Quote:
Originally Posted by stopdog
Just acknowledging that my responses do reflect my general approach to life and that it does involve nihilism. Reading posts on psych central, I find a lot of hurt, misunderstanding, feeling unappreciated and so forth comes, in my opinion, from not focussing on oneself but rather from trying to take on responsibility that is not the actor's to do, and expecting others to be appreciative, or notice, or change in some fashion or to have some effect on others that, in my opinion, is unrealistic and destined to lead to hurt and messiness.
This is just my belief and certainly not everyone agrees with me. For all I know, no one else agrees with me. And I am not talking about any specific here. Just a general sense.
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Meanwhile, I was very much hurt by something you posted yesterday on a completely different thread - a post that appeared to be in this spirit. I am not saying this to attack you or tell you that you ought not to have posted that (especially as the original poster was not hurt), and I am not going to go into specifics because it really is not important. Also, I have had a night's sleep since then and am generally in a reasonably good state of mind, so I am no longer upset. I am just trying to discuss what you are saying in context.
We should not take on any responsibility for anybody but ourselves when we post to PC. But there is a
hell of a lot of hurt being caused on this forum by people who post without considering what the effect of their words might be. Of course we can't know how our posts will affect anybody else. And of course it is also possible to overthink this and worry too much about hurting others. (I throw away a lot of what I write without actually posting it because I am afraid of offending - and I still found out the hard way that I was on somebody's ignore list.) But you are making it sound as if it is always the addressee's "fault" or problem (and I use "addressee" in a wide sense, to mean everybody who reads a post) if they are hurt by something written, and by extention that it is a choice, based on a sense on personal responsibility, whether to get hurt or not, and I do not believe that is true at all. I know you did not use the word "fault" and that you did not make any value judgment - I am just too tired and in a bit of a hurry right now so I can't think of the right word in English.
Sorry for rambling on. I hope this makes sense. I am off to have breakfast and the go to the book binding workshop to finish three books I have started making over the last two days.