Dear Murtaza:

This is a long post (hopefully an exception to the rule), please take your time with it, don’t rush. I want you to give it your patient attention and consideration.

“Why are you doing this? This whole talking and offering help“- to learn about people, myself included, to learn in depth what motivates us, why we behave the way we do, and how we humans messed up so badly. (As I just typed “we humans” I am thinking you might take offense to being grouped in with all other humans). I am curious, I want to learn, it gives meaning to my life.

This early morning I continued my months-long study of three threads in which I do not post- because there is more learning to be done from the interactions between the members who do post there. My motivation is not to interact with members in these threads, or to help anyone there- the motivation is nothing other than learning.

I don’t read books for the purpose of learning about human motivation and behavior (not for years), because they are planned, structured, edited. I learn from threads here because they are often raw, organic- not planned, structured and edited. Plus, here I have the opportunity to interact with original posters and read interactions between members.

My motivation here is not to make personal connections (although it happens, as it happens for me interacting with you), or to socialize (although at times it happens that I enjoy non-learning interactions). In regard to helping members I interact with (or those who otherwise may be reading my posts)- I am very doubtful that I help anyone long-term: sometimes what I write makes a member feel better, sometimes- worse. Sometimes a member posts to me that because of my input, he/ she understands something new,  something that never occurred to the member before- but I know too well that most often, people drop (forget about, neglect, push aside) new understandings that are difficult to hold on to.

Regarding being humans, as in social animals and therefore needing other humans, you wrote: “this  is good on paper, but when it comes to the real world, can you tell me how can I apply this? How can I find a group that can understand me? That accepts me? That can offer the things that won’t make me sick.. or do I have to drop some values of mine? Or destroy the persona I made?“-

– that we are social animals is a scientific fact, one I am 100% confident about because I believe in science. The truth of this fact (and other scientific facts) is not negotiable in my mind any more than the fact that gravity exists. There is another fact, a second fact, and that is that you have been unable to find a (large enough, birdman and I understand you perhaps?) group of people who understands and accepts you. The second fact does not make a dent in the first fact:  you can’t change your social nature so to accommodate your unfavorable social circumstances.

There is a movie that comes to mind called “cast away” about a man who finds himself alone for a long, long time on an island, not a single human around other than himself, and no internet! His way to socialize with another human was to paint a human face on a soccer ball and interact with that “human”. You are a step up from the character in that movie because you have the internet and you are interacting with me. Otherwise, you are interacting with people irl, you mentioned a friend who you refer to as birdman, with whom you have some meeting of the minds.

How to find a larger group that can understand and accept you without exacting the price of you dropping your values and your persona/ individuality? I don’t know.

I wrote to you: “Most people think and feel differently from others, that’s why they try so desperately to fit in, to not appear different”, and you wrote: “I really don’t think so.. not having a normie brain”–

– when I read your disagreement with my sentence yesterday, my first reaction was to defend my sentence against your disagreement. That was my “normie”/ rigid brain defending what’s already there, rejecting change before considering it. Later on, I thought and realized that you may be right and I may be wrong, and therefore, I considered change- that was my non-normie/ non-rigid brain.

I re-evaluated the sentence you disagreed with and I now believe that I was wrong and you are right. Re-stating the sentence in my words: once people become rigid, they do fit in with other rigid people who rigidly hold on to the same ideas, no matter what evidence is presented to them.

“a part of being normie is the desire to fit in, though most people I see, are indeed fitting in, and they like it”- I am not living where you live, but where I lived and where I live now (and here online), I see a lot of misery. I personally don’t know of any person who is not significantly anxious at some time of every single day.

When I was a child and at your age and many years after, I imagined that everyone was mentally healthy and happy, and I was the exception, the only one who was different. A few years ago, I was able to see that I only imagined that everyone else was mentally healthy- it was quite a shock for me to see reality being so different from what I imagined it to be.

“Who is Murtaza then.. no one, a nobody.. I don’t consider myself a human, or someone who follows his programming, I don’t see a desire of love is mine… all the goals and beliefs, just a part of my programming… I always felt a prisoner to my desires and needs, I always detach them from myself.. I just refuse them“-

– I am a firm believer in science, therefore, I believe that (1) you are a human, (2) programming by nature (genetics) and by the environment is responsible for every single thing that we are and can be , (3) human programming makes it possible for humans to do what other animals can not do: to initiate changes in some of the programming we are born with/ learn from the environment, and to carry on these changes. The ability to initiate and carry on changes in human programming is a human programming in itself. Few humans takes a significant advantage  of this particular programming

You wrote that you always felt a prisoner to your programming (desires and needs), that you refuse your programming- it is impossible for any human to refuse one’s programming; it is possible to focus, develop and expand the particular programming I mentioned above.

“I wanted to ask you something.. I don’t think I ever asked you this, how are you? And I’m asking in general, in life, how do you feel? Are you happy?”- earlier in life, I hated it when people asked me if I was happy, I I wanted to scream in their faces: DO I LOOK HAPPY!??? CAN’T YOU SEE HOW MISERABLE I AM? WHY CAN’T YOU SEE ME?

– I was too alone and too lonely for so long, with so much pain inside, and yet.. the world didn’t see, as if I was invisible, as if I did not exist.

I think that lifetime happiness is a myth (the concept of heaven is based on this myth). There are happy moments (contentment and peace of mind and heart are my favorite!) Overall, I feel way better and consistently better than I used to feel, no longer the devastating depression of before, but happy- no.

anita