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Probably not, because almost everyone likes to keep that part shunted away and never do it in public, if at all. And that’s not to say that they don’t do it, or have the urge, just that they don’t like the thought of what it implies: being a nutjob.
Now, I’ll have to politely disagree and issue a face-slap to anyone who defies me. Doo-lally people might talk to themselves, but that doesn’t mean that talking to yourself inherently means you’re doo-lally…but people ignore that fact all too often and just assume that it’s the crazy creepin’ in.
So, my rant! Let’s start with the fact that talking to yourself is still, invariably, talking. We all do that, all the time, just to other people, right? Now where did this notion come from that talking is only acceptable if there’s someone else there to listen? In fact, people will still talk to others, even if they’re full-knowing that said other person isn’t listening! So why can’t we talk to ourselves when we know entirely that we are listenin’? We are, after all, just that person that’s listening to what you have to say; so what if that happens to be the same person?
Well apparently it’s still a problem. Hmm. We could always look at the fact that it’s presented no mental problems or issues with anyone in the history of the world, but people will usually just go back and refer to people that are already insane or have other such underlying problems. How about if we refer to the fact that it actually has benefits? Let’s say that for children who do talk to themselves, they very quickly become more confident and social and are much more likely to approach and talk to other kids and make friends, including the introverted kids who don’t talk to themselves and just sit and be lonely? And let’s say that for adults that there’s incredible emotional benefits, even if it’s as simple as relieving stress or reassuring yourself before something stressful, such as a job interview. Shame is, that people actually do it and don’t realise the benefits it gives them, but due to them being self-conscious and paranoid in the face of onlookers, they do it as inaudibly as possible and deny it furiously when approached.
Surely that all should encourage people to stop being pointlessly nervous about talking to oneself?
No?
Well, let’s look at articulation of words versus thoughts! Talking a problem out aloud shapes and articulates a problem you have in your head much clearer than you consciously realise, whereas just thinking it to yourself you won’t be able to help but skipping past certain elements and continuing to come up with the same problematic solution. Talking it out reshapes it and gives it clearer boundaries and instructions or your sub-conscious brain to listen to, whereupon it takes those new rules and reshapes the problem in your head and hey-presto, you’ve got the answer! This is often enough experienced when you’re explaining a problem to someone else because you’ve all but given up on it, then half way through talking to them about it the answer suddenly crystallises in your own mind, before they’ve so much as said a word about it. Now, if you’d just talked to yourself about it on the bus you’d have sussed it hours ago and got back to kickin’ ass on xBox, as opposed to sittin’ there silently and shamefully (I say shamefully not because needing to mull over it is a problem, but because you’re only not talking to yourself about it because you’re ashamed to do so) mullin’ over it all day before finally seeking the help of your derisive friend. Lemme tell you, I’m the guy on the xBox, who’re you?
So we have a fairly small, but incredibly powerful list of benefits and advantages to be had from making conversation all the time, even when you’re the only one there, yet all this is denied in the face of madness. Why is it mad, I ask. Has no one ever noticed that religious folk sit at the sides of their beds and talk to themselves, or talk to their books, or kneel down and talk to the floor? Do they only get away with it because they believe they’re talking to gods and deities that potentially don’t even exist? Yet talking to yourself, who we can all accept for fact is right here and now to actually exist, is a sign of instant madness? I’d advise not to call other people mad when you’ve thrown all logic out the window, yourself…
It’s a self-perpetuating social cycle, really. You don’t do it because others will judge you, so you begin to judge others for it too, and then pass this same judgemental attitude down to your kids who continue and restart the cycle over and over again, despite the fact that our reasons to actually do this are long since lost. The only reason folk would originally have judged talking to oneself as crazy is because back then before we understood mental problems and insanity, talking to yourself would have been the most obvious and clear sign that said person is off their leash. Problem is that given our much more advanced comprehension of the subject, our red-lights and attitudes upon it haven’t changed in the slightest and we still think the same about it, forgetting that we aren’t in the 18th century anymore.
But what the hell do I care, really? That look of abject wtf-ness I get from people judging me just adds the sugar and icing to my day. If it was normal, everyone’d do it and I’d never get those moments again!
]]>Post From Vox:
Lemme start of by sayin’ that I’m a guy, and with that fact it hopefully goes without saying that I do have a penis. I do not, however, have a chunk of it surgically removed.
Why, may I ask, does such an operation exist?
If I was to ask someone today why on Earth someone would actually cut a chunk off, the most common argument is some dribble about health. I say dribble because despite the urban legend that circumcision is actually medically beneficial to you, it’s not ever been proven that it actually helps keep you healthier, with the small exception of potential reduced risk of HIV contraction during sex, which is such a small reduction in liklihood to contract the virus that you would probably catch it anyway, circumcised or not.
Of course, we could also just look at the theorised roots of the procedure and throught a huge number of candidates about how this crazy operation actually came to be, healthcare was almost unanimously not one of them.
Healthcare, then? Not bloody likely! Why do people look at a dick and assume it’s dirty? It’s a shame to think that most american males look at their penis and think that it’s so filthy, when the hands they use to masturbate with are probably hundreds of times more germ-infested… In fact, that very part of the body that’s so badly assosciated with filth is actually cleaner than a large number of other body parts, especially since pre-cum has this nifty advantage of cleaning it out of germs to prepare for healthy sperm to be launched, and lemme tell you that the foreskin being chopped has sweet fuck all to do with that, so let’s drop this falacy that it has, or ever did have anything to do with health.
Although it’s become far worse than a prevaling medical procedure done to combat disease. These days it’s become a trend of sorts in america. Being cut seems to be the popular, cool, fashionable way to do it, despite the fact that female circumcision is looked upon as an act of barbarianism. Young males might actually get mocked or bullied in schools because their body is natural and not deformed; it seems like lunacy to me that mutilation is the commonplace, and the natural growth of the body is a weird, taboo defect in that culture.
Hell, I even saw a post by someone some time ago asking if it was alright to be uncut….of course it’s bloody alright!! Might as well ask if it’s alright not to have your ears, nose, tongue, nipples, belly, balls and spinal chord pierced or punctured in some way…who needs to be normal, eh?
Ignoring the fact that it’s somehow cool to the american kids, I can’t see how people don’t look at enforced circumcision on infants as some kind of abuse. You can sue hospitals and surgeons for performing unwanted surgery, so why can’t you sue the surgeons and your parents for giving the go-ahead of a life-altering amputation at an age where you don’t even understand what’s going on.
I’m pretty sure that if said child grew up and decided he wanted to have a skinless dick so badly, he could opt for the operation himself, but who the hell’s to say he will? What gives the parents the right to decide that for a child at that age?
Religion? Well, not much need said about that; considering that there’s no religious benefits and the popular answer in america is “for sex”, it hardly coincides with the religious views of “no sex”. Given that and the fact that circumcision is virtually a default operation on newborns and not all families or jewish, so it clearly has squat to do with religion.
Going back to the argument about medical benefits, there have actually been people who’ve sought reattachment procedures from a few specialist surgeons (shockingly, america is the only country who even bothered (or indeed needed) to develop such a procedure) which rarely have perfect results and can actually cause more harm than good, not to mention potential PTSD or the long-term anger and hatred instilled within their brains when they were forcibly cut up.
So, phsyical and phsycological harm and distress aside, what else would there be?
Sex, obviously!
Wait….that can’t possibly be an argument for circumcision, can it?
Somehow, it is. For the benefit of the female, there is none. Some claim that circumcision removes some kind of smell, but get real….a tiny chunk of skin won’t get rid of an entire smell from the genitals…he either smells or he doesn’t; whether his cock is cut or not won’t change that.
Circumcised males are typically reported to have sex hard, angry and “pounding”, which can result in the female being less than pleased (depending on what kind of lass she is!) and it creates a certain skin friction (which would otherwise be prevented by the soft foreskin) which can, again, potentially harm the female.
Not to mention that many women who’ve commented on the subject mention that foreskin adds more…variance and interest!
Benefits for the guy? Well, supposedly they can reach orgasms faster….go you….
Other than that, well thousands of ultra sensitive nerves on the foreskin are chopped off, so they quite literally only lose sensation.
Great sex, eh?
What the hell do I know, though eh? I’ve never tried it…maybe I’d like the feeling of my dick being chopped up by some lunatic with a knife (although that sounds curiously similar to a certain threat that’s been issued to me by my girl should I ever cheat on her…) but it’s not somethin’ I’m crazy about.
Although one last thought….
For anyone who finds the fun in mocking uncut dudes, or thinks they’re cool because they’re cut, you might wanna know my favourite theorised origin of circumcision…
It was supposedly used, way back when, as a method to demasculinise, maim and otherwise humiliate slaves.
“are not ruled in the least by what other people think. That sounds like genuine freedom to me.”
I couldn’t have worded it better myself. It’s the exact notion that I personally believe one should strive for to be free in this world and falsely governed elected dictatorship of a society we are trapped in. Some will say that until such self-righteous governing bodies are taken away and let everyone roam free we will never be free, and to an extent I would agree, knowing that in a culture where the rich get richer and richer to the point where their surplus is redundant and virtually unusable, whilst the poor get poorer and poorer and 3rd world countries are allowed to exist when they could be so easily extinguished, I feel that no one will be ever be free in the political sense; the poor striving for what they can’t have and the rich striving for what they can never have enough of.
But I don’t believe much in politics, the whole system is a farce ruled by the people that already “matter”, so I see no reason to take interest in it myself, being far from someone who matters in the world. I care not for political freedom, I think about social or personal freedom. Those types are freedom are the only ones that truly matter in my opinion, but there are plenty of other types out there, other beliefs of the concept of freedom that people share, a number of them makin’ no sense to me whatsoever.
These different slights and variations on freedom can usually be split into the two fundamental categories; positive and negative. Positive freedom lends home to money-grabbers and materialists who line their homes and temples with gold and possessions, firmly believing that the way to freedom is to have as much as possible, that money will allow you to do whatever you want. Negative freedom focusses more on the persons will and choices, rather than their physical properties, saying that the will to do whatever you please is your liberty and the only thing preventing you from achieving that goal is yourself and the lack of will.
I can see merit in both sides, knowing that my life would be considerably easier if my bank account had a few extra disposable digits, but under similar philosophy as the Epicurean doctrine as outlined in my last post, I feel that I would struggle to appreciate everything as much as I do; my fiancae for example, means the world to me and the sheer difficulty of being with her, swimming through oceans of visas and expensive plane tickets I would hate to ever take that for granted that I have her and how incredible she is to me. The effort involved makes it worth it in the end, whereas if I could so easily pay all the problems away, I know I probably would, and she would be no less incredible, but would I truly be able to appreciate it as much as I should anymore?
The Greek Stoics believed that freedom came from removing hindering passions from our minds (note that back then, their word for passion didn’t quite mean what it does today, and meant much closer to obsession or anguish) and when one can logically, rationally and clearly look at life and any situation around them, then they could make their choices freely and live their lives freely, whereas those focused on powerful emotions, irrationality and suffering, obsessions and the like would never be able to properly be objection and would therein be trapped by their emotions and be prisoner to their “passions”. Of course it’s hard to grasp this notion when the same words we use now meant such different things back then; they would say to live following reason, but they saw reason not just as logics and rationality, but also as understanding nature in it’s simplest forms and of course back then, “stoic” didn’t mean unemotional or indifferent as it does today.
I can get my head around that, too, not wanting to be trapped behind by my emotions when I needn’t be, but I don’t quite believe in being quite so….stoic. I like to accept and follow reason, logic and science ahead of anything else, but I also like to follow my own emotions too even if they do cause me suffering and anguish; I feel that avoiding that pain is denying oneself it and hiding from it, whereas I prefer to know I have the option of pursuing it, should I choose so. “Let one make their own mistakes” would be the phrase I have in mind for this.
Fear of Freedom is something that’s caught my attention too, a concept directed at the side of negative freedom for when people do have the option and ability but lack the will, they remain prisoner to their own inhibitions due only for their own fear of the freedom of their choices. I wish I had more to say about that, but I quite simply can’t wrap my head around the idea of it, being perfectly able to do as you want, but simply choosing not to. It’s one thing that’s always stumped me in life: “I want to do that”, “Go do it, then” “No”….make sense to you? Me neither! S’like all those people who went to France and walked away without eating the froggy legs or garlic snails; why ever would you pass that up?
I’m not really sure where I’m headed with this anymore so I think I’ll call this one a day until I can centralise my focus a bit more onto a real point; I have far too many stray thoughts about this in my head and see no need to write out another 3k words detailing every gibbering contemplation I have on the subject; it’s simply too vast! That, at least, is my main reflection on the philosophy.
]]>Mmm, sounds grim, I know.
‘Course, I’m gunna flip that assumption right around on you and reveal that there is actually little pessimism or negativity in this post and that anyone who thought otherwise should be dearly shamed.
Anyhoo, onto my ramble!
I’m an atheist by a vague and simplistic definition although it could be argued that I’m a well-balanced hedonist or a logical realist, a pessimist who’s known to be optimistic, a stoicism sided epicurean or many others; there’s simply too many different doctrines in the known world for one to claim to be without religiously and blindly following those specific rules and tenants. I have beliefs and views that are shared amongst many different things so don’t like to call myself one or the other, knowing that ultimately I’ll choose my way above any unified or organised grouping, but there are some that I can definitely come closer to than others, such as epicureanism. That’s a pretty ancient Greek doctrine devised upon the principles that moderate, simple pleasures in life are the ultimate goal. I don’t believe in any deities and choose to follow logic and science, so accept that upon my death, it’s game over for me; no passing go, no extra lives, no 1ups along the way.
So, if that’s the case, why should I spend my life following others, doing as they say I should, thinking as they think I should? Why should I expend all my energy and time rushing and aiming for 1st place in every competition when the sheer effort alone sucks out all the fun, and allowing failure to ruin me? Why shouldn’t I jus’ do whatever the hell I feel like if it makes me happy? Why?
I can never find an answer to that, so I simply thought “fuck that, then!” and got on with it. I’m not goin’ to follow the rules society dictates and conform exactly as they imply I should unless that’s what I would have wanted to do anyway. I’m not goin’ to care if someone laughs at me for bein’ stupid when it won’t matter ever again. I’m not goin’ to care about makin’ an ass out of myself on the street in front of people I’ll never see again. I’m not goin’ to push myself to breakin’ point to get that 1st place trophy when the entire point of the game is jus’ to have a laugh, win or lose.
Now, I’m not encouragin’ failure on all fronts, or discouragin’ attempts at winnin’, I’m merely sayin’ that if I do lose, I don’t give a damn because I know that playin’ at all was the fun for me; the results are immaterial. I don’t want to have the best foods and the best house and the most money every day because I’ll only ever feel like shit the days I don’t have it. I’m not goin’ to forget the importance of the fact that I have clean water at my disposal every day or a fiancae that loves me and could leave me whenever she wanted. I like to try and be someone who appreciates what they have and allows myself to be happy with it, even if it is in sheer moderation.
What does all this imply? Simply that I don’t give a damn. Not about life, but about anythin’ that might hinder my personal experience. I’m not alive purely to suit someone else and if I spend my life following other people no one will notice when I’m dead and it’ll have no difference; in fact, most people will have no major effect on the world after their deaths, and even the people who do still have it limited and will only be more limited as time goes and eventually forgotten anyways.
Sounds depressing, I know, but it’s not really. It’s like religion and the acceptance of an afterlife, or eating a meal accepting that your fridge is full: if you focus so entirely on what’s to come later (the afterlife, the big dinner tomorrow, that non-instant gratification you’ve been waiting for) and you happened to be wrong, or it was stopped or interrupted, you basically just lose out. If you put that aside (and I’m not sayin’ ignore it) and focus on and enjoy what you have now, then you will find yourself making the most of every situation as it happens. A pious religious follower who devotes their life blindly to their religion and happens to be wrong will have largely sacrificed their life for nothing. Someone who eats no food expecting a large dinner later only to discover their fridge empty will have sacrificed for nothing. And even if they’re correct, then the earlier parts of their time were still given up. Expecting no afterlife and expecting an empty fridge forces you to appreciate and enjoy what you have right now.
Off-topic? Slightly, but it all leads back to the point that enjoying what you have now while you have it is simply enough, even if that is playing the game and having fun, with victory as a secondary goal. This notion, as an example when we play Pool in the common room downstairs, implies that the pros of the game sit and focus so entirely on the game and never appear to really enjoy it, and should they fail you can taste the bitterness they feel. I, however, am thoroughly crap at the game yet most around us can see I enjoy the game far more. I care not for the results; victory is a bonus to be revelled in for me, and the game itself is a challenge to be tackled, a game to be played and enjoyed and the failures to be laughed at and me to be made fun of.
There’s plenty of fun in failure, I’d say. It kinda goes along with the “don’t set your targets high and you’ll never be disappointed” but I’d say it’s more about enjoying the path whether you reach your targets or not.
]]>Came across that while engaging in my daily ritual of bein’ sucked into viral pictures and videos and jus’ have to say I’m pretty shocked. Not gunna go on a huge rant about this because, I’d hope, that the point would be obvious. Had a look through a few other articles on this site and the general theme remains the same; the journalists of this site and entirely encouraging distrust, disloyalty and paranoia that will only ever hurt a relationship. How often has bein’ paranoid about your partner and sneakin’ behind their back because of it actually helped a situation?
If you suspect your partner of cheatin’, there are numerous high-tech, 21st century methods of findin’ out about it and exposin’ them.
But have we forgotten the ancient ability to merely ask and hope for a truthful answer?
Can people simply not go about their lives without lyin’?
That’s all besides the point entirely, however; the main point is this: is the pursuit of “baitin’ them” your partner with fake accounts, hidin’ GPS trackin’ devices on them and askin’ strangers to tell you and the general act of spyin’ on them really any better or more moral than what they’re doin’ to you?
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