myth's Belated DMSI 3.1 Journal

[myth]

Very incisive conclusions:

Incisive? Hmm. I was only aiming for refined and clear, not that I mind achieving more than I'd set out to do.

one that hit was letting people be responsible for the fantasy they have about one.

Yeah, back in my younger years, I'd noticed that it was the crux of those yucky guilt and disgust feelings when learning how to reject unwanted advances, either feeling at fault for not reciprocating (when it was never my responsibility to do so) or repulsed by the interest (as if the their presumption of that responsibility said something about what others thought that I was meant to be/do). And there's value in seeing both sides of what that means: it's not one person's responsibility to make another's false expectations come true.

But it's even bigger than that, especially when extrapolating the number of people. What really hit me on SE was that it's a fool's errand to try to live up to everyone else's conflicting (and not necessarily realistic) fantasies of one instead of remaining true to the person that one is or aspires to be. I am not bound by what everyone else pre-judges me to be or thinks that I should be, so I owe them no guilt, effort, change, etc to justify their hasty diagnoses. To feel that way wouldn't be so far off from actively trying to develop the flu because someone else thought that I looked ill.

Privacy for autonomy.

That one completely caught me off-guard. I was amazed when it hit me that my privacy's primary purpose (upon its inception) was to shut off the sensors and monitoring gauges for parental control over my decisions. If the decision wasn't visible on their control panel and read-outs, I was allowed to make that decision myself.

I'd been a boy that some Bizarro version of Geppetto kept wishing into a real puppet. And I've continued to stay private because, decades later, they still want the puppet instead. The puppet validates their scriptwriting because that's what puppets are for. Puppets aren't for making their own decisions or creating their own future. Is it easier for the puppeteer to be proud of their writing (and their puppet) when the puppet follows or when the puppet ad-libs? How can the puppeteer leave their immortal mark on the world (however right or wrong it may be) when their "legacy" goes off-book? I get it: people really get off on their own self-importance and want to be remembered after they're gone. As if they only ever mattered if they can never be forgotten. But I'm a person, not a puppet, and I don't recall donating my entire (singular) life to illustrate my author's artistic vision. (And I matter now, wherever I matter now, to whomever I matter, whether or not I'm eventually forgotten later, so I need no "legacy" puppet of my own, a stand-in who would never have been me anyway. I prefer legacies like art and music and words, that have no free will upon which to impinge and are a more accurate -- albeit unfinished -- snapshot of their creator anyway.)

I won't bother extrapolating too far, but, for me, that's the tip of that iceberg. Gets even more complicated when I start looking at compounded ancestral artistic vision/puppetry. Exchanging control over my future (i.e. my existence) to my forebears in exchange for that existence nullifies the existence itself. It's giving me a gift (life) with the proviso that I may only ever use it as instructed, trying to justify that proviso with the option of passing on that gift-that-isn't-a-gift to someone else. I don't like the idea of accepting enslavement as "OK because I'm allowed to have my own slaves if I want to create them." It's a generational chain built on links of decision theft, seemingly defended because a baby bird isn't immediately ready to fly. And, before anyone gets confused, I'm not objecting to birds helping their baby before they can fly. But, if, as an adult, I just control my own decisions, there's no imposition (in either direction) between me and anyone else. I don't have to control anything else as a surrogate for not being allowed to control me.

That's just my current take on it today. Might change tomorrow. Often does.