IMO both culture A and B sucks. The problem with culture B is that people can feel (semi-consciously) disgust or contempt towards the other person but have learned to hide their feelings using...
IMO both culture A and B sucks.
The problem with culture B is that people can feel (semi-consciously) disgust or contempt towards the other person but have learned to hide their feelings using nice sounding words. The problem with culture A is that it does nothing about addressing the original problem of feeling malicious (however subtle) towards one's fellow human beings. "Teasing" and sarcasm are accepted as normal (they are ways one feels good about oneself at the expense of another; thus malicious). Why?
What about going for a third alternative? Can we live life full of mirth and gaiety?
Isn't that what we are living in anyways? Most cultures tend to have things from either, but usually lean much more heavily towards one of them. Where I live it's very much so type A, and many...
What about going for a third alternative? Can we live life full of mirth and gaiety?
Isn't that what we are living in anyways? Most cultures tend to have things from either, but usually lean much more heavily towards one of them. Where I live it's very much so type A, and many people would argue that the frankness and directive...ness(?) is part of the reason why people get along. But there's definitely a bit of both.
I think in the end, the types are more so based on the opposites of the world that the author sees, but for me they aren't opposites.
First up: calling it a "war", in any serious context, is a grandiose overstatement. There's a social movement from more accepting communities – that much is true for the West. (Don't know how do...
First up: calling it a "war", in any serious context, is a grandiose overstatement. There's a social movement from more accepting communities – that much is true for the West. (Don't know how do non-EU/non-NA countries deal with this. Russia doesn't.) But calling it a "war"? Myopic, and unnecessarily dramatic.
The two extremes of interhuman relationships – cultures A and B – seem like narrow oversimplifications, too. It's never that simple. That's worth keeping in mind, because you don't want to be startled navingating your social environment when something doesn't fall in either of the artificial categories.
That said, I think it's worth considering putting one side opposite the other and appraising their contents.
I grew up in an environment where being frank was punished, excelling in something – cut down (unless someone in the environment could suddenly benefit from it), and expressing unconventional ideas and opinions – struck against. I was taught to bite my tongue and say nice things and generally be servile.
The amount of bullshit in such a community, unsurprisingly, is "full of it". There were a couple of outstanding individuals around me, but they, too, quickly learned to find their small clique, enjoy their company, and shut up during the "main thread" conversations (in school, at the uni, with family etc.).
I was always frustrated by having to play games instead of expressing my concerns candidly. In relationships, it was always about trying to figure out what the other person is thinking by reading non-verbal cues and doing a lot of guesswork (most often uneducated, 'cause what could I learn from?). It was humiliating, draining, and maddening.
At the same time, I'm a deeply-sensitive person – an HSP, in fact. I understand the frustration and the suffering it entails when held long enough. I know struggle, and I understand others struggling. In the same message, I can be brutally-honest and reassuring; I don't think the two are exclusive. In fact, I think both are necessary for something like an optimal personal growth: a healthy degree of truthful outside information, and a healthy degree of reassurance that the flaws we all bear are neither confines nor scars to be ashamed of. That reassurance, I believe, gives us the strength to overcome the personal obstacles and grow as persons. I believe everyone deserves the latter, unless they go out of their way to justify their ignorance, arrogance, or malevolence. I believe everyone needs the former.
I loathe to make people cry, probably because I oppose hurting anyone. If I ever have to, I'd be torn inside, because I would cry before they do. It's worse when there's a miscommunication and I make them cry by telling them something honest. It took some outside perspective to recognize that my "You have flaws that need fixing" (I'm an optimizing kind of a person, so this is my modus operandi) doesn't necessarily say exactly that to the other person. It may, instead, say "You're now defined by the ill features you feared you had, and you must be ashamed, and it must now haunt you for the longest while" – which is a horrible thing to say.
In the latter case, I'm not sure where the responsibility lies. In fact, I believe it's with neither person. We're massive emotional mechanisms, defined by genetics and long, unique histories of actions and reactions. We're not nearly in control of our feelings to assign ourselves responsibility over feeling them. It's what we do about our feelings that defines us as independent, self-sufficient persons.
I think honesty is paramount to any healthy relationship, regardless of the attitude we take towards expressing it. Telling someone you like them, if true, is honest. If they reject you, and you're left feeling stranded, and you let it define you, you're being dishonest with yourself. I'm not saying that, in this case, you're cursed of being "the liar" forever: I'm saying that this should be an indicator for you to sit down, assess how you feel (use someone's help if you have to), and figure out how to move towards a better life afterwards (again, use help if you need to). At the same time, I recognize that simple instructions don't entail easy execution, and that a process of recovery is a long and painful one – but in the end, you'll be healed, learned, and stronger for it. Find strength where you have to, and keep moving until you can breathe easy.
Whether you rib each other along the way is almost irrelevant. We went frustration in different ways. If it works for your whole group – excellent. If not, there are issues to solve.
Being a man, I've never had any sympathy for people who castigated me because I somehow "made them" feel negative emotions. I'm not even allowed to have feelings because I was born with XY...
Being a man, I've never had any sympathy for people who castigated me because I somehow "made them" feel negative emotions. I'm not even allowed to have feelings because I was born with XY chromosomes, a cock, and a pair of balls -- but I'm not only responsible for keeping my own feelings to myself but for everybody else's emotional well-being as well?
Fuck that noise. If my feelings don't matter to anybody but me, then there's no reason I should give a damn about anybody else's feelings unless doing so benefits me.
What you're describing is the culture of toxic masculinity, or the prison of masculinity. Here's the good news: the bars aren't just invisible, they don't even exist. You can be emotional starting...
What you're describing is the culture of toxic masculinity, or the prison of masculinity.
Here's the good news: the bars aren't just invisible, they don't even exist. You can be emotional starting today. You can have interests and like anything you want even if you think it's unusual for a male to.
I knew that already, but thank you. Right, and government is just a hallucination as well. The problem with dismissing masculinity as a spook and saying "the bars don't exist" is that while the...
What you're describing is the culture of toxic masculinity, or the prison of masculinity.
I knew that already, but thank you.
Here's the good news: the bars aren't just invisible, they don't even exist.
Right, and government is just a hallucination as well. The problem with dismissing masculinity as a spook and saying "the bars don't exist" is that while the bars themselves are illusory, there are still plenty of people who don't realize that. You can't argue with them because they won't listen to any frame of reference different from their own.
You can be emotional starting today.
Starting today? I've always been emotional. It just usually isn't safe for me to express most emotions.
You can have interests and like anything you want even if you think it's unusual for a male to.
Of course I can -- as long as I keep my interests to myself because nobody gives a shit what I'm into unless my interests identify me as somebody useful. It's fine that I'm into computers because that means other people can come to me for help instead of solving their own problems.
Nobody has the right to stop you being yourself
I understand that you mean well by saying this, but nobody has the right to grant me permission to be myself either because permission granted can just as easily be revoked.
Has this not been clear? Is it that novel to recognize that treating people respectfully and working hard and well are valid paths to success? Has the author seriously never encountered a...
And we need to negotiate an acceptable middle ground, where we accept both that others are affected by what we say, and that nobody can decide how you feel without your consent.
Has this not been clear? Is it that novel to recognize that treating people respectfully and working hard and well are valid paths to success? Has the author seriously never encountered a workplace where you're expected to work productively with people whilst working productively? It feels like the "intellects vast and unsympathetic regard[ing] our Earth enviously" from the 1953 "War of the Worlds".
A much better way is for the people involved to go off on their own, take some time to figure out their feelings (alone or with a confidant) and then calmly bring their feelings back to the person or group. Non-violent conversation is great for this - "When you say X, I feel Y. I have a need for Z, and that need isn't being met".
What? That's not revelatory. Have I been wholly incubated in a California wearing-ties-to-work-is-what-a-crazy-person-does bubble? Did I just emerge, nutrient plugs akimbo, from the Nice Matrix? This was literally elementary-school material. This was taught before the parts of speech.
Dealing with interpersonal conflict in culture B in a healthy way requires huge skill.
No it doesn't! Just don't be an asshole! Were you raised by YouTube? When the author says this, I feel like I'm going crazy. Even if his conclusion that a middle ground should be sought rings true to me, it's like an opinion piece that ends with "What I'd prefer to breathe is a nice mix of nitrogen, oxygen, a little bit of argon, and a pinch of carbon dioxide for taste".
Which is great. Seriously. Even if I dispute the author's sense of a "correct" middle ground being some drastic new conception, I'm glad that somebody with (apparently) a background completely alien to my own reaches the same conclusion.
(I also dispute the author's brief aside that Culture A promotes rapid resolution of conflicts. My feeling is that there's a lot of noise, but that shit seeps into the environment -- evaluations are undermined, bonus or leaves are cancelled, change logs are altered. Every Culture A buttmunch loves to think "I am a perfectly rational being who airs my grievances openly and resolves them immediately", but the second they scrounge together the wherewithal their approach to workplace politics turns into spaghetti that would make the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet look like a Young Adult Finds Themself novel. And then they've just sideloaded themselves into Culture B.)
This feels like a remarkably sloppy dichotomy. Maybe everybody can try to not hurt other people’s feelings and also try to be responsible for their own feelings.
This feels like a remarkably sloppy dichotomy. Maybe everybody can try to not hurt other people’s feelings and also try to be responsible for their own feelings.
it analyses ways to manage feelings and conflicts, how this reflects on culture in general, workplace and romantic relationships.
it analyses ways to manage feelings and conflicts, how this reflects on culture in general, workplace and romantic relationships.
Bob says something to James. James is upset and goes to have a cry about it. Who is responsible for James being upset? Is it Bob, for being mean? Or is it James, because he obviously has emotional development to do? If there's 100 points of responsibility, how would you apportion it out?
Would the answer change if I told you Bob and James are 5 year old children?
Would the answer change if they were actually two 5 year old girls?
A grown woman says something mean to her boyfriend, and he runs off and has a cry about it. Is she abusive? Is he overly sensitive?
A grown man says something mean to his girlfriend, and she runs off and has a cry about it. Is he abusive? Is she overly sensitive?
IMO both culture A and B sucks.
The problem with culture B is that people can feel (semi-consciously) disgust or contempt towards the other person but have learned to hide their feelings using nice sounding words. The problem with culture A is that it does nothing about addressing the original problem of feeling malicious (however subtle) towards one's fellow human beings. "Teasing" and sarcasm are accepted as normal (they are ways one feels good about oneself at the expense of another; thus malicious). Why?
What about going for a third alternative? Can we live life full of mirth and gaiety?
Isn't that what we are living in anyways? Most cultures tend to have things from either, but usually lean much more heavily towards one of them. Where I live it's very much so type A, and many people would argue that the frankness and directive...ness(?) is part of the reason why people get along. But there's definitely a bit of both.
I think in the end, the types are more so based on the opposites of the world that the author sees, but for me they aren't opposites.
First up: calling it a "war", in any serious context, is a grandiose overstatement. There's a social movement from more accepting communities – that much is true for the West. (Don't know how do non-EU/non-NA countries deal with this. Russia doesn't.) But calling it a "war"? Myopic, and unnecessarily dramatic.
The two extremes of interhuman relationships – cultures A and B – seem like narrow oversimplifications, too. It's never that simple. That's worth keeping in mind, because you don't want to be startled navingating your social environment when something doesn't fall in either of the artificial categories.
That said, I think it's worth considering putting one side opposite the other and appraising their contents.
I grew up in an environment where being frank was punished, excelling in something – cut down (unless someone in the environment could suddenly benefit from it), and expressing unconventional ideas and opinions – struck against. I was taught to bite my tongue and say nice things and generally be servile.
The amount of bullshit in such a community, unsurprisingly, is "full of it". There were a couple of outstanding individuals around me, but they, too, quickly learned to find their small clique, enjoy their company, and shut up during the "main thread" conversations (in school, at the uni, with family etc.).
I was always frustrated by having to play games instead of expressing my concerns candidly. In relationships, it was always about trying to figure out what the other person is thinking by reading non-verbal cues and doing a lot of guesswork (most often uneducated, 'cause what could I learn from?). It was humiliating, draining, and maddening.
At the same time, I'm a deeply-sensitive person – an HSP, in fact. I understand the frustration and the suffering it entails when held long enough. I know struggle, and I understand others struggling. In the same message, I can be brutally-honest and reassuring; I don't think the two are exclusive. In fact, I think both are necessary for something like an optimal personal growth: a healthy degree of truthful outside information, and a healthy degree of reassurance that the flaws we all bear are neither confines nor scars to be ashamed of. That reassurance, I believe, gives us the strength to overcome the personal obstacles and grow as persons. I believe everyone deserves the latter, unless they go out of their way to justify their ignorance, arrogance, or malevolence. I believe everyone needs the former.
I loathe to make people cry, probably because I oppose hurting anyone. If I ever have to, I'd be torn inside, because I would cry before they do. It's worse when there's a miscommunication and I make them cry by telling them something honest. It took some outside perspective to recognize that my "You have flaws that need fixing" (I'm an optimizing kind of a person, so this is my modus operandi) doesn't necessarily say exactly that to the other person. It may, instead, say "You're now defined by the ill features you feared you had, and you must be ashamed, and it must now haunt you for the longest while" – which is a horrible thing to say.
In the latter case, I'm not sure where the responsibility lies. In fact, I believe it's with neither person. We're massive emotional mechanisms, defined by genetics and long, unique histories of actions and reactions. We're not nearly in control of our feelings to assign ourselves responsibility over feeling them. It's what we do about our feelings that defines us as independent, self-sufficient persons.
I think honesty is paramount to any healthy relationship, regardless of the attitude we take towards expressing it. Telling someone you like them, if true, is honest. If they reject you, and you're left feeling stranded, and you let it define you, you're being dishonest with yourself. I'm not saying that, in this case, you're cursed of being "the liar" forever: I'm saying that this should be an indicator for you to sit down, assess how you feel (use someone's help if you have to), and figure out how to move towards a better life afterwards (again, use help if you need to). At the same time, I recognize that simple instructions don't entail easy execution, and that a process of recovery is a long and painful one – but in the end, you'll be healed, learned, and stronger for it. Find strength where you have to, and keep moving until you can breathe easy.
Whether you rib each other along the way is almost irrelevant. We went frustration in different ways. If it works for your whole group – excellent. If not, there are issues to solve.
Being a man, I've never had any sympathy for people who castigated me because I somehow "made them" feel negative emotions. I'm not even allowed to have feelings because I was born with XY chromosomes, a cock, and a pair of balls -- but I'm not only responsible for keeping my own feelings to myself but for everybody else's emotional well-being as well?
Fuck that noise. If my feelings don't matter to anybody but me, then there's no reason I should give a damn about anybody else's feelings unless doing so benefits me.
What you're describing is the culture of toxic masculinity, or the prison of masculinity.
Here's the good news: the bars aren't just invisible, they don't even exist. You can be emotional starting today. You can have interests and like anything you want even if you think it's unusual for a male to.
Nobody has the right to stop you being yourself
I knew that already, but thank you.
Right, and government is just a hallucination as well. The problem with dismissing masculinity as a spook and saying "the bars don't exist" is that while the bars themselves are illusory, there are still plenty of people who don't realize that. You can't argue with them because they won't listen to any frame of reference different from their own.
Starting today? I've always been emotional. It just usually isn't safe for me to express most emotions.
Of course I can -- as long as I keep my interests to myself because nobody gives a shit what I'm into unless my interests identify me as somebody useful. It's fine that I'm into computers because that means other people can come to me for help instead of solving their own problems.
I understand that you mean well by saying this, but nobody has the right to grant me permission to be myself either because permission granted can just as easily be revoked.
Has this not been clear? Is it that novel to recognize that treating people respectfully and working hard and well are valid paths to success? Has the author seriously never encountered a workplace where you're expected to work productively with people whilst working productively? It feels like the "intellects vast and unsympathetic regard[ing] our Earth enviously" from the 1953 "War of the Worlds".
What? That's not revelatory. Have I been wholly incubated in a California wearing-ties-to-work-is-what-a-crazy-person-does bubble? Did I just emerge, nutrient plugs akimbo, from the Nice Matrix? This was literally elementary-school material. This was taught before the parts of speech.
No it doesn't! Just don't be an asshole! Were you raised by YouTube? When the author says this, I feel like I'm going crazy. Even if his conclusion that a middle ground should be sought rings true to me, it's like an opinion piece that ends with "What I'd prefer to breathe is a nice mix of nitrogen, oxygen, a little bit of argon, and a pinch of carbon dioxide for taste".
Which is great. Seriously. Even if I dispute the author's sense of a "correct" middle ground being some drastic new conception, I'm glad that somebody with (apparently) a background completely alien to my own reaches the same conclusion.
(I also dispute the author's brief aside that Culture A promotes rapid resolution of conflicts. My feeling is that there's a lot of noise, but that shit seeps into the environment -- evaluations are undermined, bonus or leaves are cancelled, change logs are altered. Every Culture A buttmunch loves to think "I am a perfectly rational being who airs my grievances openly and resolves them immediately", but the second they scrounge together the wherewithal their approach to workplace politics turns into spaghetti that would make the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet look like a Young Adult Finds Themself novel. And then they've just sideloaded themselves into Culture B.)
This feels like a remarkably sloppy dichotomy. Maybe everybody can try to not hurt other people’s feelings and also try to be responsible for their own feelings.
it analyses ways to manage feelings and conflicts, how this reflects on culture in general, workplace and romantic relationships.