I think the OP is channeling Jean Paul Sartre, “Hell is other people.”
Making the classic error of “…mistaking disenchantment for truth”.
I can only offer the same advice that JPS’s mom gave him when he was feeling sullen and irritable: “Son, put down the game controller, come out of the basement and mow the lawn. Shower and change when you’re done. There’s an Army recruiter coming at 3pm to have a chat with you.”
The OP is troubling for reasons others have touched on, so I won’t really bother there. That said, for me, I often feel like I have the opposite problem. Where, to some extent, I feel LESS human than everyone else. I say that for exactly the reasons the OP has trouble relating to others. I can, and do, make judgments about people’s thoughts and motivations based on their words and actions and what other things I pick up about them as I build an internal model of them in my own mind. But for me, I’m the only person to whom I have access to the inner workings. I know all of my thoughts, the inspirations and motivations to do good, and also the bad or even horrible things I sometimes think. Similarly, I see how others interact, and I see myself treated as differently; hell, almost everyone with whom I’m more than a casual acquaintance with even comments that I’m just different from everyone else they know. This is never meant maliciously, at worst it’s neutral, but it’s typically more of an interest and inquiry into why, but it does serve as a way to me feeling just separate, when I strive, as I think most do, to make meaningful connections with others.
Anyway, I do think this is something that is easy for almost everyone to lose focus on. For most of us, it’s easy to learn about, to a certain extent understand, and in time care about or love an individual person, but when we come to people, they become an inhuman mass, more like a herd of cattle. It seems like our minds struggle to keep in mind that the richness and fullness of humanity that encompasses everyone we care about is actually instilled in every single person we come across, and that “herd” aspect is an emergent result.
In this sense, yes, I get frustrated when I see collections of people making what I’d consider to be poorly thought out decisions financially or politically. Yes, I get frustrated when I’m in traffic and I see the utter disregard that we often have for each other. But then I remember these things, and understand that they’re feeling and thinking the same things. I try to treat and relate to them each as individuals rather than as a group, and it immediately becomes easier.
Use the election as an example, it’s easy to see a group of people supporting a candidate I don’t, and seeing them as a group, it’s easy to just think that they just are “wrong” about these things. But in almost every case I’ve talked to people about these things as individuals, it quickly becomes apparent that each has their own motivations. Some are really well informed and thought out, some are less so probably because they have other priorities, but I can almost always reach a point with an individual where, even if we disagree, we both understand where the other is coming from.
But that’s exactly what makes us individuals. We each have different motivations, priorities. Who am I to fault someone else for not really caring about something I might be really passionate about when I don’t care about some things they might be passionate about. And sure, there are people out there with more or less selfish motivations in various areas, but I think we also tend to underestimate that most people are generally good and will do what they think is the right thing (even if we don’t necessarily agree). This is what gives me hope and keeps me from being overwhelmed by the emergent seemingly nonsensical selfish moronic behavior I’d otherwise see.
And on the animals vs. people, it’s much the same, but it seems so much easier for most people. A dog, for instance, it’s motivations and interests and priorities are patently clear to us. We understand them well, in part because they’re bred to relate well to us, but also because it’s so much easier to conceptualize “who” that dog is. The same for cats, though many might argue they’re less transparent than dogs, they’re still FAR more so than people. There’s a certain serenity in that level of simplicity and intimacy in really fully getting another, even if it is an animal and not a person. But ultimately, that’s all it is, humans are fundamentally far more complex and able to relate to us each other in far more complex ways, we might have more complex motivations, but when we understand and relate to those, because of that complexity it makes it often difficult to have the same degree of intimacy, but with that effort, we ultimately have a greater degree of potential connection and, thus, a potentially deeper intimacy. So I’ll offer, as an exercise to the reader, what if we could have that same fullness and completeness of connection and intimacy with people, to the greater capacity, that we have with animals? I wonder how the world might be different if we could get even a fraction of the way there.
I would posit that the OP doesn’t really believe that or has emotions that feel that way. His own OP betrays those sentiments. The OP is desperately seeking some form of interaction with this group, because as others have said, “why post here?”. It is the reaction to a stated hypothesis that the OP seeks.
This is a well-studied phenomenon called Dunbar’s Number (or, less often, “The Monkeysphere”). A primate’s brain can only deal with a certain number of social relationships at a time, and the number of relationships directly correlates with the size of the primate’s brain. For human beings, this is somewhere around 150. So essentially what happens is your brain prioritizes which relationships are most important and which are less important. Hence the quote, “One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.” Your primate brain is unable to identify or care deeply about a million people, even if you sympathize with their suffering.
FWIW, I never see a reason to be mean to other people, and I do my best to be friendly and courteous because I have empathy; I understand that they are like me, and therefore I treat them much like I would like to be treated. But beyond common courtesy, the truth of the matter is that most of the people in the world will have no impact on my life. There are far too many people on the planet already, and the vast majority of them will live in poverty and die in obscurity. So when I see something like the 2004 tsunami kill a quarter of a million people, I think, “Wow, that’s very unfortunate,” but it really doesn’t make any difference to my life.
To be honest I know they are the same as me, but it doesn’t matter. I still feel nothing towards them.
I guess I regard animals as innocent and humans as not.
To keep making threads like this one, basically.
What a bunch of bastards.
It occasionally occurs to me to wonder whether some of the other people in the world are NPCs, running “on automatic” or controlled directly by God (the Great GM), rather than having minds and hearts and souls of their own. But I don’t really take such speculations seriously.
I also wonder if, historically, kings and nobles and such people thought of the “common people,” the serfs and peasants, as NPCs in this thread’s sense. Or if people in general thought of people in other countries or villages or tribes that way.
It’s that after all my interactions with people, they don’t live up to the hype everyone makes for them. Animals seem more interesting and impressive.
I also think people are greatly overstating human “complexity”.
This…
Yeah, I met a marmot once that created a message board where we could lay out our laments to other quadrupeds.
Hmm. If we’re greatly overstating human complexity, then why is psychology such an inexact science? Why do we know so little about the human brain? Why are societies across the globe structured so differently? How have you come to radically different conclusions about the world than I have?
Hmm.
Societal structures aren’t that different to be honest.
As for our conclusions, one of us has to be wrong.
But that’s getting off topic. As I said, I regard animals as having a sort of innocence (unlike humans). As such they seem to be more worthy of ones empathy and compassion than other humans.
It’s you
I’d say no.
But then this is getting off track.
Machinaforce, have you read much fiction (especially the kind that takes you inside the head of one or more of the characters) or memoirs? I think that’s one of the best ways of learning to see things from other people’s points of view, and thus thinking of them as “real.”
Like cats who will torture and kill another animal for “fun” and leave the carcass uneaten? Like dogs who are the very embodiment of “might makes right”? Like lions, grey langurs, polar bears and others that will kill infants fathered by others of their own species so they can pass on their own genes? Innocent like that?
Just remember, if you argue that animals don’t know better, are acting on instinct alone or don’t have the capacity to know right from wrong then you invalidate your own observations below.
I think your view of both humans and other animals are due to some pretty thick filters.
I repeat the question: why are you here? If you have such disdain and so little use for other people, why are you interacting with them on a message board?
You’re either wrong about people, wrong about yourself, or not dealing with us straightforwardly (or some permutation of these).
I’ve seen this type of thing before, and often it’s compensation for a lack of social skills.
Naah, he’s not down with existentialism any more than he is with people.