I was thinking over what you said about finding spaces not involved in culture wars. Is this really okay? During the past year when I tried bonding with strangers it turned out they're all anti-kink or aphobic or something. My ex bff called me a "freak" over kink discourse. So I decided I only need my few trusted friends. Others are hostile filth. But some said isolating myself is unhealthy. Is that true? I can't handle the heat, so I should stay out of the kitchen... But it's kind of lonely.
I was thinking over what you said about finding spaces not involved in culture wars. Is this really okay?
Yes.
So I decided I only need my few trusted friends. Others are hostile filth.
Hmm.
Knowing people from a wide range of backgrounds, and being politically and socially involved, can be healthy or it can be unhealthy. When it means getting into constant fights over your own private life with people who are calling you a freak, it’s unhealthy, and prioritizing relationships with people who don’t treat you that way is a great idea. But I do have some worries about the ways you’re thinking of it here.
Most people are not hostile filth. It might be that most people cannot be a good friend to you. Most people you’ve interacted with have treated you poorly, and it is okay to decide that you don’t want to interact with them. But lots of people are trying, from the tiny corner of human experiences which they have seen and which they understand, to paint the lines in a way that makes for a good world full of human flourishing. They often suck at it. It’s okay to be annoyed at how much they suck at it; it’s okay to look out at the world and go ‘come on, you could try just the tiniest bit harder to understand me and then you wouldn’t be hurting me constantly and I am sick and tired of your best because your best sucks’.
I think ‘most people are not terrible, and most people are trying to be kind and good’ is sometimes an incredibly threatening thing to say. Some people have been taught that the only reason they can cut someone out of their life is because they are terrible. So saying ‘no, they aren’t terrible’ is saying ‘I deny your excuse for not having that person in your life’. The thing is, it doesn’t matter if someone is the greatest, most virtuous, most loving, most dedicated person in the universe, if being around them is not pleasant for you you get to stop doing it. Once you believe that, it is a lot less threatening to believe that most people are well-meaning and decent.
So I think you should feel more okay with not interacting with people and also less inclined to think of those people as hostile filth, and I sort of expect those to be related to each other.
And this also seems relevant to your feeling lonely and isolated. I think there is a world of difference between ‘spending time with these people makes me unhappy, and so I don’t want to do it’ and ‘these are bad people’. Feeling like everyone in the world except a few trusted friends is a bad person is absolutely going to be isolating! You can’t dare let your current relationships slip through your hands, because they’re the only people who aren’t terrible in an ocean of terrible! You can’t casually enjoy a non-political talk with a stranger, because they are terrible and might turn on you! That sounds exhausting!
The healthier way to think about this is ‘I get to decide whether interacting with someone is making me happy or making me sad. If it’s making me sad, I get to stop. I don’t have to put up with people who hurt me for the sake of ‘not isolating myself’. Correspondingly, I don’t have to cut someone out of my life for being ‘bad’ if interacting with them makes me happy. I can just decide who I want to spend time with, and deciding not to spend time with someone is not judging them unworthy or evil, it’s just noticing that I don’t like spending time with them.’
This is categorically always okay. It can still be isolating, if you notice that all of the people around you make you sad, and in that case I urge you to look for people who don’t, because it is definitely important to have people who you actually like interacting with. But I think it will be less isolating than ‘most people are bad and so either I interact with them anyway because it is virtuous or I avoid them and feel lonely’, because it takes the ‘badness’ and ‘virtuousness’ out of the question and lets you just ask yourself what you want.