[noneparticular]

Can't say I overly agree with that, I work full time from home but pretty common for me to not leave my residence for 10 to 15 days at a time, and usually only to purchase groceries or small things to repair or maintain where I live. This is my life for the last 6 or 7 years now.

I have no family to speak of, and I don't have any acquaintances outside of work. And I've never met any of my colleagues face to face. Many of whom have never seen a photograph of me. Most of our interactions are in Mattermost chats, emails, or work items. Most people only know me as ASCII codes rendered on a screen to form words.

If that doesn't qualify me as a shut in, what does?

>To be a shut-in is the inability to access the full spectrum of what life has to offer.

My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.

[kiba]

My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.

A good question. I define that with: nothing happens. Life becomes static. Events don't happen.

That's what I meant by being a shut-in. To be fair, a shut-in to having a life is a range rather than a binary thing.

My response to that would be to ask why such things would be appealing in the first place. Why should one that finds no reward in dealing with other people at all, aspire to being promoted or falling in love? Both of which inherently require dealing with other people.

I don't know. I was OK with not meeting people in real life. Then I started meeting people, and started to find a new dimension in life. I found that I have certain social talent that I didn't know I have.

One thing to take into consideration is that people changes and their preferences changes. They are not static.

Anyway, it's not so much about having photos or being able to see someone's face. It's about something happening. It's kinda hard to define.

Again, no failure, but no success either. No exhilaration, and no happiness. Life is static. Nothing happens. Sadness may happens, but hopefully good things should outweigh that.

[Dalewyn]

>Again, no failure, but no success either. No exhilaration, and no happiness.

It's worth keeping in mind that the only useful judge of success/failure and happiness/despair is you and you alone.

This means your experience and what you consider success and happiness are only valid insofar as you are concerned. They cannot and should not be applied (nor forced, for that matter) upon anyone else.

[barbs]

I feel it's what we've evolved to be tbh, regardless of what we've logically concluded.

[dleary]

This is not a valid argument.

The same argument has been used to oppress people since time immemorial, whether they were brown skinned, homosexuals, neurodivergent, Jews, or various other arguments for being “not as we were evolved to be”. (You have targeted one form of neurodivergent people here).

If you ignore the eyeblink of the last 100 years, then we have hundreds of thousands of years of brutal rape, war, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, enslavement, and I’m sure we could think of a few others…

It would be very hard to argue that this is not “what we’re evolved to be”, since we so lustfully pursued these endeavors for literally 100 times as long as we have recorded history.

This argument is basically the same exact sentiment as “because that is Gods will” or “because that is the way it’s always been done” dressed up in a patina of science by including the word “evolved” in it.