... -.-

[reenka]

All right, so....

How is one meant to deal with people's stupidity without actually biting their head off and/or becoming a bitter bitch who hates everyone--?

I mean, I love everyone (er, in theory-- well, I mean, non-practically speaking... yes, this makes sense to me okay) and am patient (when it's just about thought), just... all from afar. Very, very far. When faced with actual folly, I blow up and have the urge to start yelling, even worse because I actually am a quiet person who never yells. *sigh*

I know most people would just accept it. "Oh look, people are just being dense again, tralala who cares, onwards to the next manga." And... I dunno why it always strikes me again and again, as if it's never occurred to me before. Of course, this is the secret to my happiness as well, because I can easily re-experience joy for the first time also.

I want to yell about how stupid people are, but really, I am aware I'm the one who's being stupid here. I just want impossible things. I want people to think more, and... I dunno, I want them to not hurt my brain by following their logic. Really, what needs to change here is me, not them, because it's not their responsibility to make my brain feel more comfortable, but. I just. This is why I avoid people, I guess... so easily frustrated.... No way of reconciling my own level of understanding with a lesser one without going bonkers. Also why I sort of lose it if I'm misunderstood too much. I should never be a teacher.
    Ironically, of course I have an internship/job at the design office at campus teaching an html workshop. *facepalm* And I hope you understand, none of this is actually intended to mean I'm certain I'm right-- just that regardless of what I theoretically know is possible or likely (ie, that I'm at least partly wrong and the other people may also have a point I'm not acknowledging though usually I -see- it, dammit, behind the huge error they'd made), my gut reactions remain.

I mean, my last boyfriend, my biggest issue with him was that he didn't automatically 'get' everything about me, and... I mean, he got 95% of everything which is more than most people get by far, and yet it wasn't enough. Really maybe I'm just high-strung -.-

Perhaps this sort of easily set-off attitude actually comes through unintentionally on lj and this is why people think I'm scary and/or don't talk to me that much. Or something. *sigh* Yeah, that's probably true, isn't it. I mean, I don't precisely -hide- that I'm hard on certain things/ideas (though I swear, it's people's ideas that piss me off, nothing personal-- I really do separate people & ideas even if other people don't)-- so I guess maybe I come off as threatening/annoying but not in a direct enough way so that people would confront me but are rather okay just avoiding me as I avoid them. Er. Or maybe I'm overthinking it. Again. ^^;;;;

I mean, I don't think I'm intolerant, really. I just see faulty reasoning, no matter -what- the actual thought is, and react as if burnt. It's not like I can't be disagreed with-- that'd be easier to filter for, if anything, 'cause I could be more careful to only talk to people I agree with (to actually be elitist). But the problem is actually that it doesn't matter if I agree with you or not, if you seem to miss -seeing- (not agreeing with-- that doesn't matter) a point I think is important. It's that 'not seeing' that drives me insane. When I see and others don't see. It's like red cloth to a bull. A very silent yet stewing bull who avoids the red cloth altogether and goes home to rant. That would be me.

Somehow, I don't think expressing my feelings out loud to the people involved is the answer, 'cause then people -would- actually hate me and it would be no use anyway. Le sigh.

Comments

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

IS ANY OF THIS MY FAULT? JUST CHECKING SAKJFLASDFS. *HURRIES BACK TO FEVERISH CHECKING OF THE FRIENDS LIST*

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Of course it's not your fault for just proving a forum for people who frustrate me~:))

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

ooh, have i? WHO IS FRUSTRATING YOU I MUST KNOW. So I can actually go read their comments, omg i have no time. :((

I was sort of :-< that my post was linked to H_T because I knew it would mean I'd have people coming over from there, and not everybody really reads in such situations. Like. The headline they tagged it with was "who writes out of the box?" which wasn't really what I was asking at all, or at least, didn't bother explaining what the box was in this instance.

You know, *jumping topics*, I have a huge huge lifelong problem with getting too invested in things and having a really hard time dealing with people not seeing things how I see. This has been surfacing in a major way for me over the last two weeks because I have been dealing with issues of prejudice in our tutoring center. This means that I have been dealing not only with my own overbearingness regarding this issue but with all the lifelong frustration I ever felt about this growing up in the south. Which has led to the fact that in some cases no matter how much I want someone to feel and see the way I do, my passionate exhortations, you know me, are only exacerbating the problem. You cannot, you cannot change the way people think by telling them how they should think. You can only let them have experiences that contradict their viewpoints, and allow them to change their thinking on their own.

This does apply to your situation, in a very direct way. Tolerance of people and tolerance of a viewpoint is not the same thing. But no one can reach someone else by implying that they know more than the other person, that the other person is just unenlightened or not thinking critically enough. Even if the person isn't thinking critically enough, we can't tell them how or do it for them. We can show them, and give them opportunities to, but after a while, we have to acknowledge the boundary between teaching them how and doing it for them.

In essence, as I've been realizing this week with regards to my own levels of frustration where this problem of racism is concerned, and how to be adamantly opposed to racism in my classroom without being so belligerently against it that the kids who are practicing it completely tuning out forever, my own personal level of frustration is proportionate to the level of caution I need to show when voicing that frustration to the people who are causing it. Because it's not the *people*, it is the *ideology* itself. And even though I know that in my mind, to the people who are hearing my views, it can easily, easily turn into me attacking them, which is the last thing I want.

So, all fortnight long I have been receiving lessons in the fact that speaking tolerance goes both ways--I need to speak tolerantly, and encouragingly, to everyone, even when I hold the firm belief that their views and opinions are illogical, stupid, or abhorrent.

And just because our issues are different, fanfic v/s prejudice, doesn't mean that the methodology needs to be.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

Heh, well, it was generally anyone who just answered with a list of their favorites and especially fics that basically had -no- relevance to the actual question or real context provided, and yes that SohW reference REALLY FUCKING PISSED ME OFF, that having more to do with me now hating that fic (moreso 'cause it's so popular and beloved by the H/D fandom at large and held up as a standard than any, uh, specific feelings, even). Sort of like people get pissed off when anyone raves about the great IC Draco that is DT!Draco. Or something, I dunno. But yeah, it was just the flood of people not reading/thinking, really, nothing that specific.

When you put it like that-- as a problem with people 'not seeing things how I see'-- that disturbs me a lot more because, well, I don't have a problem with differing opinions or beliefs, y'know? I'm pretty laid back about reconciling contradictory beliefs within myself, forget others. It is merely awareness I'm after, though that's trickier to define; at least, that's what I mean by 'seeing'. The lines do blur, of course-- like, I get enraged by prejudice and such and want to punch people and that's disagreeing with opinions, now isn't it....

I know what you mean about letting people have 'the experience', however; in fact, it's my deep appreciation of my utter inability to convince people that leads me to be so frustrated and morose. In the end, I'm not a confrontational person anyway, so I -wouldn't- confront unless I was 100% certain it would help or 100% pissed off beyond all belief (and... that like, never happens-- and thank god, I haven't yet gone insane and killed anyone, either-- yeah, it's the quiet ones, ahahah). So for me, it's frustration with powerlessness and my own uselessness as much as anything-- and I know it takes patience, and of course patience is one of those things I have for anything -but- dealing with people in large quantities. As in, I can be pretty good with just one person when there's no serious conflict, but beyond that....

In the end, I feel I'd -like- to help people a lot, but at the same time-- my main motivation is so they'd stop bothering me with their faulty thinking-- as I said, it literally hurts me, burns me, affects me. My main feeling is just 'OOOWWW, MY BRAAAIIN, make it stop!!!' rather than 'I want to help', though that's also in there, y'know?

I do try to speak tolerantly/politely/calmly to the point that I -can't- confront people, though, and that in itself is what drives me up the wall. You -can- blow up and -actively- have to learn to hold yourself back, whereas I'm so used to holding myself back that it'd be a heroic trial for me to actually speak out in any remotely confrontational way, y'know? I'm always trapped by myself into a sort of passive resistance and avoidance, so basically people drive me insane without ever realizing it, or if they realize it, they don't know -just- how passionate I am feeling. So we're coming at this from opposite (complementary) sides, I think~:)

[cellia.livejournal.com]

A bit of a tangent, but I'm curious... have you had any luck getting anyone to "see the light" in any way with their prejudices? If so, how?

My own experience with my aunt and her on again/ off again husband seemed to show that you can only get at it sideways. And some "well if you believe this, then is that the same thing as this?" Progress was more "oh you really believed x all along, you just didn't realize it" rather than any acknowledged change.