wedrifid comments on Of Exclusionary Speech and Gender Politics - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 July 2009 07:22AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 April 2010 07:39:30AM 2 points [-]

I was pretty close to incoherent when I posted that.

I'm not sure whether I can make it clearer now, but I'll take a crack at it.

I grew up with a lot of criticism, and I wasn't supposed to show anger at it. I also was harassed by other students at school, and told to just ignore it. In other words, they were under no obligation to control their actions, while it was my job to control my involuntary reactions.

In addition, I realized recently that my mother modeled helpless anger herself. While she could pretty much get away with dumping anger on other people in the immediate family, she rarely got what she wanted from the people she was angry at, and it didn't seem to occur to her that the situation could be made any better.

My current emotional reaction is something like if I could have prevented my anger at the situations I was in as a kid, I was obligated to to so. If I can prevent anger now, it proves that I was getting things wrong then, and I deserved the way I was treated. And at that point, I get angry again.

I think that's what was going on when I posted-- the objective bit is that I felt very angry and was whaling away at my completely innocent keyboard.

I don't know whether sorting things out more clearly to the extent that I have in this post is likely to do any good, but there's some hope. At least there's some handle on the confusion between past and present..

Comment author: wedrifid 16 April 2010 08:19:07AM 2 points [-]

Your honesty and self insight are refreshing to hear.

I, personally, found it useful when I realised my anger was mine and I was free to be angry whenever I wanted and whenever it suited my purposes! I hope yours serves you as well as mine serves me at times. A useful advisor, anger, providing you can keep it aligned with the rest of you.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 16 April 2010 03:16:33PM 0 points [-]

How did you come to realize that your anger was yours?

Comment author: wedrifid 17 April 2010 01:15:32AM *  3 points [-]

A difficult question for me to answer. It comes tied up with other realisations and beliefs:

  • There is no God, no rules for Right and Wrong written down in the fundamental nature of reality, no external standard. I need not bend my beliefs of what it it right and wrong to do and, more importantly in this instance, feel to anyone else.
  • There is no 'fair', no 'justice', except to the extent that I or other people who share similar preferences make it so. Other people may get away with insisting that what they are doing is Right, with the implication that you do not have grounds to be angry. They may be able to socially enforce the suppression of anger at their actions with clever reframing or outright force. But you need never subject your own feelings to their demands. You don't need permission to be angry.
  • I have anger for a reason. It's there to tell me when the outside world has hurt me in some way. When we choose to suppress anger it can deny us knowledge of what we want or need in a situation. For all but the most self aware individuals emotional instincts know more about what they really want than conscious beliefs.
  • Letting my anger be my own, rather than trying to insist it match an external tribal consensus frees me from attachment to things I can't control. Other people can be F@#&$ if they want to, and I can be angry about it if it serves my purposes. Sometimes it does.
  • Anger makes me think better. I am more focussed, extremely strategic and much harder to manipulate. It isn't a long term option but in the short term anger is damn helpful for me. It gets me out of bad situations and opens my eyes to all sorts of opportunities that I may otherwise have been too nice to acknowledge. (Contempt, on the other hand usually just gets me into trouble!)
  • Once I start allowing my anger to work with me rather than fighting it it doesn't have a destructive influence on me. It is like a trusted military advisor that cooperates me. I don't always follow its suggestions but sometimes I do. Once the instincts that can be considered the 'angry part' of me are properly integrated with the rest of me they come to trust that the rest of the brain will cooperate to meet its goals. It will not then be tempted to sabotage the goals of the rest of me.

I hope this answers your question at least partly.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 April 2010 10:54:40AM 1 point [-]

Did you come to these realizations by thinking about philosophy, or by some other means? If it was by thinking about philosophy, how did you make the transition from abstraction to emotional change?

Comment author: wedrifid 17 April 2010 04:04:49PM 1 point [-]

Did you come to these realizations by thinking about philosophy, or by some other means?

Having the philsophy there in the background helped, but only in as much as it allowed me to better guide the emotional development that was happening at a more instinctive level. More to the point it allowed me to develop an alternative to the bullshit philosophy that was taught to me as a child. Since my hypocrisy muscles are weak that deveopment is vital.

Let me be clear that some of the thinking that prevents healthy emotional development is that same thinking that would condemn PUA. You may disapprove.

If it was by thinking about philosophy, how did you make the transition from abstraction to emotional change?

Swearing helped. Seriously. But that is me. I am male and all that testosterone pumping around in my blood makes a huge difference in how I go about emotional change. I also never lacked for what I'll call 'righteous anger', for lack of a better term. I could always get angry, and proactively so, with both bullying and bullshit. What needed to change was the suppression of selfish anger. The 'turn the other cheek', 'unconditional love', 'humility' kind of stuff. Since realising that is the sort of thing is actually bullshit used to bully people into compliance it qualified as a trigger for the outrage that I already gave myself permission to have. From there the process of expunging the undesired emotional habits was just a matter of time, counselling, hours in the gym and some martial arts practice.

Your path is probably a different one to mine. I could tell you to watch 'Gladiator' and 'Fight Club' a half dozen times each but that is more of a male-typical approach.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 April 2010 04:31:35PM 2 points [-]

Indeed. I'm already capable of swearing.

The recent thing which convinced me I have a problem is that area was feeling very upset for maybe half an hour for slamming the phone on a fundraiser whose project I strongly disagree with.

It wouldn't have been awful if I'd said no thank you and hung up. It wouldn't have been crazy to lay out my point of view a little. But I didn't owe him a goddamned thing, and I don't think it made sense for me to beat up on myself for showing some spontaneous anger.

I've seen Fight Club-- it seemed like such an unhappy movie that I'm amazed it was inspirational for anyone. On the other hand, it's been a while. Did the Fight Clubs actually make those guys' lives better?

Would it help explain the PUA thing if I tell you that one of the things I need to work on is not being too concerned for guys' feelings if I turn them down?

Comment author: wedrifid 17 April 2010 04:58:37PM 1 point [-]

Would it help explain the PUA thing if I tell you that one of the things I need to work on is not being too concerned for guys' feelings if I turn them down?

It does, and to be honest that (with girls' substituted) is still not a strength of mine either. I do it because I must, for my sake and theirs (if I couldn't say 'no' then I clearly couldn't say 'yes' to monogamy or even bigamy!) But it takes effort.

The ironic thing is that PUA tactics are optimised for girls with strong boundaries in that area. That is, most of the techniques suggested are ones for dealing with the fact that attractive, highly socialised girls are habitually biased towards rejecting rather than reverse. (Even so, I can understand your wariness.)

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 17 April 2010 05:49:13PM *  0 points [-]

I'm strongly biased towards being nice or not giving a clear no, not towards accepting.

Comment author: arundelo 17 April 2010 01:23:20AM 1 point [-]

Heads up -- I failed to parse

This means that just because other people can get away with insisting and socially enforcing that what they are doing is Right and that you do not have the right to be angry about it.

Comment author: wedrifid 17 April 2010 02:20:00AM 2 points [-]

That makes no sense. Edited to:

There is no 'fair', no 'justice', except to the extent that I or other people who share similar preferences make it so. Other people may get away with insisting that what they are doing is Right, with the implication that you do not have grounds to be angry. They may be able to socially enforce the suppression of anger at their actions with clever reframing or outright force. But you need never subject your own feelings to their demands. You don't need permission to be angry.

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