MyGiftedLife.org

sciencemama wrote:
Zaftig wrote:
I pour out my energy longing for that feeling of connection I get from just having a cat purring in my lap, but 90% of my interactions with humans are just *wrong*. I am misunderstood, discounted, or actively ridiculed. Or worse - I perceive waves of negative emotions below the dappled surface of their speech and I ache to give them a spiritual bandage.

I've three things on this.

1) I think extroversion/introversion better thought of as a spectrum. I love people when I can relate to them, and can talk for hours about what I know and love to do (like when I was giving tours, lectures, or in court), but the experiences tired me out.

And...ultimately, you are human. We all crave connection, those closer to the introverted side of things KNOW that only certain types of depth fill that need for intimate (I don't mean physically intimate, but emotionally intimate) human connection.

2) But, if you, like MANY of us in industrialized nations, are lacking in early healthy attachment to your parents, you will feel long term affects of this distance. At least here in the US, anyway. Most western parents push kids to become too independent too young.

I've been engaged in a very long term email correspondance with a friend on this matter. The woes of post-industrial society have been seen very early on by gifted philosophers/writers - like Betrand Russell and Hermann Hesse.

They saw the disconnection that the advent of industrial revolution was bringing. People are becoming the "walking wounded" and oftentimes they don't even know it. They just have a vague emptiness inside, which they seek to fill by overspending, over-drinking, over-drugging, over-eating, and on and on.

What's worse, is that it's getting worse. The MORE technological advances, the less connected we become as we turn away from meaningful interactions and more to electronic social networking (like facebook and texting on phones).

3) Your sensitivity picks up on this undercurrent of emptiness and you want to help them, while helping yourself find meaningful relating too.

I totally get that.


I have to say I have to modulate how much time I spend on MGL, because though it is superior to some other areas because it does bring together thoughtful, caring, gifted, sensitive people, it still is not the same as face-to-face interaction.

I understand it, but in a more selfish manner, I think. I don't know whether I'm more upset looking at the way other people are going on emptily, or for myself for not finding a better way for me live, safer away from the toxicity. And if I escaped the toxicity, wouldn't that just separate me further from the deeper contact with people?

This is something which I've been seeing echoes to in so very many places. And it strikes me that the biggest problem is that a very inhuman system is quite harmful to those who are sensitive and very human. And industrial society is an inhuman system. It has driven sensitive, intelligent people insane.

The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. For example, we are not supposed to hate anyone, yet almost everyone hates somebody at some time or other, whether he admits it to himself or not. Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people.
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The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society an individual's loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system.
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The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This has nothing to do with the political or social ideology that may pretend to guide the technological system. It is the fault of technology, because the system is guided not by ideology but by technical necessity. Of course the system does satisfy many human needs, but generally speaking it does this only to the extent that it is to the advantage of the system to do it. It is the needs of the system that are paramount, not those of the human being. For example, the system provides people with food because the system couldn't function if everyone starved; it attends to people's psychological needs whenever it can CONVENIENTLY do so, because it couldn't function if too many people became depressed or rebellious. But the system, for good, solid, practical reasons, must exert constant pressure on people to mold their behavior to the needs of the system. Too much waste accumulating? The government, the media, the educational system, environmentalists, everyone inundates us with a mass of propaganda about recycling. Need more technical personnel? A chorus of voices exhorts kids to study science. No one stops to ask whether it is inhumane to force adolescents to spend the bulk of their time studying subjects most of them hate. When skilled workers are put out of a job by technical advances and have to undergo "retraining," no one asks whether it is humiliating for them to be pushed around in this way. It is simply taken for granted that everyone must bow to technical necessity and for good reason: If human needs were put before technical necessity there would be economic problems, unemployment, shortages or worse. The concept of "mental health" in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.

The pervasive use of capitals underscores the stress the man who wrote those passages was undergoing, but while most people write off to stress the reason why an intelligent mathematician decides to start maiming and killing people, very few ask if there was a toxic cause for his illness. He was paranoid. But he was afraid of the encroachment of industrial society on liberties and self-determination, which is a real phenomenon. He was under stress. Actually, he had moved away from an urban area and still couldn't escape the encroachment of industrialisation on the woods he was living in. In a sense, he was trapped in a world he didn't fit in.

However much we may loathe what he did, I think Dr Theodore Kaczynski was driven insane precisely because he was intelligent, sensitive and human, and not well-equipped to withstand the constant bombardment of meaningless formalities that makes up industrial society. The only solution he worked out was to embrace violence and fight a hopeless guerilla war, killing other human beings.

So I thought we might discuss other, nonviolent, solutions to the toxic effects of industrial society on human self-determination, human relationships and human endeavour. Personally, I favor finding a large island and letting Atlas shrug.

Icon -

Dr. Kaczynski was also VERY upset that his attempts to escape the industrial machine by going "off the grid" and living in his own Walden of sorts, was being encroached upon by the push to develop the land around his Montana property. Supposedly the final straw was destroying one of his favorite natural spots to put a road in.

The thing of it is, I do understand his feelings. Long ago, I felt the crushing weight of the insanity of modern life - just in simple things like not making enough money to pay bills, yet having to put up with frustrations at work in order to pay the bills. My fiance managed to rack up $20,000 in CC debt (part of it was school bills and part of it was just mis-managed spending) and he struggled to get a job. It made me ill knowing I loved someone with THAT much debt, and knowing I was going to marry into it.

My own family was miserly (a good thing in a way) and yet money/financial support was a tool for control. And control they did. Toe the line or you'd be cut off from ANY family support - my way or the highway - you want to do things on your own, then you are COMPLETELY on your OWN.

The only way to survive with spirit intact without selling my soul for material comforts was to be completely WILLING to WALK AWAY from both financial and emotional support. The financial support was doable, the emotional support was harder, until I realized the kind of support they gave was of the gaslighting sort. You really aren't accepted for your strengths and morals and values of "people before things" - for they are ridiculed and shunned as insane.

The Allegory of the Cave? Yeah, I never knew until recently but that's exactly what it was like - they portrayed reality they created and expected me to buy into it hook, line and sinker. Only I had the niggling feeling that something was smelly about the whole thing.


As far as Ted goes, I agree, in his theory -

Dismantling the techno-industrial system is nigh but impossible:

I don't think it can be done. In part because of the human tendency, for most people, there are exceptions, to take the path of least resistance. They'll take the easy way out, and giving up your car, your television set, your electricity, is not the path of least resistance for most people. As I see it, I don't think there is any controlled or planned way in which we can dismantle the industrial system. I think that the only way we will get rid of it is if it breaks down and collapses ... The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible. To a large extent I think the eco-anarchist movement is accomplishing a great deal, but I think they could do it better... The real revolutionaries should separate themselves from the reformers… And I think that it would be good if a conscious effort was being made to get as many people as possible introduced to the wilderness. In a general way, I think what has to be done is not to try and convince or persuade the majority of people that we are right, as much as try to increase tensions in society to the point where things start to break down. To create a situation where people get uncomfortable enough that they’re going to rebel. So the question is how do you increase those tensions?

I don't agree with Kaczynski's methods, but I understand that we are so far gone we need to wipe the slate clean (actually, I felt this since I was 10 years old in complete fear of the Cold War and the potential of WWIII).

I won't reply fully at the moment, but the trouble I see with TK's escape attempt is that with everything owned and no reachable frontiers (that's another important point) there's no place to run. He fell for the assumption that nature was still free and independent. But everything is considered an ownable resource and can be taken away from anyone currently holding it with enough money or by political power. Just ask a native American or someone whose house was taken by imminent domain.

iconoclast wrote:
let... Atlas shrug.

Now there's a tshirt I'd like. With a pic of the Greek statue of Atlas of course. (www.theoi.com/Gallery/S34.1.html)

Thanks, that's a great idea.

Of course it would be tantamount to painting a target on one's back for various purposes. First, it could be considered anti-system behaviour. And I had an absurd visual from Day of the Triffids (the remake) with a mob of blind people pulling a sighted person apart in a scramble to seize them as a resource.

Here's my reply to this:

Link to On the Rise


Though I'm in the Camp of Hope, I also grok the agony of the Filth and Lies Camp. It's why this song appeals to be so deeply - both refrains running alternately, then simultaneously and finally in a satisfying harmony.