i had an experience a while ago that sort of broke me, both for activism stuff and in general. I'd like some perspective on it.
I know I don't want to live just for myself. that's so small and awful and lonely and just awful morally and I can't. I know it's work for everybody, or diminish total available resources fighting petty bullshit at your idealogical/metaphorical/literal/cultural borders and it's just another power struggle. but I can't believe in people anymore. not all the way. so you see my problem?
a brief primer on how I got here.
I can deal with monsters, I can see why they happen and how they get trapped into being that. I can even have a little sympathy for the devil. I can deal with people so high they just fucking can't and people deeeeep in mental illness who were unstable and potentially violent and people who smell like death, because they're literally halfway there. I've worked with homeless camps. I've seen all the dark shit, and was... well, angry as fuck, but not broken. my childhood role models were pedophiles torturers etc. im down with the baroque horrors of the world. I know they can be fixed/healed/set right/made useful, even if the cost is high and the success rate is vanishingly low.
but I had an experience where someone knew everything that was going on, had firsthand experience, a long positive relationship with me, a huge personal stake, and went against an overwhelming body of evidence, their personal interest, and all kinds of conscience, to believe a wild self contradicting story and be a tool for someone they perceived as being high status. we talked while they did this. it only seemed to entrench them farther. they ended up homeless because of it. years later they can't admit they did something fucked up.
so how the fuck do I believe I can make that better. how can I help people if so many of them are... that? how can I even want to do well for that?
best I've come up with is that I like who I am when I'm working for the betterment of others, and "fuck them, I'll do it for my own sake.". but thats still hollow, dishonest, selfish, and lonely. anybody got better?
Every time is a new roll of the dice. You've gotten unlucky a lot, but the next time you reach out to someone new, all your past experiences don't materially affect what happens.
again, my problem isn't that there are shit people. I was raised around absolute monsters. if that was gonna break me it would have done so before age ten. my problem isn't even that they hurt me; I've been unlucky on that, but shit happens; people do shitty things for shitty reasons all the time. that doesn't ruin my opinion of humanity. which already accounted for pedohiles, cops, CIA torturers, cops, other domestic abusers, the KKK, people who sell drugs to kids, cults, the casual dehumanizing violence against human beings, inhuman bureaucracy doing terrible things for no god damn reason because nobody was willing to challenge broken systems or admit they were even broken, people doing shitty things to maintain their shitty world, people devoted to awful causes, desperate stupid fucked up shit, and fucking libs looking away from it all. these are all personal experiences I'd had by age 14. I've seen the most baroque evil that humanity can achieve, I've seen the banal horrors of systems left to ruin lives past the deaths of their creators, I've stared into that abyss and seen all the reasons why doing monstrous things to one another can seem reasonable. can even be personally advantageous. that shit pisses me off, but it doesn't hurt me. I do not need to believe the world is fair, just, decent, or anything but the thousand generations of nightmares mistakes petty bullshit and justifications for conveniences we couldn't bring ourselves to admit came at too high a cost to someone else, layered rotting compounding and complicating one another like the worst possible dip ever conceived. that shit didn't break me.
its this; that someone can do something horrible, with no reason, no matter how fucked up and convoluted, to do it; no motivation, no spontaneous poorly handled emotions, no deep fuckery in the head no reward no bigotry no misunderstanding no systemic miscomprehension no delusions no loyalty to the wrong people/things; no fucking reason. and nearly every reason not to. it destroyed their life, maybe worse than the practical fallout of their actions did mine, and this was an entirely predictable obvious response that we discussed in the immediate aftermath. years later, they can't even admit it was wrong. and if I can't be good no matter what, if I can't at least want to be decent to everybody, even if I don't accept the cost the risk or the long odds of trying in every case, then I'm not really trying to make things better. I'm just another shit bag stepping all over the pie while I fight for my slice. and there's no point in fighting for better if I'm just another one of those fucks.
and if I believe that humanity can be that, that incurable unreasonable impossible self destructive obedience, then why should I believe people can do better? why should I even want it for them?
it's a simplification, and yes 'good' is a meaningless bullshit word, but as far as my motivations go, my inner workings are extremely axiomatic. for the motivations that keep me moving. what even is the right thing to do is obviously crazy complicated and wrong half the time, but... If I want death camps or prisons or secret police to kill isolate or dissapear the 'undesirables' in my ideal world, then its a world where I have to reconcile the existence of death camps or prisons or secret police. which means it's still a shit hole. its still a place where there's injutsice and horrors. there are people dedicated to enacting that. who see their place in making the world work right as inflicting suffering on their hellow humans. which eventually puts us right the fuck back here.
I don't ask perfect idealogical purity from anyone else, not with any expectation I'll get it anyway, but I do demand it from myself. even if I can't always put it into action, even if I constantly have to compromise with my limited knowledge and agency, making vague guesses and hopefully-less-awful decisions.
The PTSD thing is an insight, maybe something I can follow up on.
if I just accept this, this irrational counterproductive unanchored near-random destructive enaction of atrocity for the sake of atrocity, at obvious immediate cost to self, then no decency or love is ever anything but a target. I get that reality is precarious, but this means I can't trust love, can't trust compassion, can't trust curiosity or any of that other shit I adore. or I have to actively hunt this shit down and eradicate it. which leads us back to an awful crapsack nightmare world again. It's to accept that humanity is garbage, and does not deserve better. and so much of myself that's been been dedicated to that dies. and then im still lost as for what to do, and just regret not selling out for family money back when that was still an option.