Lately I’ve been noticing myself getting more extreme along some dimension, in a way that makes it harder to communicate with a lot of people. I would describe it as something like “wanting to see people as they are, and being comfortable with that including irrationality, contradictions, and other bad things.”
Some examples:
I noticed a way in which my thinking was biased against members of an oppressed group, and mentioned it to someone. She got upset, because she saw me as endorsing this by dispassionately mentioning it without disavowing it in some way. I was confused, because I was just reporting some things I noticed about my brain, not trying to endorse or disavow anything, and isn’t social justice supposed to be all about unpacking your biases anyway?
I’ll talk to someone about a book or TV show and they won’t like it because a character does stupid things, or has unhealthy relationships, or acts in self-destructive ways. I am confused that that’s a thing and think the more fucked up the better.
I was shopping with a friend on a warm day and commented that it felt like the weather was too nice to try on sweaters. She replied, “well, I don’t want to try on sweaters … but now is the best time of year to buy them since they’re on sale.” I felt like my joyfully authentic expression of feeling was dismissed. She thought I was saying something dumb and impractical.
I watched the first couple episodes of the Bachelor with a friend who was really confused about my enthusiasm for Hannah B. (I know everyone likes her now after they gave her a good edit later in the season. I liked her from the very beginning.) For the uninformed, in the first few episodes she comes off as neurotic, awkward, petty, jealous, super insecure, and the only actual person on the show.
I was talking to a friend about a story I thought it would be fun to write. I started describing the relationship between two of the characters and she asked “well, do they end up together?” I felt like she was implicitly asking me whether I thought their relationship was good or bad, which seemed like missing the point.
A was mad because B wasn’t doing a thing they were supposed to do. I gave my guesses as to why; they replied “but that’s not okay! B needs to just do the thing!” A was upset that I wasn’t mad at B, suggesting that I didn’t think the thing was serious or important. I was sort of upset that A was mad at B when it just seemed like a fact about the situation and who B is as a person that of course they weren’t going to do it.
Someone I’m dating will tell me something–say, “if you slept with [redacted] I’d like you less.” My instinctive response is probably something like “oh interesting, why do you think that’s the case?” Later I’m telling someone about our relationship and I realize that if I accurately report stuff like this they will just think the person is a dick.
I’ll tell someone about a bad interaction I had with someone. They’ll either:
- blame the other person
- blame me, but not explicitly say it, and it’s kind of awkward
- try to justify it and come up with reasons it was actually fine
and I get frustrated with all these and find them counterproductive.
I’ve thought about talking to one of my friends about this, but fittingly, I don’t know how to express it in a way that she won’t interpret as me claiming that my way of thinking is better than her way of thinking.
To be clear, I don’t think it is–I think they’re both helpful and probably there are plenty of people who should move in each direction. I think my way of thinking is useful for forming more accurate beliefs about yourself and others. It might also make me happier, or at least have lower intensity and frequency of negative emotions–I think it promotes a state of lowkey contentment.
But there are also obvious failure modes, e.g. spending the rest of my life doing stupid shit while thinking “hm, I notice that I am doing stupid shit, interesting.” Judging is pretty useful, because sometimes you have to decide what action to take, and it’s good to be able to judge which action is best and do that one. Basically, if I ever become one of those people who does nothing but meditate and drop acid, please slap me and remind me of this post.