Quotes and my response to them; plus a bit on society

“People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.” Michel Foucault

I read this little snippet the other night and it echoed as truth inside me. People seem to be blind to how their actions affect other people around them. Callousness, coldness, aloofness and insensitivity now reign supreme. Compassion is a rarity. Before, those things were the “norm”, now people who act this way (caring, kind, understanding, aware of how their behavior affects others) are considered to “have something wrong upstairs.” What causes this?

Society now moves at an astonishing rate. People spend expansive amounts of time with machines and little or no human contact. Everything gets done lightning quick, so much so that a 10 minute wait has become unacceptable. Such a break neck pace is bound to cause some side effects. I think one of those side effects is the degeneration of interpersonal skills. You can’t learn how to behave with or towards other people when you hardly interact with other people during the day. (Banking, shopping, recreation can all be done over the phone, through a computer, or by proxy.) You call the bank you get a machine. You call the electric company you get a machine. Human interaction is not as high as it used to be. As well, with such a fast paced society, people often find themselves burdened with such a heavy schedule that they have little to no time to cultivate friendships or to keep up with the friends they already have; we’re always rushing from one activity to the next. Gone are the days where Sundays are set aside for relaxation, family gatherings, or other interactions with human beings. Now we can shop, work and do millions of other things on Sundays. It seems that many people do not value interpersonal relationships as they once did and they come last on one’s “to do” list. All of these things combined, make it easier to not see how our behavior affects the people around us. We’re too busy to notice, to think about, or to care.

The victim belief has something to do with this as well, I think. The victim belief is the way everything is always someone else’s fault, or everything that is wrong with your life is because someone abused/neglected you in your past. People don’t take the responsibility for the actions anymore. Everything has a justifiable excuse and that excuse is supposed to relieve a person of any blame or responsibility for what they do. “Oh I got cranky? It’s not my fault I have huge stores of rage inside me because the neighbor abused me” or “I killed someone? That’s not my fault. I didn’t get everything I wanted/needed as a child and that neglect is what caused me to act out this way.” Where does the “not my fault” end and the “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that” begin? Yes child abuse is a horrific thing and very damaging to the child. However, it should not be a crutch that the person can use to justify any behavior no matter how wrong, 30 years later. Being an abuse survivor should not give a person a “I’m not responsible for anything” card, yet it does now. I do not think that abuse does not have long lasting or far reaching affects on a person because I know for a fact that it does. But I also know there are a large number of people who are using past abuse as an excuse for their behavior. Rather than take responsibility for themselves and heal the effects of the abuse, they use the abuse as an excuse for whatever behavior they choose to engage in. It seems to me that society has gone to the extreme with this. It used to be that abuse had no effect on children, and did not occur. Now, abuse is admitted to, but it is treated as a life-ending incident creating severe emotional disturbances in the victims that they can NEVER overcome. Isn’t going from “it never happens” to “it creates permanent flaws that victims will never overcome” just going from one extreme to another? Yes there are numerous situations where one’s past has a direct link to current behavior, but those cases are not the majority, nor should they become the majority. I think this stance of society has the most impact on the fact that many people just don’t see how they affect others anymore. They don’t have to see it because they have no blame, whoever abused/neglected them has all the blame. That is sad because it condemns society to becoming even more cold towards one another and it condemns the surviving victim of abuse to an unstable mental/emotional life by default. Too much emphasis is put on the damaging effects of abuse and not enough emphasis is put on actually healing from abuse. It is possible to heal from abuse and lead a perfectly happy life. Why doesn’t society put that message out there? I don’t know and I think it’s sad that more people do not know that they can heal from, and function “normally” despite, past abuse.

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give to themselves” Gabriel Garcia Mquez from “Love In The Time Of Cholera”

I think this little snippet has something to say to that last paragraph about the victim mindset. Throughout life people must constantly be reborn. To do this, one must be open minded to new things and learn from past experiences. Each growth spurt causes the person to change into another version of themselves, or in some cases, a new version. In this way, it can be likened to being “Born” or “reborn”. Life teaches people things every single day, if we only take the time to look for those things. We have difficult things we must live through, and it is usually from those experiences that we learn the best, hardest, and most profound lessons. A person cannot remain stagnant throughout their entire life, or they cease to truly live. Instead a human being requires growth to achieve maturity, and continued growth to gain wisdom. This is a never ending process that keeps life alive. Life is not just the ability to breathe or have a heart that is beating. Life is more than that and I think it is a growth process. Human beings must continue to learn in order to truly live.

Darn and I had a real good thought going there too. Got interrupted by my daughter who unerringly asks to talk when I’m in the middle of something. LOL Oh well. No biggie.

A lot of times the topic of terminology, expressions and words come up on mailing lists, in real life groups and in chat room. It is discussed about whether or not the words we use in BDSM actually exist, if the definitions that are in the dictionary (for those words that have definitions in the dictionary) are applicable to BDSM, and whether or not we can ever agree upon a lexicon of terms for the lifestyle. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this topic over the past few years, wondering whether having a set definition for the terms would be helpful or harmful, wondering whether or not we will ever arrive at a general consensus agreement of terms and wondering if it would even matter if we did. I wonder why people find it so necessary to create new terms when the ones that are already in place adequately describe the same situation or role.

“Words are not the things for which they stand” Robert Fulghum

The above quote seems to apply to how those involved in BDSM approach words. The frequent redefining of terms to a point where they no longer even faintly resemble their original definitions is (to me) an example of a word no longer being that which it stands for. The reason people define words is so that they can give a single word that stands for a longer meaning or situation. The word war for example is a very small word, yet whenever it is used it conveys a fight, usually with arms and usually involving large groups of people. Rather than saying “Such and such a place is engaged in a large scale war with hundreds of their military members fighting over land borders with the people of a neighboring country”, it is much easier to say “Such and such a place is at war with their neighboring country over border disputes.” The meaning is the same with the main difference being smaller words are used. Words provide multiple opportunities to get a thought/concept/idea across in different ways. The definition of a term is supposed to be the situation or such that the word was created to describe. If we start removing those definitions, we are making effective communication much more difficult because no one knows what anyone else is talking about. BDSM is a widely varied and often complicated topic as it is, and it is made more complicated by the erosion of the terminology. I do not however think this is isolated only to BDSM. I think this same erosion is occurring in every day language as well. I’m not sure why this is so, but it is there.

“We speak poetry, not substance.” Robert Fulghum

(I’ve been reading another Robert Fulghum book, can ya tell? I love his books, I always find something in them that touches me)
I read this little tidbit and all I could think of “what a neat way of saying lipservice!” Some consider poetry to be an abstract flowery use of words that has no real meaning or significance. I happen to think poetry does indeed have a distinct meaning, and it is usually the meaning that the author gives it. (It can be abstract or concrete or anything else the author wants it to be) So I can see how one could say that a person who speaks in the abstract, without conviction and without meaning what they say, is speaking poetry. For words to have substance they have to be filled with a meaning, whether that be the dictionary’s definition or some mental/emotional significance that the speaker imparts into the words. Another way that words have substance is whether or not they are spoken by someone who backs their words up rather than just speaks to hear their own voice, in this case those words have a lot of substance because the speaker can be counted on to back those words up. I think it is sad how society has developed (or regressed maybe) into something that values pretty words with no substance, over promises and honesty.

“The map is not the territory” Alfred Korzyboki (meaning “abstractions about reality are only symbols of the real world and are not to be confused with the world itself” Robert Fulghum)

With this little tidbit I get the impression that words are only the preface to the real item (be it a thought, feeling, experience, person, place or whatever) itself and not to be counted on to give an accurate representation of that item. It also could be reminding people that dreaming about something or reading about it (hearing about it etc) is nowhere near the same as experiencing it for yourself and not to take what you hear as the gospel truth about reality. Dreaming is wonderful and (I think so anyway) necessary for human beings. They help to enliven the spirit and refresh the soul. But it can be a very bad thing to confuse a dream with reality and dreams shouldn’t be relied upon to reveal the truth of a situation.

Just some rambling thoughts…