I mean those people who you look at them and they have the body and responsibilities of a 43 year old but then you hear them talk about other people or other ethnicities or other situations that people are experiencing elsewhere and the person had might as well be a remorseless 3 year old that was raised wrongly.... The thing that floors me is hen you meet a very old person, Im talking in their 60s or older, and they start spewing some of the most idiotic, narcisisstic garbage a person could ever talk of... 'How have you spent all these years learning nothing?!'
Is it really THAT hard to break free of the chains of your terrible childhood and develop just a little empathy , understanding and humanity towards others? I DEFINITELY didnt have the best childhood seeing as how I was bullied and ostracized for decades , even by my parents lol, but I came to realize that 'Hurt people will hurt people.' so why am I going to go out of my way to be selfish and make more people who are hurt? But on the other hand I see , and Im sure most of you also have seen, that humans are not a very logicsl species sometimes. We have the potential to be more logical than Einstein but it doesnt always play out like that... We as a species do A LOOOT of things based on anti-logic, emotions, our pains, our traumas, or our cognitive distortions and this in turn sometimes creates more 'hurt people' ...
Im not saying that humans have gotten worse over time cause anybody here can open up wikipedia and read about all the awful things we used to do to each other , if anything we have gotten better just a little bit. But why are there STILL in the year of 2026 people who choose to just not 'grow up' ?
TL;DR too many adults , and even seniors , Ive emcountered have illogical and sometimes psychopathic opinions . Why do so many people choose to not grow up and be more understanding?
What is your take on something like this?
I guess I can agree with you. My view from all the pain and Ive experienced from others' mean acrions or words or their unusual ostracization of me was "They can be mean to me all they want. The world sucks enough already. Why would I want to make it suck even more?". But maybe Im just speaking from my narrow perspective . All because I was able to turn around the hate I received around into a little bit of love and self-love maybe I was more priveleged than others to a point where I had the capability to turn my hate around because I receivced more guidance on how to do that from my therapist and teachers than others did.
Though I still have a hard time accepting that most fully grown adults who choose to do or spew hurtful things have NO agency in what they choose to do. Certainly there has to come an age where you just 'wake up' and realize that 'Hurt people may hurt people ...Therefore why the hell would I deliberately hurt more people?'. Right?
Well, rather than wondering about how they have lived this long and still haven't learned, that can be flipped the other way around too: they've acted this way for 60 years already. The patterns of that behaviour are quite deeply engraved at that point and even more difficult to get rid of. Older people are called stubborn for a reason and there are sayings about that too such as "an old dog doesn't learn new tricks."
However, as I said, it's not to excuse that behaviour but rather just approach it from a different angle. When a person behaves that way asserting blame as if they could have acted otherwise is unproductive. The focus should in my opinion be in understanding that this behaviour is usually a symptom of some deeper issues. These people are in pain whether they know it or not.
Makes me think of a certain person at work who was always in a bad mood and lashing out. The one time he then took it too far so I asked him to step aside but rather than telling them off I asked whether I had unknowingly done something to them and told how disrespected I felt by the way they behaved. Well, turns out it had nothing to do with me. They were embarrassed and apologized and ever since that they have acted super nice towards me. I wish this reflected on how I always handle conflicts, it doesn't, but this time the more gentle approach completely de-escalated the situation. I can well imagine how that could've gone completely differently had I taken a different approach.
But again: stressed out, underslept, overworked and then tipped over by a minor inconvenience. The reasons behind this kind of behaviour are usually rather mundane.
Ah yes! Good ooint. It could just be that theyre conditioned to act or react in those ways to certain , or sometimes even all, stressors in their life . Like their oast trauma has been so thorough and long that theyve become conditioned in this way usually through no fault of their own. I dont think we should excuse toxic behaviours though I was watching this one Dave's Lemonade episode about a man who did something absoutely heinous but after hewas caught and convicted there was a 'secondary trial' for him that assessed whst in his life led to him becoming the type of man that he was....and....yup! His childhood and even his adulthood too surprisingly clearly explained how he became the way he became. Ill try to find thr video... Edit : Here it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Otz6Ydf9Avk
Good point. Well I guess I am speaking from a point of privelege here again cause usually when I feel this way I can take a moment , or even many moments, to just cool off , understand what is making me mad, understand ehat happened to me, and try to find ways to overcome it. Others may not have this luxury...