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Blind Expectations.

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Blind Expectations.

Postby dxp » Tue Dec 23, 2008 9:06 am

I can often encounter mature, or domestic type older women who act as though crassness doesn't exist in the world, at least around me. If I make a sex joke they act like I shot their dog, and I'm not allowed to swear around them. Yet they always seem to assume like I have lived a gentle easy life being the nice boy. Acting like construction workers don't talk about women's boobs behind their backs, or the cool kids don't base entire conversations on swearing. It has been endlessly like this and I'm getting sick of having to play both sides. Especially when I have so much trouble starting conversations in the first place, they always act like I'm perfectly alright, and I've done everything needed to be a social human being. Not that I have anymore ease with the mature women who is teasing me about sex.
However I want these kind of people to aknowledge these kind of differences in the world and you have to practically be a hypocrite to get away with being a complete human as society calls it.
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Postby Nightspore » Tue Dec 23, 2008 6:51 pm

Think of it this way; everyone speaks a different language. This is most obvious with standard, spoken languages like French, Esperanto, English, et cetera, but it is, in reality, much more complicated. For one, there are non-verbal languages. Take body language, for example. In fact, most communication between individuals takes place with body language alone, and this is still only just below the surface of human communication.

As human beings, we are hard-wired for communication, so much so that we rarely acknowledge its more subtle forms. You need to realize that every person is an individual with a unique set of experiences had throughout their life. They learn to think and behave in specific ways within the context of their individual communities. Communication, as a whole, exists only as a function in the context of specific communities.

It's obnoxious to think that it's necessary to tailor the ways you communicate for different audiences, but it would be unreasonable to expect someone to communicate with you in English if the only language they knew was Mandarin Chinese, would it not? It's compromising, I'll admit, to communicate in a language with which you are unfamiliar or uncomfortable, but if you wish to communicate with others at all, it's just something you'll need to accept.

Personally, I'm looking into getting my tongue or vocal cords removed, or at least just pretending to be mute... but that's just me.

-----

I've been thinking about this a bit more, and I realized my response wasn't as coherent as I probably could have made it. I tend to blindly assume people are able to see all the thought processes behind what I'm saying, so once I've actually said everything, there are usually some gaps in, well, everything. In this case, obviously, no one else speaks my language, unfortunately.

Anyway, this whole thing boils down to simple miscommunication. When people like the women you mention hear a word like "###$," they're deeply offended, obviously. As you put it, they behave as if the speaker just shot their dog. On the other hand, when someone like you hears the word, they won't think twice, because it's nothing more than a simple word used sporadically to exclaim frustration, disgust, anger and a myriad of other emotions. That's it. The word "###$" does not carry with it any objective meaning. Words are words, and that's it. Their meaning is always subjective, dependent entirely upon the individual languages of the speaker and the individual languages of their audience.

This is incredibly frustrating, I know, but it is completely unreasonable to expect everyone we meet to conform to the way we speak and think. The best thing you can do is adapt to the different people you meet. All it takes is careful thought and practised, intentional speaking. If someone you're speaking with is an uptight, hypocritical prude, swearing probably isn't the best idea, as it tends to much less often convey your intended meaning and much more often shout "I'm a crass, guttural simpleton with no respect for your delicate, yet completely reasonable sensibilities."

Don't think of it as compromising your individuality or bending over backwards to accommodate for over-sensitive ninnies. Think of it as speaking Japanese to a Japanese person, or speaking German to a German person. That, or just don't give a ###$. Not giving a ###$ is always good.
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