This has been on my mind lately and despite me and Chatoyance having a falling out six months ago I feel the need to reach out to her and try and say this. I don’t care if she never forgives me or even talks to me, but I need to say this. I’m sorry you feel like I’m some kind of horrible person without a heart, and I’m sorry this has led to you hating me.

I now realize that the way I interacted with you was wrong, I treated you like you were some kind of mentor a role model. This led me to remove my own agency and agree with you with everything even when I really didn’t. Instead I should have treated you like an equal and friend. I was dishonest with you in my dealings and for that I am sorry. Furthermore
when I finally decide to assert this I did so in a very poor manner especially since it was over one of my odd whims and thoughts I discarded soon after, and for this I am equally sorry.

Let me explain how I really think. In my life I have a single mantra “question everything, consider everything”. For me no idea is too abhorrent or terrible to consider nothing is off the table. This predictably leads me to change my views often and to at times hold unpopular opinions. That being said only the best ideas survive. For the record I’ve abandoned thinking Trump is a good president the past 6 months have seen to that.

I came here hoping I could patch things up with you and to apologize for my behavior. I allowed my emotions get the better of me that day and for that I’m sorry. Going foreword I cannot promise that we won’t disagree on things, perhaps a lot in fact since we hold some radically different opinions, but in the past 6 months and I’ve come to realize that both sides in our current political arena suck in their own unique way and they only way we can break this cycle is by accepting our differences and relearn how to work together as a unified nation. Also putting the big companies and the government on a short leash will help too.

Anyway I hope to hear from you soon, I hope we can patch things up and we can put this behind us, and once again I’m sorry for my behavior then.

I wish you the best of luck on that, reconciliation isn't easy but if you can manage that then cheers to you.

7272354

I have no religion but kindness. Also, I have a terrible memory - honesly? I don't even remember whatever happened that initiated your letter and the... apparent reason I blocked you? So, clearly, whatever it was no longer matters - at least to me!

As long as someone interacts with me with politeness and compassion, I am more than happy and willing to respond in kind.

So... I accept your apology, and I apologize in turn for anything I might have done that was less than... nice. I can get pretty upset sometimes. Part of it is a kind of PTSD reaction, I think. Part of it is that it is super stressful in the world right now. In any case, if I was mean to you, I am sorry. I never want to be mean to anyone. Well, other than in the moment, if I am angry. But... that is just biology at work. I have never felt that my flesh lives up to what I want to be.

Probably a big reason why I write transformation stories, eh?

In any case, as far as I am concerned, we are fine, and all issues resolved. I wish you only the best in all things, Guiding_Passion!

7272569
I’m glad to hear that Chatty, I’m happy to hear your not mad at me anymore. As for anything bad you said to me it doesn’t matter, My concern was to bury the hatchet. On that note though I do have question for you, out of pure morbid curiosity do you remember me in anyway shape or form, or anybody who have talked to you on here over the past 8 or so years for that matter. I’m honestly curious at this point.

Anyway I hope you’ve been faring alright in this year of pure insanity. Honestly at this point I Feel like I want to go live in a cave and become a hermit. I feel like the whole worlds gone mad. Have you seen any of the memes regarding this year and what other insane things that might happen before it is over? I should make one which has equestria emerging from the ocean in December at this point I feel like anything might happen at this rate.

7272654
Right now, no, I do not remember you or anything regarding any interaction with you. I am sorry, I don't mean anything by stating that - it is just that... I have a really shitty memory. Or, more accurately, I have trouble pinpointing my own memories. When I do remember something, It comes to me in incredible detail. That part works. But trying to find a memory without help - reminders, an image, a description, some kind of thing to jog that memory - is really, really hard for me. So, basically, my memory is weird. I also have partial face-blindness. I just can't remember people's faces. For example, because I have no photograph of her, I can never know what my own mother's face looked like. That bothers me sometimes.

This is nothing new, by the way, it isn't age or dementia. I have always been this way. It was a serious pisser back when I was in school, for instance.

I remember a few of the names of the people who harassed me here, way back when. I remember the names of my many fans when I see the names. I remember some of my fans names very well, specifically the ones that helped me the most, or who I corresponded with a lot. The more interaction, the more I am likely to be able to recall it without a memory aide to remind myself with. But something that happened once or twice and was gone? Fffft - it is indeed gone. But want me to tell you the taxonomic nomenclature of my favorite eukaryote? Not a problem.

(It's Euglena Gracilis, by the way. Love that little red photosensitive eyespot! Such a cutie!)

There is a positive side to my memory weirdness, though! I can re-read books or watch movies or television series almost as if they were brand-new if I wait a year or two. It allows me to enjoy - almost as if for the first time - things that I have found to be the best of the best. Since really great things are few and far between in life, I see this as a sort of upside to having a broken-ish memory.

As for the world, and Covid, and Trump and everything... I honestly feel like at least 30% of America has gone functionally insane. When basic hygiene against disease protection is considered wrong and ignored, for purely political reasons, during a worst-case scenario of a deadly, incurable, untreatable, easily-transmitted global disease for which Mankind has no resistance at all... the only understanding I can have is that millions of humans of Americans have literally - literally - gone insane. Like the 'Dancing Plague' of 1518. And we have the insane push to 'open everything up' and to ignore all the death as if that were supposed to be acceptable. Just fine that over a hundred thousand people of every age just die. Of a disease that, even if you appear to survive without symptoms, months later you find you have brain damage, or heart damage, or dying kidneys, or a damaged liver. Nobody gets away from Covid without permanent damage. Nobody.

And yet... it's somehow wrong - and worth punching and killing people - over being asked to wear a facemask or wash your hands. That is insanity. That is a loss of reason, and a return to a state worse than even the 1300's. Even during the Black Plague, peasants knew to stay apart. Because they didn't want to burst out in blisters and die.

If a third of a nation deliberately chooses ignorance greater than a peasant in the 1300's, then... they are insane. There is no other word that works.

And one of those insane people is the very president. It is hard to cope. It is difficult to even face each day.

By the end of the year, I am predicting 200,000 to half a million US dead, and far, far more permanently disabled. And all of it entirely preventable. Not a bit of that has to happen - hell, none of what has already happened had to happen. It could almost entirely have been prevented. But it was not. And I don't think Trump will go gently when he is roundly repudiated in November. And that is not going to be nice or non-violent, I think.

I am so stressed. I look outside my window, and wonder how many people I care about will still be alive next year. Or whether I myself will be alive next year. I am trying hard to stay uninfected, and to keep my family safe.

I reason that the best thing we can do is try to stay safe, be careful, and be as nice as possible to each other. Because the US, if not much of the world as well, is going through a sort of insanity, a madness, combined with the very Worst Case Outbreak Scenario I once studied - in the 80's - in college. I did not stay in microbiology, but that frightening scenario is basically playing out right now... only worse.

In the scenario we studied... every part of government worked together to fight the problem with science and determination to win at any cost. And it was still bad.

Holy shit, you know?

7272698
For basically my whole life, my brother has had a friend, whom I shall call here WBF. By the time I was in my teens, my brother said simply that he never discusses religion or politics with WBF. In my late teens, I heard WBF go on a rant about how anyone on fixed incomes and food stamps should feel embarrassed. By my early 20s, WBF's brother whom I shall call Beard Hammer, had died. Beard Hammer was an atheist loved by all of his friends for his insane sense of humor. He insisted on not having a funeral but having a wake instead. By my mid-20s I discovered WBF was an ordained minister of some sect of christianity and had become even more religious due to the death of his brother and hurt feelings that Beard Hammer never shared his religion. A few years ago, we all went to the gun range where I learned that WBF owned a Glock 20, a 40 caliber handgun that he carried with him for defense when heading in town. In the past three years, WBF had a cataclysmic falling out with my brother after WBF posted a rant on FaceBlock that stated in short that there was nothing that trump ever did that he rejected. My brother, who is also a christian, confronted him with religious objections to trump's behavior, but WBF would not budge, and with ever exchange WBF revealed that he had no compassion. He hated the poor because they were poor, he was willing to kill anyone who attacked him even when the religion of which he is a priest states to not.

Most human beings are this way. They claim to be good, they claim to be part of something good, but the words are just words. They think the token agreement is enough even as they act otherwise. Before the plague, I met many gay people who thought that because they aligned themselves with christian beliefs that they were immune to christian hatred, and they were truly shocked to discover they had been cast out of their own families and colleges with nothing for nothing more than coming out. We see that token agreement today with people "wearing" masks by having them on their ears and pulled down under their chins, and then wondering how they have caught Corona when they "did what they were told". In addition to this, most people are like Mine Sweeper puzzles. When we come across a new person, the field is new, and with each major event between us and the other person, we click a square and see what opens up and what reveals itself as dangerous. Current events have been like clicking all over that board, and now we are seeing the raw truth of so many people who up until recently would have kept their beliefs hidden for convenience's sake.

What I am saying is that the vast majority of people didn't suddenly get stupid and hateful. Instead, the vast majority of people were given the opportunity to express the stupidity and hatred that was already part of them and in many cases had always been part of them. Not only do they have the opportunity, but also the encouragement as the "global village" of antisocial media allows the people who want their opinions to be right spread them like wild fire as if the opinion that masks are stupid could shame the corona virus to the point that it would stop infecting people.

You often said the one truly fictional thing about your Conversion Bureau novels was the idea that people would actively ignore and fight an unstoppable force greater than all the powers of the world because surely one's own life would be more important to any silly attachment to an idea, but here we are.

For the record, I'm a filthy centrist who wears a mask in public yet doesn't crap on other people's rights. Don't @ me about this because I understand it makes me even less friends than the two sides at each other's throats. Feel to email me or private message me if you want to yell at me. I'm not here to make friends today or score points, but instead here to bring my limited insight. Let's focus on this instead.
7276776
Cool story, but did not go far enough in explaining human nature. People are not expressing their hatred and stupidity more so than their fear and mistrust of a society at all levels beats them up. From the stacks of cruel government, nameless bean counters, corporate media that peddles more propaganda than news and horrible places to work at that pay next to nothing. Hyperbolic? For example think of the areas of your life where your job caused you more harm than good.
7272698
People aren't born hateful or stupid, but maybe some people are more prone to it? Tend to focus on nurture side of the human condition. Ever person's sum is built from good and bad in their life. You start with parents who are abused at work and other busybodies. Segway into a messed up education system that rewards everything but friendship and human kindness. Then lastly your throw into a world where more abused people seek to take advantage of the new generation. Bitterness and scorn is something that is cultivated en mass. It affects a person mind on a real physical level.

Humanity isn't united against this threat (or the others before it) because it's a lack of trust. Speaking from someone in the USA, there is no leadership or anyone to trust. No one listened to orange man with the fake hair. Why should anyone after 4 years of corporate media and friends screaming their heads off that he's the next Hitler. Listen to the media and "non bad" politicians? They said nothing was wrong, new evidence was presented, and they kept up with their games until it was too late to be helpful. How about the medical experts? They are divided or shat on by each other. Rich and powerful people? They are pointing the fingers that you and me are the real problem while they make money hand over fist and pass laws to protect themselves at our expense.

Who to trust? Friends and family verse each other over petty political games. Hating each other and thinking they are right while others are wrong. More abuse. Think Trump getting his just deserts will make things better? Well, the last president before him didn't change things much better than the president before him. Still have government spies spying on us, police cracking skulls instead prevent, useless to us drug war and along with the other wars. And so forth. This is only the piece of the puzzle on evil and I'll admit that I may know not next to all. I'm an ignorant person when it comes to many things. Could be totally wrong and just some people are born wrong. Hope not.

Here's a thought on how chip away on some of this mess: You treat a person as a monster, even though they are not, they become one. The same holds true if you hold people to higher standards. You expect someone to do well, they tend to do well and vice versa. This is based on some studies that explored expectations and other studies on the mind. Something beyond the Stanford Prison Experiment. It stared with the letter P

7277514
I hear you Griseus. I have a person in my life that flipped the bozo bit and went from a progressive person (for the past fifty years, no less) straight into making statements like 'Not all Nazis are bad' and defending J.K. Rowling's TERF attacks on trans people - and get this - this person is herself trans. Yeah, holy fuck. Worse, she has literally expressed that she thinks Covid is a hoax maintained by all the doctors and scientists of the entire planet to help Democrats in the USA take away our 'freedoms'. This is not the person she was for 90% of her life. Not even close. It's like dealing with a pod person from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. She is literally insane. She has even questioned the value of basic hygiene with regard to health. I am not shitting you.

My strategy is to not throw her away - at least not unless she is a clear danger to my family - and to treat her with kindness and compassion. I hope to bring her back from wherever she has gone. The whole thing is incomprehensible to me, this inversion of personality and identity, but I have come to your same conclusion: treating her with scorn and loathing is not going to do anything good. Treating her like a monster will only make her become a monster. So, I hold my nose, and keep my lunch down as best I can, and act as pleasant and friendly as possible. I try not to bite when she tries - very hard sometimes - to start arguments with me. It's like she wants someone to fight, to hate, and to hate her back. It is the damnedest thing. But, she wasn't always like that. Only since the last few years. Before that - completely different outlook and values. I act kind in hopes of calling her soul back into her empty shell.

It's all I can think to do. It's either that or kick her to the curb.

There is only one point I would disagree with you on: I know, for certain, that some people are just born wrong in the head and heart. Just born evil. My father was such a person: he was a classic psychopath from birth. He never changed, never varied, he literally was unable to care about anything other than himself. He was super-intelligent (I am very serious here) and high functioning, so he tended to stay out of trouble, and was very effective at his government work. He successfully hid beating me and my mother. He successfully hid what I believe are several murders. He paid the bills and rose high in the ranks.

But make no mistake - he was not taught to be what he was, and no conditioning made him a monster. My paternal grandmother was clear about it: my dad was evil from the moment he could move well enough to delight in causing animals pain. He was born defective, with zero compassion. But... he was smart enough to learn, as he grew up, the concept of consequences for actions, and the necessity of self control to achieve his goals of power and wealth. He learned to prioritize his drives. And he succeeded well despite being a monster.

Some people truly are born... wrong.

As someone who is half wrong, can understand that. More of the thinking myself that psychopathy and other antisocial personality traits are on scale of expression in people who wander the earth. Therefore they are not all lost if we're using vague and colorful words. Either way, we got to do the best with what we have and maybe not step on each other too much or turn on each other due to paranoid. Hate and falsehood have been touch on but don't forget the fear. Frank Herbert's Dune quote about fear being the mind killer and little death comes to my thoughts. Wonder if fear created the gods? Pretty sure it created much of the foundation for our society.

Anyhow, you got a fine apology from someone who seems self reflective and I overstayed my welcome on this topic.

...well, I think I only can say 'I read all your replies here'. Because adding more [from me] will much likely ruin the floor.