Hello Everyone

[Taylor Bailey]

I've been listening to FDR for about two and a half years now but have not found it easy to get into the forums and join the community actively.  I don't really know where to begin, or if there are certain "steps" to take to get the most out of it.  I want to talk about everything, yet I would find myself commenting on other websites such as youtube or facebook about freedom, places where more often than not I was met by confrontation, either directly or not.  I finally decided to overcome the paralysis and post here, and that is also something I would like to talk about.  I was wondering if anyone could share any experiences with anxiety in dealing with more intellectual people, or why apprehension arises with the possibility of communicating with more honest people (FDR).  I know it has some "Simon the Boxer" elements in it, but I'm not sure if this is the appropriate section to post my history or how it works best.  I would be very appreciative if someone could "show me the ropes" (heheh), as far as where to begin.  I would like to talk about my own personal history, the psychogenic theory of history, psychoanalysis of an anime called FlCl and Shadow of the Collosus (my favorite anime and video game).  I'm very interested in finding out why I like what I like beyond aesthetics, and how my history has prevented me from not only not having that ability, but has made it very difficult to attain.I live in Huntsville, AL, surrounded by churches, military bases, and NASA.  I have a roomate that is very into self knowledge and philosophy, and he has been very helpful in talking about some of these issues.  I suppose that could be another reason it has taken me so long to get on the boards.  I have someone in my life that I absolutely love, and the prospect of doing philosophy face to face, influencing someone and being influenced by someone that is a part of my life is much better to focus on.  Thank you for your time, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon!

[Jeremi]

Welcome aboard Taylor.

[Isomies]

Hi Taylor. Welcome here...I'd imagine you are more welcome here than most other places. Good to hear you have someone near you to discuss philosophy with since being a truth-seeker as we all know can detonate relationships quickly and turn this into a lonely world. Feel free to share your personal story, it can be therapeutic and I think you'll feel welcome here and meet others who you can discuss many topics with.

[SirJamesIII]

I was wondering if anyone could share any experiences with anxiety in dealing with more intellectual people, or why apprehension arises with the possibility of communicating with more honest people (FDR).

I would like to be updated while you figure this out. I come from the other side of the fence where I don't understand why people don't embrace criticism.

I think it has a lot to do with our education system where kids are discouraged from providing wrong answers (not that we should encourage them either). The public eduction system is set up such that teachers become authority figures. Pre-K through around the second grade, kids are still developing social norms. They may not know how to "play nice" yet, so they are taught moral lessons by teachers instead of parents. Maybe when you grow older, providing wrong answers feels like you are disobeying some authority figure. During my high school and now college years, I found that I asked a lot of "dumb" or "obvious" questions (stuff like, "what does this word mean?" or "how does this relate?"). I found that the obvious questions often have the least obvious answers and that kids were apprehensive in asking these "dumb questions" because they feel like they are already expected to know the answer. 

 

I would like to talk about my own personal history, the psychogenic theory of history, psychoanalysis of an anime called FlCl and Shadow of the Collosus (my favorite anime and video game). 

FLCL has been on my watchlist for a while. I'm thinking about starting an anime recomendation thread.

 

[Taylor Bailey]

Yes, looking back, it's as if every instance of that occuring at school built the cacoon of false self defenses thread by thread upward.  I don't remember specific instances, but I do remember feeling the immense gravity of almost instinctively knowing what to say or not say, do or not do.  I always enjoyed using my whit, and nothing was as uncomfortable as the silence your peers give you after not meeting their expectations humor wise.  I generally hung out with less intelligent people in highschool, and felt more comfortable communicating with them.  They didn't scrutinize every detail like a rabid Star Trek fan, and didn't really have the capacity to judge me, not that I did much to deserve judgement.  It was generally the other way around.  The smarter students intimidated me far more.  I was a nihilist then (also worth a discussion if anyone is interested), and thought that there was no possible way these guys could really know what they're talking about, and that their grades reflected how much they bought into the system (I bought into it too, which was a torture in itself, since I had to keep up the veneer of thinking school mattered, as well as the guise that nothing did).I think then, and to some extent now, has everything to do with how my mother bullied me verbally when she was acting out her own unprocessed emotions.  She would use rather large words with me, ones that I couldn't possibly have understood at my age.  Sometimes they weren't large, just very uncommon, and it seemed that the angrier she was, the more she would use these verbal traps.  That is, until she became so angry that her brutish intellectual shouting was replaced by pure blood soaked roaring profanity.I don't want to ruin FlCl for you, but I think it stikes such an emotional chord with me because of the motherlessness.  I'm generally not a big fan of anime.  I do enjoy some of it.  I like Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Beebop, and maybe a few others, but generally they're a little too melodramatic for my taste.  The thing about FlCl is that it's honest with itself in that regard.  It knows it's way over the top and can poke fun at itself.Some examples of the more insidious intellectual verbage would be words like "antics" as in "Taylor, I'm getting tired of your antics."  That may be normal to hear for some, but is much different from hearing the 'normal' "Quit actin' like a horses' ass."  But, when I would ask her what antics meant, she would become even more frustrated.  I recall being at a local video rental shop called Paradise Video, it had a little sign and large decals on the windows of palm trees and sand.  My mother, who I think was single at this time (married 5 times to date) was talking to one of her "girlfriends".  I was walking around the store with my little sister.  We liked brousing through the horror section, and I see a movie with a hockey mask with this demon worm crawling through the eye sockets.  I picked up the box and walked over to my mother, who was still chatting away with this other lady. and asked her if she could tell me what the movie was called.  She didn't answer, or even look at me.  I could read at this time, and was just doing it for kicks.  I knew what it meant, but I still wanted her to say it, so I continued asking her repeatedly until she turned around, snatched the box from me, and said, "It says Jason Goes to Hell, Taylor. DAMN.  You're just so damn rude.  You don't interrupt the adults when they're talking."  I giggle and walk away.  I think me and my sister talk about how I got her to say it.  The cursing and verbal violence had become so normalized, that it was now laughable (and served quite a vengeful dish to my mother, who had obviously modeled this behavior to us).  I had to make a joke out of it to survive.  In the future, I would still find it funny when people got angry.  I remember my dad getting angry with a cell phone and literally trying to twist it in half like a bread stick.  I hear the little creaks mock him in his futility and irrationality of expressing himself in that way, and I couldn't help but laugh at him, but now it seems very unpleasant.