I grew up in the country where lots of people are like this. As an adult, I’ve always lived in cities. I’m some odd amalgamation of the two, perfectly content in not chasing goals but also hyper vigilant in avoiding people that enable poor health decisions. It’s quite a zen life, to be honest, but I often come upon people who work both extremes: pushing me toward unhealthy habits or pushing me toward more prestigious paths, assuming depression. I don’t know; I’m just happy to be healthy, competent, and well fed.

And, I’ve always been single, having never been compelled to try. When you don’t intend to have children, the calculus changes. I would enjoy having the full human experience, but my outlook prevents me from making that choice.

Kudos man. Happy to hear that. It’s tough to assemble a cogent world view when the people closest to you muddy the waters by tugging emotional hooks. I’ve been there.

It’s tragic, yes. But, don’t underestimate the effects of propaganda, repeat exposures that dwarf my face time with the guy. He doesn’t have my range of experience. He’s just a lonely, 50-something man that’s had more negative than positive experiences in life. He has tunnel vision.

In my mind, he’s responsible for his choices and frame-of-mind. But that’s not going to stop me from sharing my perspective without confronting or proselytizing. Insecurity is a mother fucker.

Heh, oh I do realize that. I’d not say I’m being strategic, but I am being intentional. One of the reasons I chose to live where I currently do is to expose myself to that subset of the population. I don’t have a car, and one of the (internalized) benefits is creating opportunity to chat with a broad spectrum of people. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but I consider myself to be a student of perspective. Many years ago, after university, I joined the Peace Corps. I have direct experience building relationships with folks whose beliefs blind them. I just find it tragic that we seem to be careening toward conflict when it’s all so eminently avoidable. So, I try to spread a little grassroots goodwill.

I’d add, I wish that we in America had some form of compulsory or strongly-encouraged foreign service not related to war.

I frequently chat with my neighbor who is a Q-class Trumper. Over the past year, I’ve been able to observe the leopards licking his face as if I were filming a nature documentary in 4k. We actually get along great. I like having a window into whatever inane, batshit information he consumes, and he really enjoys my company, as I don’t outwardly judge him, and I listen. Naturally, he’s on disability and dependent upon the state. As such, he’s running low on funds and needs to move in a couple months.

We had elections this past week in my state. I told him that I voted, and he offered up some excuses as to why he can’t make it to the polls. We tend not to directly discuss politics, because I told him a long time back that I’m still salty about Bernie. Deep down, he knows that we don’t align, but he doesn’t want to rock the boat. I give his pets treats. I give him treats. He occasionally mentions various religion-based conspiracies and alludes to looming conflict and the criminality of the left, but he’s become more mum on this front. I think, the gears may be turning in his head.

I don’t have any grand insights with which to conclude my anecdote. I give the guy a 30-70 chance of rediscovering reality. But, by being nice to the dude, I do think his chances are much better than they would be had I ignored him the past few years.

Reactivity and haphazard attribution has spread like an emotional contagion. It’s understandable but certainly doesn’t inspire much confidence in our ability to adapt to compounding crises.

Not directly related to the original comment, but generally, I must disagree with the assertion that caring about differences in intensity is problematic or warrants the assumption of “justifying bad behavior”. I’d argue, that in most cases, failure to juxtapose two distal scenarios is more dubious and spurs a breakdown in communication. It seems commonplace now, amongst a set of the population, to cast all loosely related things into one bucket, details be damned. This is a dangerous mode of groupthink. It represents an over-correction that pushes the pendulum-of-social-discord to new heights. I also think it emblematic of the current political divide. Assuming intent, and classifying it as akin to some greater evil, only “highlights” that one party is tugging emotional hooks to make an obscure point seem clear. That’s religious bollocks. Words matter and differences are important. Good-bad binaries are born from our ideological past, to assert control or prepare us for battle.

“why are you defending bad behavior from being compared”

He quite clearly is comparing them and saying one isn’t as bad, in his tongue-in-cheek opinion.

“why do you care?”

Many are quite simply fatigued with the torrent of false equivalencies plaguing modern discourse, whether for dramatic effect or not. I think it sometimes comes from a good place, but more often, I suspect it to be self-serving, group-selection, othering behavior. The sanctimony with which some connect the dots clouds broader context. Effective communication requires giving the other party some grace.

I speak to some folks who have worked on university campuses over the past 20 years. Beginning, in earnest, around the year 2010, this type of behavior has run amok. I do think it started with good, well-reasoned intentions but metastasized into a nebulous search-for-meaning, a weary reaction to the declining state-of-the-world. Yes, identifying bad behavior can be a positive, to move society away from our more basal instincts, but oversimplifying in this manner is not helpful; it’s inflammatory. It’s like fighting fire with fire, which may work for a time, but ultimately, it’s a stopgap, feel-good, short-term solution that runs the risk of exacerbating the original problem.

Fact of the matter is, we are living during a time of extinction. Siloing into groups is probably inevitable, and I think manifestations of the culture war are a symptom, driven by environmental factors and bad actors. But, humans should be intelligent enough to maintain a broad context window and resist the temptation to reduce the complexities of cause-and-effect into emotional binaries. Mapping differences is how we truly improve and avoid thinking in binaries.

TLDR: I drank some coffee and wrote some stuff. No offense intended. For more about “thinking in binaries” check out the essays of Montaigne.