And that's completely understandable. I'd say that is the general position of most of the misanthropic and 'anti-social outside of the internet' people on this forum. That being said, being a Millenarian advocate leads to different conclusions and analysis than being a 'Scientific Socialist'.
For one, every version of socialism that has ever been successful in the long term is and has been a highly sociable organization. Knowing your community is a huge part of a successful pursuit of any kind of positive change, period. You have to fight alienation with humanization, which is an incredibly difficult task in a society where alienation is the default state of things. The weird thing to me about a rabid defense of isolation is that, even most Millenarian advocates also recognize humanization as the key to success, it's just that most of them use that as a way to create cults of personality that that attempt to break away from society but cannot escape becoming a reflection of it. A Millenarian advocate for isolation, imo, far more resembles a libertarian or technocrat liberal in their understanding and dealing with people and the concept of humanization, which is how I struggle to even conceive of a 'communism' that can advocate for that. Obfuscating the contradiction with mental-health language does nothing to ease or progress the dialectic, imo.
Personally, this is where I find ideas of personal growth to be helpful. Not in a 'you can suddenly fix yourself and your insecurities and then because of that become happy, successful and wealthy within society' nonsense way. In a 'it has been show, scientifically, that you can overtime make improvements within your physicality and social skills, you may never 'master it' but the more you exercise it, the better overtime you get at something'. And this is well within a 'scientific socialist' framework of understanding, and things that have been advocated for within socialist countries. That doesn't mean you have to be 100% productive all of the time, but what it does mean is that improving yourself and your skills is something that every successful communist party advocates for. Hell, I'd go so far to say as that is the whole point of attempting to reach communism, it's to give you more time to do those things that relate to yourself and those immediately around you, rather than get better at making money for an entity that you are ultimately alienated from.
I understand that. As much as I hate generalized liberal platitudes and other forms of psycho-babble, based off of what you are saying I do think you should try to engage in a behavioral psychological technique called 'positive visualization'. This term has been bastardized by the self-help community over the last couple of decades as 'mantras' or 'manifestations', but it's a far more meta-concept than that. It's not magic, it's a deconstruction of your own thought process.
Basically, if you would like, a couple times a day, try to imagine yourself engaging with people in positive way. I know you said that 'you can't see yourself doing it' but I refuse to believe that your imagination is that limited. After all, if I am reading your words correctly, you are perfectly capable of imagining a catastrophized interaction, which is a far more involved and dramatic imagining. And once you've done that positive visualization, then think about how that was an imagined conversation. In the same way, if your ever find your brain wandering off and catastrophizing a potential interaction, try to stop and think about how that was also an imagined conversation. Basically, you are trying to, through conscious choices and oppositional thinking, recognize when you are imagining things. For some people it helps to keep track of when those thoughts happen, how many times a day, what the nature of the imagination is, how long it had been since you ate (people get incredibly grumpy if they haven't eaten). None of this involves actually having to go talk to people, but it is a recognition of the difference between the material and the ideological.
However, this is just a first step. If you aren't seeing a reduction in those thoughts despite sticking to a plan, that might be indicative of actual brain-chemistry issues, not just learned behavioral thought patterns. But if you do see or feel a reduction, then you can, if you want, actually go out and try to interact with people. Who knows, maybe I am incorrect and you will always have a bad time (I personally doubt that, I have known some very strange people be incredibly social and liked, but I am not you and I don't live in your area). But at least you didn't imagine yourself having a bad time beforehand thus poisoning the well.
And that's completely understandable. I'd say that is the general position of most of the misanthropic and 'anti-social outside of the internet' people on this forum. That being said, being a Millenarian advocate leads to different conclusions and analysis than being a 'Scientific Socialist'.
For one, every version of socialism that has ever been successful in the long term is and has been a highly sociable organization. Knowing your community is a huge part of a successful pursuit of any kind of positive change, period. You have to fight alienation with humanization, which is an incredibly difficult task in a society where alienation is the default state of things. The weird thing to me about a rabid defense of isolation is that, even most Millenarian advocates also recognize humanization as the key to success, it's just that most of them use that as a way to create cults of personality that that attempt to break away from society but cannot escape becoming a reflection of it. A Millenarian advocate for isolation, imo, far more resembles a libertarian or technocrat liberal in their understanding and dealing with people and the concept of humanization, which is how I struggle to even conceive of a 'communism' that can advocate for that. Obfuscating the contradiction with mental-health language does nothing to ease or progress the dialectic, imo.
Personally, this is where I find ideas of personal growth to be helpful. Not in a 'you can suddenly fix yourself and your insecurities and then because of that become happy, successful and wealthy within society' nonsense way. In a 'it has been show, scientifically, that you can overtime make improvements within your physicality and social skills, you may never 'master it' but the more you exercise it, the better overtime you get at something'. And this is well within a 'scientific socialist' framework of understanding, and things that have been advocated for within socialist countries. That doesn't mean you have to be 100% productive all of the time, but what it does mean is that improving yourself and your skills is something that every successful communist party advocates for. Hell, I'd go so far to say as that is the whole point of attempting to reach communism, it's to give you more time to do those things that relate to yourself and those immediately around you, rather than get better at making money for an entity that you are ultimately alienated from.
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I understand that. As much as I hate generalized liberal platitudes and other forms of psycho-babble, based off of what you are saying I do think you should try to engage in a behavioral psychological technique called 'positive visualization'. This term has been bastardized by the self-help community over the last couple of decades as 'mantras' or 'manifestations', but it's a far more meta-concept than that. It's not magic, it's a deconstruction of your own thought process.
Basically, if you would like, a couple times a day, try to imagine yourself engaging with people in positive way. I know you said that 'you can't see yourself doing it' but I refuse to believe that your imagination is that limited. After all, if I am reading your words correctly, you are perfectly capable of imagining a catastrophized interaction, which is a far more involved and dramatic imagining. And once you've done that positive visualization, then think about how that was an imagined conversation. In the same way, if your ever find your brain wandering off and catastrophizing a potential interaction, try to stop and think about how that was also an imagined conversation. Basically, you are trying to, through conscious choices and oppositional thinking, recognize when you are imagining things. For some people it helps to keep track of when those thoughts happen, how many times a day, what the nature of the imagination is, how long it had been since you ate (people get incredibly grumpy if they haven't eaten). None of this involves actually having to go talk to people, but it is a recognition of the difference between the material and the ideological.
However, this is just a first step. If you aren't seeing a reduction in those thoughts despite sticking to a plan, that might be indicative of actual brain-chemistry issues, not just learned behavioral thought patterns. But if you do see or feel a reduction, then you can, if you want, actually go out and try to interact with people. Who knows, maybe I am incorrect and you will always have a bad time (I personally doubt that, I have known some very strange people be incredibly social and liked, but I am not you and I don't live in your area). But at least you didn't imagine yourself having a bad time beforehand thus poisoning the well.