Comment on Are you using Lemmy / others to create noise in your life and to replace talking to people irl?
testfactor@lemmy.world 1 month agoFair enough on all counts.
I would point out that if everyone only made friends with people better than them, no one would have any friends. It’s important to pour into others as well as to get poured into. It’s how we make the world better. And just because someone is “worse” than you doesn’t mean they don’t have value. And it doesn’t mean there isn’t something you could gain from having them as a friend. I’ve had friends who are “better” than me and “worse” than me make positive change in my life.
And I know you say you’re not in a place to work on this, and I can respect that, but I would say that it’s never a bad time to continue leaning forward in a positive direction. And if this is something that’s negatively impacting your life, the sooner you work on it, the sooner you’ll be less impacted by it. No time like the present and all that.
chosensilence@pawb.social 1 month ago
very true. however, it does make me less willing to be friends with them. we can be mutually kind and supportive, but i don’t want to know them on a personal level. also, it’s all a spectrum anyway. there are greys between each side, so it’s not like i’m looking for carbon copies of myself. but the radius of my tolerance is low, lol.
i try to lean forward, i do. i am, to my own chagrin, romantically optimistic about humanity. but it isn’t unrealistic. i ground myself by keeping up on sociological and political trends. shit is bad. shit is worse than bad. shit is worse than worse than bad. it’s all impacted how i see others and their role in the world.
testfactor@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It does sound like you’ve let doom scrolling negatively impact your life.
I won’t argue things are bad, but the reality is that most people are generally decent.
Sure, there’s a lot of dicks out there, but they’re very much the minority. They are just overrepresented in the Lemmy echo chamber (and other online platforms too of course).
Obviously it’s hard to say if you’re being “too picky” as it were without knowing exactly what lines you’re drawing, but it sounds like you might be projecting your negative expectations onto people as opposed to people actually not living up to those expectations.
chosensilence@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
i know it seems that way but it’s only because you are not accurately viewing the world, in my opinion. it isn’t that there are dicks, it’s that there are uneducated, ignorant, self-serving people who are just trying to get by. they don’t usually act maliciously but their unintentional ignorance and poor judgment causes worldwide death and suffering.
i cannot stand the average person any longer. truly, i have struggled my entire life. but the PTA mom who votes Dem without giving much thought? she is just as responsible for fascism as her Republican counterparts. it doesn’t matter if she isn’t doing it intentionally or maliciously—the end result is the same. if you are effectively contributing to the destruction of humanity i want nothing to do with you on a personal level.
testfactor@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I do think there’s an element of privilege here. Just because you have the luxury of time and space to be involved in politics and spend a lot of emotional energy in that area doesn’t mean that everyone else has that luxury. For the single mother of three, working two jobs to provide for her kids, she probably doesn’t have the bandwidth to be super “educated” politically.
But what would you have that PTA soccer mom do? The bar is always arbitrary. I could choose to set it higher or lower than you. Why is your spot for the bar what it is? I could claim anyone who isn’t vegan, or uses toilet paper, or doesn’t drive an EV, or isn’t growing their own food, or isn’t chaining themselves to government buildings in protest isn’t doing their part and is actively “contributing to the destruction of humanity.” You have defined your threshold of acceptable somewhere short of actively murdering fascists (I assume), so why is that? And what makes your choice of threshold the correct one?
I think we have a tendency to say, “what I’m doing is the correct standard,” in order to make us feel justified in our outlook and superior to the people around us. Is it that others are actually “contributing to the destruction of humanity” more than you, or is that something that you tell yourself to help maintain an emotional wall of protection?
And, literally all that aside, I think your assumption that there aren’t plenty of people around you who feel similarly to you is unfounded. You could make friends by getting involved in a political campaign. I did that a number of years ago, and met a lot of great people. Helped a lady get elected into the House of Representatives. Had a great time and met a lot of cool people along the way. And surely those people would meet your thresholds of “good enough,” no?