what the %^$#^ is WRONG with you ?

[SandRider]

In This Thread: describe what you personally believe to be your primary Major Malfunction .....



I think now that the shock-trauma that messed me up and is at the root of most of my borderline behavior
is not realizing at the age of 17 that just about everything I'd been taught about the United States of America,
it's history, people, culture, values, beliefs, &etc was a fucking horseshit lie to cover-up the guilt of imperialism,
genocide, white supremacy, and protect the one-percent of the citizenry that owned and controlled everything,
it was that when I confronted my Daddy with this, with the solid evidence that contradicted his patriotic, flag-
waving, Greatest Nation on the Face of the Earth jingoist value-system, he just nodded and agreed with me ....

Uncle Ed was in the rocker and Daddy was on the church pew we used for a bench on the front porch, and I
was standing on the steps, in jeans and a white t-shirt and black engineer boots, and Ed said "Yep, that there's
about the size of it ...'course it ain't just us, now ... Americans, I mean ... hell, all them white northern europeans
is some deceitful rat-bastards ... always have been."

and Daddy said, "Yeah, I always thought there musta been a deal with the devil in there somewhere."
and Ed spit tobacco juice over the rail and said, "When, right about mid-fifth century ? After them Visigoths whipped Rome's ass ?"
and Daddy rubbed his beard and said, "Aww, before that, but yeah, that was the reward ... course now, them Gauls got there first ..."
and Ed said, "By Golly, you're right, I forgot about them ..." and right about then something just ... snapped in my brain,
and I ain't been right since ....

[inhuien]

I don't feel like uptipping my handbag on your library table right now, perhaps when my breads as long as the OPs I feel different.

But don't let my reticence stop anyone else from sharing their moment of clarity/fuck up/failure. Remember, on a clear day you can see yourself.

[Freakzilla]

Oh my, this will take quite some time...

[SadisticCynic]

SandRider: Finding out that you have to make up your own damn mind on what to believe and not to believe. That's hard. Also, do you think this is relevant quote:

"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

I'm not sure if that's what you're getting at though.

[merkin muffley]

I like movies and way too much.

[Omphalos]

Good topic. Let me put some thought into how to say it without sounding like a whimpering simp.

[A Thing of Eternity]

I'd say the generic "finding out that my parents are flawed" or turning 18 and being so excited to finally just get to deal with adults, only to find out that I was in many ways more mature than the vast majority of human beings regardless of age. Adults continue to be idiots, they just convince children otherwise somehow... that sucked balls.

I don't think I really have a major malfunction though, lots of smaller flaws that pile up into a pretty flawed person, but nothing that stands out really. Certainly nothing I can blame on any single event, it's all been a slow evolution.

I think I'm too much of a smart-ass, and I'm a total wuss when it comes to conflict. Not sure what else. I'm sure I'll break down further at some point in my life though.

EDIT: I'm also pretty sure I'm ahead of the pack in a lot of ways, I don't know if that's really ego though - because I don't WANT to be superior to anyone, I truly wish people would step it up, I've just watched people behave like chimpanzees over and over and over until I've had to admit that I do genuinely seem to be better than the majority of people. Not that I'm great, I don't do nearly enough volunteer work or charity, or do my fair share of anything that'll make the world much better, but if I'm acting at 10% capacity for "human quality" then it seems like most other people are hovering closer to zero %.

Ok, how was that elitist rant for a flaw?

[Shaitan]

I like movies and way too much.

[SadisticCynic]

Ok, how was that elitist rant for a flaw?

Actually, there are are alot of sentiments I'd agree with there.

Judging from the other thread, I had you down for a few years older than you are. Maybe that's a good sign.

[Nekhrun]

My dad's a fucking idiot, I was raised a Born-Again Christian, lived in poverty and grew up in a deaf household.

Now, I'm a liberal, middle class, angry atheist who can't stand to turn on the TV without getting pissed about all of the idiots who continue to vote against their own best interests.

Also people like kja bug the shit out of me because they symbolize everything wrong with this fucked up country who as Frederick Douglass once said, "is false to the past false to the present and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."

[SandChigger]

In This Thread: describe what you personally believe to be your primary Major Malfunction .....

Meh, I've stopped worrying about this kind of stuff. Like Mark Twain wrote, "The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all." Just gets in the way.

[Aquila ka-Hecate]

SandRider: Finding out that you have to make up your own damn mind on what to believe and not to believe. That's hard. Also, do you think this is relevant quote:

"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

I'm not sure if that's what you're getting at though.

That resonates. It is hard. I was well into my 40's before I realised that people who seemed so certain about lots of stuff - mostly stuff that forms the basis of Western Civilisation - had no hard facts behind their certainty at all.

And then:

Now, I'm a liberal, middle class, angry atheist who can't stand to turn on the TV without getting pissed about all of the idiots who continue to vote against their own best interests.

..I became just like that.

I got better, though, and now realise that facts aren't what most people operate on at all. Myself included- at least not the objective facts which we so prize in science. I am, today, a recovering scientist who knows she is god, and all the exterior facts in the world don't seem to shake that inner knowledge.
Fucked up? Perhaps. But I'm at peace with it, at last.

[Aquila ka-Hecate]

Oh, and Chig:

In This Thread: describe what you personally believe to be your primary Major Malfunction .....

Meh, I've stopped worrying about this kind of stuff. Like Mark Twain wrote, "The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the life too closely examined may not be lived at all." Just gets in the way.

I suspect that you're right.
I also suspect that I may get there, too - but I'm a very slow learner, and I'm not at that point just yet.

[Robspierre]

I was raised to give a shit, work hard, and be responsible. Damn my parents.

Rob

[Omphalos]

I'm a hermit who has to remind myself daily not to hate other people just because they exist. Sometimes I just can't do it, but usually I can get over it and not behave like an ass. Never mind why; it just is.

[A Thing of Eternity]

Ok, how was that elitist rant for a flaw?

Actually, there are are alot of sentiments I'd agree with there.

Judging from the other thread, I had you down for a few years older than you are. Maybe that's a good sign.

I'll take it. Most people think I'm older than I am, especially people I work with (largely because I boss them around sometimes...). It would be even more of a compliment if people older than me would stop acting like they were younger than me so I could be compared to someone better.

[SandChigger]

Acting your age is vastly overrated.

That's why I make it a rule to never do so.

[Serkanner]

Acting your age is vastly overrated.

That's why I make it a rule to never do so.

Me too ... playing with dolls is still the highlight of my day.

[Robspierre]

Acting your age is vastly overrated.

That's why I make it a rule to never do so.

Me too ... playing with dolls is still the highlight of my day.

I can see why.......



Rob

[Freakzilla]

I like movies and way too much.

I'll admit to liking those things too much as well, except I don't think liking movies is a real problem.

Also, I cannot manage or save money AT ALL, should spend more time with my kids and could help my wife more.

[SandRider]

SandRider: Finding out that you have to make up your own damn mind on what to believe and not to believe. That's hard. Also, do you think this is relevant quote:

"There is probably no more terrible instant of enlightenment than the one in
which you discover your father is a man--with human flesh."
-from "Collected Sayings of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

I'm not sure if that's what you're getting at though.

no, not at all ...

I realized I would make up my own mind about everything ... and I realized my father was a man ... I did not worship him ... I had respected him, tho ...
I had listened to the things he said, about America and Communism and so forth ... things he said to me, to other men .... when I decided for myself
that his "worldview" was not only fucked-up, his historical-view was all propaganda and lies, I pumped my nuts up and confronted him ... which was
no small thing ...

I wanted to be angry with him, I wanted to prove to him that his narrow-minded, bigoted, Establishment values were not only morally wrong,
they were detrimental to himself, to his way of life; that he was parroting the propaganda of the very men who were oppressing and
exploiting him, us, the whole class of the working poor ...

but the sumbitch didn't defend his own rhetoric ... he fucking agreed with me ...

what tripped me out for the next 30 years or so was how someone could realize what they were saying and supporting was bullshit ...
and not be angry, not fight against it, but CONTINUE to spout the Company Line, after they had worked you like a large black man in the 1850s,
injured you on the job with bad practice, laid you off, spent your retirement fund on Lesbian Hookers and Corvettes ...

later on, I'd get to arguing against the war (VietNam) and Daddy would take a swig of beer and say :
I'd rather fight'em over there than fight'em over here, & Uncle Ed would grunt assent, & I'd start to argue,
"why are we fighting them at all ?" .... much later, Daddy tells me he thought the whole thing was fucked up from the beginning ...
Fuck the French ... didn't have no business tryin' to take back their colonies for 'em ... if they wanted IndoChina, sumbitches shoulda fought harder ....

which was my argument in 65 ....

then I realized .... Daddy didn't really give a shit ... he was just talking ... he was just echoing the voices around him,
to fit in, to not stir up waves, to not argue with his friends about BULLSHIT none of 'em could do anything about anyway ....

that's when I finally started standing up and taking my hat off when the band played that goddamned Federal Anthem at high school football games,
and the Kiwanis and the Lions and them Junior League bitches finally stopped giving me the hairy-eyeball ...

but mostly tho, it was too late ... I'd already become just like my grandaddy - a full-fledged aginer ...
don't matter what it was, if everybody was for it, I'm agin it ...

and I LIKE causing trouble and pot-stirring and the Shitheel Right-wing Fascist Militarist Cocksucking "Patriots" all these Southern People have turned
into deserve to have me tromp thru their parlor with muddy boots ... Flag-waving, John Wayne-lovin', Cheerleaders for the American Empire,
these dumb fuckers have forgotten what the Federal Government did to their families, their states, their culture .... fucking brainwashed Yankee zombies ...

but yeah, that's what fucked my mind up for a long time, and still does .... that everybody knows America Is A Lie, but they keep on Lyin' ...


also, something along the lines of what Thing said - it was about that same time that I realized that "adults" were just dumbass people, too ....
my generation was the one that broke out of the "respect your elders, no matter what" training ... we respect you, pops, and we love you ... but ..
your ideas are all fucked up and wrong and we're gonna say so ... problem was, we were all just dumbass kids, and our ideas were no fucking better,
and a lot of them were way worse, but by 74 or so, we had broken the culture ...



sorry about that ....

[lotek]

Acting your age is vastly overrated.

That's why I make it a rule to never do so.

Me too ... playing with dolls is still the highlight of my day.

I can see why.......



Rob

[inhuien]

but by 74 or so, we had broken the culture ...



sorry about that ....

Shit happens, and the rot of dishonesty, cruelty and avarice has filtered down from our betters from the year dot. What we need is a good few generations of benign dictatorship to the reboot our race psyche an end to scarcity and more love.

[merkin muffley]

I'll admit to liking those things too much as well, except I don't think liking movies is a real problem.

No, but my college loans are.


EDIT: It's just that I already spend a lot of time breaking this one down. For me, this particular wad gets shot on a regular basis, away from this board. It's a good topic, though.

[SadisticCynic]

sorry about that ....

Actually, your rants are usually rather fun (and interesting) to read.