Social anxiety

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Sy Borg
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Re: Social anxiety

Post by Sy Borg »

Mark, it's easy to play the "lily livered westerners" card but, if those ideas were true then teen suicide through bullying would not exist. Hari kuri would not exist.

Even people of antiquity were subtle enough to understand this: "The pen is mightier than the sword" may be hyperbolic, but the point is that when one lives in a human society survival - accommodation, employment, social connection and simply not being attacked depends on what others think of you.
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Re: Social anxiety

Post by Belindi »

Greta wrote:
If one is independent and in a position of strength, then acceptance matters less. However, when one is dependent or subject to another's powers then acceptance is a matter of survival.
I agree, Greta. Temple Grandin is an example of an autistic person who, having greatly benefited the meat industry and cattle welfare too, is also a famous social success. I wonder if Temple Grandin, if she ever feared social disapproval, since her success has little fear of it.
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Re: Social anxiety

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Greta wrote: July 6th, 2018, 6:14 pm Mark, it's easy to play the "lily livered westerners" card but, if those ideas were true then teen suicide through bullying would not exist. Hari kuri would not exist.

Even people of antiquity were subtle enough to understand this: "The pen is mightier than the sword" may be hyperbolic, but the point is that when one lives in a human society survival - accommodation, employment, social connection and simply not being attacked depends on what others think of you.
People will often choose physical pain over emotional pain - cutting for example. Social pain is very real and was even in societies with subsistance resources.
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Re: Social anxiety

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Greta wrote: July 6th, 2018, 6:14 pm Mark, it's easy to play the "lily livered westerners" card but, if those ideas were true then teen suicide through bullying would not exist. Hari kuri would not exist.

Even people of antiquity were subtle enough to understand this: "The pen is mightier than the sword" may be hyperbolic, but the point is that when one lives in a human society survival - accommodation, employment, social connection and simply not being attacked depends on what others think of you.
I'm not playing cards, least of all lilly livered westerners. If you wanted to use that as a phrase then I was thinking of 'hominids who've moved on from the apes', a bigger and older group. The original post referred to socialisation as being part of the Id, with which I disagreed. My understanding is that the Id is generally assumed to be effectively the hypothalamus, a structure we share with animals as evolutionarily ancient as the reptiles.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Social anxiety

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Mark, what we interpret as a threat to survival might range from an oncoming car to an unfriendly look from a landlord. If perceived as a threat to survival then the fight-or-flight stress response is triggered, whether a primal threat or a modern one.
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Re: Social anxiety

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Greta wrote:
Mark, what we interpret as a threat to survival might range from an oncoming car to an unfriendly look from a landlord. If perceived as a threat to survival then the fight-or-flight stress response is triggered, whether a primal threat or a modern one.
I agree and I would extend her sentiment into a different area. Survival involves more than the means of staying alive . Survival also involves personal dignity. I mean that for instance when a poor person cannot survive in life without handouts from those who perceive themselves to be better than he is that poor person will rebel to preserve his dignity. This rebellion may even take a form that decreases his own creature necessities. This is why poor Americans voted for Trump: protest. This is largely why poor Brits voted for Brexit: protest.

Christianity is a great religion for conferring dignity on the poor, the neglected, and the despised . True gallantry is to feed, house, and educate the poor, the neglected, and the despised and most importantly to let them know that the goods are theirs by right not by special favour of kind liberals.
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Re: Social anxiety

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As Freud outlined Mark is more than justified to say what he did. The Id is, as defined Freud, not about social interactions.

This doesn’t devalue the importance of social inclinations in any way. The Id was a psychological premise that has in part been attached to physical biology. As a term it is a perhaps easy to misconvey the definition as given by Freud in regards to any absolute physical substrate of the human brain.
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Re: Social anxiety

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Belindi wrote: July 10th, 2018, 2:29 am Survival involves more than the means of staying alive.
I think this is where you're missing the point, survival means exactly that, 'staying alive'. Everything else is further up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Your Id does staying alive, your ego and superego do worrying about how you do it and if you can get hold of a colour television.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Social anxiety

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The logic presented goes like this:

1. Survival is related to the id
2. Social awareness is associated with the ego, not the id
3. Therefore social problems are not related to survival.

This is an example of how logic that is poorly applied can lead people to claim obvious absurdities. The issue is that they don't check with what they know of reality to see if their notion is realistic. Do people become depressed and kill themselves through social problems? Daily. Thus the logical statements" need to be ditched.

Speaking of logic, the capacity to buy a colour TV has nothing to do with social anxiety.

Rather than using logical statements, you can just accept that there's mountains of anecdotal and clinical evidence that social anxiety can be a life and death issue. Some, however, might figure that is not important enough to consider - just the natural elimination of the weak. Wouldn't you say some people think that way, Mark?
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Re: Social anxiety

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Greta wrote: July 16th, 2018, 4:59 pm Some, however, might figure that is not important enough to consider - just the natural elimination of the weak. Wouldn't you say some people think that way, Mark?
And the psychopath will think the most of the people just the as weak those who are radically affected by social losses also as weak, but not as weak as the suicides and suicidal ostracised and or isolated.

Weak is very complicated. To some other species social mammals are weak, since they can become less effective hunters if they are treated poorly in the group- higher cortisol levels, less sleep, less confident due to social lack of acceptance or low ranking.

On the other hand social mammals tend to dominate environments. And one of them is driving the more solipsistic species out of existence.

Exile was often the judgment just under death in the old days.

Not torture or long imprisonment, but exile.

They knew they were ripping your self out by doing this.

Isolation in prison is a form of torture.
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Re: Social anxiety

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Karpel Tunnel wrote: July 16th, 2018, 5:28 pmExile was often the judgment just under death in the old days.

Not torture or long imprisonment, but exile.

They knew they were ripping your self out by doing this.

Isolation in prison is a form of torture.
More than torture, exile was effectively a death sentence. Humans are individually fairly vulnerable animals and can only viably survive in groups. In that circumstance lies both humanity's salvation and punishment :)
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Re: Social anxiety

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And some people, often religious, force isolation upon themselves and are “rewarded” for their “torture.”

Cutting someone off from society allows them to explore themselves - some don’t survive what they find. I would strongly argue that pandering to the incapacity to face yourself (socially maladjusted individuals) breed a different kind of mass social destruction. The individual in isolation has more chance to reach deep into themselves and find universally applicable to society unlike those crying and moaning about their palce in society and expecting society to change to meet their myopic needs and wants.

To sum up, without isolation from society there is no broad understanding of society. Everyone knows isolation to some extent, and some run from it (essentially running from themselves) and others run toward it (essentially running from themselves too!) What I would say is that the later has self-reflectoin on their side whilst the former goes into complete lock down and stagnation more often than not - cold comfort over uncomfortable change.
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Re: Social anxiety

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Burning ghost wrote: July 17th, 2018, 12:19 am And some people, often religious, force isolation upon themselves and are “rewarded” for their “torture.”
And many if not most of these people consider the isolation, not an isolation but a social act. A communion with God. There will be different opinions of course on whether they are right. Religions have had a habit of wanting to break down the self, cut off desires, control the emotions. If people chose to do this to themelves, I have no objection. But to DO it to another is an act of violence.
Cutting someone off from society allows them to explore themselves - some don’t survive what they find. I would strongly argue that pandering to the incapacity to face yourself (socially maladjusted individuals) breed a different kind of mass social destruction.
I certainly think time alone is valuable, but the truth is you cannot face yourself if you are just alone. You will just experience certain facets. In encounters with others, especially intimate ones we are faced with deep portions of ourselves AND we are not in control. We wil be reacting to others whose behavior we cannot fully predict and they will be reacting to us.

There is tremendous avoidance in most self-imposed isolation.
The individual in isolation has more chance to reach deep into themselves and find universally applicable to society unlike those crying and moaning about their palce in society and expecting society to change to meet their myopic needs and wants.
Well, this a false dichotomy, first off. And again it is not an either or thing, nor are those the only two reactions. But further why the need to judge people for their longings for intimacy, given that we are social mammals and being close to others is what we normally tend towards and a large component of our lives.? If crying - which is a nartual human response - and whining are all you do, then you probably need to look at your habits - unless of course your family died in a fire in the last few years or you were abused for years as a child and are just coming into adulthood. In those situations you may even need to go deeper in your sorrow before the pattern can become more complex.
To sum up, without isolation from society there is no broad understanding of society. Everyone knows isolation to some extent, and some run from it (essentially running from themselves) and others run toward it (essentially running from themselves too!) What I would say is that the later has self-reflectoin on their side whilst the former goes into complete lock down and stagnation more often than not - cold comfort over uncomfortable change.
I see both as problematic, and if you take the option of either one away from someone - they can never be alone, or they can never be with other people, you are damaging them. And you cannot know yourself without both. The isolation need not be a cabin in the woods, but it needs to be time when you do not need to focus on others at all.
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Re: Social anxiety

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

Greta wrote: July 16th, 2018, 5:50 pm
Karpel Tunnel wrote: July 16th, 2018, 5:28 pmExile was often the judgment just under death in the old days.

Not torture or long imprisonment, but exile.

They knew they were ripping your self out by doing this.

Isolation in prison is a form of torture.
More than torture, exile was effectively a death sentence. Humans are individually fairly vulnerable animals and can only viably survive in groups. In that circumstance lies both humanity's salvation and punishment :)
I actually think people in the past could do fairly well in nature. We are not natural prey for most animals. And in many areas the large predators would seriously cut back when they still did exile. Wolves and bears were not so likely to take you down in Europe. They also had a chance to join groups in other places and this often happened. I mean, the exited often went to cities elsewhere. But this felt like a death. It was not their culture, they lost their friends and family. Their customs and language were not in use. It was like dying and being reborn as someone else.
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Re: Social anxiety

Post by Burning ghost »

Karpel -

Have you heard of micro adventures? Where people finish their work in the office, go climb a hill or venture into a forest, and stay there the night. Then they wake up and go straight into work the next day.

People do this willingly because they get something from it. There is a primal urge to be truly cut off from society.

And yes, I am not saying one is preferable to the other, but I would argue that encouraging people to think they are helping themselves by complaining about the state of their place in society instead of finding ways to adjust is likely more damaging to the individual becasue they are ignoring their individuality by expressing the problem as an external one rather than taking on their own faults and exploring their own myopic view in order to break free from it and deal better with life at large.

Murderers and rapists deserve that kind of “violence.” If we are going to start apologising for murderers and rapists as being merely “sick” people we’ve got an issue. Not that I would wholly disagree with looking upo criminal acts as symptomatic of some indivdual “illness”, but practically speaking the less ethically conditioned people of the world will simply use such sympathy as a weapon against well doers.

All this is hopefully pretty obvious stuff. The issue always remains in finding a practical and applicable means to put such “obvious” points to use to better indivduals and society at large - an ongoing and unsolvable task; yet a worthy task and one we all participate in willingly or not.
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