I was rephrasing what you said about not encountering bad stuff in your life (to this extent) and emphasizing that the news can talk about this stuff, videos can show this stuff—but does your own life involve all this stuff, ‘that makes you think humanity is evil?’.
I then asked whether this method works (‘focus on your own life’) when applied to someone else’s life. I.e. stuff like talking with someone about their life (or reading an autobiography), and suggested that this might be less distorted—but there’s a lot of people, and so there will be people whose lives are extraordinary (not just in good ways), and so something like someone telling their life story on news/interview or whatever could still be very different from your own—and in the way described in this post.
And also, maybe the type of people with autobiographies are usually famous and lived unusual lives, so that doesn’t necessarily work either.
Thanks for the clarification, now I get it. I think that is a good point. I do not know anyone that I know who did terrible things. And I mean from all the people who I have ever met. Which is probably in the hundreds. But of course, if they had done something terrible they would not necessarily have said. But it feels like none of them did. I just know one person that got into prison. And with know, I mean that I said 2 words to him in all my life, and a friend who knew him better told me after I did not see him for many years. I would expect that most people’s lives are like that. For a start, at least no one of all of these people has told me that they themselves or other people had different experiences. And that would be thousands of people at least. Though again they might just not have mentioned it. I never talked with anyone about this explicitly until now.
I was rephrasing what you said about not encountering bad stuff in your life (to this extent) and emphasizing that the news can talk about this stuff, videos can show this stuff—but does your own life involve all this stuff, ‘that makes you think humanity is evil?’.
I then asked whether this method works (‘focus on your own life’) when applied to someone else’s life. I.e. stuff like talking with someone about their life (or reading an autobiography), and suggested that this might be less distorted—but there’s a lot of people, and so there will be people whose lives are extraordinary (not just in good ways), and so something like someone telling their life story on news/interview or whatever could still be very different from your own—and in the way described in this post.
And also, maybe the type of people with autobiographies are usually famous and lived unusual lives, so that doesn’t necessarily work either.
Thanks for the clarification, now I get it. I think that is a good point. I do not know anyone that I know who did terrible things. And I mean from all the people who I have ever met. Which is probably in the hundreds. But of course, if they had done something terrible they would not necessarily have said. But it feels like none of them did. I just know one person that got into prison. And with know, I mean that I said 2 words to him in all my life, and a friend who knew him better told me after I did not see him for many years. I would expect that most people’s lives are like that. For a start, at least no one of all of these people has told me that they themselves or other people had different experiences. And that would be thousands of people at least. Though again they might just not have mentioned it. I never talked with anyone about this explicitly until now.