And that is that.

[silveradept]

Sort of. I think I put in the last word of content in my thesis. Now I need to go back through it and read for continuity and to make sure that I put everything in its proper order. Sixty pages, minus index of works. That's sixty pages double-spaced and in 12-point font, by the way, so it looks bigger than it is. Either way, it's basically finished. Still kind of surprising that I managed to avoid panicking and going (too) insane enough to do this. Now I can turn my attention towards my other papers that will need to be done soon. There's also the bit about keeping my work and study working together well enough to get out and graduated. And the part about finding a summer job. But the major major stressor of this year is complete. Congratluations should be held until I actually do graduate.

Check out the penny towers. No glue, no adhesive, merely well-stacked pennies. As of this writing, most of the pictures are removed because of bandwidth issues, but Your Mileage May Vary. Or you could try it yourself.

Will the real Loki Kindly Stand Up? Eris has something she wants to tell you about. Something about the Mother of All Pranks...

I'll pick your brains about the contents of this article about kindness. I think the article-writer's right - we're insulating ourselves from each other (says the guy at his keyboard with a chat window open and his livejournal client on his desktop - I'm aware that I cut quite the hypocritical figure on this). But I don't think it's because we're taught to see each other as obstacles. I think we're taught to see each other as threats. We're told to assume that everyone is putting on a face when they interact with us, that their real self is something different and most likely dangerous to you. Of course, that's for your peers and people considered above your rank. For those below, we're taught not to notice them - the hired help is, after all, supposed to be invisible.

If I want to, I can make this a possible reason why children go shooting up their schools - their classmates are seen as threats or opressors, rarely ever as friends or comrades or fellows. Those same classmates might see the aggressor as someone beneath their rank, not worthy of acknowledgement, much less communication. The aggressor becomes a target. Is it any wonder that the aggressor starts seeing them the same way?

Or if I feel like it, I can tie it into something like the Schavo case - each side sees the other as a threat (excepting the pols, who see opportunity). Thus, the bitter squabble. The vicious infighting over American politics and court decisions. The litigation-happy society. All of this can be linked to the simple idea that all of us are taught as children to see everyone else as a threat. My revolutionary socialist friend would call it a necessary idea for the continuation of capitalism, and I'm inclined to agree. The cutthroat competition we have these days is a matter of getting them before they get you. It's not even necessarily about making a better product, but making the only product.

At the same time, I know that there are some people that are threats to my well-being, and that I should be guarding against them. But this paranoia about everyone else is lunacy. We might find that there aren't so many threats if we started trusting each other a bit more, being a bit more kind to each other. Then we might find out where the real threats are. And I'm sure there are quite a few vested interests that don't want that.

Comments

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's so much that we're taught to see others as risks, although you're quite right that a lot of that happens, it's that we aren't taught otherwise.

Human beings are, when you get down to it, apes with large brains, we're a product of where we came from. We have evidence that civilisation has been around for a couple of thousand years, a bit more perhaps, but these numbers are a blink of the eye of the world compared to the millions of years of evolution that brought us from small post-mesozoic mammals through to the first mud brick in Mesopotamia. Thoughout our entire evolution, anything outside the group was a potential threat, our ancestors developed in a world where trust was a quick way to end up as the next meal. In the absence of training to the contrary, we will revert to our evolved response: trust nothing outside the group, the tribe. But people are being trained to just use that evolved response instead of fighting it.

But I think you've missed something...

says the guy at his keyboard with a chat window open and his livejournal client on his desktop - I'm aware that I cut quite the hypocritical figure on this
So, you're talking to people, how is that insulating yourself from it? I admit, I have a rather skewed view of things given that I don't tend to draw much distinction between talking online and talking face to face but the internet's great strength is that it allows people to come together who would otherwise never even know the other exists.

[silveradept]

I suppose I've been drilled with the idea that face to face is superior contact than on-line text messaging - in the realm of nonverbal cues and determining the mood of the speaker, that's true. While chat and forums have advantages of drawing the distant together, to do so to the exclusion of the local enviroment is a problem. As we dive deeper into the possibilities of global chatting, we don't always spend as much time interacting in realspace.

Plus, the Internet allows for quite the horde of "me, too" if you look in the right places. Tribal constructions become easier that way. It's good to have a support group, but surrounding yourself with virtual yes-men is no more productive than surrounding yourself with real yes-men.

I agree that we should be fighting the idea of "everyone is a threat to me". How we do that effectively is a bit of a mystery to me.