A Hikkikomori StopGap

(Old) Being exasperated with people who just don’t listen -> politically correct copy-paste version

Copy-Paste: Building Cages and Dropping Keys

Copy Paste: Tales of a Recovering Hikikomori

Are you Weird?

Still occupied with arranging my backup files.

Meanwhile here’s a set of Hikikomori-related Subnormality comics for those wondering if this blog is abandoned or not.

P.S. For those unfamiliar with this series, the artist tend to put lots of text in the panels so you might prefer going to the permalinks one by one instead.

Here’s the list of links:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page500.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page509.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page489.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page486.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page483.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page481.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page476.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page471.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page469.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page465.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page467.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page456.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page454.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page452.html

http://www.viruscomix.com/page466.html

…and

7 Things Good Parents Do: http://www.cracked.com/article/195_7-things-good-parents-do-that-screw-kids-up-life/

Weird.

http://www.viruscomix.com/page500.html

Anxious:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page509.html

Cramped:

http://www.viruscomix.com/page489.html

It Should Be Illegal to Be a Jerk

http://www.viruscomix.com/page486.html

Trolled

http://www.viruscomix.com/page483.html

Embarassed…

http://www.viruscomix.com/page481.html

Exploring

http://www.viruscomix.com/page476.html

Wondering

http://www.viruscomix.com/page471.html

Tatemae

http://www.viruscomix.com/page469.html

Honne (…or why bars are like online communities)

http://www.viruscomix.com/page465.html

Friendship

http://www.viruscomix.com/page467.html

Charisma

http://www.viruscomix.com/page456.html

Direction

http://www.viruscomix.com/page454.html

Apathy

http://www.viruscomix.com/page452.html

Peer Pressure

http://www.viruscomix.com/page466.html

…and finally something from Cracked.com:

You’d Think…

Peer pressure is the thing that makes kids smoke cigarettes, do drugs and read pornographic magazines by the time they reach middle school. As countless PSAs and after-school specials taught us, we must teach our kids to be themselves and never give two halves of a fuck about what their “friends” think.

But in Reality…

Remember that smelly kid in school, who never washed his hair, had no friends and once pissed in the sink at that party he wasn’t invited to? That’s your kid, without peer pressure. A study conducted at the University of Virginia showed that kids who were exposed to peer pressure around the ages of 12 and 13 turned out to be way more well-adjusted than the ones who weren’t. They better understood the need to accommodate and make compromises when confronted with social pressure, rather than the “I’ll just take my ball and go home” attitude they adopt otherwise.

The kids who were taught to be themselves no matter what didn’t become walking clones of James Dean. They actually turned out less engaged, socially challenged and statistically less intelligent, their GPAs dropping almost an entire letter grade.

Maybe more importantly, when you actually give a damn about how people view you, it develops a skill of reading the most subtle changes in people’s emotional states, leading ultimately to a heightened sense of empathy. In this socially awkward age of the Internet, it turns out peer pressure at the right time can basically give you superpowers.

http://www.cracked.com/article/195_7-things-good-parents-do-that-screw-kids-up-life/

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There comes a time in your life…

Source: http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/?p=965

Update: Encountered PC Backup problems so meanwhile, here’s another webcomic to fill the blog.

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Copy-Paste: Life Lessons that Schools Rarely Impart

Note: This is again, another placeholder topic. (When it rains, it pours.)

This time, the reason why I am posting this is actually a combination of two things.

The first reason was that I felt bad that all I could reply in this thread (requires registration) to a person that linked to this post of mine was:

Thanks [username 1]

I just spotted this thread.

Yeah, in some ways you’re right [username 2], which is why I modified the article a bit.

Still, the main difference between an emotional manipulator is intent. It’s like the difference between manslaughter and murder.

Emotional manipulators need not only be aware but require constant malicious intent behind their choices.

This was in reply to username 1 saying: /Oh, fuck…this probably describes me perfectly.Still… this was rushed and I’m not even sure I conveyed the idea that I didn’t see anything wrong with the original article.

The comment about modifying the article was another rushed bit reply to username #2’s comment about the list applying to everyone and to be honest, I never really made clear in my blog post that my intent of modifying some parts was due to me feeling that they were wrong.

The reality was that this was just a consequence of me rushing the reply and even if there were little bits I disagree with in the article, most of them were minor, and I never considered any part of the article to be so bad as to be wrong.

It was all rush…rush…cause I had other things to worry about like figuratively bashing my head at a wall until I can be satisfied with the drafts but then I remembered something I promised myself which lead to the 2nd reason:

Everytime I write a blog post, I would bookmark an old blog post and re-organize one of my old bookmarks.

This was all intended to prepare this link to serve as a static page for this blog.

Since this was an old account though, this is where re-organizing the bookmarks come in.

I’m just not sure if there are NSFW links in there and they are all so disorganized that I don’t want to tackle it beyond one bookmark a blog post.

Still… Diigo’s list might not be a CMS but it was free and it was easier to understand plus the reason why I felt it served a better static page for me was because I can highlight some snippets in the actual article and if you click on the “More” button, you can preview the contents of the bookmark without waiting for multiple websites to load.

Anyways, what happened was that the old bookmark next in line for my organizing was this:

http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2008/04/02/16-things-i-wish-they-had-taught-me-in-school/

Since I had old highlights of the page, it was very easy for me to skim the contents that were relevant to me and this was one of the words that were in the blog:

“Don’t beat yourself up.” It was then that I decided that this post, despite being unrelated to the above topic, was worth while enough to copy paste. (Both as a reply to username 1 and also a topic that Hikikomoris might be interested in.)

…

On with the content:

80/20:

The 80/20 rule – also known as The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.

A lot of what you do is probably not as useful or even necessary to do as you may think.

You can just drop – or vastly decrease the time you spend on – a whole bunch of things. 

And if you do that you will have more time and energy to spend on those things that really brings your value, happiness, fulfilment and so on.

Parkinson’s Law:

This law says that a task will expand in time and seeming complexity depending on the time you set aside for it. For instance, if you say to yourself that you’ll come up with a solution within a week then the problem will seem to grow more difficult and you’ll spend more and more time trying to come up with a solution.

So focus your time on finding solutions. Then just give yourself an hour (instead of the whole day) or the day (instead of the whole week) to solve the problem. This will force your mind to focus on solutions and action.

The result may not be exactly as perfect as if you had spent a week on the task, but as mentioned in the previous point, 80 percent of the value will come from 20 percent of the activities anyway. Or you may wind up with a better result because you haven’t overcomplicated or overpolished things. This will help you to get things done faster, to improve your ability to focus and give you more free time where you can totally focus on what’s in front of you instead of having some looming task creating stress in the back of your mind.

Batching:

Boring or routine tasks can create a lot of procrastination and low-level anxiety. One good way to get these things done quickly is to batch them. This means that you do them all in row. You will be able to do them quicker because there is less “start-up time” compared to if you spread them out. And when you are batching you become fully engaged in the tasks and more focused.

A batch of things to do in an hour today may look like this: Clean your desk / answer today’s emails / do the dishes / make three calls / write a grocery shopping list for tomorrow.

First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.

This is a bit of a counter-intuitive thing. There is often an idea that someone should give us something or do something for us before we give back. The problem is just that a lot of people think that way. And so far less than possible is given either way.

If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give. It would perhaps be nice to get something for nothing. But that seldom happens.

Be proactive. Not reactive.

This one ties into the last point. If everyone is reactive then very little will get done. You could sit and wait and hope for someone else to do something. And that happens pretty often, but it can take a lot of time before it happens. 

A more useful and beneficial way is to be proactive, to simply be the one to take the first practical action and get the ball rolling. This not only saves you a lot of waiting, but is also more pleasurable since you feel like you have the power over your life. Instead of feeling like you are run by a bunch of random outside forces.

Mistakes and Failures are Good:

When you are young you just try things and fail until you learn. As you grow a bit older, you learn from - for example - school to not make mistakes. And you try less and less things.  

This may cause you to stop being proactive and to fall into a habit of being reactive, of waiting for someone else to do something. I mean, what if you actually tried something and failed? Perhaps people would laugh at you?  

Perhaps they would. But when you experience that you soon realize that it is seldom the end of the world. And a lot of the time people don’t care that much. They have their own challenges and lives to worry about.  

And success in life often comes from not giving up despite mistakes and failure. It comes from being persistent. 

When you first learn to ride your bike you may fall over and over. Bruise a knee and cry a bit. But you get up, brush yourself off and get on the saddle again. And eventually you learn how to ride a bike. If you can just reconnect to your 5 year old self and do things that way - instead of giving up after a try/failure or two as grown-ups often do – you would probably experience a lot more interesting things, learn valuable lessons and have quite a bit more success.

Don’t beat yourself up:

Why do people give up after just few mistakes or failures? Well, I think one big reason is because they beat themselves up way too much. But it’s a kinda pointless habit. It only creates additional and unnecessary pain inside you and wastes your precious time. It’s best to try to drop this habit as much as you can.

Assume rapport:

Meeting new people is fun. But it can also induce nervousness. We all want to make a good first impression and not get stuck in an awkward conversation.

The best way to do this that I have found so far is to assume rapport. This means that you simply pretend that you are meeting one of your best friends. Then you start the interaction in that frame of mind instead of the nervous one.

This works surprisingly well. You can read more about it in How to Have Less Awkward Conversations: Assuming Rapport.

Reticular Activating System:

I learned about the organs and the inner workings of the body in class but nobody told me about the reticular activation system. And that’s a shame, because this is one of the most powerful things you can learn about. What this focus system, this R.A.S, in your mind does is to allow you to see in your surroundings what you focus your thoughts on. It pretty much always helps you to find what you are looking for.

So you really need to focus on what you want, not on what you don’t want. And keep that focus steady.

Setting goals and reviewing them frequently is one way to keep your focus on what’s important and to help you take action that will move your closer to toward where you want to go. Another way is just to use external reminders such as pieces of paper where you can, for instance, write down a few things from this post like “Give value” or “Assume rapport”. And then you can put those pieces of paper on your fridge, bathroom mirror etc.

“Your Attitude Changes Your Realty”

We have all heard that you should keep a positive attitude or perhaps that “you need to change your attitude!”. That is a nice piece of advice I suppose, but without any more reasons to do it is very easy to just brush such suggestions off and continue using your old attitude.

But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before. You may think to yourself “why haven’t I thought about things this way before?”.

When you change you attitude you change what you focus on. And all things in your world can now be seen in a different light.

This is of course very similar to the previous tip but I wanted to give this one some space. Because changing your attitude can create an insane change in your world. It might not look like it if you just think about it though. Pessimism might seem like realism. But that is mostly because your R.A.S is tuned into seeing all the negative things you want to see. And that makes you “right” a lot of the time. And perhaps that is what you want. On the other hand, there are more fun things than being right all the time.

Gratitude is a simple way to make yourself feel happy:

Sure, I was probably told that I should be grateful. Perhaps because it was the right thing to do or just something I should do. But if someone had said that feeling grateful about things for minute or two is a great way to turn a negative mood into a happy one I would probably have practised gratitude more. It is also a good tool for keeping your attitude up and focusing on the right things. And to make other people happy. Which tends to make you even happier, since emotions are contagious.

Write everything down:

If your memory is anything like mine then it’s like a leaking bucket. Many of your good or great ideas may be lost forever if you don’t make a habit of writing things down. This is also a good way to keep your focus on what you want. Read more about it in Why You Should Write Things Down.

Notable Site Comments: (Note that just as the above article, these aren’t necessarily the ones I agree with. They are just the notable ones I feel worth highlighting at the time I was reading this article.)

#1 - (Btw item 15 is “write everything down”.)

I work at a tech startup, and one of my coworkers has a favorite saying: “All engineering problems eventually come down to heat.”

In general, most fields will have a reasonably specific problem which is the cause of any trouble you have 90% of the time. So if you’re having a problem and you’re not sure why, think of that one first.

Also, item 15 is probably the best advice to give anyone, ever. Not because it’s the most important, but because it’s extremely important and people hardly ever mention it.

#2 - Only preach to the converted:

Fantastically comprehensive list of life lessons.

For the philosophically minded - I humbly submit the following lesson: Only preach to the converted.

When I found out about the hidden world of government malfeasance and financial cabals that are responsible for so much misery in this world, and that exist with the help of the media’s complicity, I naturally assumed a lot of people would want to know.I spent all sorts of time and emotional energy on my soapbox, to be met with bored stares or snide remarks. The only time such speech-making and arguing was productive was when I had found someone already inclined to my way of thinking who was looking for answers, as I was.

So Liberals, stop trying to convert Conservatives, and vice versa. Veggies, leave those BBQ eaters alone. If you want to change the world, start with yourself so as to provide an example, and then only preach to people who ask for a sermon!

#3 - The thing is, that what we call a “university” in the usa today is actually many trade schools pulled together onto the same campus:

Excellent suggestions. The thing is, that what we call a “university” in the usa today is actually many trade schools pulled together onto the same campus. And yes, a person in her or his early years at college is required to take classes in all the different trades.

The things that you bring up here, are not things which are specific to any trade, and thus they are never taught.

I would love to see a new kind of college education - where perhaps the philosophy department could expand to become the overall auspices of the school. This would be a school for folks who want to learn how to think critically, and reason independently. Woven into the curriculum, there would be training in all the tools a person needs in this modern world, to start her own business. Computer programming, web design, introductory economics and business courses would be important. This would be a school for both thinkers, and for entrepreneurs.

4. Put something in the “piggy bank” each pay check, even if it’s just a dollar. This may sound dumb but it really is good advise. Don’t blow your cash but save and set goals.

#5 - Polyphasic Sleep and SpeedReading

Great list of useful skills on your list! I’ll add a couple I wish I had been taught in School.

1. To read at a useful rate (not subvocalizing)

2. Maximize my quality of sleep (therefore minimize sleep time)

#6 - Sun Tzu:

Know your weaknesses and then either work to correct them or surround yourself with people who offset them.

Some weaknesses are things we care about, but we just haven’t had time to address. Others are things that we either are not capable of correcting, or really, really don’t care too. As an entrepreneur, you don’t have to know all aspects of business, technology, finance, marketing, etc, if you surround yourself with the right people.

7. These are all great lessons, but what I REALLY wish I had learned in school is: Your “permanent record” is a myth that school principals made up to scare you! Breaking the rules can be useful and occasionally necessary.
8. a slightly more practical skill not taught: personal finance. It’s amazing to me you can graduate high school and college without learning how to balance your checkbook and plan your finances. They’ll spend weeks teaching you CPR which you’ll likely never use but no time spent on how to manage your finances which will likely determine how you can provide for yourself and your family.

# 7 - Criticism

While your list has some valuable life lessons, they really don’t seems like things that would be ‘Taught’ in school.
I think our schools should teach us systems for filing and retrieving information so that we can manage the great deal of information we come across in our lives.

I think schools should spend time to teach ‘Personal Finance’ budgeting, saving, investing, credit use and maintenance. We live in a consumer society and schools do very little to prepare us.

Cooking! Everyone has to eat and many people mess up their finances by spending way to much money eating out. You can eat better and save money if you can cook.

Basic maintenance. How to fix a toilet, how to change your oil, simple troubleshooting for the day to day technical difficulties which we all encounter.

# 8 - Delegation/Parasite Single Rationale

By the way, if you want to really achieve great things in your life you should consider delegating or outsourcing as many of your routine activities as possible. These minimum wage activities are not worth your time. If you are effective in your work, you should be able to make better use of this time and pay or ask someone else, such as an employee or a child, to assist with those activites.

# 9 - Nothing is Free

It’s quite amazing when looking back (I’m 27) all the things you THOUGHT would happen after high school that didn’t. I had a horrible time with bullying in school. Although I knew it was just a school thing and as soon as I got out of there it would be “a lot better” I didn’t think of it as “100% better” as people don’t do constant barrating and name calling like what happens in schools.

Some things I wish were taught in school: I forget the percentages but something like when you are in a class, immediately you are going to forgot half of it. Within a year you’re going to forget 90% of what you learn and/or experience. Basically to focus on what you most cherish from any moment and hope that’s the 10% you still remember.

Nothing is free. Something happened to my train of thought within the past couple years that now whenever I sign up for some service or someone offers me something for free I ask myself “what are they getting from this?” With my brother, for example, always like to give me stuff he no longer uses, which was nice and all. Problem is he never let me forget that. Whenever he wants something in return that cost me money and I don’t want to give up (say copying a game) he starts pulling out “but I gave you …”. When signing up at websites I try to guess what is their motivation. Is it ad revenue? going to charge later on? Now for some people, the “fee” is just knowing so many people use your service and benefit from it. Other’s want to monetize it.

# 10 - Adults

I was lucky to come across good books with success principles and meeting some people who practiced and taught these principles when I was 23 years old. Same as you I was upset at first why such important lessons were not taught to me in school. Later on I realized it was not only the schools who are responsible for that but mainly the grown-ups you grow up with, the parents. Parents have the children around for thousands of hours before the first teachers arrive on the scene. It is too easy to lay responsibility for lack of peopleskills/success principles/positive thinking etc. on the educational system. I’m now 50 years old, have successfully used many of the key points you talk about in your post.

#11 - Trilemma

Here’s one, the trilemma or the art of trade-offs. (I never heard the word trilemma used to describe the principle but I learned it a long time ago and it’s a very useful tool to approach many (any?) projects.
The classic example is managing a project where three major variables are time, cost, quality. Out of the the three you can only really choose two variables, the third one will be ruled out by virtue of the other two being present.

Here’s a discussion of trilemmas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilemma

#12 - Clay Shirky

A word of caution on the 80/20 rule (#1):

“This is what’s wrong with a lot of 80/20 optimizations- the belief that truncating the system at the head will optimize its effectiveness; in many cases it actually cuts off a critical piece of the overall ecosystem.”

-Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody

13. This was a great reminder of many of the things that help make us successful and happy in life. I am going to print this out and put it on my wall. To think, if they did teach us these “basic” but fundamental things in life, how many frustrations we could have avoided while learning or stumbling on them by ourselves?
#14 - Open to interpretation:

I got kind of a different interpretation from the 80/20 rule, which is that because the rule constantly applies, you can not only cut out a lot of wasted time, but you can find what makes that 20% of your time work well for you, and apply it to the rest of your efforts, continually improving your productivity.

Reddit Comments:

#1:

more like “16 things i wish my parents taught me”

schools shouldn’t be responsible for this stuff.

then why do we have a ‘Life Skills’ class?

It’s called CALM - Career and Life Management, and here in Canada (I think all of Canada) it’s a required grade 11 course, though most people take it in grade 10, it’s only a half credit course. It covers making a resume, budgeting, safe sex, setting career goals, endless tests about what you should be when you grow up, etc.

Americans have that as well, but I think it’s an elective. (And not available in Florida.)

Yeah it was pretty good! At the time everyone hated it though, but at least we’re not drinking bleach to prevent HIV

#2:

Schools shouldn’t be responsible for anything except for their intended purpose: brainwashing and babysitting/confinement.

aahaa.. Funny, yet so true it’s sad.

okay.. how about…

aahaa.. Funny, so sad it’s true.

#3

These are things that adults learn. The teenage brain, to say nothing of the school-age brain, is developmentally incapable of comprehending and applying many of these concepts. Wishing you had learned them earlier is like wishing you could change the past. You just gotta learn what you learn when you learn it. Besides, if you learned everything you needed to learn in school: What fun would adulthood be? Thankfully, life has lessons to teach you until you get old.

I agree but that doesn’t take away from it’s usefulness (I’m 21). I find the most interesting bits of knowledge are those that we felt all along but never quite knew how to express.

I think that experience you’re describing is a kind of anecdotal evidence for the development that’s happening in your brain: At some point, things move from inexpressible feelings to concrete ideas that make real sense — just because even at 21 your brain is still developing. So I’m not saying that young people shouldn’t be exposed to any of this (I routinely talk to my 4 year-old about stuff I know he can’t process, but I’m just hoping the vocabulary will sink in so that when he is ready to understand, there will have been some prior exposure).

you’re absolutely right, this is a list of experiential learnings which written or taught to teenagers have little value without the experience that validates them. My other problem is it reads like a business self-help cookbook.

#4

What a load of crap! This guy must be writing motivational books for a living…

why crap? Im just curious.

It’s all the kind of empty crap that you find in self-help books, with absolutely no scientific value. Be proactive! Organize your time! Attitude is all that matters! Bullshit, everyone has his own personality and own way of working, there is no way to help a person by giving him this sort of standard advice. The only think that matters is how motivated you are, and that’s usually a function of how much you’re payed and how well you get along with your boss and co-workers. It’s all very personality-dependent of course.

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So in essence we come down to the same old scenario:

I’m not sure if this is satire but it came off that way to me so I’m categorizing it as one. (Plus, it seemed easy enough to serve as a placeholder since all I need to do in this case is to just copy and paste.)

So in essence we come down to the same old scenario:

Due to how society has formed its constructs, those who can’t perform in the “socialization circus” are doomed to failure through no fault of their own.

I have generalized anxiety disorder. I’ve been unemployed since 2002 because I can’t find a job environment that will work for my skill set and anxiety requirements (no travel, no 7 days a week, no insane deadlines, no constant phone, no customer service, etc. etc.)

So I’m told, “Just work from home!”

What options are there for home-based CREATIVE computer work (and it must be creative, or I’d slit my throat)? Blogging or web design, really. No other choices unless you have the ability to make something from scratch to sell. I don’t, other than writing.

Obviously web design “requires” (again, under current societal constructs) travel, client meetings, phone calls, and all the other stuff I’m incapable of doing that also achieves little more than waste time in most cases. Not to mention it’s a career swap for me, and with the millions of kids coming out of college who know 8-10 of the scripting languages fluently, I can’t compete for a career, as my work was niche.

Blogging is the perfect career for me. I’m a professional-level writer, have never received less than an A+ in any English class, love to write, and have a superior writing style compared to a vast majority of what is found in other writing efforts.

Now you tell me to make money at it- I have to have a “non-meaningless” blog (my blog is on creativity and imagination- discussing/reviewing movies, tv, film, gaming and with a creative writing focus).

I don’t “solve” anything- I provide my personal take that is far less jaded towards entertainment than 99 percent of what is out there today. (To me that’s worth all the value in the world if I can go to a blog without reading, “That sucks!”)

Now you’re saying to do the one “perfect” job for me, I’d have to travel, try to meet people and form relationships, and all of the very things that I’m incapable of doing due to the incurable disorder I can’t get health treatment for under our current health system? “Gah!” Is all I have to say. And I’m not even sure what “Gah!” means.

I’m getting ready to find a tall bridge to leap from.

What’s a person to do in this world that does not require other people, to make enough income to live off of, doing something creative on the computer, utilizing writing skills, without all the rest of the social nonsense that often wastes time more than benefits anyone? O_o

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Justice by Points

Justice by points essentially means they’d ignore a crazed ax wielding man walking down the street because they are buys ticketing people and trying to harass them into a half-excuse to arrest them. Then when the ax man comes back after butchering a family, they call a mini-army and take him down, then get even more “Points”. But the officer who just gives warnings and stares away bad guys before they do something bad at least doesn’t get a promotion, if not fired…

And, likewise, Prosecutors will go after girls photographing themselves nude but ignore insider traders and other high-profile crimes. More “Slam Dunk” cases, better score. Criminal who do a Lot of damage to society but can afford good lawyers, bad score.

Source: http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/09/25/schoolgirls-arrested-for-photographing-themselves/

Typo issues aside, this is why even as a Hikikomori, it is important to discuss the laws and policies of the world. It may seem like this is a problem for the outsiders or that we should deal with these issues with a severity of most internet forums (i.e. dogmatic and viciously against anyone with opposing opinions) but the problem is that the rest of the world are too busy tiring themselves to really listen unless there’s a special occasion like the election.

Yes, most of us aren’t politicians, political science students and internet sadists but that’s why we have one of the most ample opportunities to listen and apply that dream by the US Constitution Founding Fathers which was for law to be understood and discussed by common lay-men and not be controlled by a “ruling class” (I’m sorta combining a theme by Marx here). That said, I’m not saying many of us don’t know some politics but I think we as an online community even when talking about politics treat it like the rest of people do and I can sit here and type all kinds of adjective of what that means, but those of you who’ve participated in an online political discussion already know how, just like religious topics, they are often anxiety-inducing topics even to normal internet surfers. How we progress beyond a community that won’t crumble when bringing up those themes will be a huge test of how much our community has improved beyond normal communities. How much we value the information we get from that kind of a community may even be the X-factor in elevating us into an online community so unified the likes that may never have existed before.

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No country or population is more pure than another

Full quote:

No country or population is more pure than another, they each have flaws, although they can be different, and the definition of a ‘flaw’ can vary depending on culture and history, it’s all the same when it comes to the victim.

Like I said in an earlier comment, you’ll enjoy your life far more if you just forget instead of discovering more of the world. I don’t regret my decision since I rather see cruelty and face it daily than be ignorant, but this doesn’t even come close to what some people would call ‘sick and awful’ anymore, and you can see in the comments that I’m far from the only one who knows that.

The context of this quote is directed at a far far more severe issue than why I’m quoting this

…however the reason I wanted to share this with my fellow Hikikomoris is because of the way some anxiety based ones feel they are worthless compared to their fellow non-Hikikomori neighbors and how some people feel that Japan should have the monopoly on who should be categorized as Hikikomoris.

I have even read some posts pointing out how that this wouldn’t happen in America for example because the parent would just throw the person out on the street. They have some validity but sometimes these…”words” feel like one culture saying these things to “one up” another culture or another group.

I don’t have a quote with me but there are some forums where they would even argue which of their idol’s hometown is more dangerous just so they can say that their guy has more “street cred”.

Exceptionalism is very detrimental to a community and is in fact one reason why despite saying I had an elitist definition of Hikikomoris, I am not for pushing those people who don’t fit the definition to leave our environment. (This is also a hint at why some Hikkis can be so affected emotionally by some people forcing them to leave and alter their environment that they would go to such an extent as to kill or hurt that person.)

That’s why this quote comes off good (for us); with or without the context.

It is able to hint that it’s not just a country issue but a population issue. That means it can apply to any group even a small one like ours.

It highlights the stupid side of patriotism and alludes to exceptionalism without offending those same people by bringing up some specific issue they did but rather by challenging these people’s view of how pure they see themselves as a group.

It even hints at how escapism is not about withdrawing but on choosing to be ignorant of certain things.

On the flip side, it also hints at how withdrawing can also be a decision to escape or forget.

One compliments the Hikikomori’s decision, the other shows the noble necessity for why a huge portion of being a Hikikomori is about making a decision — for without that component, a Hikikomori would not know or forget what they are withdrawing from — and without that, the definition of Hikikomori loses any intangible quality that makes it different from normal social anxiety.

(except the fact that the word is Japanese if you buy that exceptionalist perception)

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Practice rephrasing common phrases to wordings that suggest possibilities.

From: http://thinksimplenow.com/happiness/the-power-of-language/

Alot of the article’s content I find to be too long winded in defending it’s point. (The not seeing salt in front of you bit for example.)

Similarly, alot of the alternative examples can be attributed to positive “woo-woo” thinking phrases but I find the core points:

• can’t doesn’t exist
• must is always only in your head

and

• opportunity is so everywhere that you can find it if you look for it

…to be “golden rule” truths that make this post worth sharing:

Suggested Action Items:

• Come up with alternative phrasings to popular I can’t phrases. Here are some examples:
  • Instead of saying “I can’t find it”, say “I have not seen it yet, l will keep looking.” or “If I could find it, where would it be?”
  • Instead of saying “I can’t get it working”, consider saying “It is not working yet, but I will keep trying until it works.” Or “I am still working on this. If you have a sec, will you help me?”
  • Instead of saying “I can’t make it today because…”, consider skipping out the excuses and give a firm but honest answer, “I am going to pass on it now, maybe next time? Thank you for inviting me. It means a lot.”

Stop telling others they can’t do something. Alternatives to “You can’t do that” are “I prefer you not to do that” or “I don’t recommend doing that because …” or “I tried it last time and it did not work for me, maybe it will work for you.”

Suggested Action Items:

• Instead of saying “I have to do this“, say “I want to do this” or “I am doing this because (insert benefits to you)”

• If you don’t want to do something, instead of giving people excuses starting with “I’d love to but, I have to…“, just gracefully say “Thanks for the invite, but I am resting at home tonight.” Or “Thank you. I have plans tonight. Maybe next time.” (Note: a date with yourself at home count as plans.) You don’t owe anything to anybody. Be honest and do so with your head held high.

“Your beliefs don’t simply reflect your reality, they create your reality.”

As for why I hate these:

a.

b.

That said the reason why this philosophy has importance is because even as cliche as they are today, many of them can still send warnings and alert us to the self-negativity that we may be unconsciously and habitually imposing on our beliefs.

This goes beyond the value of positivity because as Orwell alluded to: left ignored, these can allow politicians to pull a fast one on you and your beliefs.

It’s the old appeal to pathos but it’s not just prevalent in politics anymore. It’s prevalent in ads, blogs, infotainment, etc. and sure you might already know this and feel this is common sense knowledge in this day and age but that’s why Orwell’s article was important when it was written.

It wasn’t because people then didn’t know of this but Orwell with that article brought it to the forefront and presented the full danger of what words can do from a political angle. In fact, it can be argued that it wasn’t enough and that it only popularized the idea of keeping words simple, understandable and direct while not hitting home the fact that we should particularly be wary of common words all around us. Wary enough to attempt a dictionary out of it. Wary enough to explain why certain words in certain sentences and certain structures are belief-changing despite neither being hypnotism nor subliminal advertising.

Instead what we ended up having on a common enough layman plate is some positivity blogs taking this concept and selling it as “feel good” articles, some positivity blogs suggesting this because they one day realize how changing one word changed their mindset and over-hyperbolize it to all other words without testing and narrowing to words that really worked for them and in between those, some pop psychology on the way the unconscious mind and habits influence our beliefs.

The worst crime to us layman is that these articles don’t even put the disclaimer on how changing your words can make you come off as weird when talking to someone else.

Yes, it’s obvious and “we should’ve already known that” but certainly enough, this fact is more elusive than “drink moderately” ads.

You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to start adapt a new word, get confident with it and suddenly you test it on a conversation one day and it just sounds bad. No matter how well it worked in your head or how valid the word is, it just sounds bad.

Just imagine yourself replying to another person with this: “I have not seen it yet, l will keep looking”

It’s THAT bad only this is the more obvious ones. Imagine actually having a decent word and trying it anyway. The whole thing not only falls apart but your positivity minded ideology immediately dips down to full anxious negativity.

Anyway, this author asks What are some alternative phrases you can suggest to and these are my suggestions (and also my reply). They’re far from decent and alot of them I got from elsewhere (and I don’t speak these out loud) but these are what I have:

• News -> Olds (News as in newspaper. I think I got this one from Steve Pavlina - I’m not really anal for sources. Anyway here’s the sentence that inspired it: Most news stories are repetitive, redundant, and say the same things twice.  Very few stories are actually fresh and new.  News should really be called “olds.”)
• Positive -> Pro-active (although this is really spelled proactive, I prefer the emphasis on the word “active”)
• Multitask -> MultiFocus (Because it is not the number of tasks we are constantly doing that reduces our efficiency but rather the number of things splitting our focus that confuses us to what we want to be doing.)
• Practice -> Grind/Grinding (This one is more negative and is obviously an rpg reference)
• Taught -> Enabled them to discover
• Polyphasic Sleep -> PolyActive Healing (My uneducated attempt at self-psycho-analyzing: The desire to replace the word sleep with the word healing to clarify to one’s consciousness the true value of sleep and hopefully lessen the misinterpretation that one is merely “resting” or wasting away their time when one is feeling drowsy but busy.)
• Nice Guy -> Annoying Pussy (I’m serious with this btw. Here’s the rationale: The phenomena by which mainstream society conformizes and verbally praises the act of annoyance and wimpiness and re-interprets these as the act of a legitimate nice male person thus subsidizing this behaviour which results in men misguidedly adapting this approach to court women.)
• Teacher -> Opportunizer (A word replacement designed to focus on the true structure of learning thus keeping people from turning these educators into authoritarians of education.)
• Difficult -> Challenging (The first word replacement that got me back to believing in this concept. Forget where the original link was though. It probably sounds fluffier without it and maybe it still would even with it but it was a strong influence to me at the time)
• H.E.L.L. (another negative one and this one doesn’t apply but it stands for History, Experience, Life, Legacy)
• Storytelling -> Storysharing (I personally prefer the words Plagiarizing but it is offensive to many and there’s a negative connotation in that word that even I couldn’t avoid in my head.)

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Don’t waste our meeting time with questions or discourse, just give me the bullet.

http://jessicarandazza.com/uncategorized/140-characters-killed-the-art-of-language-or-did-it/

Sam said:

140 characters have killed more than language. People use these media to say virtually anything, at anytime. People are constantly using the “look at me!” approach with SM. How many tweets a day do you get (especially if you follow the active SM spokespeople types) that read like “going to SFO on my way to [enter conference name here]!”, “I just presented this killer strategy to xxxxx!”,”I can’t believe I ate all of that xxx”, and so on. These are things that most people would not consumer their day communicating to acquaintances, especially those they probably have not met and yet SM now gives permission, actually no, gives purpose to communicate the minutiae of daily life, 80% of which 80% of your ‘followers’ don’t care about.
I would like to see more thought (and better language usage) instilled in all of these media for them to actually be relevant for the long term.

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How to Flirt

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How to Make a Great First Impression

I feel most of the content is overstated common sense that doesn’t really work but here are some of the contents in the link that’s worth noting:

Act as if you are meeting a good friend

Ignoring the details as often people tend to stretch this advise to the point of being useless but if you’re anxious, the advise is beyond sound. It’s a fundamental of good communication. Just remember that “good” friend here is a hyperbole in case you’re also nervous around most of your friends.

Mentally rehearse before you even enter the room

Again, mostly fluff if extended beyond these words. Non-anxious people might not encounter this problem much but it’s highly possible to become addicted to mental rehearsals.

Hell, it got so bad for me that I tend to have the compulsive action of verbally talking to myself out loud. (although I don’t exactly shout the conversations out…)

On the plus side, the author did share this more useful link: http://www.positivityblog.com/index.php/2006/11/05/do-you-make-these-10-mistakes-in-a-conversation/

Finally the two other fundamental things that are understated by generic advise blogs are:

If all else fails, mimic a person’s body language.

I say if all else fails because even though some blogs advise these, you can easily go overload on this and literally copy a person and that just looks awkward.

Also how does anyone expect a guy to mimic a girl’s body language? That’s asking for expert level subtlety and mass amounts of coming off as strange.

The important clues are mainly position, cues, pitch and phrasings.

Of course, I’m often the opposite in that both online and offline, I’m often accused of being a poor if not vague speaker. No excuses here. I just recommend you try these stuff for yourself.

Position is simply a case where if a person slightly leans back, you slightly lean back when talking to them in the same direction. (This means you’re not actually on the same side when talking to each other.)

Cues are minor gestures. It’s not about going out of your way to copy these but if you can gather a short set of actions from a talk, as long as you don’t overdo it, you’re going to score a more natural feel than if you relied on your own individual gestures unless you happen to match up well with a person or are good at making an impression to begin with. Hell, underdo it if you want. The key isn’t to copy it but to lower enough new bits around each other that your receiver becomes more relaxed when talking to you.

Pitch is basically voice level. This is why it can be very easy to talk to absolutely complete and neutral strangers because often times you have the same pitch due to both of you being anxious when talking to each other. This is also why you can literally agree and say a simple “Yeah!” or “You’re right.” to a topic you’re literally interested in and the receiver will react positively to it but you try constantly doing that to an authority figure and you come off as a sycophant.

Phrasings may seem like the most important bit but it’s really the least. This is because this is so often used nowadays that really the impact is akin to saying Lol when you didn’t used to because you know your audience would not only get it but it won’t come off as stupid.

Ultimately though, the ultimate advise is to follow this bit:

Never go into panic mode even if you’re in panic mode.

The thing that is often understated by good speakers because they’re good speakers and bad speakers who learn how to be good speakers from instructions is that a bad conversation going into panic mode is far more detrimental than a good conversation going bad.

It’s not that they don’t mention this. Take this article. It advises something like “Don’t think too much” or “What you say isn’t important” that seems like great reminders in theory but are absolutely horrible and common sense in practice.

The reality from my experiences is that I have almost often gotten away with any bad or boring conversation and redeemed it with a normal one. This is because until I go into panic mode, I’m not over-stretching and prolonging the already bad incident.

Of course, anytime you try to make a stand, you’re bound to need to do this (if you want to come away with an impression”) but that’s a different issue altogether because more times than not, from an anxious speaker PoV, you’re not reaching to most people in that level. Especially not for first impressions.

So always keep in tight and ride the bad impression always and even if you don’t apply the rest of the advises — as long as you never go into panic mode — you’ll never come off overtly cocky, fake, hyper weird, strange to the nth zone, etc. especially in the long run which is where it counts the most.

Of course, like I previously stated, remember that I constantly break these rules even the last one so you can’t afford to take my word for it if you need these advises.

At the same time, the last one is also the same scenario that allows me to break all these rules. There comes a point where having lots of bad conversations is better than even a good conversation (unless you have something you really need to have done) because then you don’t really need to think so much of preventing panic mode but rather you just develop the conviction to have enough ice in your veins that you retain a bit more of who you are truly about. Pros and Cons.

In a way this is also what separates tatemae from being a mask but not exactly. (Tatemae is more of a conscious “flash” decision while learning how to communicate decently is more of a conscious then unconscious habit.)