Misc. comments 28

[redbird]

This is another collection of comments I posted elsewhere. Once again, this is partly for my own reference, both because I may forget where I said things and because the person who posts an entry can delete it later, taking all comments with it. (Yes, they may be right to do so--but that doesn't mean I won't want to remember what I said.) Thus, I'm saving thoughts I might forget, and once in a while things where I like the phrasing.

rho had asked about admirable traits, and then posted a discussion of what zie thinks is, or might be, wrong with general opinions on the subject:

Looking at the answers that people gave, almost all of the attributes named were purely mental. There were two or three which could be considered either mental or physical traits, and absolutely none that were purely physical traits.

There are certainly still elements of our society who will discriminate against people based on physical attributes (or lack thereof), but in most civilised circles it's something which is distinctly frowned upon and looked down upon. And rightly so.

I try (I won't claim I always succeed) to admire people for what is admirable in them, rather than thinking less of them for traits they don't display.

Many things are relative. I'm proud of my physical strength--it may not be much compared to a lot of people (I'm short, fat, and female), but it's something I've worked to have, and continue to work to maintain. I'm not proud of my ability to spell--that seems to be a pattern recognition thing that's part intrinsic and partly drilled into me by grade school.

It's a personal best thing--what matters isn't whether I or the person who used this machine before or after me can lift more. What matters is that I'm continuing to build my own strength. It is good that there are people who are more patient than I am; I try to learn from them, not look down on myself for not being as patient as I'd like.

---

This was in response to ozarque, who wrote a long post saying she'd promised to answer someone's question about animal rights, animal welfare, and vegetarianism and then realized that she found it too painful, but it was okay for us to discuss it in comments on that post:

(N.B.: I'm an omnivore. My personal ethic is that I will not eat sapients, and I will not eat endangered species, nor will I kill either except in self defense. I realize that neither of these lines are fixed: the former as we learn more about some other species, the latter because we hope to bring endangered species back to healthy numbers, and more sadly as formerly healthy species become endangered. I slip sometimes, I know that: I don't keep track of up-to-date information on fish populations as well as I'd need to do this without giving up fish altogether.)

I think I could make a better case for using animals in medical experiments than for using them as food. Few if any people must eat meat in order to be healthy (though more have difficulty getting enough protein, or sometimes other nutrients, from a vegetarian diet). Right now, we don't have a good substitute for animals for certain research. Some of that research is life-saving or seriously life-enhancing (e.g., work on restoring function to paraplegics).

Sidelight: I was reading recently about someone who was doing (medical? I don't recall) research on some species of domestic ungulate (I think cattle, but I'm not sure), and noted that they had a very valuable model species for the work, a related mammal on which there is a lot of published research, including the genome: Homo sapiens. It can in fact work both ways, though there's more interest in human health than that of other animals.

---

A discussion in mrissa's journal about people trying to be shocking about their sexual practices led me, after a while, to this:

I am reminded of a Dorothy Sayers short story in which Peter Wimsey tells a new-met acquaintance on a train that that's what total strangers are for, to tell things to.

Because if you tell a relative, or a friend, or the supermarket cashier (especially in a small town or in your own neighborhood in a city), you then are asking or expecting the amount of trust you refer to. If you tell a complete stranger on a train, who you'll never see again, you can get it off your chest, maybe even get some insight into the weird thing that happened, without that ongoing relationship.

Not everyone wants to be that confidante, of course, nor is obliged to be. And it's a risky thing and more of an imposition if there's any likelihood of seeing the person again, because there's no room for the ordinary getting-to-know-a-person stuff, and because if they run into you again, it stops being "I ran into this guy on a train in Kowloon, and he told me this really weird story." (For me, it can be Kowloon--if the speaker lived in Hong Kong, it would have to be Ealing or the Bronx or Kathmandu.)

---

copperwise asked:

At what stage in a relationship do you think it's reasonable for one partner to be expected to automatically know what another partner's behavior means?

I don't mean the passive-aggressive sort where one pouts, claims nothing is wrong when asked, and expects the other partner to continue asking over and over. Or where one partner is upset and expects the other to automatically know that they caused the upset. ("You know what you did, I shouldn't have to tell you.".)

I'm just talking standard behavior here. Like, when Jim-Bob retreats into his shop with his flyfishing tackle to tie flies, he wants to be alone, don't bother him. Or, when Betty Lou is sick she wants to be coddled but when Jemima is sick she wants to hide under the covers and sleep all day and be left alone. …A standard repeating behavior that indicates a certain need or desire on that person's part. How long do you thing is too long for it to have to continually be explained?

I don't think it's generalizable.

This may be in part because I have three relationships of the sort I think you're referring to [1], and they're of three different shapes. cattitude and I got to know each other, fell in love, and have lived together for half my life. Q and I got to know each other, fell in love, and have been happily involved long-distance for the last few years. adrian_turtle and I met, got involved, and then fell in love, and have been happily doing a not-as-long-distance thing for a year or so. There are things that are a lot more visible when you live with someone; if I'm at Q's home, zir partner and my good friend W is also there--and I've got some idea of W's patterns as well as of Q's. Adrian lives alone, so her expectations are of a lot more alone time.

Q and Adrian are much less likely to see me after a stressful day at work (though I do sometimes leave work and head for a bus or plane to see one of them--planned in advance, not "oh, gods, work sucks, I'm running off to Boston!"), or if I'm dealing with medical crap.

Having said that, I'm going to suggest some generalizations. The first is that it depends on how consistent the cause-effect of the behavior is. Does behavior X always mean "I'm upset and need to be alone for a while," or only 80 percent of the time? Conversely, are Y and Z also going to mean the same thing?

Second, how self-aware is the person of zir behavior? When Cattitude and I were first living together, I'd sometimes go into the bedroom when I was upset. He'd follow me in and do quiet comforting things.

It turned out that, to my own surprise, when it was him doing this, it worked for me. I didn't need to shut a door and cry, the way I had when I was 15 or 16 and it was my father following me after I'd run out of an argument because I didn't like being shouted at.

Even in a more usual situation, does Jim-Bob know that whenever he goes to tie flies, he wants to be left alone? Or does he sometimes think "I want to be left alone, I'll go tie flies" and sometimes "I'm going fishing next weekend, I could use some more flies" and sometimes just storm out and go sit in his shop without thinking about it? Because if Jim-Bob can't tell me that he wants to be left alone in that context, I may not pick up on it either, especially if I'm not around that behavior often, either because I'm not around Jim-Bob that often or because he only does it every other year.


[1] At least, I think you're talking about sexual/romantic relationships, not friendships that don't have those elements.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I have three partners. One of them always knows what I mean. Another of them knows sometimes. The third doesn't know, pretty much ever. There's no relation whatsoever to the amount of time I've known each of them, though--some people are just better at that than others.

-J

[redbird]

A good point.

I do think that, even when people are good at it, time helps: even someone who's very good at it won't know until they've seen the behavior, probably more than once, or been told.

Addendum

[redbird]

I went back and looked at rho's post, and the poll that went before it. What I answered is: "honesty, compassion, patience, intelligence."

One of those is, I think, to some extent innate, and much of the rest determined early in life by choices other people make for us (to do with nutrition, avoiding lead paint, and such). One is mostly a choice, I think. The other two, I'm not sure about.