I'm usually a pretty optimistic person, but lately I've decided that I think I just hate people. I'm so over people in general. As a species, we are so lacking. It's exhausting.
You're welcome.
Love the office!!! High five right back at ya!
Maybe all you need is to be around positive and inspiring people?
I have those people, but sometimes it's still exhausting. ?
Sorry to hear that your half full perspective has been altered by (____) .... So here's a meme that relates to your mindeset. Thought I'd share
Yes. Absolutely! ?
I'll bet it's just the mood you're in. And you're right. And then some person will do something to redeem the whole human race in your eyes.
The whole human race... that's a pretty big redemption! And yes, it's a mood, but one that occurs more often than I'd like. ?
You've been watching too much news or looking at your Twitter feed too much, I suspect.
On my worst days, I'd agree with you. But at those times, I try to pay more attention to the handful of good people in my daily life.
I saw an interview a few months ago that kind of rocked my world. The interviewee was a Trump supporter and border wall advocate, but he also was deeply into volunteering his time with a school in South Texas where each family pays what it can afford to, and his voice actually broke when he told of one Latina mother who couldn't afford tuition but offered to make tacos for the lunch program. He waxed eloquent about how these kids need an education, how sweet they are, how hard working the parents are etc.
It was apparently lost on him what Trump's immigration policies would have done to these sweet children and this noble young mother. It never occurred to him to try to humanize the faceless invading hordes supposedly assaulting the border in the same way he'd managed to do it at this school passion project of his.
One possible response to this is to ram your head into a brick wall over the irony and hypocrisy and stupidity ... another is to realize that people hold conflicting and logically exclusive views all the time, and compartmentalize the shit out of it. I choose to believe that even the seeming knuckle-draggers are not beyond hope or being reached. They are just wired with conservative minds, and they are afraid, and Trump is playing them. Those same people's "better angels of their nature" could be evoked by leadership that's moral / ethical and draws compassion rather than abject terror out of them.
In other words it's not that all these people have been simmering with hatred and just waiting for an opportunity to express it. They just feel their hopes and dreams slipping away from them and don't know how to deal with it and the Citrus Caligula knows how to press their buttons.
I have a friend, too, who is relatively old-school Republican, he is not stupid but he's not a deep thinker either. He thinks things like Trump has really taken a firm, realistic approach to North Korea and we're safer for it. He doesn't understand geopolitics and the actual danger we're in there and as soon as you start explaining it his eyes glaze over. To him, telling it like it is and "standing up" to Little Rocket Man must be a good thing, and it must be disinformation if you present evidence that it's not. So the positive takeaway is that he's no war-monger, he wants us safe, he just doesn't understand how that works. And here again, this guy has a heart of gold, and takes loving care of an autistic grandchild, and is a fine husband and father.
I guess all I'm saying is we have to be careful not to dehumanize these folks like they dehumanize us, and immigrants, and gays. It's too discouraging and depressing to go to those places, anyway.
There's hope. Sometimes I wish I were free to leave the US and go somewhere very far away where I don't have to be effected by this crap, and I understand how you feel. And I am not economically or racially endangered so I suppose it's easier for me to disassociate, but still ... we have to maintain some kind of hope and my hope is in the spark of humanity in that guy down in Texas. Yeah, he's a dipshit in ways, but then ... so am I.
It sure as heck helps if you see that spark in people.
Thanks for this. Sometimes I forget. Usually I'm the one reminding folks that people do shine if you let them.
I NEVER watch the news. I can't stomach it. ? Sadly social media keeps me relatively informed. It's a coping mechanism and I recognize I'm privileged in order to be able to disconnect.
And I agree with everything you said. My family is all Conservative Christian Republicans and I know they all have a heart of gold. Their ability to compartmentalize is astounding to me at times. and every now and then it just exhausts and overwhelms me.
Thanks for the encouraging words!
@RavenCT Weirdly, I was at a low ebb when I wrote this, although on a completely unrelated topic. My way of bucking myself up I guess. Glad it helped.
On a related note, here's an interesting article I saw today that speaks to the differences in underlying motivations between conservatives and liberals:
It needed to be said.
There, I said it! My work here is done. ?
Okay. I have no argument for you. I think if you don't feel that way at times, you aren't seeing reality. So, thank you.
True, very true! Sad, but true.
one of the main reasons that there is so much discontent & hate among ordinary people is the success that the elites have with their divide & conquer tactics.
Humans suck as a species overall.
Evil, destructive, invasive, cruel, greedy, and inhumane.
We need a damn good plague.