I want to be able and capable of being 100% independent and choosing not to. Right now, I'm not capable, and I don't like it. If I suddenly needed to be, I'd be screwed.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Mental Health
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“OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys.
But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, or how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this:
“You are not enough people!”
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who has six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty it was, or handsome.
Wouldn't you have loved to be that baby?”
― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian
I'm all for saving the Western world view from individualistic anti-humanist self-annhilation. Its not too late to start prioritizing people more than objects.
As an added bonus, it'll piss our billionaire overlords off.
I'm so vehemently adamant about needing and wanting to live completely alone, and be left alone, that I would sooner live in my car (and do), than have to live with friends or roommates. Needed to see this. It definitely made me feel something I can't put into words.
Im not sure about that, i want to be alone
But also please know that you are loved.
Oh and I hear you please also know that.
Sadly we've created (or at least blindly complied with) a society that values consumerism over community. The larger family/tribe unit worked because everyone had someone. The young were looked after by the elderly, who in turn were nourished by feelings of worth and value, while younger adults would work or look after the household. Now we pay strangers to look after our kids and ourselves in old age. We work with colleagues we barely connect with for the best years of our lives, lives that we spend mostly buying stuff and things to fill the void we've created.
I work with colleagues that are actively hostile to me, and I'd rather trade smashing rocks in a forest for 12 hours, with no human contact. I straight up gave up YouTube, Videogames, C.AI, and Discord, just to focus on my job, and it is never enough.
I just like being alone and there's nothing wrong with that. All my life I've tried liking being with others and tried accepting being loved but really I just want to be left alone and people to not care or not make a fuss of things.
Just be!
Yeah, I do deserve all that but it ain't happening. Hasn't happened for decades. Don't see it changing any time soon.
For the record, I don't think it's malicious, I think it's that my needs are high and/or unusual or something. Idk.