And to be fair it could be the environments I'm dealing with and what I'm having to do to my own way of thinking to survive.Ecurb wrote: ↑July 29th, 2020, 4:37 pm There's a grain of truth here, but only a grain. Humans do compete, but they also cooperate. We're actually formed not by the competition, but by the cooperation. All mammals are dependent on their mothers, who supply them with milk. Humans wouldn't even resemble humans without their cooperatively created culture: without language, and religion, and law, and other institutions that are cooperative by their very nature. One can emphasize either the cooperation or the competition; both play a role in human society. But I think you're emphasizing the wrong one.
It's a salient enough dynamics lets just say that to not automatically conform to your environment, I don't mean practical conformity like being able to get along and work well with others or make sense but shibboleth conformity like sharing all of the hobbies, interests, values, beliefs, etc. of your coworkers of the people around you, means that your days are numbered. The really horrifying side of that is realizing that yes, you have a right to your own beliefs and to your own interests and hobbies, and it's closely tethered to your right to be destroyed.
I find it increasingly difficult to find people who want to even exchange pleasantries and it seems like they're looking for status-markers first before they figure out how to engage. It would be one thing if this was all happening to me, odds of it signalling that there's something wrong with me would be quite high in that case (and who, that has something wrong with them, can see it - that seems reflexive), but if that were the case I shouldn't see the same things happening to other people regularly. My best explanation - we're in a fitness war or an arms race where cluster B personality disorders are dictating the terms and when its like that - if you're a guy, you're literally a wallet and a height. If you're a woman in those conditions you're a set of measurements. Personalities don't matter, values don't matter, any humanity in relating to other people turns into 'Wait wait wait...stop. Show me your status card and your social status card. Below 700? That's what I thought, get lost'.