People often lack empathy about empathy, which seems ironic. Not everyone is as well-endowed as you. Aren't you so wonderful, and aren't they so scummy.

I care a lot about empathy, and I'm a fairly empathetic person, and that isn't an act, as I think sometimes people believe it to be; but I find that attitude I described small-minded, gross, and prejudiced.

With all that empathy of yours, you can't even, like, use it properly?

Sometimes I find people least empathetic of all about other people's level of empathy.

Do you really believe that you chose all that?

Have you ever, say, aced a class that you worked hard at? If you hadn't studied, you would have done poorly or failed. Right? So you earned a good grade. But if you'd been someone else, you could have studied twice as much and still failed. Huh. And we also know that many people who realize they aren't good at something put in even less effort than average... given that they will (they believe) never be any good at this. (It can naturally start to feel like throwing good money after bad.) Meanwhile, someone else could have aced the test without any perceptible effort.

Are you seeing the connection?

Empathy is a skill like every other skill in existence. Some people are great at it, seemingly naturally. Other people suck at it, despite a lot of effort. And most people are somewhere in a very big and complicated space between those extremes. (I would recommend the following: try to get over it and be a little less judgy. But now that I've given you the message as clearly as I can, it's up to you.)

There's a lot of talk (and sometimes from me) about whether things are weak or strong. But... it's subjective. Is it weak or strong to go through migraines? It's both. It's a defect. It's something wrong with me. If I could change my DNA (or reverse the damage if it came from hitting my head sometime as a toddler - for example, who knows, maybe the time I rode my tricycle down a flight of stairs and fell on my head - or maybe the time I ran out of the bathtub, slipped, hit my head on the sharp corner of the sink counter, bled all over the place, and had to get stitches) so that I didn't get them, I would. Sure, it could be unhealthy to walk around everywhere thinking "I'm defective. There's something wrong with me." There's something wrong with all of us, though. Evolution is a process of one defect after another. We're all massive conglomerations of typos, some of which are essential.

The things that make us weak can also make us strong, and the other way around. It isn't strictly one or the other. In fact it may be a mild/naive form of gaslighting to insist "This *is not* weak. It is *strong*." I mean, without metrics, these are opinion words. When you give an opinion, you should be aware it's an opinion and someone else will have another, and that isn't evil, it's just natural.

I'm sure - there's no question in my mind - that some of my greatest and most useful qualities are seen as weak, defective, annoying, stupid, or wrong by others. But when it's useful over and over, it is also a strength.

Migraines have taught me many things, not only about pain and suffering and perception, but also about brain chemistry and communication.

It isn't badass - I think - to suck it up and take the pain when the pain comes from a self-reinforcing inflammatory cascade - a feedback loop. A migraine is almost exactly like feedback from a mic on a PA. It's this needle-sharp, hot, almost (with the migraine, it literally is) nauseating crack down the calcium-phosphate crystal of your skull and your soul. That's kind of how it feels. Like a needle through your eyebrow, behind your eye, into your brain. Just left there, radiating. The pain leaks into the bridge of your nose, across the top of your head, into your neck at the atlas vertebra, sometimes your jaw and teeth. It doesn't have to be that bad to drive you slightly crazy. Nauseating pain that persists mercilessly is much worse than the same pain for a moment. It's more what it does to the pit of your stomach and your sense of the decency of the world than what it does to your actual pain receptors, somehow, though when the pain subsides, there's often relief to the point of euphoria.

So it's a thing I learned that just because pain isn't obviously physically damaging anything, it is actually not good, and trying to push through it with willpower can weaken rather than strengthen you. Pain has psychological effects, and when you let that inflammatory feedback run - like the mic feedback - without interrupting it, it grows and grows until it reaches some saturation point (you hope - but you really don't want to find out how high that point can be, because when you think you know, it can go higher). The longer you let a migraine run this time, the more easily you'll get the next one. And the more it'll affect your mental clarity, too, and probably your cardiovascular health. That isn't badass, really. That's something to avoid.

Writers like to cut through the cruft and say it right, preferably in a few words that feel like talking at its best.

When non-writers write or edit, they puff everything up. They want it sounding respectable and accomplished.

Banish that instinct.

Cut the shit and say it right, in words that feel like talking at its best.

ADHD is a lot less of a problem when your mind is in good working order otherwise. Sometimes I'm honed to one idea for hours or days, almost no interruption. Other times I'm doing 4 or 5 things at once, interleaving them. Both take presence of mind.

If I'm forgetting why I opened a new tab or walked into the room, if I want to die, if I need to call someone but I feel too stammery - that's all going to destroy progress and leave me feeling like a large pile of permanently unsorted laundry forgotten in a basement near Chernobyl.

I'm often too egotistical to read books, apparently. That is, I go for a walk with my headphones on, audiobook loaded. Should be easy enough. Press play. Don't press stop. But if I start at all, I often stop within a minute or two, because my thoughts keep pressing and I prefer them now. Some I write down. This is one. I never pressed play today.

As a writer I stand against this sense that words are supposed to be puffy, serious, professional, impressive. I hate that.

I write as naturally and simply as I can. People who aren't writers inevitably will reverse my work and try to make me sound like everyone else.

They don't seem to realize that "everyone else" sounds pretty awful to me, and that's exactly why I removed all the cruft that they're trying to put back for heaven knows what reason.

Ah, yes, I was briefly lying—I almost forgot the reason: to be puffy, serious, professional, impressive. I hate that.

Dopamine, GABA, serotonin, adrenaline, noradrenaline, anandamide, endorphin/enkephalin, dynorphin, acetylcholine, BDNF/NGF, glutamate, histamine, adenosine, oxytocin, melatonin...

It's a unique thing in history that many of us have a decent idea what these feel like.

Of course, it isn't the actual chemicals we feel, but the neural systems they set off.

Our brains are hives of neurons secreting pheromones, essentially. The pheromones are as much about how to connect as where to fly.

When women talk about and swoon over a guy's "confidence," they mean his calm feeling that he easily can and will go and get laid with someone else. Or get/accomplish whatever else he wants. It can certainly be other kinds of confidence, too, but I'm taking out a magnifying glass, here. Virtually everyone is really confident about some things, so when a person is labeled "confident" or "unconfident" in this setting, it's often situational.

So if a guy is busy with other aspects of life, or choosy, or both, and isn't playing the game as it was played in the wilderness, then he will quite likely not be getting laid, and will not feel on that basic instinctual level that he seems all that great to a new person who seems great, or that it's that easy at all to just go out and get sex and affection. And so he will not seem confident this way, especially when he thinks he has found someone worth his attention, and feels she is really special and he doesn't want to mess things up. This uncertainty/hesitation will be unattractive, and he may very sadly find himself avoided by the women he's interested in.

By those women specifically, and specifically because he's interested in them. Women he isn't interested in may still be crazy about him, seemingly because he isn't interested in dating or sleeping with them, but then again, maybe also because he has lots of good qualities. And if he can read people, he can see this pattern all too clearly, but it doesn't help him. Noticing may only make things worse.

This is to some extent (possibly a very large extent) because we have been removed from the naturalistic setting in which these instincts evolved. The way women and men evaluate each other for mating, on an emotional level, which is the level we make many of those decisions on, has scarcely changed in a million years.

When he actually just plain wants someone, she makes herself scarce... Because he wants her and she can sense it... Because he doesn't seem to feel confident around her. She will never tell him this.

This will make him feel not only undesirable but also eventually creepy. He'll have to ask himself if he's getting avoided because he's scary. Worrying about that actually makes a guy tend to seem creepy if he didn't seem that way already. Women generally do not provide feedback on this unless it's extreme, so he is left guessing. He feels she doesn't understand. But he isn't even sure what she's thinking, and she won't tell him, so how can he know? All he knows is that this is somewhat excruciatingly predictable, and it's because he likes her that she's avoiding him. That's clear. The exact "why" or what he can do about it may be totally unclear. That just doesn't seem fair. You feel more affection toward someone than toward other people, and that person treats you like a pariah.

So, in effect, from his point of view, now he's getting prejudged for the fact that he tends to get mistreated for the fact he has feelings. Good feelings. Feelings of peace, love, and understanding.

Do you see any hints of toxic femininity in this?

Yes, there are also hints of toxic masculinity in it. That's serious and needs to be addressed fully. Absolutely, and as a top priority. But statistically, more crimes tend to have been committed by black people. To assume a black person is a criminal is a prejudice. Prejudice is social toxicity.

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Ghosting a guy because he seems unconfident or seems to have feelings is toxic when that's what all the women are doing to him (and other men like him). He can "up his game" like most guys would, but to him this may feel manipulative, dishonest, or both.

You think you have every right yourself, and safety first, and girl power, and everything.

But when you put it all together and watch how the pattern plays out in people's lives - when you realize that you are participating in (unnecessarily painfully and unclearly via ghosting, dishonesty, etc) pushing down the kinds of guys - or kinds of attitudes from guys - that women keep complaining they don't see enough of - then you have to admit to some toxicity here.

It's one thing for you to fail to respond to a guy's message. It's another when it seems like that's all he's ever known.

Admit to that toxicity.

You make men feel ostracized when they have done nothing wrong.

Regularly. Like it's putting bread in a toaster in the morning. Like it's nothing. Like it should be normal and expected.

You ostracize men who care because they care.

You make them feel like they don't exist to you or are acting like axe murderers. And from their perspective, the reason is that they felt you were special. That's why you're treating them that way, in their eyes. And it is. That's why. If you had a specific problem, some glaring error the guy made, you could tell him. But you don't. Ever. Not this kind of guy, the kind who would listen, who would love to hear any word from you. You treat him as if he doesn't exist. He has no idea what you're thinking or whether he did something wrong. Or he has a thousand ideas and can't tell which it is, and is having a secret emotional meltdown because this keeps happening, and he's trying to be more than decent and hide this from you, even though it's your fault.

Admit to that toxicity.

Or you can go on gaslighting and blaming all of this on men all of the time. Rather than some of it some of the time. Or much of it much of the time.

The dynamic is also yours.

The idea that belief itself - in absence of or against evidence - saves you in the eyes of God seems circular and contrived, and frankly like a sometimes very dangerous misconception.

It is a false moral. That is not good.

Yes, faith can be helpful. We don't have all the answers. There are times - many times - we must go on and do our best, despite forces against us, despite not knowing.

That is true, and confidence often helps us function and keeps us feeling ok or better than ok, which is generally good.

But to elevate that to an absolutist moral in ways it cannot sustain, and without any real evidence that you should -

Not good.

Socially destructive in the long run, also.

I know it isn't intended that way.

But faith-as-salvation is a false moral that can have severe negative consequences.

When people want to disapprove of an activity, one common strategy is to make a big show of NOT understanding it.

I've never found this very useful.

By proving to someone that you don't understand their motives/feelings/actions/words/beliefs/thoughts, pretty much all you're doing is saying, "Hey, I'm really stupid, you should listen to me." They make sense to themselves. If you can't figure that out, it makes you look dim. (Dim at best, and hypocritical at worst.)

???

Ok, I understand that you do not want to give the appearance of condoning or excusing what is not actually acceptable or tolerable.

There are other, better ways to go about this, though.

Also, and against what I just said, I will acknowledge that there MAY be situations in which a show of NOT understanding IS effective.

However, I haven't seen much evidence of this myself, nor does anyone seem interested in pointing to such evidence, nor does this approach align with my understanding of human minds from life experience with family abuse, a degree in psychology, and many years of teaching one-on-one.

I have seen things work, and well. But acting willfully ignorant by NOT understanding is not something that seems to work, in my experience. It increases bitterness all around and solves nothing.

If you believe that a show of NOT understanding is effective, show me the evidence, and explain where/when it might be effective, and more effective than any alternatives.

I'm open to this, but I just don't see it approached with any objectivity. I see a cultural, perhaps evolutionary bias in the direction of dehumanizing those we wish to scold.

Unless you have a good, evidence-based argument for that, count me out of it.

I think my methods are far better.

Which is a blunt way of saying what I've been saying different ways for many years.