this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
581 points (96.5% liked)
Greentext
4717 readers
1871 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Real talk: I've had this happen a couple of times, and know of many other people who either went through this or believed the same nonsense, with all types and permutations of identities and Southern plumbing between them. And all I'm left with after trying to wrap my head around this thing is a question: can we really blame the people who are doing stuff like this considering Mass Media's been force-feeding us this nonsense from the beginning?
I'm not saying this should imply forgiving the behaviour, not in a million years! I'm just questioning where our collective frustration should be directed.
Only valuing a relationship for the momentary bliss of being close to someone new is a problem of emotional immaturity.
The problem arises when we consider the facts that a person's emotional development depends on parenting, and people tend to partner with others of similar emotional maturity. If you've got one immature parent, you've more than likely got two. It takes extra work to shed that baggage and start being your genuine self.
It's definitely a cultural ill, but I can't credit the notion that our emotional development comes from our media. We need to be teaching people what emotional maturity is, how to get there, and how to heal from having emotionally immature parents.
Emotional immaturity is so pervasive at this point you'd need to put this stuff in the curriculum of every school and have that initiative succeed for multiple decades to change the culture.
My belief is that emotional immaturity is the natural state of humanity. Without guidance, some wise people will reach maturity, but that's really a small subset of the population, and the vast majority of people will not make this growth.
The vast majority of people do things because that's what they've always known; it takes special effort to question why you do what you do. Saying that these people are emotionally immature may be true, but I don't think that the cause is that people have emotionally immature parents. People have to be specifically taught to value rationality and wisdom over vibes and feelings, and without this concerted effort, most people will simply be emotionally immature.
I don't think humanity has a "natural state" so much as a rock bottom - and I'm not even convinced it has one of those. It's not really a state of being we should promote or excuse.
You speak of guidance as if it comes from some unknown external source - the source is other people. That's exactly why I said we should teach about emotional maturity in schools, to give kids necessary guidance.
You speak undiluted truth. That's my thinking as well, growth is, for better or worse, a collective effort even when talking individually. It is unreasonable for us to expect a single person to figure everything out by themselves, especially when societal conditions are heavily biased toward romanticising everything down to friggin' toilet paper. This also applies to larger groups in my opinion - thinking about how many languages have entirely unique words for concepts which basically don't even exist within others, that's a clear sign to me.
Speaking from personal experience, the only reason why I reached the opposite conclusion about love is because I had the (mis)fortune of being an awkward bookworm from the start, which meant I got an extra dose of information and managed to develop relatively robust critical thinking (at least enough to know not to trust everything which pops into my head by default). But I can clearly see every point where things could've gone very differently in my development. Which is also why, as frustrating as it is, I cannot blame an individual for this. Not until they demonstrate that they're in wilful and fully cognisant contempt of the truth.
We really need to up our game in terms of education and the standards we choose to promote - not saying "we" as though you and I have a say in this matter, appealing to the collective yet again.
What is emotional maturity?
That's a big subject, so I'm just going to recommend my favourite book about it:
Highly recommend. Bravo for suggesting this book.
Seems a lot of people get addicted to the drama, continuous stimulation, emotional rollercoasters, cheap thrills and quick validation. Social media made it a lot worse. It gets to the point people can't live anymore without the drama and go in withdrawal to seek out new thrills. It's the opposite of a stable relationship.
I get what you mean, stress for the cortisol, anxiety for the adrenaline type deal. And, yeah, I do agree that such a temperament/character/neurochemical inclination seeks these situations for different reasons.
But I've also seen plenty of cases where it was just based on a belief, they were convinced that a relationship reached a breaking point once the chemical ecstasy started to die down. The people holding it were obviously suffering because of it (though not fully aware of this causation) and genuinely wanted to find a fix. Unfortunately, they went from disappointment to disappointment when the inevitable kept happening.
It's also why I only have questions, there are layers upon layers of nuance with subjects like this...
You seem to know my ex wife.
Oh, man, I'm sorry... Only ever got as far as "engaged," but it was bad enough when it went to shit. Can't even imagine how it must feel after a commitment of that magnitude...
Bruh, that is only the start. Let’s just say I lost her and my best friend of 20 years at the same time. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.
Oh, noo... Oooh, fuuuuck... I honestly don't even know what to say, I'm just so very sorry you went through that... Hell, that you're still thoroughly going through it, I imagine! Jeesus, what a fucking mess!
You’re telling me. It’s ok though. Now I have nothing to lose, so I can start over exactly how I want to.
That is beyond admirable! I'm sincerely keeping my fingers crossed for you, hope with all my heart things'll go your way!
Thanks, I appreciate it.
I don't think its too much of an ask for my partner to be aware of and avoid brainrot.
If an idiot like me can, they can too.
Again, it is well within your prerogative to not accept such behaviour! I honestly view it as yet another traumatic maladaptation and treat it as such - even though it's causally not their fault that they believe/behave thusly, it is their responsibility to keep it in check.
But I'll be straight with you, I think you may be underestimating yourself and overestimating the average person. Critical Thinking really isn't innate, it's a skill. A skill which a lot (I'd even go as far as to say a large majority) of people thoroughly lack, because it is a skill which needs training from very early on, as it builds upon itself. I don't think there's a general educational schema on Earth at the moment which in any way truly encourages Critical Thinking, if there ever has been one. From what I've seen, it tends to come into play way later and in very specific fields of study, which means there's a lot of catching up to do by that point, so the horizon it affects tends to remain narrow.
Not to mention the utterly insidious and imperceptible nature of ideological corruption. It's incredibly hard to see the brainwashing if one's been going through it since before one started forming coherent throughts. It permeates even the subconscious.
I'm not trying to play the perfect being over here, I've seen myself being as dumb as a rock at times and I know that I have a llllot of learning left in front of me. But realistically speaking, just because we're dumb doesn't mean others aren't even dumber...
What is southern plumbing?
Genitalia. Meaning the genders and sexualitiesb of the people are not what determines their behaviour
Ah, thank you. Of course. I was confused by “between them”, thinking it only referred to the southern plumbing.
Yeah, sorry if it came out abstractly, I have an unfortunate flair for needlessly complicated sentences...
That's what I meant, that it's a gender-/sexual orientation-/hormonally-/identity-neutral mentality.
When the outhouse is directly next to a theme park
Genitals?
No no no. Southern plumbing says "bless your heart" when you flush.
Now I want southern plumbing. It would be a funny way to start the day.
Anal sex.