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Originally Posted by DanaC

Wise words, glatt.

Thank you, I appreciate the thought, and on that note... Is that a bad time to mention I disagree with what you are attempting to do here - not just you two you but the whole thread you...

Bear with me here:

I know I linked this in the past (That bit is so useful), but...

You know the incident Louie describes here:


I happen to very much agree with him: That friend while trying to support and empower and show how good of allies they make to the person in question by how strongly they side with them on anything... Is also giving horrible advice and reinforces a very distorted one-sided and narrow perspective...
And I find it hard to disagree that walking through life believing to yourself that you are so amazing that anyone who doesn't answer your text messages immediately is a piece of shit who isn't good enough for you... Is a pretty shitty way to live your life.
Now, it's possible that her friend truely believes that, she has anlyzed the situation thoroughly and this is the best hypothesis she was able to come up with... But it's more likely that she just tried making her friend feel better, both out of caring and because better is a lot more enjoyable to empathize with, and then tried finding the best way to rationalize that.

Almost everything in life can have a multitude of perspectives and it's very easy to pick the ones that reflect best on us, the one that tells the story we want to hear... Or in the case of trying to comfort a friend, the one we want to tell.
Underneath all those perspectives though, there is - IMO - a truth, otherwise known as The shit that actually happened, and a common characteristics of The shit that actually happened are that it doesn't exclude the bits that did not fit in the story, doesn't care about how it makes people feel (Even though feelings - events in people's skulls - can certainly be parts of The shit that actually happened), and doesn't need to hide or dodge elements that make it particularly uncomfortable.
In contrast, one thing indicative of a good story is that even though it doesn't actually contradict in the fact it describes opposed perspectives, their meaning and implications contradict, and yet the author will still view it as a contradiction to avoid, because what's under protection isn't a conclusion on reason, it is an intended meaning. Often the shift is not in the variables, but the focus.
To give my own case as an example... Even if I was a good soldier, it does not in itself contradict the plausible possibility that children died from that. Both statements have no trouble been true in the same universe, they just shift the focus to generate one meaning rather then the other. What I did was... Probably both. The same is true for clod's case but I am going to pick that open unless asked.

Just like that "the amazing college girl", I think going through life denying the harm you cause or even could have caused others and filtering it through whichever perspective best suits you, excluding that which is ugly or puts you in a bad light... Is a pretty shitty way to live your life.

I don't know when exactly in history did guilt and remorse became emotions people shouldn't feel, but I think once it's there, you can't show someone understanding by trying to strip away the guilt's legitimacy.