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MathiasZaman comments on Open Thread, Feb. 2 - Feb 8, 2015 - Less Wrong
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I've recently had a discussion about ethics here in this thread, and the conclusion I've arrived at is that a big reason for my lack of motivation is lack of social support.
I don't know if this is the right place to post this, nor am I fully clear on what kind of response I am expecting. I guess I would like advice and emotional support with this issue.
I have basically been in shutdown mode for the past year because I'm not getting the kind of support I need, and I have my doubts I will ever get the kind of support I need.
I am in my mid-twenties, highly intelligent and have nonconformist opinions - I also have had personal difficulties and not lived a very happy life so far. I find myself unable to connect to other people when it comes to personal stuff because most people, even well-meaning ones, can't understand what's going on for me. That goes for mental health professionals as well. And unfortunately people, even mental health professionals, can be surprisingly mean if I point out that their well-meaning opinions or advice aren't working for me - which usually ends up with them going into a death spiral of self-justification and/or hurt feelings.
I doubt therapy would work for me (based on previous experiences), because of the personal connection with the therapist not working, and the information and strategies offered to be of rather mediocre quality - mostly things I already know, things that are rather obvious, things that aren't generally true and things that don't apply to me. I doubt anything would actually work for me actually, except actually solving the underlying problem which is that I don't have a support network, "tribe", or whatever you want to call it. Or at least having a possible solution in sight.
It's not so much about receiving support (although that's a part of it) - I guess I would like to have something meaningful to do. Right now I have an at least partially altruistic mindset, and nothing to direct it at, because I have a hard time liking "people" at large. I would like to have a personal connection to a person or people who I actually feel that I like - because otherwise when I feel like being doing something positive either for specific people or for the world, I don't even have an accessible example of someone who I would want to benefit from the results of that.
So yeah. I'm not sure what to do about this, because I'm not feeling very hopeful at the moment. I find that for whatever reason even things I imagine to would be very basic (like being understood by other people) are really hard to find in reality.
...I notice I am feeling confused about this, because the particular set of experiences I just described seems to be extremely non-typical among people in general, and I'm not expecting it to be
Edit: I don't live in the US (I feel this is worth sharing because it affects the advice/options available).
The obvious suggestion is going to (or starting) a local Less Wrong meetup. They're a good way to meet people who can become your "tribe."
Another option (and one that worked very well for me for quite a while) was to move most of my in-group needs online. I don't make a strong distinction between cyberspace and meatspace friendships, so this worked out pretty well. The "bonobo rationalists" of tumblr have a skype group that has general conversation, if you need something to try out.
What is important to keep in mind is that "having a tribe," means that most of your interactions will (and maybe should?) be trivial and banal. You need to build a rapport with the people, so that your brain will more readily accept their praise and advice.
I agree, and I would definitely visit one if there was one nearby (note: I don't live in the US. Edited the original post to reflect that).
As for trying to start a meetup - intuitively I feel there are several reasons why that might be problematic. And I don't know if there are enough (or any) rationalists in my area.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for the suggestion. I believe I have found the contact information for that.
I don't know if I need that. Maybe other people need to have trivial interactions with me to see me as in-group, I don't know. My experience with that is that the trivial interactions are not a reliable indicator for the quality of non-trivial interactions.
...
I have a feeling that the implication here is that the way to form connections is to have a bunch of casual interactions (that's my prior expectation for how many kinds of connections work, anyway).
Maybe that's not really the implication, so I might be going on a tangent here... but I'd like to share this anyway.
Casual interactions work very poorly for me, and I have a feeling that that way to connect select against my particular mindset.
The problem with casual interactions (the way I see it) is that they put too much weight on similarity and agreement about relatively unimportant things.
It's signalling "I'm similar to you in a lot of ways" as a proxy for signalling "I'm not crazy, trustworthy, have reasonable values, etc etc...".
I think it's kind of like using "academic achievement" as a proxy for "learning", because trying to measure "learning" directly is too inconvenient. (I don't know what the term here is, lost purpose?).
I'd rather have people directly tell me what they expect, so I can tell them whether I think I can live up to that - rather than having to signal that indirectly. The problem with signalling is that a lot of standard signals people are simply not true for me (and there's dishonesty and self-deception involved in signalling because that obviously allows for stronger signals). For example, my thinking patterns are different from most people so I can't use "yeah, I've had exactly the same experience" as a bonding thing.
And, generally speaking, I suspect there might not be enough self-awareness in people for me to be able to say "you know, we're sitting here talking about X but I suspect you're actually interested in Y. How about we talk about that directly?". (or maybe there's some kind of taboo against doing exactly that, I don't know).
I understand what you mean, but think of causal interactions as a fast, cheap filter.
Finding people you'd really like to connect to will necessary involve a lot of trial and error. You would like to minimize the costs (in time and effort) of the trials and the errors. Causal connections basically allow you to do this: you have a limited, surface contact with a person and in the majority of cases that will be enough for you to filter that person out and continue looking.
Don't think of small talk as a way to bond -- think of it as ritualized low-effort behavior one engages in while evaluating the other person.
I was in fact referring to casual interactions as way to bond and build rapport, because a lot of people do it that way, and I also think that's what MathiasZaman suggested (though maybe he meant it in a different way?).
Oh wait. Is that what you mean by small talk? I think my understanding of the concept just shifted. I was thinking of small talk as "that boring thing people do when they don't want to talk about serious stuff". But of course I use it in the fashion that you described, and it's actually quite fun when done that way.
If you actually want to bond, you don't want casual interactions -- you want highly emotional shared experiences.
That sounds right. Thank you for pointing out the distinction.