This, and accept that people will have incorrect input and build it into the confidence. Even the smartest person in the world sometimes makes clerical errors, or has the wrong neuron fire at the wrong moment.

Either you have to trick your mind that the people who are going about the same rituals with you shoulder-to-shoulder are part of the same tribe as you: using the same bus, coffee shop, elevator.

Or you have to trick your mind that being completely alone and going hours, sometimes days, without opening your mouth to communicate with someone or exercise the part of your brain that reads facial cues or even smell the hormones of another human (good or bad) is also somehow okay.

Having done both (2 major metros, as well as suburban and WFH life), I’ve found the former to be easier for me, personally. I also find suburban and rural people to be generally more misanthropic than urban people, which of course has some selection bias. Exurban people seem to be the most misanthropic, by far (shout out Dallas-Fort Worth).

But the point is, being surrounded by people day-in and day-out doesn’t seem to me to make people misanthropic on aggregate - otherwise cities would be an even worse place to exist. It’s the humans that make it bearable.

Teenagers today are probably more likely to share your disinclination towards social interaction because they grew up during a time when AirPods are so ubiquitous.

Our ancient ancestors probably did all of the following within eyesight and earshot of around 40 people:

  - Eating
  - Drinking
  - Defecating
  - Fornicating
  - Bathing
  - Exercising

Edit: I’m also deeply fascinated by the ability of historical sociolinguistics to give us insight into cultural attitudes towards different topics. Consider the evolution of and the attitude towards the expletives “fuck” and “Jesus Christ!”

I’ll have to keep this in mind the next time it comes up…

So it’s no longer about whether we allocate funding to this or that, as a political compromise, it’s about the culture war.

This is an unfair characterization, and frankly, is baseless political rhetoric. Incredible propaganda job moneyed interests have performed in order to convince the right wing that any research that asks probing questions about equity automatically implies anyone white and conservative is “racist”.

My favorite research that falls into this category concerns the effects of nuclear weapons testing on the lands and livelihoods of indigenous peoples. Clearly, nakedly something that anyone with a decent moral compass would give a shit about, but pulled under the umbrella of DEI because empathy is dead.

  - nothing happens by accident
  - nothing is as it seems
  - everything is connected

Anyway, what you presented is not a “gotcha”, despite the fact that I’ve heard it a million times when engaging with right wing “intellectuals”. It’s still a conspiracy theory.

It’s like: what if we took all of the principles of the enlightenment, and forced them through a sieve that served our racist, xenophobic, chauvinist world view? Rediscovering eugenics and pseudoscience, especially for christofascist ambitions and exploitative grifting.

Their business model almost makes them more comparable to cooperatives rather than corporations.

I’m with you - I don’t think this is necessarily an issue with economic systems, but with culture. Specifically the culture that the wealthiest Americans have imposed upon the less wealthy.

The incentives are perfectly aligned for all of us to absolutely hate interacting with call centers, especially automated ones.

It creates a sense of entitlement, as well as enforces a certain type of world view that justifies their actions. How would you feel if your entire career was being invalidated by those who you consider intellectually and culturally inferior political enemies?

Take for example the Wikipedia article for Liz Peek[1]:

> Peek spent more than 20 years on Wall Street as a research analyst focused on the oil industry. She began working for Wertheim & Company in 1975 and in 1983, was one of the first women to become partner at a Wall Street investment firm.

> Peek was the first woman elected president of the National Association of Petroleum Investment Analysts and was also a member of Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts.

> She has written for The Fiscal Times, Fox News, the New York Sun, The Wall Street Journal, Alternate Universe, the Motley Fool, and Women on the Web and has appeared on Fox Business with Neil Cavuto and Fox & Friends. Peek contributes opinion pieces to The Hill.

> Their son, Andrew Peek, studied at Princeton, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and the University of Texas at Austin, is a veteran of the US Army, and has worked for the Heritage Foundation and for two Republican US Senators and one Republican Congressman. He briefly served in each of the Trump administrations; as part of the State Department during Trump's first term, and as an advisor at the NSC during Trump's second term.

Just read her opinion pieces and you’ll experience her worldview firsthand, which I can only presume comes from a foolish sense of self-righteousness for making a career out of enabling and exacerbating the fossil fuel crisis. Don’t think she would be able to sleep at night if she actually gave a shit about even learning about the potential impacts of climate change.

And she’s a drop in the bucket - all of these people are like this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Peek