Never Mind.....

Discussion in 'Community Chit-Chat' started by Amulet, Sep 22, 2018.

  1. Ouroboros

    Ouroboros Silver IL'ite

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    The Johari window representing amateur counselling is high-blown for amateurs! One might get confused between aleatory and alleviatory counselling forms in that the former scrambles the unknown whilst the latter rambles in the platitudinous and feel-good tokens of sympathy. I fear to indulge in both known or unknown counsel, that is hard-hitting advice, because I would invariably evaluate the problem by my mental toolkit, if I were you then ...which is faulty given the poster isn't me. Moreover, the foremost known-unknown for me in that 'epistemological risk' square in the grid is the glaring voice patterned on the literary trope of an unreliable narrator. It is not first-person, second-person or third-person narrative but that of an unreliable narrator whose perspective is wrought in solipsism and not necessarily disingenuity.

    The unreliable narrator is an odd concept. The way I see it, we’re all unreliable narrators of our lives who usually have absolute trust in our self-told stories. Any truth is, after all, just a matter of perspective.

    Hence I eschew soliciting and supplying counsel, both, as I flounder to construct a fair representation of my life for others to analyse in that self-told initiative no matter how dispassionate I strive to be in my strait-laced recount but can only be guided on deeply subjective narrative. I would lapse on what was reproducibly uttered and provide details on what I have reductively inferred and how I have keenly interpreted it. He said something to the effect of (there! my jacked-up interpretation of the event rather than the factual account). Mind: The preceding line is a customary example in a fictive relationship not that I have a dormant grievance.

    Moving on from fictive cases, your amateur counselling framework piqued me. So, I searched for the origin of "aunt agony" column in print. Goodness Gracious Me! Behold!

    An agony aunt is “a purveyor of common sense”, writes Irma Kurtz, who did the job for Cosmopolitan for four decades, in “My Life in Agony”, a memoir. Since what counts as common sense varies from age to age and from place to place, the history of agony aunts reveals a lot about social change. The first regular problem page, open to questions from readers, was published in 1691 in the Athenian Gazette, a British periodical. Its creator, John Dunton, was feeling guilty for cheating on his wife. He thought that people like himself might appreciate confiding anonymously in a stranger, and that readers would be titillated by the exchange. It was an instant success. He was bombarded with queries on everything from marriage to the ethics of slave-trading to why sermons seem longer than they are.

    The format caught on. Daniel Defoe, the author of “Robinson Crusoe”, penned an agony column for the Review, a magazine he founded in 1704. Alas, it wasn’t much good. “[H]e felt superior to his readership,” notes Robin Kent in “Aunt Agony Advises: Problem Pages through the Ages”. Defoe said his aim was “to enlighten the stupid understandings of the meaner and more thoughtless” members of the public. He railed against divorce, sex before marriage, sex after menopause and fiscal irresponsibility (which was a bit rich, coming from a serial bankrupt).

    Note, 'aunt agony' sparked as 'uncle agony' with Daniel Defoe on the forefront. I tried to find that Kent's "Aunt Agony: Pages through the Ages" online but no digital print. The material sounds interesting! I cross-referenced few more articles and got intrigued on reading that the classic aunt agony column held sway on the social and cultural movements. Thereafter, is the neolithic 'aunt agony' column representative of the society at large or is it peacefully conservative (behave ...talking in public) or is it subversively progressive (so what ..I am anonymous)? Broadly, counsel dispensed in reputed personal columns in media even today could be indicative of the societal trends on matters of sex, marriage and child rearing. What do you say, Asterix?
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2018
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  2. Ouroboros

    Ouroboros Silver IL'ite

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    Thank you! Next time, get something of my size.

    upload_2018-10-15_21-39-17.png
     
  3. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    Yes. I will try and send you a big one next time. The forum policy says, no matter how big the menhir, it doesn't count.

    Excerpt from Knowledge Base:
     
  4. Ouroboros

    Ouroboros Silver IL'ite

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    In that johari window with knowns of the first order, the unreliable voice discounts even the knowns.

    Say for example, a poster writes:

    I am soft-spoken and good-natured and self-possessed and never a spiteful remark ...

    This is what is been made known to us. An unsuspecting and critical poster writes back:

    Then you must do this <>

    The original poster lashes out as:

    %^$#%*! Who do you think you are! Get lost! %^$#%*. You don't understand me.

    And continues with her:

    I am soft-spoken and good-natured and self-possessed and never a spiteful remark.

    Even the amateur counselors and seasoned aunties should be on qui vive for telltale signs of unreliable narratives spawning purportedly known facts. Everyone has an idealized image of self. Hence the shared 'known fact' is as doubtful as the studied 'unknown fact'. Professional counselling fares better than expedient counselling in this regard as the latter overlooks the discrepancy between the poster's claim and the poster's comportment unless one is contemplating an endured interaction, whereas the psychologists are trained to identify unreliable narrators parroting "I am good-nurtured" to interfere and counsel "Honey, you need to examine thyself and align yourself to the dictionary definition of self-possessed and not your personalized definition".
     
    Last edited: Oct 16, 2018
  5. Ouroboros

    Ouroboros Silver IL'ite

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    In that case, let's exchange these friendly totems elsewhere like 'friends and neighbors' corner under the guise of thread titles like "How to deal with a mean and greedy friend who expects a bigger gift".
     
  6. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    It is best to keep it here, how ever, if you want to Mind It...and
    If you want your shares to count... go to Share and Share Alike.
     
  7. Ouroboros

    Ouroboros Silver IL'ite

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    I prick my broad thoughts with the rapidity of a sniper assassin and the confusion of a psychotic mongoose. Never mind (isolation) despite no credits or no loving-cups suits me!
     
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  8. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    Yes... No menhirs, but if I am in town, and not gallivanting, you would get your ball returned back to you.
    However, you must go there and check out the Mind-it Murugan Bangra and the Terence Hill movie scene.
     
  9. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    Given the advisory "don't believe everything you see on the internet", Amateur Aunt Agony help on internet forums is a cute thing to read. Now and then someone might post a unique twist in a misery or mastery. It is like watching "As the World Turns" on daytime TV, but without any commercials for Tide.
     
  10. Ouroboros

    Ouroboros Silver IL'ite

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    I scan very less of personal columns at IL or even in magazines, may be summer reads while growing up. Don't know why, never was intrigued much to examine human condition through personal columns in magazines. Whilst my friends would discuss Pearl Padamsee's advisory column in Femina and similar column in Woman's Era to work out social biases at large, I was inept in dissecting a case to the extent they could with keen insights. Realized, I was not cut out for it. Back then and even now only the correlation between personal columns in magazines and the ethos of the society intrigues me -- which drives and which represents. I am interested in that "Pages through the Ages" book, should check if I could find a paperback at least. Noteworthy to see how the raison d'être of the column has evolved since Dunton and Defoe.
     

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