personality or actions -???

[joko]

I have come to the conclusion having given it a lot of thought and from watching shows like big brother - that people seem to dislike people more for minor personality traits rather than their misdeeds.

People become irritated and even furious by other people who for instance play with their hair, giggle, sniff a lot, preen - and feel justified in this (even though these things are nobody elses business and don't affect anyone else at all), rather than when someone does something bad, and completely out of order - they are forgiven, or the incident is glossed over.

the feelings towards the person who has made them angry about something serious, often revert to the way they were before

whereas minor incidents seem to fester and in the long run seem to generate a more intense dislike.

i don't dislike people for having personality traits or foibles, i dislike them when they are rotten to me or others!

people say "be yourself", but often when you are, people can't handle it if "yourself" is not just like them or just to their liking.

why is this?

any thoughts?

[noxlumos]

I really don't know why it is. It's the age old thing of the "popular " kids at school invariably being complete gits whilst anyone a bit different is teased unmercifully even though they are probably very nice people. I notice it myself that if I speak in my natural accent which is broad North of Ireland, people take an instant dislike to me or are very wary of me. My wife is an actress/director and taught me to speak rp and if I use that even in shops etc then the reception is very much warmer and nicer. Unfortunately I can't be bothered to and don't see why I should so they are stuck with my natural accent, but it is clear that it's not always wise to "be yourself".

[DaSwede]

joko, I think part of the explanation may be that often we instinctively like or dislike someone (maybe somebody you sit next to on the bus or something), and these instinctive feelings can get so strong that we have to somehow explain them to ourselves. We can't stand 'hating' or 'loving' somebody for no reason, so we start screening for anything, anything at all to justify the feeling that's already there. Myself, I've begun to accept my intuition, and accept is as knowledge that has not yet been possible to verbalize - but knowledge it is, nonetheless. Best regards, DaSwede

[joko]

noxlumos - inetersting - i have been suspected of theft a few times - as a scouser - so i suppose accents have more connotations than people realise.

you are right about the popular kids - they often have so many undesirable personality traits that you can see why they are popular.

You would think with the mount of movies where the underdog comes up smiling and the poular on egets there come-uppence, would teach people to think a bit harder about these sorts of things.

thats a good point DaSwede - it makes sense. like when we have dreams - they are often in reality jbberish but we compose them to make sense when telling someone else. so i suppose its natural for our brains to fill in the blanks and try to make sense of and justify irrational emotions.

[DaSwede]

Hello again joko. Just want to add to my initial response that when I speak of 'knowledge' I'm certainly not referring to some kind of 'objective truth', but rather knowledge of what's true for you, where you're at right now. For instance, if you dislike someone intensely, the 'knowledge' involved would not necessarily be that he is in some way bad, just that you and he are not compatible at this time in your life. It could in fact even be because he's 'better' than you, but you're not ready for the hard work of seeing that, as it would require that you change your own way of being. So your instincts tell you "Stay away, your energy level is low right now, you don't have what it takes, right now, to change for the better, you need your energy just to survive." At some other time in your life you may meet the same person and not react at all in the same way.

What you say about dreams - yeah, and I believe we do that even while we're dreaming!