glass-of-crickets

[glass-of-crickets]

People telling other people they should chill with their opinions on things that “don’t matter” while heelturning and going off handle on topics that also don’t ultimately matter are a joke.

People in general are a joke.

God I fucking hate people.

[glass-of-crickets]

Stripping people of agency is the worst thing you can do to them. It doesn’t matter how you do it, or with what intent.

[glass-of-crickets]

One thing I keep wondering about is why I can’t just let things be. Let people fuck up their and other peoples lives in peace, since it’s not my responsibility to care, nor do I have much right to impose on other people like that, and yet I still waste so much energy and brain power on getting frustrated. So I seethe. Seethe, and get more and more misanthropic with each passing year.

I wish people could be reasoned with on a more general basis, but ultimately it’s not worth it unless they’re people I’m personally invested in. I understand why. I get it. Fuck, for the love of god, I get it. It’s understandable, because you can’t ask every single person on planet earth to spend the ludicrous amount of energy that’s needed to get to a point where you can stop reflexively kneejerking people in the face when they start exhibiting the slightest hints of “moral rot”. It’s a pipe dream. It’s never going to happen. I should cut my losses and move on with my life.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being selfish. Everyone’s selfish. All living beings are selfish, that selfishness is a necessity to survival; everyone would just self destruct otherwise.

But oh, god, I can’t fucking stand people who try to justify their selfishness as being “good” because it “opposes evil”. I wish people would get over themselves. I wish, I wish, I wish.

I’m not above anyone but I’m starting to think the only way to find peace is to frame it like I was above listening to them. I don’t need to entertain every single person I come across, it’s just... Not worth it anymore.

[glass-of-crickets]

I think the way people generally tackle morality is both infuriatingly simplistic and needlessly complicated, often at the same time. A lot of grandstanding and posturing over concepts that are based on the false premise that morality is quantifiable or based on a metric.

There are no good or bad people nor good or bad actions. There are only actions--and intent--that aims to benefit one group, sometimes unsuccessfully, and sometimes (almost always, directly or otherwise) at the expense of other groups. Sometimes the group is just one person. If it’s the perpetrator, we call them a psychopath.

What do you have to tell a “good” person to make them realize that human brains can’t physically distinguish between pain that’s been caused on purpose and pain that’s accidental, I wonder? That good intent doesn’t stop a body from bleeding out on the sidewalk once you stab it in good faith?

... But you’re different, I’m sure. You, of all people.

“Ah, but you see,” you might say. “I know I’m not better than other people.”

And somewhere in the back of your mind, you quietly silence the voice that congratulates you for being different by knowing you’re the same.

I see.

[glass-of-crickets]

There’s probably something to be said about not taking yourself too seriously and not getting too attached to your image or ideas.

... There’s something really terrifying about having an image too. Everything’s so uncontrolled, and the only way to deal with it is to not care.

[glass-of-crickets]

I think I only recently realized that I have a crippling fear of faceless crowds.

“Recently realizing” and “crippling fear” don’t really get along well in a sentence, but I always thought it was just a fear of public speaking. That getting rid of it is just a matter of doing it more often. But, no, apparently that just makes it worse if the issue isn’t related to humiliating yourself in front of an audience.

It’s horrifying, obviously. But you only have to bite the bullet so many times before the sting settles. Then it’s out of your system, and your brain can stop riling up the alarm bells once it realizes it hasn’t died yet.

But I think the most difficult part of presentations in my case has always been that there is nothing I want to say. I can’t be given an incentive to write anything in regards to anything if the purpose is to present it to a larger audience, which is so unbelievably paradoxical for someone who has done NOTHING but theorycraft speeches for 20 years. 

And the thought of having to actually give said speeches is fucking terrifying, less because of the act of ‘giving’ the speech and more because of the implication of the context. What it’d mean to have a large audience. What would’ve had to happen so that I would’ve ended up at that point, and what it would be like to be in that situation. It’s terrible. It’s genuinely distressing. It’s not something I ever want to go through in my lifetime even if I had the resources to get there.

... I don’t think it’s an unreasonable fear. Or, at least, not in the sense that it’s something I have to “get over” or whatever. I’m not a coward, I’m just selfish.

I’m not sure there’s anything wrong with not wanting to make a change in the grand scheme of things. Even if I didn’t have this fear I wouldn’t do anything to actually go out there and make something happen, on the contrary I’m pretty sure the fear exists because I feel morally obligated to be a role model or whatever even though that’s the last thing I ever want to be.

And it’s absurd. I know that. What, you don’t want to make a positive change in peoples lives? And you call yourself a good person, my word.

There was a long stretch of time some years ago when I kept feeling like I was being watched. It still comes around occasionally, especially when I look in the mirror or think about things that have a controversial tinge to them. As if my every single god forsaken move was being monitored and scrutinized by some amorphous audience that I have to explain myself to.

And it never made any sense to me why I got so wound up over it. If I was honest about my intentions to this nonexistent blob then why did I always feel like such a horrible person?

... But you know? There’s no way you’re explaining yourself to a group of people without at least one of them walking away from the situation convinced you’re lying.

Be it because they want to think so, or because you explained yourself poorly. It doesn’t matter. Some people want to assume the worst, and some people want to feel superior. Some people have associations that you can never be careful enough to not trip over, and that’s just the nature of language. I’m so unbelievably fucking tired of having to justify myself to people.

I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m absolutely fucking TERRIFIED of hurting people, especially people I’m close with; not because of the reaction they might have, but the fact that I’ll have to live with the self-generated guilt that literally nobody else is reinforcing. I can’t live with it. It’s so indescribably painful, and oh, GOD, the thought of being branded as abusive on top of that by people who don’t have the whole context is harrowing.

I love my friends so much. I have a lot of very strong emotions about a lot of things, and a lot of those emotions are very genuine and very overwhelming. I want to do what’s best for them, regardless of what that subjectively “”should”” be in “”my opinion””.

I also have zero interest in benefitting the human race as a whole in any meaningful way.

I’ll do my part. That’s about as much as anyone can ask from me, I think.

[glass-of-crickets]

There are a lot of misconceptions about how brainwashing works, the largest of them being that you have to be gullible or stupid to be brainwashed.

Anyone can be brainwashed into believing anything, as long as the following conditions apply;

1. The person being brainwashed is isolated, either physically or socially. The length of time and severity needed depends on the person and the thing they’re being brainwashed into believing. 

2. The group around the person is adamant that the ‘fact’ is true, and only presents evidence that supports this claim.

3. The person is prevented, either by physical restrictions or via peer pressure, from seeking alternative opinions or viewpoints. This usually manifests as social reprimanding, demonizing, and exclusion of anyone who even remotely questions the validity of the ‘true’ claim.

The human experience is inherently subjective. We view the world through a lens that is heavily altered depending on the types of people we hang around, and the most common form of brainwashing has no real culprit; people who have had their viewpoints altered by their social group will go on to alter the viewpoints of those who enter it in the future, and they usually believe every word they say.

The key is repetition and fear. Your brain functions like a muscle; as long as you hear something often enough, it’ll be easier for your brain to use that train of thought later, because frequently used neural pathways are less energy intensive to use than inactive ones. It’ll prefer to have that thought over others, and in turn, will prefer to believe the contents are true.

Isolation and exclusion from groups is the worst thing you could do to a person. Be wary of any claim that has to threaten you into believing it.

#Brainwashing #psychology

[glass-of-crickets]

I think saying “everyone is unhappy sometimes, some people just know how to hide it” is deceptive. Yeah, everyone is unhappy sometimes, but most of the people who look genuinely happy all the time are people who learned how to cope.

You’re never not going to have bad days, but that doesn’t mean it has to make you miserable. There are ways to learn to make it less all consuming, and everyone can learn those skills. Nobody is doomed to be miserable. There are people who aren’t, and you’re not any different from those people; they just went through circumstances that taught them to deal with the bad things that happen in their life, in healthy ways.

#mental health

[glass-of-crickets]

Also, I find it kind of interesting how in music the general laughing stock is pop, which is often characterized by easy to understand and repetitive themes, whereas in visual art the laughing stock are pieces with too much reliance on meaning. 

Meaning is easy to impose, but difficult to convey.

[glass-of-crickets]

On the other side of that spectrum is conceptual art, which... Does nothing for me, frankly. It makes me uncomfortable. 

“That’s the point!” Someone might say, but it’s not like I’m missing it. Conceptual art is the art of concepts, where the actual piece is secondary to the message it’s supposed to convey, and that’s something I can’t find value in. It’s vaguely bitter and resentful toward “art” as a whole despite demanding to be considered a part of the club, and that’s a strange combination; a conceptual art piece without context becomes surrealist or abstract, but with context the piece itself becomes irrelevant. If a piece that’s entirely dependent on it’s meaning doesn’t inherently convey what it’s trying to convey, why does the piece itself hold any value? How can an art genre that inherently devalues the piece in favor of concepts be so insistent that the pieces are artistically significant, especially when a core subject of the genre is questioning the value of traditional art? How can you demand to be taken seriously as an art-form when the entire basis for your genre is the ridicule of art?

A lot of it is very charged, and comes off as artists trying very hard to look like they’re not trying at all while still demanding to be treated as if they’re trying. I think there’s a lot of artistic merit in many conceptual art pieces when they’re separated from the concept, ironically.

Conceptual art is more effective in concept than in practice. Maybe there’d be more artistic merit in considering the entire movement a massive collaborative piece in protest against traditional art, rather than single pieces that simultaneously scoff at being art and then accuse you of not getting it when they’re not called that. Concept concept concept concept concept.

#conceptual art #art

[glass-of-crickets]

Even though I love art and the concept of artistic expression with all my heart there are very few genres I actually like. Very few I can name off the top of my head, very few I can get passionate about, and my niches have a tendency to be very tiny so my relationship with art in general is a bit questionable. 

There is a very specific branch of surrealism I can’t get enough of; Surrealist word play. Using words in ways they’re not meant to be used either by changing the context behind what’s being conveyed and then cutting out the context, or by strategically placing them to convey a concept or emotion. They’re the art of saying meaningful nonsense, and the art of saying things without saying them respectively. Neither are particularly profound (art in and of itself never is) but there’s something intriguing about the way you can break down perception with surrealism, especially with language.

[glass-of-crickets]

Abusive behavior stems from the false belief that the abuser can’t get what they need without it. In some cases the abuser might not even know what they’re trying to get with the behavior (just that they feel compelled to do it), or that it’s abusive.

While this doesn’t make abusive behavior acceptable or justifiable, it does mean these people are capable of significant change provided they put in the effort to learn healthy ways to cope, and find people who have priorities and needs that are complementary to theirs.

#abuse

[glass-of-crickets]

Personal thought, I sometimes get annoyed at the arrogance of people who think they’re above others on account of being “more miserable”. It’s so narcissistic. Spending hours, and hours, and hours of your life making up metaphors and similes to explain how your anguish is somehow incomprehensible in comparison to others. Scoffing at people who have issues different from yours, because people “just don’t understand” just how much worse you have it. I think mood disorders fall victim to this a lot. There tends to be a lot of self-pity going on, especially if you compare the self-expression of someone with anxiety or depression to someone with psychosis. 

It’s strange. You find these people inserting themselves into discussions that don’t directly concern them a lot more than you see other demographics.

[glass-of-crickets]

Every human is a human, and if a theory about how humans work can’t logically fit every single human being who has ever lived in one way or another it’s worthless. You can’t dehumanize people you disagree with (or hell, even people who have done atrocious unforgivable things, no matter how bad) and still come to logical conclusions on these things.

There is not a single human being who isn’t human. Period.

[glass-of-crickets]

Making jokes about your bad qualities for the sake of being funny doesn’t come off as manipulative, but making jokes about your bad qualities for the sake of forcing transparency does. I think people underestimate how much intuition people use in their day to day lives. Even if we don’t completely understand the situation, if something doesn’t quite add up, we’ll know.

We might not know how it doesn’t add up. We might come to wrong conclusions or make poor decisions due to not having all the puzzle pieces. Regardless, the feeling of something being off is very potent and often very accurate.

[glass-of-crickets]

Being genuine goes a long way with people. Admitting to mistakes is usually well received if no emotional manipulation or excuses are involved, and trying your hardest and not overstating how hard you’re trying pays off in the end. People aren’t stupid. They’ll know you’re being deceptive; they might not know why, because intuition works in mysterious ways, but they’ll know.

Transparent effort is inherently attractive and trustworthy because there are no loose threads. Trying to appeal to that need for transparency by making jokes about how transparent and straight forward you are about your manipulation is, in itself, manipulative. It might make “logical” sense that being transparent about your manipulation would make you more trustworthy, but it doesn’t. It just makes it clear to people who are paying attention that you are capable and willing to do it.

#genuinity #psychology

[glass-of-crickets]

The most important thing that goes into creating successful and pleasing art is internal consistency. This is true for all kinds of mediums, although I’m personally most familiar with drawing and writing. You can create something entirely unrealistic and still sell it as believable as long as the internal logic is solid; on the other hand, if the internal logic isn’t consistent, the quality of the piece suffers as a result even if you aim for realism.

“But it’s not supposed to be realistic” isn’t an excuse. What people are criticizing isn’t a lack of realism, it’s the breaking of rules you’ve either purposefully or accidentally set yourself. 

#Art #criticism