(We don’t have split voting here, presumably because this draft is from before split voting was created, but if I could I would strong upvote and strong disagree.)
I think an important piece of “why not grieve?” is that it doesn’t just come from dismissable randos, it also comes from friends and family and so forth. Something something, this bit from HPMOR:
“I think you’re taking the wrong approach by trying to defend yourself at all,” Harry said. “I really do think that. You are who you are. You’re friends with whoever you choose. Tell anyone who questions you to shove it.”
Hermione just shook her head, and turned another page.
“Option two,” Harry said. “Go to Fred and George and tell them to have a little talk with their wayward brother, those two are genuine good guys—”
“It’s not just Ron,” Hermione said in almost a whisper. “Lots of people are saying it, Harry. Even Mandy is giving me worried looks when she thinks I’m not looking. Isn’t it funny? I keep worrying that Professor Quirrell is sucking you into the darkness, and now people are warning me just the same way I try to warn you.”
“Well, yeah,” said Harry. “Doesn’t that reassure you a bit about me and Professor Quirrell?”
“In a word,” said Hermione, “no.”
There was a silence that lasted long enough for Hermione to turn another page, and then her voice, in a real whisper this time, “And, and Padma is going around telling everyone that, that since I couldn’t cast the P-Patronus Charm, I must only be p-pretending to be n-nice...”
“Padma didn’t even try herself!” Harry said indignantly. “If you were a Dark Witch who was just pretending, you wouldn’t have tried in front of everyone, do they think you’re stupid? ”
Hermione smiled a little, and blinked a few times.
“Hey, I have to worry about actually going evil. Here the worst case scenario is that people think you’re more evil than you really are. Is that going to kill you? I mean, is it all that bad?”
The young girl nodded, her face screwed up tight.
“Look, Hermione… if you worry that much about what other people think, if you’re unhappy whenever other people don’t picture you exactly the same way you picture yourself, that’s already dooming yourself to always be unhappy. No one ever thinks of us just the same way we think of ourselves.”
“I don’t know how to explain to you,” Hermione said in a sad soft voice. “I’m not sure it’s something you could ever understand, Harry. All I can think of to say is, how would you feel if I thought you were evil?”
“Um...” Harry visualized it. “Yeah, that would hurt. A lot. But you’re a good person who thinks about that sort of thing intelligently, you’ve earned that power over me, it would mean something if you thought I’d gone wrong. I can’t think of a single other student, besides you, whose opinion I’d care about the same way—”
“You can live like that,” whispered Hermione Granger. “I can’t.”
The good people who think about these sorts of things intelligently matter to me; it’s hard not to oof at their roundings-off even though it’s pretty easy not to oof at (most) randos (most of the time).
I do think there’s something here à la Buddhist attachment or whatever, that there is something that could be released or cauterized, but I think that releasing or cauterizing it comes with a real and significant cost, and not having been able to disentangle those (such that I can avoid losing the precious thing) is a deterrent.
This is what I wanted to get at about your post. There are some people/some environments where I feel totally attached to (what I imagine) are people’s models of me. I’ve worried about my mom’s judgement for basically all my life. But she can’t know me entirely because as you rightly point out, she isn’t me — I’ve felt a lot of comfort in realizing that her model of me (and my model of her modeling me) is necessarily incomplete, and therefore can’t be eternally true. My worthiness isn’t dependent on her model. If it’s any consolation, having this feeling for the past short while hasn’t made me detached from what I generally think is her good judgement.
BUT, at the same time, my mom has been able to like take one look at me and totally figure out motivations that I couldn’t articulate beforehand. I don’t know myself entirely. There are some motivations which appear transparent to to others, and which I could reasonably say right now “I don’t feel”, but I actually might. Not saying this is true of most of the A-ful without B-things you’re feeling. And obviously people over-extend their heuristics. Still, I think this is the value of putting stock in other people’s models of you — different info from the outside. But variable levels of attachment seem to be the problem?
One thing worth noting is that I have an entanglement between [my defense of my self] and [my defense on behalf of all the Nevilles Longbottom out there].
Like, I have T O N S of evidence that my own “hey, HEY, you don’t speak for everybody, bucko!” has been deeply nourishing for lots and lots and lots of people in lots and lots of contexts; even if I were to solve this one completely such that I had no need for self-defense along this axis I would likely still want to push back against the roundings-off on behalf of all the other people who had not yet solved this one for themselves, and are constantly taking damage.
No doubt I can do both the [self defense] and the [other defense] more effectively, but fixing my own orientation is not enough because other people have broken orientations, and I want them to be okay, and allowed to exist in their own skin under the sun.
Lol this entire thread that you’ve linked to is “why neurotypicals are bad, except I’m not going to admit that they’re bad and I’ll keep protesting devoutly that they’re not bad even though I haven’t said a single actually positive thing about them yet.”
Go ahead and test the prediction from the start of that thread, if you like, and verify that random people on the street will often deny the existence of the other two types. (The prediction also says not everyone will deny the same two.) You already know that NTs—asked to imagine maximal, perfect goodness—will imagine someone who gets upset about having the chance to save humanity by suffering for a few days, but who will do it anyway if Omega tells him it can’t be avoided.
Oh god, that not only describes Jesus but also many main characters of epic fantasy stories etc. The whole reluctant hero bullshit. I was always like, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be the hero? Interesting point though!
One way to make it stop hurting when most people effectively say you do not exist, or that if you do, you are wrong and do not matter, is to tell yourself that most people don’t matter. It’s what I told myself as a weird kid.
But that is a really harmful and problematic thing to tell yourself in so, so many ways. It reflects something dark. It has dark consequences. It becomes a self-fulling prophecy, because you no longer try to connect and understand, and this means the other side has even less of a motivation to do so for you. It means you miss out on the valid pain and valuable insights and skills of the other people around you. It can turn you into an elitist jerk. It can remove you from any sphere of impact. It can leave you isolated in an environment where you would not have to be, and where isolation comes with ignorance and danger.
I think making the pain over not being included in society disappear by deciding that society is shit anyway is the wrong approach. It prioritises not feeling pain, not admitting hurt and vulnerability, over recognising the amazing potential that humanity and civilisation have. The pain fucking hurts, and it hurts because you sometimes begin to imagine that this could be different. It’s a pain that is needed to drive and guide a change for something better. It is pain demanding rights, rather than giving in to not having them. It is the pain of wanting to contribute and fix things, and if you retreat, something is lost. I think it is a brave and good thing to feel it and allow yourself to stay with it, rather than getting over it. It is a thing worth grieving over, and raging against.
(We don’t have split voting here, presumably because this draft is from before split voting was created, but if I could I would strong upvote and strong disagree.)
I think an important piece of “why not grieve?” is that it doesn’t just come from dismissable randos, it also comes from friends and family and so forth. Something something, this bit from HPMOR:
The good people who think about these sorts of things intelligently matter to me; it’s hard not to oof at their roundings-off even though it’s pretty easy not to oof at (most) randos (most of the time).
I do think there’s something here à la Buddhist attachment or whatever, that there is something that could be released or cauterized, but I think that releasing or cauterizing it comes with a real and significant cost, and not having been able to disentangle those (such that I can avoid losing the precious thing) is a deterrent.
This is what I wanted to get at about your post. There are some people/some environments where I feel totally attached to (what I imagine) are people’s models of me. I’ve worried about my mom’s judgement for basically all my life. But she can’t know me entirely because as you rightly point out, she isn’t me — I’ve felt a lot of comfort in realizing that her model of me (and my model of her modeling me) is necessarily incomplete, and therefore can’t be eternally true. My worthiness isn’t dependent on her model. If it’s any consolation, having this feeling for the past short while hasn’t made me detached from what I generally think is her good judgement.
BUT, at the same time, my mom has been able to like take one look at me and totally figure out motivations that I couldn’t articulate beforehand. I don’t know myself entirely. There are some motivations which appear transparent to to others, and which I could reasonably say right now “I don’t feel”, but I actually might. Not saying this is true of most of the A-ful without B-things you’re feeling. And obviously people over-extend their heuristics. Still, I think this is the value of putting stock in other people’s models of you — different info from the outside. But variable levels of attachment seem to be the problem?
One thing worth noting is that I have an entanglement between [my defense of my self] and [my defense on behalf of all the Nevilles Longbottom out there].
Like, I have T O N S of evidence that my own “hey, HEY, you don’t speak for everybody, bucko!” has been deeply nourishing for lots and lots and lots of people in lots and lots of contexts; even if I were to solve this one completely such that I had no need for self-defense along this axis I would likely still want to push back against the roundings-off on behalf of all the other people who had not yet solved this one for themselves, and are constantly taking damage.
No doubt I can do both the [self defense] and the [other defense] more effectively, but fixing my own orientation is not enough because other people have broken orientations, and I want them to be okay, and allowed to exist in their own skin under the sun.
Except, if you Read The Manual, you might conclude that in fact those people also can’t understand you exist.
Lol this entire thread that you’ve linked to is “why neurotypicals are bad, except I’m not going to admit that they’re bad and I’ll keep protesting devoutly that they’re not bad even though I haven’t said a single actually positive thing about them yet.”
Go ahead and test the prediction from the start of that thread, if you like, and verify that random people on the street will often deny the existence of the other two types. (The prediction also says not everyone will deny the same two.) You already know that NTs—asked to imagine maximal, perfect goodness—will imagine someone who gets upset about having the chance to save humanity by suffering for a few days, but who will do it anyway if Omega tells him it can’t be avoided.
Oh god, that not only describes Jesus but also many main characters of epic fantasy stories etc. The whole reluctant hero bullshit. I was always like, who in their right mind wouldn’t want to be the hero? Interesting point though!
Agree.
One way to make it stop hurting when most people effectively say you do not exist, or that if you do, you are wrong and do not matter, is to tell yourself that most people don’t matter. It’s what I told myself as a weird kid.
But that is a really harmful and problematic thing to tell yourself in so, so many ways. It reflects something dark. It has dark consequences. It becomes a self-fulling prophecy, because you no longer try to connect and understand, and this means the other side has even less of a motivation to do so for you. It means you miss out on the valid pain and valuable insights and skills of the other people around you. It can turn you into an elitist jerk. It can remove you from any sphere of impact. It can leave you isolated in an environment where you would not have to be, and where isolation comes with ignorance and danger.
I think making the pain over not being included in society disappear by deciding that society is shit anyway is the wrong approach. It prioritises not feeling pain, not admitting hurt and vulnerability, over recognising the amazing potential that humanity and civilisation have. The pain fucking hurts, and it hurts because you sometimes begin to imagine that this could be different. It’s a pain that is needed to drive and guide a change for something better. It is pain demanding rights, rather than giving in to not having them. It is the pain of wanting to contribute and fix things, and if you retreat, something is lost. I think it is a brave and good thing to feel it and allow yourself to stay with it, rather than getting over it. It is a thing worth grieving over, and raging against.