scale (not severity) of isolation

bottles666 wrote:"Success" is not a boolean value here, I think. I believe another's qualia are neither completely alien nor completely familiar. I tend to suspect it falls more on the "familiar" end of the spectrum, though, at least outside of various pathologies.

Hmm...I have never considered this before. I do tend to be a very 'black and white' thinker.
Perhaps it is a bit silly of me to think that I am so unique or special that other people can not approximate what I'm thinking/feeling quite well. I will try to think about this some more. I'm not sure it'll have me changing my behaviour anytime soon though...I can be a stubborn cow.

bottles666 wrote:BTW, Platypus, I like your posts

Thanks. I enjoy reading your posts. I get the impression that you can see more of the picture than I can...as if you are further along your path, or simply wiser than me.

I wanted to reply to this before, but I had to think about this a little bit. I actually went through most of the scales today, so I got a pretty good idea of what I feel like.

1-on-1 depends very much on the person. If I know the person really well and I trust them fully this is no problem for me, though I will still think very hard about how much I will let out. Other than that it is pretty much the same as being alone (in a non-lonely phase)
If I know them well, but don't trust them fully (and I do mean fully) I really watch my words and am worrying about what they will think of me. I generally will think this is very tiresome.
If I know someone somewhat, I tend to be quite anxious, because I feel the burden of conversation is very much on me, and I'm a lousy conversationalist.
If I don't know them at all, it can be reasonably ok, though I do feel quite awkward most of the time. Again the burden of conversation is what I feel strongly here as well.

In a small group I tend to enjoy being in a group with an uneven number of people (like 3 or 5) as this allows me to not have to be conversating all the time. I can actually stand back and just listen a bit.
I do feel somewhat awkward in loud environments as I tend to not be really able to hear what people are saying in this situation, so I just play it by gestures and keeping everything to a "yes", "no", "indeed" depending on my interpretation of their body language. I really do hate it when that happens, and I don't know if it's a concentration issue, or if I am slighty noise deaf.
This all of course also depends very much on the people present, following roughly the same distribution as there is in the 1-on-1 environment, though the first two groups (of people I know pretty well) merge together a bit more.

A large group can go either way for me. If it's a large group with a commen "goal", like a crowd at a rock show I actually quite like it. It allows me to stay pretty annonymous and unpressured.
But still I am somewhat weary of meeting someone in the large group (with whom I didn't agree to meet up) that I know (somewhat, or really well). I generally just want to do my own thing and have prepared myself for that and meeting someone I know foils that plan, as now I have to socialise on a 1-on-1 or small group basis, which requires a different mental preparation from me.
A large crowd without a common goal (a busy street or something) I tend to find really annoying as I am quite a fast walker and I just want to do my own thing and in this situation the group is preventing me from doing what I want to do. So that's quite an irritating thing, especially with people all of a sudden stopping and darting elsewhere, etc. I am always weary of bumping in to them as I will have to interact on a 1-on-1 basis again, which I don't like as these aren't the most friendly encounters.
So in these groups I am always looking for the path of least resistence to get through them, both in a physical and in a mental way. Of course here also I have the fear of meeting somebody I know.

In reguards to humanity overall I have a very split view. I actually feel that a large part of the human population can be wiped out without great loss (search "bill hicks freebird" on youtube, though be warned it is pretty graphic), but at the same time I do feel I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, always worrying about how everybody else is doing. I like to be naive and think in the end humanity will do the right thing, but at the same time I am disillusioned so many times it is unbelievable. And then people question me for my bleak outlook on life, humanity and the world, saying I should be more positive...
Well hell, to me the pessimists are the real optimists they are just so battered and bruised that they have to protect themselves by going to the other extreme...