headin' home

[mdrnprometheus]

I think one of the things I missed most about travel was the chace to introspect. you spend a lot of time waiting in lines, killing short periods here and there, and generally in transition. Plus, you get jarred out of your familiar surroundings, which makes you reconsider patterns

Comments

[rebeccavich]

I don't think we were all *that* broken...

[mdrnprometheus]

I think you forget just how dysfunctional we could be. We've mostly done ten years of growing up and getting better. (Except, of course, for some mutual acquaintances of ours who are still stuck in the same patterns.)

[rebeccavich]

granted re: the ten years, although I guess I take a lot of the former dysfunction as freely and openly chosen, and therefore less "serious" than the kind that's an expression of internal fucked-uppedness that one isn't even aware of as it plays itself out in your life. Of course, one could argue that the former kind of dysfunction doesn't actually exist.

But seriously. Taking me, for example, I don't think there was anything seriously wrong with me, really, except self-confidence, which was only confined to limited areas of my life. Or Mike? Or Tim? I don't see huge issues.

[mdrnprometheus]

Um. So, I do not think it is a very good idea for me to start listing all of the people who I love and the specific way in which I think they are and/or were messed up. This does not seem conducive to keeping friends. As you will recall, Tim is still basically not speaking to me over comments expressed nearly ten years ago regarding differing opinions about ethics.

I would in fact argue that "freely chosen dysfunction" is a bit of an oxymoron. Certainly, one can choose to march to a different drummer, and that's often adaptive. BUT, many people I know, and I've certainly been guilty of this myself, tend to take this a bit like an alcoholic saying he can quit anytime he wants to. By stating awareness of the ways in which we're offensive/annoying/self-sabotaging, we sometimes abdicate responsibility for actually *doing* something about it.

If it were actually adaptive, i.e. bringing more benefits than pains, it wouldn't be a dysfunction.

[rebeccavich]

Well, yes, clearly, I wasn't actually expecting you to start gossiping in semi-public lj about anyone other than me. I guess I still feel that although yes, issues, serious ones, were present, dysfunction is an awfully strong and negative descriptor. Dysfunction doesn't tend to just go away, it continues to be dysfunctional, to stunt progress, to limit. So it begs the question of how a group of allegedly dysfunctional individuals got to be a set of largely highly functioning individuals, unless we weren't all that dysfunctional to begin with.

[mdrnprometheus]

Well, I can definitely say, given my specialty, that there is plenty of messed-up at the very low-functioning end of the curve. I think it impresses me more here *because* they're smart people. We're talking about some of the higher-end (academically, not socially -- no hobnobbing with future presidents here) minds at an Ivy League institution. The prevalence of bad choices is striking.

Of course, when I lived it myself, it seemed totally reasonable, and perhaps what I'm seeing is just generalized immaturity, which would be normative for this sample. That may be more parsimonious.

[shmike95]

Impressed at the similarity of your reaction to that situation to the reactions to similar situations that I have experienced over the years.

[mdrnprometheus]

I think you win the vagueness award today, Shmike. :-)

You're seeing a similarity in my reaction to this vs prior situations *I've* experienced, or you're seeing a similarity in my reaction to *your* reaction to other situations? If the latter, duh -- we're old.

[shmike95]

we're old...

leads to vague lj comments...

Of course, I'm sitting here with customers in a PoC. So I'm distracted too...