Confessions Of A Sensitive Man - How To Express Your Sensitivity (With HSP Author William Allen)

iainmf · 2020-12-22T00:37:05+00:00

OP has been spamming his content to multiple subs, but I am leaving this up because I am interested in seeing a discussion.

SensitiveAcceptance · 2020-12-22T15:41:34+00:00

The author is old enough to have been in the first generation of Sensitive New Age Guys. Can we examine how that worked out, what mistakes were made, what assumptions were proven right or wrong? Or does somebody just have a warehouse full of ideological disco pants that they want to sell to a new generation?

I did the the self-evaluation to find out if I'm highly sensitive. I got points for not liking loud noises or violent movies, but I lost points because I'm insensitive to a dusty room. There was a question about whether I'm very moved by art and music. I don't know what to say to that. It seems to be a choice between being pretentious or being ostentatiously unpretentious.

The traits of a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) reminded me of a theme in Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks. Two brothers, Thomas and Christian, from the first generation of a hardheaded merchant family who've had the opportunity for an education in the finer things in life. Christian buys in entirely to the lifestyle of being a gentleman connoisseur and man about town. He's a Highly Sensitive Person, very moved by the arts, and very tuned in to the symptoms of his exquisite nervous disorders. And Thomas has chosen to put aside those opportunities and take on the responsibilities of running the family firm. He's aware, or tries to be aware, of the price he pays for this choice. He feels comfortable neither in one world nor the other, and tries with varying degrees of success to build an integrated life. So in the quote below where he's talking about Christian to his sister Antoinette, he's talking about their Highly Sensitive brother, but he's also talking about himself in real life and himself in a life he could have chosen but didn't....

You see, Tony, anybody, except Christian, may say that he loves the theatre. But he would say it in a different tone, more en passant , more modestly, in short. Christian says it in a tone that says: ‘Is not my passion for the stage something very marvellous and interesting?’ He struggles, he behaves as if he were really wrestling to express something supremely delicate and difficult.”

“I’ll tell you,” he went on after a pause, throwing his cigarette through the wrought-iron lattice into the stove: “I have thought a great deal about this curious and useless self-preoccupation, because I had once an inclination to it myself. But I observed that it made me unsteady, hare-brained, and incapable — and control, equilibrium, is, at least for me, the important thing.

There will always be men who are justified in this interest in themselves, this detailed observation of their own emotions; poets who can express with clarity and beauty their privileged inner life, and thereby enrich the emotional world of other people. But the likes of us are simple merchants, my child; our self-observations are decidedly inconsiderable. We can sometimes go so far as to say that the sound of orchestra instruments gives us unspeakable pleasure, and that we sometimes do not dare try to swallow — but it would be much better, deuce take it, if we sat down and accomplished something, as our fathers did before us.”

EvilLothar · 2020-12-23T15:03:32+00:00

This sounds like trying to get society to accept weak men and hasten it's demise. Nope. Weak men don't help society grow and don't create anything but hardship.

Title	Confessions Of A Sensitive Man - How To Express Your Sensitivity (With HSP Author William Allen)
Author	SensitiveAcceptance
Upvotes	8
Comments	11
Date	December 21, 2020 11:10 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/khsoca/confessions_of_a_sensitive_man_how_to_express/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/confessions-of-a-sensitive-man-how-to-express-your.837761 https://theredarchive.com/post/837761

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