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| Author |
Message |
| 10 new of 62 responses total. |
katie
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response 53 of 62:
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Dec 13 22:41 UTC 1998 |
You mean all of us who own or drive one? That`s rather harsh.
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keesan
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response 54 of 62:
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Dec 14 01:03 UTC 1998 |
I meant that I have no sympathy with cars that cannot get where they are going
as fast as they would like, because they interfere with the rest of us going
where we want to go. By car people I mean people who see through pedestrians
and pretend they are not there.
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brown
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response 55 of 62:
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Dec 14 17:44 UTC 1998 |
I'm 'car-using' person by weekend and ped/biker by week..... what a
twisted double life ;)
'course lately the train is getting a lot more use than my bike ;)
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faile
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response 56 of 62:
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Dec 14 17:50 UTC 1998 |
I don't ignore pedestrians because if I were to hit one, it would put a ding
in my car, and I like my shiny new car just as it is. (just kidding)
But really, I understand nearly being run over. There's a three way
intersection on teh way from where I live to the rest of campus, crossing htat
intersection once on my way to a class, I almost got run down three times.
(This was after almost getting run down anotehr time at another interesection)
One of the vehicles that almost hit me was a commuter bus for the medical
center (their parking is way out in teh middle of nowhere, so they run
busses)... I thought they were in the business of saving lives. *grin*
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jazz
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response 57 of 62:
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Dec 16 11:07 UTC 1998 |
I tend to err on the side of needing people around rather than
having difficulties with them, or with groups of people, too. I don't feel
that I'm really alive in a lot of cases unless I can share an experience, if
only in a small way, with someone, and it isn't necessarily a friend or an
acquantance - it can be as simple as a small comment on a movie I'd watched
with another moviegoer.
Thanks for clarifying social phobias, Brighn. I guess my bias lies
in that I used to have something close to a phobic reaction to many social
situations, but that was, in my case, a lack of social skills. Social
situations in our culture are incrediby complex beasts, and the most
intelligent and calm of us would be hard pressed to get by in a social
situations that they had no rituals or skills to handle, unless they were
supremely confident. And in order to be supremely confident, you have to do
well in social situations ... such was the trap that I was stuck in for a
period of time.
Well, we all fake it 'till we make it, eh? Just some of us are better
at hiding it than others. Smile, you can, as Bokono noted, make no mistakes.
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brighn
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response 58 of 62:
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Dec 16 14:56 UTC 1998 |
Actually, I'm making remarkable progress on my social phobia.
Buddhism helped a lot. The more I thought of it as an embarassing stigma, or
a personal failure of mine, to have this phobia, the worse it got. Accepting
it as just a challenge, as a shortcoming among a species that has
shortcomings, and as something I could share without using it as a crutch or
an excuse for my behavior, enables me towork with it.
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jazz
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response 59 of 62:
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Dec 17 01:38 UTC 1998 |
Oh, the social rules in American culture do tend to be a bitch.
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orinoco
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response 60 of 62:
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Dec 17 02:52 UTC 1998 |
Heck, I imagine the social rules in any culture are a bitch - just a different
sort of bitch...
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jazz
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response 61 of 62:
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Dec 17 07:25 UTC 1998 |
Actually, I think it depends on the culture. In America we're very
big on informal social customs, the kind of thing where no one ever really
tells you what to do ... they just become very irritated when you do it wrong!
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lumen
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response 62 of 62:
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Dec 19 04:00 UTC 1998 |
I agree-- for some reason, we place such an emphasis on individuality and
informality, yet they're emphasized only on the surface. Protocol is still
an integral part of our culture, but so much of it is assumed, I suppose
because no wants to teach it. But then, our culture is complex. When the
Titanic went down, we stopped trusting the rich as much as we used to-- and
they were the last remnants of a nobility class. We kept so many ties in our
culture to England, but their aristocracy hasn't really died yet. Many
sociologists assert we have a class structure, but it's not so cut and dry
as it was in the Old World. The old rules rarely apply, although fortunes
can still be inherited, those held up as beautiful generally prosper
materially, etc.
In the community, it is more complex since the rules are partially hidden.
I mean, I'm still figuring out some of it. Of course, with all the
misconceptions, it gets harder. Stereotypes are one example, and strangely,
sometimes they're enforced. I told you my sister was pressured to 'butch up'
and lose the makeup. I've also read some gays are encouraged to 'act gay'.
And in the midst of all this, there are the bis, who are often spurned because
they're not gay or lesbian.
But this is for another item-- and for the most part, this goes back to our
overall discussion throughout this cf. (I just hope the tie-in was clear.)
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