Do you ever think that maybe you are better off alone?

[expatwriter]

A phenomenon I've noticed spreading in nearly viral fashion is an au courant total denigration of the notion that people matter - a notion deeply held that human disposability is something to be constantly if tacitly celebrated as a given virtue. It would be trendy cynicism if it were flippant, or circumstantial, but it's never that - more akin to a fully normative derision of the possibility that affection between people can ever in any way be transcendental. I'm talking about something cultural, running far deeper than any transient fears of intimacy that are, in fact, to be mutually expected as moments par for the course in any healthy relationship. As if love were something obsolete, a mere myth as antiquated as creationism or any other religious belief (not mere practice, which is habitual and traditional - but actual theological belief). Head-nods donated in the direction of loosey-goosey new-age (rhyming with 'sewage') spiritualism seem to spackle the cracks in the relentless superficiality of such anti-love positions, and meanwhile, the sacred end of intertwining one's entire life narrative with another person's on the basis that a shared encountering and seeking to understand one another's individual otherness as deeply as possible, as a true life's work, can indeed not change, but affect people for the better, make the world a safer place both for those most closely involved as well as radiate forth as an inspiring example to others also seeking to know that such solidarity is possible... It just seems to be a belief in a circumstance today most often laughed out of any arena of possibility - held as not only implausible, but dangerously delusional. Even the married couples I know seem to be gradually succumbing to this kind of general, diffuse jadedness, few if any of them treating their relationships as truly sacred, most often at best seeming to treat them as having been "good deals", "acceptable matches".

As a dyed in the wool romantic from a lifetime's educational exposure to literature, art, and philosophy, this burgeoning isolationist norm can sometimes begin to seem as if it flies in the face of everything, no matter how secular, I was ever taught to believe that, throughout history, could possibly be held as good, true, and beautiful between human beings. It's as if the very infrastructures girding all possibilities for genuinely human solidarity are under a relentless if so diffuse as to be always plausibly deniable assault... Or maybe I'm just misinformed, and exhausted from years of having found increasingly more and more people, even ones thought to be relatively enlightened, becoming more and more comfortable - laughing even - to treat love itself as not just being, but always having been a completely bullsh!t myth. Not even talking about any fairy-tale notions - in fact, especially *not* those. As anyone who's ever taken the even the prospect of love for so much as a walk knows, it definitely gets funky, difficult, strange, and much of its time is far less than ideal. But the ideal moments and values that it allows to flourish do, I remain convinced, do make it worth it. Just some observations.

Perhaps initial romance, the notorious 'honeymoon' period, is, as is said in our insatiably materialistic times, "a neurochemical con-job". Perhaps it is. But that doesn't prevent it from being applicable to better things, possibly leading to them. I wager to say that treating people as if engaging with them is at best like taking a euphoria-inducing drug is supremely unethical.

 

[wallflower79]

A phenomenon I've noticed spreading in nearly viral fashion is an au courant total denigration of the notion that people matter - a notion deeply held that human disposability is something to be constantly if tacitly celebrated as a given virtue. It would be trendy cynicism if it were flippant, or circumstantial, but it's never that - more akin to a fully normative derision of the possibility that affection between people can ever in any way be transcendental. I'm talking about something cultural, running far deeper than any transient fears of intimacy that are, in fact, to be mutually expected as moments par for the course in any healthy relationship. As if love were something obsolete, a mere myth as antiquated as creationism or any other religious belief (not mere practice, which is habitual and traditional - but actual theological belief). Head-nods donated in the direction of loosey-goosey new-age (rhyming with 'sewage') spiritualism seem to spackle the cracks in the relentless superficiality of such anti-love positions, and meanwhile, the sacred end of intertwining one's entire life narrative with another person's on the basis that a shared encountering and seeking to understand one another's individual otherness as deeply as possible, as a true life's work, can indeed not change, but affect people for the better, make the world a safer place both for those most closely involved as well as radiate forth as an inspiring example to others also seeking to know that such solidarity is possible... It just seems to be a belief in a circumstance today most often laughed out of any arena of possibility - held as not only implausible, but dangerously delusional. Even the married couples I know seem to be gradually succumbing to this kind of general, diffuse jadedness, few if any of them treating their relationships as truly sacred, most often at best seeming to treat them as having been "good deals", "acceptable matches".

As a dyed in the wool romantic from a lifetime's educational exposure to literature, art, and philosophy, this burgeoning isolationist norm can sometimes begin to seem as if it flies in the face of everything, no matter how secular, I was ever taught to believe that, throughout history, could possibly be held as good, true, and beautiful between human beings. It's as if the very infrastructures girding all possibilities for genuinely human solidarity are under a relentless if so diffuse as to be always plausibly deniable assault... Or maybe I'm just misinformed, and exhausted from years of having found increasingly more and more people, even ones thought to be relatively enlightened, becoming more and more comfortable - laughing even - to treat love itself as not just being, but always having been a completely bullsh!t myth. Not even talking about any fairy-tale notions - in fact, especially *not* those. As anyone who's ever taken the even the prospect of love for so much as a walk knows, it definitely gets funky, difficult, strange, and much of its time is far less than ideal. But the ideal moments and values that it allows to flourish do, I remain convinced, do make it worth it. Just some observations.

Perhaps initial romance, the notorious 'honeymoon' period, is, as is said in our insatiably materialistic times, "a neurochemical con-job". Perhaps it is. But that doesn't prevent it from being applicable to better things, possibly leading to them. I wager to say that treating people as if engaging with them is at best like taking a euphoria-inducing drug is supremely unethical.

In what way would you say that there is a viral notion that people don't matter?

 

[expatwriter]

A phenomenon I've noticed spreading in nearly viral fashion is an au courant total denigration of the notion that people matter - a notion deeply held that human disposability is something to be constantly if tacitly celebrated as a given virtue. It would be trendy cynicism if it were flippant, or circumstantial, but it's never that - more akin to a fully normative derision of the possibility that affection between people can ever in any way be transcendental. I'm talking about something cultural, running far deeper than any transient fears of intimacy that are, in fact, to be mutually expected as moments par for the course in any healthy relationship. As if love were something obsolete, a mere myth as antiquated as creationism or any other religious belief (not mere practice, which is habitual and traditional - but actual theological belief). Head-nods donated in the direction of loosey-goosey new-age (rhyming with 'sewage') spiritualism seem to spackle the cracks in the relentless superficiality of such anti-love positions, and meanwhile, the sacred end of intertwining one's entire life narrative with another person's on the basis that a shared encountering and seeking to understand one another's individual otherness as deeply as possible, as a true life's work, can indeed not change, but affect people for the better, make the world a safer place both for those most closely involved as well as radiate forth as an inspiring example to others also seeking to know that such solidarity is possible... It just seems to be a belief in a circumstance today most often laughed out of any arena of possibility - held as not only implausible, but dangerously delusional. Even the married couples I know seem to be gradually succumbing to this kind of general, diffuse jadedness, few if any of them treating their relationships as truly sacred, most often at best seeming to treat them as having been "good deals", "acceptable matches".

As a dyed in the wool romantic from a lifetime's educational exposure to literature, art, and philosophy, this burgeoning isolationist norm can sometimes begin to seem as if it flies in the face of everything, no matter how secular, I was ever taught to believe that, throughout history, could possibly be held as good, true, and beautiful between human beings. It's as if the very infrastructures girding all possibilities for genuinely human solidarity are under a relentless if so diffuse as to be always plausibly deniable assault... Or maybe I'm just misinformed, and exhausted from years of having found increasingly more and more people, even ones thought to be relatively enlightened, becoming more and more comfortable - laughing even - to treat love itself as not just being, but always having been a completely bullsh!t myth. Not even talking about any fairy-tale notions - in fact, especially *not* those. As anyone who's ever taken the even the prospect of love for so much as a walk knows, it definitely gets funky, difficult, strange, and much of its time is far less than ideal. But the ideal moments and values that it allows to flourish do, I remain convinced, do make it worth it. Just some observations.

Perhaps initial romance, the notorious 'honeymoon' period, is, as is said in our insatiably materialistic times, "a neurochemical con-job". Perhaps it is. But that doesn't prevent it from being applicable to better things, possibly leading to them. I wager to say that treating people as if engaging with them is at best like taking a euphoria-inducing drug is supremely unethical.

> In what way would you say that there is a viral notion that people don't matter?

In any way it might be applicable, really... "Viral" not really describing any particular notion involved in the tendency, but the velocity and means of its spreading. That's part of what makes its proliferation so difficult to pin down.