I think we mostly if not totally agree, there were just some things I needed to clarify from my own experiences.
It isn’t always. There’s just a danger in thinking that self-improvement is entirely intrapersonal and not interpersonal. I fell into that trap myself. Because I think of self-improvement as a meditative, introspective process, I tend to neglect the interpersonal aspects of it. Eventually I realized that the interpersonal stuff requires practice, developing theories, testing them out, trying to break them,* and self-improvement isn’t all about monastic contemplation.
*I have next to no native social skills of my own, but I am an engineer. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
I don’t understand this stuff intuitively, so I’ve always tried to make little rules and generalizations as to how social interaction works. That sounds easy enough, but the more important part is figuring out the conditions that cause these generalizations to break down.
It is often not easy. With the benefit of time and perspective I can generally figure out where I messed up, but it isn’t always obvious in the moment.
You have my empathy, and I do believe that as a community we are making all of us better people.
I haven’t, but it sounds like the sort of thing I would be deeply interested in.
I cannot get there from where I am right now, but I’ll check it out.
My problems were not so much with romantic relationships (which I never really was interested in) but more with trying to meet new people. I’ve always moved around the country a lot, so I’ve had problems putting down roots, and I’m not the type of person who can simply settle down in an area like they’ve lived there their entire life.
I would always spend the first week (or more) wandering around whenever I had the time, looking for local anchors like bakeries, parks, grocery stores. Paying attention to how the locals move and where they go. Going to the biggest public transportation hubs (where significant numbers of buses, trains, subways, etc. make connections) to see what’s there. There’s something wonderful about looking at a place with fresh eyes, knowing that some day soon you’re going to start knowing it well enough to give directions to others.
Very true. If there aren’t any, or if it’s a bedroom community where the locals go elsewhere for everything, then my personal experience would suggest moving to some place more active.
Me and suburbs don’t exactly get along.
Not necessarily true:
There sure is. Not only does the new stuff look less scary over time, and feel more comfortable, it also feels completely different. I can’t really explain how.
I just read a couple of his articles, and they are pretty spot on. I am my most vicious critic, and it takes practice to break out of that cycle. Intimacy can be really difficult, so I went to a doctor. The pills could be sugar pills for all I know, it is the psychological part that is important.
I’m going on a date tomorrow with a friend that is totally out of my league. But you know what? Similar to the Fitted Sheet example I used, partnerships don’t have to be equivalent. Just equitable. So when, after years of therapy, you internalize those ideas, it becomes waay easier.
It is doubtful I will ever marry again. But that doesn’t exclude close relationships. And who knows, it took Clooney what 50 years to find Amal? While I certainly feel like I have little to offer, that is just my perspective. If I meet a woman that loves bread, sailing, and fish puns, we might… Adjusts necktie… Get along swimmingly.
Well, yeah, but all sorts of people use all manner of behavior that (from some POVs) might be judged ‘virtuous’ to manipulate others for personal gain and advancement.
When someone shakes my hand and says “I’m very pleased to meet you”, they may be expressing genuine pleasure, or they may be just muttering standard social pleasantries, or they may be lying through their teeth (because they really despise me), but they need or want something from me so they’re ‘buttering me up.’
Now, even though I’ve encountered plenty of the latter type, I still don’t assume that everyone who says they’re pleased to meet me is a lying jerk trying to manipulate me.
Me, if I say I’m a feminist, I’m NOT virtue-signalling, because I don’t necessarily register ‘feminism’ as a virtue.
Now to be sure, it’s my preferred political position, and I generally prefer being around people who share that position, as I find them generally more pleasant than those who don’t, but that’s my own personal preference, not some absolutist moral principle.
Other people may not share that preference (or that position), but that doesn’t make them bad people — it just means I probably won’t like them as much, and I’ll probably disagree with their politics.
Well, yeah, but again, not everyone sees “I’m a feminist” as “tooting their own horn.”
I honestly didn’t even realize people might see it that way until I read this article.
And being wary of someone who proclaims (what you judge to be) a ‘virtuous’ position is a far, far cry from telling them “Fuck you, it ain’t up to you.”
Now that I know that someone is liable to apply their own condemnatory judement for me saying “I’m a feminist”, I’ll probably say something more like “I support feminism” or “I support feminists” rather than “I’m a feminist” in the future. (Those all seem pretty much the same to me, but hey, when in Rome…)
Though I’ll probably won’t do it without a small flash of resentment toward the judgmental moralists who insist on bollixing up the language with their own dimwitted moralistic judgements.
Secular Moralists are the New American Taliban.
To be clear, why people engage in virtue-signalling is not mysterious to me.
What puzzles me is why people think it’s the primary purpose of politics and voting.
And when people refuse to do what they can to stop a fascist because they’re too ideologically pure to vote strategically, it enrages me.
(The ones who really set my teeth on edge are the ones who proclaim that they’re ‘idealists’, as though that were some sort of virtue. Now, that’s one that makes me immediately wary.)
