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Misanthropy vs. Idealism - are most people inherently good or bad?
joshofalltrades
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
Class TraitorSmoke-filled roomRegistered User regular
So, lately I've been having a lot of difficulty with the human race as a whole. I'm well aware that humans can be altruistic. I even experience that streak of goodness on a daily basis (my boss is paying for my college education. All of it, with nothing asked for in return except that he be invited to my graduation party). As I get older, though, I feel like I'm starting to get way more jaded with people. See, I personally feel like there's very rarely any reason to start shit. Why in the fuck would I want more drama in my life? And here's where things get tricky. I can probably count on one hand the number of people in my life who subscribe to this "not starting shit for no reason" philosophy. We're talking petty, unreasonable and stupid shit that people blow way out of proportion and consider friendship-breaking or use to lower their opinion of myself or others. Nobody seems to have any issues making crap way more important than it has to be.
Even when shit gets started, I try to find it in myself to be conciliatory. Maybe there is something to it after all, right? I mean, people can't change the way they feel. But I usually find myself giving ground over and over until I feel like I make ridiculous concessions for people (that I have no choice but to interact with; like at work, for instance) and they are usually not reciprocated to me.
I'm 28 years old. I'll be 29 next month. I feel the streak of idealism and that I had as a kid/young adult rapidly fading. In fact, it's worse than that. I'm starting to feel hatred for people in general. I mean, I didn't expect to be a starry-eyed JRPG hero or anything, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to trust people or let them get close to me, even people I have known since childhood. Is this just a part of reaching your 30s? If so, why? How abnormal is it to be distrustful of the human race? Is it even an important thing to retain that idealism and generally trust people?
Even when shit gets started, I try to find it in myself to be conciliatory. Maybe there is something to it after all, right? I mean, people can't change the way they feel. But I usually find myself giving ground over and over until I feel like I make ridiculous concessions for people (that I have no choice but to interact with; like at work, for instance) and they are usually not reciprocated to me.
I'm 28 years old. I'll be 29 next month. I feel the streak of idealism and that I had as a kid/young adult rapidly fading. In fact, it's worse than that. I'm starting to feel hatred for people in general. I mean, I didn't expect to be a starry-eyed JRPG hero or anything, but it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to trust people or let them get close to me, even people I have known since childhood. Is this just a part of reaching your 30s? If so, why? How abnormal is it to be distrustful of the human race? Is it even an important thing to retain that idealism and generally trust people?
joshofalltrades on
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The plus side is, you're no longer a naive fool, and you have more money for nice toys.
Welcome to being an adult, it happens to the best of us
I feel like this thread is on the cusp between D&D and H/A, and I'm not sure how much of this is a general question versus personal issues you've got.
edit:: You remind me of a friend who was always overly nice (read, a doormat) to girls, doing whatever they wanted, constantly buying them things, and then getting mad when they didn't want to go out with him, or do what he wanted them to. He had to learn to stand up for himself.
Maintain calm, do good things because you'd like to do good things.
I hate that "I make concessions and I get nothing" complaint. No shit. No one asked to owe you anything. Do things because you'd like to help, or stop doing things you don't like to do. Going out of your way for someone and then getting pissed that they don't get you back is just silly. Either you cared, in which case the act was the reward, or you didn't in which case why should anyone want to pay you back?
"I helped that old lady across the street and the jerk didn't even bake me cookies!"
Also! Yeah you can help how you feel, where'd you get the idea you can't? I mean, it doesn't make people any more rational, but you can take a deep breath and not be angry, or psych yourself up, or cheer up, or whatever.
You're covering a wide area here, and in a really vague and obviously biased way.
I'll say that things like politics, a lot of the issues come from not being able to see other people's perspective. If you're ever looking at a large group of people and saying that they're all idiots, then you need to change how you're looking at it, because they're obviously not all idiots.
This. X1000.
Also, a certain level of distrust of your average human being is a healthy thing to have... just so long as you can set it aside when appropriate.
I'm not talking about people not baking me cookies. I'm talking about people starting shit, getting into arguments with me for little to no fucking reason, and when I am nice in response, getting, "Well yeah you're going to be conciliatory to me" in response. I mean, I'm not saying I've never defended myself. This typically gets me labeled as "defensive" and I get nowhere regardless.
I wouldn't call passively not going out of my way to be a douche to people the same thing as actively doing nice things for people. Basically, I guess I just need to stop expecting people to not be twats on a daily basis.
Also, I've been told I'm basically the epitome of Avoidant. So, maybe I need to see someone about that. But I think my distaste for generally bastardly behavior is tangentially related; nobody likes assholes, even if they're not avoiders.
If you do nice things for people and find they walk all over you as a result - as an example, I have friends whose kid we often watch while they go out on dates, yet they never seem willing to reciprocate - then stop doing nice things for that person. Don't be an asshole about it, just don't go out of your way to be helpful.
People are generally pretty decent. If you find yourself questioning this, maybe you should hang around different folks. Or maybe lower your standards.
Okay. I didn't want to get into specifics because this is long drama story material. Also, this is just one of many recent examples.
So we have a big meeting where it's decided (not just by me, in fact I said nothing about this) that he should not be mixing anymore. This is put as delicately as possible by our pastor. Somehow he attributes all of this to me, however, and he stops coming. He is about as passive aggressive to me as is possible for a human to be. He starts sitting close to us and makes a point of never even looking in my direction. It sounds like I'm being paranoid or something, but this guy is making it really clear to me that he's pissed off at me.
So we start sounding better than ever now that he's not involved, and somebody who knows how to mix (me) is mixing us. So he starts showing up again. Then he gets pissed because I'm doing the mixing and he's not. The pastor tells me to let him mix because he's being a goose. He's my boss, I can't say no. So the guy starts mixing again. Then we start sounding like crap again.
Finally, to cap all this shit off, we get to the point. I get a 5-page long manifesto from this goose about how he doesn't feel like I care about how we sound. That as the leader, I should be more concerned about our mix. How he's taken it upon himself to take care of it but he doesn't feel like I'm handling things as best I could. Etc. etc. et motherfucking etc.
I respond carefully to this. I tell him that he asked to be in charge of the mix and that the last time I insinuated myself in front of the board, he quit the team. So it seems like I can't win?
And he sends an email to my pastor saying basically, "This guy isn't worth my time."
And my pastor accidentally carbon copies an email response to me basically saying, "You know how Josh is, he's defensive, just work through it".
Now I can't quit this job. I need the money. But now I have to be diplomatic with a total goose and a pastor who doesn't back me up.
which is more or less "Hope for the best, plan for the worst"
Over the last 3 years I've become even more of a reclusive hermit than before. Rarely leaving the house to do errands, and even then only when I had to. I've had a brand new car for 5 years, I just hit 30k miles on it. And that's with driving from maine to delaware to come home. There were a lot of reasons for being reclusive and a homebody. I was poor and didn't have the money to pay for gas, let alone get the car registered, inspected, and kept insured. So, I stayed home. And I've stayed this way for almost 3 full years now.
I still have a hard time trusting people and truly becoming 'best friends' with anybody that wasn't already in my life before this.
However.
I have gotten better. It is possible to get your idealism back, if you want it. You have to work for it a bit, but you can.
More thoughts later, after I get back from the gym.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
I'm fine with calling most people, in the US, ignorant of politics. You can try and look at it from the perspective of someone else but often times that perspective is "I'm too busy with my kids/life to pay any attention to whats going on in the world and which politician best represents me and this country."
Remember, not all perspectives have the same amount of reasoning or thought behind them.
I know I took a big risk of being the smelly internet asperger syndrome guy starting this thread. I still know people that I like off of the internet. I'm just sick of pettiness in general, and feel like the world could use less of it.
And obviously not everybody who likes Palin is a total moron in every respect.
If you're in the parking lot at Wal*Mart and you cut someone off, it's because you thought you had the right-of-way or you'd waited for 5 cars to go by already or you're just in a hurry because you've got ice cream in the trunk. You didn't mean to be a jerk, and probably didn't even consider that you might be being a jerk; it was just time for someone to go and it was either you or them. On the other hand, if you're in the parking lot of Wal*Mart and someone else cuts you off, the natural assumption is "That guy is an asshole and/or doesn't know how to drive."
If you're at work and are busting your ass trying to get things done while you watch your co-workers chat on facebook, but you get in trouble for slacking off when you take an extra half hour at lunch because you lost track of time, you wonder why nobody notices or appreciates your hard work and why you're the only one who isn't a waste of air. Meanwhile your co-workers are thinking about how hard they work and how they're only on facebook because they worked their asses off yesterday or they had a late night and can't concentrate or 'Nobody appreciates me around here and that guy still isn't back from lunch, so fuck it I'm going to play Farmville'.
People don't think about why other people do things. They don't wonder - by and large - what causes events to happen or really think very far ahead about what their own actions might cause. If an action will net positive for someone over the near term and they can think of a way to justify whatever inconvenience it may cause others around them, that's usually good enough. I do it, you do it, we all do it. Most of the time the thought train leaves "I'm angry" station, passes through the "I'mma yell at that bitch" junction and never arrives at "She's going to yell back and that's going to make me angrier rather than solve anything" station.
If asked, most people will agree that they want to help their fellow man. They want to work together for the betterment of all and be altruistic and so forth. Day to day and action to action, almost no-one thinks of themselves as an asshole. They think of themselves as a generally good person. Sometimes things don't turn out the way they expect, but it's not their fault. It's the other person's expectations, or circumstances, or whatever.
None of this really points to a way to deal better with people's actions that you view as selfish. I haven't figured that out, beyond the turning of the cheek that eventually leads to doormat-town.
I turned 29 a few months ago and I can completely relate. Driving is the worst for me, it really brings out my vitriol for mankind. I just don't really like people as a whole, I've found. I remember feeling this way in Junior High, when most of my idealism was systematically destroyed.
This is exactly the sort of post I was hoping for. Thanks.
I know that there are people who just don't give a shit about anybody else except for themselves, and on reflection they probably are a minority. The problem for me arises because when my thought train leaves "I'm angry" station, it hits a fork and instead of going to "I'mma yell at that bitch" junction, it ends up at the "It's not worth my time to yell at someone, and I'll do them a favor by letting this slide" station. I may be an aberration there, maybe not. I should probably stop expecting that favor to be returned, it's becoming increasingly clear that's an unrealistic expectation that I have.
I agree with you in regards to politics and other largely opinion-based topics. Obviously some people have a personal reason for agreeing with any given pundit or policy or for disagreeing with any given other one.
That said, just because a group is large does not mean that they're not idiots.
Nearly 20% of American adults think that the sun revolves around the Earth. About the same number don't know what nation America declared its independence from. (http://www.gallup.com/poll/3742/new-poll-gauges-americans-general-knowledge-levels.aspx)
Around a third of Americans believe in astrology. (http://horoscopicastrologyblog.com/2008/12/11/31-percent-of-americans-believe-in-astrology/)
That may not fit everyone's definition of 'idiot'. There's an argument to be made that finding out basic knowledge facts or applying even a modicum of critical thought to your superstitions isn't necessary in day to day life, so a person who can't be arsed to figure out which way around the solar system is set up or that being a capricorn doesn't really mean shit can still be a brilliant luminary. But I'm fairly comfortable calling them idiots.
Collecting a random population of a million people, sure, they're not going to be all idiots. Most of them won't be, since 'idiot' carries the implication of below average intelligence, competence, and/or knowledge and the level of such in a random population is, by definition, average. But if you're selecting for a certain belief (i.e. "The world will end in 2012", "The moon landing was faked", "Palin would be a spectacular president") and that belief is demonstrably false with even basic thought or research, the odds of the entire population being idiots skew upward dramatically.
lonelyahava, I'll be looking for your post.
It's really not worth it most of the time, though. I've been in several altercations with shitty drivers (the tendency where I live is for everyone to give everyone else the finger. It's how we say hello!) over being tailgated or almost collided with due to their poor driving.
You know what? People crazy enough to run a red light or drive down the shoulder of the highway or tailgate are generally not mentally balanced!
Now I just get in my zen zone and drive, because god damn my life is awesome and I don't want to lose everything over some jerk weaving in and out of traffic! I'm done with having people physically threaten me because I called them on running a stop sign and pulling into traffic without looking, or something equally dangerous to everyone around them.
Knowing why someone is expressing an opinion is at least equally as important as knowing what opinion they've expressed.
For instance, when someone says "The moon landing was faked", they're actually saying "I do not trust our government to tell the truth most of the time, and I do not actually care that much about scientific research or progress. It seems distant and unimportant, while government malfeasance looms large."
Because obviously it wasn't. That or they're saying "I would love it if Buzz Aldrin punched me."
I think understanding that most beliefs aren't designed to hold up to scrutiny is an important step toward respecting people more, if not their opinions.
I do the same thing. In my case, at least, I recognize that this is largely a result of my fear of conflict. I don't like conflict so I strive to avoid it, often making me the proverbial doormat, and I can conveniently justify my behavior in many situations by the fact that getting in someone's face is really not going to do any good anyway. Most people don't have that fear of conflict, though, and enough critical portions of our society revolve around competition and aggression that it's not at all surprising that the average person reacts violently when provoked in day-to-day life. I like to hope that, eventually, people who react with passive-aggressive dramatic bullshit or violent rage whenever someone does them some half-imagined sleight will learn that their tactics aren't getting them to the places they want to be. Unfortunately it works often enough that most people don't bother finding out that there are more consistently productive ways to behave.
I would urge you to speak to a professional at your earliest convenience, and to follow their advice.
I see your point but it is hard for me to wrap my head around why people act that way. I'm just so used to being around people who reason through their ideas. I think it is a Bad Thing™ that people do not reason through things and I believe we should work towards correcting that. Of course you have to be tactful while doing it, but I think that it is a better approach than letting illogical conspiracy theories slide.
I don't think everybody else is stupid. I never actually said that.
Generally disliking people lately is probably due to the overall feeling of pettiness I am getting locally. I don't think I've ever experienced it quite so acutely before. That said, I should definitely ask a professional if I have Avoidant Personality Disorder. Just looking over the symptoms, I seem to have quite a number of them. Even if it's not, I could probably benefit from talking to someone about this.
CptHamilton, I agree with everything you wrote. I think it's a side effect of the fight or flight that people get when they are stressed or angry, and I just happen to go into flight and expect people to do the same. The problem is that so many people around here get into that fight or flight state over the dumbest bullshit and then invariably choose fight.
Ah, but you don't. You, and your friends, have some opinions that are just wooooah totally incorrect.
You don't really remember what they are, or care, because they matter very little to you.
I mean like... how many people believe that glass is a slow liquid or that water runs down drains in the opposite direction in Australia?
Expressing those opinions is not meant to indicate that they've spent years researching drain-related physics, it's meant to express "Hello, I have read things in places."
You will never have the time or inclination to reason thoroughly about everything. It is possible to offload that responsibility to other trustworthy people, though. The test of being a sensible person, in my opinion, isn't in removing from yourself all unconsidered opinions. It's having the ability to endure the embarrassment of being hilariously incorrect and alter your opinion.
You don't need to let conspiracy theories slide. I would never encourage that. But you do need to realize that there's a difference between "I have spent 5 years exploring in detail Subject X, but because I am A Dumb I've come to a totally crazy conclusion" and "I could not give less of a shit about Subject X, but I would like to express how little I trust our government." Otherwise you can't convince anyone of anything because you're too busy patting yourself on the back for not being dumb.
While I agree with your sentiment here - that people tend to form bizarrely inaccurate beliefs about shit that doesn't matter to their daily lives (case in point, Big Bang Cosmology: it doesn't actually matter, day to day, for the vast majority of the populace, so why not say it's BS?) - I disagree that it's a reasonable state for people to be in on all scales.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Or, if you prefer, Ockham's Razor.
If you don't have much of a scientific education or have never bothered to think about it then sure, "Water goes the other way down drains in Australia" gets a pass. It's a fairly banal claim and "I read it somewhere" is sufficient justification for most claims of similar scope.
"The moon landing was faked" or "The British monarchy are lizard-aliens" are not okay. They are extraordinary claims requiring vast collusion on the part of thousands of individuals over decades at tremendous expense. Whether you know thing one about the science, history, evidence, or investigations into your oddball belief or not, simple deductive reasoning in a vacuum should be sufficient to disabuse you of the notion. It would probably be harder to have faked the moon landing at this point than it would have been to actually just go to the moon. These kinds of beliefs aren't merely a case of minsinformation or misunderstanding and get a pass because they're exposing some core belief about the government or whatever. They are exposing a dedicated campaign of self-delusion which has allowed a belief which flies in the face of not only common sense but continued presentations of evidence to the contrary on a day-to-day basis, almost whether you care about the subject at all or not.
Now, if your particular bullshit is wide-spread, commonly-accepted bullshit then fine. You think astrology is the real deal, okie dokie, so do, apparently, 30% of everyone else around you. I get that. But if you have some whackadoo idea about Nature's 4-Sided Harmonic Time-Cube that you and three guys in Uganda all agree is The Way and The Truth but everyone else disregards as the horse-puckey that it is, then no, you don't get to fly under the moron radar just because your Time-Cube is a symbol of your disrespect for patent law reform.
My point wasn't to justify belief in any conspiracy theory, it was to say that stating "but you are factually inaccurate" has no weight against an argument that was never supposed to be a presentation of accurate facts. The reason you never convince a conspiracy theorist they're wrong isn't because you haven't constructed an air-tight enough case, it's because their reason for arguing is not to come to the most reasonable conclusion given the evidence. It is to say "I am smarter than the average person" or "I hate the current/all governments" or whatnot.
The same way when someone expresses amazement at all the weight they've gained recently, they're not honestly saying "Oh, wow, I cannot believe eating a ton and not exercising causes weight gain. Have you noticed this?"
Having a surface-level argument with people who aren't interested in it isn't usually all that useful.
I mean that dude who kept talking about the pyramids being built by ancient aliens and whatnot a while ago, do you think he really would have been convinced if only more of us had presented effective peer-reviewed evidence? He wasn't discussing possible explanations for ancient architecture, he was saying 'Hello, forum. I am smarter than you'.
Well, that and we're irrational. But irrational isn't dumb.
Also, the David Foster Wallace speech to Kenyon College in 2005 seems relevant here.
Yeah, this puts me in mind of DFW's commencement speech at Kenyon College, that has circulated around the web for a few years now.
The relevant part:
edit: what, seriously? I guess I shouldn't have taken the time to re-read it before I posted. :P
Ok, two points.
First, those are not the two only options, and you shouldn't really be taking either of those roads. You obviously don't want to blow a gasket and yell at somebody, but that doesn't mean you completely capitulate either. You've built up a false dichotomy, and you're picking the more reasonable of those two, but there's a large gray area inbetween you can explore. Be angry, but be as calm as you can, as reasonable as you can, and try to see their side. Actually explain what the issue is. Be honest. You will both be angry, but you can also both be adults.
If you never explain the problem, you can never resolve the problem. This is directly relevant to your example.
Secondly, if you're letting it slide, then you're not doing it a favor. If you have that mentality, that it's a favor, then you're going to expect a favor in return. Well, of COURSE you're not going to get a favor in return, because you didn't really give anything to them, at least not expressly. If I'm arguing, and the other person throws up their hands and says 'ok, I don't care', my reaction is not 'Oh, I really owe them for this one', I think 'Oh, I guess they don't care'. You're seeing a give and take which is only occurring in your head, and has nothing to do with reality.
If you're making this assumption about why they're doing things, it's basically the same as thinking they're an idiot. You're assuming they're arguing with you for no good reason at all.
I have a friend who accuses me of this, and it annoys the ever loving shit out of me, because he cannot conceive that I might actually disagree with him on things. He doesn't assume that I have well thought out positions, or reasoning which is different from his. He assumes that I'm arguing with him just to be arguing. It's pretty insulting.
Yes, I can see where you're coming from here. But this completely ignores the possibility that people can just be petty. If somebody obviously deeply cares about whatever it is that they're arguing about, I can get behind that. But the possibility exists that people can care way too much about things that they shouldn't be attributing so much to.
On the above, yes. I get that it's a personal failing of mine, hence the way I ended that post with "I'm seeing that this is an unrealistic expectation".
A lot of people I talked to seemed surprised. That I'd want to be compensated for my job. The church would save $1200/yr. dropping my salary down (a drop in the bucket; we have a half a million dollar yearly budget). Meanwhile, the lady who does bells for 1 song every other week and plays the church organ once a month makes over $800/mo. because she has been there a long time.
Do you see what I mean by petty? And why I'm getting disillusioned with people?
EDIT: Oh, and the secretary in question? When I asked her why she didn't come out and say she made a mistake, she launched into a tirade about how she doesn't like me much and feels like I don't deserve to get paid for working for a church. Just... *HYPOCRISY HEAD ASPLODE*