6d ago

what is something you've learned as you got older and wiser?

mine is that people in general are bad and terrible and my ideal life would be as a hermit with very little interaction with anyone except my animals and plants and no impact from people or governments and never reading the news.

when i was young, i was optimistic about the future of the human race but reality has bitch-smacked my inner child and taught me the truth and it keeps getting confirmed the older and older I get.

so what lessons have you learned as you've gotten older?

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Mine is the exact opposite, that people are generally kind and good once you remove some initial barriers that keep us apart. The older I get, the more love for people in general I feel.
So I guess we're both mentally ill. High five!
- I wonder if it has to do with where folks live...suburbs are full of Karen's. Rich people really suck.
  
  Money and status rot people’s brains.
  We never evolved for that.
- I’ve learned that people almost exclusively fall into holes of being good at heart or bad at heart. At this point in my life, I tend to pick up on how they think about others pretty quickly.
  I’ve found that people good at heart are generally capable of opening up kindness once they gain empathy for someone, e.g. realize what someone is going through, even when they were previously convinced otherwise. Sometimes they’re quick to anger, but they seem to get that we’re all people so they just want to be sure they’re mad at the right people.
  I’ve found that people bad at heart consider every interaction in their life to be a transaction, or a zero sum game. Unfortunately they’re easily convinced that the person next to them in line, or the generation they don’t understand, or the invisible immigrants or whatever are the cause of all their problems with money, healthcare, taxes;
  While ironically they’re reading that on Facebook, and corporations don’t want them to look at the history of their wages vs profits or whatever. There’s a big difference between someone who wouldn’t vote for Kamala because they thought she wouldn’t serve their interests, and someone wearing a “say no to the ho” t-shirt while actively supporting a rapist pedophile.
Some people aren't even worth the energy and time to be angry at. They're not even worth the energy it takes to think about. The sooner you stop spending your energy on them the better your life will be.
Secondly: The vast majority of people you encounter couldn't give less of a crap about you. This one has taken me a long time to process as someone with social anxiety problems, but once you internally acknowledge this concept then life becomes a lot easier. Dress how you want, talk how you want, do what you want - people really aren't going to care. And if they do, they'll forget in 10 minutes.
- This has taken me a lot of time and I'm still working on it, because I really do or did care about other people. I want everyone to do well, I want everyone to thrive, but this has most definitely not been my experience. I feel like when I was younger I cared less which is odd and it seems to be against most people's experience.
Social structures like religion and government are ultimately outsourcing one's ethics to others. If one's ethics are grounded in these institutions through guilt, shaming, or the fear of getting caught, one does not have real ethics. Real ethics are independent of all external factors. Real ethics imply potential for virtuous character.
- I think evangelical christianity (lowercase 'c' is intentional here... ) is a plague on society. It teaches people to ignore their conscious because as long as they ask forgiveness from ~~Jesus~~ themselves, then any bad thing they did was A-OK and they get that first class seat to heaven.
Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. Everybody is just making it up as they go along.
Admitting to making a mistake right up front completely diffuses all but the biggest assholes from giving you a hard time about it.
- Apologise quickly and earnestly.
Honesty is almost always the right choice. If you tell the truth directly and with kindness, you'll find out who is worth caring about and who isn't real quick. A surprisingly large percentage of people are willing to put up with the occasional badly worded or blunt remark if it means less ambiguity and deception. There are two tricks to doing this right:
Be self aware enough to know when you're playing the "I'm not an asshole, I just tell it like it is" game, and don't do that. You can always say things in the nicest possible way, and being a dick doesn't make you honest, it just makes you a dick.
There is a line that you need to be aware of, where being honest can get people hurt or killed. When you reach that line, you need to be ready to seamlessly transition from being honest and direct and kind to looking honest and direct and kind while lying your ass off. So spend some time refining your ability as a liar but don't use those skills until you need to.
Stop trying to solve every problem you come across, especially if your help wasn't asked for. Most of the time when someone is expressing a problem they are just looking for a sympathetic ear.
Now I am more aware of my own ignorance. I thought I knew a lot, and that I had figured life out. Now I am more humble and aware of my own limitations
- The more you learn about a subject the more you understand how little you know about it.
when i was young, i was optimistic about the future of the human race but reality has bitch-smacked my inner child and taught me the truth and it keeps getting confirmed the older and older I get.
If you become a student of history, you see that that distant past, nearly everywhere was much much worse than it is now. If that is the case, then that must mean humanity has improve, even a small amount. Is there more improvement needed? Absolutely!
Life is hard and complex. Be kind.
Humans generally choose and behave based on how we feel. That's neither good nor bad, it's what we are--emotional beings.
The risks of social interaction is often the cost of meaningfulness.
I have several undiagnosed conditions. Many people do. There is nothing wrong with this.
People divide themselves by creating issues where they don't exist. Groups will spin language to suit their side as being correct and greater than the other. Even empathy has confrontationally different definitions. I don't foresee this changing but do think it will come and go in severity.
I do not see anyone as generally bad. I see them as giving into basal instincts and not overcoming misunderstandings. Being a hermit is fine for introverts. I need people and I tolerate more than gives me comfort sometimes.
nothing matters.

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