[overflow] Re: GHHS

[Lee Gold <leeway@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob 'Autographed Cat' Wynne wrote:
> 
> But I've stressed to people for years that you only need take to heart the
> opinions of those who you respect.  Everyone is entitled to their opinions,
> but they are not entitled to have you accept them.  As Eleanor Roosevelt
> once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

I wish it were that easy to shrug off brainwashing but the Big Lie
still works unless you're very careful.  

I remember the feeling of enlightenment and empowerment I felt when
a Scottish subscriber to my gaming magazine proudly told me that
his heritage forbade him to object to my having saved him some
money by retyping his double-spaced first zine as single-spaced.
My own parents had been so affected by the nasty stereotype of
money-grubbing Jews that they were unable to ever act publicly
as if they were watching how much they spent.  And I have a 
black friend who refuses to eat watermelon because of the
strereotype of his race.  

I warn people that deliberately defying others and 
repudiating stereotypes gives the others as much power as 
deliberately obeying them.  You're not free until you can go
your own way without caring what other people think.  

But we're not lone wolves (bad phrase that:  wovles are 
pack animals).  We're not tigers or other solitaries; we're
social animals and people who genuinely don't care what other
people think -- even other people they don't respect -- 
aren't mentally healthy.  

The big diffreence is that when we're adults, we can pick our
own friends (and even choose to minimize our associations with
our relatives), and most co-workers try to get on with one
another because that's how you get work done.  Unfortunately,
that ethic isn't usually applied to school socializing, and 
that's why children are allowed to spend so much time 
picking on one another instead of having adults focus on
the work or games the children are supposedly doing.  (And I
wonder whether the cure for bullying and being bullied might
be just special assignments for everybody involved to fill up
what was obviously too much spare time that they didn't know how
to use properly.)

--Lee