Throw away for obvious reasons. I find almost everyone intensely boring. How am I supposed to get along with people without feeling like a complete fraud?
Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into.
I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a mask of civility and charm when needed, but all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.
It's like you try to peel back a single layer of why people believe what they believe and there's nothing there. No reflection, no relevant context, no mirror provided by an intimate knowledge of history or literature ... just nothing.
Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.
How do people put up with it?
Small talk, feigning interest in kids, in sports, in wine, in whatever useless dull, pedestrian thing a coworker is into.
I find that anyone who isn't a PhD (or could easily have been if they hadn't gone into industry) might as well be a paper shell. I can put on a mask of civility and charm when needed, but all I really want is to talk to deeply self-aware people struggling with the boundaries of human knowledge.
It's like you try to peel back a single layer of why people believe what they believe and there's nothing there. No reflection, no relevant context, no mirror provided by an intimate knowledge of history or literature ... just nothing.
Nearly every time I work up the motivation to try to really get to know someone who I think I may have judged too quickly I find religiosity, passive consumerism, an unexamined life, something so distasteful that it takes ages before I can do it again.
How do people put up with it?