A minor personal relevation.

[Lenin McCarthy]

I used to think I was completely different from my peers. That I was more sophisticated, intelligent and for some reason deserved to be treated differently from them. I often found myself wondering when people would at last discover my genius and let me skip high school and go to university right away. Only my social phobia (and perhaps my habit of trying to be at least somewhat nice to other people) kept me from coming across as a complete and utter asshole. I took solace in the idea that I was not at all like my fellow 11-12-13-14-15-16 year olds, who were shallow, ignorant and egoistic. I was careful with alcohol, in stark contrast to the mindless, decadent drunkenness that prevailed among my classmates and other people my age. All the other kids only cared about vulgar things like sex, drugs and sports, but I was cultivated, read books (even non-fiction ones) and held the final solution for every problem imaginable.

As I've matured (I am still in the process of doing so, hopefully), I've at least partly come to grips with the fact that I was wrong. I am very much like my peers, and I was even back then. It was only last weekend I fully realized that. Friday night I went to a party, got relatively drunk (for the first time in my life), puked in the hosts' wardrobe and on one of his textbooks, and did other stupid things I've either forgot or don't feel like telling you. Later I tried to apologize to the owner of the textbook and the wardrobe, and he answered something along the lines of "Meh, it's fine. Everybody has done that once, and it's okay that it happened at our place."  

EVERYBODY? My delusion of personal exceptionalism has been severely damaged.

[Roaring Biscuit!]

Nomatter how special you think you are.

Hunter S. Thinks you're adorable.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I used to think I was completely different from my peers. That I was more sophisticated, intelligent and for some reason deserved to be treated differently from them. I often found myself wondering when people would at last discover my genius and let me skip high school and go to university right away. Only my social phobia (and perhaps my habit of trying to be at least somewhat nice to other people) kept me from coming across as a complete and utter asshole. I took solace in the idea that I was not at all like my fellow 11-12-13-14-15-16 year olds, who were shallow, ignorant and egoistic. I was careful with alcohol, in stark contrast to the mindless, decadent drunkenness that prevailed among my classmates and other people my age. All the other kids only cared about vulgar things like sex, drugs and sports, but I was cultivated, read books (even non-fiction ones) and held the final solution for every problem imaginable.

As I've matured (I am still in the process of doing so, hopefully), I've at least partly come to grips with the fact that I was wrong. I am very much like my peers, and I was even back then. It was only last weekend I fully realized that. Friday night I went to a party, got relatively drunk (for the first time in my life), puked in the hosts' wardrobe and on one of his textbooks, and did other stupid things I've either forgot or don't feel like telling you. Later I tried to apologize to the owner of the textbook and the wardrobe, and he answered something along the lines of "Meh, it's fine. Everybody has done that once, and it's okay that it happened at our place."  

EVERYBODY? My delusion of personal exceptionalism has been severely damaged.

May I ask you what age you are? I ask only because I have a theory about roughly the age that "wisdom" starts setting in, sort of like how children tend to develop objective reason and critical thinking around age 7. My theory has to do with the age at which the cerebral cortex matures, and started as a sort of similar revelation I had myself, followed by observing the age at which everyone else I knew who is younger has a very similar revelation.

[Lenin McCarthy]

Nomatter how special you think you are.

Hunter S. Thinks you're adorable.

Unless you're Richard Nixon, that is.

May I ask you what age you are? I ask only because I have a theory about roughly the age that "wisdom" starts setting in, sort of like how children tend to develop objective reason and critical thinking around age 7. My theory has to do with the age at which the cerebral cortex matures, and started as a sort of similar revelation I had myself, followed by observing the age at which everyone else I knew who is younger has a very similar revelation.

Seventeen. I've had a lot of similar 'revelations' recently.

[Cainad (dec.)]

That sounds about right. I was 17 when I joined these forums, and my brain was undergoing all kinds of restructuring. You start getting epiphanies almost as often as you get boners.* That feeling of being distinctly "other" than your peers starts to fade as you gain more perspective.

Your capacity to be self-critical (not self-loathing, which is something else entirely but gawd knows I had have plenty of that too) increases dramatically, and you become more aware of how your own thoughts work.

Also, every interesting book you read will probably have major, mind-bending new ideas that will completely screw with your worldview. Actually, you've probably started noticing this effect already. This has more to do with all the extra space your brain is growing than with the actual content of the book, although there's certainly a lot of really great stuff that's well worth putting in your headmeat.


Cainad,
21 and still gaining perspective



*Later on (like 3 years later, I mean), the epiphanies will happen less often, but don't worry; you'll keep getting boners.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That sounds about right. I was 17 when I joined these forums, and my brain was undergoing all kinds of restructuring. You start getting epiphanies almost as often as you get boners.* That feeling of being distinctly "other" than your peers starts to fade as you gain more perspective.

Your capacity to be self-critical (not self-loathing, which is something else entirely but gawd knows I had have plenty of that too) increases dramatically, and you become more aware of how your own thoughts work.

Also, every interesting book you read will probably have major, mind-bending new ideas that will completely screw with your worldview. Actually, you've probably started noticing this effect already. This has more to do with all the extra space your brain is growing than with the actual content of the book, although there's certainly a lot of really great stuff that's well worth putting in your headmeat.


Cainad,
21 and still gaining perspective



*Later on (like 3 years later, I mean), the epiphanies will happen less often, but don't worry; you'll keep getting boners.

Those epiphanies are wonderful and valuable; I suspect that they are much more frequent in teen years while your prefrontal cortex begins the maturation process, then decrease in frequency but peak in intensity around about 23-25 because the full development of your prefrontal cortex allows you to have a better understanding of long-range consequences as well as greater empathy and a better understanding and more control of your own emotional state, all of which help you put epiphanies into a better contextual arrangement that helps you actually predict ideas that otherwise would have generated epiphanies. So, things start to be less mind-blowing, because you are able to see a path between your existing knowledge and newly-acquired knowledge. This predictive ability is "wisdom" and increases for as long as you keep refreshing your brain cells by actively learning and using critical thinking, both of which become more challenging to engage (for a multitude of reasons) as you age.

[Pæs]

EVERYTHING CAINAD SAID.

I USED TO BELIEVE I WAS A SPECIAL SNOWFLAKE UNTIL I TRIED ERIS™.

NOW I LOOK BACK ON THOSE DAYS AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Wait until your next revelation when you realize that all of your 'peers' are actually unique individuals, rather than a blob of identical beings and that the concept of them being a group is as silly as thinking you are somehow different that 'the group' 

[Lenin McCarthy]

Wait until your next revelation when you realize that all of your 'peers' are actually unique individuals, rather than a blob of identical beings and that the concept of them being a group is as silly as thinking you are somehow different that 'the group' 

That realization has been coming more or less in parallel with this one.