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Responsibility and Relationships
15 years ago
My observation on two subjects related and not related at the same time.
█ When it comes to matters of emotion (to which both these words are strongly tied) things tend to get out of hand, and out of hand quickly because people let their emotions fly way out of control, and way out of what should be deemed reasonable.
The way I deem it 'unreasonable' is when they fly to the level just to exploit people's empathy: This is what passive-aggressive people do. They go with the woe as me, I'm a victim of circumstance, everyone is against me lines of thought and wait for people around them to tell them they are wrong. I'm sure most of you know a person or ten that act like that now and then to a 24/7 thing, and that you're likely being taken advantage in that manner as well.
Now let me be clear on this, because the line is rather small, perhaps even blurry. I accept that there are indeed people who got the short end of the stick, that it seems the world is crushing down around them; I used to be one of those people (at times I still am). The thing of it is I was genuinely alone; I didn't have people to dump my self-pity on for attention and I had no one to talk to and go "oh woe, woe as me." I used no one as a shoulder, and eventually when I did have a shoulder to cry on, I picked myself up as best I could and not remain on that shoulder indefinitely in an attempt to drown a friend in my own self-pity.
Yet there are those who cry 24/7 never getting better, always blaming everyone but themselves for their troubles. It's the world, it's their friends; they treat them so unfairly. This drains the empathy out of people to the point in where someone is genuinely in a bad place that people have a hard time caring about their problems because they've been listening someone else do it non-stop. It's an easy way to create cynics out of people.
The main reason, above all else, why the world is in such horrible social state is no one takes responsibility for anyone or anything. It's always, always blame displacement.
Name 10 events in where someone took full responsibility for some crap that went down and took steps to resolve the issue. I can only name one off the top of my head, how sad is that? It was some food processing company in Canada that had a food poisoning problem, that was inspected, up to code, followed all the rules (and then some I believe), and yet there was food poisoning. They took full blame, compensated those who got sick, they recalled their product, and investigated the issue. The problem ended up being the equipment they used required the machine to be dismantled and cleaned on a regular basis due to food build up in some parts that couldn't be cleaned otherwise. Quite a brilliant design for a machine if I say so myself, and when I say brilliant I mean utterly stupid.
As far as most everyone else has tried to pin the blame one someone else before deciding "Okay okay, you got me, it's my fault." It doesn't matter if it's a company or a person, people don't take responsibility. Blame someone else, blame society, blame the situation, blame anyone but me. Blame alcohol, blame the government, blame temporary insanity, anyone but me.
From the greatest to the smallest of problems our modern society has faced, it's all due to a lack of responsibility. Personally I view responsibility as part of a core package of what we call being moral or honorable; yet it is missing from so many people's line of thinking. People are "responsible" enough to create systems with half a dozen redundant safety measures to prevent a disaster from happening, and yet the system fails because no one cares to enforce it. I think that a system requires half a dozen redundant safety measures in the first place is a testament to how irresponsible we are as a people. Any system should only need ONE redundancy measure to prevent disaster. That's it. Whatever we have in place shouldn't be breaking in the first place, the back up is there just in case it does. It's to the point of stupidity that we need a back up for the back up.
Yet this is how our world works now. Be it from government, to jobs, to things we see in our every day life. Our world is riddled with so many back-up plans and contingency measures that nothing is clear, and responsibility for anything is utterly impossible. Why take responsibility for yourself when it's literally someone's job to be responsible for you?
So I take a look at our children, where it all starts both literally and figuratively. Oh look, a pre-teen shot his parents to death, clearly the parents are the ones responsible for raising a bad child, and the child doesn't know better. Clearly it was the video games, or violent movies, or that brain washing music that corrupted this small individual. An extreme example perhaps, but in the end no one 'made' the kid pull the trigger. In the end the child will bear no responsibility. So what is the lesson learned? Not a damned thing.
We as a society raise our children as a society; parents be damned. Yet society takes no responsibility, they play the blame game. If you raise a kid in a society that takes no responsibility for it's actions, you expect the same of it's citizens? Laughable. You give children unrealistic goals and artificially inflated self-esteem and you become surprised when they have a self-entitlement complex? Yes, I can't possibly see how that could have come to pass. Hell, when I was young, they took out acknowledgments of excellence in my school because they didn't want other students feeling bad.
The worst part of all this responsibility business is that the ones who DO take responsibility are taken advantage of and flayed alive; because suddenly they become the reason for everything that's wrong in the world. How often are they praised for standing up and doing the right thing and admitting to their mistakes? Next to never. They only get the "AH-HAH! I KNEW IT!" shoved in their face and then proceed to get stone and flogged by everyone else.
█ So why am I even talking about 'responsibility' and the lack of it? Well it came up due to topic of commissions unpaid for. I'm sure most of you know about it, and how things went down is one of the main reasons why I don't do commissions until I'm paid first, as opposed to after the fact. It's my 'safe-guard' if you will.
As far as my opinions go on the matter, it goes along something like this: How much responsibility has an artist have in regards to a commission? To create the art. How much responsibility does the commissioner have? To pay for it. That's about it in a nutshell.
I mean it shouldn't really matter in what order it goes in, but I like getting the money up front because at least then the artist can refund the money. You can't undo the effort spent to create art.
I also understand that the commissioner can run into hard times and thus can't pay for a piece of work rendered, but again that falls into the realm of responsibility. Responsibility of one's own finances. A lot of people are irresponsible in this regards, running up huge credit card debts, and loans taken out.
Now I don't confuse honesty with responsibility. If someone was irresponsible with their finances, but are an honest person, then that person will strive to make things right once they get their fiances in order. To that I hope that's how things will play out.
As to an artist outting people as a bad commissioner, that's their right to do so. Though if my experiences in school have told me anything being a tattle-tale, trying to get a message out of so-and-so did wrong; you get flayed alive for doing that as well. As adults we call them whistle-blowers, and they still get flayed alive for doing that as well. It's just a matter of "Oh don't hire those guys, they'll whistle blow on us." That just means that perhaps every business out there have dishonest things to hide and don't want to be outed. Such a wonderful system we have. When I was young I became a tattle-tale because I was sick and tired of being taken advantage of and treated like crap and no longer cared what my 'peers' thought of me. Yet the stigma of it still remains: It's a dirty little secret, don't tell anyone, or you're going to regret it.
Though in any event, emotions will run high at times, and responsibility ends up meaning diddly squat. Instead the only thing that happens is a lot of finger wagging and shouting. It's how the world works right now and isn't isolated to just this whole art commission business.
Just how I see things; I hope people can rise above it, but it's a very small hope. Just the nature of being a cynic.
█ As to the relationship bit of this post, this only comes up because of simply being witness to people who do not understand the nature of it. They don't know what 'love' is.
Yeah sure you can go most people don't know what love is, and you'll never know unless you experience it for yourself lifting it up as some mythical legendary thing.
That's BS.
Love is simply this: The ability to care for someone (or something) more than you do yourself.
More over I know this to be the truth despite not experience it for myself, simply because I've been on the opposite end; that I was able to hate more than I cared for myself. It's an intoxicating effect.
Now, this is an important thing about 'love.' If you do not love yourself, your own love is worthless. Why? Because then it's all too easy to love other things more than yourself. If your life is worth so little, that you'd give your life up so someone else can have a sandwich, then in that context your life is worth... a sandwich.
Being in a relationship of any kind is a two way street. You give and you take. This applies to acquaintances, to friendships, to lovers. A healthy relationship is when you give something and it is accepted, and in return you are given something greater, and you accept that. This then repeats. If this isn't true; then your relationship is unhealthy and possibly abusive.
So how do I view my relationship to my viewership? What is the give and take here? Well what I give is art and a bunch of words, you as the viewer take that in and accept it. What I get in return, well is dependent on you all. I find this relationship to be a bit interesting, as what you give me is attention: View count goes up, a favorite here or there, a passing comment. These are all little tiny things that don't mean tooo much on their own really. I think the greatest thing given to me is the sense of acceptance; that I'm not alone in my thoughts and interests, that I belong somehow, someway. In that I accept happily. So I continue to share what I do, and I continue to share in your company no matter how tiny or large. I also do appreciate the trading of thoughts now and then as well, cause I certainly don't know everything and other people's points of view are interesting.
So I view you all as my partner in all of this, how can it be any other way? I also don't wish to abuse said partner, and I appreciate that you listen and accept me.
Though back to the love thing. If you want to truly be able to say you love someone, then you must be able to say that you are willing to give everything that you are to that person; that you would be willing to die for them. If you want to know if that person loves you back, then you know they would die for you as well; but at the same time would not let you die for their sake.
Not to say that this applies to lesser levels, cause it does; but being able to give all of yourself to another I think is the only appropriate cut-off line for love; because everything else is just different levels of caring. You know like lending money, or taking a punch, lending a shoulder, sharing time together.
That said, if you give all of yourself to another, and they don't do it in return; that does lead to abusive relationships. I'm sure most of you know the ones in where you have a girl with a boyfriend. Boyfriend beats and abuses the girl, apologizes with kind words and gifts and does it the next day. You know the whole "You shouldn't have pissed me off" line. The girl defends the boyfriend, saying he's a great person and just has some issues, who doesn't and that she can change him.
The girl does genuinely 'love' the boyfriend; but that's easy. The girl has low self-esteem and worth; it's easy to care for someone else more than yourself if you don't care about yourself. The boyfriend doesn't love the girl at all, and any love the boyfriend has is the possessive kind of love.
It is possible to have a one way street of love. Easiest example I can think of is the love of a car. If you come across one of these people, and you dare say a bad thing about his car, or worse yet touch it (let alone do something like scratch it) that guy could very well kill you. I don't even mean that in the hyperbolic sense either.
In reality that's what most relationships are: Possessive. It's an easy kind of relationship to determine: Much like how a man would get furious if he ever saw someone drive their car, if a man saw their 'girlfriend' with another guy...
Well I'm sure you know where I'm going with that one. I'm also sure people would disagree with me as well as it's your partner's responsibility to be faithful and loyal to you, but I'll still argue that kind of thought just shows that you hold the possessive kind of relationship as opposed to the give and take one.
Here's a thought for those of you who don't think their kind of care and love is not 'possessive': Do you make the other person make promises? If so realize that promises serve only one purpose: They are only good for being broken. I do mean that as people will get angry when a promise is broken. It is viewed as a betrayal of trust, but to even ask for a promise in the first place means you don't trust them. More over, if a person does their best not to break a promise, but it gets broken anyways the effort they spent trying not to break that promise is usually unacknowledged. They could have put their heart and soul into trying to keep their promise, and when it breaks in the end you only get hate, anger, and rage because the promise was broken. Making people promise things is just an expression of things you want for yourself, not the other person.
Additionally, do you get angry at a person for being themselves? Again, that's a possessive kind of relationship: You only care for your own values and not of the person you supposedly care for and their own happiness. if the argument here is that they don't let you be yourself either; then again the relationship you have is a destructive and or abusive in nature.
What I'm saying I guess is that you should be caring about the other person's happiness as opposed to stunting it just so you can be more happy. Who knows, I'm not exactly a councilor or a psychiatrist; I'm just some guy who draws art for my own entertainment and the entertainment of others. Though I do care for your happiness in some twisted way of thinking I guess. So I do my best to keep things within the boundaries are what I feel is good taste.
█ Anyways that's just me rambling on about 'life.' As usual I hope to get more art done in the near future, I still have like 7 other themes to make!
█ When it comes to matters of emotion (to which both these words are strongly tied) things tend to get out of hand, and out of hand quickly because people let their emotions fly way out of control, and way out of what should be deemed reasonable.
The way I deem it 'unreasonable' is when they fly to the level just to exploit people's empathy: This is what passive-aggressive people do. They go with the woe as me, I'm a victim of circumstance, everyone is against me lines of thought and wait for people around them to tell them they are wrong. I'm sure most of you know a person or ten that act like that now and then to a 24/7 thing, and that you're likely being taken advantage in that manner as well.
Now let me be clear on this, because the line is rather small, perhaps even blurry. I accept that there are indeed people who got the short end of the stick, that it seems the world is crushing down around them; I used to be one of those people (at times I still am). The thing of it is I was genuinely alone; I didn't have people to dump my self-pity on for attention and I had no one to talk to and go "oh woe, woe as me." I used no one as a shoulder, and eventually when I did have a shoulder to cry on, I picked myself up as best I could and not remain on that shoulder indefinitely in an attempt to drown a friend in my own self-pity.
Yet there are those who cry 24/7 never getting better, always blaming everyone but themselves for their troubles. It's the world, it's their friends; they treat them so unfairly. This drains the empathy out of people to the point in where someone is genuinely in a bad place that people have a hard time caring about their problems because they've been listening someone else do it non-stop. It's an easy way to create cynics out of people.
The main reason, above all else, why the world is in such horrible social state is no one takes responsibility for anyone or anything. It's always, always blame displacement.
Name 10 events in where someone took full responsibility for some crap that went down and took steps to resolve the issue. I can only name one off the top of my head, how sad is that? It was some food processing company in Canada that had a food poisoning problem, that was inspected, up to code, followed all the rules (and then some I believe), and yet there was food poisoning. They took full blame, compensated those who got sick, they recalled their product, and investigated the issue. The problem ended up being the equipment they used required the machine to be dismantled and cleaned on a regular basis due to food build up in some parts that couldn't be cleaned otherwise. Quite a brilliant design for a machine if I say so myself, and when I say brilliant I mean utterly stupid.
As far as most everyone else has tried to pin the blame one someone else before deciding "Okay okay, you got me, it's my fault." It doesn't matter if it's a company or a person, people don't take responsibility. Blame someone else, blame society, blame the situation, blame anyone but me. Blame alcohol, blame the government, blame temporary insanity, anyone but me.
From the greatest to the smallest of problems our modern society has faced, it's all due to a lack of responsibility. Personally I view responsibility as part of a core package of what we call being moral or honorable; yet it is missing from so many people's line of thinking. People are "responsible" enough to create systems with half a dozen redundant safety measures to prevent a disaster from happening, and yet the system fails because no one cares to enforce it. I think that a system requires half a dozen redundant safety measures in the first place is a testament to how irresponsible we are as a people. Any system should only need ONE redundancy measure to prevent disaster. That's it. Whatever we have in place shouldn't be breaking in the first place, the back up is there just in case it does. It's to the point of stupidity that we need a back up for the back up.
Yet this is how our world works now. Be it from government, to jobs, to things we see in our every day life. Our world is riddled with so many back-up plans and contingency measures that nothing is clear, and responsibility for anything is utterly impossible. Why take responsibility for yourself when it's literally someone's job to be responsible for you?
So I take a look at our children, where it all starts both literally and figuratively. Oh look, a pre-teen shot his parents to death, clearly the parents are the ones responsible for raising a bad child, and the child doesn't know better. Clearly it was the video games, or violent movies, or that brain washing music that corrupted this small individual. An extreme example perhaps, but in the end no one 'made' the kid pull the trigger. In the end the child will bear no responsibility. So what is the lesson learned? Not a damned thing.
We as a society raise our children as a society; parents be damned. Yet society takes no responsibility, they play the blame game. If you raise a kid in a society that takes no responsibility for it's actions, you expect the same of it's citizens? Laughable. You give children unrealistic goals and artificially inflated self-esteem and you become surprised when they have a self-entitlement complex? Yes, I can't possibly see how that could have come to pass. Hell, when I was young, they took out acknowledgments of excellence in my school because they didn't want other students feeling bad.
The worst part of all this responsibility business is that the ones who DO take responsibility are taken advantage of and flayed alive; because suddenly they become the reason for everything that's wrong in the world. How often are they praised for standing up and doing the right thing and admitting to their mistakes? Next to never. They only get the "AH-HAH! I KNEW IT!" shoved in their face and then proceed to get stone and flogged by everyone else.
█ So why am I even talking about 'responsibility' and the lack of it? Well it came up due to topic of commissions unpaid for. I'm sure most of you know about it, and how things went down is one of the main reasons why I don't do commissions until I'm paid first, as opposed to after the fact. It's my 'safe-guard' if you will.
As far as my opinions go on the matter, it goes along something like this: How much responsibility has an artist have in regards to a commission? To create the art. How much responsibility does the commissioner have? To pay for it. That's about it in a nutshell.
I mean it shouldn't really matter in what order it goes in, but I like getting the money up front because at least then the artist can refund the money. You can't undo the effort spent to create art.
I also understand that the commissioner can run into hard times and thus can't pay for a piece of work rendered, but again that falls into the realm of responsibility. Responsibility of one's own finances. A lot of people are irresponsible in this regards, running up huge credit card debts, and loans taken out.
Now I don't confuse honesty with responsibility. If someone was irresponsible with their finances, but are an honest person, then that person will strive to make things right once they get their fiances in order. To that I hope that's how things will play out.
As to an artist outting people as a bad commissioner, that's their right to do so. Though if my experiences in school have told me anything being a tattle-tale, trying to get a message out of so-and-so did wrong; you get flayed alive for doing that as well. As adults we call them whistle-blowers, and they still get flayed alive for doing that as well. It's just a matter of "Oh don't hire those guys, they'll whistle blow on us." That just means that perhaps every business out there have dishonest things to hide and don't want to be outed. Such a wonderful system we have. When I was young I became a tattle-tale because I was sick and tired of being taken advantage of and treated like crap and no longer cared what my 'peers' thought of me. Yet the stigma of it still remains: It's a dirty little secret, don't tell anyone, or you're going to regret it.
Though in any event, emotions will run high at times, and responsibility ends up meaning diddly squat. Instead the only thing that happens is a lot of finger wagging and shouting. It's how the world works right now and isn't isolated to just this whole art commission business.
Just how I see things; I hope people can rise above it, but it's a very small hope. Just the nature of being a cynic.
█ As to the relationship bit of this post, this only comes up because of simply being witness to people who do not understand the nature of it. They don't know what 'love' is.
Yeah sure you can go most people don't know what love is, and you'll never know unless you experience it for yourself lifting it up as some mythical legendary thing.
That's BS.
Love is simply this: The ability to care for someone (or something) more than you do yourself.
More over I know this to be the truth despite not experience it for myself, simply because I've been on the opposite end; that I was able to hate more than I cared for myself. It's an intoxicating effect.
Now, this is an important thing about 'love.' If you do not love yourself, your own love is worthless. Why? Because then it's all too easy to love other things more than yourself. If your life is worth so little, that you'd give your life up so someone else can have a sandwich, then in that context your life is worth... a sandwich.
Being in a relationship of any kind is a two way street. You give and you take. This applies to acquaintances, to friendships, to lovers. A healthy relationship is when you give something and it is accepted, and in return you are given something greater, and you accept that. This then repeats. If this isn't true; then your relationship is unhealthy and possibly abusive.
So how do I view my relationship to my viewership? What is the give and take here? Well what I give is art and a bunch of words, you as the viewer take that in and accept it. What I get in return, well is dependent on you all. I find this relationship to be a bit interesting, as what you give me is attention: View count goes up, a favorite here or there, a passing comment. These are all little tiny things that don't mean tooo much on their own really. I think the greatest thing given to me is the sense of acceptance; that I'm not alone in my thoughts and interests, that I belong somehow, someway. In that I accept happily. So I continue to share what I do, and I continue to share in your company no matter how tiny or large. I also do appreciate the trading of thoughts now and then as well, cause I certainly don't know everything and other people's points of view are interesting.
So I view you all as my partner in all of this, how can it be any other way? I also don't wish to abuse said partner, and I appreciate that you listen and accept me.
Though back to the love thing. If you want to truly be able to say you love someone, then you must be able to say that you are willing to give everything that you are to that person; that you would be willing to die for them. If you want to know if that person loves you back, then you know they would die for you as well; but at the same time would not let you die for their sake.
Not to say that this applies to lesser levels, cause it does; but being able to give all of yourself to another I think is the only appropriate cut-off line for love; because everything else is just different levels of caring. You know like lending money, or taking a punch, lending a shoulder, sharing time together.
That said, if you give all of yourself to another, and they don't do it in return; that does lead to abusive relationships. I'm sure most of you know the ones in where you have a girl with a boyfriend. Boyfriend beats and abuses the girl, apologizes with kind words and gifts and does it the next day. You know the whole "You shouldn't have pissed me off" line. The girl defends the boyfriend, saying he's a great person and just has some issues, who doesn't and that she can change him.
The girl does genuinely 'love' the boyfriend; but that's easy. The girl has low self-esteem and worth; it's easy to care for someone else more than yourself if you don't care about yourself. The boyfriend doesn't love the girl at all, and any love the boyfriend has is the possessive kind of love.
It is possible to have a one way street of love. Easiest example I can think of is the love of a car. If you come across one of these people, and you dare say a bad thing about his car, or worse yet touch it (let alone do something like scratch it) that guy could very well kill you. I don't even mean that in the hyperbolic sense either.
In reality that's what most relationships are: Possessive. It's an easy kind of relationship to determine: Much like how a man would get furious if he ever saw someone drive their car, if a man saw their 'girlfriend' with another guy...
Well I'm sure you know where I'm going with that one. I'm also sure people would disagree with me as well as it's your partner's responsibility to be faithful and loyal to you, but I'll still argue that kind of thought just shows that you hold the possessive kind of relationship as opposed to the give and take one.
Here's a thought for those of you who don't think their kind of care and love is not 'possessive': Do you make the other person make promises? If so realize that promises serve only one purpose: They are only good for being broken. I do mean that as people will get angry when a promise is broken. It is viewed as a betrayal of trust, but to even ask for a promise in the first place means you don't trust them. More over, if a person does their best not to break a promise, but it gets broken anyways the effort they spent trying not to break that promise is usually unacknowledged. They could have put their heart and soul into trying to keep their promise, and when it breaks in the end you only get hate, anger, and rage because the promise was broken. Making people promise things is just an expression of things you want for yourself, not the other person.
Additionally, do you get angry at a person for being themselves? Again, that's a possessive kind of relationship: You only care for your own values and not of the person you supposedly care for and their own happiness. if the argument here is that they don't let you be yourself either; then again the relationship you have is a destructive and or abusive in nature.
What I'm saying I guess is that you should be caring about the other person's happiness as opposed to stunting it just so you can be more happy. Who knows, I'm not exactly a councilor or a psychiatrist; I'm just some guy who draws art for my own entertainment and the entertainment of others. Though I do care for your happiness in some twisted way of thinking I guess. So I do my best to keep things within the boundaries are what I feel is good taste.
█ Anyways that's just me rambling on about 'life.' As usual I hope to get more art done in the near future, I still have like 7 other themes to make!
I won't have any troubles commissioning you and paying you in advance... but I still need to make a reference sheet before hand.
That's some really deep thoughs on "love"... if only I met love to experience it. But like you said, to know the real "love", you need to "love" yourself first. I just keep avoiding love, I guess. Meh, I'll start by sleeping early. One thing at a time. Hehe. ^'===='^;
But what that disapointment of not making the junior league team was... It was an incentive to find what you have that are special, if everyone makes the cut... why and how do you look beyound and elsewhere....
just my 2 cents
I'm going to memorize this so I can take the fight to the fools in my life.
I wish you could favorite Journals XD this would sooooo make it.
For example, getting or keeping a job is one of the most important things in most people's lives. Do personal diligence and effort affect your chances of finding or keeping a job? Absolutely. Are they the only factors involved? Absolutely not. In the current economic climate, they may not even be the most important ones. People who in good times would have no trouble whatsoever landing a decent job are finding themselves unemployed lately, and it's not hard to sympathise with them when they blame factors out of their control for their situation.
I'm not saying that personal responsibility isn't a good thing. But people's success in life nowadays is affected just as much by their employer's financial situation or the state of the economy as a whole as it is by their own personal efforts. You could say that society's issues are causing personal irresponsibility, rather than the other way around.
Also, as a watcher on FA I always felt vaguely like a gold-digger, trading affection for material reward. Of course, the reward in this case is porn rather than money, but hey. Analogy still holds. I hope.
As I noted, when it comes to the responsibility of the artist and the commissioner, it's to create the art, and to pay for the art. That's it.
Creating excuses down the road means a failure of responsibility, but that's what many people do. Yeah horrible things do happen; but playing the blame game is pointless. It's a pointless game because no one ends up being responsible. Where does it end? Don't blame the commissioner, blame their job instead. Don't blame the job, blame the economy. Don't blame the economy, blame society. Blame everyone but me. Hell, blame the artist even.
This is the culture of everyone wins, no one loses. That mistakes are blameless and is the fault of parents, friends, authority figures; anyone but the person who made the mistake. No responsibility.
I don't think the term gold-digger, is all that bad if the affection is real and that people wish to reciprocate with art. People just give what they have the ability to do. Most people it's just friendship, but I'd say that's a pretty valuable thing.
...when it comes to commissioning art though, I'd agree with you absolutely. I'd feel kinda bad too taking money from someone I felt was worse-off than I was. How can you tell online who can afford it and who probably can't, though?
Guilt by association is ridiculous on the whole, and gets extremely fuzzy when it becomes guilt through enabling (I'd need a whole other journal to get through that line of thought)
And no there's no real way to determine if someone is on hard financial times without talking and getting to know that person; but on a whole it's safe to say that most people aren't that well off. A few thousand dollars probably separates most individuals from poverty to homelessness.
Also, it's pretty awesome that you're replying to loads of the journal comments like this. Not many artists with thousands of watchers take the time to talk with mere mortals. Though I guess after you'd turned out an essay the size and scope of the one above, a few one-paragraph replies don't seem like too much of a burden, baha.
I don't blame you for going on a tangent either, it's very hard for people to stay on topic, or follow a train of thought because there's always other things that will tug in one direction or another. How things are today there's a lot of spin, spin, spin to get people away from the core of the issue. Society in general sucks, and a lot of people are abandoned by it, others are rendered powerless within it; though again those are other things that would require whole other journal entries. >>
Anyways, I'll stop bothering you now. Was fun though, you seem pretty good-natured. Feel free to IM me anytime if you're feeling bored. Info in my profile, natch.
The second half, I like your symbolism of how much worth your love is based on how much you care for yourself. That's an interesting point of view, which I'll add to my list of thoughts.
Not sure whether this part was more about personal relationships with a sidethought about artist-viewer relationship, or the other way round. They feel kinda different, though.
Personal reflections...
Would I die for someone? No, I don't think so. For myself? Probably not, either. Hm.
Though as to the thoughts of the weight of love, I think for the most part it's true. Egotistical self-centered people have a great love of themselves, and almost, never, ever have a love of anyone else. Usually if someone with a huge ego learns to love someone else more than themselves, they at the same time learns humility. As to the flip-side, people with relatively low self-esteem tend to fall in love with people rather easily, frighteningly so.
'Oh he's just having a bad day' ... 'Oh he's just coming down off that weed, he'll be fine' ... 'Oh he's actually really sweet most of the time.'
Bullshit.
For me its hard for me to fight the urge to consider such women that go through this as weak willed and stupid. It's hard for me to understand otherwise. My learning experience has always been based off of the things I know I didn't want but have never really seen and lived with an example of how things should be done. It's all abuse by someone controlling and a weak-willed recipient that can't accept life without all that pain and misery from someone that can't ever love them 'properly'.
Where does that strength come from? Where does it go? That's a question I've never been able to answer. The person going through this can't seem to summon up the strength and they ignore everyone that tries to save them. So what is one supposed to do? It's that feeling of helplessness I endure on a regular basis as I see my loved one's lives crumble with the realization that there's nothing I could do, or could have done, if they don't want to help themselves.
Once again, thank you for your personal input, even if thanking it might sound out of place/odd etc.
This unit returns to its stalking duties now.
However a few good points came out of this; the one I wish to touch on being personal responsibility.
I am a firm believer in socialism; public funded social service, EI, health-care, regulation of industry etc. etc. but what I dislike with a passion is the hordes of people who have sued fun out quite a few things. The parents you described; filling their kids with an id that can never hope to be satisfied and creating a feeling of entitlement that will continue for the rest of their lives are a huge problem; and they're called generation X. I'm pretty sure they are, at any rate, since I had boomer parents and they were ruthless in making sure I knew the value of anything material and the consequences of my own actions. Generation X parents seem to have coddled their kids to a disgusting degree; bought them every toy and thing they ever asked for and generally made a mess out of things by not being able to set reasonable limits on their children's expectations.
Moral of my story there; yeah, for overentitlement it's the parent's fault. They DEMANDED from the insitutions that they follow their own code of overindulgence and the institutions have meekly complied. So I blame Generation X... I guess. What personal responsibility to I have? Not bucking the trend enough when growing up with a huge group of self-obsessed kids.
I recently went and met a friend of mine from FA and really wanted to go out with her. She ended up being exactly who she was, but the lack of responsibility showed, as well as her immaturity. She was spoiled, i ended up buying her alot of stuff too. In the end, I gave up the love interest, since I couldn't handle the immaturity for her age...i have a job, go to college, and went out of my way to go see her, and all she did was sit in her room and play videogames, ranting how much her life "sucked" and stuff.
When I got home...guess what? She ends the friendship, without thinking twice about it, and blames me for everything!...even though it was her immature actions that started it all. Its already been a month and i've moved on, back in school again...what she doing? Still blaming me for the things she caused.
So many people are like that sadly, but your right about it. They don't wanna take responsibilities for their actions and want to blame someone else for them. As they say though, "You reap what you sow"