I Can Feel It

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*BEFORE THE POST AN ANNOUNCEMENT:
Due to WordPress being less functional than normal, would you please sign your comments with your usual handle? (Also, yelling “we’re number one” is allowable, of course.) It might, though knowing the Huns it’s not guaranteed, limit the amount of friendly fire around here.*

I was sharing the link for the substack installment of Witch’s Daughter (Winter Prince tonight. This week and next are rocky, as they could/should be titled “fun with doctors.” For us or the cats.) and came across a discussion about “My feelings are valid.”

I really have no clue where this came from, except of course people wishing to use their feelings as cudgels on other’s heads.

I mean, assuredly, your feelings are “valid” in the sense that you have feelings, and no one can tell you not to have the feelings you have or that you do not in fact feel that way. By virtue of being an internal (and often not entirely controllable) phenomenon feelings are out of the reach of others. Others can’t deny them, or tell you don’t have them.

So, in that sense they are “valid” in that they exist. Or maybe exist. (How the heck do I know. I’m not you.)

But the question that comes to mind after establishing that is “Yes, and?”

Most of the “my feelings are valid” crowd are claiming that because they have these feelings, you have to change whatever you’re doing that gives them unpleasant feelings. And that is… what is the technical term? Oh, yeah: batshit insane.

To be clear, no matter how you feel, other people can’t do anything about it. This means they can’t do anything about your feeling sad/despondent/insulted because they did something you think triggered your bad feelings. You can say that people did it on purpose, and maybe they did, but the same principle that dictates that we can’t invalidate your feelings, also dictates that we can’t control them.

The truth is that while your feelings are real, they are fundamentally disconnected from external reality. They exist, but they are created by a confluence of who you are, your entire past and what actually happened.

Take the ridiculous attacker (probably Clamps trying to evade the block. I didn’t have enough interest to look it up) who came by to leave his first comment saying something like “This fat bitch won’t allow dissent in her comments. Enjoy your echo chamber, you fake American.”
I think I was supposed to feel really bad. Note the fat, which will hit about any modern woman — except I know I’m fat, know it’s not entirely under my control, since it relates to thyroid, and feel no guilt about it. Also, I’m too old to care about being a slinky sylph — and bitch — Which frankly I’ve been called by better people — and the not allowing dissent in my comments, which is of course anathema to a libertarian — except this libertarian doesn’t feel the need to invite the drunken uncle to the wedding. I allow you guys to duke it out, but insults like that would catch you a ban even if not first time, and not directed at me — and then the “fake American” — except I have the passport, and I’ve studied the culture and the history, and frankly? No one has the right to judge if I’m fake or real, and certain not an asshole troll. So, did I feel bad? A little. I felt bad I didn’t have the time to go in the back panel to ban him permanently after approving his first comment to say “Oh. I’m sorry. Does this blog make me look fat?” But hey, we can’t all have everything we want.

So, that comment went way off the mark. (And is not even the worst I’ve come across. Everyday some enjoin me to attempt impossible anatomical feats or worse. I honestly don’t even read most of them now. My assistant has permanent orders to delete the crazy ones that start off with name calling and profanity. Not that they affect me, really. They just give me a feeling of wading through a sewer.) It made me giggle and want to answer back in that way in the worst way possible. (Which I suppose is why I’m quoting it. Because I still think “Does this blog make me look funny?” is hilarious.)

Or take when Mary Three Names called me “racist” for using the term Chicom. I think I was supposed to feel guilty and immediately apologize. Except I know for a fact that communist is not a race — it’s a mental illness — and therefore I just made a post mocking her insanity and had ever-so-much-fun. (Which is why “bitch” is probably an appropriate descriptor. Meh. Sometimes it’s needed.)

These insults went wide, because I’m not your standard issue person my age and type or national origin, or whatever the heck you wish. And because frankly my writing career has most resembled a series of kicks in the teeth. So after a while what you’re kicking is scar tissue and doesn’t hurt.

However, I have friends — some of them my age, and with similar experience — who simply couldn’t take either of those accusations without dissolving. These friends largely stay out of politics, and often don’t even read them, because they could not engage and give as good as they got.

Their feelings are valid. And yes, the current climate causes their feelings. But it doesn’t mean, as much as I love them, that all of reality should stop in its tracks and everyone should — or can — start being nice to wrap them in cotton and spare them.

For one, because that’s impossible. For another, because their feelings are theirs, and an intersection of who they are and what else they’ve experienced. I can’t fully understand why they’re so sensitive, or how they became that way. But I don’t have to. I just have to realize they are that way, and when I get annoyed because they run and hide at the slightest thing, I can use my realization to stop feeling angry at them.

Because ultimately, your feelings are valid, but you’re the only one who can change them.

Say you love the color purple, and are deeply hurt and offended whenever someone says that purple sucks. Your feelings are real, of course. But you can’t demand that everyone, including strangers, respect your feelings and abstain from saying purple is an ugly color. Trying to do that will turn into a full time job, not to say a crusade. And if you could police the entire world, all you’ll achieve is having people trash-talk purple behind your back. Knowing that, you’ll probably feel even worse.

What you can do is — instead — learn to cope with the fact other people hurt purple. You don’t have to like it, but you can learn to accept it, and thereby stop feeling hurt and offended. They don’t hurt purple to offend you. They just hurt purple.

Then there is the other aspect: We can agree your feelings exist. Or at least, we can’t say they don’t.

However, we don’t have to agree with your diagnosis or your feelings.

Most of the craze of transing kids is because “kids’ feelings are valid” and if a little boy says he’s a little girl, that means he’s a little girl.

Uh…. no. It means he says he’s a little girl. Which means he might feel it — or not. Kids, literally say the craziest things. My kids spent an entire summer being an Alien and an Evil Twin (BUT as he kept telling me, not the ALIEN’S evil twin.) — or he might be pretending, or he might be playing. But even if he feels he’s a little girl, this isn’t necessarily an informed opinion. No, your two year old son doesn’t know what a two year old little girl feels like. How would he? He’s not one. What he knows of little girls has nothing to do with growing up to be women, and he has no more concept of sex than most of us do of advanced physics. So, if he feels like a girl, he probably likes pink, or would like to wear a dress for about an hour (before he needs pockets, or wants to climb a tree.) “Feeling like” doesn’t mean what you think it means.

It might also not mean what the person themselves think it means. Look, I have no beef with adults transitioning (well, not people older than 21. I think if you can’t drink, you really shouldn’t be allowed to overload on opposite sex hormones either. If the brain isn’t fully grown up for one thing, it’s not fully grown up for the other) but when an adult “feels like” the opposite sex, is that true? Or are they feeling something they interpret as feeling like the opposite sex?

We used to have very complex tests to make sure people really would be better off as the other sex, to avoid irreparable harm. But in the era of “Your feelings are real” all you have to do is say you feel it really deeply and boom, you’ll get hormones.

This is a guarantee of irreparable harm, because feelings change and sometimes you find that the other half isn’t what you felt like. You really felt like you’d like your life to be easier, say, but it turns out this patriarchy isn’t all it’s been advertised to be, and men don’t have it easier.

In the same way, the mass of loonies who stop people say expressing opposing opinions, because they feel attacked. Just because you feel attacked, it doesn’t mean you’re being attacked. And if your reasoning for feeling attacked is something like “The speaker is conservative, and therefore hates gays, women and people of color, so since I’m one I’m being attacked.” the attack is mostly between your ears and part of your defective thinking meat. If you actually clean out the ear wax and listen to what people are saying, chances are you’ll find that the speech doesn’t have anything to do with you. Instead it’s about things like the rule of law, the abstract advantages of free speech, or even things like taxation. Which aren’t about you and therefore boring, and might make you feel bad in an entirely different way.

Feelings are feelings. I feel, you feel, we all feel. But feelings are a worst way to run a society or determine a political system than moist bints submerged in lakes and distributing magical swords. And just as uncontrollable.

“Respecting other feelings” belongs to the realm of polite party manners, not the realm of adult society. In adult society, where we discuss important things and even more important principles, someone is going to get upset.

I often get upset at gross injustice. And I work through my feelings by writing blogs about it, because at my age, lack of connections and avoir-du-pois I really can’t do much more than push the ripple out and make more people aware of the injustice. It isn’t’ much, but it does help me deal with my feelings.

Which is what we all, as adults, have to do. I might feel that a vast portion of the population would be better off dropped from helicopters, but the question is: how do I identify them? Further questions are: whose army would help me with this task? And further questions: How could I buy that many helicopters. And then: wouldn’t it be terrible for marine ecology? And then: I don’t even know if commies can be safely eaten by sea creatures. (Yes, that is facetious. I am not, in the words of facebook, coordinating harm.)

So, instead, I accept that my feelings are real, but there is no way to assuage them, and instead make a lot of St. Augusto de Puma memes and afflict other people’s feelings, and let them deal with that.

Because yeah, your feelings are real. And they’re valid in the sense you feel them, and we can’t stop you feeling them.

But they entail no obligation on anyone’s part to change them, or make you not experience bad feelings.

If you’re a little kid, have a lollipop.

If you’re an adult, learn to cope with your own feelings. Other adults weren’t put on this Earth for your joy and comfort. Find something to do and stop angsting about how you feel.

Or, if you can’t, do what my more sensitive friends do, and abandon the field of battle. Restrict your activities to things that don’t inflame your feelings.

Because the only one who can do anything about your oh, so valid feelings, is you.

And you’re the one who should.

88 thoughts on “I Can Feel It”

  1. I’ve spent far too much time checking my own feelings to see if 1) they have a rational cause and 2) if it is the other person, or something from my past that the person is accidentally setting off. I have no time to worry about inadvertent offense.

    We can’t always control situations. We can control our responses to them (with a few known exceptions). Too many of these folks get a high off of their being offended or “hurt.” “Your feelings are valid? For whom? Talk to the paw.” holds up paw, head turned away

    TXRed

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I just exercised my middle finger because my beloved had gotten a truly gross rumor from his former office. (Where the new owners, who he thought he’d trained, are busily undoing most of what he did. It’s disappointing). For the record, the rumor wasn’t about him, but….here’s my finger, anyway.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. As been said plenty of times, there no right to “Not Be Offended”.

    IE The answer to “I’m offended” is “So What”.

    By the way, the names are back on Word Press.

    *
    Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard

    Liked by 2 people

      2. “I’m Offended!! WAAAAAH!!”
        ………….

        “Fine. You even have the right to bleat about it. I Do Not Have To Listen/Read. Go. Away. Now.”

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  3. When I saw the title, honestly thought this was about the likely oncoming storm. Yeah I have no idea what to do about feelings. I went into a field based entirely on testable stuff to get away from all that fuzzyness. Ironically, most of my day job is resolving conflicts between different groups. Oops?

    Side note, I think they’ve fixed the disappearing names thing.

    Harry Voyager

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The Reader believes that the ‘feelings’ are the leading edge of the oncoming storm. In fact, the group ravings about ‘feelings’ are probably the equivalent of pop up thunderstorms and have the potential to grow into something worse. The Reader thinks you can tell an individual to take their feelings elsewhere, but be careful if you are isolated with a herd of lemmings spewing them.

      thereadersittingindarkness

      Liked by 2 people

  4. Never heard once growing up “I can give you something to cry about” in response to “feelings”. Hint. Meant I can swat you on the behind. Not once. A thousand times maybe, but not once.

    Trust me. My empathy scale is off the charts. I’ve had to learn how to rein that in under most circumstances.

    Harry Voyager. I changed careers to get away from one that required a thick skin. A job where if you were doing it correctly, everyone hated you. Too draining. To the one with testable stuff so delivered everyone was happy. I was lucky enough to not have to deal with resolving the conflicts between different groups.

    d

    Liked by 2 people

  5. WOW !!!!! What an awesome post!!! Love it. I recall that Buckminster Fuller once stated, “I feel like a verb!” but no one assumed that he was, in fact, a verb! For those who think kids’ feelings should determine their fate, they will be glad to know I just gave my nine year old nephew my car keys and a twenty dollar bill to go grab himself a six pack of beer and some smokes at the local 7-11, as he feels like an older guy. BTW, at a recent meeting of our county bats association, Boris, the head bat, said that it was offensive to use the term ‘bat shit crazy’, as he insists that bat guano, being an inert material, is no more or less insane than any other waste product. He said that instead, other terms should be used, such as “ape shit”, since he has no great love for apes.
    FINALLY- a gay acquaintance of mine, who is always a sharp dresser but never flamboyant, has a female neighbor who loves to virtue signal how welcoming she is to the ‘gay community” and since she enjoys complimenting him on his fashion sense, she approached him in her new high dollar jeans and, pirouetting, asked him if the jeans made her butt look fat. He replied with a perfectly blank expression, “Oh no, dearie, it’s not the jeans!”

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  6. Well, how about this then. If someone is over the age of majority and wants to mutilate him or herself irreparably, he or she has every right to do so. Anyone assisting in this is however engaging in a felony, and should be prosecuted for it. As for advocating the acceptance of minors of any age deciding to engage in said mutilation, anyone doing so should automatically be declared non compos mentis and be shorn of the right to vote. They can still bleat about the right to juvenile self-mortification, they just don’t have any way to put it into practice.

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  7. I have an anger management problem. But it usually only occurs when I, or a family member, is physically threatened. Still working on it though.

    As for dropping people from helicopters, I turned down the position of military dictator of Haiti this morning. While I’m sure I could do the job, I wouldn’t be happy with myself doing it.

    For one thing, cleaning out all the gangs in Haiti would involve a probable 50% drop in the population. And like Sarah, I pity the poor sharks and other sea scavengers who would be grossly overfed for too long.

    Second, I’m a middle class, educated, old white guy, and most Haitians aren’t melanin deficient like I am. They might not appreciate being ruled by someone they would probably identify with historical brutal white slave masters.

    But mostly because I don’t like the climate, being a northern New England kind of guy who likes 4 seasons, including snow. And unfortunately, unlike the Okinawans who know how to build homes that sneer at typhoons and earthquakes, nobody along to Gulf Coast or the Carribean has a clue.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. I’ve been offended and offended people often enough through simple misperception that I don’t entirely trust feelings as a basis for rational action. Not yours, not mine, not anyone’s. And they are often transient and passing anyway. They may be real, deep, and worth considering, but I prefer to double and triple check them when I can.
    Confutus

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Indeed. Feelings like an engine with infinite fuel, and they’re always propelling us. But where they propel us, and how fast, and what we do when we get there, are things that we can control. We can consult road maps, turn the steering wheel, and apply the brakes. They don’t have to control us.

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    2. Emotions are evaluations, but they are frequently unreliable.

      Anger is a just reaction to actual injustice, as long as it is proportionate: stealing elections vs. interrupting people at work as well as vs. not lying as you wish.

      Fear is a prudent reaction to actual danger. People who sulk that they were just trying to scare someone and that someone reacted prudently, to the harm of the culprit, are the ones in the wrong.

      As C.S. Lewis observed in Abolition of Man, proper sentiments must be directed and will not be spontaneous.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Indeed. Hate, too. Misdirected or overindulged, it’s incredibly harmful. But hate is also an emotion that arises when something (someone) deeply and consistently violates your core beliefs and poses a threat.

        It’s useful and necessary, and pretending it doesn’t or shouldn’t exist is incredibly harmful in itself, because it guarantees that the hate you inevitably feel will be distorted and misdirected, if not entirely mistaken for something else. I think this is part of the reason why there are so many woketard/SJW types who will coldcock you with a bike lock inside a gym sock (whether literally or figuratively) and call it empathy.

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  10. How was it Father Pacwa put it? Oh, yes: “Feelings are stupid.” In other words, feelings allowed free rein to lead one around by the nose are going to get one in trouble with a capital T. They invented something called the Darwin Awards for people who do not think things through but follow their “feelings” to do something that “seemed like a good idea at the time.”

    So, yes, feelings are valid. And that means they have to rule a person (or multiple people) why?

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  12. Hey, I’ve disagreed with you. Rather strongly at times. You haven’t kicked me out. And I know I’m not important enough to make you make me think I was still not blocked…

    Matt

    Liked by 1 person

  13. On the subject of body modifications, I get uncomfortable seeing two year olds with pierced ears. Yeah, I know it’s a cultural thing in some latin american countries, but it bothers me. Teenagers shaving parts of their heads, dyeing their hair strange colors is merely amusing, since it will grow out.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Sre, but the scarring is not even perceptible I know because they pierced my ears when I ws three months old, but because I’m horribly allergic to metal including gold, they couldn’t make me wear earrings. By the time I was 3 and conscious of it you couldn’t tell I ever had pierced ears.
          Since 18 I’ve had my ears pierced three times. THey keep closing and leaving no trace…
          OTOH older son has keloid scars all over his chest from a trivial sunburn at 14. So, yeah.

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          1. In any case, I am very sensitive to any body modifications made to young children. I know it’s my viewpoint and not accepted by everyone. Getting your ears pierced at 12 or 14 doesn’t bother me as much. Other than that, silly, non permanent changes such as hair styles, colors, painted nails, etc are fine with me, but I reserve the privilege of pointing and laughing.

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  14. As far as this “gender” thing, you know me. I wear earrings, not just studs but actual dangly earrings. I paint my nails. I paint my toenails (which, since I never wear open toed shoes or sandles, means the only person who sees that is me). I like wearing yoga pants because I like the way they “squeeze” me legs (it’s a neurodivergent sensory thing). When I was younger, I frequently fantasized about being a superhero and kept coming up with plans (ridiculous to outright lethal in retrospect) to make myself into one. The thing is, the “super hero” I fantasized about becoming could be either sex and the fantasy included becoming that sex.

    According to many folk these days that would make me, at least some form of “non binary.”

    I’m not. I’m a man. I happen to be secure enough in my manhood that I can comfortably engage in non-macho pursuits and interests. They don’t threaten my manhood.

    But if you keep telling people who have “non-standard” (for a particular gender stereotype) intersts and traits that it means they are some form of “other” gender, sooner or later they’ll believe it. The big lie writ large.

    So while I do agree that there are some cases where the “wiring” really doesn’t match the “plumbing”, that’s been carried much too far and has become faddish. And I can only be glad that I formed and became comfortable with my own identity before activists started shoving that kind of thing onto people.

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    1. You might want to try compression pants. I get mine from eastbay. They also protect my shins while deadlifting…

      Like

    2. BIL loves pedicures of both hands and feet. Because his daughters and granddaughters do. Neither BIL are not big on hunting, fishing, or tent camping, because their parents never did either. RV camping, that, one BIL’s family did. The other BIL’s family went to Hawaii and “the Cod” (Cape Cod).

      Both my sisters and I never dreamed it was possible to not go camping, fishing, and when old enough hunting, until after we left home. Did not and does not make us boys or men. While we each love our men, not one of us want to be one.

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  15. By virtue of being an internal (and often not entirely controllable) phenomenon feelings are out of the reach of others. Others can’t deny them, or tell you don’t have them.

    Unless you have an emotionally abusive parent, who constantly tells you as a child that what you feel is not what you feel, what you think is not what you think, and what you really think and feel is whatever s/he finds convenient. Getting punished for feeling things you don’t feel is all kinds of fun.

    Or take when Mary Three Names called me “racist” for using the term Chicom. I think I was supposed to feel guilty and immediately apologize.

    There’s more to it than that. Yes, you were supposed to be shamed and forced to contrition, but also she, and the left in general, and all too much of the American culture, now operates on what Ayn Rand termed “social metaphysics” or “primacy of consciousness”, i.e., words shape reality, because reality consists only of what other people believe or can be made to believe.

    She called you “racist” because “racist” means “untouchable bad person”, and you dared to condemn communists as bad, therefore you are beyond the pale. The more people she could con with the smear, the better for her, not least because it would have made her powerful.

    Your laughter and mockery were probably terribly confusing to her, because you are reality oriented rather than other-oriented. You were supposed to react, if not with shame and contrition, then with panic and fear, because she had altered your reality. When you mocked her, you robbed her of power she thought was hers by right.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. I think there’s a plausibly charitable explanation for some of the ‘my feelings are valid’ crowd, though I’m not sure how many people are actually doing this:

    It might be a defense mechanism against a culture that’s pressuring them to do uncomfortable or dangerous things, or saying they’re evil because they disagree with the prevailing opinion. Saying, ‘I don’t like X, and how dare you try to invalidate my feelings’ allows young, inexperienced, or inarticulate people a quick way out when their classmates or coworkers are trying to get them to do something stupid. Sort of like how some people are adopting ‘demisexual’ as an ‘identity’ because it allows them to turn down sex on the first date.

    Impossible to say how many people are using ‘my feelings!’ as a tool to bully other people, and how many people are using ‘my feelings!’ to escape from the bullies.

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    1. So every “muh feelings” person I’ve met is some flavor of hard left nuttery. I’m not saying there aren’t some on the right. I’ve just never met them.

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  17. Thoughts and feelings are only valid insofar as they are grounded in reality. Aligning those thoughts and feelings with reality used to be the essential nature of psychotherapy. The approach, whether this was some watered down psychoanalysis, cognitive-behavioral, existential, or other–the goal was the same, a more resilient, functional, mentally healthy individual. Premises had to be sound.

    The culture today is the antithesis of mental health. Especially when it comes to Gender Identity Disorders (that may be an obsolete term, I have not been in the field for a couple decades). Today, health professionals, medical, mental health, educators are all supposed to accept the patient’s delusion as reality (but only when it comes to gender identity). The patient’s delusion is “living their truth” or some such crap. I think Ayn Rand would have called it “primacy of consciousness” but I don’t think it rises to that level of personality integration.

    Now, if a person is an adult and want to take hormones and have surgery with life altering consequences, I don’t care. It won’t make you a woman, just a man with a mangled penis. Even Mr. Garrison eventually realized this.

    However, the State of California, has proposed legislation to criminally prosecute parents for not providing “gender affirming” care (talk about some ungooddoublethink) for every five year old boy that one day decides “I’m a girl.” Never mind that most of this resolves going through puberty. Didn’t Michigan recently pass a law that people can be criminally charged with a felony for “misgendering” someone? IIRC this called for up to five years in state prison. Completely unconstitutional and won’t stand a challenge, but that is irrelevant to the point.

    So you cannot disagree, but must actively participate. Under threat of prosecution.

    This is insane.

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      1. Thanks, I couldn’t remember. Perhaps CA passed while MI is still in process. Either way, I stand by my statement that this is insane.

        And wouldn’t you know, the comment that vanished like a fart in a tornado appears.

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        1. Sure it’s weird, and it’s unlikely to stand up to the legal challenges, which is why it having passed the house rather than on to the governor is something of a relief — I’d guess that there’s some reasonable caution, and some active fear-mongering, going on. I’m still not sure if the fear mongering is for self promotion (nobody gets clicks from “hey, not an emergency yet, but keep an eye on this part of this state’s congress being possibly stupid and/or crazy”) or from active attempts by the opposition to make it so we know there is ABSOLUTELY NO HOPE, GIVE UP NOW, EVERYTHING IS LOOOOOST by finding NOTHING BUT DISASTER in every direction. (Because if EVERYTHING is a disaster and lost cause, there’s no reason to try to fight, it’s already lost; for this case, having passed the house means that the senate has to be gotten through… and they are likely to get a LOT of attention, if folks don’t think it’s already been completely passed.)

          WPDE, it’s weird.

          At one point it was auto-spamming every mention of…uh… the French WWII general that had a daughter with Down’s and has an airport named after him, and nobody knows why.

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          1. make it so we know there is ABSOLUTELY NO HOPE, GIVE UP NOW, EVERYTHING IS LOOOOOST by finding NOTHING BUT DISASTER in every direction.
            ………………

            Which to me is absolutely insane. Haven’t they heard of the parable of the peasant? (Which type of peasant is 100% irrelevant, I’ve heard multiple versions.)

            Group of workers heading into work, whatever drudge work they are being forced to do. They stop briefly for something. One worker asks his fellow workers “Um, what happens if we revolt?”. Reply “We die!”. “Um, what happens if we are late?”. Reply “We die!”. “Well, um. We are late.” And thus the revolution started.

            If everything is Lost, Nothing but Disaster, We Are Doomed, anyway what is stopping people from saying “Well can’t make it any worse”. What is really scary, is the people making this noise are people that until recently were on their side, or at least going along to get along. But TPTB just have to move the goal post line too far. FWIW yes they can make it worse depending on what happens. No one wants that. Making TPTB back down is the only way to go. Right now that line is the Supreme Court.

            Liked by 1 person

              1. And the Leftroids are totally losing their collective shit over that. Look at the insane proposals they have spewed out over the last couple of weeks, to destroy the Supreme Court for doing their jobs. Why, they’re returning individual rights and freedom to people! Where will it end?

                Liked by 1 person

    2. Thoughts and feelings are only valid insofar as they are grounded in reality. Aligning those thoughts and feelings with reality used to be the essential nature of psychotherapy.

      –
      But that’s obsolete White Male Supremacy thinking! No, reality itself must be forced into compliance with their ‘Feelings!’ Telling them that’s not doable is Hate Speech!

      Leftroids are prone to demand simple solutions to complex issues they don’t begin to understand. Explaining to them slowly, in very small words, that it’s impossible makes no impression. They only scream louder. They believe their tantrums can change the very laws of physics and force the universe to do the unpossible.
      ———————————
      If reality fails to conform to your ideas, it’s not the universe that’s wrong.

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  18. In a former career I was in the mental health field. I had a lengthy, well thought out (to me anyway) comment focusing on the nature of psychotherapy and the destructiveness of “feeling are valid” to the process.

    Naturally WordPress ate it.

    WordPress Delenda Est.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. If on twitter then this thread on psychotherapy (and particularly couples therapy) is excellent

      Like

        1. In the twitter thread was this gem:’

          Most people in therapy are there because of the people in their life who actually needed >therapy refused to get it.

          And boy is it true.

          Each of the three times I have been in therapy, it’s been to prove to myself that I am not the crazy person.

          My one experience of couples counseling was the ex using every session to prove that his BDSM and cross-dressing dominatrix persona were perfectly normal.

          BLURGH!

          RedVixen75

          Liked by 1 person

    2. It’s too late for this advice to help you with that lost comment, but my habit when posting long comments is to copy-and-paste them into Notepad* first, then click the Post button. Especially when the blog post has been sitting in a tab for several hours, because at some point WordPress sliently & invisibly times out and will give you the “This comment cannot be posted” error if you post after that invisible deadline.

      * Really a VS Code window, because being a programmer, that’s the text editor I always have running.

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  19. The more ones opponents wallow in anger, the more likely they will err, bigly.

    Goad them. Best to goad with scornful humor. They cannot abide your disrespect or good spirits. Defy them. Thwart them. But most of all, goad their anger.

    For in their wrath is error, and downfall. And they wallow in rage as a pig to its own shit.

    Likewise, turn away wrath yourself, for that pisseth them off too.

    (Grin)

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  20. I’ve always thought that people will do whatever gets rewarded. If having proper (and properly intense) feelings is rewarded, I find myself wondering at what point did that sort of reward system begin to emerge.

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    1. I’ve read that it was in the late 1970s, but cranked up in the late ’80s and 90s. “Authenticity” became paramount and the intensity of emotion was seen as being more valid than the strength of the logic. I remember some of that from college 1.0, and seeing more of it (where tolerated) during college 2.0 a decade later. It just got worse after that. It was often tied in with the argument that women were more sensitive to emotional intelligence and so emotion was the stronger and more effective argument tool for women as compared to logic and reason for men.

      double facepaw

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  21. As someone who has struggled with mental health most of my life, I’d also like to say: Your feelings can lie to you. Trust your heart might work in the movies but verify with your common sense or another person first.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Verify with another person? Well, that’s not practical. The isolation in my life is really rough. I’m the only person I can begin to trust and I can’t even trust myself.

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  22. Could we just go back to the “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me” stage? Because I’m REALLY tired of people whining about trauma from being called names

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    2. Why would people do that, when it’s much more profitable to talk about “trauma,” “attacks,” and “violence,” the definitions of which are whatever they feel them to be.

      It’s a perfect excuse to be inaccurate, though it would never be called that.

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  23. Could we just go back to the “sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me” stage? Because I’m REALLY tired of people whining about trauma from being called names

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    1. IMO There’s a difference between people deliberately trying to hurt you with words and a person who is hurt by everyday speech especially when the “everyday speech” is something that the person disagrees with.

      Of course, if my “everyday speech” on a subject cause a person to “claim that it hurts them”, then I fight the mood to deliberately hurt them with personal attacks on them.

      Oh yes, I was in the position where people deliberately tried to hurt me with words and they knew it.

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  24. TWO things- ONE- my entire, longer and semi coherent post, never appeared but with time and therapy I shall doubtless recover from being shunned.
    TWO – in case THIS one shows up= How many people saw the intro headline. “I can feel it coming” and mentally replied, “In the air tonight….oh Lawd…” ?
    still i remain Julianus Tertius

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      1. Free at last! Free at last, thank KEK and Pepe I’m free at last! Or, well, thank Sarah my comment is free anyway. I am still in the thrall of the current administration in DC, but that is another thing.

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      1. And the lyrics so fit my attitude towards the Biden* Regime:

        “Well, if you told me you were drowning
        I would not lend a hand
        I’ve seen your face before my friend
        But I don’t know if you know who I am

        Well, I was there and I saw what you did
        I saw it with my own two eyes
        So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you’ve been
        It’s all been a pack of lies”

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      3. Best slow burn and drum pickup in the history of music. (Of all music? Sure, why not? Fight me.)

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  25. One more bit of blather, then MidnightOilDiary will shut up.

    Even if you’re convinced that your feelings rule supreme, and that logic is an artifact of oppression, you’re still in a competitive rhetorical system (please don’t ask me to define that). Only this time it’s more brutal: With no objective facts or logic to rely on, “victory” goes to those who are loudest, and quite frankly, meanest. No matter how good or virtuous you think you are, somebody better will come along, and before you know it, you’re the villain, subject to the mob’s denunciation. If only you’d thought that through ahead of time.

    It’s sort of like valuing office politics over professional competence. No matter how skilled you are at it, somebody else will be better. It’s only a matter of when.

    Did that make any sense at all?

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    1. It certainly did, and you made some good points too. I hadn’t thought of the comparison to office politics, but it’s an apt one. There’s always a bigger fish. (… And now my brain is thinking, “I cast Summon Bigger Fish!”)

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  26. The whole emotional screech about people demanding that offensive speech and thought should not be permitted and is the equivalent of physical violence is a direct consequence of the indoctrination throughout the miseducation system that has been the breeding place for the current Cultural Revolution Redux.

    People who look at things logically and are willing to “agree to disagree” and those who are willing to accept that free speech means being offended at times are resistant to the manipulations of those who seek to rule. Thus, it is necessary for those seeking to rule to create a generation of people with the emotional maturity of small toddlers, who rant and rave each time the Two Minute Hate takes place.

    Cardshark

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  27. I’ve always liked Stephen Crane’s take on this attitude:

    A Man Said to the Universe
    BY STEPHEN CRANE
    A man said to the universe:
    “Sir, I exist!”
    “However,” replied the universe,
    “The fact has not created in me
    A sense of obligation.”

    Short, simple, and sweet. I’m not obliged to do anything just because you have feelings.

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  28. My usual response to “I’m offended” is “Noted.” *

    My name is Jeff, and I’m a recovering Blueshirt.

    *For those unfamiliar with either Low or High Blueshirt, “Noted” translates as “I hear you, I understand you, I just don’t *&#$ING care.”

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  29. Sit Nomine Digna: Be worthy of the name.

    And yes, Rhodesia used that on their coat of arms; but it’s not a strictly Rhodesian, or even “white” sentiment. Look up the motto of the FDR Primary School — https://www.fdrprimary.co.za/about-us/

    Be worthy of the sacrifices good people have made to give you your place. That’s what it means. And the sentiment was even displayed at the end of Saving Private Ryan.

    And as far as nose-picking simps for the CCP go, may the Lord rebuke them. They deserve all the respect any tyrants deserve. They’re still busy massacring their own people, though not as fast as Mao did.

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  30. From time to time I suspect I feel like a human. This is when I go lie down for a while. I said feel like, not feel up. That’s… not for public..consu…er… not for public. PubLic. With an ‘L’, Sheesh. Humans!

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  31. Yeah… feelings. You (or me) can have all they want just don’t “trust” them. The character from Star Trek, Spock, was a study of sorts on how “feelings” were a problem that logic could solve but it always turned out in the story line that it needed the combination of both to work in reality. Know they are there and factor it in but it needs more.

    Feelings are real and need to be considered but they are not the only factor. It is also very true that the individual generates the feelings and produces the response due to that but only the fools stop there – anyone actually thinking will process beyond the “feel” and toss in some good old experience and common sense (a bit of logic too maybe) and have a rational reaction to life situations. Those who stop at the feeling stage are fools and are hurting themselves (and others) by doing so.

    The old Hippy saying of if it feels good, do it is the idea that feelings rule but it won’t work in any real relationship or social context as has been proven over time in many cases.

    As for the song… yup, my mind went there too! I always think of the Vice version…

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