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My psychiatrist said to me today, "You shouldn't write off humanity based on your experiences with [given type of people]" Is this true? I've very systematically and logically, rather than emotionally, found that people are untrustworthy and that really it's not very plausible for them to be trustworthy and one shouldn't expect them to be. I wish to shun the cycle of making and losing relationships. That given, should I give humanity a second chance?

Ask the psychiatrist where the line should be. "Writting of humanity" is a probably over dramatic exaggeration to what you're doing probably but that was probably done to gain your attention and interest and focus on the issue at hand which is that normal societal interaction implies collaboration and collaboration implies trust. So I would go back and ask where that "trust" falls, where you can stop trusting others and relying on them and rely on yourself. Where you should actively distrust others and how your perception is with all these questions and then question your psychiatrist to what degree this should be changed. "give humanity a second chance" is an empty phrase that only works in movies. Would you give a junkie another chance after he steals everything in your house after you let him in? What about trusting others in collaborative effort where the socio-economic factors make people distrustful of each other and backstabby from the get go? And however logical and systematic you might think of yourself as, you and I are still humans with emotions and I would say over rationalization as form of defense mechanism. I can talk about this to you in many forms of trying to rationalize things but blindly trusting people is obviously dumb. Trust is built based on putting higher and higher stakes on people whilst having tit-for-tat tactic. When they or you say "quits" then you find the line, FOR THAT PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL, not humanity as a whole. I however have found that people are more so unreliable than untrustworthy and the difference between these two seemingly same words (as also described by dictionary) is that one implies autonomy and backstabbiness whilst the other implies functionality of object. I do not think other people are objects however, just the best way to perceive something to you, junkie taking out debt is unreliable, a person with excessive power over you is untrustworthy because the general demographics proclivity to fuarrrk you over (if socio-economic situation dictates such behavior for maximum gain). I would suggest you pinpoint with accuracy what your issue is, what are some examples of it, were there indicators of possibility of that type of behavior before those examples, could have those examples been avoided or how could they have smaller impact, etc, etc. See, emotions of past that haunt us (cringing, sadness, anger...) they're not bad emotions, they're just trying to push us to learn something from those interactions. If you don't stop and objectively try to see why those interactions turned out for the worst then it is onto you, not others. Putting blind faith into humanity "ONCE MORE" and hoping for the best won't do YOU or OTHERS any good. Hope that helped.

>>14906 Trust but verify, give humanity a second chance and a third, and fourth etc, but practice risk mitigation and damage control, rather than total avoidance.

>>14906 there's a distinction in french between "avoir confiance en x" and "faire confiance à x" both would translate to "trusting x" but the first one is inherent trust you have for someone while the second is the act of trusting someone for a specific act. I remember vividly when I was very little my father teaching me the difference, because he said he needed to inspect my teeth after i brushed them even if he trusted me (first meaning). Soon after I thought about it and came to the conclusion that to function you have to trust (second meaning) but you never have to trust (first meaning) ever, since it's not enough to never have to check anyway. It could only be a weakness in that it would skew you instincts to check on people and make you feel betrayed by actors.

to add to what these others have said, or perhaps just to give it a different perspective, try to remember that boundaries are arbitrary. humanity is untrustworthy, but it is also trustworthy. any person is untrustworthy, but is also trustworthy. if you stop thinking about a collection of people as a hard and fast individual, or even stop thinking about any single human body as a hard and fast individual, it becomes easier to stop making connections in your head where they may not be in the real world.

While it's true that all people will eventually betray or disappoint--and it's not really their fault, because to avoid that over a long period of time both parties would have to be flawless, and that's not how people work--it's kind of missing the point anyway. You don't trust people for their sake. You trust them for your own sake, untethered even from the aspects of interpersonal relationship. Living it a world where trust is impossible is worse than being betrayed, indeed even worse than being betrayed by every single person you meet. Choose to trust even knowing that it won't be deserved, because you're doing it for yourself. You're doing it because human contact is, for better or worse, something we all need like an engine needs gasoline. Trying to deny it is fruitless. Lots of people screw themselves over in the long run because they don't want to feel like chumps and rubes in the moment. It's emotional, not logical. It's fine to be a fool sometimes and look like a chump or whatever. Don't impale yourself upon the need to be immune to the betrayals of others.

>>14921 You're prolly the most resonating through these replies. The thing is, I don't want to take the betrayal or disappointment. I wanna stop it all. And no, not by suicide, but by refusing to partake in the cycle.

>>14932 You can try, and I can't say for sure that nobody can do such a thing--I am only one person, I only know myself. But I think that you'll run into some significant complications if you try to isolate yourself completely. I've been isolated for some extended periods myself. It gets weird.

>>14933 I go in fully aware. I wish you and myself luck in the future lainon.

>>14921 This poster has no idea what they're talking about. This poster will not be there to comfort or save you when you are betrayed. Nobody will- because they are all bound to look out for themselves first. Humanity is a dumpster fire. A majority of individuals living today have no compulsions whatsoever against knowingly deceiving and manipulating you for personal gain. Trust no one.

>>14943 I don't think you really understood what I was saying. Your strategy with dealing with humanity is really sad, but I'm sure you'll look really clever when you make it to death alone without having been betrayed by anybody.

>>14944 op here. I hate to say it but >>14921 is right. Such fatalism as yours will get you to a dead end, and I hope you reconsider. Though your path is the same that I've suggested, it's for the wrong reasons, and that being said, will get you about as far as mentioned above.

>>14943 yeah the thing is most people dont take it that seriously, they move on. unless you live in an environment where betrayal is life and death, or results in some long term harm, a mentally healthy person gets over it. Learns to better pick out people who are lying probably yeah, but doesnt resort to some dumb trust no one mentality. you really ought to consider whether you are in a good mental place before you start giving advice to somebody trying to get better. If you want to wallow in your loneliness circle and not try to get help dont drag other people down with you its equally as self centered and dumpster fire material as whatever great betrayal you faced.

>>14906 well, we're social creatures, if you socially isolate yourself with humans you become depressed, depersonelised etc. There's a lot of people out there, now you might not like everybody, but you should atleast try to get to know people. i think we have to make connections with actual people to feel ''connected'' for the sake of our mental health. try to find people who have similar hobby's.

Yeah most of the population is pretty much untrustworthy. There is only a very small number of people that can love us, as well as people that we can love. This is all why having appropriate boundaries is very important

>>14944 Everyone dies alone, yes? Death is a bridge one lane wide, no? Oh ye, lain of Truest Faith! Ye who espouse the position that there is something more to this spiral and spin than a short, largely uncomfortable stroll from the maternity ward to the crematorium! Come now- you must defend your position. OP's very soul may depend upon it. Humanity is intrinsically evil- most people are more evil than good. At the very least, most people are more selfish than selfless. This being the case, it is not rational to bet on any human, because humans are one of the most dangerous and vindictive species in the galaxy, and losing a bet could cost you your life, or worse. As humanity has developed, more humans have attained sentience and rationale, and they have used the above analysis to drive trends in society which have at their end neatly ordered stacks of bio-pods, jacked into the throbbing cyberpussy at the center of the metaverse. ...and outside the towering stim-domes, the writhing hordes of diseased, mutant Poor and Other- waging eternal war back and forth across the abandoned trappings of that dead idea, "society." Much of the population is already enslaved by the black mirror- and even those who are not cannot escape its all-seeing gaze. The Algorithm knows you better than you know yourself- the Spy can read everything you write, hear everything you say. Every internet search, every link, every conversation forever catalogued for eventual analysis by the yawning maw of some vast corporate intelligence far beyond mortal comprehension. It's all been admitted- we hurtle headlong into a digital apocalypse of unholy thaumaturgy, a world where it is easier to text than it is to speak to the person next to you. Where conversation is rare, ingroup preference is high, and the stakes are even higher? The whole mess recurses forever and ever, O lain of True Faith! What hope lies here, on the road which ends with the valley of the shadow of the heat death of the universe? What say you to the forgotten, the lonely, the downtrodden, the exhausted, the cast-off, and the cast-away? >>14945 Good, you have identified an absurd limit to your problem. By no means should you ever take any advice. There is a problem, though. The End is, objectively speaking, a dead one. Can't be avoided. We are all entirely doomed. WHY BOTHER? What other rational choice remains but fatalism and survival in a gilded cage? It is my most sincere wish that the lain of True Faith shall pour fourth much wisdom in this regard, for the mutual benefit of all assembled. >>14946 My dear lain, you really ought to consider that there may be more than one road to Rome. Also, there exists for you the same conundrum as the lain of True Faith; this environment is very much one where betrayal is life and death, fully capable of causing long-term harm. Every day, humanity wreaks evil upon its own in service of blind powers and principalities trailing green paper in their wake. You clearly have a selfless instinct, leaping forward in defense of the needy, and this is to be commended. However, in the absence of some overriding Principle, and in the full light of the dumpster fire, such actions and instincts are fundamentally insane. Yet to presume one such as yourself to be fundamentally insane is a preposterous position to take. Pray tell, my dear lain, WHY?

>>14921 That sounds like a slave mentality without the God aspect. Emotional self serving in a world where your weak slave morality stops you to betray others. How long do you think he will push on with your advice before he relapses?

>>14944 >but I'm sure you'll look really clever Yea, that's why people distance themselves from untrustworthy people, for looking cool to others.

>>14944 but to imply that you have to die alone if you put yourself in position where you can't be betrayed by others (especially by untrustworthy people) is as silly as saying that you shouldn't trust anyone. Robert Sapolsky, renowned human behaviorist, went over the topic ITT in few of his stanford lectures on Youtube (I suggest you guys watch it) and concluded, with logical arguments from people such as Pavlov and Freud and experiments on topic of interpersonal human interaction that there are couple of tactics of "game" people can play amongst each other to have most "profit" from each other (whether socially, emotionally or monetarily) whilst at the same time guarding themselves from betrayal. I won't go over his and other behaviorists reasoning for their opinions but the tactic is basically tit-for-tat tactic that turns into tit-for-tat with trust tactic (to eliminate the component of noise that tit-for-tat tactic might induce with both parties lashing out on one another just because of first misstep by one that might be percepted as malice). The point of my post is that trust of component of tit-for-tat tactic is EARNED through longer period of association and relation. If someone dissapoints you day after day and betrays you it is natural not to believe them. If someone is honest and good friend that keeps their word you will trust them. The gray area in between is where you have to put the limit and start trusting people and letting them come over and excuse them for their missteps. Do not hand out your trust to every bum on the street, you are not that cheap to be fuarrrked over and betrayed. Do not put yourself at arms length all the time. Go tit-for-tat and see how the person reacts. Build on that, little by little. Trust will come with time.

>>14906 i think that if you really thought about it you dont have a choice but to be in situations that require predictability of others. that shouldn't even be a question. and it was a dirty move for your handler to try and pass off that piece of add-absurdum in the place off a viable cognitive tool. maybe they dont think you have the capacity to handle anything sharper. maybe they learnt the dangers ascociated with introducing concepts to every looney that walks in the door. maybe they never even thought(or even had a choice after the financial and time investment on their piece of paper) about it and just say what the where told and it is a part of a archaic and rigid systemic policy based on the first visible pattern 60 years ago. maybe the potential scale of influence of the decision was not even considered. those maybes are not a best case or a worst case but they are a case. be suspicious when anyone uses the term "humanity" its an easy delivery mechanism for almost anything. the place emotions come from cant get a grip without logic and without emotion there is no purpose for traction. you are probably both of those parts of yourself and more. how would i know though? >>14957 different poster you should only trust yourself to predict others or tell when you cant. we are living in a time when truth is not valued, most people cant even trust themselves there is almost no point in sokafing around. i decide what i think will happen before the game starts. if your long term(ill asume that people from stanford capable to have longterm goals as well as short) goals are not aligned from the start and your trying to breadcrumb someone your the "betrayer". from experience tick tac always has a punchline

~ The feeling of wanting to forget It, too, is an emotion that is not a lie ~

Trust is a comidity, it should be traded wisely. It might not be always needed, but sometimes it does, knowing when and what to lose/gain is the key. As long as you can trust humans to be predictable within reaonable boundries its ok.

I think there's waaaaayyy too much overthinking in here. Which is to be expected from a self-isolated population. Are humans inherently evil, deceptive, unreliable, kinda soykafty? Sure. Is death waiting to tear us all apart no matter what we do? Sure. Is there a great, cold, gulf between each mind as wide as the space between stars? Yeah, you'll never really know anyone. But for the mean time, when we're actually living and not ruminating in our paranoia and pathos, being around some select humans can be kinda fun. And that's kind of the beginning and end of it. Screw it, let people in your life for a bit, have a bit of entertainment, have some regrets, move on. Sheesh, no need to write a manifesto about it.

>>14961 Perhaps you don't realize that some people find some measure of satisfaction in the writing and reading of manifestos.

>>14963 Fair enough, I shouldn't be telling y'all how to live your lives. I cede that. Sorry.

>>14965 no you are correct, there is even a term in psychology for it which I know some people here will hate called intelectualilization. When somebody essentially tries to reason their way out of certain normal and healthy emotions and situations, such as forming relationships. our brains evolved for survival. im sure many people have heard the saying here that you can mistake a bush for a tiger 1000 times but mistake a tiger for a bush once and you are dead. now take out the tiger and the brain can start doing this for increasingly small things. And almost anything can be rationalized or reasoned despite people equating reason with some kind of objective truth. There is no objective truth behind ones opinions on humanity, what it often ultimately is, is just a defense mechanism, masquerading as some sort of deep understanding of the world. still true, no need to tell people how to live their lives. But OP invites you by asking, and other people would like him to continue repeating his situation by continuing to "trust no one" over what ultimately probably stems from something much smaller than a great big ideal. It can be complicated to understand why intelectualization is a bad thing, but it isnt really if you have any want to. It seems like you already do intuitively. Because ultimately certain things are worth investing ultra complex thought into, because you can complexify forever. Certain things are not, like the great activity of sitting alone in a room, unless you are a philosopher and are ruminating on something specific which is detatched and unrelated from justifying your situation/actions.

>>14972 also its incredibly hard to tell whether it is intelectualization on an imageboard. and you will never know because few are going to be honest about why they believe what they believe, and you cant really tell. Often people who consider themselves intellectuals have a terrible habit of not disclosing, often not even exploring themselves, why they truly believe what they believe. Any inquiry into past happenings in their life makes them angry because they hate having their ideas reduced to a thing that happened to them, because it makes it not intellectual and personal. This is fine, but often times its relevant and again they themselves may not even know it because it ruins the facade for themselves. this also doesnt negate an idea being true. it is true there is germs and disease everywhere, however using this to rationalize ocd like behaviours is ultimately still a rationalization designed to keep one in their comfort zone. many of these peoples opinions on humanity are no different, the justifications are contrived and irrelevant, if somebody countered them they would just find new ones because all that matters is a deep down fear of relationships.

>>14973 fuarrrk sorry to keep posting but the ocd thing was just an example by the way. im aware often times ocd is from a phobia that feels very real.

OP says: >>14974 It's alright. I have OCD myself, and it's really very rarely a tangible phobia. I may even go on to say if it is, that's something else in itself. I appreciate your writing, it brings in a good middle ground lost in what has become a senseless thread. >>14961 You too are right. I guess it really just comes down to whether you place higher value in living humanly, accepting the cycle, or seeking absolute truth and safety. And yes, you will likely end up sad, lonely, and quite possible demented doing the latter, but there are some very alluring benefits people often don't even think of after being warded away so willfully by the "greater society". I still think one should carefully consider and prove to themselves their choice before making it. Stay safe lainon, but leave a little space for happiness too.

Generally you don't trust in their morals but rational self-serving nature. I.e driving or just buying food is based on the hope that they will play along for their own benefit and it works out well enough. It's not perfect of course but what is truly risk-free in life? It stands that the gains are bigger than the risk and so you participate. What i find way more troublesome is it's sometimes really hard to spot when your way of thinking is fundamentally different to the other person. When what you perceive as good courtesy is silently taken as deliberate disrespect you lose their trust without even being aware of it. Explaining it afterwards once spotted doesn't seem to alleviate the situation much either. I guess it makes somewhat sense too. Having no common way of thought makes you hard to predict and thereby somewhat dangerous to deal with.

>>14999 What you describe explains the bullying I experienced. Having no common way of thought seems to be asking for it. I still experience stress because of it.

>>15001 Being different is not the problem, it's not fighting back. Teachers who tell otherwise are an example where their self-serving benefits don't align with your own interests and thus the advice is only meant to help them not you. And if they resort to the jesus mercy story it's a false interpretation too. The real story behind turning the other cheek is it's an invitation to total war. First offense you give them another chance, 2nd offense you can attack without holding back - that was the roman custom.

>>15009 the rainbow sign, or the fire next time

There's nothing systematic or logical about that, you're protecting your feelings because people hurt you, where's the focus on logic?

>>15071 ??? risk assessment is based on your statistic. If he got fuarrrked often he will have a higher risk prediction than someone who got lucky and never backstabbed. Nothing irrational about it.

>>15076 I mean this concept followed to its conclusion would basically mean any emotionality is the same as rationality and there would be no real distinction between the two. Which to be honest kind of makes sense; I think that when we talk about putting rationality before feelings we're really just favoring certain ideas over others for arbitrary stylistic reasons. The vast majority of self-described 'rational' people are really just presenting the emotional affect of rationalism, without actually doing any work or having any intellectual rigor. Actual scientists are pretty rare among the general population. In other words, we aren't Vulcans from Star Trek. We don't have a direct pipeline tapping into profound objective truth, we mostly just have faith in the work of others. We're beings who evolved emotions for good reasons.

>>15077 "We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think." - attributed to Antonio R. Damasio, neuroscientist, and referenced in Peter Watts' neuroscience-focused hard science fiction novel Blindsight, which I heartily recommend, especially to fellow lainons

>>15078 Yes, brilliant. I've actually had quite a few recommendations for Blindsight, I think I'm past due to check it out.

Perhaps I am setting myself up for eventual disappointment, but I have no trouble trusting/forming relationships with the people I enjoy being around. Rather than worrying about their future untrustworthiness I prefer to try and be trustworthy towards them in the present. I may just be lucky or good at finding trustworthy people, but so far the risks have been fully worth it. OP, when you have followed the cycle of making and losing relationships, what upsets you more? The loss of the relationship, or the lack of the relationship? It sounds like you are more upset by the occurrence of the betrayal rather than not having the relationship afterwards. In that case, you may just need to find/form higher quality relationships to regain your trust in others.