Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Another downside of Atheism...
This will be short, but I don't know about sweet... Whenever I am feeling deeply empathetic for someone who is in some horrible physical or emotional pain, or who has experienced some terrible misfortune, and I cannot do anything to help them, I always have this impulse to "pray" for them, but quickly remember that I am not religious and I don't believe that praying for someone actually does them any good. Not being able to help someone in pain is one of the worst feelings I know of, and it would be a great comfort to be able to "pray" for people when I knew I couldn't do anything else. Unfortunately, instead of praying for people, I just worry about them and make myself sick and depressed. I guess even if praying to a nonexistent god for the sad-looking, elderly man sitting by himself at a restaurant might not help him in any way, if I actually believed in God, my prayer would at least make me feel better.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
my inspirations
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| Marianne Faithfull |
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| Marianne Faithfull again |
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| Uschi Obermaier--same for the two below |
the difference(s) between bloggers and everyone else
Well, obviously i'm new to blogging, since this is my second post, so i'm going to take this opportunity to publicly cogitate on blogging in general. Well, first of all, that is exactly what blogging is: public cogitation. I don't really know whether I think blogging is a good thing or a bad thing yet, and I also don't really know if I care, but what I do know is that is satisfies an urge that I have and that apparently millions and gazillions of other people have who create blogs just like me: we all have these deep emotions that mean the world to us as individuals, and we want to share them with other people. These emotions are inspired by life events and art. And the invisible interaction of chemicals in the brain, I suppose...
What blogging does is that it lets EVERYONE share these emotions with the world, and they don't necessarily have to be talented. John Keats, Franz Schubert, Edvard Munch--these are all people that were incredibly gifted at sharing the most profound emotions in the most beautiful way, and for that, their emotions are immortalized in the works of art that they created. However, for every John Keats in the world, who can bend the English language to his will to express his emotions in the most beautifully precise way possible, there are billions of other people who read his poetry and appreciate it because they have felt these same emotions, but unlike Keats, are not masters of the English language.
I think that, relative to other people, I have trouble converting my thoughts into words. It sucks. I read, I am educated--I am about to graduate from college at UNC Chapel Hill, and I interact with other people on a normal basis, but I am just not as good with my words as other people tend to be. Or perhaps as I would like to be. I have all of these grand ideas, or at least I think I do, but grand ideas don't really matter unless you can put them into words, do they? If you don't know how to present your "grand" ideas convincingly in a language that others understand, it's as if you don't have the ideas at all.
I'm not really sure why I have trouble expressing myself, but I have some theories. In normal social situations, probably one problem that I have is confidence--not being comfortable with expressing how I feel around other people, or even with myself. Another problem that I have is that I am scatter-brained, and my thoughts come so fast I cannot keep track of them. I move from one thought to the next so rapidly that I cannot follow my own logic, let alone communicate this logic to other people. I will have one really profound thought, and then another equally or even more profound thought at the same time, and then I become paralyzed, and don't know how to organize or what to make of the revelations that have just come to me.
Also, I am a perfectionist. It is an integral part of my personality. Unfortunately, there are many kinds of perfectionists, and I am of the type that wants things to be perfect, but instead of causing me to do things perfectly, this perfectionism just causes me to give up on everything. Everything is all or nothing for me--I can't even imagine how I would go about doing a pretty good, but not absolutely perfect job on something. So, unless it is the rare case in which I complete something that satisfies my usually unrealistic standards of perfection, I do things kind of shittily. SO, basically, because I cannot find the perfect way to express myself, I do it poorly. I am never satisfied with conventional ways of expressing how I feel--I must find the words to EXACTLY describe what I am feeling, and furthermore, I must use words that are understood in the right way by my audience.
Finally, I think my difficulty expressing myself comes from the fact that I may be more in tune with my emotions than a lot of people are. According to the Enneagram personality typing system, I am a four. Fours are, to summarize very briefly, "self-aware, sensitive, and reserved, but also self-centered, self-conscious, moody" and "can feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living." To understand more, just google the Enneagram.
I don't necessarily endorse the Enneagram personality typing system, but I do think that knowing that I am a four helps me understand a lot of things about myself, and how my personality affects how I interact with other people and how I see the world. I am so focused on my own emotions that I forget about everything in my life outside of my emotions. More easily than others, I find it hard to appreciate everything that, from a rational point of view, make me an EXTREMELY lucky person.
Moreover, the Enneagram, I believe, explains my urge to blog. My emotions are the most important thing to me, and it isn't appropriate to just go around expressing my deepest emotions on a regular basis, so I need some sort of outlet.
Not just people who are fours have trouble connecting to people, especially in the world today. Technology, lifestyle, social norms, etc. all prevent people from being able to relate to one another naturally and meaningfully.
Annnnd let's be honest, blogging and the use of social networks is totally narcissistic. This is why I haven't started blogging until now--I feel kind of embarrassed, you know? But what really makes blogging any more narcissistic than other art forms? Honestly, you should read what F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about himself. He thought he was the shit. But, you know, he really was the shit, whether he was narcissistic or not. If Fitzgerald was a narcissist, isn't it ok for me to engage in narcissism every once in a while, too?
What blogging does is that it lets EVERYONE share these emotions with the world, and they don't necessarily have to be talented. John Keats, Franz Schubert, Edvard Munch--these are all people that were incredibly gifted at sharing the most profound emotions in the most beautiful way, and for that, their emotions are immortalized in the works of art that they created. However, for every John Keats in the world, who can bend the English language to his will to express his emotions in the most beautifully precise way possible, there are billions of other people who read his poetry and appreciate it because they have felt these same emotions, but unlike Keats, are not masters of the English language.
I think that, relative to other people, I have trouble converting my thoughts into words. It sucks. I read, I am educated--I am about to graduate from college at UNC Chapel Hill, and I interact with other people on a normal basis, but I am just not as good with my words as other people tend to be. Or perhaps as I would like to be. I have all of these grand ideas, or at least I think I do, but grand ideas don't really matter unless you can put them into words, do they? If you don't know how to present your "grand" ideas convincingly in a language that others understand, it's as if you don't have the ideas at all.
I'm not really sure why I have trouble expressing myself, but I have some theories. In normal social situations, probably one problem that I have is confidence--not being comfortable with expressing how I feel around other people, or even with myself. Another problem that I have is that I am scatter-brained, and my thoughts come so fast I cannot keep track of them. I move from one thought to the next so rapidly that I cannot follow my own logic, let alone communicate this logic to other people. I will have one really profound thought, and then another equally or even more profound thought at the same time, and then I become paralyzed, and don't know how to organize or what to make of the revelations that have just come to me.
Also, I am a perfectionist. It is an integral part of my personality. Unfortunately, there are many kinds of perfectionists, and I am of the type that wants things to be perfect, but instead of causing me to do things perfectly, this perfectionism just causes me to give up on everything. Everything is all or nothing for me--I can't even imagine how I would go about doing a pretty good, but not absolutely perfect job on something. So, unless it is the rare case in which I complete something that satisfies my usually unrealistic standards of perfection, I do things kind of shittily. SO, basically, because I cannot find the perfect way to express myself, I do it poorly. I am never satisfied with conventional ways of expressing how I feel--I must find the words to EXACTLY describe what I am feeling, and furthermore, I must use words that are understood in the right way by my audience.
Finally, I think my difficulty expressing myself comes from the fact that I may be more in tune with my emotions than a lot of people are. According to the Enneagram personality typing system, I am a four. Fours are, to summarize very briefly, "self-aware, sensitive, and reserved, but also self-centered, self-conscious, moody" and "can feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living." To understand more, just google the Enneagram.
I don't necessarily endorse the Enneagram personality typing system, but I do think that knowing that I am a four helps me understand a lot of things about myself, and how my personality affects how I interact with other people and how I see the world. I am so focused on my own emotions that I forget about everything in my life outside of my emotions. More easily than others, I find it hard to appreciate everything that, from a rational point of view, make me an EXTREMELY lucky person.
Moreover, the Enneagram, I believe, explains my urge to blog. My emotions are the most important thing to me, and it isn't appropriate to just go around expressing my deepest emotions on a regular basis, so I need some sort of outlet.
Not just people who are fours have trouble connecting to people, especially in the world today. Technology, lifestyle, social norms, etc. all prevent people from being able to relate to one another naturally and meaningfully.
Annnnd let's be honest, blogging and the use of social networks is totally narcissistic. This is why I haven't started blogging until now--I feel kind of embarrassed, you know? But what really makes blogging any more narcissistic than other art forms? Honestly, you should read what F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about himself. He thought he was the shit. But, you know, he really was the shit, whether he was narcissistic or not. If Fitzgerald was a narcissist, isn't it ok for me to engage in narcissism every once in a while, too?
Music of my life
Today, instead of doing anything productive, I created four mixes on 8tracks.com. This site is the shit, by the way. I'm never satisfied with the playlists that Pandora creates, but I can always find something to listen to on 8tracks. Real people make the playlists, so they reflect human emotions and not some "music genome project" software I guess.
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/sparkly
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/quiet-and-dreamy
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/seriously-amazing-songs-that-must-be-blasted
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/badassness
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/sparkly
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/quiet-and-dreamy
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/seriously-amazing-songs-that-must-be-blasted
http://8tracks.com/neergna468/badassness
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