For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
Programming fast.
When I program for my personal projects it takes hours to get very little done.
Functional programming.
I’m gonna go meta on this one:
I don’t understand how some people just know that they can do things from the get-go. Like from their early teens on.
It took me until age 50 to understand who is holding me back: me.
There’s very little I don’t think I can grasp now. Anything another human can do, so can I. I could have been a doctor or a musician or a chemical engineer or Michelin starred chef if had believed in myself like other people do.
How??? Why did they know they could do these things???
Dancing. And even something like swaying or tapping one’s foot to a beat is hard for me unless the song makes it super obvious. Most people seem to just intuitively get all of this. Plus I don’t have good coordination or spatial awareness, where I still routinely run into doorways in my home and such. And then add social anxiety on top of all that. A nightclub might as well be a torture chamber.
Socialization.
Not getting overwhelmed and burned out all the time.
Complex boss fights in video games. Multiple stages with precisely timed keypresses, being able to track multiple things simultaneously while also dealing with random changes, being able to do quick gear changes, etc. I don’t know how the hell people do it.
How the actual fuck? (gestures vaguely)
Skateboarding. None of it computes for me. My brother has been a lifelong skater and still rips it up at almost 40, and I see him do shit on the board and I just can’t figure out what the fuck is happening. It breaks physics, it’s like bee flight, none of that crap should be possible.
I watched him go up a very steep incline and do the thing where it’s a kickflip and a pop shove it at the same time, which is enough on its own to break my brain, but he and the board went up and landed at the same angle of the incline like it was flat ground, he and the board went up and down perpendicular to the incline without any vertical drag on the drop and landing. Gravity doesn’t fucking work that way! And how the fuck do their feet and the board just get back together after the board is seizuring mid air and just fucking land and keep going like there are magnets on their feet or something? It’s gods damned wizard shit.
I’m not sure if this answers the question but I feel like the older I get the more I see through “the game of life” and once that illusion gets shattered it’s impossible to unsee. Much of the status seeking, tribal behaviour becomes nearly impossible to partake in once you start seeing what it’s all for.
Go ask a person why their Instagram is filled to the brim with pictures of their face, for example, and you can watch in real time as their world view starts wobbling and they start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic. Try doing that while being fully conscious about the true motivations behind it. You can’t - something has to give.
However, I’m not sure if this is a good thing. Sure you can pat yourself on the back for being above it all but it makes it really difficult for anyone to try and integrate in normal everyday social situations when all of it just feels like a performance.
There is a difference between being narcissistic and craving validation. It’s completely normal to want validation, feel needed, wanted and appreciated.
It’s very sad that every human need has been turned into a subscription based service.
the problem is people twist themselves into knots to get it these days, and it makes the mentally unwell.
And they hate people who don’t ‘go along’ with the ‘game’ they play.
Narcissism is just pathological validation craving. They’re on the same spectrum. However, I’m not one to judge someone for just posting on instagram.
Narcissists don’t crave validation. They don’t think they even need it, because they already feel so self-assured.
You’re confusing narcissism with insecurity, which is practically the opposite of narcissism.
A narcissist doesn’t think they need your approval, and isn’t going to beg for it. They’ll just explode the moment you express disapproval or disagreement, because that clashes with their worldview and self-image, and that’s something they can’t tolerate.
Yeah I also have autism
autism has nothing to do with this.
In this particular case autism has lots to do with it.
Sure, sure
Oh, it does
If its all a fake performance, perform the show well and find yourself in a better position to help more people do the same.
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those people don’t exist in many people’s lives.
and even if they do, it’s typically only temporary. people who get these lifelong deep authentic friendships… are pretty rare and lucky to have the circumstances in life that allowed for that.
like, a lot of people don’t have those kinds of relationships and never seek them either, the concept just doesn’t exist for them and they live their entire lives on a very surface level understanding of the world.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t understand how I can develop a deep authentic relationship with people who obsessed with shallow things like their social status and how expensive their car is compared to other people’s cars… and that’s what dominates the culture in my city. Or who fly into a long winded speech about their anxiety and despair over the fact they only make 350K last year or their stock portfolio only returned 5.5% instead of the 7% their account manager promised them…
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Only by being yourself you can find people who like you for who you are rather than who you pretend to be. Nobody can beat you at being you but you can only be the second best at pretending to be someone else.
I take that to mean that if you are weird then embrace it. That attracts other similarly weird people and those are the best kind. There’s no point in being liked for being someone you’re not so why pretend.
With who?
It was middle school when I realized “you can only be cool if you’re not trying to be cool,” which I then said in an effort to sound cool. By high school that had sunk in better and I accidentally ended up popular, I think. That was when I first started looking past what people do to try looking cool.
In college I got into psychedelics, broke through to ego death while listening to Dark Side of the Moon with blindfolds and peaking, and found that the deeper level of existence was that there isn’t one. Most things in life can be as simple or as complex as you want, and I had been trying to make it more complex than it is.
But the thing I keep finding is that for as simple as most things actually are, people are consistently more complex than their surface suggests.
A week ago my cousin was in town and I had a one on one conversation with him for the first time in our adult lives that started with him showing me his relatively popular Instagram photos from the past couple years of him running the rave circuit. But as we got to talking about it, he revealed that he didn’t give a shit about his popularity, his ex-boyfriend was the socials guy who wanted the clout of being with a hot rave guy. He had become disillusioned with pretty much his whole life, but you wouldn’t get that just looking at his socials. And for as shallow as his ex is, if you peeled back the layers of bullshit he’s built around his life, there’s probably some interesting thoughts in there.
I guess I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with all this. When I make an effort to understand, most people I meet drop the facades and spill their guts pretty quick to me. I might be uniquely weird for that ability, but I don’t know that it’s narcissism on their part so much as trying to be cool and grappling with never succeeding because of that trying.
got into psychedelics, broke through to ego death
Couldn’t quite parse the beginning. Who broke through to ego death, again?
That is always the case when comparing one’s complex internal life to the perceived external lives of others. It’s never an apples to apples comparison. However social media was just one example. This applies to other forms of signaling as well: designer clothes, latest tech, following trends… Basically almost anything people do that they wouldn’t do if there were no one to see it.
and you can watch in real time as their world view starts wobbling and they start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic.
I encounter this when chatting with a family member and she mentions that she “loves animals” and who “couldn’t hurt a fly” while also being an omnivore. She feels sorry for the animals when she thinks of industrial farming, but does her best to never think about it. When this topic comes up, I don’t say anything (we’ve been through the topic in the past), but she sees the impatience with her bullshit on my face, and gets flustered by the fact that someone doesn’t consider this cognitive dissonance normal.
I can somewhat relate with that. Eating meat is one of the few behaviours that I still do despite being unable to morally defend it. It’s not even that I’m trying not to think about it or have to somehow deceive myself believing that it’s good. I know exactly what I’m doing. The convenience of it simply outweighs the moral guilt.
What I think would possibly make me feel different about it is someone handing me a gun and telling me to shoot a cow. If it turns out that I can’t do it, then that really puts into question the outsourcing of the messy part of it in the first place.
Cool. I love animals and I eat meat and I love it.
I see nothing wrong with it. Death is part of life.
Do you ever ask yourself why it is that you need other people to believe and practice what you believe? And do you find when other peole impose their beliefs on you find it offputting and upsetting?
One can be perfectly happy with the concept of beings dying and being eaten, and still feel nothing but disgust about the meat industry.
I tend to eat meat semi-regularly out of convenice and social norms, but I am fully aware of my hypocrisy. Same way as I am typing this on a device that probably contains parts made with essentially slave labour. Doesn’t make it better. But at least I can avoid the treadmill of having to have the newest iPhone, or eating as much supermarket steak as possible.
Add in a psychedelic experience or two, and it becomes impossible not to recognize how ridiculous it all is.
Can be done without them, of course, but psychedelics can blast you right to that position, for better or worse.
I’ve taken the slow route and have been doing mindfulness meditation for a decade which probably plays a role in all this.
I’m at the point where I don’t even try to integrate any more. The only time I leave my flat is against my will because I have to go to work to be able to afford to live.
start making up rationalizations and excuses for behaviour that is utterly narcissistic
Humans are narcissistic and selfish because over the millenia the ones that were selfish outcompeted the ones that weren’t. It’s totally natural to be selfish. Some are just better at hiding it than others.
However there is also a simple social aspect to including yourself in photos. It’s a clear visceral way to say “I was here”. A photo without your face does not have capture the “you” part of that statement. Social interaction is not just an exchanging of ideas, it’s also about building relationships, and for that to happen, the “you” part of the equation is vital.
To be fair I rarely include myself in photos, but for the same reason I am also less integrated into my social circles.
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You don’t have to fully integrate, I guess. As in, people don’t have to be your intellectual/ideological peers or see things as clearly, but you can still enjoy their company. If anything, it’s your moral responsibility to guide them and elucidate them when needed because, well, who else is gonna do it? They can’t do it for themselves, else they wouldn’t be posting a million selfies or doing whatever other nonsense they’re up to after their PFC has developed sufficiently. You’re gonna have to lead the blind to water, you don’t want them to die of thirst, right? The way is important too, because you don’t want them to see you as an annoying, moralising, “no fun allowed” kinda guy, they’ll just run away from you… but with the right approach you can be the somewhat wise unc/paternal figure of your group.
Beware though, people WILL call you asking for guidance on your days off and it’ll be up to you to define the limits of your relationships so you don’t end up moving to a cabin in the woods disconnected from everything, but it is definitely rewarding and very prosocial.
A 3-way light switch circuit.
AHA.
Meaning, of course, Ad Hoc Abbreviations.
Slippery/sliding/rolling things underfoot.
I wanted to learn how to skateboard when I was a kid. I tried for several weeks, with a friend trying to teach me. I got tired of hurting myself, and gave up.
I know people don’t “grasp it easily”, but most people eventually get the hang of it, and it doesn’t seem to take them long.
Over the years I’ve tried roller skates, ice skates, and skiing. And, failed at all of them.
Math and numbers in general. I have hyperfantasia so the voice in my head is completely self directed and language is otherwise only external, I read whole words I don’t read letters, when I learned to read it was all at once essentially, like flipping a switch. Numbers don’t have anything visual I can attach to them and don’t exist holistically, I have to look at each number not the whole set or problem or algorithm at once so it’s very foreign to how my mind works. Ideally I could just do everything in geometry because I do have something there to translate to my visuals only brain but as is I just really struggle with math and reading numbers.
Shopping. Walking around looking for stuff to buy.
Same. But I’ve had a couple breakthroughs: I enjoy it if I’m looking to buy something for someone else. And also when it’s random junk: thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, bin stores, that kind of thing. With those it feels like I’m exploring, not just shopping.
This has NEVER made sense to me. I’ve practically never happened upon something I want to buy in a corporate store
Parents are really good at this because it’s their only alooone time
I’ve done this lots of times, especially at malls, only because it’s considered “spending” money. The reality, though, is that I’ll rarely actually buy something.
