35 Responses to “Obsession 2.0”

1. Lisa Williams Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 9:16 am

   Oh no! What, no dating? Tivo is running a matchmaking game/event in San Francisco and NYC, matching people based on their television viewing; check out Lauren Pavlovich on Gothamist, and Evan tells me that Rocketboom is trying to do some matchmaking with Amanda Congdon as the matchmaker. He said to me earlier, “It’s coming out with typical results: hundreds of men and like three women.”

   I still want to hear the Dating 2.0 show.

2. Lisa Williams Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 10:41 am

   “How do you survive Valentine’s day when you’re single or just don’t buy it?” Lifehacker.

3. peggysue Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 12:36 pm

   I confess to unabashedly googling crushes. Sometimes you get nothing. A common name can make googling someone less than fruitful. I have however hit the jackpot a few times. Once I googled someone who had a plethora of published articles on the Internet with pictures and everything. By the time I got to the technical articles though it got pretty boring and I couldn’t read it all so I figured I must not be too horribly obsessed. We never became lovers but we did become friends however I would never admit that I googled him… well, until now.

   I’ll also even admit to googeling Christopher Lydon, another gold mine! I found that fabulous anthem to obsessive love by the Dresdon Dolls! It made me laugh at my own obsessive tendencies and is on my ipod now. Not that I stay home nights with my headphones on while my friends are out having fun or anything. Christopher Lydon is so brilliant though and that picture of him that you get when you click on Open Source from the KUOW schedule with that endearing crooked smile is such a charm. Happy Valentines Day!

4. Lisa Williams Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 3:49 pm

   OMG! “The Dumpster is a portrait of romantic breakups taken from blogs in 2005.”

5. nother Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 5:17 pm

   Howdy! My computer has been out of commission, so I took a little retreat from technology- no email, no ipod, no ROS, no crooked smiles from Chris. I’ve had to resort to reading and sitting around thinking more – booooring. Anyway, now I’m back to the future.

   Maybe in some way, my retreat was about reestablishing control over certain aspects of my life. In the same way one might stop drinking alcohol or coffee for a period of time, in the same way one might choose to be single for a period of time, all to prove to one self that you have control.

   “Control,� What the hell does that mean anyway? To me it starts with ones “ego.�

   A few years ago I was in a five year relationship with a beautiful woman from Galway, Ireland. Black Irish- piercing blue eyes, silky black hair, generous heart. We were 28 and the timetable told us the next step was marriage – then a baby carriage. Whoa, bring on the clichés, I was not ready, I felt trapped, I needed to figure out my career first. In my cowardness, I forced her to break us up by pushing away from her so much that she had to give me an ultimatum to know if I still loved her. I did not respond and we broke up. Now I had my “freedomâ€? and she looked like the bad guy for breaking us up with an ugly ultimatum. I went on trips to Jamaica and Brazil and had a grand ole time, while she sat devastated back home. After a year, I came home from my jaunts to find out that she was seeing another guy. What? She had moved on? Hey, I just needed some space, some time away, get my head together, you know. I’m ok now though, let’s forget about all this. I’m sorry!

   What do you mean it’s too late? A lot of happy marriages have that little break up right before, come on now. I said I was sorry. NO? Oh shit! Maybe if I describe to you how much I love you, (I’ve been reading Shakespeare while away in Jamaica) you are as a winged messenger of heaven unto my white-upturned wondering eyes! Look, please come back to me, I screwed up, I’m so sorry, PLEASE! PLEASE!!!!

   She didn’t come back to me. I fell into despair. I fell into a depression. Until now in my life – I was a man, I was in control. Now all of a sudden I was having trouble breathing, I could not stop thinking about her, about us, about her, what the hell did I do, what was I thinking? I’d stay up late, than wake with dawn. How could I possibly go on without her? The only thing I dreaded more than being alone was the presence of other people. I wrote her long letters, pouring my guts out on the paper. I probably freaked out to no end. When she finally agreed to meet me for coffee (now I could convince her) I borrowed a friends new wedding ring, pulled it out and told her that I had bought it for her, to show her that I was serious about marrying her. No chance. She had a stubborn dignity, which in a tragic irony, is one of the things I loved about her. I cried like a baby at that coffee shop in the Common, broke down like never before. My ego had been shattered and pieces were dripping all over my shirt. She cried to, but for different reasons I suspect.

   She went on to marry the guy; I went on obsessed, until someone convinced me to take the anti-anxiety drug Paxil. I took it for about eight months and it brought be back to a place where I could let time move me forward. After a lot of reflecting, I’ve come to realize that what sent me into that downward spiral of obsession was not some Shakespearian loss of love, it was a massive blow to my damm ego. Up until that point in my life I had been in control of everything including my emotions. I had been in control of that relationship and now I had no control anything. With time I’ve realized that breaking up had been the best thing – I truly wasn’t ready. The revelation for me is that when we have obsessive impulses, the impulses say more about us then the object of our obsession.

6. cheesechowmain Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 7:46 pm

   I like to google myself occassionally…auto-google-erotica…mastur-google-bation…. will it make me blind or cause my google indices shrink? Seriously though, I do occassionally research how an ex-spouse is doing in regards to their work in the film business. I root and cheer for this person to acheive their goals and aspirations, so I keep in touch that way. I’m not much for obsessing or stalking activities.

7. cheesechowmain Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 7:53 pm

   Sheesh, I almost forgot, I met my spouse through an internet dating service! We did quite a bit of correspondence before we met for a date. This seemed very helpful and important in the process.

8. cheesechowmain Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 8:01 pm

   “I know, look, listen, you’re unhappy. I’m unhappy, too. That’s what a good compromise is all about. Have you heard of Henry Clay, are you familiar with Henry Clay? … He was The Great Compromiser, this is a good compromise … A good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied, and I think that’s what we have here.”

   — Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm, “The Car Pool Lane”

9. Miss T-Rex Says:
   February 14th, 2006 at 8:13 pm

   I decided to Google an old boyfriend I slighted in high school; he wrote me love poems and, being 14, I just couldn’t handle it. I finally found him on MySpace and apologized for being so mean so many years ago. I just wanted to make sure that I didn’t scar him for life by making a sweet, young boy afraid of writing his feelings to girls. He was open to the apology and told me his wife still loves his poems. Awwww.

10. cheesechowmain Says:
    February 14th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

    You can’t smell someone over the internet…some transactions and relationships need to be within smell distance.

11. RDJonathan Says:
    February 14th, 2006 at 8:39 pm

    I find it fascinating that Dr. Frost wrote her dissertation on this topic! I’ve enjoyed her comments.

    The advice I give to anyone interested in online dating is to make it fast– no more than one or two email exchanges, one phone call, and then a meeting. That leaves minimal time to start filling in the blanks by fantasizing.

    The marketing that online dating sites use is brilliant in that it plays right into those fantasies. It’s outcome visioning to the extreme. Match.com’s is a good example; eHarmony.com’s marketing goes right for the jugular. Users of these sites should temper their enthusiasm with patience.

12. buddhapest Says:
    February 14th, 2006 at 9:26 pm

    I gave online an extended try. My experience was all the negatives mentioned by your guests tonite. So I stepped offline as the only REAL way to meet people. (I agree with cheesechowmain – the smell factor is essential).

    Christopher: in the mode of craigslist’s “Missed Connection” I introduced myself to you this past fall at the McCoy Tyner jazz concert at Northeastern. Medium height, medium brown hair, glasses, age appropriate, from Wickford RI, big fan of Open Source. Not much to go on to prick your memory, but your interest was momentarily piqued, evidenced by the second look you gave as you walked away. Hardly enough contact to employ the smell factor. Perchance when next we meet………

13. allison Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 11:51 am

    I have never been obsessed with another person. I have been the object of obsession. I had a job that lent itself to men seeing me as some exotic thing. Okay, let’s not get carried away. I’m not exotic. It was the 80s and I was a programmer. I worked for a small company that made publishing systems for major newspapers. I was the on site installation manager. This meant I would live in place like London, Sao Paolo, Los Angeles, Nashua – yes, Nashua – for 9 months to a year. I would over see the customization of the systems for each deparment in the paper, along with the training for the users.

    On almost every installation, someone would become obsessed. This was not unique to me. My female peers within the company all experienced this. Sometimes it was harmlessly annoying. But other times it was frightening. (Oh, yes, I was also stalked by a man in NYC for a few months. Also frightening.)

    As the one on the receiving end of obsession, I have a different perspective than the obsessed. I experienced that Obsessors feelings really had nothing at all to do with me. Though, inevitably, others would question whether I had done anything to cause the clearly destructive behaviors. Luckily I was never hurt. And I don’t have the victim mentality, so I never let them get the best of me. (I can be formidable when threatened.) But, sadly, i never felt supported by those around me. Especially those in a position to do something – the bosses. I always had to fend for myself and defend myself. It was the same ‘blame the victim’ mentality that you see when women are raped.

    I used different tactics with the different characters, but it was always traumatic for him and for me. I didn’t appreciate having to defend myself in the ways required. (I told one man that I was gay. That sent him into a drinking binge and weeks later he quit his job at the paper. He went right over the edge. I resented that I ended up feeling so badly for him and that I had someone damaged him. When, in fact, I was the recipient of inappropriate and frightening behaviors that I was forced to handle.) (I set another up to nearly get fired by Robert Maxwell – that’s a fun story in a twisted way.)

    In the end, I experienced a combination of people who were sad and lonely and also felt powerless. I (the version of me in their heads, that is) became the magic crystal, the grail. The magical item that would make all their pain go away if I would love them. Meanwhile, they were doing everything they could to ensure that I was repulsed and frightened. Still, I always knew that I was internally more powerful. More connected to reality. Less shattered. (Startling, given my childhood.)

    I am a person of great empathy. Coming into contact with these men was very painful. I could feel their dark spiral. They lived in the darkness without the hand of a guide. The despair was palpable. And I could not help. Perhaps, now that I’m older, I could handle it differently and be of some limited help. I am beyond the need for simple self-preservation. But then, all I could do was survive it. And when the survival button is pushed, the cornered animal comes out. Not so helpful to the other suffering one.

    And suffering they are. I know loneliness. I have a corner of deep, unrelenting loneliness in my heart. A feeling that no one will ever see the whole me. Let alone, actually accept me lovingly if they did. I know powerlessness. I spent a childhood lying in wait. I can see how the combination of the two becomes so unbearable that you need to believe there is someone who can see you and love you for who you are and make all the pain go away. In retrospect, I think that the obsession of these men was an intensely exsquisite reflection of a piece of me. And I think that we need to find a way to embrace this part of ourselves. Soothe it with loving kindness. Something we could offer those we know who are locked in the prison of obsession themselves. Bring them out of their isolation cell and let them know real love by acknowledging the deep pains and pangs of being human.

14. Lisa Williams Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 12:09 pm

    I met my husband before Google was around, and I have to say, I think I’m probably pretty lucky. Had I written a personals ad with all the things I thought I wanted back then, I would have ended up desperately unhappy.

    Because personals ads assume that you actually know what will make you happy.

    Had I had to depend on personals, my list of criteria would have excluded the man who is now my husband, with whom I am delighted and have two children with.

    At the time I met my husband, I had had a lot of “He’s From Earth, I’m a Weirdo from Outer Space” dates. I was working on getting myself okay with the idea of being an 85 year old, by myself…then I’d start worrying, my god, what if I end up like one of those women with 19 cats? No, no, I would take up gardening! As a defense against cats!

    It was a weird time. I was still in my post-college roommate apartment, but two roomates departed for graduate school, and my remaining two roommates…married each other. They bickered, I felt like I was in their personal space. So I started treating the coffee shop down the street as my remote living room. I’d bring my books and settle in. The only problem with this place, from my perspective, was that it was a pick-up joint. At some point every evening, all the tables would be taken — but not all the chairs, thus making it easy for some guy to come up and say, leeringly, “Is this chair taken?”

    My solution? If there was an extra chair at my table, I moved it to the other side of the room. Men! Had enough! Go away! I’m collecting cats!

    Then one evening I was sitting, reading, and I saw this guy and he was reading Towards a Perfect Language, a big tome on semiotics by Umberto Eco, and some little voice said, “Hey, I have a book by that same author in my car.” And even though I was firmly Off Dating, my feet, mysteriously, were piloting me towards my car, where I fished around next to the jumper cables for a copy of How To Travel With a Salmon, a book of travel essays by Eco.

    Then I went back into the cafe and chose a new chair that was directly in his line of sight. (In the background you could hear the Mutual of Omaha “Wild World of Animals” announcer whisper, “Here we see the mating dance of the reclusive nerd — each one displays a book…”)

    I sat there and opened the book in front of me. I couldn’t read, I just sat there and thought, “I am such an idiot! This is so cheesy, there’s no way this will work!”

    Then the weirdest thing happened. It worked. It worked!

    He came over and talked to me and ultimately asked me for a date, and I never had to date anybody else ever again, hallelujah!

15. peggysue Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 1:02 pm

    Christopher’s crooked smile thing… it’s not like an Elvis lip curl, it’s just one side of his mouth going up higher than the other side. Harrison Ford does the same thing.

16. nother Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 1:08 pm

    Allison, if a guy comes across a woman who has an obsession for him, the result is generally highfives from all his buddies. Wow that’s cool man! It’s the stuff of bragging. That’s why it’s so amazing to hear a woman perspective – no matter how intelligent you may be, no matter how strong your spirit is, being the object of obsession = danger for you, danger = fear, and life is simply too short to live with any kind of fear. If he can’t have you “physically,” he will possess you mentally; he craves your fear of him Allison. It’s like I said in an earlier post, it’s about his ego. He knows he can never have you and that hurts his ego, he feels less of a man, he feels powerless, – the power of having you fear him is two-fold- he is simply on your mind and he wants to be on you mind as much as you are on his. The other thing is, you fearing him, takes away his feeling of powerlessness – as a woman you are now the powerless one, because you feel fear.

    It all reminds me of the Chris Rock bit, where he says that none of the white people in the room would trade places with me – “and I’m rich.” I believe that none of the men on this site would trade places with Allison, or Lisa Williams, or Oprah, or any other woman, no matter how smart, beautiful, or rich, they may be. White men (me included) have no idea of the privilege we have inherited – that we feel entitled to. You want to talk about a cornered animal, Allison – try taking away our power. Try telling us that we can’t have something we want – like you! You may reject us, but that’s not where it will end.

    With all that said, I do believe that a very small nugget of the irrational obsession for you was a rational attraction to “an intensely exquisite reflection” of you. You have a unique empathy and an insatiable wonder, and that’s a VERY beautiful thing.

17. nother Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 1:15 pm

    Lisa, beautiful post! On the missed connections thread, I talked about my existential dread at not “taking action� on an attraction at CVS. I talked about the need to at least go down swinging. Well you took action and you didn’t go down swinging, you scored a knockout! You are the heavyweight champion of the world in my book. I will take inspiration from your post Lisa, thankyou.

18. nother Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 1:20 pm

    Peggysue! Now every time Chris makes a wry or sly comment on the radio I will be tormented with visions of his crooked smile.

19. Robin Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 1:45 pm

    Lisa – Thanks for all those hilarious links! Forget friendster…I’m going with Dumpster. And thanks for reminding us to lighten up once in a while. Missed connection obsessives, take a line from Lisa’s brave husband.

    Thanks to everyone who shared their personal stories, too. Allison and Nother – great, thoughtful stuff there. I’m only sorry we weren’t able to use it in the show.

20. allison Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

    Hey nother:

    Thank you for the kind thoughts.

    I agree that life is too short to love with fear. In each of my situations, I ultimately let go of fear and realized how much power I had. If the man didn’t let go of the obsession, I destroyed him. While I’m not proud of being a destructive force, sometimes you have to be. Sometimes you have a tear a building down to make way for a new one. What usually came between fear and empowerment was anger. Everyone around me would be worried, but wouldn’t help. I had better things to do with my time than occupy with some stranger’s psycho-emotional garbage that I did not generate. I would feel a rage and then I would plot. Unlike the victims of stalking and obsession that you read about in novels and see in films, it was a calm, simple course of action that didn’t require any life-threatening moments. But it was the undoing of the man. And in the end, I could empathize. And forgive.

    I hadn’t thought about any of this in years. The things that are evoked by ROS…..

21. Nikos Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 5:54 pm

    First, a big Thank You to the contributors to this thread.
    At least a couple of the posts herein deserve nomination to the imaginary end-of-year ROS ‘Best Post’ award. (Whose prize will be what? – an autographed and gilded copy of that infamous “Crooked-Smile Chris� photo?)

    I’ve bits of reaction to many of you, but I must start with a question to nother.
    Please let me know if you agree with the following.

    My real-world, non-psychological understanding of ‘ego’ is this: A protective sense of persona, primarily self-generated but inescapably dependent on validation from peers. A shield of emotional cloth, whose purpose is to allow the young – especially adolescents – to feel capable of interacting in the daunting world of worldly adults.
    Its formation takes place in peer-groups and in families, but its existence is highly personal – and so much so that its operators almost immediately begin to confuse the constructed, or shall we say carefully-stitched-together, shield with the true, inner self. This confusion accounts for the nearly unimaginable self-obsessiveness of professional athletes, and for the more mundane need for most of the rest of us to consider if not actively seek personal counselors at one point or more in our lives.
    It’s more akin to having a demon possessing you than it is the paradigmatic ‘healthy ego’ of Freud (whose theories, apart from identification and naming of this thing the ego, are long overdue for a wholesale junking).

    Now for an example of this definition in a real-life context.
    My own ego never really developed, though I certainly tried to make it happen. I hadn’t had the emotionally healthy sort of family life that could intuitively ‘guide’ my ego creation, because I didn’t have enough self-perspective to understand how my peers would judge the various stages of its development. In short, my efforts could be only characterized as ‘pretentious’ – which is a great way to earn ostracization.
    But it was also an unintended boon, because it meant that I felt uncomfortable ‘in my skin’ (which really, I think, means, ‘in my ego’), and so I presently abandoned the misbegotten wretch instead of trying to perfect it. This left me a shy and uncertain young man, but amiable enough, and unpretentious enough to earn many good and equally quiet-type friends. I wasn’t threatening, nor terribly charismatic.

    Then a funny thing happened in my mid-twenties. Enough women my age and slightly younger had grown aware and jaded of the post-adolescent male-ego to notice that the ‘charisma’ so venerated by teenage girls actually tends to make for unconscientiously lousy adult males (does this in any way jibe with your own experiences?). This, coupled with the fact that I’d won the genetic ‘appearance lottery’ (and the fact that I worked in a bar) meant that, seemingly overnight, I went from ‘cute but too shy’ to ‘cute, sweet, and highly desirable’. I went from an adolescence of ‘no girlfriends’ to a couple of adulthood decades of…too many?

    So will you be surprised to learn that I too had more than one (many) occasions like yours? – Like you, I couldn’t voice my unreadiness for deeper commitment and instead fell into that damnable male relationship-silence.
    It wasn’t my ego – I didn’t have one worthy of mention – it was my relative lack of experience (especially while young and yearning), compounded a cultural acceptance of male uncommunicativeness. (This is, nother, all in the end gonna let you off the hook, btw.)
    Does the ego’s presence and robotic control occlude the needs of the man within?
    You betcha.
    The ego, I my humble opinion, is the least valuable human attribute. Egos, being artificial/societal constructs, by their nature can’t sense the feeling people beneath their layers. Egos, not the sensitive and caring people beneath their protective layers, fence, feud, and battle to no good end. And delude us, their putative operators, into thinking that they fairly represent our personages.
    It really is more like a demonic possession.

    (And have you ever noticed that the general pattern of egos varies from culture to culture and society to society? That the ‘California’ and ‘Michigan’ egos vary nearly as much as the ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ egos? When bigots give coded statements of their prejudices like the classic “I just can’t understand those people�, they’re actually referring to other-cultural ego-types, not the fully human and fully feeling people beneath the egos. We should perhaps name them pseudo-scientifically, like (based on other posts herein): ‘Europa Americanesis programmeri nerdi Lisa-Wilsoni’, or something like that!)

    So how else, you might wonder, does my story parallel yours?
    Perhaps a lot. Like you, I lost many good lovers from benign neglect (and why worry when another would make herself available almost immediately?). I didn’t do it from egotism – it was instead a weird reversal: my empathy (of which I’ve plenty) sensed that my emotion evolutions didn’t match those of my lover. I wasn’t self-confident enough, not even after dozens of lovers, to imagine myself in an adult marriage. I was permanently ‘unready’. This doesn’t mean I never fell hard for a lover. I came to regret the loss of three who I imagined to be my soulmates. Unlike the countless others, I knew these were once-in-lifetime women (and, in hindsight, what luck to have found three!). Yet the same unreadiness that caused my ‘benign neglect’ of other lovers sabotaged my each of my Big Three, although each instance was unique, and as dependant on the failings, foibles, and circumstances of the women as it was anything to do with me. (When big relationships fail, it’s not ALWAYS due to the doings of both partners, but most of the time it’s probably the case.)

    The point? Each of the big three caused me massive and long-lived pain on their dissolutions.
    Why? Because, unlike egos, people have feelings – feelings that the loss of a love can savage.

    So: twasn’t your ego that writhed in agony on the loss of your black-Irish. It was you, the person under the ego’s thumb. The person the ego fooled into thinking he didn’t need the love of his life.
    My theory for why this happens is simple: couples forge distinct, conjoined identities.
    And any ‘self-respecting ego’ (aren’t they all?) will view this eventuality as a threat to its existence.
    They really are like demons. They need to possess you. Their existence is artificial – and any new possible self-identity threatens them at their core.
    When you finally notice that the man named ‘(your name here)’ isn’t actually the person he shows off to the world, the demon freaks out and points the finger inward, shouting “NO! That’s the ego! The one with feelings! Not me!�
    It doesn’t want to die.
    So kill the king, and long live the new king, because when we stop letting robots run our personal lives, we might just find that it’s not so hard to meet the people that will meet our needs.

    Nother? Is this kinda like what you meant?

    Is this worth a further thread-wide conversation?

    What do women think of this account, especially in light of the very brave soul-baring done by nother?

    I’d meant to give more specific kudos and respect to the other posters, but this word-balloon has stolen all my free time for the rest of the day.
    Later, all.

22. Nikos Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    Oh, I meant and forgot (in my haste) to mention that my ‘carefree couple of decades’ actually ended a bit earlier, after 7 years with the third of the Big Three, and the heartbreaking realization that love alone isn’t enough to overcome fatal incompatibility.
    And then, as the heart healed slowly, the additional disillusionment that the older ‘carefree’ lifestyle was for folks younger than me.
    THere’s a moral in there somewere, I think.
    Gotta run again…

23. Gizmo Logix Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 9:56 pm

    >>>Lisa Wrote: Then I went back into the cafe and chose a new chair that was directly in his line of sight. (In the background you could hear the Mutual of Omaha “Wild World of Animals� announcer whisper, “Here we see the mating dance of the reclusive nerd — each one displays a book…�)>>>

    Your Mutual of Omaha satirical analogy was hilarious!

24. allison Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 10:14 pm

    Its an interesting concept – the ego as demon possessor. Different from the id. I think this would be very interesting to explore.

    I, too, think Freud should be junked. He creeps me out.

25. Nikos Says:
    February 15th, 2006 at 10:48 pm

    Ah, and the amorphous moral of my previous post came to me while running. (It’s amazing how a four-miler through the brisk air of a colorful twilight can clear out the cogitational cobwebs.)
    It’s as time-honored as it is unrealistic: pick your Big Loves carefully. The seemingly miraculous ‘parallel interests’ espoused by the courting paramour might two years later turn out to have been nothing but enthusiastic but inauthentic ‘Me toos!’ designed soley to rivet your attentions.
    By then it’s too late: you’re already in love. Five years after that you’re asking for multiple rounds of liquid anesthetic from your friendly neighborhood bartender.

    As for my arguable notion that egos have regional flavors, I ought to have offered a reason and an example. Perhaps this will suffice:
    Egos, being mostly societal constructs, inevitably reflect the society’s attitudes. Example: To, say, a lad from Michigan, California guys might seem to possess a suspicious amount much effortless ‘cool’. The same Californians might judge the guys from Michigan ‘nice but reserved.’ (Think Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon.)
    The ‘reserve’ will likely be occasionally be punctuated by outbursts (since reserve means at least some emotional repression, and even the barely simmering pot must occasionally nudge its lid). Meantime, the Californians, while making their egos, have the advantage of plenty of ‘cool’ older role-models.
    Okay. You’re right: that’s a really lousy example. But it’s all I can think of off the top of my head. (Sigh.)

    Gizmo: you’re dead right about Lisa’s post. It’s a big-time winner.
    But so many of these posts are just awesome. And since I don’t want to fawn, I’ll just reiterate my heartfelt Thank You to all.
    Affectionately,
    Europa Americanensis adultus-slackerino scriptori Nikos

26. Gizmo Logix Says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 12:02 am

    “id” and “ego.” Sigh…

    Us humans are such silly creatures…good thing we don’t have tail feathers. Each of us would be wagging them vigorously at various speeds. Each trying to impress his or her mates in our musical dancing matting ritual. Just beware of the dreaded “molt…”

    I remember reading somewhere that the perfect mate is one that sees the best in you. Or, rather, seeing the best in you, through their eyes. That’s says a lot about ego. Kinda selfish. But then I thought about it and reversed the roles.

    I had a friend that just made me crack up in laugher. I don’t know what it was. But some of the things they did was just funny. It was genuine. So, in my eyes that person was fun to be around. It would also make sense that that person would also want to keep getting the reactions from me as well. It was a feedback loop. They enjoyed the attention from me. Because not everyone thought they were funny. There’s the “ego” for ya.

    Picture this. A group of seven people — myself included. This one girl telling a story about her day. At the end of the story she makes some grand hand gesture/facial expression trying to reenact something that happened to her. Two people chuckle. Three people smirk. I crack up laughing. And it was spontaneous laughter on my part. Great way to make a new friend, no?

    And still to this day, if she tells a story I’d still crack up. This is a perfect example of her seeing the best in herself though MY eyes.

    Give and take.

27. Nikos Says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 1:25 am

    gizmo: what’s interesting about your example is that it doesn’t strike me as an ego-exchange at work. We even have a cliché for it: ‘to let down your guard’ (as with a friend or intimate. (That ‘guard’ is the ego.)
    And if that ‘absence of guard’ was the normal STARTING point for making acquaintances with others, interpersonal contentiousness might become a thing people looked back on as a barbarity of an older—and unlamented—culture.

    If this sounds all together too mushy-warm-fuzzy, that’s cuz it is. But only because egos have become a vital self-defense layer in world obsessed with hierarchy – a world run by adults (or ARE they?). Hierarchy is the villain when friends cut-down other friends. The insulted must then make a choice between retaining the insulters as friends – at the cost of their social standing and self-esteem – or accepting ostracization. In youngsters, this isn’t an easy choice. Ego construction then becomes an arms race. (Adolescent put-downs are simply one common method of this escalation.)

    The question, then, is whether hierarchy is a normal feature of ‘human nature’, or only massively exaggerated in the world’s currently dominant cultures.
    I believe the latter (probably obviously).

    I doubt that obsessions with hierarchy and ego would persist if adults behaved their ages instead of tediously perpetuating their puberties. For instance, the professional athletes whose egos are so big they must speak of themselves in the third person. For example, “Tyrell Ovens [an imaginary pro] needs the respect that only comes through the biggest contract.� Who’s speaking? His agent? Nope. His own biological mouth. Guys like this haven’t matured a day since their talents began garnering adulation in middle school. Their egos serve to shield the embarrassing presence of the twelve-year-olds hiding out within their powerfully honed bodies.

    Much, much more importantly, this sort of monster-ego isn’t limited to athletes – hell, they run the world’s governments (although they’ve enough politesse and savvy to know better than to thump their chests like footballers). It’s hard to see from afar because (perceived) humility is a virtue crucial to voters. But the hapless staffers see the egos. They know the sordid truth, but keep mum in support of the pols’ sundry righteous causes.

    Anyway, this sort of child-in-an-adult’s-body norm is as overdue for a junking as Freudian theories of sex-obsessed children and the like.
    Or so say I while Chris talks Orwell ‘live’ on KUOW.
    (But what the hell do I know!)
    Anyway, thanks for (re-)joining the conversation, and please feel free to respond. I’m not looking for a ‘fight’ so much as I am the necessity, through critique, of refining my thoughts enough to be convincing. Thanks.

28. Nikos Says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 1:44 am

    Or am I misnaming it?
    (Shari Thurer would come in handy here.)
    Is the ‘guard’ of ‘letting down one’s guard’ ego, or something closely related but perhaps not psychologically recognized? (Something yet unnamed?)
    I *think* it’s ego…

29. nother Says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 12:46 pm

    Allison says: “I have never been obsessed with another person.� Forgive me, but do you lament that or are you proud of that? Was Juliet obsessed with Romeo? Was Cathrine obsessed with Heathcliff? I’m fascinated by the thin line between passion and obsession. Is there even a line, or just some blurry nether land?

    I’m sure you’ve heard people say- prick my finger for blood “I want to feel somethingâ€? – well, the obsession of love can be “something.â€? I felt it once – it was tangible, I could bite it. When the flame fizzled, I fell hard – but is that important? Does the falling negate the rise? I’m serious, I don’t know. When we get very drunk with friends and have the time of our life, does the hangover dread the next day take away from the previous night’s experience? Are they two separate things or not? I say yes, as long as the hangover does not infringe on “importantâ€? responsibilities the next day. The obsession I’m thinking about this time was the rebound from my five year relationship. I met a bartender from New Orleans who convinced me to move down there and move in with her and bar tend there. She was artistic and she could party – now this is what I’m talking about! Well, I was still talking about it after she dumped me and I was stuck in New Orleans. Luckily, New Orleans was a good place to be stuck at the time. My point is, for those few months, I felt a love that lifted me, something greater than the sum of my partial parts. Something that made me appreciate Lional Richee love songs, something that made me want to learn how to make homemade pasta (I’m not even a good microwaver), something that made me exclaim “I love youâ€? in the midst of making love, something that made me want to simply – want!

    “A lark cannot help singing in the spring.� Vincent van Gogh Nov 1881 from a letter to his brother about his obsession with his cousin Kee Vos.

    In the effort to convince Kee to return his affection, Van Gogh alienated most of his family. Most of the following is from the same Nov. 1881 letter to his brother.

    “Never, no, never,� were the words Kee said to Vincent, leaving no doubt about her feelings. This hurt Vincent but did not dissuade him from the effort to gain her love. All it did was become more of a challenge to him. Was it his ego? Was it a beautiful passion?

    Vincent says his persistent efforts in the face of “never, no, never,� might have been wrong but (and I love this quote) “we pick up the scent as we wander about, not as we sit idly by.�

    “You may, Theo – you may hear it said of me that I want to force things, and expressions like that. Yet everyone knows how senseless force is in love!�

    “By now you will realize that I hope to leave no stone unturned that might bring me closer to her, and that it is my intention: To go on loving her Until in the end she loves me too.�

    Vincent writes that to love and not be loved back is better than to not love at all. This is powerful because (in my mind) he is saying that an obsession of love can be healthy if you do not put fear in the other’s heart. It is simply beautiful to love. “if you and I are in love then we are in love. And we keep a clear head and do not becloud our mind, nor curb our feelings, nor douse the fire and the light, but simply say, ‘Thank God, I am in love.’�

    “Imagine what a real woman would think if she found that someone was courting her with reservations; wouldn’t she say something worse to him than ‘never, no, never!�’

    “And they call me ‘the melancholy one’, and I ask you to congratulate me on my ‘never, no, never,! And I get very cross when people tell me that it is dangerous to put out to sea, observing that one might drown in it. I don’t get cross because I think they are wrong to say that, but because they seem to forget ‘that there is safety in the very heart of danger’�

    “Whoever feels so ‘sure of his ground’ that he rashly imagines ‘she is mine, even before he has waged the soul’s battle of love, even before, I say, he has become suspended between life and death on the high seas, in the midst of storm and tempest – there is one who knows little of what a real woman’s heart is, and that will be brought home to him by a real woman in a very special way. When I was younger, one half of me once fancied that I was in love, and with the other half I really was. The result was many years of humiliation. Let me not have been humiliated in vain.”

30. peggysue Says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 7:51 pm

    Van Gogh my dear
    cut off his ear
    and though it was quite gruesome
    He sent it to
    a lady who
    He wished to make a twosome
    While not impressed
    with his distress
    to nothing this amounted
    But please remember anyhow
    It was the thought that counted.

31. Marcel Says:
    February 17th, 2006 at 1:11 am

    Oh Christopher, say it isn’t so! Finally a topic on which you sounded distressingly out of your depth! You don’t get it. On-line dating is not so unlike your beloved blogs. The bogger blogs for his own pleasure, the reader reads for his. They are tied by intellect alone, until one grows enamored of the other and wants to make more substantive contact. I both cases one human being seeks affitnity with the humanity the other, and as with most seeking, it is the journey that the healthy mind values (that is barring obsessional behavior, which we are all at risk of with or without the internet.) I have met some interesting people, as interesting as I am . I am currently dating a British woman living in Quebec, a woman whom I would have needed to live in Singapore to meet had I not met her on-line. And we’re both 50.

32. Gizmo Logix Says:
    February 18th, 2006 at 6:40 pm

    Nikos,

    Sorry for the late reply. I had to work three 15 hour days, WED, THU and FRI! Uhg… After my day was over I had a bite to eat and went straight to bed! No time for podcast or blogs. Ugh…

    Anyways, from your post above I agree. All I was doing was taking the word “ego” and extrapolating it to the silliness of human nature (more in-tune with Latin literal meaning of ego: “I” or “self,” not arrogant ego, per se). But since “self” is part of ego. There is a sense of selfishness (or need) that can never be removed regardless if you take your guard down or not. It’s when the ego gets to be a burden that it can be bad. That’s all I was trying to say.

    In regards to your post. I think that hierarchy is part of human nature only because no one lives in a perfect bubble. Even the word hierarchy doesn’t mean that we don’t have some sameness or similarities, either. I try to avoid absolutes. But hierarchy is something that is based on knowledge, class, race (like it or not), and just a general level of accomplishments one has achieved (monetarily and spiritually). Yes, pop culture does exagerate. But hierarchy would still exist even in a small clan in 10,000 B.C. Although less so.

    In regards to the child-ego example…
    You and I know that Tyrell Owens is a child in a mans body. But I’m sure there are some mature teenagers that are mature enough to see the same thing in T. Owens as we do. They have matured faster than others. So, all depends on what path one has reached. Wisdom does wonders. But that takes time and experience. A good example is Allen Iverson. He’s changed a lot! Just watch his interviews today vs yesterday.

    One of my favorite parts of your post is the part where you said, “make a choice between retaining the insulters as friends – at the cost of their social standing and self-esteem – or accepting ostracization.”

    I was lucky enough to have a revelation at the age of fourteen and realize that I was going to do what I wanted, not what everyone else thought I should do. It helped me not get caught up in the “do they accept me or not” trap. I didn’t care. Why? Because sometimes what they considred “cool” or “good” or “right” I rejected. Some things were “cool.” Like being invited to a football party. But I didn’t want to give in to that at the expense of being “fake.” So, I would always ask myself, “Is it worth it?”

    But many people still struggle with this even late in their lives in part because of who they are (mentally and physically) and who they had around them as mentors now and back then. They have a hard time looking in the the future; i.e. seeing the big picture as well as the small picture.

    Check this out:

    http://teenadvice.about.com/library/weekly/aa101600d.htm

33. nother Says:
    February 19th, 2006 at 3:33 pm

    Nikos- I appreciate your blogs very much, sometimes after reading them I feel out of breath, but that’s ok. Maybe I’m intimidated by your writing. Maybe your writing riles my ego – just joking – I think. Then I remember that I’m still trying to tackle Joyce’s writing – but that’s like trying to tackle Earl Cambell or something. At any rate, I appreciated your very personal blog. You are right; we did follow a similar path. I like your idea that what made us loners as adolescent boys, has made us attractive as adult men. I have a little different take on it though. I let myself be marginalized by my peers throughout school and in someways I’ve spent adulthood repairing my hurt ego. If I couldn’t get “the girlâ€? then, well damm you, I’ll get her now. I love you’re comment in a later post about ego – “Ego construction then becomes an arms race. (Adolescent put-downs are simply one common method of this escalation.)â€? Even as an adult, I make a conscious attempt to refrain from these “friendlyâ€? sarcastic put-downs that people feel the need to engage in. Too often this give and take of sarcasm becomes the “arms raceâ€? of ego that you wrote about.

    When describing the ego you wrote about the “nearly unimaginable self-obsessiveness of professional athletes.â€? Where you see an “unimaginable self-obsesivenessâ€? I see an optimal confidence. I’m serious; don’t get persuaded by the sensationalism of the media – Terrell Owens, Kobe Bryant, and the rest. Focus more on the beautiful confidence of a guy like Troy Brown from the New England Patriots. 6 feet 180, 6th round pick, destined for obscurity – or not. This man would not say a kind word about himself if you held a gun to his head but if it’s third and long in the forth quarter and the game is on the line, there is no man that will prevent him from catching the pass …. Confidence – what a beautiful beautiful trait.. Some confuse their own confidence with an egotism – those are the people I never buy a second Guinness for. I’m intrigued by you idea of ego as demon possessor but I feel a little different. I feel that ego can be a good thing on some level. There is a blurry space where ego and confidence coexist. I know too many talented people who do not share their talents with the world because of a lack of confidence. These people suffer from a lack of ego. I find myself berating them with compliments hoping to build their ego to a level of confidence. Sometimes I need to do this in the mirror.

    Our own Christopher Lydon has many critics, and they all say the same thing, he has too big of an ego. Yes he has an ego, but he brings the goods – it’s an ego built on a lifetime of questioning, learning. An ego that gives him the confidence to question world leaders and laymen alike. An ego that enables him to spark and provoke conversations on the big issues of our life. You may say the Christopher lydon has a big ego, but you must also say that Norman Mailer has a big ego, Tom Brady, Oprah, Picasso, Madonna, General Patton, Miles Davis, JFK, – the movers and shakers of our culture require a healthy ego.

34. adepostman Says:
    February 19th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    True love favours the true. Studying people to see if they’re right for you is a barrier from the beginning – one is testing the other or both are doing the same. Filtering folk on account of personal selection is paving paradise and putting up the parking lot. Since when has the 100% appropriate been 100% appropriate? Being wrong and happy is a good clue. We’ll be dating by statistics soon, what’s next, a chart? This man is at number one as he has good family values and has never done a bad thing, he earns such and such amount of money and scores an average 8.27 on the S.O.H survey,,,, trusting in statistics or finding faith in ones own heart, saying the right thing or sailing free the song of the hearts eloquence, the good thing or the right thing?

35. allison Says:
    March 13th, 2006 at 1:50 pm

    nother: Allison says: “I have never been obsessed with another person.� Forgive me, but do you lament that or are you proud of that?

    well, neither. It was a neutral statement.

    Have I been passionate about someone? Yes. Have to say yes. Love? That word is too amorphous for me. I don’t know what people mean when they say love. Passion, I can grok. And I have been/am passionate about people with whom I cannot have the relationship I desire. While I bask in the joy of what we can have, I am sometimes deeply pained by what we can’t. Sometimes I fantasize. But I am not obsessed. I accept what is and wonder whether I will ever experience what the potential I envision.

    How to distinguish between a passion and an obsession? Not sure. Obsession implies something emotionally unhealthy. An obsession creates anxiety, drives people to destructive behaviors, and prevents the person from engaging in truly intimate relations. Usually, underneath an obsession, is a deep-seated lack of self-worth and fears that the person can’t yet face. While an obsessed person may feel ‘alive” at times, it is a double edged sword with a lot of feelings of frustration and self-loathing. And those who witness the one obsessed can usually see the darkness.

    Passion nurtures a person. It is generative. While it may seem very one-track to others, they can see the light of it.

    Many relationships fall somewhere in between. There is some combination of generative nurturing and some amount of frustration and self-loathing. It can be hard to determine where on the continuum your feelings for someone fall.

    As for ego, I’m not sure if I agree with the Freudian compartmentalization of the personality. But, if you go with it, there is such a thing as healthy ego. It is the thing that supports self-confidence. Too little ego and you withhold what you have to offer the world. You don’t serve. Too much ego and you serve but with too much self-serving and valuing yourself far more than others.

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