A
AaronAgassi
Guest
WARNING: This is a fairly lengthy message. If you are convinced that loneliness is always a simple problem, then this might not be for you.
There is frequently a great divide between the abstract and the concrete, all but guaranteeing poor planning and feeble practice. For while the lofty, rarified and abstract is seldom rendered concrete up high in the proverbial ivory tower, meanwhile, back down to Earth, broadest faulty assumptions behind concrete procedure go blithely and perilously unexamined.
Rather, from a position of Empirical skepticism towards all that many so fervently and somewhat simplistically embrace and fixate upon as "tried and true," instead, the abstract must at long last ever be cultivated and wrought out in strategic detail, towards practical and practicable concrete implementation. Then let us proceed:
PSYCHOTHERAPY etc. is ALL FINE AND GOOD:
Obviously, inner conflict and ambivalence can only be confronted by each individual within inner life. Nevertheless, I do not here inquire into emotional or psychological issues alone as such and in and of themselves. Rather, the challenge I hope to raise is explicitly and particularly as to individual conflict with the environment, and real progress MEANING: ongoing improvement of the inevitably imperfect social environment in order to lessen as much as possible and practical, often however repressive and oppressive adaptive compromise on the part of the individual. -To further liberate and to better serve...
But rather than any vast social revolution, I propose to begin far closer to home for each of us.
After a while, ENDLESS REPETITIVE ENCOURAGEMENT can even seem EMPTY and even ANNOYING
I do not seek consensual or other validation, encounter group SHARING, a support group, small talk, inspirational/motivational pep rallies, so on and so forth, ad nausea.
Because all such superficial conformist interactions of co-validation do not assuage my loneliness, but actually frustrate and aggravate the condition! -As indeed is often observed when an individual caries any real burden upon their chest, let alone any real purpose, that remains palpable distress unresolved by petty distraction and small talk. To wit:
All too many people are far too wound up in what relationships are supposed to be like, even simply to observe for themselves and ever appreciate, the real world dynamics of actual ongoing relationships. And I believe that exactly such social myths and normative distortions greatly obscure the struggle to overcome widespread loneliness.
So to Hell with the jobs we hate for the money we need, the boring classes to get ahead, the depressing courtship ordeals endured in hopes ever of getting laid, and the frantic insecure contract negotiations, struggle and strife, of long term codependency. Down with Moloch! Let us strive, instead of pointless sacrifice, towards interaction, even in every context, intrinsically for whatever it's own joy!
HOW LUCKY ARE THOSE WHO CAN DO WHAT THEY LOVE! AND THE MORE SO, TO DO SO TOGETHER WITH FRIENDS.
Alas, there are those of us that despite being well spoken, not shy or awkward, yet nevertheless, people simply will not befriend us, neither at random in public, at recreational venues, in pursuit of common interests, nor in such conventional structured environments as school and the work place. Nor can we network any web of support for suitable introdictions.
Hence, let us imagine better alternatives to all the blithe clichéd advice detailing somewhat robotic procedures how to meet new people, because, one way or another, clearly the aforesaid approach simply doesn't work for everyone.
Indeed, just such nominal advice may not actually be intended as substantive advice at all, but merely as exhortation and encouragement. Indeed, success thereof, as ever, might come more often in normative socialization of the individual, rather than howsoever individual outreach achieved. Hence, exactly such may be vastly discouraging coming as it does, distinctly at cross purposes for anyone already frustrated with exactly any such common sense application, let alone howsoever dishonest peer preasure, actually and sincerely seeking new perspective, fresh ideas and new knowledge to put to use instead.
TRUISMS in REACHING OUT from LONELINESS
Consider those online or mail order courses for various business opportunities, in any range of marketing or brokerage variations. Often, the way they make it all so appealing is by oversimplification and by concealing key difficulties. In particular, they typically do not include any inventory of the fairly specialized skills and actually quite vast background knowledge required and simply assumed. They claim to be for everybody, without regard to compatible temperament for the actual experience of the work. Nor do they include proper business plans, profit and loss projections, by which risk, benefit and required investment of all manner of resources of time, effort and ongoing capitalization may be realistically assayed. Or else, as in those pyramid schemes, they are motivational, meaning that they exhort a manic enthusiasm to exhaustive drudgery.
Now, all of the same may be said of truisms in prospecting for new relationships and connections. Serious works upon the topic are more honest about what is really entailed and how dehumanizing it can be. -about the absurd costs of acceptance, let alone popularity. Or else, there are tactics for chatting up new people, that are the laborious and random equivalent of cold calling in marketing. In other words, unqualified leads in sheer volume or in hope of random dumb luck.
We are in situations of which we have no control, and if it just doesn't work, then this is because we have not adequately plunged in and surrendered ourselves! Or so we are slyly encouraged to believe. And, actually, it's all true! The more vigorously one adapts, the more responsive the social environment becomes. Why, we should all just become model prisoners, and be grateful for all that's on offer! Anything less is just perverse, antisocial. And let us never ponder how wretchedly unhappy all to often are those who have entered into such a profoundly Faustian bargain with life. In truth, regulating the tradeoffs and cost of opportunity at all, is yet another daunting and complicated challenge.
Surely all of the above merits serious conversation so that people can be better prepared. But these topics are often seemingly taboo. Because if we only knew what we where getting into, we might balk! Maybe there is good reason we experience despair and depression. Especially considering how in the endless scramble, friendship is often the first thing to go by the wayside.
KNOWING HOW TO BE A FRIEND IS DIFFERENT FROM KNOWING HOW TO FIT IN
Although, the latter sometimes may be disguised as the former. As when public words of comfort achieve social integration. -Perhaps also even for the individual comforted. But as individuals, do the participants actually relate or even truly care? Who knows what they feel deep inside. Indeed, let us assume the best of faith. Nevertheless, perhaps they may remain deeply lonely despite nominal social integration. And that precisely is the lonely Hell I frequently percieve on this very forum.
SUBSTANTIVE CONVERSATIONAL ENGAGEMENT:
Good intentions, let alone mere trite sentimentality, are simply not enough without genuine interest and attentive discussion in detail, all honestly taken in the spirit as intended. But because disagreement, incomprehension and misunderstanding are the normal human condition, conversational adequacy of public discourse requires meticulous detail in detecting and repairing miscommunication together, no less than vigorous open controversy. So, speak up to disagree, and if you don't understand, ask. And again, provide detail and reasons to help in communication repair, no less than in support or refutation of an argument or assertion. And keep at it! Stay interested.
Real engaged conversation is always far more efficient and productive over time, than any nominal exchange that howsoever fails to fully engage, such as monologuic exchange, bypassing, gainsaying and empty social rituals, even strokes. -Let alone hostility, abuse or suppression.
MISCOMMUNICATIONS REPAIR
Again, miscommunication repair may often require feedback seeking out to whatever logical, narrative, linguistic or other ambiguities in specific beyond sheer general expression of incomprehension. Do not simply assume that the other party already knows what it is that you do not understand, why and how so! -But spell all of that out, as specifically as possible.
Framing particular questions may also be of great help. People who will not question, cannot be very interested.
CAVEAT:
Ongoing cooperation in miscommunication repair is indispensable to higher function. The level of communication heteronymous possible without miscommunication repair, is fairly low, intellectually and emotionally.
Indeed, conversational adequacy of substantive conversational engagement is crucial.
For surely just such apathy and ennui as ever to reject substantive conversational engagement as defined above, renders all else pointless, futile, isolated and crushingly lonely!
VALUE PREPOSITION:
Because true compassion requires genuine interest beginning with the sheer attention span required to sustain ordinary curiosity! By contrast, soothing strokes are easier and far less demanding, perhaps even more explicit, but that hardly renders all that schmaltz actually superior or more advantageous. But by all means, welcome to it...
AUTONOMOUS vs. HETERONYMOUS STAGES of BONDING
An autonomous individual seeks to connect with others directly. Whereas the heteronymous personality expects social intermediation of some kind. In the development of every relationship, there must be stages drawing closer. For an autonomous individual the stages are of interpersonal engagement, beginning intellectually, emotionally or sexually, as ever the case may be. But heteronymous personality simply will not be content to engage. Because, for the heteronymous personality the stages seem to be, instead, of even somewhat impersonal social participation.
Naturally, while the autonomous individual finds the heteronymous personality frustratingly alienated, the heteronymous personality considers the autonomous individual jarringly antisocial. Heteronomy lacks real warmth and acceptance. Bringing about social participation and integration of the individual is the friendliest and most inclusive agenda that that heteronymous personality is capable even to conceive of, when they engage at all, only to inveigle and peer pressure the autonomous individual to compromise and accept admittance, conditionally, in tedious hope of reciprocity down the line.
But ultimatly these opposing value systems are irreconcilable in reciprocal bad faith at best.
NOW ======> MY PROPOSAL:
All thus, yet do l hope that it can be worth while first to understand and identify our various stimulus and interaction needs, then to describe suitable interactivity in order to meed said needs, and then to imagine the kind of circumstance under which such interaction most readilly occurs, defining happier lives in fulfillment all thereof, before only then working to strategize success on our own terms, before making preparation and taking action.
Because surely there are as many different kinds of loneliness as there is malnutrition. And likewise, first is needed some idea exactly what is missing. Only then what sort of diet would satisfy. Only then where to obtain the ingredients and how to cook it up.
Indeed, I do not here seek to address all conceivable real world issues or problems, but only privation of specific stimulus needs of human interaction, in any way or sense as ever obstructed or neglected by the social environment.
THIS IS IT!!! ======> THE PROCESS:
0) Please do not ask me for my examples. There are plenty at http://www.FoolQuest.com wherein my own rhetorical point of departure is the desire for shared creativity as better motive for social interaction. But if you just can't relate, then never mind...
1) Rather, give YOUR OWN example of whatever stimulus of gratifying interaction that YOU find yourself missing. If that still won't make sense, then nothing ever will, EVER!
If you are lonely, then that may mean that there must be some or other particular stimulus of gratifying interaction of which YOU find yourself deprived. Indeed, everyone has their own unique needs and preferences. Again, just list and describe your own stimulus of gratifying interaction that YOU find yourself deprived of and yearn for.
2) Then let us strive to imagine YOUR OWN example or examples of any more specific category of suitable interactivity that ever fulfils such whatever unfulfilled needs.
Because, there must be some manner of interaction that would be fulfilling of whatever gratifying interaction that YOU find yourself missing. Again, just list any suitable kinds of interaction that YOU desire in order gratify the stimulus need of which YOU find yourself deprived and yearn for.
3) Then let us strive to reason out any plausible hypothetical ongoing situation of such interactivity.
In other words, just imagine and then list, kinds of situations that might supply the suitable interactions the YOU have just listed as gratifying to whatever the stimulus need of which YOU find yourself deprived.
4) Then, and only then, will we be ready so strategize, in order ever to actually realize what we have dreamed up. -To discover whatever necessary course of action. -How to actually go about creating the kind of situations to supply the suitable interactions the YOU have listed as gratifying to whatever the stimulus needs of which YOU find yourself deprived.
THE THRUST:
From the general through to the specific. Neither ivory tower passivity on the one hand, nor the flurry of senseless activity on the other, but sound concepts intentionally cultivated and ever carried through to successful execution.
Again, rather than words of encouragement and blithe motivational exhortation to pragmatic common sense, instead, more imaginative understanding of interaction for whatever it’s own joy, intrinsically, may be the true key to real optimal practical progress, to new premise for different results.
And all of the above is precisely the kind of discussion that I seek in the quest to resolve loneliness.
MY AGENDA:
Instead of means to some hoped for gratifying end, I propose that gratifying interaction is what can be most productive and wholesome. And I propose that imagination is the first step: Hypothesis then narrowed by criticism, and progressively rendered practical and practicable. Hopefully, that might even be fun!
GOT A PROBLEM WITH ANY OF THIS?
There is frequently a great divide between the abstract and the concrete, all but guaranteeing poor planning and feeble practice. For while the lofty, rarified and abstract is seldom rendered concrete up high in the proverbial ivory tower, meanwhile, back down to Earth, broadest faulty assumptions behind concrete procedure go blithely and perilously unexamined.
Rather, from a position of Empirical skepticism towards all that many so fervently and somewhat simplistically embrace and fixate upon as "tried and true," instead, the abstract must at long last ever be cultivated and wrought out in strategic detail, towards practical and practicable concrete implementation. Then let us proceed:
PSYCHOTHERAPY etc. is ALL FINE AND GOOD:
Obviously, inner conflict and ambivalence can only be confronted by each individual within inner life. Nevertheless, I do not here inquire into emotional or psychological issues alone as such and in and of themselves. Rather, the challenge I hope to raise is explicitly and particularly as to individual conflict with the environment, and real progress MEANING: ongoing improvement of the inevitably imperfect social environment in order to lessen as much as possible and practical, often however repressive and oppressive adaptive compromise on the part of the individual. -To further liberate and to better serve...
But rather than any vast social revolution, I propose to begin far closer to home for each of us.
After a while, ENDLESS REPETITIVE ENCOURAGEMENT can even seem EMPTY and even ANNOYING
I do not seek consensual or other validation, encounter group SHARING, a support group, small talk, inspirational/motivational pep rallies, so on and so forth, ad nausea.
Because all such superficial conformist interactions of co-validation do not assuage my loneliness, but actually frustrate and aggravate the condition! -As indeed is often observed when an individual caries any real burden upon their chest, let alone any real purpose, that remains palpable distress unresolved by petty distraction and small talk. To wit:
All too many people are far too wound up in what relationships are supposed to be like, even simply to observe for themselves and ever appreciate, the real world dynamics of actual ongoing relationships. And I believe that exactly such social myths and normative distortions greatly obscure the struggle to overcome widespread loneliness.
So to Hell with the jobs we hate for the money we need, the boring classes to get ahead, the depressing courtship ordeals endured in hopes ever of getting laid, and the frantic insecure contract negotiations, struggle and strife, of long term codependency. Down with Moloch! Let us strive, instead of pointless sacrifice, towards interaction, even in every context, intrinsically for whatever it's own joy!
HOW LUCKY ARE THOSE WHO CAN DO WHAT THEY LOVE! AND THE MORE SO, TO DO SO TOGETHER WITH FRIENDS.
Alas, there are those of us that despite being well spoken, not shy or awkward, yet nevertheless, people simply will not befriend us, neither at random in public, at recreational venues, in pursuit of common interests, nor in such conventional structured environments as school and the work place. Nor can we network any web of support for suitable introdictions.
Hence, let us imagine better alternatives to all the blithe clichéd advice detailing somewhat robotic procedures how to meet new people, because, one way or another, clearly the aforesaid approach simply doesn't work for everyone.
Indeed, just such nominal advice may not actually be intended as substantive advice at all, but merely as exhortation and encouragement. Indeed, success thereof, as ever, might come more often in normative socialization of the individual, rather than howsoever individual outreach achieved. Hence, exactly such may be vastly discouraging coming as it does, distinctly at cross purposes for anyone already frustrated with exactly any such common sense application, let alone howsoever dishonest peer preasure, actually and sincerely seeking new perspective, fresh ideas and new knowledge to put to use instead.
TRUISMS in REACHING OUT from LONELINESS
Consider those online or mail order courses for various business opportunities, in any range of marketing or brokerage variations. Often, the way they make it all so appealing is by oversimplification and by concealing key difficulties. In particular, they typically do not include any inventory of the fairly specialized skills and actually quite vast background knowledge required and simply assumed. They claim to be for everybody, without regard to compatible temperament for the actual experience of the work. Nor do they include proper business plans, profit and loss projections, by which risk, benefit and required investment of all manner of resources of time, effort and ongoing capitalization may be realistically assayed. Or else, as in those pyramid schemes, they are motivational, meaning that they exhort a manic enthusiasm to exhaustive drudgery.
Now, all of the same may be said of truisms in prospecting for new relationships and connections. Serious works upon the topic are more honest about what is really entailed and how dehumanizing it can be. -about the absurd costs of acceptance, let alone popularity. Or else, there are tactics for chatting up new people, that are the laborious and random equivalent of cold calling in marketing. In other words, unqualified leads in sheer volume or in hope of random dumb luck.
We are in situations of which we have no control, and if it just doesn't work, then this is because we have not adequately plunged in and surrendered ourselves! Or so we are slyly encouraged to believe. And, actually, it's all true! The more vigorously one adapts, the more responsive the social environment becomes. Why, we should all just become model prisoners, and be grateful for all that's on offer! Anything less is just perverse, antisocial. And let us never ponder how wretchedly unhappy all to often are those who have entered into such a profoundly Faustian bargain with life. In truth, regulating the tradeoffs and cost of opportunity at all, is yet another daunting and complicated challenge.
Surely all of the above merits serious conversation so that people can be better prepared. But these topics are often seemingly taboo. Because if we only knew what we where getting into, we might balk! Maybe there is good reason we experience despair and depression. Especially considering how in the endless scramble, friendship is often the first thing to go by the wayside.
KNOWING HOW TO BE A FRIEND IS DIFFERENT FROM KNOWING HOW TO FIT IN
Although, the latter sometimes may be disguised as the former. As when public words of comfort achieve social integration. -Perhaps also even for the individual comforted. But as individuals, do the participants actually relate or even truly care? Who knows what they feel deep inside. Indeed, let us assume the best of faith. Nevertheless, perhaps they may remain deeply lonely despite nominal social integration. And that precisely is the lonely Hell I frequently percieve on this very forum.
SUBSTANTIVE CONVERSATIONAL ENGAGEMENT:
Good intentions, let alone mere trite sentimentality, are simply not enough without genuine interest and attentive discussion in detail, all honestly taken in the spirit as intended. But because disagreement, incomprehension and misunderstanding are the normal human condition, conversational adequacy of public discourse requires meticulous detail in detecting and repairing miscommunication together, no less than vigorous open controversy. So, speak up to disagree, and if you don't understand, ask. And again, provide detail and reasons to help in communication repair, no less than in support or refutation of an argument or assertion. And keep at it! Stay interested.
Real engaged conversation is always far more efficient and productive over time, than any nominal exchange that howsoever fails to fully engage, such as monologuic exchange, bypassing, gainsaying and empty social rituals, even strokes. -Let alone hostility, abuse or suppression.
MISCOMMUNICATIONS REPAIR
Again, miscommunication repair may often require feedback seeking out to whatever logical, narrative, linguistic or other ambiguities in specific beyond sheer general expression of incomprehension. Do not simply assume that the other party already knows what it is that you do not understand, why and how so! -But spell all of that out, as specifically as possible.
Framing particular questions may also be of great help. People who will not question, cannot be very interested.
CAVEAT:
Ongoing cooperation in miscommunication repair is indispensable to higher function. The level of communication heteronymous possible without miscommunication repair, is fairly low, intellectually and emotionally.
Indeed, conversational adequacy of substantive conversational engagement is crucial.
For surely just such apathy and ennui as ever to reject substantive conversational engagement as defined above, renders all else pointless, futile, isolated and crushingly lonely!
VALUE PREPOSITION:
Because true compassion requires genuine interest beginning with the sheer attention span required to sustain ordinary curiosity! By contrast, soothing strokes are easier and far less demanding, perhaps even more explicit, but that hardly renders all that schmaltz actually superior or more advantageous. But by all means, welcome to it...
AUTONOMOUS vs. HETERONYMOUS STAGES of BONDING
An autonomous individual seeks to connect with others directly. Whereas the heteronymous personality expects social intermediation of some kind. In the development of every relationship, there must be stages drawing closer. For an autonomous individual the stages are of interpersonal engagement, beginning intellectually, emotionally or sexually, as ever the case may be. But heteronymous personality simply will not be content to engage. Because, for the heteronymous personality the stages seem to be, instead, of even somewhat impersonal social participation.
Naturally, while the autonomous individual finds the heteronymous personality frustratingly alienated, the heteronymous personality considers the autonomous individual jarringly antisocial. Heteronomy lacks real warmth and acceptance. Bringing about social participation and integration of the individual is the friendliest and most inclusive agenda that that heteronymous personality is capable even to conceive of, when they engage at all, only to inveigle and peer pressure the autonomous individual to compromise and accept admittance, conditionally, in tedious hope of reciprocity down the line.
But ultimatly these opposing value systems are irreconcilable in reciprocal bad faith at best.
NOW ======> MY PROPOSAL:
All thus, yet do l hope that it can be worth while first to understand and identify our various stimulus and interaction needs, then to describe suitable interactivity in order to meed said needs, and then to imagine the kind of circumstance under which such interaction most readilly occurs, defining happier lives in fulfillment all thereof, before only then working to strategize success on our own terms, before making preparation and taking action.
Because surely there are as many different kinds of loneliness as there is malnutrition. And likewise, first is needed some idea exactly what is missing. Only then what sort of diet would satisfy. Only then where to obtain the ingredients and how to cook it up.
Indeed, I do not here seek to address all conceivable real world issues or problems, but only privation of specific stimulus needs of human interaction, in any way or sense as ever obstructed or neglected by the social environment.
THIS IS IT!!! ======> THE PROCESS:
0) Please do not ask me for my examples. There are plenty at http://www.FoolQuest.com wherein my own rhetorical point of departure is the desire for shared creativity as better motive for social interaction. But if you just can't relate, then never mind...
1) Rather, give YOUR OWN example of whatever stimulus of gratifying interaction that YOU find yourself missing. If that still won't make sense, then nothing ever will, EVER!
If you are lonely, then that may mean that there must be some or other particular stimulus of gratifying interaction of which YOU find yourself deprived. Indeed, everyone has their own unique needs and preferences. Again, just list and describe your own stimulus of gratifying interaction that YOU find yourself deprived of and yearn for.
2) Then let us strive to imagine YOUR OWN example or examples of any more specific category of suitable interactivity that ever fulfils such whatever unfulfilled needs.
Because, there must be some manner of interaction that would be fulfilling of whatever gratifying interaction that YOU find yourself missing. Again, just list any suitable kinds of interaction that YOU desire in order gratify the stimulus need of which YOU find yourself deprived and yearn for.
3) Then let us strive to reason out any plausible hypothetical ongoing situation of such interactivity.
In other words, just imagine and then list, kinds of situations that might supply the suitable interactions the YOU have just listed as gratifying to whatever the stimulus need of which YOU find yourself deprived.
4) Then, and only then, will we be ready so strategize, in order ever to actually realize what we have dreamed up. -To discover whatever necessary course of action. -How to actually go about creating the kind of situations to supply the suitable interactions the YOU have listed as gratifying to whatever the stimulus needs of which YOU find yourself deprived.
THE THRUST:
From the general through to the specific. Neither ivory tower passivity on the one hand, nor the flurry of senseless activity on the other, but sound concepts intentionally cultivated and ever carried through to successful execution.
Again, rather than words of encouragement and blithe motivational exhortation to pragmatic common sense, instead, more imaginative understanding of interaction for whatever it’s own joy, intrinsically, may be the true key to real optimal practical progress, to new premise for different results.
And all of the above is precisely the kind of discussion that I seek in the quest to resolve loneliness.
MY AGENDA:
Instead of means to some hoped for gratifying end, I propose that gratifying interaction is what can be most productive and wholesome. And I propose that imagination is the first step: Hypothesis then narrowed by criticism, and progressively rendered practical and practicable. Hopefully, that might even be fun!
GOT A PROBLEM WITH ANY OF THIS?
