This is more like my son telling me his legs hurt all the time, but he just got back from running around like a maniac, and he’s about to go run around like a maniac. And I’m not even suggesting the pain isn’t real, but sometimes you gotta push through.
And to bring it back to the example at hand, developing a community is hugely important. I know all of my neighbors and we all hang out and know each other. Half the time, I don’t want to, but sometimes I just do it. Sometimes it’s not great, but sometimes it is. But when we need a hand, I have a pool of people to pick from, and I know I’m in their pool.
Dehumanizing the morons on the internet forum you frequent is bad, but dehumanizing your neighbors is really bad. The door swings both ways, community is important. Make an effort. I’m sorry it’s hard.
Is this the kind of thing that you also say to the people in your neighborhood when trying to build a community, and if so, how do people usually respond to it?
Not every conversation I have with my neighbors is surface level, and sometimes we talk about how just regular life shit can be difficult. It wasn’t sarcasm, I meant it. Make an effort, despite the fact that I understand it’s hard. I get it, it hard for me too at times, but you can’t just shy away from difficult things all the time.
Gah, it is not hard for me to talk to strangers! It just burns through energy.
In particular, I have never had much trouble talking to strangers with my full empathy turned on. It gets a bit tricky when I don’t actually care about what they are talking about, but I have a couple of abilities that help with this. First, I generally care about the person and making sure that they feel valued, regardless of what they are saying. Second, I have a mild form of bipolar so I am used to having raging emotions underneath the surface that are disconnected from the situation at hand and needing to regulate them, so I can keep up an expression of interest–and again, I am generally genuinely interested in the person–even while feeling very restless underneath. In fact, I have been so successful at this that in the past a couple of conversations with strangers have led to them asking me out, despite the fact that we were both men and I am not gay.
Again, though, all of this burns through energy. So the difficulty has nothing to do with me lacking a skill but more like being exhausted from having done hard physical labor all day, and then having a random person demand that you drop and do pushups or else they will declare that you are not trying hard enough.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest it was a “skill issues,” as the kids say these days. And I think it’s a pretty apt comparison to physically demanding tasks. Got a flex the social muscles or they atrophy, and the benefit is building a network.
I’m with you 100% though. I’m tired all the time, and sometimes the thought of going out and being “on” with people is daunting. And it’s funny, because my wife is like, you’re an ENFJ or whatever the fuck (I’m exactly as uneducated in that field as she is educated), and I try to tell her that despite how I was, how I am now is tired of social situations, generally. But I try to just eat it. And sometimes I don’t eat it and I sit at home and unwind. I just know that theres benefits to maintaining relationships, and that for some folks a text chain isn’t enough. I do wish that everyone was cool with texting, or even talking on forums like this, but I know that’s not the case generally.
I do feel like we’ve gotten into the weeds here. I just really believe in community, despite the fact that I’m a curmudgeon. I just imagine a world where we can’t perhaps communicate the way we do now. What are we left with? Well, the people whose homes I can walk to, essentially.
A lot of the people I regularly interact with are at a contra dancing venue. Does that not count as a community because I have to drive to interact with them instead of walking? (Genuine question; not intended as a gotcha.)
Also, keep in mind that my original comment to @ameancow@lemmy.world was responding to the following,
We have spurned community because it’s more tempting to hide inside and feel miserable and lonely. Losing community was how we lost civics and representation and basic human empathy. [emphasis mine]
I just find social interactions to be energy draining
My broken arm
How are these equitable? How is “feeling drained” the same as having a handicap or being physically broken? I don’t actually want an answer, I don’t really care, you’re not going to do my community any good if you feel forced to do something you don’t see the benefit from, but it’s worth remembering that submerging in comfort now usually has a pretty steep cost later. Whether it’s not exercising your body because it hurts, or not exercising your emotional intelligence because it’s uncomfortable or draining.
This epidemic of de-socialization is artificial, and should be pushed back on by everyone who cares about being a strong, healthy adult in a strong community. It’s very basic stuff that got us through ice-ages, mass extinctions, depressions and violent times of the past.
Funny how you go on and on about the importance of connecting with the people around you, but then when someone shows up who is different from you and talks about how they are different, you stop trying to connect and turn incredibly hostile instead.
That you feel attacked is what I want here. I am not here to make peace with my own side. I am pissed at my own side. I want to antagonize you all by telling you the hard shit you don’t wanna hear.
One of those hard things is you have all broadly gotten to sheltered, too lazy, too self-entitled and abandoned community. Leftists and progressives broadly are rejecting community because it seems like something “midwest white rednecks” have. The same way we let them have the flag and guns. It’s dumb, we have to exercise, we have to get stronger, we have to get angry.
Get mad at me. Hate me. WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES TO SAY “I WILL BE STRONGER” so that when you do talk to your neighbor you don’t feel so fucking drained you have to escape to your dark hidey hole for a whole day.
It’s less that I am defensive and more that I think, based on your comments here, that you are a judgemental self-absorbed asshole who does not understand people nearly as well as you think that you do. 😉
(Also, for the record, although I may be a troll online, I am not a troll in real life. Despite what you seem to believe, I do not actually live in a cave.)
“Oww! Oww! Oww! My broken arm still hurts!”
“Stop whining and keep doing those pushups, and you’ll eventually get strong enough that those bones will knit themselves!”
This is more like my son telling me his legs hurt all the time, but he just got back from running around like a maniac, and he’s about to go run around like a maniac. And I’m not even suggesting the pain isn’t real, but sometimes you gotta push through.
And to bring it back to the example at hand, developing a community is hugely important. I know all of my neighbors and we all hang out and know each other. Half the time, I don’t want to, but sometimes I just do it. Sometimes it’s not great, but sometimes it is. But when we need a hand, I have a pool of people to pick from, and I know I’m in their pool.
Dehumanizing the morons on the internet forum you frequent is bad, but dehumanizing your neighbors is really bad. The door swings both ways, community is important. Make an effort. I’m sorry it’s hard.
Is this the kind of thing that you also say to the people in your neighborhood when trying to build a community, and if so, how do people usually respond to it?
Not every conversation I have with my neighbors is surface level, and sometimes we talk about how just regular life shit can be difficult. It wasn’t sarcasm, I meant it. Make an effort, despite the fact that I understand it’s hard. I get it, it hard for me too at times, but you can’t just shy away from difficult things all the time.
Gah, it is not hard for me to talk to strangers! It just burns through energy.
In particular, I have never had much trouble talking to strangers with my full empathy turned on. It gets a bit tricky when I don’t actually care about what they are talking about, but I have a couple of abilities that help with this. First, I generally care about the person and making sure that they feel valued, regardless of what they are saying. Second, I have a mild form of bipolar so I am used to having raging emotions underneath the surface that are disconnected from the situation at hand and needing to regulate them, so I can keep up an expression of interest–and again, I am generally genuinely interested in the person–even while feeling very restless underneath. In fact, I have been so successful at this that in the past a couple of conversations with strangers have led to them asking me out, despite the fact that we were both men and I am not gay.
Again, though, all of this burns through energy. So the difficulty has nothing to do with me lacking a skill but more like being exhausted from having done hard physical labor all day, and then having a random person demand that you drop and do pushups or else they will declare that you are not trying hard enough.
Yeah, I didn’t mean to suggest it was a “skill issues,” as the kids say these days. And I think it’s a pretty apt comparison to physically demanding tasks. Got a flex the social muscles or they atrophy, and the benefit is building a network.
I’m with you 100% though. I’m tired all the time, and sometimes the thought of going out and being “on” with people is daunting. And it’s funny, because my wife is like, you’re an ENFJ or whatever the fuck (I’m exactly as uneducated in that field as she is educated), and I try to tell her that despite how I was, how I am now is tired of social situations, generally. But I try to just eat it. And sometimes I don’t eat it and I sit at home and unwind. I just know that theres benefits to maintaining relationships, and that for some folks a text chain isn’t enough. I do wish that everyone was cool with texting, or even talking on forums like this, but I know that’s not the case generally.
I do feel like we’ve gotten into the weeds here. I just really believe in community, despite the fact that I’m a curmudgeon. I just imagine a world where we can’t perhaps communicate the way we do now. What are we left with? Well, the people whose homes I can walk to, essentially.
A lot of the people I regularly interact with are at a contra dancing venue. Does that not count as a community because I have to drive to interact with them instead of walking? (Genuine question; not intended as a gotcha.)
Also, keep in mind that my original comment to @ameancow@lemmy.world was responding to the following,
How are these equitable? How is “feeling drained” the same as having a handicap or being physically broken? I don’t actually want an answer, I don’t really care, you’re not going to do my community any good if you feel forced to do something you don’t see the benefit from, but it’s worth remembering that submerging in comfort now usually has a pretty steep cost later. Whether it’s not exercising your body because it hurts, or not exercising your emotional intelligence because it’s uncomfortable or draining.
This epidemic of de-socialization is artificial, and should be pushed back on by everyone who cares about being a strong, healthy adult in a strong community. It’s very basic stuff that got us through ice-ages, mass extinctions, depressions and violent times of the past.
Funny how you go on and on about the importance of connecting with the people around you, but then when someone shows up who is different from you and talks about how they are different, you stop trying to connect and turn incredibly hostile instead.
So much for empathy.
That you feel attacked is what I want here. I am not here to make peace with my own side. I am pissed at my own side. I want to antagonize you all by telling you the hard shit you don’t wanna hear.
One of those hard things is you have all broadly gotten to sheltered, too lazy, too self-entitled and abandoned community. Leftists and progressives broadly are rejecting community because it seems like something “midwest white rednecks” have. The same way we let them have the flag and guns. It’s dumb, we have to exercise, we have to get stronger, we have to get angry.
Get mad at me. Hate me. WHATEVER THE FUCK IT TAKES TO SAY “I WILL BE STRONGER” so that when you do talk to your neighbor you don’t feel so fucking drained you have to escape to your dark hidey hole for a whole day.
It’s less that I am defensive and more that I think, based on your comments here, that you are a judgemental self-absorbed asshole who does not understand people nearly as well as you think that you do. 😉
(Also, for the record, although I may be a troll online, I am not a troll in real life. Despite what you seem to believe, I do not actually live in a cave.)