PEOPLE
So today I got into an argument with my roomie/current good buddy. It's a complicated subject to really discuss, but the gist of it is he thought he was doing a flawless job at work, so the mistakes that happened tonight were the fault of the company/his coworkers, and I was trying to get him to take up the mindset that there is always something he can be doing to help them out/make it not happen.
SO THE GUY GETS SUPER-PISSED AT ME because I'm not giving him 'a solution'. I-- don't really know what to do about this. I mean I told him I was probably poorly communicating because cutting through his dense wall of bullshittery wasn't quite cutting it and, in fact, was just getting him ANGRIER at me... but, whatever. It's beyond my help now. All I can really do is lament his bull-headedness.
The moral of this story is that I'm kind of wondering if people can truly co-exist in a happy, altruistic manner. I understand that in any relationship there will be conflicts and yelling, but it seems to me that the bottom line of most person-to-person interactions is that people are looking out for themselves more than anything else. It sounds very depressing, sure, but there are a few reasonings for it. The one I'm thinking of involves one of the great Existential Crises of the human condition:
No matter how hard you try, you can't ever really KNOW somebody else. You're born alone, you die alone, and you're the only person you'll ever truly, intimately experience. People are, to some level, incapable of understanding that the other has needs and urges similar to theirs on that instinctive, natural level that they understand themselves. So there are going to be points, in any relationship, where a person simply forgets about the other's stake in things, or, even worse, CHOOSES to throw their own above the other person's. This is not a good thing, it's where hurt feelings and arguments come from.
The way people seem to be acting these days makes me think that there's something in the air, culture, or whatever... something causing people to throw their priorities on top of everything else even more than they normally might. Blame it on modern society's huge push for individual success, maybe. Perhaps it's just my current living/social situation - I've got a lot of friends who don't really think in terms of what other people may want or enjoy. I guess I've been rambling a lot, but the bottom line of this thought process is...
I really do wonder if we aren't better off, the way people are these days, just forgoing the fanciful notion that we can find somebody who we'll well and truly mesh with. This isn't just, say, marriage, I'm talking about. It's something so simple as a lifelong friendship, or something along those lines. I mean, if you can't befriend/love a genuine person, what's the point? It's just going to hurt you in the long run.
SO THE GUY GETS SUPER-PISSED AT ME because I'm not giving him 'a solution'. I-- don't really know what to do about this. I mean I told him I was probably poorly communicating because cutting through his dense wall of bullshittery wasn't quite cutting it and, in fact, was just getting him ANGRIER at me... but, whatever. It's beyond my help now. All I can really do is lament his bull-headedness.
The moral of this story is that I'm kind of wondering if people can truly co-exist in a happy, altruistic manner. I understand that in any relationship there will be conflicts and yelling, but it seems to me that the bottom line of most person-to-person interactions is that people are looking out for themselves more than anything else. It sounds very depressing, sure, but there are a few reasonings for it. The one I'm thinking of involves one of the great Existential Crises of the human condition:
No matter how hard you try, you can't ever really KNOW somebody else. You're born alone, you die alone, and you're the only person you'll ever truly, intimately experience. People are, to some level, incapable of understanding that the other has needs and urges similar to theirs on that instinctive, natural level that they understand themselves. So there are going to be points, in any relationship, where a person simply forgets about the other's stake in things, or, even worse, CHOOSES to throw their own above the other person's. This is not a good thing, it's where hurt feelings and arguments come from.
The way people seem to be acting these days makes me think that there's something in the air, culture, or whatever... something causing people to throw their priorities on top of everything else even more than they normally might. Blame it on modern society's huge push for individual success, maybe. Perhaps it's just my current living/social situation - I've got a lot of friends who don't really think in terms of what other people may want or enjoy. I guess I've been rambling a lot, but the bottom line of this thought process is...
I really do wonder if we aren't better off, the way people are these days, just forgoing the fanciful notion that we can find somebody who we'll well and truly mesh with. This isn't just, say, marriage, I'm talking about. It's something so simple as a lifelong friendship, or something along those lines. I mean, if you can't befriend/love a genuine person, what's the point? It's just going to hurt you in the long run.