner they fly, even in the religious, it’s just often more hidden - but in the end it does come down to that personal journey, it’s not really for me to judge, it’s not really my place. I just know I was taught kindness on Sundays growing up which the world could use more of - I always remember learning “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” So much hate and anger in the world today (In my opinion more online than in the real world) for being the wrong color, religion, political position, etc, but I think you would have to agree (hopefully) that giving up on people before even trying something as simple as having an open conversation without boundaries would also be forgoing your chance to share with them how you found peace in your life (which very well may be different than mine) and based on what I detect in the language you’ve used here, it seems faith is important to you and I also remember learning that faith without works is dead, and it could even be considered sinful if someone weren’t willing to do that work of trying to help people where they could try. Am I wrong?