Writer Wander 022 - A Sensitive Young Man

If one painting is worth a thousand words, then one trope is worth ten-thousand

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Rider Wander Twenty Two, The Power of Perception. Okay? So I was thinking about the earlier episode that I did talking about Brandon Sanderson. And there were a lot of things that I talked about in that episode. But one of the key features, and probably the central point of that episode, was this idea of the myths that we currently have in our culture being often being shorthand for certain concepts or certain themes that are universal to the human experience, but which require, if they were to be explained merely using language, would require an overly elaborate use of language that would be unwieldy for the average person to understand. And that's the utility of something like an elf or something like a dwarf or something like a dragon. These are creatures that, by their very existence, imply a set of ideas because they evolved alongside us, alongside our cultures, alongside our storytelling traditions. And I was able to tie that in with a couple things. The first thing I tied it in is part of the reason for why I'm taking my story in this more classical fantasy direction, is because I'm starting to come more and more with peace with the idea of the power of perception, the power of aesthetics. So let me give you a simple example of what it is that I'm talking about. So I'm gonna tell you one of my secret wishes. This is something that I desperately wish I could do, but my you know, my my Catholic conscience wouldn't permit me to do it. And one of the things I've wanted to do ever since I found out about this, there's like this entire subreddit called Unethical Life Tips and Life Hacks, and it's hilarious, it's awesome. Basically, it it gives you like a bunch of tips of like bad things that you could easily get away with, and you know, nothing nothing major, right? It's usually like very, you know, petty theft and whatnot. And there are things that you can easily get away with because there's things that that almost nobody notices, and the post from there that changed my life was this post that had to do with the continental breakfast that takes place in hotels, okay. And basically, the scheme goes something like this you know how all hotels or nearly all hotels they offer like a free continental breakfast, and obviously, most hotels have like this massive staff, and they you know, they have a lot of people going in and out, staying in the rooms or or leaving the rooms. And what's most curious about this is that um, you know, there's not the the monitoring for the people who get to eat the breakfast and and those who don't, it is not it is not quite up to par. It's not very easy to keep track of this. I think hotels have gotten better at this recently, um, but definitely for a long while, it was pretty easy to slip through. And this unethical life tip was that hey man, if you dress up in business casual and you like you put on like a Bluetooth or something, and uh oh yeah, that's an and you just you just walk ahead and you act like you're talking on the phone, like you're like you're super busy, and you just keep pressing ahead, people will just look at you and they will assume that you are one of the people staying at the hotel, and you will be able to freely enter the hotel and get a completely free continental breakfast without having to pay a dime, a nickel, a penny, to get your hands on all of that delicious food. And you know, a bit of a bit of a point of that. I I you know I'm so happy that people people just talk on their phones right now. I don't know what it is, but you do you guys were were I I assume a lot of you were around to see like people when people used to walk around Bluetooth. I think people still do it. Um whenever I see like a businessman walking around in Bluetooth, like I can't resist the urge to just want to punch them in the mouth. Like I I hate it so much, like you know, they they look so pretentious, they're like, oh man, um I I'm I'm the busiest man on earth. I'm I'm doing stuff, bro. Like you know, shut up. I I I want to like suplex someone like that. Like, you know, but but that's besides the point. That that's like you know, primitive thoughts coming out of me, right? But the illustration that I gave before, which I you know, if I had zero moral conscience or zero qualms about anything, I would go for it. I I don't recommend anyone does it. It is immoral, it is wrong to steal from a hotel. Yes, even if the food is gonna get wasted, but the point of that story is that the only reason that such a trick is facilitated is through the power of perception. What does the way that you being in dress casual and business casual, what does that communicate? It communicates ah, this person is a professional, this person is reliable, somebody is probably paying this guy a lot of money to do something that I can barely comprehend, so he must be very smart. And oftentimes, indirectly, we assume that intelligence is correlated to morality, it isn't, but we we often we often assume that that is the case, right? And all of these impressions just came about from the fact that you decided to wear dress pants instead of jeans, that you decided to wear a button shorts, uh button shirt instead of a t-shirt. That instead of putting on that graphic tee from like that band you used to like, you decided to I don't know, wear wear like some man, I I don't I have no idea. I get all my clothes from Amazon, so I don't know anything about any any brands, but but there's so much power to this perception is power, and this also ties into you know something that I've been learning recently. I used to be the guy that had no fashion sense, and for a very long time I did not understand fashion. I I didn't I didn't get it, I didn't get what the point of it was. I thought it was just some some silly superficial thing that people obsess over, but at the end of the day, it's not it's not really important, there's no there's no utility to it, until I found out the name of what the fashion sense that applies to me is, which is smart casual, which you know I'm not gonna get go into a whole discourse about what small smart casual is, but it's like a blend between formal wear and casual wear so that you are intelligently casual, right? And when I found out about this, and when I started dressing like this, it it it finally clicked for me. Like the entire idea behind fashion, the entire purpose behind fashion, the role it has in our society, it finally got in my mind, and I could understand it. And it's like you know, you the reason that movies used to say something along the lines of, hey, if if it like some character like changed their fashion, and they said, Oh, that person's making a statement, it's because your your fashion is a means of communicating an idea of the kind of person that you are, and the fact that I like to dress this particular way more so than the clothes being of high quality, and they are, but more so than that, it it's the fact that I'm choosing to portray myself in a particular way. That me dressing in smart casual gives a particular perception of me that I would hope is true, well, that I I know is true, and I hope that people can grasp that it is true through the way that I dress, right? So that they can they can look at me and make those associations with me subconsciously without ever once, without ever once having, you know, having actually known me. There can be people who walk past me and they, you know, just look at me and they are already making assumptions about my intelligence, my professionality, my courteousness, all of which I know are true, but they aren't necessarily true. You just perceive them to be true. That's the kicker, right? And you can perception is not just visual. Perception, in a sense, can be treated as a synonym of impression, right? So if you're if someone's perception of you can be said to be the the the way that a person physically looks at you and comes to conclusions about you as a person, then impression is sort of like the mental equivalent of that, right? So I guess you can think about this as like the first, you know, the first like ideas of yourself that come to someone based on relatively superficial details that you're letting on. And honestly, you can see this a lot in modern meme culture, okay? Yes, right or wander, we're finally selling out, we're gonna talk about memes, but this is important. This is important. I'm I'm taking it to the next level, okay? Trust me, I'm wearing smart casual, yeah. And it's true, I'm wearing smart casual as we speak. You know why? Because when making this episode about perception, I know that I need to dress in a way that makes me feel that I am what I am, right? That makes that lifts me up. You know, I I could be recording this in my underwear, which I may or may not have done in the past, but but today, today, I'm in smart casual because I am projecting ideas to you, I'm making you understand things, okay? And uh, you know, but more more so than to you, because obviously you can't see how I'm dressed, but being dressed this way gives me a stronger reaffirmation of the kind of person that I am, you know. It's sort of like a shield to my own ego, and that sounds very superficial and very silly, but it I suppose that it has a very functional role in that you know it is telling myself who I am, reminding myself of who I am, because oftentimes in the day you can be surprised with how easily you can fall into a sort of amnesia as to the kind of person that you you know that you are, the kind of image that you want to portray yourself as. But going back to the subject of perception and how you can see this in memes, you know, there's this hilarious meme going around about you know this concept of the sensitive young man. Sensitive young man. Let me tell you, I have not looked up once what the sensitive young man is. But I have little doubts in my mind that when I say sensitive young man, when I string those three words together, even if you guys have never heard of that concept before, your brains are already wiring, they're already making connections, and they're already painting a picture of someone that may or may not exist, maybe it's some fictional character that you're thinking about, or maybe there are people in your own real life that you can identify with this concept of the sensitive young man. And because when I think of a sensitive young man, I'm thinking of a few things, and again, these are the impressions that come to my mind without without ever having looked up anything relating to the meme. But my assumption, which I suppose we will verify in a few minutes, is that when we talk about a sensitive young man, we are talking about a particular masculine archetype, a particular masculine archetype that is not masculine in the typical sense. We are thinking about a man that feels strongly, that that feels passionately. You're maybe thinking about a guy who is obsessed with with with deep knowledge or or scholarship or someone who's very studious and reads a lot. But despite the fact that most men, uh the the typical association of a masculine trait is some degree of stoicism, that is to say, detachment from your emotions, the sensitive young man is someone who has a more intense experience of those emotions while not necessarily being emasculated. They are still a man, but they are a man that experiences the emotions intensely. I guess when I think of the sensitive young man, I'm thinking of someone like Dante Alighieri, you know, the author of the Divine Comedy. And as I as I hope all of you know, Dante was deeply in love with this woman that did not reciprocate his affractions. Her name was Beatrice. And Dante, by all accounts, was a masculine man. He was a knight, he went to war. He he knew how to wield a weapon, he knew how to defend himself, he was from a noble clan. And despite all that, he was deeply smitten. His intense emotions did not, in some sense, detract from his masculinity, they just made him a different kind of man, you know, and I suppose you can also say that the sensitive young man is more prone to channeling that kind of strong negative emotion, channeling it into some form of creative endeavor, some form of some form of art. So notice all of those associations that I have made on the basis of three words that came together solely as a product of a meme without me having even having had to look up the the context of the meme itself. Now, give me one moment, and I'm gonna look up what sensitive young man is. Let's verify my own hypothesis, okay? You know, we are a legitimate podcast. If I am completely wrong about my impression, then I will read it out to you and I will let you know. So I found this from uh know your meme, and it says the following The sensitive young man is an archetypical character and a slang term that gained virality in memes in 2024, which describes a young man who is misunderstood by those around them due to his disregard for more basic values in favor of those more spiritual, leading to them failing to fit. Okay, so there were I think that that was a rough fit of the things that I just described. That was a rough fit of who who uh who Dante who Dante was, right? Though obviously Dante was probably much less of a social pariah than the example that is being is being thought of. But, you know, obviously he was rejected from his own city, right? Without entering into too much history, he was uh from a different political band than was common from the people of his own of his own cities, but aside from that, uh he was a you know he was a man much taken up with spiritual pursuits, with intellectual pursuits, with pursuits that you know are often not viewed as as masculine, despite fundamentally being deeply masculine, being essential to to a true masculinity, right? And more more so than the idea of the sensitive young man, it's the idea of perception, of the impression, of just the few strings of words that were necessary to get you thinking, to give you that particular notion, to to put that in your head, because there are certain vision certain images, you know, you everyone's heard the phrase a picture's worth a a thousand, a thousand words. Well, if a picture's worth a thousand words, a trope, a narrative trope is worth ten thousand words, okay? You know, people bash stereotypical things like the the chosen one and you know a hero having dead parents and and whatnot. And you know, you're free to do that. Um, some of those I I like more than others, and some of those I I do think that you know novels should steer away from. But what you cannot deny is that these tropes they they emerge as cultural shorthand to give you strong, concrete impressions of something that is true, but would otherwise require multiple words to explain. This is also part of the reason why we like to categorize people and why we are obsessed with personality quizzes. Okay, so personality quizzes are you know a bit of a pet peeve of mine, you know. A lot of these quizzes, my my main critique of these quizzes is that oftentimes uh the people who take them are like 13 years old, and they take them and they look at the results, and obviously they ignore the fact that they are in a developmental stage in life and they look at the results and they hold on to it as like a badge of honor rather than a descriptive, and as a result, aside from just treating it as a descriptive, they start using their assignation from the personality quiz as a prescriptive way on how they can keep on acting for the rest of their lives. So if you if you read somewhere on some stupid internet quiz that you were a deeply introverted person, you may well be or have been an introverted person, then however, with that notion reinforced inside of you, with that impression of introversion being forced inside of you, let's say that you took like a Harry Potter quiz, and I don't know, you who are who are like the the introverted ones, uh the like Ravenclaw, like the the smart ones, Ravenclaw, whatever. I don't I don't read Harry Potter, don't read Harry Potter, read Lord of the Rings, but but or read my books, uh but well once they're out. But rate, you know, if you take an online quiz from like 2007 and you figure out that you're a Ravenclaw at like 12 years old, and now the entire trajectory of your life is completely changed because of that, then I'm sad to say, but um that should not have happened, you know. You know, as a child, I think that especially when you are very young, you should, yes, you should have some idea of the kind of person you are, and a lot of the tendencies that are there with you are gonna stay with you as you grow older, but you also need to understand the malleable and changeable nature of your own personality and humanity. You can change, you don't have to be the same person, you don't have to be an introvert if you don't want to, if you want to redefine yourself in a different light, you can be you can be different, right? But again, there's a power in categories. There's a power in categories. So if I have if I if I have a friend, right, and he's a very intelligent guy, he's a you know kind of a wisecracking guy, and he you know, he's just he's just a very smart dude. He knows a lot of stuff, and most of my interactions with him somehow revolve his knowledge. It's very easy to categorize him as the intellectual. It's very easy, and that that is you know conceptual shorthand for us. However, in reality, he is not an intellectual, he's that guy, and that guy can be. Multiple that guys for different people in different contexts. Let's start out with the most basic one. The most basic one is that there's almost always someone smarter than you. It's an experience that I had a very hard time understanding. A concept I had a very hard time understanding when I was very young. There's always someone smarter than you. Just because someone's smarter than you, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean you need to enter into a mental panic. Okay? Because there's always gonna be someone smarter somewhere. And that's an that's an opportunity for learning. But that's you know, that's aside the point of this episode. But another point, maybe that person that you're thinking is very smart, only chooses to portray himself as in uh as intelligent around you. There's probably a group of people, a group of more trusted people, or maybe less trusted people, depending on the kind of person he is, around whom he is I don't know, maybe he's kind of he's the joker. He's the joker of the group. I I've had this happen to me. I had people who like who like talk to me and they're like, oh Wanda, you're you're so you're so smart, you're you're so intelligent, and then I had I have like other people like talk to me. It's like like dude, you are one of the most autistic men on earth. And they're both true. And the second one is not just true because I I you know I have Asperger syndrome, but but they're both they're both true. They're both true, you know. I I can I I can have intellectual pursuits, and I can also make weird animal noises with my close friends. That's not a contradiction. That's not a contradiction. It's just that I can't be all of myself to any given person at once, and you know, call harking back all the way to the very first episode. There is a version of yourself that no one else knows about. Only you and your God. Only you and your God. There is a version of yourself only known to only you and your God, and that may well be the truest version, okay? And a project like Rider Wander, part of the idea is to bring somewhat to light that version of myself, right? Because right now I'm pacing alone in my in my apartment, there's no one else here, and in normal circumstances, no one would even have a glimpse as to what I'm doing here. Because I'm just, you know, a lot of the thoughts I'm having here, they probably remain in my head, or maybe they would have been thoughts that occurred to me throughout the course of the day, and I never decided to cogitate and and articulate, but I'm doing so because of this podcast, and that's also the limitation of this podcast, because the the very concept of producing this podcast, even though this is proxy pro probably the most approximate rendition of that version of myself that could be given to you, because of the fact that there's this concept concept that I'm I'm providing this to some audience of people, because of that, there are things that will subtly change. My intonation will change, the way that I say things will be will be different because the way you say things to make them engaging and entertaining is different from the way that you might be talking to yourself. The way that I articulated these ideas will be different than the way that they came to me. They're probably a lot more organized, a lot more understandable, but conversely a lot less sincere, a lot less trustworthy. Certainly there are some approximation of what I actually believe, but perhaps the impression in my own mind, in my thoughts, no, not perhaps, most certainly, that impression is messy, dirty, probably much more crass, certainly less respectable, certainly not smart casual. But that's Rider Wander. Any further thoughts? No, there are no further thoughts. But uh Rider Wander, keep wondering.