unspeakablehorror: (Default)
[personal profile] unspeakablehorror
I have to make extra effort to be sociable but I think it's very important for me to continue working on that.  I think it's very easy for me to feel alienated from other people, for a number of reasons, but I think I need to improve on that.  One thing that's hard is that I don't think my core beliefs slot easily into any of the major belief sets that people seem to have. Though I also don't claim to have anything resembling even a comprehensive understanding of what all these different belief sets involve.  Regardless, no matter what people's politics are, I tend to have important areas of disagreement with them.  And when I was more antisocial, this didn't matter, because I was just like 'well I don't need to care about anyone or feel any investment in others, I'll just avoid interacting or talking to anyone as much as possible so I will not be bothered by this and other people won't be confrontational towards me about it'.

But, haha, that doesn't really fit into my personal philosophy anymore.  Because while I don't think personal investment in other people as individuals is sufficient for compassion and solidarity towards others, I do think it's perhaps very difficult to practice either of those things purely in the abstract.  And politics doesn't mean very much if I only take my individual needs and wants into account anyway--there's many possible paths to maximizing my chances of obtaining those goals, but not all of those are good paths, and what distinguishes the good and the evil are what helps and what hurts other people, respectively. 

But I really wish there were classes like  'How to Be Friends With People' and 'How To Compromise Like a Well-Adjusted Person Instead of Always Needing to Get Your Way'.  Because that would be uh, personally helpful to me.

Date: 2019-06-29 04:14 am (UTC)
chamerion: (Default)
From: [personal profile] chamerion
If it helps, I think rigid conformity to every particular of a given belief system is rarer than it appears, especially among thoughtful people who typically have - well, nuanced thoughts. Obviously the data points do tend to cluster in certain spots. But society (and maybe social media in particular) tends to amplify a limited number of popular takes until it appears they’re the ONLY takes, when really there’s a significant minority of folks either dissenting or at least raising minor objections on the sidelines. (Heck, intra-left squabbling is common enough to be a punchline in politics.)

That said your frustrations are very understandable! Personally I grew up in an environment that wasn’t super tolerant of even mild disagreement, and untangling the resultant conflict aversion is an ongoing project, so you have all my sympathies and encouragement. Socializing can be rough and sometimes being a wilderness hermit sounds enticing.

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