Two Face by AnthonyT

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Two Face

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 11:36
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Monday, December 19, 2011 7:36 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

When I was a child, my parents used to argue quite a bit. Often, I was the subject of argument. My Mom tended to be impulsive and passionate, while my Dad tended to be reserved and logical. I loved my Mom very much and still do, but her impulsive passions often brought her into conflict with me during my youth. This was a conflict both verbal and physical. I despised the volatile nature of our relationship, and often saw her emotional unsteadiness and regular outbursts as a weakness of character.

Time would inform on this attribute, and I would learn that she suffered from severe hormone imbalances that removed the filter of control from many of her actions. Worse, I would learn that I shared this problem, and I would find the waters of my soul to be a roiling tempest of emotional discontent.

However, I have a good role model in my father, and did my best to adopt his reserved, polite demeanor. I tried to embrace logic and reason over blind reactiveness. This is a skill, not a part of my nature. It is a an iron cage for ugly, untamed vermin. Over time, life experience has added perspective, and I am able to see things through a different lens than in my youth. This helps.

I think I am able to present myself as a better person than I am. I hope that as time goes by and I continue to apply principles of better thinking, I may actually change the creature inside and not merely polish the façade. I like to think that I am slowly but surely re-wiring my computer so that my worst impulses become unavailable to me. I realize this is a journey of a lifetime, and not one that I can really win. There will always be more of the mountain to climb, and there will always be the chance to lose my grip and tumble down. I tumble quite a bit.

I am often angry. Things people say and do often make me rage inside. That I am able to stop and think and rethink and attenuate and reshape and remodel and take a deep breath and present myself in a half-amenable fashion does not change this fact. I can't count the number of times I felt like reaching through the computer screen and ripping someone's lungs out, or beating them half-to-death with a galvenized steel pipe. Peace does not come naturally to me, and virtually every kind word I speak in a disagreement has been chiseled from a monolith of inappropriate responses.

I can't think of anyone on this board who hasn't made me angry at least once- even the meekest and kindest member- even if inadvertently.

When the rage subsides, and the emotion dies down, I am often grateful for having proceded gently. I am often ashamed of thoughts and impulses that I felt during moments of unkind passion. I find love in my heart for almost everyone, and thank God that I was able to keep from permanently polluting my relationships with negativity and insults that can not be un-said.

When I counsel for peace and understanding, it is much less a campaign to improve the world and much more a reflection of my internal struggles. I am at War. I will always be at War.

It is heartening to get encouragement from people who say that I have been reasonable or kind. It helps to reinforce my good choices. But at the same time I don't wish to foster a lie about myself. I am trying to be what I seem to be, but that's not what I am. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Monday, December 19, 2011 7:54 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Thanks for sharing that. Though, "two face" may be a bit hard.

We all have sides of ourselves we don't like, and don't like to admit. They pop up from time to time, like evil twins. I bet Frem speaks kindly to some religious fanatic once in a while. Kwicko probably lets himself watch boxing or some such. ;)

I, for one, never entertained the notion that you were always calm and never riled. What was apparent to me was someone who chose to stick to standards of speech and action despite anger. Not someone who represses or has no anger.

Your choices provide a tremendous stabilization for RWED. I believe RWED would be a great deal stormier without your principles. For what it's worth.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Monday, December 19, 2011 7:58 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I understand the dilemma as this: honest? or intentionally better?

If this is how you see it then it's a dilemma I share, but for reasons of my own personal history I pick honest as the better option.

Also, I understand about the 'being born with ...' issue.

If only we could all be born secure, positive, serene, energetic, intelligent - then our society would reflect that and we would all have an equal chance at personal happiness. Regrettably, many are born with noisy brains, or short tempers, or volatile emotions, or deep depression, or high levels of anxiety, or tendencies to compulsions, or aggressive tendencies etc. That is just one of the many ways the real world dishes out injustice (and then, well, you add human injustice).

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Monday, December 19, 2011 8:01 AM

BYTEMITE

I feel like I'm the same way. I have a pretty short temper and can be pretty snappish. One minor comment can send me spiraling emotionally out of control into panic attacks, paranoia, rage, and deep depression for a day or few.

I feel like everyone has to walk on eggshells around me, and I also wish I could handle myself better so I didn't prompt that reaction. Sometimes I think it would be easier for everyone if I left, I'm rather redundant anyway.

In any case, thanks for speaking up, Anthony. I suppose we all have our dark sides. But what determines our character isn't whether we HAVE them, but whether we ACT on them.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 8:22 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Tony, the fact that you rage inside but remain humane is a testament to your character, not a flaw. I have often gotten frustrated and angry here and IRL, and having seen the generally poor outcomes that engenders, I think your approach is the wisest. That is not to say that one should be a doormat, but simply that there are less offensive ways of making a point, and that points made THAT way are most often those that stick.

Alas, You're a better (hu)man than I am, Gunga Din!

It is very very hard to control one's emotions. But thanks for being a good example.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 12:12 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

A Anthony a chara,

Some of us in life are doomed to certain fates, I'm doomed to two fates myself. The best way is to find beauty and goodness in yourself that you can hang on to when the storm of your fate rages around your inner being. We face our fates manfully every day and do everything we can to not give in to the pain they give us. Your anger doesn't show here a chara, we see the person that you want to be, the reasonable logical creature that is inside you that fights to come out past the anger you say you have, you've learnt ways to help your inner being shine through the pain, at least for us here and so the creature we see when we look at you is the thing you strive for instead of the thing you've been stuck with.

Thank you.

And Byte a stor, You're a good friend and you're so strong and brave and you help me to be brave too. I don't know too many people tougher than you. No one wants you to leave because we'd all miss you a lot and you add plenty to things here.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, December 19, 2011 1:56 PM

HKCAVALIER

Hey Anthony,

Among the greatest gifts that you bring to us here online are your exceptional generosity and personal courage as embodied in this and many other stories you've shared over the years. It simply takes guts, a ton of self-acceptance, and exceptional faith in people in general to open up as you do. The impulse to share your struggle with all of us isn't strictly rational, nor is it the controlled thing to do. The urge to connect with others, to belong, to share is a primary human drive found in our emotional nature. A pure, unquestionable need.

The aggression you experience and identify with is secondary, not fundamental to our nature. It's what happens to any of us whenever our primary human needs go unmet.

I do not believe that you can be a consciously empathetic person in this world without experiencing anger and lots of it. You think the Dalai Lama is beyond anger? He will be the first to correct you on that score. So much violence has been done long ago--is being done as we speak--and we are all here suffering the consequences. If you dream a solution to the world's problems, you are angry. Some of us are trying to heal, but so many of us simply continue the cycle of violence by projecting our own violence onto others--denying the violence in ourselves. Carrying violence inside us isn't a fault of our nature, it is a consequence of living in this world. It's what we do with the violence that lodges within that matters.

I too am inspired to anger even by the meekest among us on RWED--not the least for that very meekness and gentleness of spirit they trade in. Too often, I think. Sometimes meekness and politeness have no place. It puts me in mind of the graduate assistant who walked in on Sandusky raping that child. To his shame, meekness and politeness are the tools he reached for when he failed to call the police and waited instead for an audience with the Great and Exalted Paterno.

Anger in the face of such a story isn't wrong. But vengeful anger is. What is rape if not an act of revenge? Clearly, such revenge is misplaced, but I contend that all revenge is misplaced. No revenge will regain what is lost. All too often the act of revenge only binds us to the violence of our loss, precluding the possibility of healing.

When whishimay asked not long ago, "Since when is revenge a bad thing?" I got pretty pissed off over here. She seems a nice person, but I perceive on a regular basis that the premises she works from are violent. It's in the culture; hardly her fault. Then DT posted his eloquent reply in pictures: Since when is revenge a bad thing? Since Jesus for westerners, and since Lao Tzu for everyone else. That was a real comfort to me. None of my emotional turmoil made it onto the web, though.

The violence your mother enacted was wrong, but I would contend that violence wasn't in the nature of her emotions, but a distortion of them, an affliction. I can't help seeing the other side of the coin you present here: was your father's logic and control really what your mother most needed from him, or was it only what he chose to give? People in relationships tend to polarize, with each taking on certain roles and giving over other roles to their partners. So, your mother was likely in a position to carry the lion's share of the emotional baggage of the relationship so your father could maintain his posture of control. Time and again, I've seen the more emotional, the more sensitive, the "weaker" among us, sacrificing themselves to make those we love look strong. Again, I'm put in mind of the graduate assistant who protected JoPa's and Sandusky's good names. Was there some of that sacrifice in your mother, I wonder.

Anyone who walls up a part of himself in an "iron cage" cannot help but simultaneously envy and despise, but ultimately stand in need of the overtly emotional person. Really, what we all need is to integrate these roles as necessary parts of ourselves. The emotionally cold person needs to find in himself a way to let go, surrender his war, and the emotionally undisiplined person needs to find the inner strength to choose when and where to express her feelings fully and without violence.

And then you were born, I believe, not simply to continue the legacy of your father, but to reconcile what kept your parents at odds with one another--to find the unity in their duality. You say here that you often were "the subject of the argument." But that does an injustice to you. Within the syntax of that remark floats the implication: were you to be taken out of the equation your parents' suffering would have been reduced--a classic inversion of causation in the child's mind, but one necessarily outgrown as the real sources of adult discontent become apparent. The child is not so much the subject of his parents' conflict, but often enough the most immediate and convenient pretext. And, tragically, the receptacle.

You know, the cop who pepper sprayed that 84 year old woman defended his actions by saying he HAD to spray her because THAT'S WHAT HE TOLD HER HE WOULD DO if she did not comply with his demands. You see the essential madness of that justification, and its relationship to all justifications of violence?

We have the power to choose our actions, not always the power to choose our feelings. Our truest feelings are never chosen, so much as they are revealed and either accepted or denied; integrated or disowned.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 1:58 PM

DREAMTROVE

Anthony,

You are the calmist most level-headed person I have known online. Perhaps it's your past and difficulties in life that made you acquire this ability, but you possess an internal editor that I admire. I would very much doubt I have anything to teach you, but I have a great deal to learn, which is in general, why I'm here.

I suspect no one in society is truly sane, and we are all perpetually exerting as much effort as possible to fall within a behavior pattern that allows us to communicate with others. I often fail miserably at this, and you've been kind enough to point out when I do and why, and what you think I'm doing wrong, and even when it doesn't look like I appreciate it, I really do.

I suspect the truth is that we all live on mars, relative other humans we interact with. That we can communicate at all is a sign that space travel is possible.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 2:38 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
This is a skill, not a part of my nature. It is a an iron cage for ugly, untamed vermin.

You are by far not alone in this: not whatever - my answer wasn't to cage it though, but throw a saddle on that fucker and ride it to battle... I'm crazy like that.

Quote:
I think I am able to present myself as a better person than I am. I hope that as time goes by and I continue to apply principles of better thinking, I may actually change the creature inside and not merely polish the façade. I like to think that I am slowly but surely re-wiring my computer so that my worst impulses become unavailable to me. I realize this is a journey of a lifetime, and not one that I can really win. There will always be more of the mountain to climb, and there will always be the chance to lose my grip and tumble down. I tumble quite a bit.

Rousseau versus Hobbes, the ever classic dichotomy and battle within - everyone has a piece of it, mano.
Ever consider embracing that beast and making friends with it instead of trying to flee or fight ?
I am sure HKCavalier could explain the principles behind that better than I - but so too could Carl Jung, and you're stuck for the moment with me...
You are who YOU are, every bit, every ounce of good and bad, heal and harm - all of it, is what makes you HUMAN.

Your CHOICES though, that, and that alone, is what makes you HUMANE.
One letter of difference, an entire universe of behavior.

For me, the beast is a greater part, but ONLY part, of who I am - because I have embraced it, made peace with it, and know that it has its place within me every bit as much as the angel, an alliance rather than a conflict, from one who has faced the darkness within and instead of seeking to cast it out, realized and accepted its purpose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_%28psychology%29

One might wonder if perhaps, there are other options than fight or flight, ehe ?

-Frem
ETA: Obligatory snark.
Uptight Vorlon asshole!

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 11:36 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
You are who YOU are, every bit, every ounce of good and bad, heal and harm - all of it, is what makes you HUMAN.

Your CHOICES though, that, and that alone, is what makes you HUMANE.
One letter of difference, an entire universe of behavior.

Goddamn. That was fantastic.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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