Family

[AFK]

Okay, I will be the campagne bottle for this sub-forum.

I want to discuss the topic of family.  I brought this up in LHX's excellent post in 'Or Kill Me' and I think it's a topic worth discussing in the context of BIP, et al. 

How do you reconcile family and BIP. 

I'll use myself as an example.

I grew up in a fairly conservative Baptist family.  The rest of my kin are all pretty religious and devout.  Additionally, we all grew up in a fairly isolated part of the world.  It really is a "Cleaver" mentality up there. Or, at least it was.

And now, I'm raising a family of my own.  I love this new family and I very much love my parents and the family up north.  And I feel, I could never, ever, share with them my thoughts and feelings and ideology as I've expressed them here.  I think the ideas we've bantered about here and in other parts would absolutely scare them.  Not so much the ideas themselves, but that I have those ideas and think about them, with others.  I really think my family would view this as some weirdo cult like Jonestown. 

So, is it a matter of going it alone in a sense?  Trying to advance change, in a minimalist way, but leaving my family out of it?  Do I risk freaking them out by trying to get them hip to what is "really" going on?  Does anyone else struggle with this?

[LMNO]

No one in my family undeerstands my ways of thinking, including my wife.

But I can get through to my dad sometimes, if I use almost purely scientific language.


Mostly, I keep my thoughts to myself, but I do speak quite often about where my thoughts lead me.

Last night, I realized that my use of the meme "barstool" is just about equivalent to my Scientologist brother's use of the meme "reactive mind".

Both are metaphors for some other phenomenon, and no one knows what the fuck it means, outside fo a small social circle.

I'm not sure if this has any relevance to this thread, but it's early and I don't want to do any work.

[East Coast Hustle]

I'll go a step further. I don't really have much in the way of family (my dad was an orphan, and I only like two people on my mom's side of the family - her and my cousin who lives with her), so I've always considered my close friends to be my "real" family. Now, it has never occured to me to pick my friends based on their ideology or their politics, so I've got a pretty diverse collection of "family". These are the people I have chosen to be that close to, people I have always been able to talk to about anything and who have always been able to talk to me without fear of judgement...

...and they would probably hang me from a streetlight if they knew what I really thought about the world.

Now, most of these people think of themselves as being very liberal/progressive/open-minded/etc. (though oddly enough, the ones that fall more towards the conservative end of the spectrum seem to be more open to my way of thinking - I think they just like the conspiracy theory stuff and don't recognize it for the mental excersize I take it to be.) Most of them think they "get it". And yet, even these people (who are more like me than 99% of the rest of the world) recoil in absolute terror any time I attempt to make even the tiniest chink in their mental armor, even though I've always been relatively good at chipping through those shells without doing too much damage.

I don't know if I have a point here, but it strikes me as odd (and borderline tragic) that even the people who should be most sympathetic to our ideas and most likely to understand what the fuck it is I'm on about would probably rather choke me to death with their own hand than actually allow themselves to start dropping filters.

So what do we do about this? or can we do anything at all?

[AFK]

I think if I were to start talking barstools with my wife she'd just stare at me in wonder.  Like, "I wonder what the hell is wrong with him."  And the thing is, I think, strike that, I know she has some of the same thoughts, she just doesn't piece them together the same way I do.  

I think part of it is a Parental Instinct.  Consciously, or subconsciously, she couldn't afford to think subversively.  She has to be "normal" for our daughter.  I wrestle with that too.  My wife accepts me as, "Weird" or "Strange."  Hell, if I had been a normal shmoe I don't think she would have ever gone out with me.  

And I also accept that I have to give in to certain societal constructs if I want my daughter to co-exist in the society into which she is growing.  Like, I can't leave BIP pamphlets at the Christian Daycare that she attends.  

But then, when it comes to my biological family, my parents and siblings, it's another bowl of wax just because they grew up in bumbfuck, Maine where all "Weirds" are somehow blasphemous.  

[LMNO]

I thought everyone from Maine was batshit crazy to start with.



I had to explain the Barstool to my wife, because she's essentially a walking barstool, when it comes to me.



She takes the "what the fuck are you on about?" to a whole new level.



I have a feeling that, since breaking the filters and chains is such a traumatic experience, that it really can only be done to strangers.  Maybe.

[East Coast Hustle]

heh. I knew I'd found the girl I wanted to marry when I utterly shattered her filters one day (mostly by accident - I lost my temper in an argument and shouted out the horrible truth before I realized it).

she spent about a half-hour on the floor, weeping and banging her head into the wall in mourning for her worldview, then popped right back up and demanded to know how she could help me do that to everyone else.

[AFK]

I thought everyone from Maine was batshit crazy to start with.

They are.  It gets worse when you get into the real hinterlands of Washington and Aroostook Counties.  It's pretty much Appalachia without the mountains.  

And I think you're right in your last line.  It's easier when you don't have to go home to the person or if you aren't going to see them during Holidays, and so on.  It's like you can drop the bombs and run, sort of speak.  Friendly Fire is a different matter.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I saw some kind of metaphorical light. I tried to explain it to everyone, especially my family. They locked me up and injected me with chemicals. Especially my family. I learned to keep my mouth shut after the second time this happened. Maybe the mind unlocks with a magic word. Maybe it's a different one for each person. If so I don't know it. No one ever showed me I had to find it out myself. Now and again people will ask me something. I'll think real hard before I answer. If they aint ready to hear the truth they won't hear it.

[East Coast Hustle]

good point.

never underestimate the lengths your family will go to to "protect" you from yourself.

[LMNO]

But don't forget to keep in mind that you actually ming be mentally unstable.



LMNO,
Who's schizoid brother believed that Tupac was trying to kill him, while he was hanging out with ODB (RIP).

[LHX]

as the days go by a lot of us are going to be in varying degrees of discomfort and will find sadness at not being able to reach or be reached by loved ones

just a hunch

i got more to say on this in a second



i do / have struggled with this



but it seems that there are worse things than rejection and isolation

(not many tho - looks like it ranks #3 at the lowest on the list of bad things - altho some people have it ranked at #1)

[P3nT4gR4m]

But don't forget to keep in mind that you actually ming be mentally unstable.

I'm not as unstable as I used to be but I am completely and utterly insane by normal definition. The trick is hiding this when I'm around those cursed with the affliction that is sanity.

[LMNO]

Good luck with that.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Good luck with that.

so far so good

[faust]

But don't forget to keep in mind that you actually ming be mentally unstable.

I'm not as unstable as I used to be but I am completely and utterly insane by normal definition. The trick is hiding this when I'm around those cursed with the affliction that is sanity.

unless you are damaged goods I would not call you insane even by normal definition. I hate the way so many people on the net say they are insane. of all the people I know there is only two I would call insane, one who tried to rape a dog and braught a gun and threatened the nerd soc I was in called the guild, the other showed me a video of a woman being raped through a cut in her throat till she died.

Being unbalanced emotionally does not make you insane, hell I have been seeing colours and stuff thats not there as well as hearing shit thats not there and I still consider myself sane because I am capable of mostly cohesive thought as are you, flying off the handle occasionally is not insanity.

My mother is the only parent who I talk to, and though she would not understand alot of the stuff I talk about, she trusts my judgement. I have worked through all issues of her being my parent as an authority and a personal figure, I have come to terms with her mortality and my own, the last thing that I had to come to terms with was how at my age she gave birth to me,
and that she chose the life of a parent then and effectively ended her escapades and sense of adventure. Its unfortunate but I make up for it by doing my best to be a figure that she can talk to when she needs and reassure her she has raised an decent(not by normal standards) son.
I also intend in a few years to give her the money to go traveling, and I hope she meets someone because I dont like her being alone.

My father... to be honest he was an absentee figure, while my brother suffered by this and holds great hero worship for older men(kinda like some of the stuff roger gets in his threads), I myself have had no need of an older figure to guide me I like to solve stuff myself, as a child I never really thought about him either, I was very shallow self absorbed and apathetic towards the world (nothings changed I guess).