It is customary for women to make fun of men for being the silent types, by which they mean -- not talking through their problems like "normal" people should. But it is often not possible to talk about our problems: first, because our interlocutors generally do not understand them -- as most for instance do not understand that it really does upset me to be in ugly rooms, surrounded by ugly, badly dressed people; but, more importantly, because by talking about our problems honestly, we tip our hand. For instance, if I were to tell anyone that I have never overly loved my mother (i.e. never particularly desired to have her company, approval, or sentiment), my interlocutors would most likely say (or at least think) that I am cold, selfish and ungrateful, by which they would in fact understand that I am not likely to develop and emotional co-dependency and therefore not easily emotionally manipulated.
It would of course be all true, but unwise to advertise. People are willing to enter into barter with us when they think that they can easily have the better of us; if they suspect that may not be the case, they will simply refuse to play along.
And this is the reason why we do not talk through our problems, not because we are tough or silent or because we want to pretend that we are.
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Now, not being able to talk to anyone is a bad thing, because it prevents us form dressing our true thoughts in words and therefore from taking a closer look at just what it is that we think we are thinking. My purpose here is to write things which I could never write in any of my public blogs -- so that I can see what they look like once they are dressed in words. Things such as as my finding that I have never overly loved my mother: which, once I have written it, makes a lot of sense to me.
(There is a downside to writing here, though: the honest view of the world, when one surveys it, is truly very dark; if taken seriously, it discourages any human contact at all).
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Or writing openly, for instance, that looking at ugly people depresses me.
To say this seems unkind, but it is an aesthetic fact. The ugly may tell us all they want that slighting them on account of their ugliness is unfair, or even immoral, but the truth is that we pretty people simply cannot help ourselves, and trying to be otherwise is like putting a lion on a vegetarian diet -- both we and the lion will simply wither away. Of course, we pretty people have to keep mum about this fact for fear of offending the uglies -- and the timid -- and one consequence of that silence is that all public discussion of aesthetics is fake, missing its central element: the way experience of beauty differs between the pretty and the ugly.
Keeping mum about our true feelings regarding ugliness also has a negative impact on our own selves: forced to dissimulate about the way we feel about ugliness and the uglies -- which, given that the uglies are in massive majority we must for strategic reasons -- we sometimes manage to convince ourselves that we do not mind, thereby losing the clarity of mind and purpose needed for successful pursuit of happiness. It's a rare man who can talk and behave as if he thought or felt some way without letting that thought or feeling confuse his self-perception. Not speaking about ugliness, its dangers and effects, not confronting what it does to us, not staring the truth in the eye has a debilitating effect on us. Unrecognized beautism drills within us like the worm of unrecognized homosexuality might an ostensibly male man.
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