Interactions, Relationships, Collective Advancement and Ageism. Sometimes I wonder if we will ever reach collective balance and I know that if ever we do it will be a long time from now and I feel that there would need to be a lot less of us on this ball of muck for that to happen. I hate to be seem to be a pessimist but I see myself as more of a realist and I have difficulty telling myself that it is any other way than simply the way that it is. People work better in smaller more coherent groups and what we have in this society and many others is a case of too many of us with far too many extreme opinions. Add to that peoples natural ability to take everything personally and you end up with pretty much what there is, confusion. I have found through experience and study that the main reasons for people having difficulties come from our inability to understand our emotions and instincts. There is always a vast differential when it comes to interpreting our own emotions and instincts as opposed to those of others, in short we always give ourselves breaks that we’re either unwilling or unable to give to others. I believe this is human nature and I fear that the same aspects which have so often saved us also have the potential to destroy us. Just last night I was working on SOS Bus and while I was having a smoke break a guy who used to work with me came along and we were chatting. A friend of his who I don’t know so well but have met previously once or twice came a short time after and almost immediately he had difficulty with something that I happened to say. Now when I say he had difficulty I mean he was beginning to get upset but he had been drinking so that is understandable. I like both of them, they’re inquisitive and curious and are good conversationalists but for some reason they end up disagreeing with me. I happened to say something which I have noticed I may be saying a lot lately and which I believe is very true. “People who have experienced more tend to know more.” I have noticed that when I say this some people sometimes get upset with me and they start trying to make me out to be wrong. They say that it isn’t always true, which I agree with because if look at exactly how that sentence is worded you’ll find that I didn’t try to say it was ALWAYS true. As with so much of a human persuasion I have found that what you say is not always the issue often the opinions and even levels of stability of the individuals you are speaking to can make what you say seem like something that you may not have exactly said. Some people are very, very defensive and insecure and they can take very straight and innocuous statements completely the wrong way. In this exact instance and with many other times that I say the above sentence I find that people automatically begin a kind of defensiveness with me directly where it becomes apparent that they think I am saying that I am better than them. This is a very common problem and I am sure many of you will have seen arguments and disagreements arise in such a way with very little provocation. I am very mindful of the past, I can remember situations therein where I myself had behaved exactly as those guys did last night and so I am beginning to see this a kind of repeating dilemma that happens between people who have differing age and experience. I remember when I was young I thought I knew everything but as I got a little older I came to a point that I realised I knew very little. People change throughout their lives and a couple of decades and all the experience gathered therein can change a person beyond comprehension. The problems that exist in generational terms are often not looked at or are looked at as being something else entirely. Equally differences in class can also present people with different types of experience and knowledge depending upon the paths that their lives take. When a person reaches a certain level of experience on any matter they will see, feel and speak about things from a much more informed sense of themselves. This is actually a good thing, I mean experience so often makes us stronger and wiser but it is not always seen to be so by others. The difference here always comes back to three simple facts: 1. We often see others differently so we misunderstand peoples intentions and viewpoints. 2. We have a problem empathising and giving others the right to be just as they are. 3. We are instinctively competitive and we don’t realise that even during simple meaningless chats we have to be the ones who come out on top. Of course just because a person has lots of experience doesn’t mean they will use it wisely and it is difficult to speak about this generally but as far as human interactions go I can see where the problems lie. It’s almost as if during conversations people try too hard to assert too much while at the very same time they try to see what the other person is saying in general terms. It’s like this really interesting flux of a conversation as a kind of gauge culminating in determining where the conversers are at! I am not sure if studies have been done about this type of thing but I would be interested to read and understand more about how people converse exactly. Why can’t we just let one another be? Why can we not just allow to people to believe in themselves without us always getting competitive and defensive and believing that everything is about us personally? If someone happens to mention that they are really good at something it doesn’t mean that they’re saying you’re no good. Confidence is a wonderful thing and we should be happy for people who have it instead of always being worried about what we ourselves don’t have. The tendency to see things firmly from our own point of view is not necessarily a good thing, often it can be taken to extremes and peoples sensitivities then cause them to be socially paranoid and make them think that the fortune or others represents a misfortune for them. So often Northern Ireland keeps being my example for matters such as this. Not too long ago there where, in the news, a few reports in a row of positive things that were happening within the Nationalist community and at around the same time the Unionist side had some setbacks. I am not going to start going into each the individual happenings, I am looking at the wider view here. Anyway after a while Unionist Politicians started coming out and saying that this was unfair, look what they have been getting but we’re just getting a rough ride and just to be as partial as I possibly can here I can recall things happening the other way around! It’s like we always see ourselves in comparison to how other people are and view what happens to us as being always linked to others. Since we are social animals this is most likely very true but the problem nowadays is that it is always taken in a very negative sense and so if they get and we don’t, it’s not fair. This is of course childishness but you can’t tell people that because they firmly believe their own bullshit. It is very difficult to get any sense across to people nowadays because there is a high degree of confusion and misunderstandings about our nature. Everyone thinks they know what is going on but it is clear that is not so. People looking at things through a very narrow spectrum and being selective of what they recognise is clearly a massive problem. I have spoken before about those who conduct personal crusades as both groups and individuals against particular things and while they are very often noble causes it is taken as though the issues people are fighting are the key issues and if they win this or that crusade the whole of humanity will be saved and we’ll never have any more difficulties. This mode of behaviour is not only short-sighted it can be very dangerous because sometimes we envisage threats which are either not as bad as they seem or simply non existent. In other cases people can be very noble and righteous in one sense while being completely reckless in another but they defend themselves with all the vigour of an injured badger when you try to explain things to them. As matters involving human interactions and relationships go there is something which cannot be denied: people do not interact with another in a very harmonious way nowadays. Difficulties between social groupings and the collective failure of many relationships will attest to this, we simply seem to be struggling, in a wider sense of course. The reasons for this are many but I am not discussing reasons right now I am merely stating exactly how it is. When we look at matters about our society and our race on the wider scale we tend to think about things in a very narrow minded manner. People can be overly positive and often only use particular aspects to come up with conclusions while completely ignoring matters of great importance elsewhere. When relationships break down the reasons for this occurring can be varied and as always it is difficult to speak about matters which can be so diverse in a general way but if looked at honestly peoples underlying intransigence and inability to connect or empathise probably accounts for a large proportion of communication break downs. I have been in instances where the person whom I was trying to have a relationship with had underlying issues which they would not address but which I could see very clearly. Anytime I tried to bring the issues up the person got very, very defensive and started accusing me of me of being overly negative. Equally I have been the in the wrong in relationships and I would not listen to what was being said to me about my own difficult behaviour but hindsight is an amazing thing and I did not have the ability at the time to either change or recognise how difficult and unfair I was being. Success is a difficult thing to measure but I do not see anything we have or are currently doing as even nearly resembling success. Human beings have been continually taking more and more backward steps. People who attest to the fact that we are currently successful use many different aspects of our development to highlight this. Two major aspects of Humanity which could be seen as very positive are Medical advancement and Population growth. People look at either one of these and use them to say the Human race has made huge advancements and they’re at least partially right. If you look at medical advancement though and set it along side advancements in weaponry and warfare you will see that for all the advancements we have made to prolong life and make people better we have made maybe as many if not more to kill one another. Sorry to have to say they but it’s true. Who we save and who we kill is subjective but if on the one hand we cure a disease and save 100 000 thousand people while murdering an equal amount elsewhere for unrelated reasons then I am not sure the advancement can be seen as such. I am sorry that I sometimes seem to go off topic quite so much. The way I write these pieces is really blind in many cases. I have something which happens and when I sit down for a couple of hours to explain it I get other things coming to mind during the writing process which I kind of end up comparing and contrasting. I hope it makes sense. A lot of what I am saying has to do with mindfulness. In order for us all to get along we really do have to be very aware of two major factors. 1. How we treat other people. 2. How we see ourselves. None us are perfect and we never will be but we have to all try a little harder because it is our own instincts and emotions which ultimately cause us each so much difficulty in our lives. Give the people you love a break and if you can try to give strangers a break as well. Everyone is just trying to get along in the only way that they each know how. If we all tried a little harder maybe it would at least SEEM to be a little easier. Take care of yourselves and one another.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 19:48:17 +0000
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