Thursday, July 20, 2006

Deception

The offshoot (splinters) of my favourite group: Plaid. That was the assemblage, this is the dissemblage: Pork Corp. And then there's those wackos, the Chemical Brothers.
@ @ @
A lady asked me yesterday what I find myself obsessed with these days. I had no answer last night. Today I think I do... self-deception. Every one does it, and it's the devil that's convinced you he doesn't exist. A few things were pointed out about my character by someone, and though I tried damned hard to outright reject them, the nature of their attribution couldn't allow me to deny their validity (cryptic enough? okok, I was told I don't take responsibility for my emotions. Which is kind of unfair, as to a degree, their purpose and very existence is impossible to be underwritten by your culpability. And perhaps that's all that selfcontrol is, adjusting your response to the stimulus. But people can overcompensate and become rigid, lock it down and quiver unhappily till the original feelings fester and become illness.) And so, I don't really have much to say about self-deception. Or rather, I have a lot, but I'm midobsession. I will come back to 'er later.
@ @ @
ps. Miss the world cup? Here's a montage of England's striker Peter Crouch after his risible attempt to roundhouse a cross during the Trinidad and Tobago game.

7 comments:

Lin-Zed said...

I know a lot about locking it down and becoming rigid...control or the obsession with it is a huge issue in my life. How to find a middle ground...that's the trick.

Eve said...

Yeah, lockdown here.

Don't take things (especially yourself) too seriously. Nothing worse than an out of touch self-obsessed person. Not that you are, but there's a fine line between introspection and narcissism.

Lin-Zed said...

That's a good point...self-awareness has its limits. But while it's important to be self aware and to work with your personality, I think it's equally important not to scapegoat your idiosyncracies (sp?), to make excuses for them, and to not take responsibility for yourself.
Jeez...it's a wonder we're even half able to function...

Grae said...

I don't think self-control is the same as being rigid. I think it's mostly just self-awareness. Your dog dies and you feel sad. You computer crashes a second before you save and you feel angry. You have no one to kiss and you feel lonely. Someone kisses you and you feel happy. But.... the awareness comes from knowing that every emotion is just a chemical and since our bodies (hypothalmus?) create theses chemicals, technically, we manufacture our own emotions based on stimuli. You COULD cry over spilled milk or you COULD laugh over it. It's not locking down. It's opening yourself up to the root of your feelings. I think the real deception is the notion that your environment governs your emtions.

S'Mat said...

i remember being very self-conscious as a budding teenager and, from grade 7-9, almost mute. i figure now it was some attempt to freeze my determination. these were my 'rigid' years, i guess as a mode or inability to cope with or express my emotions. so i became near catatonic. that's what i meant by rigidity: mistaking self-control with 'bottling up and shelving'. i agree with you grae about the mistaking the environment as governing your emotions, but there's so many forms of input: from the internal environment (eg. memories, anxieties, phobias, heuristics) and external (eg. others' emotions, failures, tragedies), it can be hard to know what's influencing what. also, i think people are pretty similar as to what they feel (they might be prone to a particular brand of emotion, like you mention chemical dependancy), but they differ as to how they express them. that's probably why you chose the word 'govern'.

lindz... go balance! and how much is for you and how much for others? eve's suggestion of inspection turned narcissism sounds like where it becomes reflectant on another (is that how Echo lost her voice?)

Amy said...

self-awareness doesn't equal self-control. i'm aware that i'm lonely. if i kiss someone, i'm not necessarily less lonely or more happy.

is self-awareness more than spectatorship?

is the real deception that we can govern our emotions?

Eve said...

yes, we can't really govern our emotions. Well, maybe except for sociopaths, who just imitate them.