The summer of 1990, my friends and I took a trip to Israel. We traveled all over the country, spending a few nights in each major city. A few weeks into the trip, we spent the night at a youth hostel right by the Masada. We were to climb the mountain early in the morning, before it got unbearably hot.
As we chitchatted in the yard of the hostel, a group of Americans joined our conversation. At 15, I already knew that I wanted to attend college in the United States and I also knew that I wanted to study computer science. As I told one of the American strangers about my life goals and dreams, he said, “If you want to study computers, you should go to Carnegie Mellon.”
I had never heard of CMU, so I ran back to my little room and scribbled the name of the university in my diary. After I returned back to Istanbul, I did some research and found out that CMU was indeed quite a well-regarded computer science college. I even flew halfway across the world to visit the campus and fell in love with it. So I spent the next few months working, praying, and begging to get in.
And I did.
The winter of 1996, a few months before I graduated college, I cut my Christmas break early and flew back from Turkey to New York. In New York, I changed planes to reach my final destination, Boston. That winter happened to be a particularly bad one so our flight sat on the ground for quite some time and we were stuck inside the plane. I’d already been flying for twelve hours so to say that I was slightly anxious to get there wouldn’t be an exaggeration.
I was thoroughly bored and trying to stay awake, so I started chatting with the gentleman seated next to me. I truly can’t remember how the subject matter came up but we started talking about programming. I started talking about interviewing. He asked me if I’d ever heard of a specific firm and I said, “Sure. They recruit heavily at CMU. They’re mostly looking for Cobol programmers, though.” We started discussing the details of several different programming languages. Our plane was still sitting on the ground.
After an hour or so, the gentleman took out his business card and handed it over to me. Of course, he worked at the firm I’d just dissed and he was a Vice President. He got my email address and asked me to come down to New Jersey for an interview. Which I did, and after presenting me a book on Cobol, he offered me a job.
And I took it. (Actually I didn’t, but wouldn’t my story be neater if I had?)
I’ve had many incredible coincidences, random strangers who completely changed my life.
Sometimes life works in magical ways.
And if you’re sitting on a plane, make sure to talk to the person next to you.
Previously? Crappy Men.
Dura è la stella mia, maggior durezza
è quella del mio conte: egli mi fugge,
i’ seguo lui; altri per me si strugge,
i’ non posso mirar altra bellezza.
Odio chi m’ama, ed amo chi mi sprezza;
verso chi m’è umile il mio cor rugge,
e son umil con chi mia speme adugge;
a così stranio cibo ho alma avezza.
Egli ognor dà cagione a novo sdegno,
essi mi cercan dar conforto e pace:
i’ lasso questi, ed a quell’un m’attegno.
Così ne la tua scola, Amor, si face
sempre il contrario di quell ch’egli è dagno:
l’umil si sprezza, e l’empio si compiace.
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Harsh is my fortune, but harsher still is the fate
dealt me by my count: he flees from me,
I follow him; others long for me,
I cannot look at another man’s face.
I hate him who loves me,love him who scorns me;
against the humble lover, my heart rebels,
but I am humble to him who kill my hope;
my soul longs for such harmful food.
He constantly gives me cause for anger,
while others seek to give me comfort and peace;
these I ignore, and I cling instead to him.
Thus in your school, Love, we receive
always the opposite of what we deserve:
the humble are despised, the heartless rewarded.
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The above sonnet is Sonnet 43 by Gaspara Stampa. She was influenced by the well known poet Petrarch.
Reading this poem reminded me of a pattern I frequently observed in my female friends since high school. For some reason most of my female friends were attracted to typical “bad boys” and quickly got bored with the nice, caring men who liked them. I never fully understood the fascination of the ‘bad’ but I noticed it with enough consistency that I can be sure Gaspara wasn’t the only one who suffered from this phenomenon.
It seems the nice men have a low dangerousness quotient and are therefore less interesting to be around. They often make great friends but are rarely ever picked as a potential boyfriend. Of course, choosing the guy who makes your life more challenging becomes a major hazard in the long term. Invariably the guy cheats on you, abuses you verbally or, worse, physically or just ups and leaves. If he didn’t do any of the above, he wouldn’t qualify as the dangerous and exciting partner to have.
Almost all of my friends were acutely aware of the stupidity of their decisions, but yet they kept making the same choice over and over again, falling to pieces at the end of each one.
I remember a friend who kept turning down really wonderful guys who were interested in her. Guys who cared about who she was and what her thoughts and feelings might be. Instead she’d go for the good-looking guy who chose her for her looks and never really cared about her words. For some inexplicable reason being with this guy would make her feel good about herself. Even if the guy drank too much and trashed her place, she was dating the cool guy and that’s all that mattered.
I’ve made a few misjudgments of character in my life, held on to people for a little too long but I can easily say I never went for the type who was obviously going to break my heart. I guess the biggest reason must be cause I was never really good looking enough to be chosen by such men and also cause I’m not really any fun: I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t smoke and I rarely dance. I’d much rather spend the night reading a book. So I guess in this case, it all worked out to my advantage as I ended up with the nice men and in durable relationships.
But I still don’t understand why a person would knowingly go for someone who is obviously going to be disappointing. Isn’t that sabotaging a relationship before it even begins?
Previously? Behind.
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden painted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” from Fahrenheit 451
When I read passages like the above, I try to look at my life and figure out what I plan to leave behind. Having children is an obvious answer. Assuming everything turns out okay biologically, I plan to have children and, hopefully, I plan to have them outlive me. So even if I accomplish nothing else, I can have that as a backup.
The fact is, I want more than that. I want to change the world. I want to touch people’s lives, I want to save the planet, I want to create things, I want to make a difference. I think that’s one of the main reasons I am displeased with my job. While it makes my financial life smooth sailing, programming applications for an investment bank isn’t what I’d call ‘saving the world.’
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I need to start a movement to save the world. On the contrary, I believe a tiny thing is all it takes. If everyone did a tiny bit, we’d all be so much better off. I’ve talked about this before and I still believe in what I said. But I also have this urge to do something great. Something bigger than I am. Something that isn’t selfish and all about making my own life better. Something that will make me and my family proud of who I am. Something that will show the world that if I can, so can everyone else.
The question is what? Of course, I have no clue, cause if I did I’d be out there doing it instead of here, writing about it. But I promise you here and now that I shall leave something behind.
What will you leave behind?
Previously? I Am.
One of the main reasons I tend to not like personality tests is that they seem to mostly test who you think you are as opposed to who you really are. After all, you’re the one sitting there answering all the questions. If the question says, “When at a party, are you more likely to mingle or sit at a corner and avoid getting noticed?” you can say “I’m the life of any party” and no one would know whether you actually told the truth or not.
Not you’re thinking, “Why would I lie?” right?
I’m not trying to imply that you’d purposefully try to affect the results of the test, but I think that many of us have an incorrect notion of who we really are. I can think of several reasons for this imbalance. One can be because we tend to pay more attention to our personality when we’re young and being judged by others and then as time goes on and other people voice their opinions less, we tend to not notice changes in ourselves. Or maybe we concentrate so much on whom we want to be that we don’t notice who we actually are. Or maybe we don’t like who we are so we don’t even want to admit to ourselves the sad truth. And possibly a million other reasons.
There have been times in my life when I’d call up a close friend and ask him what he thought of me in reference to a specific scenario. I’d wonder whether I’m sociable or if I’m caring and compassionate. Obviously since he was my friend his answers were biased but hopefully a little less then my own were. I wonder how widely our answers would differ if I took a standard personality test and asked a few close friends to take it for me. Do I come across the way I think I do? Am I really the person I think I am?
There are psychologists who believe you are only who others think you are. To me, that’s a really sad thought and I can’t yet fully articulate why.
I know that, like many people, I act differently around varying groups of friends. A girl I’ve known since birth will differ in her ideas of my personality from the guy I met in college or my classmates in my sign language class. I also know that who I am is more complicated than a test category. We all are. But I still wonder whether who I am is who I think I am. In the end, what makes me who I am, my thoughts or other people’s assessments of me?
Add to that mix the incessant conversations that occupy our lives about who we should be. Parents, teachers, managers, siblings, friends and many other people that have been in our lives pass judgment on some of our actions. They influence our thoughts, our behavior patterns and even our actions. Think of all the things you do to please your family and loved ones. How much of that defines who we are?
I’m afraid I don’t have a point or conclusion today, just many questions. However, I’d be delighted to know your thoughts.
Previously? Facing my Face.
I was always the ugliest child among my friends.
The girls in my group were nothing short of drop dead gorgeous and they’d make sure to remind me of the difference in the quality of our looks. Ever since the time I heard a guy mention how I was the only ugly person they hung out with, I couldn’t look myself in the mirror without the word ‘ugly’ sprinting to my mind.
About two years ago, I cut my hair. I’d been growing it since the fifth grade and it was weak and difficult to manage. Since then, I cut my hair maybe twenty times. I dyed it to dark brown, auburn, orangish red, dirty blonde, deep red and now I’m once again trying to become blonde. And I’ve decided to start a peace process between my face and me.
Now I stare at the mirror for a while and try to see what my face tells me. My eyes remind me of my dad. They are a light brown with darker tones on the edges, a sign of my middle eastern heritage. The little lines on the corner of my eyes are getting deeper: a sign of my increasing happiness. I see lines across my forehead, a sign of my continuous worrying. When I smile, thick lines form around my nose and a tiny dimple appears on the left side of my face.
I have nice teeth. I never had to wear braces and they’ve always been straight. My face has somewhat grown into my large ears and my haircut mostly hides how much they stick out. Even my nose says something important. It’s a symbol of more of my roots, Jewish ones. The purple marks under my eyes insist that I don’t get any sleep no matter how many hours I may lay in bed. When I’m sad, my eyebrows curl up in the weirdest of arches. My hair reminds me that I’m learning to let go.
I’m learning to look at myself and see something besides ‘ugly’. I see my family, my background, signs of my happiness and characteristics. And I smile.
I think I’ll keep this face, even if it is ‘ugly’. It’s mine.
What does your face tell you about yourself?
Previously? Audience.
I started writing diaries at the age of eleven.
I still recall the very first day I scribbled my first words. I struggled to distort my handwriting to appear somewhat decent. I remember looking at the colored pages with small “Hello Kitty” images all over and awkwardly trying to find the pithy words the pretty pages deserved.
I kept a diary for every single day of my adolescent life. Every single day from eleven years old to eighteen. Any friend from back then could easily tell the stories of how I would never go anywhere without my overflowing diary and a can of Diet Coke. If that’s not enough, my eighteen diaries are the proof of my obsession.
By the fourth one, I’d developed a pattern for ending a diary and starting a new one. One of the private ceremonies I held at the start of a diary was naming.
If you were to open any of the pages of my diaries, you wouldn’t see any real names. Every single person in my life had a nickname that would only be used in my diaries. Most of the names were quite stupid and generally referred to a characteristic of the person. So at the beginning of each diary, I would pick the person that symbolized my mood best and name my diary after him or her.
For the rest of the diary, I would start each entry with “Dear Such-and-Such” and actually write in a tone as if I were speaking to the actual person. The things I wrote, the feelings I conveyed were possibly more honest or deep than I’d necessarily tell to the person’s face, but the attitude was right on. With each new entry, the person’s face would flash before my eyes and make me smile. She or he was my audience for the duration of that diary.
Earlier this week I started thinking about my audience for this site. Who would I have used for its nickname if it had one? Whose image flashes before my eyes as I type these entries?
I’m not sure of the answers. Certain entries definitely feel like I’m talking to a specific someone and others are mostly talking to myself.
What about you?
Previously? Beauty.
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
As always, I’m sure they’re right. Thankfully, we all have our own ideas of beauty so that the wide varieties of humans who occupy the earth are each considered beautiful by one person or another.
I spoke to my mom yesterday and she told me about an event she had attended the previous evening. The event was organized by a distant family member I dislike. My mom said that the woman’s daughter looked absolutely gorgeous and I replied, “She’s such a terrible person that it’s impossible for me to see her beauty.”
After we hung up, I thought about my words and realized they were a perfect example of my true sentiments. When I see a stranger on the street, I might think she or he is beautiful but as soon as I get to know a person, my feelings about that person fully affect how good looking I think he or she is.
This is not to say that I don’t have a “type”. Even though the men I’ve dated have a wide range of looks, there are commonalities among them and I know that I prefer scrawny to buff. I like blue or green eyes. I tend to go for men who wear glasses. That’s about it. So when I met Jake, I was attracted to him. But over the years, as I fell more and more in love, Jake got more and more handsome in my eyes.
The same goes for my close friends and people I admire and it’s one of my favorite things about the web. The fact that I don’t get influenced by the facial image before I get to know a person makes it such that I think the person is beautiful before I meet him or her and once I have that image it rarely goes away.
It’s as if the inner beauty (or lack thereof) reflects on to someone’s face and features.
I don’t know if this behavior is specific to me, but I enjoy having it. While it makes it less pleasant for me to be around people I don’t like, it makes it a total joy to be around my loved ones. I feel like I am often surrounded by beautiful humans.
What could be more wonderful?
Previously? Tearful Meetings.
I had an important meeting this morning.
I usually don’t work on Mondays but this issue had been bothering me for quite some time and I knew that the Managing Director only had a few available hours in the week and I knew the matter could not be put off another week.
Or I might have blown up.
For someone as emotional as I, conversations about a discomfort with current project setup tend to be complicated. Most often, by the time I get to make the appointment, I’ve been obsessing about the problem for quite a long while. Since I tend to involve my emotions and make a mountain of small issues, I always need to step back and disengage my feelings. I need to make sure there is a real problem before I start asking people to notice it. Not to undermine myself, I am pretty observant and intuitive, so I do often notice real issues before they become major disasters.
The problem is, I have a real hard time turning off my feelings. I remember how my emotions totally spiraled out of control by the last year in my previous job. There were so many unfair, unprofessional and unacceptable situations that I couldn’t concentrate on anything but the problems. The lack of prevention and resolution was mind-boggling.
A most common scenario would be my walking into my manager’s office to professionally bring up an issue that needed his help. My manager was so dense and so incredibly bad at understanding people that he would choose the worst possible way to handle the situation and within minutes I would either be extremely frustrated or in tears.
The thing is, no one will take you seriously if you’re crying. People tend to take crying as a sign of weakness. While I agree that crying is not professional and should not necessarily be done in a manager’s office, often times tears don’t mean that there isn’t a real issue beneath all the strong emotion. But crying isn’t going to get you the results. And it all comes down to resolution. If you’re not in your manager’s office to get the issue resolved, you should be talking to friend, who’s going to listen to you and offer words of consolation.
I’ve learned that the best way for me to control my emotions and ensure that I stick to the problem at hand is to write things down. Now, before I go to a meeting, I make a list of points and valid complaints. I walk in with suggestions on possible tracks of resolution. I try to come up with examples to back up my arguments and recommendations. And I keep telling myself that it’s not personal. It’s not about me. It’s about the project.
So today, I walked into the office, stated my case and we had a productive and professional conversation about it.
And I didn’t shed a tear.
Previously? Unconventional.
My mother never graduated from high school.
There is a word for people like my mom in Turkish but I’ve been struggling with finding an accurate translation. If I look up the word “becerikli” in a Turkish-English dictionary, it says skillful. But I don’t think that’s an accurate translation. We mostly use it to mean a combination of capable, skillful, street-smart and several other related concepts.
My mother has worked pretty much every day of my life. At times she worked eleven-hour days and at times, she only worked a few days a week. She’s never worked in the traditional company setting. When I was a kid, she used to design jewelry and work as a consultant to individuals who wanted custom-made jewelry. She’d draw the design according to their tastes and then get it made for them. She worked with a bunch of jewelry makers, stone setters, etc. After I graduated high school, she reduced the hours she worked in order to learn to relax and enjoy life a bit more.
A few years ago, she started offering decorative advice to a few acquaintances. They would pay her to rearrange the furniture, paintings, etc. in a certain room to give it a new look. She was so good that word of mouth got her new clients. She moved from simple rearrangement to decorating. She went antique shopping. She decorated restaurants. She’s gotten to a point where she ends up having to turn down offers cause she’s too busy.
Yesterday, Jake and I walked over to Borders so that I could check out some GRE books. I’ve been contemplating getting a PhD. Most of the areas I’m interested in require a subject-GRE exam. As I leafed through the biology, literature and psychology exams, I got more and more discouraged. By the time we walked out of the bookstore, I’d almost given up on the idea of applying to college. What was the point? There was no way I was going to get accepted. I even told myself that after a BS and an MS, I had no knowledge to show for all that past education.
Several hours later, I started thinking about my mom and how she’d managed to have several successful careers without much education. Surely such careers were hard to start without the appropriate education background, but she’d done it. And if she could do it, why couldn’t I? I told myself to stop feeling depressed and start making plans. I decided to do research about several jobs I’d love to do and figure out what background the people in those positions had. I also decided to look into different research projects offered by schools in areas I am interested. I figured even if I can’t get into the program now, I might be able to get a job in the area and start learning.
I’ve always been proud of my mom for her tenacity and ability to do just about anything she wanted. But today, she taught me another valuable lesson. She taught me that life is not always conventional.
There are a plethora of paths to reach an end-goal.
Previously? Crappy Web.
Okay, I apologize ahead of time and give you fair warning that what you’re about to read is something I feel very strongly about and since I’m extremely emotional, this might be painful to read. It might take me some time to get to my point. It also will probably repeat some issues I mentioned in previous posts.
You’ve been warned.
I’ve never considered myself a web person. I’ve been familiar with the web for a very long time and had a web page back when Mosaic was the cool browser. I even did an art project in college about intermingling art and web technology. But until recently, I used the web mostly as a tool to get information. I read newspapers, I looked up movie locations and reviews, I researched stuff, and that was about it.
I can’t remember the first weblog I read. I can’t remember how I discovered most of the sites that are now part of my daily routine. But, somehow, I found a site and started following the links until I discovered a whole new world.
I’m still not a web person. I guess what I mean when I say “web person” is someone whose primary job/interest is the web. I love the web. I love writing my site. I love reading other people’s sites. But I have a job that doesn’t use any web technology. I volunteer at an organization that doesn’t have computers in each room, let alone dial-up access. Most of my friends don’t know HTML and almost none read my site. A few close ones do but many don’t.
The thing is if the web were like the real world, it would be extremely difficult for me to have my own little corner. Imagine walking into a magazine’s office and asking to have your own section. Or an art gallery to have your work displayed. Most of the world is very structured and segregated. There are committees that decide the value of your work. College admissions offices tell you whether you deserve to get in. Publishers decide the future of your book. It doesn’t matter whether you poured your soul into a piece or not, if the woman at the publishing house had a bad morning, your novel will not see the light of day.
The real world is full of rejection. Full of “you’re not good enough”, “you lack the necessary background”, and many other forms of limitations. There are millions of preconceived notions, prescribed patterns you have to fit, roadmaps you have to follow, asses you must kiss, before you’re even given a chance.
But it takes you ten minutes to setup your own web page. This little corner will let you show off your novel, photographs, artwork, or many other incredible talents. The web allows you to bring people together in the most awe-inspiring ways. It allows you to meet someone halfway around the world who shares the same interests and can broaden your mind instantaneously.
Where else can you do that?
Sure I can write my words in a diary and still get them out, but this way I get to share them with the whole world. I put myself out there and I get rewarded. It’s like getting your work displayed, not just in a small gallery, but to the whole world.
Why are criteria and elitism the only harbingers of success?
And what’s so terrible about trying?
Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” And yet, people get stifled so early on. Your lack of talent is recognized and hammered into you at an early age. “You really can’t draw, honey, why don’t you try being a biology major instead?” I remember an anecdote I read in a novel about the author visiting a kindergarten and asking the students who could draw and all the hands shot up. The author then went to a college classroom and asked the same question and very few hands were raised. Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, we’re taught to stop trying. Since badness is discouraged and we’re bad, we should just give it all up.
And after all this rambling, I’ll come out and say my point. Earlier this week someone made a comment on a metatalk thread that drove me absolutely crazy. It doesn’t matter who as such comments have been made in several places and instances, by many different people. These people think that the web should emulate the elitism of the real world. They feel that your having your own homepage is unacceptable unless it’s perfect. And before you ask, yes, of course, they happen to be the judges of material that qualifies as perfect. They believe letting you have your own web site overpopulates the web with crap.
Aren’t they fucking nice?
The thing is, I totally understand the right to judge something that was submitted to your inspection. If you have a site where you post submissions and someone enters and you don’t like their work, you have every right to turn it down and you don’t even need to give a reason, because it’s your site and you can do whatever you damn please. This is no different than if I were sending my novel to Random House and they refused to publish it. At the end of the day, by accepting your work, they are agreeing to put their name on your work and if they don’t like it, they should have the right not to give you their name. Totally fair.
Not letting people make their own pages, however, is not.
Assuming you should get to choose who’s deserving of having a web page is ridiculous. It’s nothing but pompousness.
The great thing about using the web is that you get to choose the sites you go to. So here’s my little message to the people who feel that the web is getting diluted with crap:
“Surf elsewhere and shut the fuck up.”
Previously? Reflection.
I’ve now been writing this log for over eight months.
To many, that’s not a really long time and to some it’s awfully long. Personally, I’m quite amazed that I’ve been writing consistently for that long. Amazing that I can find something to write about every single day. Maybe that can account for the entries you’ve read that seem to lack in substance. (I’m not going to do my usual self-deprication act here, since I assume you wouldn’t be coming here unless you enjoyed my writings on some level and if you’re a first time reader, well tough crap if you don’t like what you see.)
I’ve also often thought about why I write. I went through many phases and mood changes, especially in the beginning. I started with blogger, so I anxiously awaited for my page to show up in their directory and then I kept checking my hits everyday. I asked my friend Adam, who’s hosting my site, to setup my referrer logs so I could check who was coming from where. I discovered weblog rings and joined a few so I could get more hits. I needed the hits!
And then a while passed and I started reading more and more people’s pages and seeing what they did and tried to figure out what appealed to me most so I could shape my own site. I redesigned a few times, but I am no designer and I realized that most concepts I had in my head weren’t really feasible in my ability range. And then I went through the self-denial phase where I was like, ‘who cares if anyone reads my page, it’s for me anyhow.’ Which I totally believe to be an untruth. If you want to write and don’t care for others to read, it makes no sense to make a web page for your writing. Barnes and Noble and other establishments would be happy to sell you diaries that require no HTML skills.
For days I pondered why I felt the need to have a site and to write, especially since no one read it anyhow. And, of course, that wasn’t the truth. While I might be far from the most popular sites, I had a few consistent readers. Some people even liked to me from their sites. And then a few people started emailing me their thoughts related to some of the posts I made and we started conversing, initially about those issues and then in general. That’s when it hit me.
I’ve always written diaries, so the question of why I wrote wasn’t interesting. The reason I like writing on the web, however, is because it’s like having a multi-way conversation. Not only do I get to put my thoughts out there, but people write back to me and challenge my thoughts and stretch my mind, or they agree with me and make me feel less alone. Both of which I find extremely rewarding.
I don’t really like reading logs that point to many news items. News items are interesting and good information but between the newspapers, metafilter, slashdot and a few similar sites, I can get all the news and links I need and then some. I like the personal side of the pages. I like to see how people think, what kind of lives others have, what struggles they go through. When something great happens to the owner of a page I read regularly, I feel just as happy as if it had happened to someone I know in real life. And when something bad happens, I tend to react just as strongly.
I don’t exactly know who reads my log anymore, and I’ve sort of let go of my obsession with it. Of course I like that people read it and I hope more and more people do, but if they don’t, well it’s really hard to obsess over something I can’t control. I’ve also learned that not every page appeals to everyone. Some of the pages others love, don’t give me the satisfaction that I get from my favorites. And thankfully, we all have the freedom do surf wherever we want.
What I do still wish for, however, is for my readers to make contact. I feel like my thoughts are a good start for me, but when someone else tells me his or her side, it makes me think harder and if there were three of us, the conversation would get even more interesting, and so on. So since I don’t really link to much of anything, except in my tidbits, I wonder why people don’t tell me what they think more regularly.
Oh, well. This is just to give you my thoughts on logging for this long and also to tell you that if you have something to say and even if you don’t, please say it. If you don’t like to say it publicly here, you can always email me.
And if you don’t? Well that’s okay, too, I still hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it.
Ps: Yes, I know eight months is an odd time to be writing a reflective entry, but I felt like it and who says I have to wait anyhow?
Previously? Evil!.
Well, today’s psychology issue is deeper than usual.
As we started studying humanists, our teacher raised the issue of evil versus good. Freud believed that humans, in their core, were evil beings and that they needed to repress their inclinations to live in society. And then came along the behaviorists who thought that humans were neutral and how they turn out is an outcome of their conditioning. Finally we have the humanists who believe that people are good at core.
Humanists say that we are all born with the tendency to grow to actualize our own potential. The teacher made an analogy to a flower seed. Assuming it gets the right light, care and soil, a seed will actualize its inherent potential by becoming a flower. I immediately thought of Fred which proves the humanists must have had some correct ideas.
The question of whether humans are born evil or good is extremely well discussed, controversial, and most likely to stay unproven.
Some very famous people resisted the notion of inherently evil humans even though they had huge hardships.
Most people who believe that humans are good in the core, tend to “blame” parents or upbringing for the seeding of evil. The humanist Carl Rogers said that we establish conditions of worth, which are ways in which we need to act so that our parents will keep loving us.
For example if my mom made me feel like she didn’t like me each time I threw a tamper tantrum, I might take than in as “for my mom to love me, I need to not show my anger.’ And then I grow up never showing my anger, even when I should. So now I’m living with what I think my mother wants me to be. I’m not sure if I made it unclear, but to me it makes perfect sense why this totally screws up a human being.
The more psychology I study, the more scared I get of being a parent. So many possibilities of failure. Of ruining another human’s life.
As I sat in class today, I tried to think about my beliefs. Do I believe in the evil-born human? I’m not sure. My tendency is to go with the humanists and say that I believe all babies are good at heart. Which, then, puts incredible amount of pressure and responsibility on the parents.
Do you think humans are born good or evil?
Previously? Lacking Questions.
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projects for twenty twenty-six
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projects for twenty twenty-four
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projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
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projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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