Sometimes the only thing to do is simply accept that other people get far more invested in pretty minor things than you do because, well, they are PEOPLE. For people you like generally, you have to balance that against the stuff that makes you like them. For people you already don't like well.. unless you have to deal with them for some reason(work, family ect), I don't see why you should feel obligated to be involved. If you do have to deal with them, be to the point of business and be polite, and simply decline to be involved in their extraneous bullflop.
Well, I won't pretend that misanthropy is maturity. Nor do I think that everyone except for me is dumb, or that I'm especially more intelligent than anybody such that I need to lord it over them. I wouldn't call myself a misanthrope, it's just that I'm beginning to despise the petty nature of a lot of my fellow man. It has nothing to do with intelligence for me and everything to do with people feeling like they should start a fight over small things so they can feel like the alpha male/female/whatever.
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".
Yes, it does ignore the possibility that people can be petty, and frankly, so should you. So somebody is being petty. So what? Either a) You're wrong, and you thinking they're being petty is just going to make your relationship with them worse, or b) you're right. And so what if you're right? What are you going to do about it?
I did read your example, and I read your follow up, and I'm really not all that impressed. These don't really strike me as super petty. The one dude thought he was fixing the sound so it didn't sound like shit. The pastor doesn't want to get involved in a stupid argument. The secretary didn't strain to make public a mistake she didn't care about. Other people disagree on a reasonable salary for your position. What about this is petty? Not going the extra mile to please you isn't petty. Going the extra mile to fuck you over is pettiness, but that's not what's happening here.
The guy wrote a 5-page manifesto about how I was the source of every problem in the universe and cc'd it to my boss. What about that is not going the extra mile to fuck me over?
If he did that, I'd agree with you. But he obviously didn't do that.
ie. you're obviously a biased source here. try being a little more objective in your reporting
Um, what? He absolutely did do that. I don't know that "you're lying" is going to get us anywhere here.
One final, and more extreme example and then I'm done with them.
I'm getting the envelopes in order for storage at work. They are ordered 1-100, front to back. The lab girl starts filling them back to front, because it's not how she's used to doing it. No problem, right? We figure out the mistake and relabel the envelopes.
But the office manager (who is not my boss, or anyone's boss for that matter) starts howling her head off about how this is a dire error. She does not shut up about it and we all take the yelling (literal yelling here, not being hyperbolic) for about an hour before I finally lose my cool a little bit. I tell her that we get it, we understand how she feels about it and that the problem is fixed. I then ask her if there's something more we can do about it to make her more comfortable. She gets up in my face and starts screaming at me, and in this instant I am cool and collected. I let her scream in my face for a while, and then calmly ask her if she is done. She goes outside and cries for an hour.
Obviously she had something else on her mind, and this was stressful to me, but whatever.
3 months later I am filling up my car with gas. A huge truck pulls up and I recognize the driver as the son of this woman. We'll call him Bill.
"Hey Bill, what's going on?"
"I heard about what you did to my mom. If you ever treat her like that again, I am going to kick your ass. I don't care about you and I will fuck you up if you ever give her another bad day."
Then he gets back in his truck and drives off.
Okay, so I can't think of a more extreme example than physical violence being given to me as an ultimatum for standing up for myself at work.
joshofalltrades on
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Interesting points. Hmm.
Ok, Life story boiled down in the spoiler:
I moved to a rural town from the city when I was 8 years old. Immediate outsider. Add onto that fact that I gained a ton of weight during this transition and that I was only one of two Jewish students in this insular area, and you immediately can see the problems that develop. Inferiority complexes like you wouldn’t even believe. I went through all the same ‘typical’ teenage issues, including being suicidal. Luckily for me, I had managed to make my one good friend who’s been with me over the years. My one single rope to grab onto.
I lost faith in my adults and my religious organization when I was 16. I had already been Bat Mitzvah’d (age 13) through the synagogue and in this small community, that was all you did. You got Bat Mitzvah’d and then you moved on being secular. I wanted to stay and teach at the Hebrew school, to give something back to the community. So I was allowed to do so, under the table, for the two years that my brother had left until his bar Mitzvah. The Third year came about, and I went to the parent/teacher meeting at the beginning of the school year. Here I was, getting ready to turn 16, helping out the teachers (who were getting older) and showing the students that you didn’t have to be secular once you hit 13. Well, the parents didn’t like my influence, or that I was getting paid $20/week to be a good influence like that. So I was told, in the middle of this meeting, in front of my mother, several of my students, and the other teachers, that I was no longer welcome at the Hebrew school, as my presence was a bad influence. Faith in humanity, crushed. Faith in religion, damaged.
College was a fantastic time for me, I bounced back from my complexes and inferiority and problems and I had a fantastic group of friends, a job that I loved, and life was fantastic. I became idealistic, happy, and just wonderful. And then 9/11 happened, put a damper on things for a bit, but then life got better, as it always did. I got engaged, I broke that off. I met guy after guy and life was good. And then I decided that I wanted to put my new boyfriend’s needs in front of mine. And I left school 1 class short of my degree to move to Maine and try my hand at being an adult for a while.
Failure. The first four years were fine, dandy. But always with that nagging about not having a degree in my mind. Always. Life took a sharp turn downwards after four years and losing my job at Verizon due to business politics. We moved, got a smaller place, almost but didn’t get a good job, and I ended up working at Walmart. Part time, feeding 2 adults. Hungry obese adults. I went from being comfortable to being dirt poor, or close to it. Shitty credit rating, barely feeding myself, not leaving the house for fear of the cops pulling me over for being really very illegal. I hated everything. I hated my job, I hated my boyfriend, I hated myself. I hated the fact that I couldn’t get myself out of the situation. And I hated finally calling my dad and telling him that he had been right all along, and that I needed to come home.
But, that period in my life was also where my faith in humanity and the kindness of strangers started getting better. There was a month where we would have been tossed out into the snowbanks, had it not been for the Salvation Army helping me with my rent payment. We would have frozen, had it not been for the Red Cross helping with my electric bill. We would have starved had somebody not slid a $50 gift certificate to a local grocery store under my front door. We would have stunk had somebody else not paid for the water bill, anonymously. And this was during the Presidential Campaign. Where I had an Obama sticker on my car and the neighbors all around me had McCain. And still, they helped me survive that winter. A 75 year old man pulled over to the side of the road and helped me get my car unstuck from the ice and snow.
Life back then sucked. But there were parts of it that were pretty great. I think that’s one of the bigger lessons to learn as you grow older. Things get harder, not easier. But there is always, hopefully, going to be one nugget of good from a whole pile of bad. One thing that you can point to and say, “This made me smile.” People suck. It’s true. The general populace just plain sucks. They are stupid, they are rude, they are mean, they are bigoted, evil, hateful, and just plain assholes. But, the people themselves, they can be pretty good. Just, think small. Act small.
Yes, you want to change the world for a better place, most of us do. But most of us are not going to be the next gazillionaire going off to build roads and water treatment plants in sub-saharan Africa. But, if you can make one person’s day a little better, if you can make one person smile, if you can remember to keep it on a personal level, then things start to look brighter. Everything looks dismal, grey, and just horrible from up above, monotone, boring. But the closer you get, the more local you get, the more vibrant things become. You can make a difference, you can make a better place. You just have to sometimes ignore the haters around you and get it done. You might get laughed at, you might get poked, you might get teased and jeered, and even get a shower in tomatoes, but eventually it’ll all come out in the end.
Just remember, for every person that you dislike, even strongly, there is another person that you can like. Every up has its downs. Every rose has its thorns. Etc. Ok, no more fortune cookies from me. I promise.
Hope that helped put some sort of thoughts in motion. Just know that you're not alone in hating things.
Hope that helped put some sort of thoughts in motion. Just know that you're not alone in hating things.
Let's zoom out from me. I kind of want to talk about this. A lot of this feeling comes not just from things that happen to me, but reading about things happening all over the world. It's like when I start thinking about death, especially when I need to sleep. I start getting into this weird spiral of thoughts and then pretty soon I'm not sleeping. I think about all the crap happening in the world, and I start wondering if there's enough good to balance out the bad.
Well, that's an important part of it. When someone expresses, for instance, a really stupid opinion about science, it's important to consider the context. Are they deeply invested in the science being accurate? Was their intention to provide the most factual information, or to express a loose opinion, or even simply an emotional reaction?
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 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.
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.
The reason why I say I can't wrap my head around this is I do care about truth and science. If I do have a belief that is incorrect, I either have reasons for it or if I am somewhat ignorant of a topic I wouldn't mind if someone gave me more information. At one point I did hear that glass was a slow liquid and someone corrected me sometime in the future. I was glad that they did correct me. However things like that do not effect my mood, how I vote, or any other part of my life. They are pretty self contained.
When an idea you have does affect your mood enough to rant about how you don't trust the government, then you do obviously give enough of a shit about that idea. In that case I believe people should have that idea be based on some reasoning that can be discussed.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I think about all the crap happening in the world, and I start wondering if there's enough good to balance out the bad.
Probably not. If anything I would say there are more "Meh" things in the world that are neither good or bad. As human beings we would rather be alive than dead so we put up with the large amounts of meh and bad things because the small amount of good things are totally worth living for.
Edit: I'm not sure that really made any sense.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Just remember everyone else is stuck in their head, just like you are stuck in yours. Any assumptions they make about your actions and your importance are gonna be skewed by how they view universe that they are at the center of. Again, just like yours.
For instance, your pastor probably wants OCD guy to continue to come to church and might consider crappy sound worth the price of him being comfortable to show up. My skewed perspective conclusion jumping here, but that is actually a nice thing to do. Church is suppose to be a nurturing place and some people need more support than others. As far as not having your back, he/she may have talked to OCD guy in private on this matter and encouraged him to let others play too. Humiliating him by lecturing and reprimanding him in front of others would not be a nurturing nice pastor thing to do. This might also explain the hate mail if he was, in his mind, encouraging others to join in and you wouldn't. Making him feel all rejected and looking bad to the pastor. I guess zen up and decide that the sound quality is not that important. And if you can muster up a lot of patience learn to work with him and his little ways.
As for everyone being oblivious to what you do is worth, or that it's worth anything, is a bit insulting. But an unintentional one. By all means, fight for what you are worth. But learn to lets things go after. From their point of view that is just background stuff that gets done that you don't have to think about and isn't noticed until, you know, it's not done. Don't nurture slights for eternity to the point anything will put you over the top and shit flies. Unless you want to become like the woman in your last example who flips out over minor things and have it ruin the next 3 months (what a wacko).
Learning to deal with high maintenance people is a skill. You noticing them more now might be because of your youthful enthusiasm is waning. Or perhaps people around you are now finally viewing you as a grown up and thus not shielding you from shit anymore.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
I think about all the crap happening in the world, and I start wondering if there's enough good to balance out the bad.
Yes.
But again, you can't see it from very far off. It's kinda like a satellite image from space. There are a few beautiful things that can be seen from up above, but mostly the earth looks like a grey blob with some blue water.
but once you start getting in closer, you get the rainforests, the deserts, the waterfalls, the cities, the ancient wonders, etc. There is good amongst the bad. There really is.
Is it enough to balance? Maybe, who knows. What do you consider to be balance? I say that there is. But then, I'm getting more optimistic as the weeks go by because my own life is starting to look up from where it was. It's just you hear about the bad more than the good.
The guy wrote a 5-page manifesto about howI was the source of every problem in the universe and cc'd it to my boss. What about that is not going the extra mile to fuck me over?
No, he obviously did NOT do that. This is what I mean about keeping cool and keeping rational. If you're trying to explain to people that you're in the right and are being mistreated, it doesn't help you to make obvious exaggerations about how you're being mistreated. It makes you sound childish.
Now, your next example is about a woman who yelled at you, for apparently the tiniest of reasons, for an hour. AN HOUR. An hour is a long time. Especially for, as you claim, a tiny, easily explained reason. Now, I don't know anything about her, you, your job, her job, or your relationship, working or otherwise. But people don't yell at you for an hour unless they have a) a good reason, b) a hatred of you, or c) something else awful going on in their life. I don't know what it could be. Maybe she thought it was a bigger deal than you did? Maybe she thought you were sassing her? Maybe she's just got a lot of shit going on and is really stressed out. If she went outside and cried for an hour afterwards, I'd say this is pretty likely.
The son threatening you was definitely an overreaction. But if your mom came home bawling her eyes out because she had to yell at some asshole at work? I'd say it's normal to get kind of worked up, especially if it's someone you know. But it's not evidence he's a bad person, either. He's trying to protect his mom, and he's just not trying to see it from your perspective at all.
People aren't all good or all bad. You've just got to understand why they do things.
Okay, but that whole thing is just making excuses for the shitty things that people do. People asked me for examples of things that are making me jaded about people and I gave them. Just because somebody doesn't realize that what they are doing is shitty or maybe they have great internal reasoning for doing a shitty thing doesn't make it not shitty. Saying, "Eh it's not as bad as you're saying it is" is doing exactly the sort of thing you're blaming me for. I was fucking threatened with physical violence. I don't care how noble he thinks he was by doing it. We had to get a god damn restraining order at my office (which my boss did, not me). I'm not at my computer right now but I'll type more later.
I think you'd benefit greatly from talking to a psychiatrist. I don't think there's anything anyone here can say to change your mind and it'd help you work through some of your issues.
Okay, but that whole thing is just making excuses for the shitty things that people do. People asked me for examples of things that are making me jaded about people and I gave them. Just because somebody doesn't realize that what they are doing is shitty or maybe they have great internal reasoning for doing a shitty thing doesn't make it not shitty. Saying, "Eh it's not as bad as you're saying it is" is doing exactly the sort of thing you're blaming me for. I was fucking threatened with physical violence. I don't care how noble he thinks he was by doing it. We had to get a god damn restraining order at my office (which my boss did, not me). I'm not at my computer right now but I'll type more later.
Yeah I'm making excuses for the shitty things people do; it's called optimism. People do shitty things. It's a fact. I'm not trying to say that the things that happened weren't shitty for you. I'm saying that if you want to regain your faith in humanity, and become an idealist again, you're going to have to understand why people do the shitty things they do, and that means looking at events from their perspective.
Just because someone does something that ends up bad for you doesn't make them a bad person, and that's my main point, I'm just trying to illustrate it. Take the dude who threatened you. I absolutely am against threats and violence, and think you're definitely justified in a restraining order. But is that guy an awful person? He didn't threaten you because he's a bully, because he likes seeing you suffer. He did it because he's trying to protect his mom in the easiest, or maybe only way he knows how. It was an awful decision of his, and were I his friend I'd tell him he's stupid, but is he a bad person?
It's like that saying 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. I'm just making sure you differentiate between the two, because as people have noted, it's real easy to see the act and assume it's the entirety of the person. If you're unwilling to make that effort to understand other people, then welcome to misanthropy.
Okay, but that whole thing is just making excuses for the shitty things that people do. People asked me for examples of things that are making me jaded about people and I gave them. Just because somebody doesn't realize that what they are doing is shitty or maybe they have great internal reasoning for doing a shitty thing doesn't make it not shitty. Saying, "Eh it's not as bad as you're saying it is" is doing exactly the sort of thing you're blaming me for. I was fucking threatened with physical violence. I don't care how noble he thinks he was by doing it. We had to get a god damn restraining order at my office (which my boss did, not me). I'm not at my computer right now but I'll type more later.
Yeah I'm making excuses for the shitty things people do; it's called optimism. People do shitty things. It's a fact. I'm not trying to say that the things that happened weren't shitty for you. I'm saying that if you want to regain your faith in humanity, and become an idealist again, you're going to have to understand why people do the shitty things they do, and that means looking at events from their perspective.
Just because someone does something that ends up bad for you doesn't make them a bad person, and that's my main point, I'm just trying to illustrate it. Take the dude who threatened you. I absolutely am against threats and violence, and think you're definitely justified in a restraining order. But is that guy an awful person? He didn't threaten you because he's a bully, because he likes seeing you suffer. He did it because he's trying to protect his mom in the easiest, or maybe only way he knows how. It was an awful decision of his, and were I his friend I'd tell him he's stupid, but is he a bad person?
It's like that saying 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. I'm just making sure you differentiate between the two, because as people have noted, it's real easy to see the act and assume it's the entirety of the person. If you're unwilling to make that effort to understand other people, then welcome to misanthropy.
Okay. Yes, this I agree with.
Also I do need to mention that I was in a really shitty mood earlier when I made this thread. In retrospect I was sort of blinded by that, so sorry if I come across as anything less than congenial in my posts.
joshofalltrades on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
So, let's get this straight, you're concerned about pettiness within a church board committee, something which is already doubly reknowned for pettiness for being connected to a church and for being composed of amateurs and volunteers. This committee is located within a small town. So we're talking about an exponentially above average level of pettiness here.
And you are surprised that mediocre employees fail upwards. And when people are emotional they don't rationally or objectively recall a sequence of events.
However, the real issue here is that you took no actions or actively bad actions and are now complaining about how the world is unfair. You don't talk to the pastor, who your boss or not is paid to listen and advise about your problems. You don't disagree and say "Hey look, if we let him play with the mixing board we will sound like dorks. Let's clarify our problems and priorities here." you don't talk to the pastor and say "Hey I'm uncomfortable with how this played out - I feel like you sold me up the river." To which the pastor's response would almost certainly have been that A) he cc'd you intentionally because he was managing the guy with obvious problems and wanted to let you know what had happened and an apology.
As for your office manager - you should have just reported this to your supervisor and said "Mary spent an hour yelling at everyone over something petty, this is a) unprofessional and b) unproductive and as such I would like to make a formal complaint."
Making bad decisions and avoiding issues doesn't provide a sound basis to generalise to "All people are petty jerks and I should be a misanthrope."
I was just at an arcade, playing some DDR and Time crisis. They have laser tag at the arcade too. A big birthday group was there, maybe 7 or 8 year olds? Anyway, one of the kids was too scared to go play laser tag with his friends, I think he was spooked by the dark or something. When he didn't want to go in, no less that three of the arcade employees and a couple of the parents offered to go with him, so he could play with his friends.
Not everyone is a dick, it's just that the positive things people do tend to be pretty small in scope. Makes it really easy to lose perspective.
Second, there's a ton of good in the world. We just tend to ignore it because it's unremarkable. The good things are not, by and large, people being heroes that are going to make the news. The good things are the simple habits of a people who have been raised to be polite and who know the internal rewards for doing something nice.
Today I made cookies with my kids. I played a game with them, let my youngest win just enough to keep him interested, laughed and joked with them. My daughter made me a little card shaped like a heart telling me she loved me. I made them cocoa and we watched a movie of their choosing, during which my son crawled on my lap and cuddled with me. I spent some time trying to fix a toy for my son, and as I type this my daughter is singing me a song because she knows I like when she does so.
The point isn't that I am an awesome dad or that I have a particularly awesome children, because I really don't think my experiences are that abnormal. I am a dad who loves his kids, they are children who love their father, and we do things for one another. They are not newsworthy things, they are not things that I would bother mentioning to anyone else outside a context of "So, what did you do today?" But they are good things, they are instances of goodness and beauty in the world, and these things are happening right now in millions of homes across the world. You'll never hear about them because they are mundane, but still they exist.
People go out of their way to talk about things that are remarkable. You'll notice that these things are generally things that annoyed them - such things ranging from petty to major catastrophe - or things that are really awesome. People rarely say, out of the blue, "I had a muffin this morning, and it was not bad" or "someone held a door open for me" or "the weather today is unremarkably decent." They only talk about the muffin if it was stale, or the door if someone let it slam in their face, or the weather if it's pouring rain.
What I draw from this is that most people, most of the time, are experiencing a low-level degree of goodness. Life is generally pleasant, and you only really hear about it when it drifts away from mildly pleasant, either to awesomely pleasant, or to anything worse than minor annoyance.
There is a ton of good going on all the time, all around you. You probably don't notice it because you've come to expect it. Maybe you should stop and pay attention to the world a little closer. You'll probably notice a lot of people holding open doors or letting you go by in the parking lot or offering to get you coffee when they run into the break room.
Because people do that.
Because people are more or less good.
Even though sometimes life contrives to make it seem otherwise.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Well, compared to a lot of the people around here, they are.
See, the people on these forums are not a random sampling of the population. We skew towards the more intelligent end, for a variety of reasons. We also skew on the more antisocial end, for a variety of reasons. (And these reasons largely overlap.) Take one of us at random and some guy out of the population at random, and the PA forumer is probably smarter. He probably spend more time thinking about abstract concepts, he probably knows how to do proper research when trying to form an opinion.
(Of course, there are a lot of people here who are complete fucking retards.)
Point being, yeah, you're probably smarter than a lot of your coworkers, or many other people you tend to hang around with for reasons other than entertainment.
Yeah, and?
Intelligence is a nice thing. It comes in handy. It's kinda fun. But it doesn't make you a better person. It probably doesn't make you a happier person. Sure, maybe it would be great if everyone was smarter. And if everyone was stronger, and better looking. But your intelligence is largely a product of things beyond your control, just the same as how pretty you are is beyond your control. Thinking you're better than someone else because you're more attractive makes you dick; so does thinking you're better because you're smarter.
Hell, being smarter doesn't even necessarily mean you're going to be better at what you do. The dumb chick with the innate charisma will probably kick your ass when it comes to sales. The kinda-slow guy with the infinite patience will file papers just as well as you, and maybe better.
Yeah, sure, maybe you'd make the best scientist out of the guys at your work, but you're not in a science lab. You're working at a small-town church. All that brain probably isn't doing too much for you.
Being smarter is nice. I'm pretty damned smart, and I like it that way.
I just don't pretend it makes me any better than the dumb oaf down the way who thinks the sun goes around the earth and woulda voted for Guiliani if he'd had the chance.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I've definitely been extremely successful at avoiding drama since I took up the "I hate people" mantra. There's a downside in that I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of what life has to offer, but that's the tradeoff I guess.
The thing that's sad for people liek you is that I've avoided a ton of drama and I'm not a misanthrope. I'm just better able to avoid situations I don't like without coming off as a twat.
mrt144 on
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Okay, but that whole thing is just making excuses for the shitty things that people do. People asked me for examples of things that are making me jaded about people and I gave them. Just because somebody doesn't realize that what they are doing is shitty or maybe they have great internal reasoning for doing a shitty thing doesn't make it not shitty. Saying, "Eh it's not as bad as you're saying it is" is doing exactly the sort of thing you're blaming me for. I was fucking threatened with physical violence. I don't care how noble he thinks he was by doing it. We had to get a god damn restraining order at my office (which my boss did, not me). I'm not at my computer right now but I'll type more later.
Yeah I'm making excuses for the shitty things people do; it's called optimism. People do shitty things. It's a fact. I'm not trying to say that the things that happened weren't shitty for you. I'm saying that if you want to regain your faith in humanity, and become an idealist again, you're going to have to understand why people do the shitty things they do, and that means looking at events from their perspective.
Just because someone does something that ends up bad for you doesn't make them a bad person, and that's my main point, I'm just trying to illustrate it. Take the dude who threatened you. I absolutely am against threats and violence, and think you're definitely justified in a restraining order. But is that guy an awful person? He didn't threaten you because he's a bully, because he likes seeing you suffer. He did it because he's trying to protect his mom in the easiest, or maybe only way he knows how. It was an awful decision of his, and were I his friend I'd tell him he's stupid, but is he a bad person?
It's like that saying 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. I'm just making sure you differentiate between the two, because as people have noted, it's real easy to see the act and assume it's the entirety of the person. If you're unwilling to make that effort to understand other people, then welcome to misanthropy.
I'd go a point further and say, even if people do shitty stuff to you or people you know, you likely DONT have to deal with them if you don't want to. And if you do then work on getting out of that situation.
Yeah, I've definitely been extremely successful at avoiding drama since I took up the "I hate people" mantra. There's a downside in that I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of what life has to offer, but that's the tradeoff I guess.
The thing that's sad for people liek you is that I've avoided a ton of drama and I'm not a misanthrope. I'm just better able to avoid situations I don't like without coming off as a twat.
I guess not.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
Yeah, I've definitely been extremely successful at avoiding drama since I took up the "I hate people" mantra. There's a downside in that I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of what life has to offer, but that's the tradeoff I guess.
The thing that's sad for people liek you is that I've avoided a ton of drama and I'm not a misanthrope. I'm just better able to avoid situations I don't like without coming off as a twat.
I guess not.
I like this situation. Cry me a river.
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Irond WillWARNING: NO HURTFUL COMMENTS, PLEASE!!!!!Cambridge. MAModeratormod
edited January 2011
i've grown tired of misanthropy
most people will behave in understandable ways. they're generally motivated by a desire to be what they see as the way they "should be" and also sometimes out of insecurity.
i dunno. i don't really feel like a lot is gained by looking down on people or playing the cynic.
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mrt144King of the NumbernamesRegistered Userregular
most people will behave in understandable ways. they're generally motivated by a desire to be what they see as the way they "should be" and also sometimes out of insecurity.
i dunno. i don't really feel like a lot is gained by looking down on people or playing the cynic.
the smug self satisfaction of looking down on people doesn't really last that long.
most people will behave in understandable ways. they're generally motivated by a desire to be what they see as the way they "should be" and also sometimes out of insecurity.
i dunno. i don't really feel like a lot is gained by looking down on people or playing the cynic.
This. My feeling on the subject is that if you think that everyone is stupid, either
A)You have an over inflated sense of self
or
B)You have unrealistic expectations of others (probably related to A)
When you learn to look at things from other people's perspective, you get a lot less mad about stupid shit, because unless people are maintaining traits that obviously hurt you/themselves, people being petty or whatever is really just people being people and thinking of themselves first. This isn't a negative trait, nor should it be canonized.
I once had the same problem, and I went through the same resolution of disliking most people and expecting people to be dicks. I ended up losing a lot of friends because I expected one of my friends to be an asshole when she was trying to be nice--oh, also because I was just 'going for myself'. I'm a lot happier, now that I understand that people are flawed, then when I expected life to go on an instantaneous karma system where nice shit immediately gives you stuff.
Just chiming in with apothe0sis and ElJeffe here, along with those who recommend professional help. It sounds like you're confronting relatively normal professional experiences for someone in his late twenties and handling them badly. This happens to a lot of people and may be tied to a disorder; playing psych over the internet is not particularly effective. If it is, then a professional can recommend the correct treatment. If not, then a professional can provide better ways of handling such situations.
It's a win-win. If it makes you feel any better, I was struggling professionally while trying to deal with my depression alone. Therapy (thank you Centerstone) helped me harness my talents. In the past seven months, I moved past a destructive relationship, found a new one, and am working a job I love. Things can turn around in a blink if you're brave enough to change.
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
Talking to a shrink, or anybody really, helps immensely. And even if there's no underlying problem, sometimes just talking to an objective 3rd party helps.
I did last year when I got home from Maine. I talked to some counselors and got a few things straightened out in my own head. And doing that helped me get things straightened out in my own life. I can drive my car again (helps that it's legal, but that's beside the point). I don't have as many anxiety attacks when i see a cop car like I used to, even after the car was legal.
I was able to work through a lot of the issues that came up with the help and advice of people who only knew what I told them about the situations. There is nothing, nothing, wrong with going and talking to somebody. Even if all you do is just sit there and talk about football and Miss America.
But seriously, Josh, if it's bugging you this much, and these situations seem to be spiralling out of your control and you don't think that there's anything you can do to stop them, or even get out of the problems that you know are problems... then go talk to somebody.
You will be amazed (hopefully) at just how much venting it all out on somebody who will listen can help. And there is nothing wrong with asking for help.
If you have conversations with people and it leads to unpleasant behavior, stop having those conversations with those people.
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.
Or if it gets bad enough become a monk or live in the mountains/wild. Seriously.
most people will behave in understandable ways. they're generally motivated by a desire to be what they see as the way they "should be" and also sometimes out of insecurity.
i dunno. i don't really feel like a lot is gained by looking down on people or playing the cynic.
Well, I'm pretty cynical about a lot of things, but I don't really look down on people. I just recognize that life is unfair, people are products of their environments and upbringing and despising them or looking down on them doesn't help. This used to make me sad, but now I'm very /shrug about that sort of thing.
I used to be pretty misanthropic. I think I'm kind of an anti-misanthrope now. I'm pretty okay with everyone, can't remember the last time I hated anyone. Like, anyone. But I'm still a cynic. People are selfish and self-centered.
Probably a pretty large part of what I'm going through is that I'm starting a 19 hour semester, working a full-time job and another part-time job with two kids and a wife who want to see me in between all that.
So yeah, I'm pretty stressed out and am probably attributing too much to normal things. My university has a counseling office though and I'm going to see if they'll see me.
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
people are products of their environments and upbringing
Environments don't just "happen".
There are people out there who are committed to creating the environments that 'produce' people with these vices, purely for their own exploitation.
For example, the Republicans continue their campaign of fear-mongering towards the Middle East, knowing that they can use that fear during elections as they will always 1-up the Democratic foreign policy.
Another example, the Labour Government (UK) secretly brought in 5x the average annual immigration population during their government, knowing full well that these immigrants were exactly where all the benefits of their economic strategy were focused, and thus were highly likely to vote Labour come election day.
The pharmaceutical industries around the world have their primary interest in scientists who know what the regulations on paper-writing are. Why? So that they can toe the line, creating research papers that give stronger than accurate support to medically trivial pills without getting pulled for breaching paper regulations.
Intelligent Design. Chiropractors. Homeopathy. Mediums. Tort justice. Just to name a few, there are a wealth of environments that are, by the design of the people within them, insidious and intentionally, knowingly false with a view to exploitation.
And the reason it's so much easier to be pessimistic about this is exactly that; it's intentionally 'evil'. Sure, some people try to be good, but most good things you encounter are actually just people being good-natured.
You can look at that two ways I guess; that it takes effort to be a bastard and most people are thus, by default, nice; or alternatively, that people are prepared to put effort into being bastards for their own success.
people are products of their environments and upbringing
Environments don't just "happen".
There are people out there who are committed to creating the environments that 'produce' people with these vices, purely for their own exploitation.
For example, the Republicans continue their campaign of fear-mongering towards the Middle East, knowing that they can use that fear during elections as they will always 1-up the Democratic foreign policy.
Another example, the Labour Government (UK) secretly brought in 5x the average annual immigration population during their government, knowing full well that these immigrants were exactly where all the benefits of their economic strategy were focused, and thus were highly likely to vote Labour come election day.
The pharmaceutical industries around the world have their primary interest in scientists who know what the regulations on paper-writing are. Why? So that they can toe the line, creating research papers that give stronger than accurate support to medically trivial pills without getting pulled for breaching paper regulations.
Intelligent Design. Chiropractors. Homeopathy. Mediums. Tort justice. Just to name a few, there are a wealth of environments that are, by the design of the people within them, insidious and intentionally, knowingly false with a view to exploitation.
And the reason it's so much easier to be pessimistic about this is exactly that; it's intentionally 'evil'. Sure, some people try to be good, but most good things you encounter are actually just people being good-natured.
You can look at that two ways I guess; that it takes effort to be a bastard and most people are thus, by default, nice; or alternatively, that people are prepared to put effort into being bastards for their own success.
i don't think i've met any of ID, chiropractors, homeopaths or mediums who did not earnestly believe in the bullshit that they were peddling. there probably are some cynics out there who are looking for an excuse to snow people, but they are, i believe, few and far between.
Probably a pretty large part of what I'm going through is that I'm starting a 19 hour semester, working a full-time job and another part-time job with two kids and a wife who want to see me in between all that.
So yeah, I'm pretty stressed out and am probably attributing too much to normal things. My university has a counseling office though and I'm going to see if they'll see me.
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?
No offense, but if you were truly maturing into an adult, you'd realize misanthropy is just as silly as idealism.
You need to realize that yes, people CAN be scumbags and assholes, but they aren't, by their nature, this way. By our nature we're social animals. That requires a lot of interaction, good or bad.
And yes, idealism is foolish. But the thing about misanthropy is it's just as bad. It's hypocrisy. Unless you're openly hostile to someone else, you're faking a smile. And you couldn't get along by being a prick to everyone because "Deep down, you can't wait to hurt me."
So while a misanthrope walks around mumbling about pain and sorrow and how every human just wants their share and fuck everyone else...he smiles and nods to the cashier who rang him out because they did it to him, and he wants to look good. They tip the pizza guy who they think is shiftless and lazy. They shake hands with their Pastor who they think is just trying to wiggle his way into Heaven.
They are basically everything they hate. So the trick? The trick is to straddle the line between misanthropic and idealistic.
People have the potential to be awful or wonderful. Let them show you what they're going to be before you decide how you'll view the world for the better part of the rest of your life.
(Well, assuming you don't become a cranky old fuck around age 58, of course).
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
When ID was first conceptualised, it clearly involved the Christian God (I think it's Sam Harris who goes into this in detail, but it's fairly well known amongst skeptics everywhere). Its proponents at the time removed the term when they discovered they couldn't get it into textbooks like that, resulting the present day vagueness that essentially alludes to God(s) without saying the word.
Both know damn well that there's a reason they don't have a medical license. In both cases, the trick about recruiting to the job (I would say profession except that's not really the applicable word here) is getting people to believe you can cure anything; it preys on some people's urges to help. Lots of people want to help others get through sickness, but being an actual real nurse or doctor means investing lots of money in difficult medical school, and having to face reality, where the best science and medicine don't always succeed.
So, we have a nice environment where we coddle people practicing chiropractry, homeopathy, spirit healing, and various other things like prayer, for example, to believe that they're having a positive effect when they are, honestly, having no effect on anyone but themselves.
or mediums who did not earnestly believe in the bullshit that they were peddling. there probably are some cynics out there who are looking for an excuse to snow people, but they are, i believe, few and far between.
And this is where you are, I'm sorry to say, completely out of touch.
Mediums are well known fraudsters. The entire thing involves cold reading and various other dubious methods of information gathering to prey on people's attachment and grieving in response to death. Obviously this is cherry picking for examples, but take Sylvia Browne, Allision DuBois or John Edward, all of whom have built extremely successful careers around deceiving vulnerable people when they're at their lowest.
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Yes, it does ignore the possibility that people can be petty, and frankly, so should you. So somebody is being petty. So what? Either a) You're wrong, and you thinking they're being petty is just going to make your relationship with them worse, or b) you're right. And so what if you're right? What are you going to do about it?
I did read your example, and I read your follow up, and I'm really not all that impressed. These don't really strike me as super petty. The one dude thought he was fixing the sound so it didn't sound like shit. The pastor doesn't want to get involved in a stupid argument. The secretary didn't strain to make public a mistake she didn't care about. Other people disagree on a reasonable salary for your position. What about this is petty? Not going the extra mile to please you isn't petty. Going the extra mile to fuck you over is pettiness, but that's not what's happening here.
ie. you're obviously a biased source here. try being a little more objective in your reporting
Um, what? He absolutely did do that. I don't know that "you're lying" is going to get us anywhere here.
One final, and more extreme example and then I'm done with them.
But the office manager (who is not my boss, or anyone's boss for that matter) starts howling her head off about how this is a dire error. She does not shut up about it and we all take the yelling (literal yelling here, not being hyperbolic) for about an hour before I finally lose my cool a little bit. I tell her that we get it, we understand how she feels about it and that the problem is fixed. I then ask her if there's something more we can do about it to make her more comfortable. She gets up in my face and starts screaming at me, and in this instant I am cool and collected. I let her scream in my face for a while, and then calmly ask her if she is done. She goes outside and cries for an hour.
Obviously she had something else on her mind, and this was stressful to me, but whatever.
3 months later I am filling up my car with gas. A huge truck pulls up and I recognize the driver as the son of this woman. We'll call him Bill.
"Hey Bill, what's going on?"
"I heard about what you did to my mom. If you ever treat her like that again, I am going to kick your ass. I don't care about you and I will fuck you up if you ever give her another bad day."
Then he gets back in his truck and drives off.
Okay, so I can't think of a more extreme example than physical violence being given to me as an ultimatum for standing up for myself at work.
Ok, Life story boiled down in the spoiler:
I lost faith in my adults and my religious organization when I was 16. I had already been Bat Mitzvah’d (age 13) through the synagogue and in this small community, that was all you did. You got Bat Mitzvah’d and then you moved on being secular. I wanted to stay and teach at the Hebrew school, to give something back to the community. So I was allowed to do so, under the table, for the two years that my brother had left until his bar Mitzvah. The Third year came about, and I went to the parent/teacher meeting at the beginning of the school year. Here I was, getting ready to turn 16, helping out the teachers (who were getting older) and showing the students that you didn’t have to be secular once you hit 13. Well, the parents didn’t like my influence, or that I was getting paid $20/week to be a good influence like that. So I was told, in the middle of this meeting, in front of my mother, several of my students, and the other teachers, that I was no longer welcome at the Hebrew school, as my presence was a bad influence. Faith in humanity, crushed. Faith in religion, damaged.
College was a fantastic time for me, I bounced back from my complexes and inferiority and problems and I had a fantastic group of friends, a job that I loved, and life was fantastic. I became idealistic, happy, and just wonderful. And then 9/11 happened, put a damper on things for a bit, but then life got better, as it always did. I got engaged, I broke that off. I met guy after guy and life was good. And then I decided that I wanted to put my new boyfriend’s needs in front of mine. And I left school 1 class short of my degree to move to Maine and try my hand at being an adult for a while.
Failure. The first four years were fine, dandy. But always with that nagging about not having a degree in my mind. Always. Life took a sharp turn downwards after four years and losing my job at Verizon due to business politics. We moved, got a smaller place, almost but didn’t get a good job, and I ended up working at Walmart. Part time, feeding 2 adults. Hungry obese adults. I went from being comfortable to being dirt poor, or close to it. Shitty credit rating, barely feeding myself, not leaving the house for fear of the cops pulling me over for being really very illegal. I hated everything. I hated my job, I hated my boyfriend, I hated myself. I hated the fact that I couldn’t get myself out of the situation. And I hated finally calling my dad and telling him that he had been right all along, and that I needed to come home.
But, that period in my life was also where my faith in humanity and the kindness of strangers started getting better. There was a month where we would have been tossed out into the snowbanks, had it not been for the Salvation Army helping me with my rent payment. We would have frozen, had it not been for the Red Cross helping with my electric bill. We would have starved had somebody not slid a $50 gift certificate to a local grocery store under my front door. We would have stunk had somebody else not paid for the water bill, anonymously. And this was during the Presidential Campaign. Where I had an Obama sticker on my car and the neighbors all around me had McCain. And still, they helped me survive that winter. A 75 year old man pulled over to the side of the road and helped me get my car unstuck from the ice and snow.
Yes, you want to change the world for a better place, most of us do. But most of us are not going to be the next gazillionaire going off to build roads and water treatment plants in sub-saharan Africa. But, if you can make one person’s day a little better, if you can make one person smile, if you can remember to keep it on a personal level, then things start to look brighter. Everything looks dismal, grey, and just horrible from up above, monotone, boring. But the closer you get, the more local you get, the more vibrant things become. You can make a difference, you can make a better place. You just have to sometimes ignore the haters around you and get it done. You might get laughed at, you might get poked, you might get teased and jeered, and even get a shower in tomatoes, but eventually it’ll all come out in the end.
Just remember, for every person that you dislike, even strongly, there is another person that you can like. Every up has its downs. Every rose has its thorns. Etc. Ok, no more fortune cookies from me. I promise.
Hope that helped put some sort of thoughts in motion. Just know that you're not alone in hating things.
It happens around this age
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Let's zoom out from me. I kind of want to talk about this. A lot of this feeling comes not just from things that happen to me, but reading about things happening all over the world. It's like when I start thinking about death, especially when I need to sleep. I start getting into this weird spiral of thoughts and then pretty soon I'm not sleeping. I think about all the crap happening in the world, and I start wondering if there's enough good to balance out the bad.
The reason why I say I can't wrap my head around this is I do care about truth and science. If I do have a belief that is incorrect, I either have reasons for it or if I am somewhat ignorant of a topic I wouldn't mind if someone gave me more information. At one point I did hear that glass was a slow liquid and someone corrected me sometime in the future. I was glad that they did correct me. However things like that do not effect my mood, how I vote, or any other part of my life. They are pretty self contained.
When an idea you have does affect your mood enough to rant about how you don't trust the government, then you do obviously give enough of a shit about that idea. In that case I believe people should have that idea be based on some reasoning that can be discussed.
Probably not. If anything I would say there are more "Meh" things in the world that are neither good or bad. As human beings we would rather be alive than dead so we put up with the large amounts of meh and bad things because the small amount of good things are totally worth living for.
Edit: I'm not sure that really made any sense.
For instance, your pastor probably wants OCD guy to continue to come to church and might consider crappy sound worth the price of him being comfortable to show up. My skewed perspective conclusion jumping here, but that is actually a nice thing to do. Church is suppose to be a nurturing place and some people need more support than others. As far as not having your back, he/she may have talked to OCD guy in private on this matter and encouraged him to let others play too. Humiliating him by lecturing and reprimanding him in front of others would not be a nurturing nice pastor thing to do. This might also explain the hate mail if he was, in his mind, encouraging others to join in and you wouldn't. Making him feel all rejected and looking bad to the pastor. I guess zen up and decide that the sound quality is not that important. And if you can muster up a lot of patience learn to work with him and his little ways.
As for everyone being oblivious to what you do is worth, or that it's worth anything, is a bit insulting. But an unintentional one. By all means, fight for what you are worth. But learn to lets things go after. From their point of view that is just background stuff that gets done that you don't have to think about and isn't noticed until, you know, it's not done. Don't nurture slights for eternity to the point anything will put you over the top and shit flies. Unless you want to become like the woman in your last example who flips out over minor things and have it ruin the next 3 months (what a wacko).
Learning to deal with high maintenance people is a skill. You noticing them more now might be because of your youthful enthusiasm is waning. Or perhaps people around you are now finally viewing you as a grown up and thus not shielding you from shit anymore.
Yes.
But again, you can't see it from very far off. It's kinda like a satellite image from space. There are a few beautiful things that can be seen from up above, but mostly the earth looks like a grey blob with some blue water.
but once you start getting in closer, you get the rainforests, the deserts, the waterfalls, the cities, the ancient wonders, etc. There is good amongst the bad. There really is.
Is it enough to balance? Maybe, who knows. What do you consider to be balance? I say that there is. But then, I'm getting more optimistic as the weeks go by because my own life is starting to look up from where it was. It's just you hear about the bad more than the good.
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No, he obviously did NOT do that. This is what I mean about keeping cool and keeping rational. If you're trying to explain to people that you're in the right and are being mistreated, it doesn't help you to make obvious exaggerations about how you're being mistreated. It makes you sound childish.
Now, your next example is about a woman who yelled at you, for apparently the tiniest of reasons, for an hour. AN HOUR. An hour is a long time. Especially for, as you claim, a tiny, easily explained reason. Now, I don't know anything about her, you, your job, her job, or your relationship, working or otherwise. But people don't yell at you for an hour unless they have a) a good reason, b) a hatred of you, or c) something else awful going on in their life. I don't know what it could be. Maybe she thought it was a bigger deal than you did? Maybe she thought you were sassing her? Maybe she's just got a lot of shit going on and is really stressed out. If she went outside and cried for an hour afterwards, I'd say this is pretty likely.
The son threatening you was definitely an overreaction. But if your mom came home bawling her eyes out because she had to yell at some asshole at work? I'd say it's normal to get kind of worked up, especially if it's someone you know. But it's not evidence he's a bad person, either. He's trying to protect his mom, and he's just not trying to see it from your perspective at all.
People aren't all good or all bad. You've just got to understand why they do things.
Yeah I'm making excuses for the shitty things people do; it's called optimism. People do shitty things. It's a fact. I'm not trying to say that the things that happened weren't shitty for you. I'm saying that if you want to regain your faith in humanity, and become an idealist again, you're going to have to understand why people do the shitty things they do, and that means looking at events from their perspective.
Just because someone does something that ends up bad for you doesn't make them a bad person, and that's my main point, I'm just trying to illustrate it. Take the dude who threatened you. I absolutely am against threats and violence, and think you're definitely justified in a restraining order. But is that guy an awful person? He didn't threaten you because he's a bully, because he likes seeing you suffer. He did it because he's trying to protect his mom in the easiest, or maybe only way he knows how. It was an awful decision of his, and were I his friend I'd tell him he's stupid, but is he a bad person?
It's like that saying 'love the sinner, hate the sin'. I'm just making sure you differentiate between the two, because as people have noted, it's real easy to see the act and assume it's the entirety of the person. If you're unwilling to make that effort to understand other people, then welcome to misanthropy.
Okay. Yes, this I agree with.
Also I do need to mention that I was in a really shitty mood earlier when I made this thread. In retrospect I was sort of blinded by that, so sorry if I come across as anything less than congenial in my posts.
And you are surprised that mediocre employees fail upwards. And when people are emotional they don't rationally or objectively recall a sequence of events.
However, the real issue here is that you took no actions or actively bad actions and are now complaining about how the world is unfair. You don't talk to the pastor, who your boss or not is paid to listen and advise about your problems. You don't disagree and say "Hey look, if we let him play with the mixing board we will sound like dorks. Let's clarify our problems and priorities here." you don't talk to the pastor and say "Hey I'm uncomfortable with how this played out - I feel like you sold me up the river." To which the pastor's response would almost certainly have been that A) he cc'd you intentionally because he was managing the guy with obvious problems and wanted to let you know what had happened and
As for your office manager - you should have just reported this to your supervisor and said "Mary spent an hour yelling at everyone over something petty, this is a) unprofessional and b) unproductive and as such I would like to make a formal complaint."
Making bad decisions and avoiding issues doesn't provide a sound basis to generalise to "All people are petty jerks and I should be a misanthrope."
Not everyone is a dick, it's just that the positive things people do tend to be pretty small in scope. Makes it really easy to lose perspective.
Second, there's a ton of good in the world. We just tend to ignore it because it's unremarkable. The good things are not, by and large, people being heroes that are going to make the news. The good things are the simple habits of a people who have been raised to be polite and who know the internal rewards for doing something nice.
Today I made cookies with my kids. I played a game with them, let my youngest win just enough to keep him interested, laughed and joked with them. My daughter made me a little card shaped like a heart telling me she loved me. I made them cocoa and we watched a movie of their choosing, during which my son crawled on my lap and cuddled with me. I spent some time trying to fix a toy for my son, and as I type this my daughter is singing me a song because she knows I like when she does so.
The point isn't that I am an awesome dad or that I have a particularly awesome children, because I really don't think my experiences are that abnormal. I am a dad who loves his kids, they are children who love their father, and we do things for one another. They are not newsworthy things, they are not things that I would bother mentioning to anyone else outside a context of "So, what did you do today?" But they are good things, they are instances of goodness and beauty in the world, and these things are happening right now in millions of homes across the world. You'll never hear about them because they are mundane, but still they exist.
People go out of their way to talk about things that are remarkable. You'll notice that these things are generally things that annoyed them - such things ranging from petty to major catastrophe - or things that are really awesome. People rarely say, out of the blue, "I had a muffin this morning, and it was not bad" or "someone held a door open for me" or "the weather today is unremarkably decent." They only talk about the muffin if it was stale, or the door if someone let it slam in their face, or the weather if it's pouring rain.
What I draw from this is that most people, most of the time, are experiencing a low-level degree of goodness. Life is generally pleasant, and you only really hear about it when it drifts away from mildly pleasant, either to awesomely pleasant, or to anything worse than minor annoyance.
There is a ton of good going on all the time, all around you. You probably don't notice it because you've come to expect it. Maybe you should stop and pay attention to the world a little closer. You'll probably notice a lot of people holding open doors or letting you go by in the parking lot or offering to get you coffee when they run into the break room.
Because people do that.
Because people are more or less good.
Even though sometimes life contrives to make it seem otherwise.
Well, compared to a lot of the people around here, they are.
See, the people on these forums are not a random sampling of the population. We skew towards the more intelligent end, for a variety of reasons. We also skew on the more antisocial end, for a variety of reasons. (And these reasons largely overlap.) Take one of us at random and some guy out of the population at random, and the PA forumer is probably smarter. He probably spend more time thinking about abstract concepts, he probably knows how to do proper research when trying to form an opinion.
(Of course, there are a lot of people here who are complete fucking retards.)
Point being, yeah, you're probably smarter than a lot of your coworkers, or many other people you tend to hang around with for reasons other than entertainment.
Yeah, and?
Intelligence is a nice thing. It comes in handy. It's kinda fun. But it doesn't make you a better person. It probably doesn't make you a happier person. Sure, maybe it would be great if everyone was smarter. And if everyone was stronger, and better looking. But your intelligence is largely a product of things beyond your control, just the same as how pretty you are is beyond your control. Thinking you're better than someone else because you're more attractive makes you dick; so does thinking you're better because you're smarter.
Hell, being smarter doesn't even necessarily mean you're going to be better at what you do. The dumb chick with the innate charisma will probably kick your ass when it comes to sales. The kinda-slow guy with the infinite patience will file papers just as well as you, and maybe better.
Yeah, sure, maybe you'd make the best scientist out of the guys at your work, but you're not in a science lab. You're working at a small-town church. All that brain probably isn't doing too much for you.
Being smarter is nice. I'm pretty damned smart, and I like it that way.
I just don't pretend it makes me any better than the dumb oaf down the way who thinks the sun goes around the earth and woulda voted for Guiliani if he'd had the chance.
The thing that's sad for people liek you is that I've avoided a ton of drama and I'm not a misanthrope. I'm just better able to avoid situations I don't like without coming off as a twat.
I'd go a point further and say, even if people do shitty stuff to you or people you know, you likely DONT have to deal with them if you don't want to. And if you do then work on getting out of that situation.
I guess not.
I like this situation. Cry me a river.
most people will behave in understandable ways. they're generally motivated by a desire to be what they see as the way they "should be" and also sometimes out of insecurity.
i dunno. i don't really feel like a lot is gained by looking down on people or playing the cynic.
the smug self satisfaction of looking down on people doesn't really last that long.
Feeling sad for people doesn't make me smug or self satisfied. It makes me sad.
This. My feeling on the subject is that if you think that everyone is stupid, either
A)You have an over inflated sense of self
or
B)You have unrealistic expectations of others (probably related to A)
When you learn to look at things from other people's perspective, you get a lot less mad about stupid shit, because unless people are maintaining traits that obviously hurt you/themselves, people being petty or whatever is really just people being people and thinking of themselves first. This isn't a negative trait, nor should it be canonized.
I once had the same problem, and I went through the same resolution of disliking most people and expecting people to be dicks. I ended up losing a lot of friends because I expected one of my friends to be an asshole when she was trying to be nice--oh, also because I was just 'going for myself'. I'm a lot happier, now that I understand that people are flawed, then when I expected life to go on an instantaneous karma system where nice shit immediately gives you stuff.
It's a win-win. If it makes you feel any better, I was struggling professionally while trying to deal with my depression alone. Therapy (thank you Centerstone) helped me harness my talents. In the past seven months, I moved past a destructive relationship, found a new one, and am working a job I love. Things can turn around in a blink if you're brave enough to change.
I did last year when I got home from Maine. I talked to some counselors and got a few things straightened out in my own head. And doing that helped me get things straightened out in my own life. I can drive my car again (helps that it's legal, but that's beside the point). I don't have as many anxiety attacks when i see a cop car like I used to, even after the car was legal.
I was able to work through a lot of the issues that came up with the help and advice of people who only knew what I told them about the situations. There is nothing, nothing, wrong with going and talking to somebody. Even if all you do is just sit there and talk about football and Miss America.
But seriously, Josh, if it's bugging you this much, and these situations seem to be spiralling out of your control and you don't think that there's anything you can do to stop them, or even get out of the problems that you know are problems... then go talk to somebody.
You will be amazed (hopefully) at just how much venting it all out on somebody who will listen can help. And there is nothing wrong with asking for help.
Democrats Abroad! || Vote From Abroad
Or if it gets bad enough become a monk or live in the mountains/wild. Seriously.
Well, I'm pretty cynical about a lot of things, but I don't really look down on people. I just recognize that life is unfair, people are products of their environments and upbringing and despising them or looking down on them doesn't help. This used to make me sad, but now I'm very /shrug about that sort of thing.
I used to be pretty misanthropic. I think I'm kind of an anti-misanthrope now. I'm pretty okay with everyone, can't remember the last time I hated anyone. Like, anyone. But I'm still a cynic. People are selfish and self-centered.
So yeah, I'm pretty stressed out and am probably attributing too much to normal things. My university has a counseling office though and I'm going to see if they'll see me.
There are people out there who are committed to creating the environments that 'produce' people with these vices, purely for their own exploitation.
For example, the Republicans continue their campaign of fear-mongering towards the Middle East, knowing that they can use that fear during elections as they will always 1-up the Democratic foreign policy.
Another example, the Labour Government (UK) secretly brought in 5x the average annual immigration population during their government, knowing full well that these immigrants were exactly where all the benefits of their economic strategy were focused, and thus were highly likely to vote Labour come election day.
The pharmaceutical industries around the world have their primary interest in scientists who know what the regulations on paper-writing are. Why? So that they can toe the line, creating research papers that give stronger than accurate support to medically trivial pills without getting pulled for breaching paper regulations.
Intelligent Design. Chiropractors. Homeopathy. Mediums. Tort justice. Just to name a few, there are a wealth of environments that are, by the design of the people within them, insidious and intentionally, knowingly false with a view to exploitation.
And the reason it's so much easier to be pessimistic about this is exactly that; it's intentionally 'evil'. Sure, some people try to be good, but most good things you encounter are actually just people being good-natured.
You can look at that two ways I guess; that it takes effort to be a bastard and most people are thus, by default, nice; or alternatively, that people are prepared to put effort into being bastards for their own success.
...and those people are likewise products of their environments.
I also suppose I should have added "genetics" to my earlier statement about environments and upbringing.
i don't think i've met any of ID, chiropractors, homeopaths or mediums who did not earnestly believe in the bullshit that they were peddling. there probably are some cynics out there who are looking for an excuse to snow people, but they are, i believe, few and far between.
That's great! Good luck!
No offense, but if you were truly maturing into an adult, you'd realize misanthropy is just as silly as idealism.
You need to realize that yes, people CAN be scumbags and assholes, but they aren't, by their nature, this way. By our nature we're social animals. That requires a lot of interaction, good or bad.
And yes, idealism is foolish. But the thing about misanthropy is it's just as bad. It's hypocrisy. Unless you're openly hostile to someone else, you're faking a smile. And you couldn't get along by being a prick to everyone because "Deep down, you can't wait to hurt me."
So while a misanthrope walks around mumbling about pain and sorrow and how every human just wants their share and fuck everyone else...he smiles and nods to the cashier who rang him out because they did it to him, and he wants to look good. They tip the pizza guy who they think is shiftless and lazy. They shake hands with their Pastor who they think is just trying to wiggle his way into Heaven.
They are basically everything they hate. So the trick? The trick is to straddle the line between misanthropic and idealistic.
People have the potential to be awful or wonderful. Let them show you what they're going to be before you decide how you'll view the world for the better part of the rest of your life.
(Well, assuming you don't become a cranky old fuck around age 58, of course).
Both know damn well that there's a reason they don't have a medical license. In both cases, the trick about recruiting to the job (I would say profession except that's not really the applicable word here) is getting people to believe you can cure anything; it preys on some people's urges to help. Lots of people want to help others get through sickness, but being an actual real nurse or doctor means investing lots of money in difficult medical school, and having to face reality, where the best science and medicine don't always succeed.
So, we have a nice environment where we coddle people practicing chiropractry, homeopathy, spirit healing, and various other things like prayer, for example, to believe that they're having a positive effect when they are, honestly, having no effect on anyone but themselves.
And this is where you are, I'm sorry to say, completely out of touch.
Mediums are well known fraudsters. The entire thing involves cold reading and various other dubious methods of information gathering to prey on people's attachment and grieving in response to death. Obviously this is cherry picking for examples, but take Sylvia Browne, Allision DuBois or John Edward, all of whom have built extremely successful careers around deceiving vulnerable people when they're at their lowest.