ftw!

¶ filters Posted 21 years, 6 months ago on July 13, 2004
Think of the thoughts that go through my mind as a continuous signal with numerous frequency components, with the spectrum being all the different feelings and emotions I could have. If you could read that signal directly, you'd know everything that I ever thought and felt. Every ounce of happiness, despair, impulse, and desire.

When I speak to different people, parts of this signal are transmitted to them. But the signal is filtered, with a different filter for every person. For people I don't know, it's a narrowband filter. I only show very select frequencies of the signal of my mind. If I don't know you, you don't get to know when I'm sad and depressed, or when I'm hungry or sleepy. As a person becomes closer and closer to me, the band widens, and more frequencies are passed through. Each individual frequency component is also filtered over time, usually with a lowpass filter to smooth it out. I'll tell good friends how I feel, but I won't tell them every time my mood changes. For my closest friends, even those lowpass filters aren't very selective, and any time they tune in, they see a lot of the variations and changes going through my mind.

But I don't think anyone will every be close enough to me to get that raw, unfiltered signal. Somehow, it's just not something I would do.

This blog pretty much gets the complete stranger filter.

Re: filters

Posted 21 years, 5 months ago by Sumi • • Reply

I don't know, Albot, about your blog getting the stranger filter. What you've written is rather introspective and revealing (or was that the whole point, and I'm stating the obvious? I'm a little slow, what can I say). You might have less control than you think over this narrowband filter, or any filter you think you're placing between You and People. ;-) As for anyone ever getting You, completely unfiltered -- well, our dear Luke might differ with me, but I don't think it's necessarily desirable to have someone have access to your every thought, your every emotion, your every molecule. It's wonderful to be an individual, and inherent in that is a state of solitude at your very core, born of your singularity -- and that, to me, is an essence to be embraced, not doubted or resented. I hope you're not doubting and resenting the thought of no one getting that raw, unfiltered signal. Crimminy, did I make sense? I'm half-delirious from a 10-hour multi-peak hike. Well, Luke, disagree with me already! What's taking you so long to hit "One Comment" and write?!

Re: filters

Posted 21 years, 5 months ago by Sonic • @ www • Reply

This "Luke" character sounds like a total dork. As for me, I almost never talk to people "unfiltered", which is incidentally the same word I use. I have done it once or twice in recent memory and, well, it's not exactly fun. I think it'd be ideal, fuzzy, and nice in a happy-go-lucky world if there are people (or one person) who you dont' mind talking unfiltered to but even I'm not that naive to think that this happens regularly in the real world. Honestly, I personally do resent the fact that I talk to most people with a filter sometimes. Whether that's rational or not has no bearing on whether I think it is so. It just feels as if I "should" be able to talk to at least one person unfiltered, but I'm not this "Luke" here. He's probably not writing cause he's not sure, the vacillating nincompoop.

Re: filters

Posted 21 years, 5 months ago by amandine • • Reply

here's my 2cents without sumi's or luke's beautiful prose because after all, this english language is not my mothertongue and is, in my eyes, just a tool i use to communicate. but that it a completely different topic. filters. everyone uses them and the person who says that they don't is a liar. our instinct to survive and watch our backs dictates us to use filters, to not let people know our deepest thoughts or motives. the catch 22 with that is that unless you thoroughly know yourself, you can easily drown or loose your way in all the feelings and thoughts you keep locked up inside yourself. in my opinion, that's where friends step in and try to steer you home.

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