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The fine line between needing to be social and needing solitude.

Goatworshiper

Does anyone else have problems with this balancing act? If not I'm just getting this off my chest.

I feel odd when I'm with people, without being insulting towards other humans I find they frustrate the life out of me. I find people just don't really have much valid to say. At the moment I'm sick of hearing people being demonised for claiming benifits, by people who claim working tax credits, child tax credits etc. I'm not in a position were I personally need to claim benifits, however I'm not into the demonisation of the ill and unemployed. It's not only this issue, people just being wide of the mark on lots of topics, science denialist's tend to be particulary frustrating.

I'd like to get on with people a lot more, I enjoy being social (within my small circle of friends). But I just find people stupid, ignorant and inhumane. I'm generally misanthropic and tend to upset people quite frequently by telling them that human life is cheap and explaining about a history of slave labour, concentration camps etc. Well I say upset, I think it just annoys people as It questions thier humanitarian ideals. I suppose thier lies my problem, hypocritical humanist whom don't see that they treat humans particulary badly. For instance they want to save the world and help African children, but have a poor attitude to work colleages.

I went to Auschwitz recently and people seem perplexed that I didn't get upset from the visit. I find it very odd: when I here people talking about how they think other people should be dealt with for not working (and not conforming to thier belief system), I can easily see how something as big as Nazi Germany could escalate. I find it so odd that people think that work is the only important thing in life. Surely there has to be more to life than self regulated slavery?

Today I cut my grass with mp3 player on and it was just bliss. Solitude and the world blanked out.

Wierdly, I still crave some social activities even tho people frustrate the life out of me. 

Parents

  • True Colors: I  do not take such a pessimistic view of humanity. You are seeing things in an operational way and are blinded by the current societal values: emphasis on external reward and money. It goes without saying that currently people work to live, work is often boring and degrading, people do it because they have to and not often because they want to. However, there is also a different type of motivation - intrinsic motivation. People can be motivated to do things because it brings them self-respect, self-worth and other feelings which are independent of material gain.

    So take the example of street cleaning. Agreed, if this is the be all and end all of a person's life, then for most people this job would not be enjoyable - even in a Communist society. But in a communist society, menial jobs would be shared and celebrated. Extrinsic reward certainly plays a part, but only if it operates in unison with societal validation. So I think that street cleaners should be paid the same as junior teachers are currently paid, and teachers should be paid even more than they are at present. Without street cleaners, toilet cleaners, rubbish collectors, we would all get disease. Prevention comes before cure!. It makes so sense that these people are on such low wages. Our society operates according to the inverse logic of value - financiers and speculators get paid millions when we can live without them, but street cleaners are on the minimum wage when they are indispensable.

    The only compulsion for street cleaning etc in a Communist society would be necessity. If no-one cleans the streets, vermin would proliferate and I don't think any right-minded person could possibly tolerate this. And as Scorpian suggests, we can increasingly mechanize very dangerous and dirty work - machines can increasingly perform tasks previously done by humans. I am not saying there are any easy solutions, but I am not bound by the current values and ways of seeing things.

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  • True Colors: I  do not take such a pessimistic view of humanity. You are seeing things in an operational way and are blinded by the current societal values: emphasis on external reward and money. It goes without saying that currently people work to live, work is often boring and degrading, people do it because they have to and not often because they want to. However, there is also a different type of motivation - intrinsic motivation. People can be motivated to do things because it brings them self-respect, self-worth and other feelings which are independent of material gain.

    So take the example of street cleaning. Agreed, if this is the be all and end all of a person's life, then for most people this job would not be enjoyable - even in a Communist society. But in a communist society, menial jobs would be shared and celebrated. Extrinsic reward certainly plays a part, but only if it operates in unison with societal validation. So I think that street cleaners should be paid the same as junior teachers are currently paid, and teachers should be paid even more than they are at present. Without street cleaners, toilet cleaners, rubbish collectors, we would all get disease. Prevention comes before cure!. It makes so sense that these people are on such low wages. Our society operates according to the inverse logic of value - financiers and speculators get paid millions when we can live without them, but street cleaners are on the minimum wage when they are indispensable.

    The only compulsion for street cleaning etc in a Communist society would be necessity. If no-one cleans the streets, vermin would proliferate and I don't think any right-minded person could possibly tolerate this. And as Scorpian suggests, we can increasingly mechanize very dangerous and dirty work - machines can increasingly perform tasks previously done by humans. I am not saying there are any easy solutions, but I am not bound by the current values and ways of seeing things.

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