How Do You Feel About People?

smirks wrote:I don't know if people are necessarily boring, but I think there is a limit to the novelty of interacting with any one particular person. I really just want to suck all of the new and interesting ideas I haven't been exposed to out of their heads and then move on, so I don't have to hear about what they ate for lunch today. Or not-very-amusing office anecdotes.

This is something I would have said at one point. I think the novelty has worn off. Don't get me wrong, people can still amuse me. That's probably a negative statement. This is awkward because we are also talking about each other. Sure, we could say we are different but are we really? Maybe just a different kind of different?

emillionth wrote:In that situation, you'd very likely be much more annoyed/disappointed than you would be appreciative. You appreciate that they care enough, but you wish they hadn't done whatever it is that they did for you. Gratefulness can be a strong emotion, but appreciation is something else. It's more like a concept.

The degree to which you'd be emotionally sincere would be roughly proportional to the degree that your reaction would upset the other person. It's a choice, and you just can't choose both. And verbally explaining all the facets of how you feel about it would just be awkward, as if you were approaching the situation from an academic perspective instead of a personal one.

If you want to be social, you may not need to actually straight up lie at all (though in general you probably will), but you do need to play along with someone to some degree on a regular basis. Even just plain politeness is usually a form of prosocial insincerity if you think about it.

Maybe the more annoyed/disappointed feelings are your experience, but personally I don't feel that way. I'm kind of weird in that I very often give as much or more weight to other people's perspective than my own, just because people tend to have larger emotional reactions than I do. I have had good results recently with emotional sincerity, especially when acknowledging people's good intentions.

I feel politeness can come from a genuine place if you place some value on others' time and feelings.

I am very bad at being okay with lying. I am very bad at playing along with things I don't agree with.I don't know how people do it so often without driving themselves crazy.

-- Wed Sep 05, 2018 10:53 pm --

emillionth wrote:In that situation, you'd very likely be much more annoyed/disappointed than you would be appreciative. You appreciate that they care enough, but you wish they hadn't done whatever it is that they did for you. Gratefulness can be a strong emotion, but appreciation is something else. It's more like a concept.

The degree to which you'd be emotionally sincere would be roughly proportional to the degree that your reaction would upset the other person. It's a choice, and you just can't choose both. And verbally explaining all the facets of how you feel about it would just be awkward, as if you were approaching the situation from an academic perspective instead of a personal one.

If you want to be social, you may not need to actually straight up lie at all (though in general you probably will), but you do need to play along with someone to some degree on a regular basis. Even just plain politeness is usually a form of prosocial insincerity if you think about it.

Maybe the more annoyed/disappointed feelings are your experience, but personally I don't feel that way. I'm kind of weird in that I very often give as much or more weight to other people's perspective than my own, just because people tend to have larger emotional reactions than I do. I have had good results recently with emotional sincerity, especially when acknowledging people's good intentions.

I feel politeness can come from a genuine place if you place some value on others' time and feelings.

I am very bad at being okay with lying. I am very bad at playing along with things I don't agree with.I don't know how people do it so often without driving themselves crazy.

iabsurdlyexist wrote:

smirks wrote:I don't know if people are necessarily boring, but I think there is a limit to the novelty of interacting with any one particular person. I really just want to suck all of the new and interesting ideas I haven't been exposed to out of their heads and then move on, so I don't have to hear about what they ate for lunch today. Or not-very-amusing office anecdotes.

This is something I would have said at one point. I think the novelty has worn off. Don't get me wrong, people can still amuse me. That's probably a negative statement. This is awkward because we are also talking about each other. Sure, we could say we are different but are we really? Maybe just a different kind of different?

Yes? I'm not sure I would get along with anyone in this forum if we met in real life. I come here for a very specialized discussion, usually when I'm trying to process something related to dealing with other people.

But there's a whole constellation of thoughts swirling in my head constantly that I have nowhere to put. You can't exactly follow up "hey let me tell you about my lunch meeting" with "hey, I've been redesigning the human housing problem in my head for the past three weeks, let me tell you about my ideas" -- and where even do you go with that sort of thought anyway?

I get the feeling that you don't mean what I understand by the word "sincerity" when you use it. Like here:

smirks wrote:I'm kind of weird in that I very often give as much or more weight to other people's perspective than my own, just because people tend to have larger emotional reactions than I do.

That's not sincerity as I see it, it's thoughtfulness. Maybe you're sincerely thoughtful, but then it's already something indirect. Something that you wouldn't do or express if you were being impulsive.

smirks wrote:I am very bad at being okay with lying. I am very bad at playing along with things I don't agree with.I don't know how people do it so often without driving themselves crazy.

Me too, very much. Probably for slightly different reasons though. One of my reasons is that it takes a lot of effort for me to censor myself. I normally have a lot of self-restraint, but it's not for nothing, it's because I really need it. I tend to be either disproportionately excited or (more often) disproportionately cynical, with not much in between. ("Not much in between" seems to be a recurring theme when I'm talking about myself.)

smirks wrote:But there's a whole constellation of thoughts swirling in my head constantly that I have nowhere to put. You can't exactly follow up "hey let me tell you about my lunch meeting" with "hey, I've been redesigning the human housing problem in my head for the past three weeks, let me tell you about my ideas" -- and where even do you go with that sort of thought anyway?

Lucky for me, the few people I do talk to actually don't mind listening to that kind of crap, or even commenting on it themselves sometimes. So I do exactly that on a regular basis: I go from "what my last meal was like" to "what I've been wondering about the future of humanity and the universe" and whatnot.

And then there's the category of "everybody else" (people who actually do mind listening to that kind of crap in that kind of random way). On any personal level, I don't know what use they could be to me, and even less so what use I could be to them.

emillionth wrote:I get the feeling that you don't mean what I understand by the word "sincerity" when you use it. Like here:

smirks wrote:I'm kind of weird in that I very often give as much or more weight to other people's perspective than my own, just because people tend to have larger emotional reactions than I do.

That's not sincerity as I see it, it's thoughtfulness. Maybe you're sincerely thoughtful, but then it's already something indirect. Something that you wouldn't do or express if you were being impulsive.

smirks wrote:I am very bad at being okay with lying. I am very bad at playing along with things I don't agree with.I don't know how people do it so often without driving themselves crazy.

Me too, very much. Probably for slightly different reasons though. One of my reasons is that it takes a lot of effort for me to censor myself. I normally have a lot of self-restraint, but it's not for nothing, it's because I really need it. I tend to be either disproportionately excited or (more often) disproportionately cynical, with not much in between. ("Not much in between" seems to be a recurring theme when I'm talking about myself.)

I think that you are probably a little more cynical than I am. Do you think that sincere thoughts or feelings have to be selfish in nature?

smirks wrote:I think that you are probably a little more cynical than I am.

Probably.

Do you think that sincere thoughts or feelings have to be selfish in nature?

Not necessarily. The drunk who tells you "I love you, man" is probably being very sincere (he's not making a lot of sense or being very meaningful, but... sincere nonetheless). And he'll buy you a beer just because.

I'd say "self-focused" rather than "selfish". Maybe you feel like helping someone. Then it's sincere if you do help them. Maybe you don't feel like it, but willingly decide to help them anyway. Then maybe it's out of sincere consideration, but still, there'll be a certain distance added between you and the act. And then if you express or imply that you're gladly doing it (and not that you're willfully making the effort to do something you'd rather not do), I think that's "insincere" (quotation marks because the word has a negative connotation that I'm not actually implying here).

emillionth wrote:Lucky for me, the few people I do talk to actually don't mind listening to that kind of crap, or even commenting on it themselves sometimes. So I do exactly that on a regular basis: I go from "what my last meal was like" to "what I've been wondering about the future of humanity and the universe" and whatnot.

Same here for the last place I worked at. They'd let me go off on my big idea tangents. I mean, listening to me is better than work, right? Captive audience? After one of those sessions with a coworker I'd lunch with is when I was told I think differently than most people. I wonder if it's because people are caught up in all their little affairs that they never think outside of them or just don't have that capability. Since I don't have much of my own affairs, I guess I have space for thinking bigger. Either way, it's not like I ever accomplish anything with them. Maybe I inspired someone and don't realize it.

Thanks to a lot of mommy issues and 90% of my more messed up events in my life having been carried out by women, I have a hard time not thinking positively regarding them. The annoying thing is I don't have a hard time talking to them but it takes me a loooong time to build up trust with females. When that happens it's almost like they're not male or female but a person I find as being good people. Men don't normally do a lot of talking and when they do it's usually something I can talk about. Because of this I tend to feel more comfortable being nearer to men than women if I have to make a choice. Men don't ask me if I have a boyfriend, if we want kids, how long we've lived together, gossip etc. I'm not ruling out that it might be a "talking to the same vs opposite gender" sort of thing. Men can do this too however I barely have ever encountered them doing it.

I recently found out how to cope with this. When I must talk to my mother I have to deal with her droning on about work or how my dad's annoying her or other things I tune out while occasionally saying "Mmm hmm". My mom despite loving to hear herself talk loves getting to know something about me. Normally I refrain from telling her any details because she uses it against me. I've found if I take over while "obsessing" over things I like that have no real effect on my life she curtails the conversation by suddenly having to go off and do a something important.

The one fairly "girly" thing I do is get my hair done. I have way too much of it and cutting it makes it worse since I've never found anything that keeps it pulled back or not being an extremely bad looking afro. The women there almost never try talking to me anymore but on occasion there'll be a new person who feels the compulsion to play 20 questions.

New girl starts this up one day and due to me playing a DnD type of game on my phone she said "I noticed your game and wonder if you read comic books too." I said yes. Surprisingly another stylist came over and sat quietly and grinning. The one working on my hair (had not actually read comics but only seen movies) told me what ones she was into. She was clearly disappointed when I critiqued her favorites. I probably shoulda just given her suggestions but oh well. She asked me about mine. The quiet one became my favorite real quick by nodding like crazy whenever I mentioned characters who I liked and why. I could tell she never got this kind of conversation here and I knew I hadn't in the years I've been going there. The stylist told me last week she'd started reading a comic of one of my favorites and how she still loves hers but said mine is cool too.

I've learned since to have a random topic that doesn't necessarily apply to what I've been up to lately and if the conversation gets too mundane I start in with it. I first start by asking what they've been up to and then claim I've being doing "xyz" involving said topic. If they can't relate they shut up. Last Tuesday I taught way too many of them about Steam and Imgur. I flipped through the phone app of Imgur and they watched and asked questions about things in my favorites feed that gave me some hope in humanity. There were lots of posts they didn't know the references to but were intrigued and asked questions. I'm hoping I don't hear too many of them have partners who simply didn't tell them. If so I may not trust either gender. >.O; I'm glad I could help them broaden (hah) their horizons but pains me how many had never heard of either. The way they asked questions and talked to me honestly felt like they had never used computers before.

naps wrote:I try to be true to myself, but sincerity is another matter. I feel like I have a distorted image of myself, which is not the same as what was discussed above, but maybe a kind of denial of what I need to do (or sacrifice) to function better.

Maybe but I feel it's kinda like the phrase "fake it to make it"

If it's an outright lie than that's that. At the same time though, if it's you feeling you're a certain way then that's how you are to you whether others see you that way or not. There's also of course the attempt at becoming something better by acting as if the person is already their idealized image of themselves until if/when they finally become whatever that image is.