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Author Topic: What ever happened to Luther?  (Read 22340 times)

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Offline Ray

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Re: What ever happened to Luther?
« Reply #75 on: July 10, 2013, 06:36:26 AM »
What’s the matter Luther? Did I hurt your feelings by exposing your phony little game?
 
All of this childish name-calling and incoherent ranting will do nothing to solve your personal problems. The problem is in your head and until you get real professional help, it will only get worse. But I think you already know that, don’t you Luther?
 
 
Now are you going to sue me too? Oh no, what am I going to do?     
 
 
 :-*
 
 
 
 
 

Offline Luther

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Re: What ever happened to Luther?
« Reply #76 on: July 10, 2013, 06:47:55 AM »
"Blame the victim." Nothing special. Bullies are all the same.

Offline Luther

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Re: What ever happened to Luther?
« Reply #77 on: July 10, 2013, 08:31:31 PM »
...why he has so many enemies?

 As long as there is one or more persons on this forum who have some twisted psychological need to invent malicious fiction about me and post it here in this public place, I think it is in my best interest to take an active stand against their venom. Even if, as in the case of Ray, their work is really just play, only for self-entertainment of a heart long rotted by cynicism.
 
Ray would love to drag me into a point-by-point analysis of what's wrong with everything he says, but this is not Ray's thread, it's mine. So I will hit main points only and ignore him as much as possible.
 
Highest on the meter of ridiculous accusations today is the notion that I have many enemies. This is fiction. For the facts, read Culture Shock: Philippines, and you will learn that the rest of the world does not function as expected by America the Arrogant. Ours is a young country without ancient traditions, without respect for its elders, without any value for the extended family since the advent of the personal automobile has created this obnoxious spreading weed called the "nuclear family". Without respect for individual freedom since the takeover by the banking brotherhood, corporatocracy, and lobbyism as business-as-usual. And without enough self-respect to demand and expect that our personal liberties will be untampered-with by pretty boy politicians who are bought and paid for by monopolizers of influence.
 
America is also the home of gleefully unhindered bullies. Everywhere you look, there is someone more than ready to sneer in your face and try to depants you in public.
 
Well Ray, thanks for the compliment, if your way of making friends is to try and desensitize someone to flagrant bullying, but I can see that you are just trying to mount me, so no thanks. I prefer life on the edges of life, unhindered by twisted fratboys inviting me to grovel my way into their clique by running the gauntlet of hazing rituals. I can see clearly here in the hinterlands, and I don't have time for a lot of "friends".
 
Here in the Philippines where I've lived non-stop for almost 8 years, the realities I deal with are not invented by some overpaid southern California yuppie. As you will learn in Culture Shock: Philippines, which is written by well-educated and perceptive Filipinos, there is most certainly an ancient culture. It has been severely compromised by imperiaist attacks from Spain, the Roman churchmongers, and the American overlords who still have a heavy behind-the-scenes influence, but there is still a culture here, a very old one. As is the case with all cultures old enough to value wisdom and experience over macho bravado and personal pride, a certain compromise has been made to protect the group: the value of the individual has been downgraded. Not to hurt any one individual, but to protect the group from being downgraded by an individual's perceived freedom to do damage for personal gain.
 
The basis of the Filipino culture, and the building block of everyone's psychological and social security, is the family. Family loyalty wins out over logic. Many priorities here seem foreign to an open-mouthed opinion spouter like me, and it takes many years to undo many years of ingrained personality traits. Not creating a disturbance wins out over many things including telling the truth and speaking one's mind. Passing the buck, making excuses for oneself and others, refusing to respond, these things so despised by American values are perfectly fine here, it keeps the peace to LET someone save face in any way they can. So when someone screws up, they are usually allowed to save face, because it keeps the group strong to not chase down and emphasize the things that COULD alienate people from each other, if those things were considered important. What Howard has done to me, with wrong information he either made up or squeezed out of his wife's infected grudge, is more than disgusting, creepy, stupid, damaging, and deplorable. It's against everything that his wife's culture stands for. And no, I am not doing the same thing to him. I am not the aggressor here. This whole thing stops when Howard says to the forum owner, "Delete that thread."
 
Making friends is my greatest handicap, because my brain has no social center. If Ray wants to melt me with his acid for the way I was born and/or brought up, well whatever, it's been tried before and my detractors still have not forced me to slit my throat in self-hate. Believe it or not, I do the best with what I have and I am enjoying my days on earth. In spite of feeling a burning in my brain when people try to be too nice to me, I try to be nice too. In spite of being indisposed to give people eye contact, I try to do it anyway. Even though it hurts my face to smile, I force myself to try. In spite of a near total inability to engage in casual conversation, like my father and grandfather who were the same way, I haven't seen any reason to stand up in public and downgrade myself for being different, and I will also not allow people like Howard and Ray to downgrade me in public. Not without a fight.
 
But to address the accusation at hand: do I have a lot of enemies? In fact, in light of what all I cannot seem to accomplish socially, I'd say I have a lot of friends! Every child and young adult here calls me Buddy, now whose idea was that? Not mine! Even some of the grandmothers here call me Buddy. Not because they've never seen me lose it and do or say something unFilipino-like. But because they are wise, with wisdom held up by long cultural tradition.

 
Here in the Philippines, the culture demands near total lack of personal conflict. This sits well with the majority, but a few individuals stick out. These individuals, including me wife, her favorite younger brother, and her "favorite niece," have naturally aggressive personalities, have to vent from time to time, but they are readily forgiven for it. There are only one or two Filipinos who hold a grudge against me, and these are the ones whose repressed need to be aggressive and have their say even outstrips mine. A brother-in-law who was my wife's spoiled little brother till I came along and changed his world, he hates me for reasons he doesn't understand. A niece who has always been top dog, the eldest of her generation in a very large family, will hate me as long as possible until her native intelligence kicks in and she realizes it isn't worth the suffering it causes. Everyone else forgives me for who I am! Including the neighbor woman who threatened to kill me for correcting her small child in an angry tone, and who got her father to bulldoze my garden. Even she has decided to be friendly again. Even the sister-in-law who had enough of me one night and screamed at me for ten minutes, threatening to have me thrown out of the country, and got her husband to hit me…because I came to her house looking for my guitar, which was missing. She has forgiven me (or is that herself she has forgiven?) and just the other day dropped by to borrow an extra mouse for her computer. Not the computer I gave her, a different one.
 
So that's duha lang ka kalaban, two people who choose to have me as an opponent, out of the hundreds of people I know in the Philippines, and one of those two has had barely any contact with me, just lives in a stew of imagined insults, somewhere in America, land of the unfree.
 
Now that kalaban bro-in-law next door, what does he have to be upset about? His favorite sister stopped financing all his business ventures and I took over. Does he feel castrated that I have bought him a pool table for his billiaran, a water tank for his dumoy water business, and a Megavision disc player for his karaoke business? If so, he would be the last to know, he has never read a psychology book, nor any other kind of book. Does he feel jealous that I took his favorite sister into my life and adopted one of his three children when asked to? If so, he would be the last to know his own reasons for his own raging emotions. Or, why he feels the need to threaten me and aggress against me when someone else would just walk away and say, Never mind, it's OK. Or, why he shouts at me when my wife threatens to cut my toes off with the shovel in her hand and I try to take the shovel away from her. He hasn't shouted at me since, I saw to that.
 
Does my one-and-only local kalaban (not enemy; an "enemy" is an American concept; kalaban is the same word used for the opponent in a game of tiddly winks)…does my only kalaban here understand himself well enough to know that he is extremely shy and nervous of having to acknowledge me every time we pass in the hall, resentful of the expectation that he should have to speak to me? Pissed off at having one more elder male to call "kuya"? Does he know what drives bigotry? Does he realize that he is just taking the coward's way out by shunning me for over five years? Because he's too shy to deal with reality's enforced changes of routine? Does he know this about himself? Not a chance in hell. Because he has the support of a large family that will never criticize him, he doesn't need friends. And doesn't have any. Like me, he prefers not to have a hang-out lifestyle, doesn't like to waste time flinging the bull around with compadres. Like me, he is a workaholic. Like me, he is too serious. Catch the thread? He hates me because I am a mirror to some parts of himself that make him uncomfortable. Some "enemy," huh?
 
So Ray's "lots of enemies" is the worst kind of sneering, cynical lie, and I don't want to discuss it with him again, nor anything else with him. This is my thread and only my friends are worth listening to. Howard, who is my wife's nephew-in-law but no nephew of mine and not my friend, is encouraged to get his balls out of his ass and come to this thread of mine and explain who the hell he thinks he is, but if not, OK, that is what libel court is for, he can save his explanation for the judge.
 
Better yet, he can get the whole thread deleted, all he has to do is ask. The judge will want to know why he didn't think twice about what he posted about me, and why he missed his opportunity to delete it.
 
Now anyone who thinks Howard and Ray have something to say, fine, go do your brown-nosing somewhere else. This is my thread and I am taking it over in my own way and for my own reasons. If the management doesn't like what I have to say, they can do what they want, it's their forum.
 
 

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Re: What ever happened to Luther?
« Reply #77 on: July 10, 2013, 08:31:31 PM »

 

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