entertainment
Well-known member
I suspect a fundamental part of how I relate to the world can be traced back to some early childhood instance of misunderstanding something that someone else had apparently understood. Maybe of being exposed of that misapprehension to others and perhaps feeling ridiculed if it was something absurd -- BUT the feeling I want to describe is not exactly of the social plane. It's not only the humiliation, the sinking feeling of a faux pas; it's about the implication that it carries about something deeper, about how you understand the things around you. It's sort of an anxiety of not being able to trust the way you understand the world. A fear that your senses are somehow compromised compared to everyone else, onto whom you automatically project some other, inaccesible level of seeing things. Not a higher, more sophisticated understanding, but some intuition that you lack, some way of simply seeing things that are invisible to you, and constantly communicating these cues among each other in a language you don't speak.
I don't remember many actual experiences from early childhood but of those I do remember, many feature this aspect. One I recall as clear as day: I must be 5 or 6 and football training is finishing up. I walk over to a friend and say to him that I'm supposed to be picked up and driven home by his dad. My mother has told me this. But he says no, that's not true. Feeling embarrassed I do not walk with him over to the parking lot but stay in my place as the other kids pack up and leave. I go over and try to look for my older brother who sometimes train on the next pitch but I can't find him anywhere. Now I'm alone and it's getting dark and I don't know what to do, but the fear is not about what's about to happen to me, it's about having misunderstood something and because of it having been left behind - not just physically but on some other level I can't describe because every other kid went happily on their way and I'm standing alone and I don't know how they all understood what to do when training finished but eveidently they all did.
I think something like this epistemological anxiety is lodged deep inside me and governs the way I think and feel to a high degree. Also who I am, what I do. On some level I suspeect the reason why I read books or go on dissensus or discuss anything with anyone is to assuage this fear - to feel that I understand things the same way that others do.
When I think about it this fear must be the basis of all insecurity - the feeling of not being able to trust that you understand things in the same way that others do. If normal shyness is an apprehension caused by doubt as to what others will think of your action, it always features a deeper anxiety that others have understood some principle that you haven't grasped, that you don't see things on the same plane as others, which is an essentially alienating feeling, something that you can organize your whole life on trying to evade.
I don't remember many actual experiences from early childhood but of those I do remember, many feature this aspect. One I recall as clear as day: I must be 5 or 6 and football training is finishing up. I walk over to a friend and say to him that I'm supposed to be picked up and driven home by his dad. My mother has told me this. But he says no, that's not true. Feeling embarrassed I do not walk with him over to the parking lot but stay in my place as the other kids pack up and leave. I go over and try to look for my older brother who sometimes train on the next pitch but I can't find him anywhere. Now I'm alone and it's getting dark and I don't know what to do, but the fear is not about what's about to happen to me, it's about having misunderstood something and because of it having been left behind - not just physically but on some other level I can't describe because every other kid went happily on their way and I'm standing alone and I don't know how they all understood what to do when training finished but eveidently they all did.
I think something like this epistemological anxiety is lodged deep inside me and governs the way I think and feel to a high degree. Also who I am, what I do. On some level I suspeect the reason why I read books or go on dissensus or discuss anything with anyone is to assuage this fear - to feel that I understand things the same way that others do.
When I think about it this fear must be the basis of all insecurity - the feeling of not being able to trust that you understand things in the same way that others do. If normal shyness is an apprehension caused by doubt as to what others will think of your action, it always features a deeper anxiety that others have understood some principle that you haven't grasped, that you don't see things on the same plane as others, which is an essentially alienating feeling, something that you can organize your whole life on trying to evade.