Re: On nerds and dreamers

Hey!

So I'll grab together all my English skills and write a
longer comment ...

On Wednesday 16 March 2005 00:33 +0100, Kris Kowal wrote:

 > Frankly, the social barriers are illusory.  All that
 > makes a "nerd" or a "geek" is shyness in youth.  Young
 > and shy males in at least in American social avenues tend
 > to fall behind in the break-neck, competitive environment
 > they're hurled into as children.

That is not only so in America. My impression as someone
who's considered to be a geek, but "nevertheless a nice
guy", has always been that either you're partying until
you're physically exhausted each weekend, or you're a geek.
That's of course exaggerated, but I know some people for
whom there's nothing greater in the world than partying.
Plus, even worse, if you say you strongly believe in
Christianity. Or unusual, introverted hobbies like reading,
conlanging, drawing/photography, playing a classical
instrument that is not suitable for bands like in my case
the classical guitar, ... you get the point.
My family recently went to the psychatrist's to help my
little brother (13) to better get in touch with the people
in his class and to find out the reason why he raises his
finger so little although he knows the right answer most of
the time -- after all, he's still got 3 years to go until
he'll be ready with Realschule. What she explained us was
that it's all a matter of self-confidence. When your
picture of yourself is bad, this radiates to the others and
gets mirrored, and you get an even worse picture of
yourself basically. According to her, a deficit in
self-acceptance also includes shyness and lacking important
social capabilities, i.e. to know how to make friends, the
process called "socialisation" that all geeks have problems
with. She also explained that these social capabilities
have to be learnt from the parents -- I hope my parents
will forgive me when I take my family as an example here --
but both of my parents never have really extensively cared
friendships after puberty AFAIK -- my parents are both
introverted to different extents, my brother and I are
introverted as a result of this, too. My parents said their
parents themselves have never had many friends. That means,
becoming what the society calls "geek" has also something
to do with education and family traditions. However, the
psychartrist said it was important to know how to make
friends, and suggested I should be willing to leave my old
self behind and go out to learn how to socialise myself in
order to do something good for myself -- though I'm
according to her not completely lost, I think I mentioned
that before, there's still a fair amount of hope for me to
decrease my introvertedness with a little training. From my
own experiences I can tell that once you've arranged
yourself with a group of people you like, it's actually
quite fun and lots better than sitting in front of the TV
or the computer and not knowing how to pass your evening.
Just dare to arrange a meeting with some friends or your
class in a nice local pub or at home or so. However,
getting contact to other people is not that easy, as with
every psychological problem things take a while to get
better: For me it's the case that I can cope with small
groups of max. about 15 people, but I fear huge, public
parties with 200 visitors. And I need to know people for
some time to feel well among them, so strangers . That
means I fear to lose control over the situation and of
myself. However, it takes some self-forcing (Überwindung?)
and *time* until you have 'bettered' yourself in that you
do not have so much difficulties anymore with getting in
touch with others. Another thing I have difficulties with
and which regularly tears me down is that due to me not
leaving home, I cannot participate at talking about all the
"enjoyable" things in the world like discussing the last
game of your favourite team or about parties, or
girlfriends. It's kind of a spiral of evil so to speak, or
as we say in German, a "Teufelskreis" (devil's circle).

 > Young and shy girls
 > tend to support each other earlier on, I think.  If nerds
 > are less interested in sports, there is little
 > correlation to physical attributes, but rather that they
 > weren't accepted in sport venues when they were young
 > because _they were shy_.

As I said, shyness is also caused by a lack of
self-acceptance and self-confidence. In fact, the P.E.
lessons where I think "Do things as good as you can,
competition doesn't matter" are far more fun than lessons
where I always suggest myself "I can't do sports". And yes,
with my parents never having had an interest in sports, I
am not interested in sports as well. I know that I should
do something for my body, but I have never really been
'enthusiasable' (begeisterbar?) about sports up to now.
Actually, what also keeps me from starting to play soccer
like a classmate of mine recently did (at age 18!) is "What
may the other people think of me?". This thought is
absolutely destructive. The unfortunate thing about being a
"geek" due to shyness in your youth is that I think when
you get older, it doesn't matter so much anymore if you've
been passionate with RPGing or computers or whatever
geekish hobby in your youth -- but all the capabilities you
need to survive out there in the business you learn in this
particular time. Of course you don't when you have never
approached to learn to know the real world, which can lead
to disadvantages of course.

Carsten

--
Edatamanon le matahanarà benenoea eibenem ena
15-A7-58-12-2-5-49 ena Curan Tertanyan.
» http://www.beckerscarsten.de/?conlang=ayeri

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