The Concept Of A Human Caricature

Before I start I would like to say that nothing I am about to say comes from a place of superiority. I am not ultimate judge when it comes to human nature or how people act and this is simply me giving my opinion on a concept that was brought to my attention earlier today.

This week I started following a Youtuber by the name of Satchbag’s Goods. The content of this channel consists of in-depth video game analysis with connections to rich themes and the real world. It is a great place to check out if you are a diehard gaming fan; or just want to expand your mind. Anyway, plugging aside one of his videos brought up the concept of a caricature and it struck me as interesting. The basic idea he brought up is that humans have a habit of defining others by the one thing that stands out about them most. For example, say if someone robbed you, then you might go out of your way to say that person is “nothing but a thief”. That seems correct right? They wronged you in a specific way so you respond by remembering and defining them by their specific action. The problem with this is that in thinking this way we no longer treat that person as a whole, but as a caricature of what that person really is.

By Caricature I simply mean that the person is treated as an exaggerated representation of who they really are. It is not possible for someone to be “nothing but a thief,” because for that to be the case they would literally have to be stealing something every minute of every day. Now I know some of you may argue that that is simply a figure of speech and not meant to be taken literally but think about it this way, how many people do you define by one specific thing? How many people have you burned bridges with because of the one time they cheated on you, the one time they lied to you, the one time they made a mistake? We are so quick to write people off for one thing without having in all of the information present, but when we do this we are writing off the person for something their caricature did to offend us. The way Satchbag put was “taking a 2D view of a 3D world”. We are all guilty of this, hell I do this all the time, but why does this happen Why are we as humans so able to categorize others by their most bare traits and then decide what kind of person they are based off of that? Part of my thinks it is a defense mechanism and another part of me thinks it is just a refusal to relate.

As a defense mechanism it makes sense that we make caricatures of people and use that to keep them in line. Life is dangerous and we simply do not have the time to learn everything about everyone. We need to think quick and make decisions about people on the fly so we pick out what is important (or not important) about them and use that to define them.  He stole from me  therefore I cannot trust him, she abuses children  so I will not leave my children with her, he has always been there for me so maybe now I will give him a chance, etc. It makes perfect sense and you should not feel bad if this blog has suddenly made you aware that you do this. The only downside of this natural phenomenon is that is horribly unfair to the people we strip the personalities of. If you are in a bad mood and you yell at your significant other because of it, then you KNOW why you did it. You know it was because you woke up and were late for work, stubbed your toe, whatever. You have a 3D view of yourself because you know yourself. However if your significant other gets all at your throat you may not be so quick to dismiss their temper  as  “just a bad day”. We can never know someone as well as ourselves and this very fact leads us to not be able to understand everyone else’s 3D personality. We can try but it will always be easier to take the high ground and confuse a caricature for a person.

Now in response to all this I ask the question of what can we do to change this. Is there a reason to change this? I am sure this skill has saved us all the annoyance of a bad friend, annoying roommate, or a terrible date. But does that make what we do right? Is it possible for us to take the time to get a 3D image of all the people in our lives? I personally think it is, even if we cannot know anyone like we know ourselves, I think it is worth it to try and understand everyone you love as much as you are personally able to. It will help if a strain is put in your bond to know that Blank person is more than “that guy who lied to me once”, or “the girl who is overacting”. This is personally why I make it a point to not talk trash about my Exes. No matter where we may be now there was something that attracted me to the people I was with and we shared bond that kept us happy for some time. Even if the times change I honor that that person is still someone who was able to make me happy at some point in history. Now, there are some people whom even when you learn everything about them, they will still not be worth your time and it is okay to realize that. I am not saying you should be a saint and try to give everyone a fair shot, because some folk genuinely do not deserve it. What you might want to try next time you are arguing with someone or talking ill about someone you care about, is to consider the whole picture. Consider what that person is going through or how they might have felt, and make sure that you are not just mad at the caricature of a person you have stripped down in your mind.

Star World Thoughts.

Letting out the hot air…

Being someone who constantly crumbles under the weight of his own baggage, I used writing as a way to get some of the stress off my shoulders. By sharing everything I feel with everyone ranging from complete strangers to close friends I can convince myself that I am not alone in my quest for sanity and life gets a little easier because of it. So if you are a returning reader of the Star World then I thank you for reading my attempts at wittiness and truth. If this is your first time reading, then welcome to the Star World, a place where I get to carve out my own little niche of clarity.

Ever since my mental state started interfering with my life I have gotten into the extreme habit of saying “I’m sorry” a lot, and I hate it. Not because I hate the phrase itself, but because I hated saying I’m sorry to someone knowing that I will probably just often them again. I have cursed people, insulted them, ignored their help, and worried them with constant musings of my depression or suicidal tendencies. I want to stop that. Now that I am on a hot streak of being able to get out of bed and be happy about it (what an achievement right?) I can finally see how much of a strain I put on a lot of my relationships. I put a lot of pressure on friends and girlfriends and then got angry or irrationally sad when they couldn’t support my enormous weight, and that is just downright unfair. So I am sorry to anyone I have scorned in the past year or so, hell I am sorry to anyone I have ever hurt. I know just how selfish and hard to deal with I have been but I have been doing much better. I won’t go into detail about ever way I hurt every person, but know that if something went down with us and it was my fault, I know about it. And if you think I don’t feel free to tell me and I’ll admit to any wrongs I have committed. I believe to be a good person you have to accept that there is bad in you, that you will make mistakes, hurt people, and have to burn bridges for something that could have been avoided. The upside to that, however, is that by accepting your faults you get wiser, wise enough to save your relationships and not let your past define everything about you. So while this is a blanket apology, it does not mean I am going to stop learning and improving myself in every way possible. People love to quote a tiny green alien who says “there is no try, there is only do or do not”, and I have long been done trying to get better. Now is the time to do.

That latter half of this is me letting go of a lot of dumb stuff that I have held onto for no good reason. I used to wish I was more popular with women, not that I have any desire to be a womanizer (that takes way too much effort and charisma for my tastes) but I just felt like it would be nice to be desired by people. As shocking as it may seem I used to be shy and hate talking to anyone or anything. I hide myself from the world because I knew that at least then I would be safe. I wanted to be liked but I refused to make myself likable in anyway (if that makes sense) and until recently I have still put so much time and effort into making sure people like me and that is just…stupid. We all want to be loved but that comes at a price. You should NEVER compromise any part of your person just to be loved by others. If you are an oddball you will find other oddballs to roll with (as I did), if you are a serious dude then you will find other serious dudes, and if you feel you don’t deserve to be here then I guarantee you are not alone and will find others like you. All it takes is one little thing: being content with who you are. If you can look yourself in the mirror and say, “eh I’m a 6 out of 10” I think that is one of the healthiest things you can do. We are so used to either building ourselves up or tearing ourselves down that we rarely take the time to just sit and be proud that we survived another day. I wished I had more people because I didn't appreciate the people I had near me, and this carried on for a while. I would hurt friends and find new ones until one day there was a group of people I just could not leave. It took me being and idiot to see that who I am is pretty okay…like seriously I am a pretty cool dude most days. It is not easy to be content with yourself and it is something that no one can teach you, but if I can learn it so can you, and you will be much happier because of it.

I am trying to own up to everything I am so I can improve upon myself and accomplish my goals. I want to be a writer, I want to start a dance company, I want to be a therapist, and most of all I want to help people realize that there is more to life than feel like you should not exist. I’m sorry to the people who were with me through the lowest times and know that I love you for not giving up on me. I feel like my posts are getting predictable and I do not want that. So here is to positive futures and learning from the past. You are going to do things you regret and a lot of times you will hate yourself for it, but we are strong enough to look at a broken mirror and still see ourselves in the reflection.

And in the Star World we are all on that path to becoming our true selves. 

A little bit of nothing

I think too much. I was trying to think of a clever metaphor but I think it is much more effective to just write how I think. Which of course means there are going to be an abundance of words that I throw just for the sake of extending a sentence. Sometimes I hate my brain. More specifically I hate that I feel as though my brain works on a different level than others. Not in a more advance, but in a more personal way. Things that don’t get to other people get to me, I internalize tragedies that happen across the country and treat them as if they happened to my family. I go above and beyond to try and solve my friend’s problems because the problem gets to me personally. I like to tell myself that this will help me in my therapeutic future but this is probably unhealthier that I give it credit for.

My mind also has a hard time distracting itself. What I mean by that is that if there is something on my mind, there is almost nothing I can do to get it out. Even by end all solution of dancing cannot clear my head in extreme cases. If there’s a girl I’m into then I cannot stop thinking about her, if there is an event coming up that I am excited about then there is no calming me down, and on the negative side if there is a problem in my life then it will stay with me all day and night. This is a tad bit irritating as you can probably tell, because it seems like everyone I know is better at distracting themselves then I am. Or at the very least they are better at acting like they are distracting themselves.

I realize now that this probably does not make a lot of sense, but such is the curse of my writing style. Its honest and confusing, much like my personality. Hey a simile! Look at that I am already making progress. I guess the point of this is just that I had a random thought and it carried its way through my fingers and onto this post you are now reading. It is kind of funny how the tiniest spark of nothing can build until you have…well something. That something may not be important, but it is more than the nothing that came before it. I’m so used to letting my mind wander and linger, yet still surprised at some of the thoughts I have. Still surprised at how far my nothing has come, and I can only hope that it becomes a very important something one day.