Some thoughts came together and solidified for me, so allow me to share them with you if you will.
I am an aspie, so I have spent my life studying people, trying to figure out how they work, they all seem to have been born with a manual on how to be a person and I just wasnt, so I had to watch them and learn. After 10 years I learned to imitate them, after 20 years I learned to be like them, and after 30 years I have seen through them and realised that what I saw as the "manual to being a human" is just a farce, they have no more idea than I do, they just seem to find it so easy because they dont care that they are getting it so completely wrong, and seem to get on so well with each other because there are more of them than of aspies. The more I look at the world around me, the more I am convinced that mankind, far from knowing how to be people, are clinically and measurably insane. I see people basing their beliefs on what they wish was true rather than endless overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I see people deliberately and consistently making the worst choice available I see people stumbling through life and cursing life for getting in the way when they walk into every problem they could have avoided if they just thought about it, I see friends betray each other on whims and instead value the praise of people they dont know, I have seen people convinced of their innocence even during committing a crime, I have seen people value the appearance of skill over actual growth as a person, I have seen the never ending madness of a species that, now that I think about it, I am surprised has survived this long, they are all absolute lunatics and the only reason they get to call themselves "sane" is because there are so many of them that they are the ones who got to define "sanity".
Then I come here.
On SF I dont see unstable or crazy people, I dont see worthless people, I dont see weak people, or any of the other things people are always calling themselves on here. When I come to SF I see a group of the only sane people I know. People suffering under the constant barrage of madness of the world around them, people who cant take living in a world were the insane define sanity, where nothing ever makes sense and "justice" is simultaneously a high ideal and a joke. I come here and I see considered people, thinking about right and wrong, really evaluating their lives and themselves and asking the important questions, "am I a good person?", "why is the world the way it is?", "what is my fellow human thinking and feeling?", "what if anything can I do to make things better for myself?", "what can I do to help others?", "why am I alive?" These are famously the thoughts of the greatest thinkers and philosophers in history, Socrates even said "An unexamined life is not worth living" and yet here is the only place I see anyone living up to that ideal. This is a place full of the sane, the just, the noble and the good. People who are shunned because they know who they are rather than relying on others to tell them, people who are hurt by those they try so hard to help, people who were attacked by their protectors, people who cant see how truly wonderful they are because the standards they hold themselves to is just too high, and their base idea for what a person is just too virtuous so they discount all their virtues as just common acts and all their failings as deep shame. I come here even when I dont NEED to because here is where I can always count on finding people worth knowing.
If, in my day to day life, I was surrounded with the calibre of people I find on SF every single day, I would have lived a much happier, easier and better life than I do.
I am an aspie, so I have spent my life studying people, trying to figure out how they work, they all seem to have been born with a manual on how to be a person and I just wasnt, so I had to watch them and learn. After 10 years I learned to imitate them, after 20 years I learned to be like them, and after 30 years I have seen through them and realised that what I saw as the "manual to being a human" is just a farce, they have no more idea than I do, they just seem to find it so easy because they dont care that they are getting it so completely wrong, and seem to get on so well with each other because there are more of them than of aspies. The more I look at the world around me, the more I am convinced that mankind, far from knowing how to be people, are clinically and measurably insane. I see people basing their beliefs on what they wish was true rather than endless overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I see people deliberately and consistently making the worst choice available I see people stumbling through life and cursing life for getting in the way when they walk into every problem they could have avoided if they just thought about it, I see friends betray each other on whims and instead value the praise of people they dont know, I have seen people convinced of their innocence even during committing a crime, I have seen people value the appearance of skill over actual growth as a person, I have seen the never ending madness of a species that, now that I think about it, I am surprised has survived this long, they are all absolute lunatics and the only reason they get to call themselves "sane" is because there are so many of them that they are the ones who got to define "sanity".
Then I come here.
On SF I dont see unstable or crazy people, I dont see worthless people, I dont see weak people, or any of the other things people are always calling themselves on here. When I come to SF I see a group of the only sane people I know. People suffering under the constant barrage of madness of the world around them, people who cant take living in a world were the insane define sanity, where nothing ever makes sense and "justice" is simultaneously a high ideal and a joke. I come here and I see considered people, thinking about right and wrong, really evaluating their lives and themselves and asking the important questions, "am I a good person?", "why is the world the way it is?", "what is my fellow human thinking and feeling?", "what if anything can I do to make things better for myself?", "what can I do to help others?", "why am I alive?" These are famously the thoughts of the greatest thinkers and philosophers in history, Socrates even said "An unexamined life is not worth living" and yet here is the only place I see anyone living up to that ideal. This is a place full of the sane, the just, the noble and the good. People who are shunned because they know who they are rather than relying on others to tell them, people who are hurt by those they try so hard to help, people who were attacked by their protectors, people who cant see how truly wonderful they are because the standards they hold themselves to is just too high, and their base idea for what a person is just too virtuous so they discount all their virtues as just common acts and all their failings as deep shame. I come here even when I dont NEED to because here is where I can always count on finding people worth knowing.
If, in my day to day life, I was surrounded with the calibre of people I find on SF every single day, I would have lived a much happier, easier and better life than I do.