I'm gay and probably slightly autustic so for me the very natural goal of having a partner is indeed unreachable. The society doesn't give me any other goal to pursue, so I'm stuck just smoking weed and watching YouTube, which is depressing.
> the very natural goal of having a partner is indeed unreachable
It is not. Plenty of gay men in the world. About one in ten, last time I checked the statistics. But I'll admit it's real tough for most of us out there, not because we are few, but due to all the other reasons. You don't need no goals given by society; make some of your own.
> Do you really believe pursuing a relationship is the only real goal you can work toward?
Yes, and I'm tired of pretending it isn't. I'm sorry I'm a human, not some higher being that exists above natural constraints of biological brain that spent millions of years evolving around the concepts of "be a member of a tribe" and "have a family".
My tribe will fire me the second I stop being useful to them by the way, so yeah.
Ah yes. Whenever someone asks me what can we do about poverty I'll just reply "I know plenty of people with lucrative jobs, get off the internet and touch grass".
We've been telling people for years already that them being lonely is their personal failure, not some systematic problem, yet people, on average, keep getting even more lonely. What makes you think that continuing to present loneliness as a personal failure will eventually solve the problem?
Hahaha IKR I keep hearing that advice and like has it EVER worked for ANYONE? If someone doesn't believe things can get better, then you can't make a depressed horse drink or however it goes. The thing that needs to be learned CANNOT be communicated.
I discovered it for myself after like 6 months of therapy. Give it a shot if you can. Trust me, being smug about it to people online is so worth it.
And on a societal level it's an interesting philosophical question, but waiting around and hoping that something external comes along to magically fix the problem that you're experiencing personally isn't a plan for success. That feeling of loneliness isn't going to go away sitting at home, playing another single player video game by yourself,
it's going to go away by socializing with people, in some sort of fashion.
It's gonna be cringe. it's gonna be awkward. it'll be fine, you'll survive.
Poverty is a wholly different problem, with different solutions, and comparing poverty to loneliness isn't doing you any favors. If we're gonna play that game, how about comparing it to obesity? society bears some responsibility for McDonald's, and for not giving good education on nutrition, but the reality there is that there are some wonderful new drugs to help with that problem. even with the new drugs and before them, at the end of the day, it still is a personal decision on whether or not to do something about the problem.
so the government isn't going to come in and start forcing people to attend friendship-making ceremonies. the solution to your loneliness is pushing yourself to go out and find people. don't go off trying to fix the systemic societal level problem for everybody, just solve for one. fortunately you don't have to wait around for a magic anti-lonliness drug to be research and formulated and then undergo trials before approval by the FDA. the drug for loneliness is alcohol. go do a lubricating amount of it around other people.
> And on a societal level it's an interesting philosophical question, but waiting around and hoping that something external comes along to magically fix the problem that you're experiencing personally isn't a plan for success.
Yeah, I suppose the only reason to point out that a problem is systemic and therefore requires a systemic solution is if you're part of a group or movement that is proposing a systemic solution. Otherwise, there's no point, because the only other solution is to solve the problem for yourself at the individual level anyway.
> We've been telling people for years already that them being lonely is their personal failure, not some systematic problem, yet people, on average, keep getting even more lonely. What makes you think that continuing to present loneliness as a personal failure will eventually solve the problem?
Your logic here seems to be that, over time, telling people it's a personal failure (which I don't agree has been the rhetoric, but for the sake of conversation...) will lead them to fix that failure - which isn't at all my experience. There's plenty of issues one can point to that, just because we've been informing people of for many years, doesn't mean any progress has been made.
> Ah yes. Whenever someone asks me what can we do about poverty I'll just reply "I know plenty of people with lucrative jobs, get off the internet and touch grass".
If someone said, "I'm in a wheelchair, so having a job is unreachable" then I might respond in a similar way as GP (though perhaps a bit nicer)... because you can have a job while in a wheelchair, and have a relationship while gay and autistic.
