Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Henry wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 04, 2024 8:47 am

I see the old men, accompanying their wives, walking a few steps behind them, their eyes to themselves as though they are walking through a mass gynecological examination room.

That drives me mad as well, they just stand in the middle of the isle getting in everybody's way without any benefit. Then there are the couples who bring the children with them. If there are two of you then one of you should take the kids to the park whilst the other shops. Don't get me started on the old people that think a trip to the till is a social outing.

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 04, 2024 12:19 pm

Don't get me started on the old people that think a trip to the till is a social outing.

That's why self-checkouts are just a joy. At least to us introverts. Plus they are too complex for the elderly to operate so the queue moves quickly and efficiently.

The jockeying for how/who on these sort of domestic tasks when you are dating or cohabitating at midlife or midlife-plus can also be fairly humorous. For example, I have dated divorced men who are clearly still following instructions given to them by their ex-wife on such matters as how the table service should be arranged. And when a man thinks he knows how to cook/shop better than I do, it has happened that he will maintain control over the cart and send me on micro-errands across the grocery store like I am a 10 year old child. Of course, although I have not yet encountered a man with a cooking repertoire as wide and deep as my own, I have dated a few whom I would rate as better cooks on the basis of upbringing and/or natural artistry. For instance, a Greek heritage Type 2 I dated exclusively for around 9 months whose guidance on olive oil and purchasing/preparing a cold spread I still follow. My angry-chef eSTJ partner was also better than me at very simple dishes such as homemade chicken broth with ginger and green onion, so we traded up or collaborated on cooking and shopping fairly evenly. My Permaculturist Partner and I were also fairly evenly matched in the kitchen and would collaborate on recipes-that-take-advantage-of-too-many-ripening-tomatoes and similar. I also learned a lot of Persian cooking methods when I was with my second "husband", but much more from some of his female relatives and friends than from him, because he didn't learn to cook until he became a divorced Dad in his 40s. My first husband was 6'1" 132 lbs and living on frozen pot pies when I met him, so no-brainer on task assignment there.

On line grocery shopping is stressful. It's like watching a football game but yelling "No! I said jumbo eggs you stupid motherfucker." Plus I get all old man frugal on paying someone to do it for me. I went again today. There was an old couple. The man could not handle maneuvering the fucking shopping cart even though for the amount of items they are buying he can carry the hand basket. They should do shopping cart testing. If you can't turn the thing, you're not pushing it. The woman picks up a box of tea and says "This is so difficult." The man can't answer because he's too busy doing a k-turn with the fucking shopping cart. Then you got super fucking mom pushing the shopping cart with one hand and pulling the baby carriage with the other. I'm a grown ass man and I can't control a shopping cart full of food items with one fucking arm. Plus, that operation measures half the length of a fucking aisle. Why don't you just have the baby hold a leash with a fucking dog at the end of it and call it home. Plus, move the fucking baby carriage up when I'm trying to unload at the check out. I hope that baby doesn't read lips because I called her mother things that unless she grows up to become a crack whore she'll never here again. And by God, is there anything more tortuous than watching an old lady bagging fucking groceries. It takes her three months to open one bag and by that time all her groceries are at the end of the carousel and its like a 15 car pile up down there and now she's got to pay and course its by fucking check so now she gives up bagging and starts the next three month project of finding her check book in her pocket book full of old lady bullshit so now the check out lady has to do the bagging and she's finished with that before the old lady has even put pen to fucking check so we're all there watching an old lady write a fucking check and I'm thinking they should add age restrictions to the height restriction which effectively bans little old ladies from grocery shopping.

ertyu wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 02, 2024 9:49 pm

Did you reinvent cognitive dissonance theory then? Have you read Mistakes were made but not by me?

I have not read that book. I briefly looked up cognitive dissonance theory. What I'm talking about is similar, but slightly different.

According to the 1 summary article I read on cognitive dissonance theory, cognitive dissonance is caused when action does not match belief. When cognitive dissonance happens people will either 1) change their action; 2) change their belief or 3) change their attitude perception. I'm not clear from the article how (2) and (3) differ.

For this to happen we have to be aware of the dissonance, it must be cognitive, which I interpret as conscious.

What I'm talking about is sub-conscious. Emotional or sensory dissonance.

I think this subconscious dissonance does spring from a situation where there is dissonance. That dissonance comes from experiencing a situation where trying to get a need or want met leads to a situation that your emotional system evaluates as life threatening. This trains the emotional system to become distressed when it encounters similar situations.

That's the "trauma."

The need or want doesn't go away, but either the need or want is hidden from us or the most direct means of satisfying it is placed off limits by our emotional system. We compensate for this by trying to fulfill the need in a roundabout and ultimately ineffectual way, and our emotional system builds defenses around this new unsuccessful behavior (which also becomes habitual) because we subconsciously believe this is the only way to get our (possibly hidden) need met.

Jin+Guice wrote: ↑

Thu Dec 05, 2024 12:53 pm

The need or want doesn't go away, but either the need or want is hidden from us or the most direct means of satisfying it is placed off limits by our emotional system. We compensate for this by trying to fulfill the need in a roundabout and ultimately ineffectual way, and our emotional system builds defenses around this new unsuccessful behavior (which also becomes habitual) because we subconsciously believe this is the only way to get our (possibly hidden) need met.

Oh yeah this checks out, people are full of this sort of shit. Iirc, Freud even talked about it, called it either compensation or sublimation or some such. I agree you'll find it everywhere you turn. I now understand what you're talking about!

@J&G, you mention trauma (and I assume you mean big-T trauma based on things that would shake most people). For me, the needs-wants of NVC is a good starting point for more present day stuff. CBT looks a core beliefs, deeply-held beliefs about self/others/world that influence thoughts and behaviors. The need/core belief and want/thought and behavior have some overlap. I find the CBT allows for some mining of root causes and permanent shifts away from trauma reenactment/sabotage/accepting the unacceptable.

Example of how this could play out:
• Core belief: How I feel does not matter, a young child’s view of a traumatic situation.
• Dissonance: Wanting and needing kind/respectful/honest treatment as an adult but deeply believing I don’t deserve it.

What deep learning is under your need-want conflict?

Another possibly relevant note would be that one theory from the Enneagram is that the Type 7 personality type is formed when a child experiences a happy childhood brought to an end by a traumatic event. So, the core of optimism is strong, but the subconscious tendency to always want to distract oneself back to that happy place can be problematic. What works better is to consciously build upon the optimistic base.

I currently believe that a great deal of temperament is innate/genetic, so the Enneagram theory could also be reinterpreted towards something like possession of a brain chemical/structure mix that is towards holding a perspective like unto "traumatic fall from Eden" and inner optimistic need/drive to explore and solve problems or more dysfunctionally distract oneself in order to as they sang at Woodstock, "find our way back to the Garden." (Humorous note for me being that my way of coping with tasting of the Tree of Knowledge or Gazing into the Abyss of the meta-crisis was to literally attempt to build a Boundaried Highly Varied Resource Self-Sufficent Garden (permaculture project), thereby meeting both ENTP and INTP subconscious needs.)

Gluttony is the passion that drives Type Seven. In its expression as the core emotional motivation of this type, gluttony fuels the desire to experience pleasure without limits, to taste a little bit of every experience, and to stay open to myriad possibilities.

OTOH, the Type 5:

For Fives, the central motivation of avarice is to hold on to what they have in light of an early experience of not getting much from others. Not having received enough love or care or responsiveness early on, Fives naturally fear being depleted, which leads to a defensive expectation of impoverishment.

Since both 5s and 7s can have a 6 wing:

Sixes are primarily motivated by fear. Sixes have a strong desire for a good authority, but can be suspicious of and rebellious against real-life authorities. They can be hard workers, intent on control and achievement, or they can have a hard time getting things done, getting caught up in procrastination, indecision, and fear of success.

Since I am a core optimist, I would also note that traits that may be a weakness in one context or if over-expressed, are almost always a strength in another context or if expressed in a strong and self-aware manner. Also, for almost all Rationals, who are in their Heads too much, and therefore overly Fear motivated, learning to move towards present moment experience in Heart or Gut may be helpful. Of course, one or the other of these may also be more in alignment with innate temperament (or training.) For example, I have pretty good access to Heart in the Present Moment, but poorer/more limited access to Gut in the Present Moment. (Oh, yeah, another known trait of Type 7 is that we are self-referential, which can sometimes be confused with narcissism, but it is actually not that at all. More like the whiteboard upon which we run our secondary Ti logic function, with our own inner states forming our assumptions. IOW, it's not "all I care about is my own inner state, fuck y'all", but "all I can know is my own inner state, so I shall proceed from there...perhaps babbling aloud as I access my strong verbal center to aid me in this attempt.")

IOW, I think that the perspective that we all have our own special sauce work we are best formed to do is more optimistic than the perspective of we are all clearly fucked up and have work to do. The fact that "what if everybody did it?" is never going to come true is a good thing. From Day 1 of the paradigm that formed them, there have always been consumers (spenders towards good or evil) and anti-consumers (savers towards good or evil), and that's only going to change if/when a new paradigm emerges and designates them elsewise. A systems-level solution seeks a lever. Assuming and maintaining an anti-consumerism stance is not finding/pushing a lever; much more like an endless uphill battle. The lever of ERE is more akin to the realization of all the varying flows of capital at ERE Wheaton 6. The lever is the ability to provide the consumer within us all (inclusive of those with most conservative towards stock-piling outlook/ temperament) with more or better options for consumption at the margin through revelation that work-towards-money-towards-material-goods-towards-the dumpster is only one of many possible flows, represents only one of the many tables in the great buffet hall that is life! Just look at that newly discovered abundance! Gimme, gimme, some of that too!

@ertyu:

Ok, excellent! Can you think of a better word than trauma to talk about this? This concept is pretty important for the series of posts I'm writing in my journal.

@Frita:

When I say "trauma" I mean both big-T and little-t trauma, although again, in this instance, I'm using it to specifically to mean something that causes a need or want to be placed off-limits and slip into the subconscious or shadow. I think a lot of this does happen in childhood and would be considered big-T trauma by a child.

We weren't talking about my problems, but since you asked...

That example you gave is pretty accurate to what my core limiting belief is.

My thing works like this: I dissociate when I am uncomfortable. Sometimes this happens as a dissociative event (only recently learned what this is and thus wtf has been happening to me my whole life, mostly as a teenager) but often I don't notice that I am dissociating, which means I don't experience my emotions AND I don't know that I don't experience them. This leads me to intellectualize the situation instead of experiencing the emotions. I also do other things like justifying myself unnecessarily and justifying feelings unnecessarily. This ultimately leads to resentment as I only experience the emotion later (and I used to only experience in comparative situations, like when someone else would get upset about something I did that I felt was similar to what they had done to me... so lots of score keeping) and can't always connect it to the initial cause. This eventually leads to resenting people I love and random outbursts of extreme anger.

Jin+Guice wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 06, 2024 6:39 pm

Can you think of a better word than trauma to talk about this? This concept is pretty important for the series of posts I'm writing in my journal.

Not really bc I don't think it's one thing causing it. Freud for instance thought civilization itself / the mere act of living in a society produced it, as to be civilized==to suppress/push into the shadow some of one's inherent drives. It probably even happens to troop monkeys, given not everyone can be the biggest gorilla so if you're smart, you have to learn to shut up and "eat bitterness."

Beyond that, there's shitty parents (who were themselves unprepared and/or suffering from generational trauma). Then there's gender bullshit. Then there's school. Then there's the violence you need to do to yourself to submit to the discipline of full time work for someone else. There's masking if you're to any degree nd. So we're all fucked even without actual (T/t)rauma -- but what human gets to adulthood without (T/t)rauma. I don't think there's one word for it except maybe the human condition

often I don't notice that I am dissociating, which means I don't experience my emotions AND I don't know that I don't experience them. This leads me to intellectualize the situation instead of experiencing the emotions. I also do other things like justifying myself unnecessarily and justifying feelings unnecessarily. This ultimately leads to resentment as I only experience the emotion later (and I used to only experience in comparative situations, like when someone else would get upset about something I did that I felt was similar to what they had done to me... so lots of score keeping) and can't always connect it to the initial cause. This eventually leads to resenting people I love and random outbursts of extreme anger.

Oh, yeah, that thing where I respond to my needs being unmet by trying to suppress my needs*, and then suppressing the emotions resulting from suppressing my needs, then at some point erupting in a way that solves nothing but at least makes the whole thing real because now at least we're finally talking about the truth of what is going on, except why are you like this, this is completely irrational, why can't we all do parallel play doing happy activities while ignoring the fact that we're all humans whose interiority matters and has meaning, why do you want to have navel-gazey conversations and have someone actually be interested and be willing to stay with what's going on for you because, you know, you're a human being and as such, you inherently have value (/s, I have a giant chip on my shoulder as we can see)

tl;dr i've done the same shit, and yeah, it's a work in progress

"Can you think of a better word than trauma to talk about this?"

Undigested experience (which leaves behind a subtle trace/impression, and can re-awaken when similar situations are encountered)?

This also points to a solution,which is fully digesting experience (by being fully present to it, and even, after unpeeling the story/labels/interpretetion, bringing it close and being with it, with the raw sensation). Everything wants to live in the light of awareness. To be seen and felt, and ultimately dissolved into it.

In that sense, the rekindling reaction of an undigested experience is not something to repress or avoid, but to recognize as an opportunity for full digestion.

In yoga psychology, the Sanskrit term for these subtle traces of not fully digested experiences is "saṃskāra".

Jin+Guice wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 06, 2024 6:39 pm

Ok, excellent! Can you think of a better word than trauma to talk about this? This concept is pretty important for the series of posts I'm writing in my journal.

Temperament or character for the individual. Trend, paradigm, and culture for the sociology. Personality for the interaction?(*)

Trauma with a big T "only" affects 1/3--1/2 of Americans. That still seems like a lot but it also leaves the other half/majority unaccounted for. Trauma with a small T, where every single unpleasant life experience is considered a trauma, is in my opinion overused. It is thus easy for the casual reader to assume the one when the other is meant or project their own experiences or lack of experiences onto their understanding. What might be helpful is a graduated scale ranging from "emotional experience still triggering anxiety attacks" (PTSD-level) to ... TBD. However, the problem remains that trauma has become a randomly loaded term. It's also a somewhat idiosyncratic lens in that it uses past events as a lens to describe current effects (anxiety, etc.) w/o considering the interaction between the experience and the experiencer. IOW, was it the traumatic event that actually causes the Trauma or was the traumatic event more like the last straw or an identifiable straw in a complex interaction between character and culture?

(*) This does make it possible to speak of a traumatized culture or people (nation) should you so desire. A collective past event that formed the society of individuals as it is today even if present individuals of that society did not personally experience the original event. E.g. the Holocaust.

Jin+Guice wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 06, 2024 6:39 pm

Can you think of a better word than trauma to talk about this? This concept is pretty important for the series of posts I'm writing in my journal.

Perhaps referring to healthy versus unhealthy or skillful versus unskillful instead? (Those are on a continuum, just like trauma, but not so loaded as Jacob mentions downthread?.)

Traumatic experiences produce deep learning to cope and/or maladaptive coping skills are modeled by caregivers/community/society, which become automatic reactions as you described with the dissociation/emotional repression/anger bursts. (These were probably skillful coping strategies when developed, but it sounds like you’d like to shift. Current research shows personality can change.)

These are some questions I ask myself:
-Is this mine or was it transmuted generationally/culturally?
-How would you prefer to respond instead?
-What did you need to learn instead?
-What is the behavior chain, where can I insert a substitution, and when do I need to pause before all I can do is react?

Small-t trauma is often misused in misunderstood. From Gabor Mate:

"Trauma is a Greek word for wound. Literally that's what it means. So when you understand that, then you realize...trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.

"Trauma is not the event that inflicted the wound. So, the trauma is not the sexual abuse, the trauma is not the war. Trauma is not the abandonment. The trauma is not the inability of your parents to see you for who you were. Trauma is the wound that you sustained as a result.

"It's strange: we use the word trauma because a bit promiscuously. People say, 'I went to a movie last night. I was traumatized.'

"No, you weren't. You were just upset. It's not the same thing.

"Or, 'We had a big fight at the family dinner last night and I was traumatized.' No, you weren't. You were just angry, you know?

"Trauma is when you are actually wounded and as a result, you're constricted and limited and constrained by what happened. On the other hand, where it matters, we don't use it at all."

Small-t trauma results from practices like letting children "cry it out" rather than picking them up when they are distressed, or growing up with an emotionally distant parent, or regularly dealing with micro aggressions as a minority.

@ertyu: I think we're largely in agreement.

ertyu wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 07, 2024 12:17 am

It probably even happens to troop monkeys, given not everyone can be the biggest gorilla so if you're smart, you have to learn to shut up and "eat bitterness."

My interpretation of this (though it could be interpreted differently) is that the regular monkey knows it wants whatever the bigger monkey has, but they are unable to get it. This is not what I'm talking about. However, if in this scenario the monkey hides from themselves that they want what the bigger monkey has, then that is what I'm talking about. This is not about always getting what you "need"/ want, it's about knowing what you "need"/ want.

@OutOfTheBlue: I like "undigested experience" and I think you are right about the solution.

jacob wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 07, 2024 8:37 am

Trauma with a big T "only" affects 1/3--1/2 of Americans. That still seems like a lot but it also leaves the other half/majority unaccounted for. Trauma with a small T, where every single unpleasant life experience is considered a trauma, is in my opinion overused. What might be helpful is a graduated scale ranging from "emotional experience still triggering anxiety attacks" (PTSD-level) to ... TBD. However, the problem remains that trauma has become a randomly loaded term. It's also a somewhat idiosyncratic lens in that it uses past events as a lens to describe current effects (anxiety, etc.) w/o considering the interaction between the experience and the experiencer. IOW, was it the traumatic event that actually causes the Trauma or was the traumatic event more like the last straw or an identifiable straw in a complex interaction between character and culture?

I typed a response but @WRC is better... this is why trauma is not necessarily the best word.

From google:

Trauma is an emotional response to a distressing event that can harm a person's sense of safety, self, and ability to regulate emotions.

This is part of what I'm actually talking about.

What I'm adding is that we aren't always aware of when we are traumatized, so that little-t trauma actually can be the most pernicious kind. REALLY Big T trauma or trauma that causes some sort of large PTSD reaction usually gets addressed, since it is disruptive to our day to day lives. If you dive for cover every time there is a loud noise, you're going to have trouble hiding this from yourself and the people around you. If you feel a little bit uncomfortable expressing when you are sad, you might just tell yourself and others that you aren't that emotional.

I have a lot to say about this... I'm concurrently making a post about this in my journal.

I was listening to someone discuss the difference between status and wealth. You cannot possess status because it's a social construct. But you can possess wealth. Consumerism is based on status so anti-consumerism is anti-status and we all know anti-status will eventually be sold on a Walmart T-shirt. Frugality is something you can possess. The avoidance of status. That seems to be fucking key.

"Who Cares About Status" - Planet Fitness t-shirt. White Plains, NY. Circa 2006.

He also spoke of "status capitalism." Public health officials, university professors, lawyers. People whose income is tied to possessing a level of knowledge that provides them a superior status over people with less knowledge. Nothing inherently wrong with it. But I think if you have a job like that, you will be limited to Fat FIRE. You just become a status capitalist that refuses to acquiesce to the status consumer on the back of the same coin. Frugality leads to wealth. Status can lead to wealth but it's got to constantly negotiate with money. I think that's why Warren Buffet can still pull off this image of frugality because he is ultimately motivated by possessing huge sums wealth rather than possessing status. I can't remember him chair dancing with a President although I would bet my BRK.B shares that he and Charlie traded multiple high-fives over the years.

I'm a little dissatisfied with the term "anti-consumerism", as merely reacting to consumerism seems vastly insufficient. I would prefer maybe "post-consumerism", for transcendence over reaction.

From my observations of EarlyRetirementExtreme, Mustachianism, TimothyWardism, NoamChomskyism, early Silicon Valley, various musical sub-genres, etc, it seems those of us who are somewhat more "thoughtful" are seeking and/or practicing alternative lifestyles, spiritualities, aesthetics and forms of community. In a way, "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed". Rather than "going back to simpler times", I think we are trailblazing lifestyles for the future.

Critiquing aspects of the present is inseparable from building the future, because we never know what will change and what will stay the same. History tells us that many human behaviours have changed, but many have remained remarkably persistent, at least up to now (spoken and later written language, sexual reproduction, religious belief).

As post-consumerists, I believe we are building a new kind of tradition, partly based on design and ingenuity, partly based on our inheritance of past traditions (either against or with).

Maybe motivation is the essential difference between narrow "frugality" and the broader spiritual-aesthetic-spiritual-social movement of post-consumerism.

Frugality is a practice, a tactic, a short-term means-to-an-end (Kantian hypothetical imperative). It might be chosen or imposed; regardless, the motivation sits outside the practice itself. The founders of AirBnB ate ramen and the early Spanish colonisers endured the deprivations of 15th century seafaring.

Post-consumerism, on the other hand, is a true voyage of discovery, a vision-building exercise, an end-in-itself (Kantian categorical imperative). The great scientists, philosophers, artists, engineers, even the founders of the US constitution, lived lifestyles and inhabited communities of thought that were unconventional for the times. Their motivations were wrapped up in how they lived their lives and were in some sense "chosen" (debates about ultimate free will aside). Modern post-consumerists deviate from social norms specifically relating to consumption, as a component of their broad pursuit of a new way of being human.

In my opinion, now is a great time to be experimenting with new lifestyles. Though "freedom of speech" has recently been a subject of contest, on the whole, we are fortunate to live in an age that treats social deviance relatively benignly. We are more trapped by our imaginations than by material or social constraints, so we should be working harder at imagining and creating.

I have so many more thoughts on this, but I fear organising and writing them all will take a colossal amount of time...

There's one more dimension to frugality/anticonsumerism that I haven't seen discussed here, and which makes me have mixed feelings about the concept.
While anticonsumerism is usually presented as a way to gain freedom, in some cases it can lead to opposite. If your country adopts anticonsumer mindset, the GDP drops, the country's army can no longer afford sophisticated weapons, and you get conquered by some neighboring authoritarian power, leading to loss of freedom and/or life. Which makes me feel than anticonsumerism and, more broadly, ERE, is not ready for mass adoption for as long as there are still countries which exhibit "red" personalities.
We'll probably have to wait till Fukuyama's end of history for post-consumer utopias to become viable. Alternatively, we'll start running out of natural resources first, and people will just become frugal as a response to that.