"I'm drowning in ***holes"

This is a line from a great little film out on video now called "Igby Goes Down."

So, I thought it would be fun to start a debate more about the human spirit and less about politics or religion.

Does anyone ever have the feeling that there's no one around them they can respect? Does anyone ever feel they have been disappointed by a majority of the people they have known, that there are very few people who wouldn't lie to them or cheat them or manipulate them given motive and opportunity. How many people do you have in your life that you completely trust?

This is an age-old whine about life, one that has even been expressed in song: "I keep searching for a heart of gold...and I'm getting old."

I'll list the three most popular responses:

1) just model good behavior for other people. Be the best you can be. Others will follow.

2) Amen, brother. People suck. Don't trust them.

3) Get therapy. You are clinically depressed.

Where do you fall? Do you respect the people around you, or are you drowning in ***holes?

 

2) Amen, brother. People suck. Don't trust them.

 

1) just model good behavior for other people. Be the best you can be. Others will follow.

 

sort of a combination of 1 and 2. i do what i can, i live my life as i see fit to live it, and i try to balnce not expecting much from people with not being hostile towards them for it. it's not their fault that they're stupid...

 

A lot of people I know advocate one form or another of the "kill em with kindness" approach.

The idea is, it doesn't matter so much what people are like and how they act as it matters how you respond to them.

I agree with that, essentially, but I also have a problem with the idea that we have no right to expect people to behave a certain way - that to expect a certain level of goodwill from the people we encounter is fundamentally a waste of time.

 

In my experience, people for the most part are arrogant, stupid, selfish, lazy, and cruel. They are constantly falling flat on their faces, and then clawing their way back up any way they can.

People who are otherwise are the exception, but ironically I always give people the benefit of the doubt and expect them to act above their baser nature. I am certainly not above this; I have been everything that I mentioned above, and am an admitted ***hole. I have gotten to a point, despite my relatively young age, where I no longer care for people in general, and it is easy to get on my nerves. I think it comes from being on a small military base in a foreign country, where there is no escape from the people that you are tired of. Not only are they your moronic coworkers, but they're your neighbors, too. That bugs me.

 

This is one of the reason families are so important. If you have a spouse you can trust, or children you can love unconditionally, regardless of their flaws, you can sort of sidestep the problem of whether people are fundamentally good or bad.

 

that helps in a limited way, but it's really, really easy to get stuck in a bubble with your family or other close circle, and in those cases the close environment allows small gripes to fester into long-tern resentment. you have to have to have to stay deeply engaged with the outside world or all the relationships inside the family tend to go septic...

 

That's exactly right. You define the problem perfectly. We have to stay engaged with the outside world, but there are severe limits on the kind of trust it makes sense to place on "outsiders." And that can include lifelong friends, lovers, work colleagues. If people are fundamentally not trustworthy, what kind of expectations do we have a right to have vis a vis their behavior?

 

You know, it does help to have that limited few that you can depend on. My wife, for one. If it weren't for her, I'd most likely spend my free time here in the base pub. No lie. I never drank before I came here, but it sort of sucks you in.

Other than her, I have a good friend here whom I can confide in, and vice versa. Aside from him, everyone else bugs me.

I think a lot of it is a perspective thing. I've been told on more than one occasion that I'm anti-social, or that I have a bad attitude, or that I am just a jerk. My thing is that I look at work as work, not a place to hang out and chat the hours away. I'm also not a kiss-(censored), so I don't fit in with the general military populace very well.

I, on the other hand, think that I am perfectly normal, and can be friendly with the right people. I've had many friends, and people I care about like me. I just don't abide laziness, and that's all I've found here.

I think I'm venting more than answering your question, so I'll just shut-up now.

 

Well, you're vent is useful.

Are people whom other people tend to characterize as "anti-social" more likely to believe that the people around them are jerks/miscreants/good-for-nothings, etc.? Is that a function of being anti-social, that we naturally think ill of our fellow men? and women?

 

Well, the only reason that I am viewed as anti-social is because I don't hang out with people that I don't like, which just happens to be the vast majority of the people I work/live with (like I said, they are one and the same).

The real question is this: what are the roots of my feelings towards my coworkers? Do I have an over-inflated sense of ego that makes me feel that I am better than they are? Do I feel intimated by them, and thus distance myself from them to keep from being embarrassed in front of them? Do I watch them sit on their computers surfing the internet while I go out and work my butt off all day, and then have them come to me with question after question because they can't do their own job, and then get in trouble when I don't help them?

I prefer to think it's the last one, but introspection is the most difficult thing to do without bias.

 

Amen, brother. But it at the same time I struggle against it. If one of the things I am the most offended by having to do with the general public has to do with a lack of respect, why perpetuate it? However, this is very hard.

 

The way to get along best in life to to trust no-one, rely on no-one for anything, and to generally think of people as stupid untill proved otherwise.

Why? Because most of the time, you shouldn't trust them, you can't rely on them for anything, and they are stupid, or at least ignorant.

I belive it's a quote somewhere, "If you are an optimist, you expect the best, and are crushed when it dosen't ahppen. If you are a pessimist, you expect the worst, and are plesently suprised when things don't turn out for the worst."

 

I tend toward the pessimist approach. I expect very little from people, and they rarely surprise me. There are times though when I wish I were "pleasantly surprised" more oftn.

I've always thought of myself as a great judge of human nature. I find it easy to empathize with people, to figure out what motivates them. The problem is, it tends to make it very easy for me to predict what people will do, and maybe that knowledge is a dehumanizing force...too reductive...and dangerous for the health of a relationship.

 

I love this "surrounded by idiots" point of view. It's fascinating how everyone insists that everyone else is an idiot while they are perfectly infalliable.

 

That has to be part of the problem, right? Introspection is impossible. People project their own faults onto other people, excuse themselves for the very things that annoys them most about the people around them. It is one of the most ingrained behavioral traits - and one of the things that makes us so unlikable.

 

I used to be a very positive nice person, and to an extent i still am. Unfortunitly i find that i end up giving more to people then i get in return. I don't really go way out of my way to give to people, and i don't feel i ask for too much out of them. There was a "friend" of mine that i helped out with her classes and i also got her a job. I needed her help with some thing and when i asked for it she completely screwed. That's when i felt likes i was being used. I no longer have anything to do with this person. I've found that there are many people who happily screw people over. I guess i would classify myself as a life sucks type of person, but i will also say that not everything and everybody sucks. I guess i'm trying to say that the average is on the sucky side.

 

People project their own faults onto other people, excuse themselves for the very things that annoys them most about the people around them. It is one of the most ingrained behavioral traits - and one of the things that makes us so unlikable

Not all people...some of us do actually cut ourselves apart when it comes to noticing our own faults, and consciously try not to excuse ourselves for those actions which we would find abhorrent in others.

Is it a perfect process? No, but it is possible, and it helps keep one in check when it comes to behavior (but is it healthy to think that in many ways, you are a worse individual than the others around you? Is that keeping yourself non-egotistical, or just self-sabotaging?).