The most interest thing I ever heard from a therapist, I used to know was that she said that she dealt with kids who were bullies and whose parents were even fact people who used to be bullied. Instead of being horrified, were in fact proud of their child. The parents believed that the child being bullies made them strength because they unlike the parents were not being picked on and instead dealing it out.

I’ve found that many people stop emotionally maturing at about 18-25 years old. I’d like to believe that there’s some way to break these people out of this “rut” - possibly through class consciousness or some other thing that might open them up to more introspective thought patterns.

I was admittedly racist and Islamophobic and a bit of a bully as a teenager until I was about 19 or 20, having grown up in a very very rural American town where that was basically the norm. I found my way to where I am now via years of introspection, exposure to more diversity, and opening my mind to trying to understand things like class and anti-imperialism (probably initially by good faith exposure to Israeli apartheid and the Palestinian genocide). I’m definitely not a “finished product” by any means, but I’m a much better person than I was back then (over a decade ago now). This leads me to hold out some sliver of hope that there is some way to move the needle with the people who are like I was when I was younger.

At least for people with my background, I do think there are a surprising number of them that would be open to left wing beliefs if you could somehow break through the endless layers of right wing propaganda. If you talk to enough of them, they will occasionally say something that sounds like they’re essentially paraphrasing Das Kapital, but somehow they come to the conclusion that the solution is hating immigrants and lowering taxes for the rich.

Aw, comrade! Wish I could wrap you in a huge, snug hug!

It requires a lot of self-awareness and lack of ego to actually get rid of these shitty behaviors. I myself was pretty shitty when I was in my 20s simply because I didn’t know better and humans do have pretty shitty behaviors by default. It requires so much work to get rid of if you’re not initially being brought up that way and have lots of trauma.

I feel you. Today, I go around and see people saying and even believing they are doing good and at the same time doing the shitty things you talk about. They are either not being aware of it or actively ignoring it because it’s too painful for them to admit. And it’s so hard for me because you just never know how someone is until they actually reveal their problematic behaviors. Sometimes it’s fast, like someone admitting to supporting right-wing politics, but more often it’s very circumstantial and you go along thinking someone is good until they’re in that specific kind of situation where they reveal their shitty side.

That’s why personally, I select for awareness. I look for signs that they think about how they think and that they are able to admit they were shitty at some point, but trying to do better. And even that fails sometimes, because there are still people that do these things just to virtue signal without any desire to actually do better.

It’s fucking exhausting. But like you say, you can choose your people and your environment. There are actually good people out there. They’re just soooo hard to find. I have found like 6 right now. And I venture outside of this only veeeeeery rarely. That works for me.

If I knew this maybe I wouldn’t have let my guard down so I wouldn’t have been bullied in college