[david.garrett84]

(03-12-2014 07:19 PM)Icarus Wrote:  

Quote:

Since many of our lives appear empty we try to fill them with our own ego. It is an awkward way to live. We consider ourselves to be huge and the universe and everything else to be tiny in comparison. A casual observer could see that this is incorrect. The ego is difficult to shrink. I have found that one sure way of doing it is to make ourselves appear foolish or insignificant on as many occasions as we can. My ego has always been out of control and, for me, only extreme measures had any noticeable effect. I’ll tell you about my own efforts to contain my ego and perhaps these examples will give rise to more appropriate examples for yourselves.

Dressed as a well weathered derelict, I would panhandle on a busy street. I have done this in nearly every large city in the States. It is one of the most illuminating activities a person can engage in. If you do this seriously, you will begin to look at your fellow man with an entirely different eye. I have discovered that if you are of no importance whatsoever to another human being, then that human being tends to open his or her true self up more readily. People who are, in the normal course of business, polite, kind and gracious, sometimes turn rude and petty when they are speaking to a person who is not really a person to them. Other people who are generally attentive to their neighbors and even random strangers, will not look at you or even acknowledge your existence when you speak to them if you are below a certain status. Homelessness appears to be at the very bottom of this unwritten caste system.

Panhandling never failed to amuse and educate me. My most memorable time was in Ventura California in the late Fall of 2004. I went into a Goodwill store and purchased an old ragged hat and an old worn overcoat. I waited until 6 o’clock in the evening and set up shop in the alcove of closed jewelry store on the main street downtown. I made a cardboard sign on which I wrote “broke and stupid” and held it in front of me while I sat cross-legged on the ground. I placed a small box in front of me in which I tossed a few crumpled dollar bills and some random change. I placed 5 new 100 dollar bills in front of the box, side by side.

I'm surprised - but happy - you started this thread. I had thought even on this forum his advice would be seen as both too esoteric and too Machiavellian/manipulative.

It was hard to verbalize why at the time, but I took his advice to heart after reading those posts a long time ago, probably around 2015. At first, it was in small ways. His idea of ego played some role, but for me the essence of this piece of advice became challenging conventional ways of relating to the world, like the non-poor person who acts as a panhandler to see his environment on a different level.

Then some time (maybe a year) after that first reading of McAfee's lessons, I felt obliged to report sexual abuse to the police in Europe and a hitherto half-hearted feud between myself and some others over the matter became a full-blown one involving lawyers. In this day and age of mass outrage over nothing-burgers or plain made-up sexual "misconduct", it was sort of surreal to be reporting a legitimate case of childhood sexual abuse that I was made aware of over an extended period of time.

McAfee's advice certainly wasn't the only catalyst for how I went about things, but it influenced my perspective. In instances of real sexual abuse, as opposed to false rape allegations, you just cannot imagine how crazily desperate the side with things to hide becomes. They fight for survival in a way that's very hard to explain. Their resort to self-preservation is atavistic at its most extreme, albeit a different form of mental illness/rabidness to those who invent rape claims.

People overly concerned with instant ego and how they are perceived try and reason these things out calmly but quickly, presuming they can win through charm or strength of argument in a "fair" social system. They do not countenance the idea of their well-constructed arguments falling on deaf ears. As a result, I was belligerent and confrontational. Facts and proof obviously mattered and I paid lip service to a sometimes reasoned facade, yet I had to strike emotions into them. Reason by itself wouldn't work. If someone made a threat, I asked them when and where they wanted to say it in person to me. If I was called a liar, I would have someone distribute copies of sworn affidavits with evidence and then demand someone take it to a prosecutor and report me to the police if they wanted to insist I had been dishonest. No one ever went.

I would receive threats about my reporting and would retaliate in the best way I could. I had been accused by the parties afraid of the disclosure of fabricating the evidence (true desperation had set in for them), so I responded by insisting the lawyer on the other side take the matter to a court and the court would decide. Of course, they refused and totally turned around, acknowledging the abuse and asking me to keep the matter quiet.

In a sense, I was playing these people, putting up with short and medium-term slander, to play a longer game. And it worked. They had to admit to a number of people that the sexual abuse had indeed happened. Naturally, some neighbors would always believe the opposing parties were not lying, but that's life.

What you learn about tribalism in situations like this just cannot be taught in an academic class, whether in evolutionary psychology or delusions of the mind courses. Having abandoned conventional appearances and worries about them, I was freed up to learn a lot about fundamental human nature, even if a lot of it was merely confirmation of things I already "knew" but had not experienced much in the real world.

I remember on a few occasions comparing myself to McAfee and his panhandling. Instead of panhandling for money on a street, I was making something of a sales pitch about the truth. The truth is the truth, yes, but the market for people to receive it is sometimes like expanding Lamborghini sales during a Great Depression.

Some key takeaways I made:

- People fear determined people or those who don't flinch. I remember one time receiving a threat that I would be attacked. I called the guy up and left a message, "Good, a threat. I live for this. Where are you threatening me in person?" He changed his number.

- You never know your neighbors but think you do. It was amazing how folks claimed they "knew" there was no sexual abuse as they had known the people involved for years. Talk to someone for five minutes a month or less but live right by their house for years and suddenly you think you know every detail of their life.

- People know things won't work but do them anyway. Five minutes, hours or days of avoiding or denying the truth is too relieving, even when one knows the long-term penalties will far outstrip the pleasures of avoidance now.