Thursday 22 April 2010

You, You and You.



Are you afraid to be alone? Were there people in your life that left you? I think everyone was left at some point. We thought we were important and eventually we were left on our own. That can be done in number of ways. Do you need others to know your true value? Well, most people need. Unfortunately, it can be easily exploited by someone. The best way to avoid emotional manipulation from someone is to learn to be alone and happy about it. That way, you will not be at anyone's mercy. I don't think it is easy, in fact I think it is very difficult. It is somewhat natural for introverts but for extroverts it must be really really hard. They need other people to feel comfortable all the time. Having lived for a long time I have noticed that people have tendencies to exploit our weaknesses once they find them out. In that sense extroverts have a really hard job because they are constantly exposing themselves and therefore are vulnerable to be hurt. They need others.

To your great surprise dear reader, I have found that there are very few people in my life that at some point didn't want to trick me, fool me or use me. People are really cruel, so to be at their mercy can be a real hell.

There are precious friends and precious friends are hard to find. That is why I had to learn to be happy about my solitude so that no one will be able to exploit me and use that against me. I recommend that for you dear reader as well.

Thursday 15 April 2010

You have been unfriended!



Have you ever been unfriended on Facebook? I have. It happens to anyone at some point in their life. I don't recall unfriending anyone, for me it is very serious.

Some people do not realize consequences of unfriending, other people do not understand potential reasons that someone unfriends us. There are many many reasons.

Social network sites such as facebook raise visibility - it is clear who is our friend and who is not our friend. Unfriending someone more or less means we do not want to hear from that person or we don't care or both. It is almost like blocking someone, thus it has far reaching consequences. Your friends are the people you trust, obviously friends are not equal, some are closer some are remote. Considering that most people have at least a few remote friends on facebook unfriending someone is eliminating someone from a group of remote friends as well. It is potentially like saying, you are more remote than my most remote friends.

Unfriending does not mean there is something wrong with you, sometimes it can mean that the person who unfriends you needs to sort out their life. They may be going though a crisis and you are not helping them to resolve their problems. They unfriend you not to hurt you but to help themselves.

Unfriendsing someone can sometimes trigger very serious lack of self esteem, especially among teenagers. They may not understand why they have been unfriended and they loose respect for each themselves. A person unfriending it, may actually be aware of this. Emotional torture is a concept well known to some people as in a skilled manipulator emotional torture can lead to so called victim's complex and feeling of inferiority and submissiveness. Unfriending someone is like giving them feedback, they they do not deserve to be our friends. A person that has been unfriended may think... but why... what do I have to do to be your friend... etc.

Some people tend to send messages and ask why they have been removed. I don't do that. I especially don't do that when I have a suspicion that this person may be a control freak and also may want to practice emotional torture. In special situations, I may ask them but I would have to be sure they don't want to play any mind tricks with me. Unfriending someone puts you in a privileged position, it is like breaking up a relationship. No one wants to be dumped, people feel superior when they dump. Similar psychological mechanism.

For me being unfriended by someone is fairly serious, it is like being removed from a circle of friends that they trust. It means our destiny, whether we live or we die is irrelevant to that person. If means they don't care if we are sick or how we are feeling. You can imagine how much it can hurt, when you have loved that person. It is not "let's be friends", it is "I don't care what happens to you." Unfriending someone that have loved us or loves us is the most cruel and vicious thing we can do to them. Just don't if you care for human beings. If you want to do it for yourself, then think about the consequences of your action for another person before you press that button.

I have heard that people unfriend to ease their own pain, when they have loved someone very much, they cannot stand looking at that person anymore. I think it is ok to do that once you notify that person, otherwise it is again cruelty in disguise. Just my opinion, who cares anyway?

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Conjecture based reasoning



It turns out that a person can create a world about another person entirely based on it's own thinking isolated from real life or any verification. When we lack information we have to think about possibilities. We have to think what another person thinks. We could do it for number of reasons but there is no harm in doing it in order to protect ourselves. What if they are lying? What if they want to hurt us, etc? During that process, depending on complexity of our brain we can create a whole new world about a certain person without him or her realizing it. The problem is that, this is often based on pure conjecture. Conjecture based reasoning is really hard. If it is done without historical data about a person, for example, if they have lied to us before and we have detected that lie or they told us, we tend to loose trust. If it is based on a moment, emotion, then conjecture based thinking can create an entirely false perception of another person. How to verify it? You can talk to a person and ask them if this is something they meant. They can lie to you though. This is very hard and many people do fail and draw completely wrong conclusions from conjecture based reasoning about someone.