That’s called having a normal and functioning think box, comes will all the usual bits of imagination just like every other human.
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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months agoThere absolutely are intrusive thoughts. Two examples:
Once in a long while, I’ll be talking to a black person and I’ll think of the N-word. It will just pop into my head for a split second and I’ll think “oh my god, no!” and it will be gone. I’ve never said that word out loud, I’ve never thought of anyone black that way, and I certainly don’t want to think of anyone that way. It’s not a thought I meant to have or even a thought that would ever represent how I felt. It isn’t even a thought that is pointed with malice at the person I was talking to. It’s literally just “N-word” and it’s gone. It’s purely unconscious and intrusive racism that I think is just part of being white.
Every so often, I’ll be talking to a couple I know and imagine them fucking. Just for a split second again. I don’t want to imagine them fucking. It’s not titillating to me. I don’t get a rise out of it. I don’t fantasize about it later. But just for a moment, I imagine what it would be like if my perceptive versions of them fucked. We won’t even be talking about anything remotely sexual. But sex is part of the human condition and sometimes we have unconscious, intrusive thoughts about sex.
I don’t think either of these will lead me to murder. In fact, in general, I don’t have violent thoughts, not even intrusive ones. But it could lead me to other atrocious behavior if I dwell on those thoughts and if I let them become more than momentarily intrusive. It’s not being afraid of thinking them, it’s not wanting to think of them and doing my best to will any such thoughts that stray out of my head as quickly as I can. Because those thoughts are not thoughts I want to have about people. I don’t care if I don’t act on them either. I don’t want to think that about any black people I ever encounter in my life. I don’t want to think that about any couples who I know. But sometimes those thoughts just pop into my head and I can’t help it. But I can help moving past them as fast as I possibly can so they don’t end up accumulating and turning me into a person I don’t want to be.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
“Bits of imagination” you don’t want to have = intrusive thoughts.
LemmysMum@lemmy.world 11 months ago
We don’t always get what we want, that’s life.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 months ago
What does that have to do with what I said or your claim that there are no such things as intrusive thoughts?
feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world 11 months ago
It’s not part of being white anymore than dropping a baby out of a window. It’s just your brain telling you what not to do, because you know not to use that term, on account of it being rude and offensive.
It’s become such a taboo term, you’d literally never say it, so it’s like internal Tourettes, and I suspect this type of intrusive thought is least vaguely related to the phenomenon of cute aggression.
I’ve even joked about this with a Nigerian friend, about how your brain will just think something awful about somebody and you just have to smile about it. It’s sad that you would assume some essential racist nature about yourself.