Thinking Everyone Is Out to Get You (1 Viewer)

Isaac

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Boy, does this article explain [what we already knew] a lot about the current state of certain things in our society - quite fascinating.

As usual, it's "studies have shown" coming 75 years after anyone with common sense already knew this, but, ya know, some people like a Study before they believe anything!


The truth, however, is very different. Previous studies have shown that people who tend to see the world as dangerous overreact to threats and see threats that aren’t there.

Those who are taught from a young age that "everyone is out to get you, everyone hates you because of X___ thing, everyone is holding you back, if you don't get what you want it's their fault"............Those people, magically, tend to FIND that imagined oppression EVERYWHERE. You can tell as soon as you pass them, it's that defiant "you lookin at me?!?" attitude. It's the bitterness and frustration caused by decades of believing that the way your day goes, or your month, year, career, or bank account must be everyone else's fault. Despite the fact that we all know what the inputs/ingredients of those outcomes are, and they are about .001% connected to anyone else's choices.

I don't own a home? It's because of what Dad taught me, "they" are holding me back
I don't make as much money as my neighbor did? It must be because "my bosses hate me because of that thing"

... Rather than, I don't own a home b/c my credit score wasn't good enough, because I didn't pay my bills back. I don't make as much money as my neighbor does because I haven't made the smart and hard decisions they have for long enough yet.

Thinking about these issues now, I have to be very grateful, honestly. It is not to my credit that I escaped this type of worldview. It's to my parents' credit.
As young people on the verge of growing up, we were never taught to even dream that our consequences were anyone else's. They were ours.
When I struggled for a few years in middle age, I knew why, and I looked inward to solve the problems.

If we can get our society back to that sense of personal responsibility, boy would we have a lot more happier, successful people. Who would then be more likely to get along as a by-product.
 

Pat Hartman

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I don't ever remember being told as a child by anyone - family, teachers, other adults- you can't do that because you're a "girl".
 

The_Doc_Man

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To shorten Isaac's comments, the world is getting entirely too full of victims. I'm not sure that personal responsibility will give us a lot of happier people. However, it would probably disappoint a lot of lawyers who would have fewer clients.

Nor can we forget that just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you.
 

Isaac

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To shorten Isaac's comments, the world is getting entirely too full of victims. I'm not sure that personal responsibility will give us a lot of happier people. However, it would probably disappoint a lot of lawyers who would have fewer clients.

Nor can we forget that just because you aren't paranoid doesn't mean everyone isn't out to get you.
well, if sustained over a period of time, it produces success/comfort/relative wealth etc. Which generally helps people to at least a modicum of contentment. As well as free un-incarcerated people, which can't hurt.

(although, as Happiness Psychology has proven....only up to about $70k in the USA, at which point, further wealth alone produces no further happiness)

for me personally, when i am blaming everyone else i tend to experience the least satisfaction in life. taking responsibility (especially for the things that truly do have little to nothing to do with others) requires some painful effort, but leads to more satisfaction in the long run.
 

NauticalGent

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I don't want to be "that guy" who starts a sentence with "back in my day..."

BUT...

My father would not accept excuses as to why I failed to get something done, very rare exceptions. If I complained about how someone else got something I wanted, he usually would point out some way I could have done something better to achieve my goals.

Not saying it made me a better person, but it has saved some folks of hearing me whine!
 

The_Doc_Man

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There is a fine line to be carefully trod there... my dad rode my toches about achievement to the point that I wondered if I would EVER be good enough for him. Even an occasional "attaboy" would have helped. The stress factors were astounding. Took me two different therapists several years apart to finally unwind myself, because for a while there I was pretty well wound up around my axle.
 

NauticalGent

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Agreed. To his credit, he was always quick to give accolades. It was only when I tried to make excuses that he would admonish me for being a "crybaby"
 

Isaac

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Good points both. Like I said, I was very lucky when it came to my Dad, and I am well aware of how grateful I need to be.
It also made me aware of just how powerful fathering is ... which brings a lot of clarity to my understanding of the current state of our society and how much more good would come of simply having families, moms, dads, etc. But it's the "dads" part that's obviously doing most of the missing.

And @NauticalGent I love a good "back in my day" story. Don't even get me started on how utterly, incalculably under-utilized the concept of learning from the past, from older people, from tradition, etc. is in our society. Asian societies certainly got something right there!
Listening to people who have gone before you in life is one of the most missed opportunities (that also comes free) in our day and age.
Including me, I don't do it often enough.

What is that amazing bit of saying/prose about the stages in a person's life and how they view their Dad's advice? I can't find it and don't know if it has a known author but wish I could now. I know for me I'm 43 and frequently find myself finally "coming to terms" with just how right my Dad was...after 40 years of wasting my time thinking about it wrong.
 

jdraw

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I think this encompasses the thought:
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years
 

Pat Hartman

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about the stages in a person's life and how they view their Dad's advice?
When my daughter was a teenager, she was impossible to live with. She eventually grew out of it and by the time she was in her 20's, she figured out that I wasn't as stupid as I looked. Which brings me to a funny/scary story.

When she was ~ 12 we took a trip to the Costa del Sol and a day-trip across the strait of Gibraltar to Tangier. She was tall for her age, with brilliant (in the sun) blond hair and very pretty (she still is). We were wandering in the Souk and this young boy a couple of years older than my daughter came up to us and offered us 2,000 camels for her. We both reached out and grabbed her hands and the boy realized we didn't take is comment in the spirit in which he intended it and apologized. Years later out of curiosity I looked up the price of a camel and it was $2,000 so once she got past her "teenage" phase, I would tease her that if we had known what a terror she was going to be for the next 8 years we would have sold her on the spot:)
 

Isaac

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Sorry Isaac, for us old guys your "back in the day" wasn't that long ago. :rolleyes:
I know, and it scares me, if I'm tired now, how will I feel when I'm you're age? Better start hitting my vitamins!
PS, I was referring to NG's "back in the day" story, not mine..The point was that I welcome older people's stories/advice, not that I give them.
However, the age difference between me and my parents is unusually large, so I sometimes feel "connected" to a more traditional generation than many people my age do - and seem to have little in common with others my age.

"It's all relative", as they say. Just as much as a 65 yr old chuckles at me thinking I'm old, I also know that 65 yr old gets the same treatment when they think they're old and the 80 yr old next to them chuckles - "you're just a kid" LOL.
All a matter of perspective....and the best ones always remind themselves to invite older people's perspective and simultaneously question their own.
 
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Isaac

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I think this encompasses the thought:
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years
Yes! The one I saw was a paragraph that kind of halfway-poetically walked through 4-6 stages of a person's life wish I could find it but that's the gist.
The younger you are when it finally dawns on you that that's the way it is (constantly realizing the wisdom you had the opportunity to learn earlier, but didn't).......the better of you'll be, it seems to me
 

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