# Mindsets you just don't understand **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 8, 2005, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069 "2005-11-08T17:41:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/61 "2005-11-09T03:39:05Z")
A woman I know told me she’d read Katherine Hepburn biography and ran across a section where Hepburn claimed she saw things as black or white, right or wrong, and felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have the same convictions. And the acquaintance of mine said she felt the exact same way. This I cannot fathom. Grey areas are challenging and frustrating, but they are, to me, a very real part of life. Recognizing and struggling with context, with things that are relative, with all those “grey areas?” I was taught (and believe!) that it’s stage of moral development that humans go through, and represents higher-level moral thinking. So it just floored me to know that some people believe “black and white” is the way to go, and anyone who thinks otherwise is pitiable. I also don’t get the mindset “I know what I know; I don’t need information.” You know, people who don’t want to be informed. Yikes. Also, there was the time a coworker said she didn’t understand why anyone would bother going to France to see the Louvre, when all those paintings could be easily seen in books… ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/62 "2005-11-09T03:45:16Z")
> [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](#): > > Also, there was the time a coworker said she didn’t understand why anyone would bother going to France to see the Louvre, when all those paintings could be easily seen in books… I kind of felt the same way the few times I have been to the Louvre. Not about most stuff, just the Mona Lisa. There she is…kinda small…but she looks amazingly similar to the prints. I wish those people would quit taking pictures so I can see. You can buy a print that will be many times better you know. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/63 "2005-11-09T03:58:24Z")
Fanatics of any ilk. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/64 "2005-11-09T04:02:16Z")
> [@calstateworker](#): > > People who say they are a “man trapped in a woman’s body” or vice versa. What does a woman without a vagina feel like? I don’t get it at all. 😕 Barbie ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/65 "2005-11-09T04:38:45Z")
> [@Anne Neville](#): > > I don’t get flirting, either. Never been able to do it or know if someone is flirting with me. > > I’m a homebody, so I don’t really enjoy going out for going out’s sake. I’d much rather stay at home and read or play computer games than go out to a bar or whatever. > > I’m not a huge fan of living alone, either. I mean, sure, it beats living with roommates that you don’t get along with. But it gets kind of lonely, and having to do all the cooking, cleaning, et cetera for yourself kind of sucks. See I’m the opposite. I love going out to the bars. I also love living alone. Ideally, I would live alone, have a large group of friends who live conveniently close, social events to go to and a girlfriend who only wants to spend 20% of her time with me. I don’t really care for the idea of a wife who has right of first refusal of every activity you do. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/66 "2005-11-09T06:59:25Z")
Gambling - a tax on people who can’t do simple arithmetic: never seen the attraction. Vandalism - never, even when young, drunk, and extremely stupid, have I felt the urge to destroy or deface someone else’s property: steal it, yes, but wanton destruction - what’s the appeal? ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/67 "2005-11-09T07:04:32Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > Vandalism - never, even when young, drunk, and extremely stupid, have I felt the urge to destroy or deface someone else’s property: steal it, yes, but wanton destruction - what’s the appeal? I agree, although i have committed one act in my life that could probably be described as vandalism, even though no permanent damage was done. When i was about 10 or 11, a friend and i snuck onto a construction site and let the air out of all the tires on the various pieces of equipment. This wasn’t a massive contruction site—probably a small apartment building—but there were enough trailers and pieces of small earthmoving equipment that our antics caused considerable annoyance and inconvenience. We did this because the owner of the construction company was the father of a guy at our school, and the kid was a bully who we weren’t tough enough to take on face to face. We got found out, and had to make a shamefaced apology to the kid’s father. ---
**Author:** ![suezeekay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/839c29/32.png) [@suezeekay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suezeekay)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/68 "2005-11-09T07:23:46Z")
> [@Amazon Floozy Goddess](#): > > People who are cruel to animals. Well, cruel in general. But especially to animals. > > A friend of mine used to have a horrible uncle whose pastime as a teen was to put on heavy boots and stomp on baby chicks at his parent’s farm. ☹ > One day their plough horse came up to him while he was doing this and bit the guy’s nipple off. Yay horse! I am never friends with anybody who is cruel to animals or even thinks it’s okay or even inconsequential or is even neutral on the subject. Besides it being something I can’t fathom, I could never trust them. It’s like some vital human part is missing from their brains or psyche. ---
**Author:** ![Anastasaeon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/69 "2005-11-09T07:24:13Z")
I don’t get people who hate. People who are just so negative, they have to pick apart everyone around them. They make fun of clothes, names, practices, or speech. They are easily annoyed by almost anything. People who think up negative things about people because they do something differently than the way they do it. You know, “That girl looks down her nose at everyone, because she wears one of those bracelets”, even though they never met the girl in their lives, or “That person is a skank because she wears her skirt higher than I would.” The people who do nothing but complain about everyone else, how something so small bothers them. I joke about it all the time, but I’m never serious. There are people out there who are really, truly annoyed by such tiny, petty things. It boggles my mind. I’m not saying people shouldn’t complain sometimes; hell, sometimes it’s productive - complaining can get things done. But these people are so dreary, and begrudge everyone around them anything they don’t have/do/believe in. I don’t get people who just have to be right all the time. That would really suck. How could you learn anything if you don’t ask questions? Or just because they read a book on sailing, they know all they need to know about it, without experiencing it, and can suddenly dispense advice on how to do it? People who envy everyone else. I don’t get them. People who only see things as black or white. There are so many shades in between, and they’re not all gray, either. People who can’t find beauty in anything at all. People who love only themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Giant\_Spongess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/94ad74/32.png) [@Giant\_Spongess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giant_Spongess)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/70 "2005-11-09T10:02:25Z")
I don’t get people who buy Hummers. ---
**Author:** ![Penchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/74df32/32.png) [@Penchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penchan)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/71 "2005-11-09T10:07:03Z")
People who are so rich they suffocate themselves in their indulgence. They go out, drink, party, basically cheat on their SO, then say that they’re a good Christian and that God loves them yet _you’re_ going to hell because you don’t wear a cross necklace and say Praise God! as you’re chugging your liquor and feeling up on girls. No bitterness here. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/72 "2005-11-09T11:06:39Z")
My immediate boss’s mindset. Think of the nastiest, crudest thing you can say about someone, and announce it to their face as loudly as possible. Think of the most humiliating thing you know about someone, and bring it up in their presence at every gathering of more than two other people. When the wife of your friend mentions how sad she was when her father died, say “why, because he was the last guy who ever wanted to finger you, you fat ugly cunt? Did his drinking buddies pass you around at the funeral for old times sake?” Keep this particular monologue up for a good thirty minutes and brag about it later. Do all this in front of your 2- and 4-year-old sons, then wonder out loud why they’re always such rude, out-of-control little brats. But maybe that’s just me. I also find the mindset of our new designer from Singapore, who recently announced in her usual happy little chirpy-surfer voice how much she and her friends back home liked to go out “Paki-bashing”, a bit alien to my thinking. Hell, sometimes I find my own mindset impossible to understand. I wander along some bizarre train of thought and then think “what possible chain of events could have produced a person who would think of _that_?” ---
**Author:** ![Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Glory)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/73 "2005-11-09T12:43:34Z")
> [@Sal Ammoniac](#): > > I don’t know, I’ve always been of two minds about that. On the one hand, you should be adventurous in travel, but on the other, I’ve always been a little uneasy about going to a country and compelling the people there to speak to me in English. It seems… rude somehow. And the idea of another person coming to the States for a visit and speaking no English is practically inconceivable. So for equity’s sake, it does sort of seem like you should visit only those countries where you know the rudiments of the language. (Though I suppose you could go on a package tour, with guides.) I’ve just spent 2 weeks in Tokyo. My conversational Japanese is limited to: Yes, no, thank you, please, excuse me, apple, princess and various kinds of food. I have a really good book with a guide to the train/subway system and a Lonely Planet Guide. I’ve been to the zoo, the aquarium, various museums, temples, out to dinner every night, seen movies, gone shopping for souvenirs and I’ve had absolutely no problem getting around (taking 2 trains and a subway to get to one temple, for example). It’s amazing what you can accomplish with smiles and pointing! I would never let language barriers keep me from exploration, it’s been incredible. Tokyo is definitely a place I would want to visit again! The mind sets I don’t understand: I’ll second smoking and people who don’t read for pleasure. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/74 "2005-11-09T13:04:25Z")
I don’t understand people who believe in God, the devil, angels, miracles, reincarnation, heaven, hell, etc., etc., etc. without a shred of evidence . . . but they won’t accept evolution because it hasn’t been 100% proven. ---
**Author:** ![grey\_ideas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/dfb087/32.png) [@grey\_ideas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grey_ideas)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/75 "2005-11-09T13:26:40Z")
> [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](#): > > A woman I know told me she’d read Katherine Hepburn biography and ran across a section where Hepburn claimed she saw things as black or white, right or wrong, and felt sorry for anyone who didn’t have the same convictions. > > And the acquaintance of mine said she felt the exact same way. > > This I cannot fathom. Grey areas are challenging and frustrating, but they are, to me, a very real part of life. Recognizing and struggling with context, with things that are relative, with all those “grey areas?” I was taught (and believe!) that it’s stage of moral development that humans go through, and represents higher-level moral thinking. So it just floored me to know that some people believe “black and white” is the way to go, and anyone who thinks otherwise is pitiable. That’s the sort of discussion that prompted my choice of user name 😃 At one time I had some friends who were very much into the ‘black and white’ philosophy that you described above, whereas I was always trying to see the other point of view and see if I can understand it. The sort of “I don’t understand how person x can think that” was often followed up with “Well, I don’t necessarily agree with that they think but I can see how they might come to that conclusion and if you think about it like…” from me. Being told that I was always trying to see everyones point of view led me down the road to my username. grey\_ideas ---
**Author:** ![PapSett](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@PapSett](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PapSett)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/76 "2005-11-09T13:37:33Z")
Women that stay in an abusive relationship. I have too much respect for myself to stay with a man that beats the crap out of me. People that don’t like animals. How can you _not_ like animals?? People that play their car stereo so loudly it vibrates YOUR car (and it’s usually that god-awful rap shit, which is another subject entirely) Parents that don’t support their children emotionally. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Arky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/87869e/32.png) [@An\_Arky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Arky)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/77 "2005-11-09T13:40:11Z")
People with Type A personality disorder. I can’t imagine being so driven to line someone else’s pockets. I can’t fathom _wanting_ to go around demanding other people perform at the same level of neurotic perfectionism as you (Type A Managers). I am utterly unable to understand why some people will work ungodly hours for some rich old boys’ club. What do you think’s gonna happen, they’re gonna let you in? HA! ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/78 "2005-11-09T13:44:36Z")
I don’t see anything yet that I can’t grasp at some level except the OP’s baby killers. Here’s the one I don’t get: Fighting, going to war, killing someone, being killed, over “honor.” (Baseball has a ton of this crap (though rarely resulting in death or severe injury) and it makes no sense to me. Retaliation for “being shown up” is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of.) ---
**Author:** ![Trunk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/87869e/32.png) [@Trunk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trunk)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/79 "2005-11-09T13:47:58Z")
I don’t understand the mindset of not being able to understand another mindset. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2005, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069/80 "2005-11-09T14:17:14Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I don’t understand people who believe in God, the devil, angels, miracles, reincarnation, heaven, hell, etc., etc., etc. without a shred of evidence . . . but they won’t accept evolution because it hasn’t been 100% proven. There is evidence about God, the Devil, et all. It’s called The Bible, and everyone knows it’s 100% true because…umm…the miister said so, and the minister before him said so, and so on. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mindsets-you-just-dont-understand/330069.md?page=5)