We are all different. We each see the world through different pairs of eyes, and those eyes feed what they receive to a mind that has been shaped by things that it alone has perceived. Those previous perceptions affect how we perceive new things.
The thing is that a pair of Siamese twins will ultimately have sufficient differences in perception that they will have differences of opinion. They have one advantage over others in dealing with those differences though. They are attached in a way that they can not go separate ways when they disagree. Granted, with modern surgical techniques, this is less of a problem than it once was, but it gives them the advantage that they know that they are going to have to work towards a solution to those differences. One of the interesting results has been that in situations where people are forced to come to an agreement, the tendency is for one of the people to be submissive to the other. Post surgery, it is not uncommon for those rolls to be reversed. Why? Because the person who was formerly dominant realizes quickly that if they don’t work out some new arrangement that the person who was tied to them before, and could not escape, and could be dominated to do things for them, can now walk away. Essentially they realize that dominating someone who can freely walk away is not a reliable way of getting something done. The reverse is also true. Knowing that you can walk away gives you the power to exert control over what is going to happen as well.
Now I’m not interested in turning this into a debate over domination and submission. That can go in a wide variety of directions and at some point it’s going to be tied to sexuality and sexual themes. I’m not afraid to broach such topics. But that’s really not what this article is about, so skipping it.
There are really 4 different types of interactions between two people. Both feel they win, one feels they won and the other lost, there is an equal exchange or both feel they lose. Ok, there are variations, where one ‘loses’ and the other feels the exchange was equal, or one feels they lost and the other feels the exchange was equal.
There are people who feel that the only thing that happens in a human interaction is that one person takes energy from the other. It is a simple view that is fairly easy to explain, and when put in the right words, is something that most people would find has relevance in their interpersonal interactions. However it’s far from the whole truth that it is often portrayed as. Are there people like that? Sure. But a prime example is a mother/child or even father child interaction where the child feels that every interaction they have with their parent is negative. Or at least leaves them exhasperated, lost, and with the feeling that something has been taken away from them.
However look at what a parent is trying to achieve. Fir the vast majority of parents, the greatest day of their own lives is they day they realize that you have gone far beyond where they believe they will go themselves. The next greatest day is when they realize that you have gone beyond where they dreamed that you could get. Neither of these situations involves them taking energy away from you to do this. They both involve you doing something that may seem mundane for you, but they feel is extraordinary. And beyond what they feel they can do. Is this a loss of energy on either your side or theirs? No, it is an example of a win/win situation.
Some of us never experience that situation. I won’t go into ‘why that happens, but yes it does. And again, it is an example of how each situation is unique and involves different experiences.
We each will go through some pretty devestating situations at times as well. Perhaps it is the realization that our dream for the future will not happen anytime soon. Or ever. Or it may be that one of us has a really bad day at work, or even looses that work. These things happen. And of course how we respond to those things happening is highly dependent on what our mind is focused on at the time. Are you interested in going beyond what this experience suggests, or are you going to define who you are by this experience. It is not the experience which defines you, whether that experience affects you or not. It is the way you choose to respond to specific experiences that is useful in defining who we are.
Not all of those experiences will work out the way we like. and not all that we do will succeed. But that is good too. Every ‘failure’ is an opportunity to learn from the resulting situation. Fell down while walking? So what were the conditions in place when you fell. Is there something you can change about how you walk? Does doing that work out better?
As with things not working out the way we like, we don’t always learn from the way that things do work. In fact there is some credence to the claim that people in general don’t learn from their experiences. Take the declaration that Einstein is credited with that repeating the same steps, and expecting a different result is one definition of insanity. Others have pointed out that we go back to doing things we are familiar with, even though they are not satisfying the goal we claim to have, simply because we are more comfortable doing that. A good example is the person crawling around under the light of the street lamp. Asked what they are doing, the person reports that they are looking for their contact lens (or something similarly difficult to see at a distance.) And perhaps they recruit two or three other people do help them. After some time someone asks where were you when you lost the lens. The person says they were off that direction 10 or 20 feet. So why are you looking here? Because the light is better.
Individually, if you try to puzzle out why someone does something, it initially may look entirely like insanity. Clearly there are better ways of doing some things, and some of the things that each person does may very well seem to work completely against their declared intent. However in nearly every case it’s because at some level the person involved either doesn’t know or recognize a different way of doing something, or they tried a different way, found it wasn’t working for them, and went back to a way they were familiar with.
Heinlein (and very likely several others before and since) pointed out that science only rarely makes real advances. We appear to have made more progress in the past 200 years than in the previous 2000 years, but at the same time if you look at the state of science in the United States today, we have gotten to the point where topics I learned in Hight School 30 years ago are again subjects being actively legislated against being taught in many parts of the country. The people fighting to keep Evolution out of the class room have alternative ‘science’ curriculum available that amounts to ‘because we don’t understand why this is, we declare that it can’t be understood, and you will have to go to some other resource to get an explanation.’ As some have put it, ‘The uneducated are beating at the doors of education, bearing pitch forks and torches, here to hang the people who have the inclination to help them pick themselves up out of the mud of the road.’
Reality of course is never quite that simple. The science that we declare as going back to Aristotle, has roots firmly embedded in the medieval Christian church, and tools that derive from the Islamic Empire that controlled a significant part of Spain before the Christians re-took the region. The number system you very likely use today has it’s roots in that exact region of the world from those events. Prior to that sequence of events there was no concept of counting ‘none’ of an item, and having a way to represent that. also the concept of numbers having a ‘place’ value has no prior history in western history.
So while there are significant ‘fundamentalist’ segments of the population who declare all science to be flawed because it does not agree with their interpretation of the word of god, the very science they are railing against happens to derive specifically from the religion they hold so fundamental.
We each are different. We each do things for our own reasons, but we also all have needs that involve recognition and involvement with other people. Some of us are really good at it. And some of us could use a lot of help. It may seem odd to some, but we also may very well be very good at some parts of working with and communicating with others, and not so good at other parts.
A prolific writer may not be able to put two or three words together in a coherent sentence when talking face to face with someone. A wonderful public speaker may not be able to correctly differentiate between to, too and two in the written word. Someone who can lead people in the roughest and most violent of combat, may not be able to convince their best friend to pack warm cloths for a trip to the Arctic for the winter. People who can play the most beautiful music and play chess at the grand master level, may not be able to interact with others in a reasonable way.
We are each different, and what may be strengths at one time and place may be critical weaknesses at others. Likewise just because someone is unable to run 5 yards does not mean they can not run a successful global business.
The thing is that most of us forget those things. We like to generalize and categorize. We make blanket statements based on a brief involvement with someone or some thing that we then apply globally to those things we have generalized or categorized. I don’t think I’m better than anyone else at doing this, or catching people doing it. I happen to think that I’m probably one of the most racist and sexist people I know. But that doesn’t mean that I have to live based on the prejudices that I’ve built. Because I am aware that I have those views, I’m doing what I can to watch out for myself behaving in a negative way based on those views. And I’m likely to be harsher on myself for any failings I find than I would allow anyone else to be towards me. And yeah, I beat myself up about these things. A lot.
Because of the way I beat myself up about these things, I hope that I’m paying more attention to the way that people around me are doing things. Looking for examples of where the generalizations I’ve made break down. Helping to tear down and tear out those false generalizations.
I don’t know if anyone else does this. I don’t ask anyone else to do that either. We each have our own way of dealing with the world, and I hope that in time we find that the ways that we find fail, we learn something from. But I know that some, or even many of us won’t. And while I’m sad to see that happen most of the time, It’s a very real situation that we have to move forward through.
In short, we are all different. It might just kill us, but it is also the very foundation of our success.
