Anyone have any advice on just kind of hating people in general less? I look at people, I know they’re huge on religious doctrines and societal models I have no place in, and I just can’t see any good in them worth considering. I try to go outside and connect with people, but everyone looks like a 4channer, or someone two slights away from becoming a 4channer. I can’t restrain the fear or loathing. It’s like the past twenty years have reduced my very capacity for compassion and my capacity to respect anyone period to molten slag.
Heteronormative society and all who uphold it fucking blow, but I’m expected to keep it in my pants re: how and when I take it out on them.
What reengages my empathy muscle is remembering that lots of these people are fucking miserable, even if they lack the introspection to appreciate it. Imagine being a fucking evangelical conservative housewife for instance - no real agency or support or avenue to grow. Even imagine yourself as an evangelical conservative bread-winning husband - no real avenue for self expression or discovery, and you harm the people around you constantly without a framework to understand that.
Even when you look at fascist states like Israel, how fucking tragic for all of those indoctrinated people that their worldview is as narrow and corrupted as it is, and, honestly, most of those people didn't have a hope in hell. Fucking cooked because they happened to be born in a fascist state.
Whenever I go down this line of thinking, I always end up feeling that it's just so... sadly rational that so many awful people are full of that weird impotent rage.
NB: I am also definitely not saying that I'm some saint who can always keep this thinking, it is truly advice on framing that makes me personally hate people less when I have the energy for it.