Never been one to let the carrier drop

http://www.addictinggames.com/theidiottest.html

According to this test, I am ‘average’. I tried three times, and that’s where I ended up all three times. This is something I’ve suspected for a long time – even though people from time to time make a point of telling me I’m intelligent.. (almost as if they sense I have some weakness in my own personal opinion of my intelligence).

Actually, this is sort of a odd point. I’ve been thinking about it, and compliments about your DNA – like your intelligence, or your beauty, aren’t really as much directed at you as they are directed at whoever wrote your software. (Which probably wasn’t you, although the jury is still out on this). On the other hand, there are certain compliments that are very directed at you.. like that you’re a peaceful person, or that you write good software or good emails or good sex stories or what have you.

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Every year my Dad’s family gets togeather and has a holiday they call Thanksmas. For a long time I avoided them as most of my memories of my Dad’s family include things like being spanked for crying after one of my uncles took part of my kite to fix his kid’s kite with, and being forced to sit in on family photographs taht I didn’t want to be in and other similar events.

Then, I went for a few years.. my grandfather was dying (except it turned out that he wasn’t.. which I’m glad of), and then I thought I’d go back to see if the results were better, and they weren’t.

I’ve concluded that in my father’s side of the family, insulting someone is a way of showing love. I wish that I could adapt to this, but I really can’t. Every time I go to a family gathering with them, someone says something incredibly hurtful. They don’t like my culture, I don’t like theirs. I think the best thing to do is just to avoid them in the future.

There’s this sense that you’re supposed to have this obligation to your family no matter how they treat you or what they say. They can use physical violence as a reaction to your crying, or threaten physical violence in order to control you, and you’re still supposed to love them and go to their family events and listen to their negative comments about how you look, who your lover is, what you think is morally right and wrong, what your politics are, and probably what car you drive with good grace.

I don’t see the point. If we weren’t related, we would actively hate each other. These are the kind of people who think that the Iraq war is a beautiful thing. They drive a SUV and have a giant american flag on their house. I fly a U.N. flag (I’d rather fly a UFP flag, but no one would get it but other severely geeky types) and would devote my entire life to working for peace if I thought it would actually do any good.

So, my mother asked me if I was going to Thanksmas this year, and I answered no, that I’d had my quota of that side of the family for a while. And then I felt bad, because that’s a really harsh thing to say. But, on the other hand, it is the truth. My shrink keeps telling me I need to ask for what I want, and with regards to a lot of those people, what I want is to never see them again. I don’t want them to be unhappy, I don’t want them to suffer or fail to prosper in any way, I just don’t want to be exposed to them.

And I don’t think that that’s a unreasonable thing to want. But yet I feel bad about wanting it.

I think if they looked into their hearts, and listened really hard, what they’d find is that they don’t particularly want to hang out with a anti-war, left-wing, socialist-communist-grean-libretarian (yah, YOU try and figure out which bits of me are which bits of those;)) pro-drug, anti-religion, musician hippie beatnik computer programmer anarchist like me, who I’m sure they are convinced is destined for eternal suffering when this lifetime is over.

So I think by staying away I’m doing us all a favor. There are a few individual people in the group that I like quite well, and perhaps I will make some effort to run into them individually instead. (assuming, of course, that they don’t also want to stay as far away from me as possible, which they might).

I’m beginning to think that with the exceptions of raves and other IT people, I’m very antisocial. I’m not particularly comfortable in a bar, or a church, or any of the places people gather that aren’t all about the music. (I do music-parties and concerts just fine and enjoy them rather a lot). I enjoy seeing people within the framework of work, but we’re all working on solving some common problems, and those people generally don’t insult me (except occasionally on fuckedcompany.com) and they generally don’t make me feel threatened.

I also seem to be able to manage things like SEVA – groups of people trying to solve a particular problem. I think SEVA is just another kind of work for me.

Anyway, that’s enough of my thoughts for tonight I think.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.