Saturday, November 24, 2012

Fear and self-loathing in not-Las Vegas

I don't usually like writing confessional blog posts that border on throwing oneself a pity party, but I'll like to begin this post with a little confession: I suffer from self-loathing. At least, that's what Wikipedia says. I don't consciously hate myself, but I do experience feelings of dislike and antipathy towards people whom I see as belonging to groups that I either belong to or identify with. Wikipedia also tells me that such feelings may be associated with feelings of autophobia. I've no idea if this is true. In any case, I'm not going to try to use Wikipedia to self-diagnose. But I'm saying all this to give you some idea of where I'm coming from.

Here's a very recent example of this self-loathing/autophobia. First, a little background story. At the coffeeshop near my home that I do my work at, there's another regular, a young guy in his mid-twenties who started coming to this coffeeshop a couple of months ago, and whom I've spoken with a couple of times. He got a degree in accounting from a nice private Catholic university in the Midwest a couple of years ago, then decided that accounting really wasn't his thing. So he went on to get an MFA in creative writing, and he's now trying to bang out a screenplay while reading novels by contemporary writers (Jonathan Franzen, etc.) in his spare time. I've no idea what he does to pay his bills, nor do I want to know. Let's call this guy the Aspiring Screenwriter (AS).

After speaking with AS a couple of times, I consciously and unconsciously began to stop talking with him. Not in an aggressive or rude kind of way: I'd just come into the coffeeshop, get my coffee, greet him in a perfunctory kind of way, and then sit down in my little corner and start working on whatever I happen to be working on that particular day. Not all of this is motivated by self-loathing; I also have a certain aversion towards talking with people in a non-professional context about what I am working on (see this post for more details), because everybody seems to think that just because I work in bioethics, they have something authoritative and insightful to add to what I am doing, and frankly, I'm starting to find that very annoying. I am totally aware that I am probably adding to this stereotype that many have of professional philosophers as aloof people who walk around with their heads in the clouds and cannot relate to "ordinary" people. But well, it is what it is.

But I digress. Back to the main story. Yesterday, my fiancee and I were at the coffeeshop having coffee, and AS was sitting at the table next to ours, working on his screenplay. He saw us, and tried to make conversation. He asked me how my work was going. I replied, "It's going." And then I turned back to my coffee. But then I felt that since my fiancee was with me, and she had never met him before, it would be very rude not to at least introduce them. So I did. I also pointed out to my fiancee that he also used to live in Milwaukee, where we lived for a year. That started a pleasant conversation going between the three of us. We started by talking about our favorite places in Milwaukee. From there, we somehow drifted into talking about literature, and the influence and interactions between literature and religion and the ills of the twentieth century, like anti-semitism and the rise of Hitler.

I really enjoyed our impromptu and spontaneous conversation. At the same time, I also realized that what caused the conversation to be so enjoyable for me was also precisely what caused me to avoid speaking with him most of the time. I sense that we have a lot of things in common, but at the same time, I also have this prejudiced perception of writers and literary/creative types as flakes who talk a lot about stuff but never get stuff done. In a way, you could even say that much of my adult life has been spent trying to make myself into a different kind of flake: A flake who actually gets things done. I mean, think about it: How many flakes do you know get up at 4:30 a.m. five or six days a week to practice yoga? Or maybe the very idea of a flake who gets things done is an oxymoron. Which makes me a walking oxymoron. In any case, what I'm trying to say is this: My self-loathing self perceives the flake in others, which reminds of the flake that is in me. And this reminding makes me not want to have too much to do with people who remind me of the flake in myself. Does this make sense?

8 comments:

  1. of course it makes sense. the most annoying features of my children are the most annoying features of my own :-) and of course at the same time I want to change/teach them something I have no idea about :-)
    anyway I also don't analize myself by wikipedia, who does that?! for example I hardly remember that article on wiki about Karen Horney, it's about theory of self... in Polish it is 'wyidealizowany obraz siebie'. anyway the piont is that one's ideal self gets stronger and turns the real self into despised self. if you know all of this, my apologies.
    I also don't remember anything about self-fulfilling prophecy read on wikipedia. I simply don't :-)
    like your post. AGAIN.

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    1. Thanks for liking my post :-) No, I actually don't know anything about Karen Horney: I'm going to go look her up on Wikipedia after this :-)

      "one's ideal self gets stronger and turns the real self into despised self"

      Very true. Sounds very much like Existentialism... Have you read Dostoevsky or Sartre? Come to think of it, maybe a big part of Existentialism is a big exercise in self-loathing...

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    2. I did fell in love with Camus and Sartre when I was in (at?) high school. I read all the Kafka's books. last year I tried to read "Plague" by Camus and I couldn't because of the language. it seemd too exalted. but I still have that thought from "Stranger" I guess: if one lived one day as a free man, he can spend the rest of life in prison still feeling free. I hate that idea, I feel so-not-free.
      and he got Nobel Prize for that and other ideas of that kind :-) and I love it.

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    3. I haven't read Camus in a long time. I very vividly remember the Stranger, though, especially that part where he talks about the benign indifference of the universe. I'll like to read "The Fall" again. Didn't quite get into it when I read it during my Junior year in college.

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  2. Sounds more like anxiety and fear to me. What if you knew for a fact that AS was going to sell his screenplay, become rich and famous, and live happily ever after? Would you still think he's a flake and not want to talk to him? My guess is no. So it's not that you hate creative types, it's that you're worried that they are deluding themselves about their capacities and won't succeed at what they aspire to do. Which sounds like a pretty common anxiety for non-tenured academics in less marketable fields to have. Don't be so hard on yourself!

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    1. Actually, if I knew for a fact that AS was going to sell his screenplay and become rich and famous and whatnot... I'm not sure what I'd do. Something tells me I'd probably try to get into his good graces so he'll remember me when he gets famous, but then again, I might be too nervous and intimidated to actually do that :-)

      But seriously, I think you are right that I am very much projecting my worries about the creative lifestyle onto others. Thanks!

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  3. "Or maybe the very idea of a flake who gets things done is an oxymoron. Which makes me a walking oxymoron. In any case, what I'm trying to say is this: My self-loathing self perceives the flake in others, which reminds of the flake that is in me. And this reminding makes me not want to have too much to do with people who remind me of the flake in myself. Does this make sense?"

    I find this in myself. I want so badly to believe that I am not a flake, yet at the same time, it's very hard for me to see myself as being someone who gets things done, even though many other people think that I have accomplished a lot in my life. But it's never enough, so I continue to think of myself as a flake or a person who has aspirations that do not come into fruition. When I see another person writing or doing something creative -- something that I wish I could do -- I can't help but think they are fooling themselves. Perhaps it's because I have known a LOT of writers and creative types who never actually get anything done.

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    1. Perhaps Carol above is right, Jryad, that we are being a little too hard on ourselves. You (we?) may have a hard time seeing ourselves as people who get things done, but perhaps, when all is said and done, the truth is quite different :-)

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