Random Stuff

[Despanan]

Luckily, the is on the rise. They've already had some major wins in Iceland and Germany, and they're growing here in the states.

[Esunasoul]

So your empathy levels have tanked. And yet you remember a time when you had more empathy. I'm going to assume that you "lost" empathy because of a combination of cancer struggles, military environment, job dissatisfaction, and stress. Do you feel that you are wiser and happier now that you have less empathy, or do you look back to your starry-eyed youth with a sense of longing?

I managed to lose a large portion of my empathy and then find it again. I'd say I'm happier after falling into that trap and then clawing my way out.

[Phantomgrift]

Honestly, one of the things that made me a little more trusting of this psychologist was when he asked what end goal I was looking to achieve was as opposed to just coming in once a week for a "How was this week" type of thing. After a bit of thought, I told him that primarily, I want to regain the enthusiasm I had for my job, if not at least the ability to go to work without feeling like everything was an uphill slog.

My empathy levels are a part of this because I can indeed look back on a timeframe where I was a little more naive and a little more happy overall. But that was long before the military. Issues I have are varied. Despite my amazing stubbornness here and apparent lack of anything but brick-level thinking, I am honestly incredibly smart. As the years went by, however, and I begin to encounter a level of basic, well, generalized stupidity in the populace as a whole, it frustrated me. It didn't matter if it was someone online, some shill at Greyhound trying to cadge free crap, or some random idiot on the bus... They would open their mouth, base nonsense would flow forth, and my patience slowly ebbed away at trying to place forth the information needed to give them a greater insight. It was far more easy and far more physically satisfying to either mental squash them, or use their own ridiculous arguments to reduce them to a sputtering incoherency.

After some years though, even that got old. Throw in everything from medical issues to career issues to set-backs, etc. and all of a nature well beyond planning or control, and I ended up bitter. Bitter, annoyed and eternally tired of watching as complete idiots had things handed to them on a silver platter without ever being aware of what they had. It was as though some giant device was in place to prove to me one-hundred percent across the board that the majority of the population was fundamentally retarded.

Sometime in all that, I found it easier to simply stop caring. I had an indifferent attitude that has always manifested itself from a time I was young, this simply moved into allowing it to blossom fully. Currently the only people I fully emotionalize with, with no forced aspect on my part, are my wife and kid. I've reached the point to where I literally have to step back within my mind and forcibly remind myself that there is (hopefully) a rational thinking human being within the walking sacks of flesh that surround me. It hasn't been easy.

I am wiser by way of experience, but happier? Well, I'm happy when I'm with my family. Outside of that, it's why I'm trying to talk to someone. After everything that has gone on for the last couple of decades, I know the immediate solution would be to become independently wealthy, find some place my wife and I could both agree on wherein the nearest neighbor was twenty miles away, and simply drink iced tea for six months and watch the world go by.

Alas, I'm aware that's highly unrealistic. Toss in a natural desire for my first response to everything to be one of anger and/or violence... Yeah, learning to regain empathy may be a continually ongoing process for me.

I'd be lying if I said just posting this much shit wasn't embarrassing to some degree.

[Phantomgrift]

Desp, you got my hopes up for nothing. I was expecting a party based on actual, ya know, Pirates.
Though I'm definitely all for net neutrality.

[Esunasoul]

So you find yourself too intelligent to relate to your peers and cannot locate any source of inspiration beyond your nuclear family? When grappling with your inability to educate and fix a broken world, you want to retreat? And yet, with the smallest question on my part you are able to open up, and with the smallest collaboration on the part of your therapist you are able to develop trust.

Empathy is within your grasp, Phant. You just need to surround yourself with more empathetic people in order to practice (which, I guess, can be the antithesis of soldiering in some ways, though not all ways). And you need to accept that you can't control *anything* in this world but yourself.

The good news is that most people can bloom where they are planted, so I'm sure there is a great deal of brotherhood going on all around you that you're missing out on. All the morons go back home to their families at the end of the day too (well, again, except maybe a boat full of manly soldiermen). I got very tired of nursing and hated my particular job, then I got my vision back and love my job again. Absolutely nothing changed but me. And that's why I have faith that you can shuck off some of this bitter cynicism.

[HisDivineShadow]

Phant shall grow from the smelly dungheap of self-aggrandizement he wallows in and finally become a beautiful flower. :)

[Phantomgrift]

Bear in mind Esuna, my last post was a rare moment for me.
Something may be within my grasp, but it's not a overnight change. Especially when my first mental response to people HDS is the desire to smack them.

[HisDivineShadow]

Phant, it's kinda hard to take you seriously when you practically scream at the top of your lungs that you only ever start arguments to troll. Even if it's to cover your ass when you craft a dumb argument, it's happened so often that there's no longer any way for us to distinguish between earnestness and more general bullshit.

Likewise, as much as I want to be super duper nice and care about your personal problems, it's hard to do so when you've basically painted yourself as a caricature all these years.

[Rip]

oh god, what I could add to this thread.



actually, oh god, what multiple versions of paragraphs I've written into this box and deleted.

so instead I wonder, if we can use the unique tools we have to aid phant, being that his therapy only works so far as the evidence that his therapist is given...and we have literally a decade of material that his therapist will likely never know about?

I wonder, would it be possible to argue phant into empathy?

would it be better to force him to argue what makes his family better than the "legions of assholes" that he is smarter than?

is confrontation all that he knows? is he inured to the form so much that he cannot help but reject it, because the Forum is as much "silly games" as it is "earnest heartfelt confessionary"?

Is he a lost cause, or does he want to be a lost cause to win a meta-argument he's been having for years on a very real basis? Can he think of it in these terms? what does our empathy for him mean, to him, and in general? can he conceive of it, as a genuine thing, or is it just another form of attack in his mind, as he illustrates in this very thread?

and then I realized how happy I was in my life, and thought about this decade-and-change knowing the online personality called Phantomgrift, and reading this thread very closely, and realized that

well

life is funny, really, in a quiet sort of way though

[Sage]

there was a time when the two of you couldn't agree on the color of the sky and grass, rip. that was your time to change him. you missed your chance to argue phant into being a better person.