i simply asked him if i could trust him, and he said something like, "trust is difficult to define, but for what its worth i'm not sure i can even trust myself". the more i asked him personal questions the more i started to realize just how conflicted he was intellectually. a very smart person, perhaps a genius, but a person who is too much at ease with contradiction, and focuses excessively on the "gray" in life. e.g. "this is true but its not true, my answer is yes and no" like he has nothing that his thoughts are rooted in conceptually. the more i asked him about his core self the less i could get a word in edgewise. he was telling me that he had multiple streams of thought and 'inner' personas going on at once internally and because of that had a difficult time articulating his thoughts well enough so i could make sense of what he was saying.
but what i could get out of him was that he was saying that his ideal world would be one where people could share their views without there being conflict. in other words someone could acknowledge someone elses views and opinions without responding with dissent nor their own views being changed themselves. but he wasn't sure if this particular ideal would be a world of "stillness".
then i just continued to listen to him voice his thoughts a loud with me saying almost nothing for like 10 min. saying things like "i have such a wonderful brain" "in the end i came out on top" "i may be narcisstic but..." i tried to speak but almost every time i would get interrupted. and at one point he wondered whether or not he was psychotic because he repeatedly monopolized the conversation without being aware. despite this consideration he went proceeded to go on a rant about psychiatry and how there's a hole in it. the bad vibes i got from the experience caused me to leave. things around me started to feel strange or unreal all while he kept talkign and talking.
holding contradictory ideas, seems very very unhealthy. plus i feel like i've only been useful to him because i liked to hear him talk and this bolsters his ego whereas other people are less passive like i am and will proceed to argue if they disagree with him. he obviously dislikes it when anyone directly and overtly conflicts with his ideas, might even become bitter or hold grudges. i was just the opposite, passive, shy, but interested in hearing what he had to say, and this was perhaps convenient for him.
this is someone who i had looked up to and admired for a long time but i had always wondered if he was someone i could trust. given how conflicted he was inside i came to the conclusion that he really couldn't. i dunno, do you think i overreacted? let my paranoia get the best of me? what do you make of all this?
i've known that "gray" area experientialyy, that void of uncertainty and i'm not comfortable with the anxiety it brings. i just dont have the capacity to not latch onto something conceptually. but he does, supposedly.
06 Mar 2011, 4:38 pm
