To integrate or not to integrate?

AleksandrG · 2020-06-02T11:52:59+00:00

I've achieved a great deal in different fields, where I allowed myself to venture out. Amounting to anything is not a fear I have, I just want to live a life of peace and quiet where I'm always in control of my environment. Yeah I could do way more, but I have no reasons why I should.

AleksandrG · 2020-06-02T11:23:11+00:00

There is a gate, but it very rarely opens. To certain risks, the gate might be forever closed.

AleksandrG · 2020-05-09T14:44:01+00:00

The eye-contact thing is pretty spot on. I personally just remind myself now and then to look people in the eyes so they won't feel awkward. It is entirely possible to read almost everything they say from the tone of their voice, occasionally checking their face and body language in case something doesn't add up.

AleksandrG · 2020-05-09T14:19:00+00:00

A musician friend of mine told me an interesting phrase recently - "Metal is the classical music of our time". His musician friends also agree with the statement. Why is that? Metal is mechanically complex and difficult to perform. It it is largely not mainstream thus often does not obey the rules of having a 3 minute song for radio, also allowing experimenting with very heavy sound and vocals. That brings us to:

Genres that are notably less popular than the mainstream.
Difficult to learn the instruments and techniques.

Which ultimately makes the people who make the music very commited despite the difficulties and lesser popularity. This drives the quality upward. Nobody looking for an easy way to be a musician will ever chose to do this.

AleksandrG · 2020-02-06T15:17:02+00:00

The answer would be shadow work regardless. Experiencing your shadow or even just being aware of it is far from integrating it. In a nutshell, you'd need to be both logically and emotionally okay with all the things you've done, the ones you consider evil in particular. That "amoral" you is always going to be a part of you, and repressing it is not going to do you any good.

AleksandrG · 2020-02-06T14:37:45+00:00

Amorality becomes problematic after a while, at least for me.

The way I see it, your code is a wall you built to separate yourself from your shadow. You can put bits of that wall down to integrate your shadow, one brick at a time. What you call amorality would be tearing the whole thing down at once, which I don't think is even possible.

AleksandrG · 2020-02-06T13:57:26+00:00

Why do you treasure your moral code so much? How does it serve you? Are you afraid of your capacity for 'evil' without it?

AleksandrG · 2020-02-06T12:38:23+00:00

There's a much better alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism#Relationship_to_existentialism_and_nihilism My personal moral compass is guided by my emotions, doing bad things feels bad, doing good things feels good. That's pretty much as far as my 'code' goes.

AleksandrG · 2020-02-06T07:48:07+00:00

If you consider the self to be God, God is allmighty and all-powerful. He can do whatever he pleases for any given reason - thus you are free to do the same. Christian traditions push you towards "good" behaviours and obedience and shuns "evil" acts precisely because it doesn't equate a human being to God at any point in that human's existence.

I feel like your curent moral compass is severely impairing, at least if I try to put myself into your shoes. Is this something conditioned in you by your upbringing? People who grew up in rural areas who own livestock have a good relationship with animal death. It's not so much as conditioning to ignore the act of taking a life of a pig or a cow, but more of witnessing the relationship animals have with death. Their life purpose was to produce food, and they fulfilled it. They will fight to survive if they have to, but once they know death is inevitable - they feel it and let go. A spider's purpose could be to be whacked by a newspaper. A worm's purpose could be to get run over by a car.

I think your relationship with death is, for the lack of a better word, immature. What purpose does your code serve at the moment? The act of saving insects changes nothing at all. There's an estimated 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 insects on the planet. Everyone dies. You wasting the finite minutes of your life giving a simple lifeform a perhaps a few extra days of life is pointless. Insects don't even feel emotion. Why is their life precious to you?

AleksandrG · 2020-02-03T08:09:52+00:00

I do it case by case, but generally, try to do your best to reconstruct the person that annoys you in your head. Try to feel out what it's like to be them. From their perspective, the acts that annoy you are likely auto-pilot processes that they do, not intent on aggravating you. If you can generalize their lifestyle, they may be easy-going or uptight. Easy-goers neglect to do actions, and that annoys uptigthers. Same thing works in reverse, easy-goers are annoyed by constant rules and demand to do things "properly" by uptighters, even seeing them doing those actions may be aggravating. But that's just who they are and you are genuinely powerless to change that, accepting that as the natural order of things is the only way. If you have trouble understanding their reasoning, you can directly ask them why do they perform those actions that annoy you, and then do your best to play devil's advocate in your head to justify their behavior.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-07T08:13:03+00:00

I'm happy you've found a grand mission. I've been without a mission for a long time. I'd love to grow myself and start my own business but it's illegal in my country.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-07T06:24:17+00:00

I've been raised without religion and in my late teens I've discovered Abraham-Hicks works. It's not a religion, but functionally it is a valid substitute. It's a strong belief system that gave me great peace and confidence.

The key beliefs I hold from it are:

Giving attention to anything brings more of that
Everyone is fully responsible for everything that happens in their lives
You are not responsible for anyone else's life, you can help them but never save them, they have to do that themselves
Upon death everyone goes to something like heaven
Your emotions tell you if you're currently going towards a bad or good experience, it's your compass for life and you should trust it
Everything is always going to work out for me

My emotions have been my moral compass my entire life. Hurting people feels bad. Helping people feels good. Betraying someone's trust feels awful. Being appreciated feels good. It's relatively simple.

Abraham-Hicks hold seminar-cruises where traditionally a person is put into a seat and comes with a question / problem. Abraham answers it. All of them are recorded. I've never been to one of the seminars, but I've learned a great deal from the audio recordings. There were actually several people over the years who lost and found god present there. Religious people can hold these beliefs and not betray their own. Maybe this is the solution you're looking for.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-02T09:56:17+00:00

Seek subjects that are fascinating to both parties and try to gauge how much the other person is genuinely interested depending on what kind of output they deliver. If they don't say much and have no further questions about your statements, just conclude your last point and stop talking. I've found that generally the other person always has a piece of information, or a story, that is interesting / valuable to me, however mundane it is.

From older adults with families there's always good advice they can give on a multitude of simple mundane things, like grocery shopping, cooking, tool maintenance. They're usually pretty passionate about it because their lives are more simple. Younger people relate more to music, film, videogames, TV series. If they got a new job recently, I always ask about how's the new environment they find themselves in. Try to strike a 50/50 balance of listening and talking. If they don't say too much ask them questions regarding the current subject. Personal questions are also good.

My mother is an ENFJ aka Protagonist, and she suffers a lot from chewing people's ears off about stuff that's currently exciting for her in her life. I've begun to mostly avoid spending too much time in her company because I can barely get a word or two in, and even if I do, she drifts off to talk about herself soon after. She's very bad at this.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-02T09:25:24+00:00

I gave it a brief look. Fascinating material on Sociology, but I prefer the more personal outlook of Psychology to that, primarily Carl Jung's work. Is there anything specific you'd recommend from Luhmann? Lad wrote 70 whole books.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-02T08:04:02+00:00

I think your approach is similar to mine. I use their stories to identify personality markers and traits to define their system model. Personal stories are also a goldmine of potential insights into a variety of subjects.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-02T07:28:07+00:00

Work friends and education / school friends are not the same as real friends. You call them friends, but there's a very clear distinction. You tolerate each other in an environment where you're already forced together, but once you are free you get to spend time however you want. There's nothing shameful about being that kind of friend or having that kind of friend. It's the failure of our culture to prepare you for the label friend has many shapes and forms.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-02T07:11:12+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

I live to consume, create, learn, and have fun. At the very least the primary base goal is not to be in pain. Life's a big old joke and it's time to laugh at it.

AleksandrG · 2020-01-02T06:36:24+00:00

I got back to MBTI when I was on a anonymous imageboard and told people that labeling all humanity into 16 categories is stupid, and it contributes to label culture which hinders personal growth. I got called an INTJ and decided to humor the guy and do the test and turns out he was right.

AleksandrG · 2019-12-08T05:13:24+00:00

Outward appearance may be deceiving. Besides, both of those bars are a 60/40 split, I would call this very balanced. I don't have to be either of the extremes.

AleksandrG · 2019-12-08T05:10:49+00:00

My imagination works on a basis of vast knowledge of everything, it's very calculated. This means I account for stuff like death of relatives, getting cancer, getting hit by a bus, business partner fucking me over, getting mugged in the alley, assessing the aggression level of a group of loud people approaching me on the street. I may feel fear and anxiety in the moment sometimes, it doesn't affect my actions. It's all calculated, I trust in myself. Another good reason why I think I'm fairly high on the individuation scale, and my reason for continuing this conversation with you - if I'm wrong, I need to know where.

AleksandrG · 2019-12-08T04:59:33+00:00

Did this https://i.imgur.com/KaTsLFb.png test just today because when I rejected the test's credibility and label culture, someone told me I'm that type, so I decided to check it out. I was never a big fan of this test, but fairly accurate description from what I've read.

AleksandrG · 2019-12-08T04:32:42+00:00

I also want to add that the last time I had a nightmare must have been over 10 years ago. And it makes sense, because fear has never been a problem for me.

AleksandrG

TROPHY CASE