Something Craig said got me thinking...I think this is significant. We're not a bunch of people who are afraid to express ourselves. We can argue the relative merits of knives, guns or other gear until the sun sets and have fun doing it. We don't care all that much if people disagree with us, because we're all playing the same game, so to speak. But, we seem to all be just a tad flummoxed by the attitude of some people who seem to be more afraid of the preparation itself than they are of the potential danger being prepared for. To us, it makes perfect sense: Things happen, so be prepared. It's so simple, we think it's self-evident. How can it be argued?

But, I am reminded of a lady friend of mine who always struck me as a walking mass of contradictions. As a self-described feminist, she felt that the way females are indoctrinated from birth in always being "ladylike" and "agreeable" was "disempowering" to women, who ended up living more than their fair share of subordination and subservience, rather than "sticking up for themselves the way boys are taught to". Personally, I fully agreed with her on that one. I've seen women give in when they shouldn't, just because they didn't have the upbringing to feel comfortable asserting themselves, especially to men. (As a footnote, I've seen the same thing in men, too. I was raised in such a way, myself, and it took a lot of personal work in my young adulthood to "take back my mind", so to speak. One word that is sometimes applied to such men is "emasculated". Telling, isn't it? Sort of the exception that proves the rule, so to speak.)

But the odd thing was, this same friend of mine refused to ever take any sort of self-defence or martial arts training. She was also a self-described "New Ager" and felt that whatever she put out into the world would come back to her, so she didn't want to put any sort of "violence" out into the universe by practicing any fighting arts or "inviting" dangers "into her experience" by focusing on overly cautious thoughts. She honestly believed, as a matter of consciously adopted philosophy, that she increased her odds of danger if she prepared for it.

I thought the self-defeating nature of this position should be obvious. She was disempowering herself by indoctrinating herself in agreeable ladylike behavior, rather than reparenting herself into being better able to stick up for herself the way she felt men did. She completely failed to see any contradiction in her stances. She was confused why I would want to fill my world with "programming for conflict".

I felt she was handicapping herself. She felt I was looking for trouble. <img src="images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

I think Craig hit it on the head when he wrote what he did. I think that the vast majority of people, while not as deliberately as my friend, also feel that somehow they will create trouble if they prepare for it. They don't see the difference between looking for trouble and looking out for trouble. It's not so much a reasoned philosophy or belief as it is perhaps a more purely emotional, less thought out, perhaps even superstitous reaction. I think it permeates all levels of life, from the person who doesn't get regular health checkups for fear of finding out something they don't want to know, to the person who refuses to make a will for fear of dying shortly after it's done. I think it even applies to people who don't balance their checkbook so they don't find out they don't have money in it. It strikes me as the ostrich with its head in the ground ... but I guess many people have some such area(s) in their life.

Over the two and a half years that I've participated on this forum, I've read more than a few people express puzzlement over how to create more understanding with their friends, family and/or peers. I think one of the reasons it seems hard to bridge this gap may be because, in order to really address the issue, we would have to talk about things as vague and oddball as one's orientation toward the universe and as controversial and potentially insulting as one's level of superstitious thinking.

So we don't address the real issue. Instead, we talk about gear.

This seems perfectly fine when we have experience to draw from, but in reality it often fails unless the person we're talking to also has their own experiences where such preparedness would have been advantageous to them. The above thinking, even when not conscious to the thinker, is that such things happen to us because we prepare for them. They may even say they don't live the same kind of life we do; meaning they avoid danger and difficulty by not inviting it in to their lives to begin with.

When we talk about hypothetical situations, it gets even worse. They may look at us like we're crazy. Part of their response, whether it's voiced or not, seems likely to be some amount of the above thinking. They may even feel we're dangerous people to be around because we're somehow creating greater odds of bad things happening. We feel that the value of continually asking ourselves "what if this happened" is obvious. They wonder why we would want to "dwell on" such negativity or why we would look for even more trouble when there's already enough in the world to go around.

When I finally realized that my friend wasn't just having an emotional reaction to something she didn't understand, but actually (indeed, religiously) believed that she was creating the universe with her thoughts, I changed my wording. I began to talk about how one could put out chaos into the world or put out order into it. One could put out random vagueness or disciplined planning. I spoke of how the less enlightened members of our species (she would have stopped listening if I'd said "bad people") seek out weaker people, and if you put out weakness, you were more likely to attract such individuals into your life than if you put out strength and confidence. I even tied it back into her brand of feminism by saying that I felt it was wrong to program young girls to attract victimization into their worlds by putting out more and more signals of weakness and helplessness into the universe.

In short, I spoke her language, not my own. I spoke only the truth of my own beliefs, but I did it with words that were more like those she would choose.

She and another lady friend eventually began to take a rape prevention class together, focusing heavily on physical resistance and escape.

Not that I think we all should change how we speak in every instance, but perhaps, when we're struggling to make ourselves understood, it may behoove us first to make every effort to be sure we truly understand the presumptions of the other person.

Just a thought. Anyway, brain dump completed...

Stay safe,
J.T.

Jet,

Very well stated, I concur.

Someone (Hyrum Smith?) once stated something to the effect of "Seek first to understand, THEN to be understood".

You are a wise man.

Regards,
Comanche7