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Reinforcement
Jun. 19th, 2006 09:06 amI think that we spend much of our lives in search of validation. It's a lot easier to find people who have the same twisted view of reality and to subsume yourself into that group, thus feeling more "normal", than it is to head out into the real world ad to face up to the fact that, when you come down to it, your own view of reality is seriously messed up.
Drinkers do it all the time. When drinking you avoid social circles including non-drinking people. Indeed, to you, the drinker, it is these people who seem weird. Instead you either seek out other drinkers or, more seriously, you avoid everyone. If you are outside in a major conurbation one sunny afternoon and you see half a dozen "dossers" sitting on a couple of park benches, drinking Diamond White, just consider the fact that they might see us as the weird ones. They reinforce their own view of the world.
Poker players are the same. One of the hazards of leaving the world of full-time employment and entering the land of professional poker playing is that you are cutting yourself just that little bit further off from people who challenge your own validation.
All of this is understandable. Which would you prefer, a feeling of "being normal" amongst others of a similar ilk, or a feeling of horrific alienation? The former, obviously. However, the downside of this comes when you see a group of, say, computer geek male adolescent student types in a pub (or any other group of which you aren't a member) and you look at them.
Women on 'intelligent' radio shows, for reasons which somehow escape me, often mock these little self-contained groups of the socially asymetric, without (or so it appears to me) asking themselves the rather simple question of why things get that way.
My own views on life are continually being challenged when I leave the house and come to the office, and the alienation can be bad. But I think that this is better than seeking out those who see things the same way as I do. That's what I did when I was drinking.
I guess that wives, or partners, are good at "dragging you back into the real world", but for the singles amongst us, that kind of control doesn't exist. It's eminently easy to drift further and further into smaller and smaller groups of like-minded people, until you end up being an 18xx fanatic, or trainspotting, or only ever talking about poker.
++++++++++
A group of 22 people have been arrested in Hong Kong for an insurance scam with a difference. In these cases they actually did destroy the sight of one eye in the "victims". Apparently four people from rural China accepted an offer of about US$35,000 to have the sight of one of their eyes taken away. As the investigator observed, that kind of money can buy 10 houses in rural Guangdong.
Which all brings us back to relative values, doesn't it? Is the sight of an eye worth $35,000? Well, no, probably not to anyone in the west. But suppose you were living in London, didn't have a job, and someone offered you 10 houses in return for the sight of an eye? Hmm. I can see that this might be a tougher choice if offered to some people.
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Drinkers do it all the time. When drinking you avoid social circles including non-drinking people. Indeed, to you, the drinker, it is these people who seem weird. Instead you either seek out other drinkers or, more seriously, you avoid everyone. If you are outside in a major conurbation one sunny afternoon and you see half a dozen "dossers" sitting on a couple of park benches, drinking Diamond White, just consider the fact that they might see us as the weird ones. They reinforce their own view of the world.
Poker players are the same. One of the hazards of leaving the world of full-time employment and entering the land of professional poker playing is that you are cutting yourself just that little bit further off from people who challenge your own validation.
All of this is understandable. Which would you prefer, a feeling of "being normal" amongst others of a similar ilk, or a feeling of horrific alienation? The former, obviously. However, the downside of this comes when you see a group of, say, computer geek male adolescent student types in a pub (or any other group of which you aren't a member) and you look at them.
Women on 'intelligent' radio shows, for reasons which somehow escape me, often mock these little self-contained groups of the socially asymetric, without (or so it appears to me) asking themselves the rather simple question of why things get that way.
My own views on life are continually being challenged when I leave the house and come to the office, and the alienation can be bad. But I think that this is better than seeking out those who see things the same way as I do. That's what I did when I was drinking.
I guess that wives, or partners, are good at "dragging you back into the real world", but for the singles amongst us, that kind of control doesn't exist. It's eminently easy to drift further and further into smaller and smaller groups of like-minded people, until you end up being an 18xx fanatic, or trainspotting, or only ever talking about poker.
++++++++++
A group of 22 people have been arrested in Hong Kong for an insurance scam with a difference. In these cases they actually did destroy the sight of one eye in the "victims". Apparently four people from rural China accepted an offer of about US$35,000 to have the sight of one of their eyes taken away. As the investigator observed, that kind of money can buy 10 houses in rural Guangdong.
Which all brings us back to relative values, doesn't it? Is the sight of an eye worth $35,000? Well, no, probably not to anyone in the west. But suppose you were living in London, didn't have a job, and someone offered you 10 houses in return for the sight of an eye? Hmm. I can see that this might be a tougher choice if offered to some people.
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