Rambles on Communication and Attractiveness

This photo has nothing to do with the contents of this post, but I like it and it makes the main page look pretty.

I should be working on my new year's letter, but there have been a few somewhat unconnected thoughts that have been rolling around in my head that I wanted to start putting down.

The first being a quote by Georges Bernanos I heard while listening to the book Nonviolent Communication, which for the sake of brevity I will paraphrase as "the reason the world will go up in flames is that people sit by and watch it burn rather than crazy maniacs taking control". There is a similar quote I came across in the National Civil Rights Museum.

So this blog post is part of an effort to not be so docile. I think eventually this and other posts like it will turn into more polished Medium posts or perhaps articles. I have had the intention of restarting my work as a journalist with an eye to covering topics at the intersection of machine learning and other topics I'm interested in but have struggled to allocate the time during the day to those efforts. I digress.

Since very few people actually read my blogs (my little brother hasn't even seen my blog and I've had it for 6 years!), the anxiety I feel about posting my informal writing has decreased.

As someone who walks around the world and seeing things that just "shouldn't be" and "need to be changed", writing out these thoughts will be a small and meaningful effort in my work to shape the world in the way I see fit. Though my work retraining in machine learning, I have understood that most change, which in this case was a career shift and acquiring a new body of knowledge, happens slowly and steadily, and I believe that I am pretty good at pursuing this kind of slow and steady change. And so, here goes some practice.

(As another aside, I really like the idea of framing things as "practice" because in practice you are free to experiment make mistakes. This thought came to me while thinking about relationships, which is, in fact, the intended subject of this blog post, so without further ado, I will get on with it.)

I believe (as do many people in the world) that women in modern American (and global) society occupy a lower social position. They are given less freedom, opportunities, and are expected to endure greater hardship. This is something that I think should change, and I think sharing some recent thoughts I have had can result in a small amount of progress (I want a word for this "small amount of progress", like "micro-progress", "nano-progress"?... anyway...)

I have been reading Medium articles recently about relationships. The Medium algorithms have so far realized there are three types of articles I will click on. Articles on machine learning, python, and relationships.

I read this article a few days ago: 5 Ways To Become More Attractive. I'm not feeling especially insec ure lately, but hey, who doesn't need more advice on being attractive? The by-ine is "These proven methods have nothing to do with appearance." which was not in fact what I was looking for, but I read it and it went more or less: be confident, make eye contact, ask questions about the other person, laugh, and be honest. All well and good.

In a conversation with a girl I've been low-key dating, we were talking about how repressed many women feel in their relationships either because they are conforming to the more docile behavior society has taught them or because their partner doesn't give them the space to express their needs and wants. Much of this comes down to poor communication between partners; whether that be women to feeling comfortable or confident communicating their needs, or men not being able to engage emotionally or actively suppressing the women's needs (I generally like to assume people are doing what they think is right and what they think is best but there are likely men that think it fit to consciously or sub-conscious suppress women's needs.)

Whatever it is, the suppression comes down to poor communication skills, and perhaps poor social education or conditioning.

And my thought was (we will get there, I promise), that being able to communicate (like the 5 things in that article) is something that will make you more attractive as a man. Regardless of whether you're single or in a relationship or married, communication is a good thing to learn for both men and women, but let's be honest, men need more help. Society does men a great disservice by not teaching them to understand and communicate their emotions.

The point of my thought was that if you're looking to attract a partner or keep a partner (because lets be honest, no relationship is safe from decay and as someone who has been divorced, the ending of a long-term relationship is not fun – for anyone).

So men, get out there and learn to communicate so you can boost your prospects in the relationship market. Because, we all need to compete and best to give yourself all the advantages you can get. And communication will also just help you as a man live a happier life.

That's all, thanks for reading :) And forgive typos and such. These are meant to be rough.