The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[Travis B.]

The good: I'm hypo! (Actually, this isn't good. But it certainly feels like it is.)

The bad: I'm not really hypo all the time, and I have been getting bursts of horrible, angry, irritable mixed mood as well. And who knows what happens when this ends. Either I crash back to Earth, or I reach orbit.

[Arzena]

I have been feeling that I'm moving up the Kinsey scale. Which is a new and strange experience for me. I'd say now that I'm closer to a low 5 / high 4 (5= predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual, 4= predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally hetero ). To compare to the previous five years, I considered myself a 6 (exclusively homosexual). Though the first strong crush I experienced was a girl

tldr; sexuality is confusing yo

[Vijay]

It's nice to be able to spend a full day at home for the first time in four days. It's also nice of my parents to try to buy me breakfast, but they aren't back home yet, and I'm already hungry. Maybe I should just go eat anyway instead of waiting around for them.

EDIT: Never mind, here they are!

[Travis B.]

So my guess is that at this rate I am not going to wind up in inpatient again, this time at least. Albeit I am going to bring my list of phone numbers to my appointment just in case.

Still, it is quite alarming that I have managed to have three periods of significant suicidal ideation in just the month up to today. I like spending time on the phone with Liz, but I do not like that she feels she has to keep an eye on me, or else.

[Imralu]

So my guess is that at this rate I am not going to wind up in inpatient again, this time at least. Albeit I am going to bring my list of phone numbers to my appointment just in case.

Still, it is quite alarming that I have managed to have three periods of significant suicidal ideation in just the month up to today. I like spending time on the phone with Liz, but I do not like that she feels she has to keep an eye on me, or else.

One of my best friends in Australia has been going through this kind of stuff. You haven't just turned 30, have you? I'm seeing in my group of friends that psychological stuff seems to really catch up with people at around 30.

[Travis B.]

So my guess is that at this rate I am not going to wind up in inpatient again, this time at least. Albeit I am going to bring my list of phone numbers to my appointment just in case.

Still, it is quite alarming that I have managed to have three periods of significant suicidal ideation in just the month up to today. I like spending time on the phone with Liz, but I do not like that she feels she has to keep an eye on me, or else.

One of my best friends in Australia has been going through this kind of stuff. You haven't just turned 30, have you? I'm seeing in my group of friends that psychological stuff seems to really catch up with people at around 30.

I turned 32 last July. For me it's been on and off variation between good periods and bad periods, with the three latest bad periods being due to issues with going off of or reducing medication, all self-inflicted in some form or fashion, even though the latest time I have been angry at my psych because I told her my blood levels were high because I was non-compliant (in that I took my meds all at night rather than dividing them between morning and night as I was supposed to) and I offered to take my meds correctly and then do new blood levels but she refused.

[Imralu]

I turned 32 last July.

Ooh, another 83 baby. We're Korean friends.

For me it's been on and off variation between good periods and bad periods, with the three latest bad periods being due to issues with going off of or reducing medication, all self-inflicted in some form or fashion, even though the latest time I have been angry at my psych because I told her my blood levels were high because I was non-compliant (in that I took my meds all at night rather than dividing them between morning and night as I was supposed to) and I offered to take my meds correctly and then do new blood levels but she refused.

Sounds like, for you, it's really driven by chemical imbalances rather than psychological damage?? (Not like it's necessarily one or the other, but some tend to be more at one end of the scale than the other.)

[Travis B.]

I turned 32 last July.

Ooh, another 83 baby. We're Korean friends.

Actually, 1984.

For me it's been on and off variation between good periods and bad periods, with the three latest bad periods being due to issues with going off of or reducing medication, all self-inflicted in some form or fashion, even though the latest time I have been angry at my psych because I told her my blood levels were high because I was non-compliant (in that I took my meds all at night rather than dividing them between morning and night as I was supposed to) and I offered to take my meds correctly and then do new blood levels but she refused.

Sounds like, for you, it's really driven by chemical imbalances rather than psychological damage?? (Not like it's necessarily one or the other, but some tend to be more at one end of the scale than the other.)

As much as I don't like the term "chemical imbalance" for a number of reasons, this is basically true.

[linguoboy]

The first person to say "Happy birthday" to me today was a debt collector.

[Viktor77]

Can I piggyback off this thread to ask you all some advice (I don't want to create a new thread on the forum). I'm about to finish up my MA in French Linguistics. I've decided that I don't think a French Ph.D. is the choice for me for the following reasons: the academic job market for French Ph.Ds is abysmal, the fact that I am not and never will be a francophone with a superior mastery of the language, the pointlessness of studying a foreign language in a country where it's not spoken, the fact that I'll never live in Europe, my interest in French is waning, and I don't love my current research into Belgium enough to go hardcore at it for 5 more years. However that leaves me with a serious problem. I have a BA in Spanish and French and I'll have a MA in French. What on Earth can I do with that??? Ideally I want to start a career. I'm tired of being a broke graduate student putting life off for education. I'd also like to finally settle down somewhere and stop moving. I thought about other PhD programs that interest me like sociology or history (if I'm honest, I suck at linguistics so I won't do that), but those programs have equally as abysmal job markets and I don't want to adjunct the rest of my life or be stuck in some postgrad program. So currently I'm completely lost in life. I could finish my education degree and be a public school teacher of French (or Spanish if I brush it up) with a MA. That would at least be a stable career. It wouldn't make tons of money but it would be sufficient to live a good life if I can handle being back in the public school. Or I could try to see if there are any private schools out there looking for French teachers. But other than that I just don't know what I can do with this damn degree to start a good solid career. I can't see myself getting a JD and I just don't have the aptitude for other more better paying graduate programs like statistics or engineering or economics.

[Cedh]

Can I piggyback off this thread to ask you all some advice (I don't want to create a new thread on the forum). I'm about to finish up my MA in French Linguistics. I've decided that I don't think a French Ph.D. is the choice for me for the following reasons: the academic job market for French Ph.Ds is abysmal, the fact that I am not and never will be a francophone with a superior mastery of the language, the pointlessness of studying a foreign language in a country where it's not spoken, the fact that I'll never live in Europe, my interest in French is waning, and I don't love my current research into Belgium enough to go hardcore at it for 5 more years. However that leaves me with a serious problem. I have a BA in Spanish and French and I'll have a MA in French. What on Earth can I do with that??? Ideally I want to start a career. I'm tired of being a broke graduate student putting life off for education. I'd also like to finally settle down somewhere and stop moving. I thought about other PhD programs that interest me like sociology or history (if I'm honest, I suck at linguistics so I won't do that), but those programs have equally as abysmal job markets and I don't want to adjunct the rest of my life or be stuck in some postgrad program. So currently I'm completely lost in life. I could finish my education degree and be a public school teacher of French (or Spanish if I brush it up) with a MA. That would at least be a stable career. It wouldn't make tons of money but it would be sufficient to live a good life if I can handle being back in the public school. Or I could try to see if there are any private schools out there looking for French teachers. But other than that I just don't know what I can do with this damn degree to start a good solid career. I can't see myself getting a JD and I just don't have the aptitude for other more better paying graduate programs like statistics or engineering or economics.

In Europe, many former humanities students end up working in a communication-centered position in a company, for instance in public relations, customer support, business-to-business cooperation, human resources management, or similar. I don't know how it works in the US, but I think the general situation should be roughly comparable. Maybe one of those career types could be something for you?

[hwhatting]

The first person to say "Happy birthday" to me today was a debt collector.

It's your birthday today? Herzlichen Glückwunsch und Alles Gute!

[linguoboy]

The first person to say "Happy birthday" to me today was a debt collector.

It's your birthday today? Herzlichen Glückwunsch und Alles Gute!

Gestern (ihr lebt in der Zukunft, ihr Europäer) aber ich schätze den Glückwunsch trotzdem. Danke vielmals!

[alynnidalar]

On the positive side of things: I'm moving forward in the interviewing process for a job I'm fairly interested in, and the next step is a coding exercise! My phone interview ran over by 20 minutes, which is probably a good sign.

On the negative side of things: I'm a .NET developer who has done 100% of my work with web forms, and they want the coding exercise done with MVC. I am aware of the general concepts of MVC, but prior to last night had never even seen the code of an MVC project. So now I get to freak out and stress about how I'm going to do this. I could do the exercise easily using web forms! It's just I'm almost totally unfamiliar with how you do anything using MVC.

To further add to the complications, they want me to make the code accessible through Github. Except my Github experience is also nearly nonexistent, and while I have slightly more Git experience, that was like four years ago. I'm trying to remind myself that while I'm not familiar with Github's peculiarities, I do have plenty of experience using TFS in Visual Studio, and from my experimentation last night, Github in Visual Studio wasn't all that more complicated... but it's not really helping.

Gah. I was straightforward with them about my lack of experience with MVC, so I suppose this might be the point--how well am I going to handle learning a brand-new technology while still producing quality work. But I stress out enough about having my coworkers do routine code reviews, let alone some strangers read my code and judge me on it. Code is like writing fiction to me... I love doing it, but I'm very uncomfortable about having anybody else look at it!!

[Vijay]

Things are going fine in general, but I just wish I had gotten certain things done by the end of the day today.

[linguoboy]

My husband is back in the ICU again. Yesterday, there was a lot of activity in the other room his nurse was covering and she spent a great deal of time there. It was the same when I arrived there today. In fact, I didn't so much as glimpse her for the first half an hour, but I saw a lot of people milling about quietly, some weeping. When she came into the room, she was very apologetic. As she was tending to him, someone from transport arrived and asked her about paperwork for the other patient. She quietly said to us, "So I guess you know now that my other patient died." I felt terribly for her and for all the relatives around. And yet part of me was glancing over at my husband and saying, "STILL HERE MOTHERFUCKERS!"

[finlay]

so my dad came to visit for my birthday, which was, in general, nice. he snored a lot though.

just... he waited until i was 29 to tell me he and his mother both had nose surgery, which i definitely need too, because our noses are asymmetrical and it's difficult to breathe through one nostril. i'm kinda annoyed because i've subconsciously known for years that it's difficult to breathe through my nose, and i usually put it down to allergies, which i also have a lot. i'd just never noticed a correlation about which nostril works better. like, he could have told me this ten years ago and i could have had the procedure done on the nhs, but if i get it done in japan i have no idea how much it could cost. he was just like, i thought you didn't have a problem - years of him moaning at me for sniffing all the time could have told me otherwise! and now i'm hyperaware of my breathing.

[Frislander]

I've only just now realised that the film One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing is, how shall we put it, not exactly PC. Some of it's joke rely heavily on Chinese stereotypes, it's full of yellow-face (the only Chinese cast members I think there are are the peasant extras), and its atmosphere is so public-school-English it is frankly nauseating. And they made this in 1975!

And yet I somehow still enjoy this film. It has what is to my eyes the silliest plot ever put to film, fun characters, decent acting talent (true that does include a few of the people from Carry-On, another set of films of the not-exactly-sensitive category) and a father fun action sequence or two.

The thing is I don't really want to completely disown this film, but at the same time I am made rather uncomfortable by the way it uses race. That doesn't make me a racist (I hope).

(This is in marked contrast with the situation with Peter-Pan, where I find the Native-American "characters" to be so offensive that I've all but sworn never to watch it again).

[Vijay]

The thing is I don't really want to completely disown this film, but at the same time I am made rather uncomfortable by the way it uses race. That doesn't make me a racist (I hope).

Of course not. Racism (and homophobia, etc.) in movies and such can be interesting in its own right, after all. I love my heritage and everything, and I can't stand Rudyard Kipling's racist attitudes, but I also honestly kind of like the Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book (I haven't read the original, but I would be surprised if it was more racist than the Disney adaptation).

[Herra Ratatoskr]

The good: I've started dating a woman and it's going shockingly well so far.
The bad: A friend of mine from college had a heart attack Sunday. He's doing okay and should be out of the hospital tomorrow, but he's only 30. Plus baggage from the last year has made it extra gut-punchy for me.

Oh, and I'm back, I guess, for those here who remember me.

[Salmoneus]

The thing is I don't really want to completely disown this film, but at the same time I am made rather uncomfortable by the way it uses race. That doesn't make me a racist (I hope).

Of course not. Racism (and homophobia, etc.) in movies and such can be interesting in its own right, after all. I love my heritage and everything, and I can't stand Rudyard Kipling's racist attitudes, but I also honestly kind of like the Disney adaptation of The Jungle Book (I haven't read the original, but I would be surprised if it was more racist than the Disney adaptation).

Which racist attitudes are those, exactly? After all, Kipling repeatedly stressed that non-Europeans were just as intelligent, stupid, greedy, generous, decadent and moral as Europeans. He often sides with non-Europeans against Europeans (indeed, as an Indian by birth and choice, with Hindustani his native language, forced into a childhood of abuse and cultural whitewashing in England from which he fled as quickly as humanly possible, he seems to have seen himself, at least early on, as something of an external observer toward European culture).
His main objections to what he saw as the condition of Indians was that he felt that the rigid caste system had subjugated most of the population in superstition and illiteracy and had encouraged inter-communal violence; European occupation, he felt, had done something but not enough to improve education, but had added a layer of dependency. His objection to the idea of Indian self-rule at that time was not due to any belief in the inherent inferiority of Indians, but simply due to his belief that democracy could not flourish until the caste system, feudalism, and inter-communal violence were done away with. [And that home rule could not in fact be instituted at that point, as the Muslims and Christians favoured British rule to persecution by the Hindus, the Brahmins and the westernised intelligensia were both frightened of what the masses might do if given sovereignty, and the masses themselves remained too disorganised and disinterested in politics to mobilise for change]. He may or may not have been right about all this, but it's not inherently racist. I think modern observers also need at least a little caution when they go about correcting a newspaperman on the streets of Lahore talking about the social and political trends with which he was intimately familiar both personally and professionally, but that for us are an alien lost world a century before our own.
[it's also important to note that as a satirist and social critic, he attacked European cultures for exactly the same flaws (indeed, a recurring theme is that underneath the modern trappings European and Indian cultures are still essentially the same].

Now, feel free to call him an imperialist, particularly in his later life. He did believe - on the basis of firsthand experience - that modern western culture had a lot to teach the world, and that the Empire could do a lot of good, or at least could do less bad than the alternative despotisms. This was hardly a blinkered or one-track imperialism, as he felt passionately about preserving the non-harmful elements of non-european cultures and could be savage toward Europeans ("the beef-fed zealots" as he calls them in one poem) who tried to impose western culture as a matter of principle, but it was imperialistic. And you could also criticise his militarism - though he's often critical of the madness that leads to war, he also often glamourises it himself, and sometimes his intended line of praising the soldier while damning the general doesn't fully come across.
But I'm genuinely not convinced that the man was particularly racist. However, I'm far from an expert, so I'm genuinely curious what he said that offended you specifically!

[I'd also suspect that any racism you find in Kipling you could also find in devoted Kipling fans like Gandhi and Nehru...]

[Vijay]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

Just as one example.

[Salmoneus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

Just as one example.

Yes, that poem is imperialist. But there's nothing actually racist about it. Kipling is using "white man" as shorthand for "member of European civilisation", and the whole point of the poem is that he thinks that the West can improve other civilisations, guide them to 'the light', which is entirely contrary to the racist belief that non-Europeans are inherently inferior. To reiterate: Kipling believed that non-European cultures were (in some respects) objectively, contingently, more problematic than European cultures at that moment in time, and that representatives from European culture should try to export what was good in Europe to the rest of the world (while keeping what was already good in those other cultures); this is different from the racist's belief that non-European cultures will always be inferior to European cultures because of the inherent inferiority of non-European people. Remember, what Kipling is arguing for is only a limited transitional period of ten years, followed by independence (or the possibility of admission into the US if desired), in which America should selflessly rebuild Phillipine infrastructure and establish democratic institutions (as later succesfully done in Japan, for instance).

It's worth noting that what it's fashionable to call "racism" in Kipling is exactly the same as what is called "liberalism" and "progressivism" in foreign policy today. Western do-gooders still preach the White Man's Burden - from campaigns against female genital mutilation to campaigns against Chinese sweatshops, from campaigns against gang rape, child marriage and honour killings in the subcontinent to campaigns for a free Tibet. These are exactly the sort of issues Kipling was agitating for/against. The closest parallel today may be Iraq and the war against ISIS (who are themselves rather more civilised than many the people Kipling was talking about in his day - the debate in his day, which the poem is addressing, was over things like "should head-hunting and cannibalism be tolerated?"): "America has gone and stuck a pick-axe into the foundations of a rotten house, and she is morally bound to build the house over", as Kipling said, and as could equally well be said now. In letters he clarified that he considered the Burden to be merely the introduction of "a sane and orderly administration" (ultimately by the local population after a period of transition) to areas of the world that lacked one, which is no more than progressives today call for in regions like Syria. We call for the overthrow of tyrants; Kipling calls for an end to "the tawdry rule of kings"; but the issue in question is essentially the same.

It's fine to argue that all cultural practices are equally moral, and that there are no "rotten houses" in the world, so that we should tolerate genocide, cannibalism, tyranny, sex-trafficking, forced marriage, genital mutilation, slavery, and capital punishment for moral offences, and so on. But it's hypocritical to assert the right - even the duty - of the West to combat these evils today, and help rebuild the rotten houses we see today, while at the same time condemning Kipling as a racist for asserting the same duties a century and more ago, when those evils were far more prevalent.

Politics aside, that leaves only his sometimes insensitive language. It's true that "the White Man" is infelicitous, but "the West" did not yet exist as a concept (or not a common one, although of course Kipling had tried to promote it as an alternative to race-based classification), and Kipling was using the terms of his day to advance a political point to the American public of the day (for whom such racialised terminology was probably more powerful than it would have been back in England - "white man" was a slang term in the US at the time meaning anything honest, decent, straightforward, etc, and Kipling is merely exploiting his audience's own words). Even the phrase "White Man's Burden" predates Kipling, and Kipling is not so much suggesting that there is one as setting a high (unreachable) standard for it (and of course Kipling was perfectly aware that neither America nor Britain was living up to the standard that would be necessary to justifiy imperialism, and that the motivations of the imperialists were often not as pure as he wanted them to be). Similarly, Kipling uses descriptions of "peoples" as a shorthand, but in context he was clearly referring to cultures, not to races - he is clear elsewhere that individuals from non-European cultures may be just as moral as Europeans (with or without being Europeanised). [The importance of nurture over nature is a constant theme in his work, from the Irish Kim (raised as an Indian) to the Indian Mowgli (raised as a wolf), paralleling his own history, and is the exact opposite of what you'd expect from a genuine racist]. And yeah, in modern parlance he shouldn't say "half-child", he should say "Less Developed", but the change in terminology over time hasn't actually changed the underlying sentiments...

More generally, it's a rhetorical poem aimed at a particular audience in a particular political debate, and uses the language of the time for the maximum effect. It's not necessarily how Kipling would have spoken in private, or in other debates. Contrast, for example, this poem with "Buddha at Kamakura", in which the wisdom, love and serenity of the Buddha and his followers are contrasted with the tawdry, violent Christrians of "tophet-flare", the "Western joke", the "pride", the "contemning", the "zealotry", the ignorance, hypocrisy and "trade and strife"...

[Vijay]

See, Frislander? Appreciating a movie with racist stereotypes in it isn't racist.

Whitesplaining at length like this is.

[Salmoneus]

See, Frislander? Appreciating a movie with racist stereotypes in it isn't racist.

Whitesplaining at length like this is.

No, what's racist is assuming that your skin colour makes your views inherently superior even on matters where you are clearly ignorant.

If you have any good reason to think that I'm wrong (which I certainly may be), please set it forth. Otherwise you're just an anti-intellectual racist resorting to facile demogoguery. I'm not surprised that your relatives support Trump; you sound much as Trump would sound if Trump happened to be Indian instead of American. You cannot point out any particular flaw in what I've said, or specify exactly what racist views you believe Kipling held, so you resort to demonising the other...

It is frustrating to spend time trying to have a rational discussion, only to discover the other person has no interest in good-faith debate, but only in mockery, trolling and belittlement to make themselves look better.