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Old 10-09-2008, 11:46 PM   #20 (permalink)
substitute
Closet ENTJ
 
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Join Date: May 2007
Type: ENTP
Location: Europe
Posts: 4,471
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I love to share and teach, but bitter experience has taught me that simply doing this often results in certain people (is it bitterness? jealousy? who can say?) throwing into my face that I'm arrogant, know-it-all, showing off, bragging about how clever I am, etc etc.

So... unless someone asks me a direct question, I tend not really, in RL, to share that much. I think I took to heart something somebody said to me when I complained of this years ago: "the way to tell the difference between helping and interfearing is to ask whether the help is solicited; likewise, the way to tell whether it's sharing knowledge or boasting know-it-all-ness, is whether your knowledge has been solicited". So, like I say... unless people ask me, I don't tell. But even if they ask me, I try to make it look as much as possible like they actually said most of the clever stuff. And I pretend to not know stuff as well as I do. Like I'll be sorta "Oh, you know, what's the word? I read about it once or someone said something... uh... what was it now? Begins with a G I think... " and fumble around the syllables until the other person guesses the word and I'll be like "Ah that's it! Glad one of us has a memory!" when in fact I knew the damn word all along.

Also, a lot of knowledge I have is, itself, very controversial - the means whereby I gained it even more so. So sharing it can result in ostracization.

But I do play down my knowledge a lot in RL, or else find more sorta 'everyman' ways to present it so it doesn't look like 'cleverness' but just 'common sense'. Reactions to this are far more positive, in general.

Maybe it's bad that I do this and maybe I should say 'fuck them' more often. But really, I just had an absolute fucking bellyfull of having the "arrogant show-off" thing thrown in my face all the damn time when all I was doing was trying to help someone. I spend so much of my time meditating and thinking hard and praying and stuff to purge those particular traits and I question myself and doubt myself so much... it fucking hurts to have someone not notice all of that and be happy to call me something so damned untrue just because I happened to accidentally make them feel stupid by saying something they thought they ought to have known.

Occasionally there are people who take me for who I am; maybe they're more educated than I am and so they know I can't be trying to impress them or show off or anything, cos they know I know they can out-do me. Or maybe we're just equals. But whatever - they just accept that I'm not like that. So with these people I take great pleasure in sharing ideas and knowledge freely and openly.
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