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I understand. In the past, I considered the possibility that I have a form of autism. However, I and my therapist decided I'm just a socially confused person. That is, I've taken the opinions of a few people and expanded on them greatly.
There are two dangerous pitfalls for me:
1. Assuming that what I think and feel is true, when it may have just been caused by an isolated memory. That is, if I see a girl on the bus tomorrow, and I think she will not like me... this is probably because I'm recalling an event where a girl did not like the fact that I spoke to her. An even worse problem is that I could be ignoring the 100 other girls who did not get upset when I spoke to them.
2. Philosophical unprovables. I just made that up, but there is a sector of thinking that can never be proven wrong. But, it's so highly unlikely that to believe in its possibility is to succumb to it. Most people celebrate life and value the progression of it. There is, however, no logical reason why this is so. It's quite possible that humans are viral at heart, destroying the world and causing mayhem. It might be best if we were exterminated. While that sounds quite silly, it is not impossible.
I think staying on the pop collar example will help. I was not born knowing that popping your collar makes you look like a "fag." I learned this through the opinions of other people. The origin of this assumption probably stems from someone being wronged or having felt they were wronged by someone with a pop collar. The wronged labeled this person a jerk and stereotypically attached the pop collar to the jerk. So now, every time they see someone with a popped collar, they incorrectly label them a jerk as well.
What I think it all comes down to is weeding out the false beliefs that stem from incorrect assumptions.
Of course, this then makes me wonder what is truly innate and what is not. As I seem to have pointed out, nobody innately thinks a popped collar is bad. Is it not true that babies prefer pretty faces? It seems like there is an innate knowledge of what is good looking and what is not. (as seen through the Averaged Face studies)
(I can tell I'm going off on a tangent, but what the hell lol)
The moral of the Averaged Face studies was that babies preferred the simplest face. Couldn't this be that babies attribute simplicity with good and complexity with bad? This would suggest that beauty is nothing more than the brain being absent of pain rather than pleasure? That is, if I see a 100 sided figure and am asked to count the sides, my head starts to hurt. But, if I'm asking to count the sides to a triangle, my brain does it with no complaints.
Could it be that "ugly" faces are nothing more than one having to do more processing than on a "pretty" face?
^ But this takes me back to the whole tolerance and weakness theory. We value strength which comes from the breaking down and rebuilding of muscles. This process is painful, but it is valued because it improves our tolerance.
Couldn't it be, then, that "ugly" faces are nothing more than that strength we try to reach? Maybe we should be promoted the tolerance building of accepting "ugly" and frowning on people who settle for the ease of looking at pretty faces?
This is an example of what screws me up. Unfortunately, telling me to chill out and not think about these things will not work. I refuse to just accept something (like most religious people do) without questioning it.
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