FRAGILE CONTENTS, HANDLE WITH CARE

The definition of normal in the society around me, and the source of my constant bewilderment throughout life thus far, is potentially the fear of thinking too hard. In my mind this metaphor works. It is as if the majority of people avoid thinking whenever possible. Why do they do this?

To clarify: these are the people who can't get a goddam cell phone battery door off to reboot their device when I ask them to. I still often become literally stupefied when the person on the other end of the phone starts to tell me they can't do it, can't figure it out, don't want to break it, et cetera, et cetera. If they sound like they might be a little bit elderly then some sympathy does occur, however the majority of people this occurs with are those who seem plenty young. I understand that many people aren't electronics/technology enthusiasts either. However, this is why I like the battery door example. They seem to inflate the consequences of a mistake such that they simply cannot make a valid attempt to learn it. It strikes me as very unadaptive.

This is the analogy I've gained about their entire mode of thinking. A mental fragility exists. They'd rather leave it to someone else, and don't want to risk making a mistake or causing damage.

I'm sorry that I can't very well vocally describe to you the physical action you should follow with your own hands to open the door of this device, without a visual on your progress. I don't think your brain would break if you try a little harder, nor would the phone.

This also seems to be why most people can't imagine something like a mental disorder. "You shouldn't worry about it, there's nothing wrong with you." They just don't want to think about it.

The underlying question for me, and perhaps I'm getting snagged by black and white thinking here, is this-- how do these people manage life at all? Do they have someone who does everything for them all the time? Someone who they can just depend on so they don't have to work or do anything of note for themselves? The only way it seems possible is that their life must have very little conflict or change, there's no need for adapting. They have a comfortable way out of anything that might require it.

Time for a tangent of sorts.

A great parallel here is the lifestyle of a sheep-like religiously devout person. Also afraid to think too hard. Their biggest strength in life is the concept that all they have to do is trust the will of their god as hard as they can, and by doing this, life's greatest eventuality (death) will be conquered. By letting others do all the thinking, and following their rules as carefully as possible, they feel they are going to earn a reward. Some will even reduce the concept of this reward to their own inner peace and happiness of having done right to their fellow man, in a fashion of acting far more agnostic than their actual beliefs.

It all makes perfect sense in their minds that they should subscribe to such behavior. It seems to me that the fear of thinking too hard is what leads people down this type of path. The danger here is that morality is being defined by something other than a person's own critical thought. The concept of ethics becomes lost as these types of people push discriminatory policies and hateful thought processes, mixed in with their worship of the power of their god's love. They claim to feel persecuted because they are not allowed to force the rest of us to believe and behave as they do.

When I try to explain why faith never helped me, I never get a thoughtful dialog out of it. I calmly explain that the ideas of soul and soul parent just confused me as a kid, that I prayed like I was supposed to and never felt anything, and that I prefer the ethics of evolutionary morality, the mantra that how well I can do depends on how well the other guy does. I explain that I don't believe auto-sexuality or homosexuality is wrong, and that both are natural tendencies that would be unhealthy to suppress. All I can get back is platitudes like "god works in mysterious ways" and "the most important gift I could have been given growing up was my faith in the lord." I was bullied all my life by these people, peddling these lies alongside some mildly acceptable concepts of charitable morality. By the time I was 19 they expected me to grow up and become a peddler too, to go out to some remote part of the world and spread this ignorance.

I think I just didn't know how to resist it during childhood and adolescence. I do recall vehement protest as a smaller child. What I'd do is avoid getting up and getting ready to go to church. I have memories of being forced out of my pajamas and into "church clothes" in the car parked in the church parking lot.

As an adolescent I did the only thing that made sense to me- thinking. I would always engage my church teachers with questions they couldn't really answer. I always did what I felt was right and to satisfy the authority of the church entities I simply concealed my behavior with deception. They were of course very interested in the behavior of the adolescent members. You were forced to attend interviews with the head leader of your city's church group, in which you had to certify your worthiness to participate in the various rituals and to receive the various magic powers to be given to you at certain age milestones. It was very easy to simply tell them you hadn't done anything unchaste. Once I was nearly an adult, I noticed that I didn't have to respect their authority anymore and I could finally emancipate myself from the entire system. I proudly exited by requesting an official resignation via mail.