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Guilty as charged! Turning 30 soon, just shed the last remnants of my prior organically grown social circle, having judged so many people for their emotional callousness, sloppy thinking, and lazy ethics. Most of these days I don't even have anyone to talk to, which is why I've taken once again to that most inadvisable endeavour of writing my thoughts on the Internet! I literally know one or two people who treat others with essential kindness and strive to make their lives meaningful. I wish I had more ways of giving back, because if it wasn't for being able to talk with them once in a while, I'd seriously be doubting my sanity right now. At the same time, it's just not right to lean too much on them - there's only so much anyone can do for your existential problems. So once in a while we share a moment of "yeah bro, I see it too, things are going downhill in a profound and horrifying way, but it's OK, we know we won't let it get to us and we'll figure it out eventually". And that's about as much relating to people that I do these days. Could I choose to "unjudge" the people who I've held to what apparently these days is an unrealistically high standard? Easy, I've had many opportunities to try it! People can be quite forgiving of past misunderstandings, the problem is that they don't seem to learn from their mistakes a whole lot. I'm like, "okay, this person might not really be so great, but they're not a horrible person either, so let's give myself a chance to share some sort of meaningful experience with them!". It goes alright for a while, then I end up having to unilaterally struggle to maintain a basic mutual comfort zone while trying to dissuade poor attempts at gaslighting. (Apparently, it's considered "toxic" to tell others when their behavior is causing harm or distress?) Somehow it's becoming very difficult these days to be a decent person - as defined by the bare minimum of not engaging in violence or manipulative behavior because you treat others like human beings - and be social at the same time. I remember when the Internet used to provide opportunities for just that. Right now it's doing the opposite; who would've thought that a marriage of mass media and the Cold War military-industrial complex would naturally act to set people apart. People are bombarded with so much emotionally charged but otherwise completely nonsensical information which has nothing to do with real life, that if you somehow fall through the cracks of that whole shared hallucination, you're effectively a pariah. |