People...

It's been awhile so I wrote a lot. The first portion is a non-specific rant about people in general, the second portion is about me and where I'm at right now.

People are social creatures, placing themselves in social groups, eager to categorize themselves, separate themselves from others, be able to define themselves by some form of group. Then, once they've established themselves as a member of some community, it's as if they can't wait to go over to the next community and ruin it, make fun of it, brutalize it, and return home. I'm constantly looking at representatives of certain social groups (ethnicity, religion, geography, etc) being huge d*cks to people in opposing communities, and then at first I wonder, "man, why is everyone part of group "X" such a tool?", but then I'll see people from the group that I thought was the victim, group Y, go and rip on people from group X... Till I finally realized: People are a*holes. It's not Christians, it's not black people, it's not Europeans, it's not Harry Potter fans, it's not members of PETA, it's not members of the NRA... it's everyone. Each group has people that are ridiculed, and people that ridicule others. There is no group that is to blame for bullying other people, it's simply people being people.

It's as if once someone is accepted by one group, they now feel they can hate everyone else. It drives me nuts. Part of the problem is I've spent so much of my life in my head, thinking about everything that I've seen almost every perspective of every argument so I never really think anyone's stupid for thinking the way they do, as it's easy for me to see their side of things. The problem is I'm really bad at talking to people that can't see my side of the argument. I was having a discussion with an atheist (I'm a theist) about the origins of the universe, it was a pretty good conversation, until some more atheists overheard and started calling me stupid. What bothered me when I saw the person who I was conversing with (just some person I'd met) change from someone who had been respectfully considering the things I had been saying and responding with well thought out, intelligent responses, into someone who now discredited all my arguments on the grounds that I was stupid. I had nothing left to say. What was the point of mentioning the fallacies of an ad hominem argument? In fact, there wasn't much point in saying anything at all. I believed in talking snakes and invisible dudes with beards, therefore I was too stupid to say anything correct. I would've told them what a strawman fallacy was, but apparently I was "too stupid". So I thanked them for giving me something to think about (which they did) and walked away. I guess my mother did a good job of instilling in me the habit of being nice to a*holes, because I wanted to stab them all with a fork, which would have solved even less than walking away did.

At first, I thought, "What's wrong with atheists? These people are huge D-bags," then I realized theists do the same thing to atheists. I remember an atheist complaining about Christians making fun of her and calling her names. Are Christians bad people? No, they're just people, doing what people do. Are atheists bad people? No, they're just people.

I guess the whole point of this rant is that it's important to understand where other people are coming from. We aren't better than anyone else, regardless of who they are, what they do, where they're from, or what they believe. It's easy to think someone is dumb for not thinking the way they do, but it's important to realize they are probably just as smart as we are; if we can realize that, then maybe we can begin to listen to the things they're saying, we can start giving them a reason to listen to us, and finally stop being a d*ck.
__________________________________________________________________

Getting back to me... I've actually suprised myself with how long I've been able to stave off this recent onslaught of depression. I haven't broken down yet. I've had some modified behavior though: It's getting harder to get out of bed and fall asleep at night, it's getting hard to get out of the shower (the shower is to me a sanctuary of sorts), at work I'm losing my ability to focus and be productive (I can tell it's bad because I'm working on a project I actually enjoy and I still can't bring myself to get much done), and my number of "emergency" bike rides/work out sessions has increased exponentially. In fact I've been riding almost 20 miles a day now (for me that's a lot).

Also I've been attributing a lot of my problems to global factors that are based on my internal, sustaining problems, a recipe for depression, ie if I fail a test it's because I'm not smart - it's my fault, it's one specific failure that points to a huge, global problem (not being smart), and it's sustaining, I can't change how smart I am. It's not that I'm bad at that subject (internal, specific, constant), it's not that the teacher is hard (external, specific, constant), it's not that I didn't get enough sleep the night before (internal, specific, changing) - it's simply that I'm not smart, a small, specific, independant failure pointing to a glaring, unchanging weakness. Granted I think like this all the time, but recently it's been getting much worse. I can't get out of bed because I'm weak. I can't focus at work because I'm bad at concentration and I have a poor work ethic. I'm not in better shape on my bike because I'm an unmotivate person, and as a result I don't push myself hard enough when I ride...

Such is life, but I move forward, through hopeless, black tunnels with white lights at the end bright enough to reveal that there is nothing there, only a nice empty patch of space for me to breakdown before I move on into the next dark tunnel.