RE: Psychobabble, Therapy and Woo-Woo: What Do Our Attitudes Say About Us?
Seeing the world 'as it is', makes you 'a hater, in some parts...yes, seriously!
I was thinking about something similar yesterday, and one of my many (and probably incorrect) observations on people I know well (and myself), is that we try to forever reproduce the circumstances that correlate to the 'happiest time' we were as children.
So, even if you were in a screwed up family lets say, but the 'happiest moment' in your childhood was a time of people fighting and conflict ( not logical, I know), then oyu spend the rest of you rlife trying to recreate the circumstances that is your 'happy place'.
I've gotten a little off track here.
(I'm busy making a video with that 'happy time' model in mind - about george soros, and it fits very nicely).
The martyr complex fits nicely into the 'suffering mode' of life.
If you find yourself happy with your lot playing the martyr, does that then make the 'suffering side' of it, go away? Happy in suffering.
I dunno, I'm waffling.
I'll stop now. lol
Funny you'd bring that up... elsewhere, I was commenting to someone that "for some people, the FACTS of a situation are interpreted as a personal attack."
And I mean that seriously, too. If I say "you missed your flight because you arrived too late to the airport," that is nothing more than a FACT. And yet, many will insist that it's a personal attack in the form of snide commentary on their tendency to run late.
Could be there's some veracity to your theorizing. My happiest times as a kid were those when the world left me the frak alone! My auntie (who raised me, in part) and I would sit on her back porch and simply watch nature go by. As an adult, I tend towards being a loner who prefers to just be left alone...
I think my (mostly past) tendencies to be interested in "suffering" were a result of too much time contemplating that something was wrong with me as a result of my loner tendencies... and my general avoidance/rejection of most mainstream life. And it seemed to me that most people connected and related to each other via various forms of suffering, so maybe if I "adopted" suffering, I could get to feeling more connected to people.
A bit sick and twisted, I know... but that was perhaps an apt description of my 30's. I'm pushing 60 now, and it no longer applies.
In many cases, I think we're motivated by neurochemical rewards... and some people (it seems) actually get their little dopamine hits from feeling miserable. Is that healthy? I doubt it very much...
So, a ramble to your ramble...
for some people, the FACTS of a situation are interpreted as a personal attack."
It's the same people who think that the story is more important than the truth.
People who think there is no truth, only narrative to convince for personal gain.
Yes, truth can be subjective, but it can be objective also, like the example you gave above - it is both fact and true.
Could be there's some veracity to your theorizing. My happiest times as a kid were those when the world left me the frak alone!
My happiest time was seeing my Dad approve of me, while standing up to liars and deceivers (mostly my family).
Ergo.. being in conflict with my authority figures, standing up for truth, and calling out the liars and manipulators, was my 'happy' time - as twisted as that may first appear.
That explains quite a lot about me, doesn't it? lolol
It's all about recreating the environment that brought you the happiest feeling as a youngster.
If this hypothesis is any way near accurate, I can only see it as being an unconscious drive in the majority of people.
I think Soros said that the time he spent as a kid - under nazi rule - was the happiest time of his life (for whatever reasons).
So his 'happy time', was fighting the authorities by subterfuge, profiting by deception, and lying to survive, all while living in a world of wartime and thus social chaos......MMMmmmmmm....