The “getting in contact with your feewwingss” thing is making me think a lot. Leap brings this up from the comments, old shit right?, but it opens new angles:
“Most men, myself included, have been trained to either ignore emotions or only relate to the ones that matter to women. I didn’t personally go all the way with that, though I’m unsure if that was a choice due to art or me drawing a line and telling society to fuck off.
Woe to the man who gets in touch with his passionate anger.”
Men who control their emotions are better suited to survive. A proper man, a strong and confident man, has to excel under stress, has to appear to make easy what is hard for everyone else. And then this man should have enough spare emotional energy to enjoy life and reap on the profits, and reproduce, and pass down his legacy. Cue: the grumpy man doesnt cut it.
But the shortcut to mastering your emotions is having none.
Does it work? yeah. Short term it does. The wave of bullshit is coming? turn it off. You have an efervescence of bad feelings and anxiety surging inside and cant turn it off? shake it out. Put it out there. Hit stuff. Man up. You don’t want to lose it under pressure. Don’t want to deal with it. Turn it off. Vampire Diaries style.
But this doesnt allow you to understand your own feelings / emotions, and, at the end, your emotions are the ones in charge, not your rational brain nor your skills. Your emotions sustain your belief and your identity and are the glue for your relational networks. So if you’re not aware and dont have emotional intelligence, if you cant command and understand and feel, and your emotional skills are limited to turn stuff off, block control repress and redirect, youre an EASY pray for emotional manipulators.
Guess whos manipulating you? Media. Society. Religions. Family. Friends. People. Relationships. Everyone. And your own emotions, that you dont control, are also manipulating other people. It’s a dark game played behind curtains and the most evident sign is what happens when you question it all.
It’s not the rational mind what’s blocking you. It’s not a logical puzzle. Question your life right now. The country, the city, the friends, your god, your pillars, and say: it’s all bullshit. Cancel your story. Take your most sacred belief and question it. Can you? or something inside shakes away from it?
What you cant handle you dont own. It owns you. You’re it’s bitch. And how exactly did you get into this position, where you respond to something and are unable to question, but you go with it. When exactly did you agree to be something else’s bitch? when did you surrender? do you remember? what if you hadnt?
Or. Who benefits from this? Who created this shit?
But I might be getting in too deep. Here’s where Emma would chime in:
“That.. sounds very profound, although I didn’t quite grasp it.”
Thanks baby, I get that a lot.
And. Women. You would think that since women are not taught to repress their emotions they are better off. But, no, since women are protected and treated like children and get a free pass and have other people to take on the consequences for them and get free respect and the natural entitlement that follows… no. They have access to a wider range of emotions, but one that is also out of touch with reality and stuck in the childhood, a meaningless, out of control limbo / mess of preferences and unsorted waves of sensorial, biological urges and minute bullshit. Sorry. Emotions for their own sake are not enlightment.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. The communication with reality and the know-how define it.
You have one gender with contact with reality but no emotional lexicon. And the other gender with emotional lexicon but no contact with reality.
And then we’re all manipulated through fear.
Where are we again?
Who are we, again?
Some good stuff! Ignoring all emotions except women-related ones would indeed be too extreme.
Some good stuff! Ignoring all emotions except women-related ones would indeed be too extreme.
For some reason, women always repeat themselves. Never did understand that.
“We are the sum total of everything we’ve thought about and experienced up to this point” – Former mentor
However, if everything we’ve been taught was part of someone’s pre-existing agenda, then 50% of who we are was force fed to us without input on our part. To make matters worse, we take ownership of their thoughts. “Yeah! I think [insert pre-existing media/institutional message here] about [insert pre-filtered topics of discussion here]. True influence is to set the conditions of the debate such that seemingly opposing opinions of the conversation are voiced while that which you wish to remain silent are never even thought of. It’s our Brave New 1984 World.
Original thought. Now that’s dangerous. Cue failed attempts at any real education reform.
But I digress.
What of the other 50%? Our experiences? While circumstantial events may cause unique events in our lives, our reactions to them are based wholly on the first 50% (i.e. our thoughts). Thus, we have templated reactionary existences to adversities and perceived pleasures in life. In short, life is scripted and thus over before it ever began.
Awareness of one’s own inner workings (i.e. logic + emotion) is the key to freedom. As Bob said, emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds. So long as the mind remains a slave to the external agendas, your freedom, your very life, remains a check box on their spreadsheet.
The 3rd option of awareness always has and will be there no matter how hard they try to stomp it out. As Stephen Covey describes in the 8th Habit, there exists a space between stimuli and response. Consciousness. Awareness. Most aptly described by him as “The Ability To Choose”.
Choice. There’s always a choice even if one’s choice is give up that choice. It is always there. While it may be miniscule thanks to a shitty life of being beaten down by the system, one’s family background and such, or nurtured to be larger by the right environment, it exists nonetheless.
Cultivate your ability to choose in everything. From the color of your socks to the the food you eat to the books you read. All choice, no matter how small, flexes your subconscious muscle such that future choices become easier. Your autonomy becomes greater. From staring stranger’s in the street and not breaking eye contact till they break it first, to eventually having conversations.
Let the snowball of your existence grow and the memory of your perishable time on this planet burn a permanent mark on the planet’s surface.
Live, love & leave a legacy.
tl;dr? then it wasn’t for you.
Jen,
It is indeed too extreme. But its what men are taught to do, and that to do otherwise is dangerous for women and society.
Look at the modern workforce. We’ve edged away from competition within the office based on hard numbers. Its too aggressive for women. Can’t joke, rib others for performance, etc. Instead the focus has shifted to making work environments a ‘friendlier, safe, and comfortable place.’
Or that if a man raises his voice to his wife, let alone his hand, the police can be called. The man will be assumed guilty and hauled away for harassment. If she then takes steps while he’s out of the house to divorce him, he’s in a horrible position because the courts are known to take stances based on what will involve the least change of lifestyle for the kids (and they usually judge that by who has the home). So he just lost house, home, and family for raising his voice. Its rare, but it happens and men are starting to realize it.
Plus the current educational system hammers in femcentric teaching methods from an early age and does so at the expense of methods that are known to work better for boys. Any emotional outbursts and boys are sent to the office as a punishment. Meanwhile a girls emotional outburst is ok and usually results in her being told she’s a little princess and has nothing to be sad or ashamed about. Its normal for her, abnormal for him.
Yes, ironic and unnatural: everyone’s taught to be emotional except men, unless it’s in a “feminine” way. I personally love seeing men jostle each other around.
Sorry Leap, my last post was meant to be under yours as a reply.
A thought this post inspired in me Yohami.
I think that women, knowing they live in a world of emotions more than men do, projected that they thus must know more of how to handle emotions than men do. Even emotions that men feel that women don’t.
So. Enter the fact that women know (and partially acknowledge) that they like two things. They like a man that shows confidence and leadership. They like a man that is able to show them SOME vulnerability and honesty.
The women, not knowing that a man showing confidence and leadership is IN CONTROL of his emotions the whole time – meaning he knows himself well enough to act without emotions registering to women because he has mastered them – women only see a stoic man. Why do they see that? Because they are the ‘masters of the emotional realm,’ or so they believe. So they see something and, not understanding what is seething under the surface of a rational male acting calmly to lead them, assume that nothing is. Because, if there was something, they would know it as the masters of emotion, right? So, they project that they could never act like that unless they were utterly devoid of emotions at that time – a cold hearted bitch.
The second part, the vulnerability, comes into play because they suddenly see that what THEY THINK is a cold, rational male leader has an emotional side. The contrasting images between the two melt their brains, their reason, and it directly melts down between their legs.
Maybe these two things and the disconnect where women don’t understand them lead to all the fucked up, complicated circles of what they tell us they want. They don’t understand that the Alpha Male in master of his emotions appears stoic while calmly sailing a seething storm of inner emotions, sure he will land in safe harbor. They don’t understand that the small vulnerabilities that same male shows are a glimpse into that storm he constantly deals with and has mastered.
Instead, they simply tell us THE SIGNS of what they’re attracted too. Enter the stereotypes of the Bad Boy ™ and The Emotional Beta Orbiter ™. They’re not lying to us, technically. They’ve just run their hamsters in so many circles that they don’t understand that they are not the masters of emotional worlds they’ve been led (lied) to believe.
Welcome to the current, fucked up, Sexual Market Place.
All good.
Personally, I think many men enjoy jostling each other around. We know its fun, it shows us that we’re all ok with each other, and it inspires growth. Gotta show off to your bros and not let them down.
Its funny to me that this same type of behavior is usually the basis of cocky/funny, push/pull types of flirting. Not exactly the same, but its ridiculously close. If you can treat her like ‘one of the guys’ with a woman WHILE letting her know you have sexual intentions with her… Well, the doors just opened wide for those men in regards to most women.
[...] posts on it at his site. This first post is great (and yes, watch the video he links), and in this second one he takes a comment I made and masterfully expresses the heart of what I was attempting to [...]
Haha, lol, yes Yohami, for me to get all that you’d have to be speak more simply and be concise. But even if I might not understand all the details of what you’re getting at, I think I might say I had a lot of progress in dealing with my own feelings, specifically anger and dislike. Allowing them to be there was the first step, but wasn’t nearly enough. When you first stop repressing, everything might come out very powerfully. It’s like a pendulum, which swings from one extreme (no feelings) to another (whatever you were repressing, felt and expressed at any time). And this other extreme might go on until feelings simply burn out and you calm down. NOW you can control these emotions. You’ve accepted them, but you can hold them back whenever you want, or dish them out sparingly.
That came out a bit mean.. I meant to say I’m better at understanding more simple text, not that yours was overdone.
http://www.shrink4men.com/2011/11/10/male-anger-and-other-emotions-part-one/
Great article. They totally ripped my post though. And 5 months before I wrote it.
Yohami, read the article on equanimity in Shinzen Youngs article section. What he describes there is the ultimate masculinity IMO:
http://www.shinzen.org/
Also read the inner game sticking points pdf you find with this google search:
http://www.google.no/#hl=no&gs_nf=1&cp=48&gs_id=124&xhr=t&q=authentic+man+program+inner+game+sticking+points&pf=p&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&oq=authentic+man+program+inner+game+sticking+points&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=37fe98ab583664a5&biw=1337&bih=700
Kuraje, cosign all of that.
Never heard of the 8th habit. Searching.
Oh no. Emma banned.
Checking.
I like that inner game link that you posted. Its a really good, step by step break down. It doesn’t get deep, but I don’t think it needs to. Its a great starting point that allows people to start that deep journey on their own.
There’s a couple points in it that I’ll have to think about.
The major one is the one dealing with curiosity and awarding it on someone or not. I -THINK- I chose the correct course with a possibly bi-polar woman I’ve seen a few times. I gave curiosity, attention, and time as a reward for an attractive, intriguing woman I was interested in. Yet I saw the returns from her dwindle rather quickly instead of increase or stay the same.
Now I simply have to consider if I calibrated poorly or if she really has issues. I suspect it was issues, but I’ll keep an eye out in the future to make sure I don’t make mistakes with someone worth keeping around.
@Leap Yes indeed, courtship can be a funny thing. Some animals even playfully wrestle with each other before mating.
[...] behavior everywhere, mostly in women and gay guys, probably because men are not supposed to be this emotional, but, for sure, we’re able to feel it, all the unfairness and conflating accusatory shit [...]