Quote:
Originally Posted by Serpentine Leaf
That type of over-payment for a local wine is a variation on the theme of conspicuous waste, something that has plagued humanity since the dawn of civilization. It isn't unique to any economic form, governmental system, or culture. It will take a lot of human evolution to finally move past it.
Kudos to you for wearing your campaign shirt regardless of the reaction! You'll win the respect of good people, even those who support someone else. Those who will trash you for it aren't capable of genuine respect. Hiding yourself only causes damage. Yet another lesson I had to learn the hard way.
There are some good TED talks about the different types of empathy, and lots of books and articles. I don't have any links to posts, but a general search should bring up something for you. By your posts here, it's clear that you have very deep empathy for a wide variety of people despite being treated so badly for most of your life. In case no one tells you this very often, you are awesome, Lundi. You compassion is strongest for the most downtrodden, the very people most of those around you would spit on if they could. Expression your thoughts and feelings is hard for anybody on the spectrum, or with ADD or other neurological differences.
Knowing how to screen dates is something even NTs struggle with, and many never master it. People who have very good social skills don't judge those who don't; they're patient and kind. The ones you met only pretended to have skills, the "fake-it-'til-you-make-it" mentality. I'm still working on learning to distinguish an act from the genuine article. My own Aspie-ish tendencies make me too inclined to take people at their word. I'm learning to hold back and see if their actions, and how they interact with others, actually match what they say.
Genuine social skills are based on empathy, both cognitive and emotional. Those who use cognitive empathy as a weapon because they lack emotional empathy are fakers, and are likely either narcissists or psychopaths (and of course narcissism is an essential part of psychopathy). It sounds like you fell into a hornet's nest of them.
|
I just came back from a meetup. I mostly went to see my acquaintance and talk with him about life and stuff. Again I saw the wine prices of $12-$13 for domestic Sonoma Valley wine. And these were happy hour prices.
I hate seeing people suffer, especially the poor and weak. Not weak as in they are of lower class, I mean weak as in they have hardships and other problems which leads them to end up in unfortunate situations. I always thought that if one treats others with dignity and compassion, that that dignity and compassion would be shown returned onto that person. Somehow it looks like that is not true. But I do have a lot trouble expressing my thoughts. I cannot express them succintly in words in most cases, but I can express them only if there existed some brain-to-brain telepathy. Obviously that is not possible.
I almost never can understand what people are thinking. I often have no clue. I can only make the most educated guess that I can based on what I see as evidence. But this is so faulty that my best guesses are often so fallacious that I am close to useless in nonverbal communication. I need things to be spelt out to the letter, so literal and blatantly obvious that even a blind and/or deaf person can understand it. Of course, one of the hardest and most important aspects of nonverbal communication that I simply cannot comprehend is trying to tell if a woman likes me or not. I simply cannot understand any hints or any type of nonverbal stuff in that area. It is terrible frustrating for me.
Things are not going so well. Since Christmas, which I spent completely alone, I very rapidly fell into a downward spiral of a deep depressive state. On New Year's Eve/New Year's Day, I thought about how I spent the entire decade of 2010-2019 without even so much as having kissed a woman. My self-hatred returned quickly, and everyday has been hell. I feel not only the sick feeling in my stomach, but also my blood pressure is constantly high from the stress of thinking about this over and over. I feel not only extreme humiliation and self-hatred of this entire single/virgin thing, but also shame as a human being that I seem to be going into the low percentages of people who are in my situation. Like for example only 2% of men are virgins at age 30 in the UK according to reports. Here in USA it probably is similar. I feel like an outcast. I keep seeing couples and stuff, and when I had to attend some family gathering near the New Year, my relatives tell me how their 13 year old son or whatever has a girlfriend already. They ask why I always attend and never have a girlfriend or wife. What is wrong with. Etcetera.
I think that this is definitely the worst that I have felt since age 25 when I lost a third of my body weight due to falling deep into a hole of depression. And from the exact same issue, this single/virgin thing. Except now, I am older. I just feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in this area. I am 30, but am in the exact same position that I was at age 25.
I hate to say this, but as I was diagnosed with chronic hypertension at age 26, partly due to poor family history of heart disease, yet mostly due to severe psychological stress, and am technically at risk of having a heart attack, if I had a massive heart attack or sudden cardiac arrest in my sleep and died as a result, I feel like it would not bother me.