Christopher James Huff wrote:

> In article <40885de1$1@news.povray.org>,
>  Dan P <dan### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> 
>>>Yes, I know. I mentioned this in some of the messages I posted 
>>>previously. Such as the one a couple steps up this thread posted in 
>>>response to one of your messages. Which you replied to. It'd help if you 
>>>read them first...
>>
>>... perhaps I am misreading this message. Are you feeling threatened by 
>>my explanation of albedo, which is causing you to become confrontational?
> 
> No, I'm being annoyed by the way you explained something to me as if I 
> knew nothing about it, immediately after I wrote about it, and you are 
> doing so in a reply to the message in which I wrote about it. (Well, it 
> was actually in a reply to my reply to your reply to the message in 
> which I wrote about relative albedos of the Earth and Moon.)

Ah, I traced back in the thread and saw you used the word "albedo"; it 
must not have registered in my head that you used the word and I was 
thinking, "Isn't there a word for that," and looked it up and decided to 
share it to try and add value to the thread.

I don't mean to demean your feelings because, as a human, you have them, 
just like the rest of us, and it is okay to have them. I just ask that 
you consider that, perhaps, you stand back, take a deep breath, and 
think to yourself, "Is this something worth getting so upset over?" 
That, perhaps in my message, I was only trying to add to the 
conversation and not challenge your knowledge.

To base our self worth on our knowledge is both hopelessly frustrating 
and ultimately self-defeating. It is frustrating because we will always 
consider ourselves inferior to somebody and it will drive us mad - often 
we'll even manage to convince ourselves that everybody is inferior to 
us, but deep down, we know that isn't true, and that will tear us up inside.

We will always seek out people who are inferior to us to try and balance 
our feelings of inferiority. Soon, we will become jaded, because there 
is so much knowledge to know and no way we can possibly know it all, no 
matter how much we try, no matter how much we want to, no matter how 
much time we spend on learning. Our drive is not to feel superior, but 
to avoid feeling inferior. Avoidance is in our very nature; we don't 
like to confront and if somebody confronts, we assume that they must be 
really angry. To some of us, this "knowledge thing" is all we have, and 
if we aren't tops at this, we feel we are nothing, which is so tragic, 
because our knowledge and intelligence is such a small part of our human 
existance.

Needing not to feel inferior is self-defeating. We will attack anything 
that might make us feel inferior, often forcing others to attack back, 
forcing them to do the very thing we most fear to try and "save face". 
The need is so strong we will actually try to convince others that they 
are inferior by demeaning them, particularly in public. The more 
miserable we get, the more we try to interpret what others say as an 
insult to our superiority, driving us even more mad. We will go out of 
our way to say, "Look at me, I'm better than you," and than brace 
ourselves for anyone else like ourselves that might challenge it. What a 
great place to do this; on newsgroups, where nobody can see the manic 
look in our eyes as we pound away our insults, all the while doing the 
very thing we fear most that others will do to us. Ultimately, we spend 
so much time building our attacks and defenses that we stop spending 
time on learning, deepening our feelings of inferiority, and our madness.

When we get really frustrated, which is inevitable for all and more than 
the reasons I have written, we grasp at any power we have to fight the 
feeling. For many of us, that means control over a computer, which is 
really no more than a really neat pencil! With the Internet, this 
control extends to control over the users of the computer, which are 
people; joy, rapture, we never had that before, drink deeply, 
clickity-clack! We make threats with our fragile power, which we know to 
be insignificant deep down, so we spend time trying to intimidate others 
and convince them not to look behind the big green curtain and see the 
little man.

If there is a better description of a personal hell, please write it!

> It means you either didn't read what I wrote before responding (mainly 
> frustrating), or are for some reason pretending I didn't write it or 
> even know about it (slightly insulting).

You are internalizing me. I am not you. You cannot predict my behavior 
or my intentions based on what you estimate you would do in the same 
situation, even if we do share personality types. We haven't had the 
same needs nor experiences, Christoph.

As a general rule, the overwhelming amount of time, we don't mean to 
insult others. If you feel insulted, consider first that you did not 
understand what the person meant. Then, if you confirm that they 
actually insulting you, beat the crap out of them.
-- 
Respectfully,
Dan P
http://<broken link>

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