Dear Joe:

Regarding ” I would rather learn from my own experiences than being told by other people.” I don’t think there is any way to learn the things that count in life (that is beyond trivia and book knowledge) except by personal experience. When people spoon feed you with .. life lessons, what they are teaching you in practice is that you are a baby that needs to be spoon fed (while their shirts are splattered with food morsels they missed while eating themselves).

So yes, anything I suggest is for your experimentation, your personal experiencing.

You wrote: ” I just thought some people were mean and judgemental and too conservative just for the sake of being those things.” For the sake of deflecting their own meanness and judgment off themselves.

You wrote: “Is them being judgemental and condescending their way of avoiding their own insecurities of feeling scrutinised?” Yes, I agree.

You wrote: “Do they judge according to how they fear they might be judged?”- I say: they judge according to how they judge themselves already, past and present.

Basically, there is this mental entity called the Inner Critic that takes after our parents/ older siblings, people who were very powerful over us when children. If they were abusive, our own inner critic is abusive (I refer to the abusive inner critic as the Inner Bully). What people do is distract the Inner Bully from bullying themselves by keeping it busy bullying others.

* This too, what I wrote here, is not intended to spoon feed you. A tiger does not accept spoon feeding! This is one reason why I wrote to you before that you are indeed a tiger. (A tiger is also not a herd animal, and you are clearly not). But there is no way for me to communicate with you other than words, sharing my understanding and experience. It is up to you to take any of my sharing to the higher level, the only level that counts: your own intellect, you own testing.

anita