Quite simply, there is nothing inherently “depressing” or “disappointing” with how people happen to be. It would be nice if people were genuinely charitable, and, to the degree that it’s intelligible, it would be nice if love were more than “mere chemical reactions.” But it’s never been this way, and neither will ever likely actually happen. The fundamental problem is that your reaction works as if changing your understanding changed the world, rather than the other way around.
What I meant by high standards specifically is that one need not think people are perfectly charitable to generally like people. People you don’t know behaving somewhat worse than you would hope is not a reason to become dispirited, particularly when they were never that way to begin with.
Quite simply, there is nothing inherently “depressing” or “disappointing” with how people happen to be
“Depressing” is a 2-place predicate—Depressing(x,y). A certain situation x may or may not be depressing to a certain individual y. The situation that humans are both uncharitable, selfish and furthermore deluded about that is depressing to me.
Causally, this is because I also used to be deluded about it, so finding out that people are not as nice as the propoganda says they are feels like a loss, though, as you point out, it is not.
But the fact that the causal explanation for my disappointment in humanity is that I used to be deluded does not logically compel me to change my standards.
Indeed, I think that it is precisely because we are mostly deluded about what our own typical behaviour is, and what our typical motivations are that we even have a concept of goodness. Our concept of goodness is what happens when we believe our own bullshit.
Quite simply, there is nothing inherently “depressing” or “disappointing” with how people happen to be. It would be nice if people were genuinely charitable, and, to the degree that it’s intelligible, it would be nice if love were more than “mere chemical reactions.” But it’s never been this way, and neither will ever likely actually happen. The fundamental problem is that your reaction works as if changing your understanding changed the world, rather than the other way around.
What I meant by high standards specifically is that one need not think people are perfectly charitable to generally like people. People you don’t know behaving somewhat worse than you would hope is not a reason to become dispirited, particularly when they were never that way to begin with.
“Depressing” is a 2-place predicate—Depressing(x,y). A certain situation x may or may not be depressing to a certain individual y. The situation that humans are both uncharitable, selfish and furthermore deluded about that is depressing to me.
Causally, this is because I also used to be deluded about it, so finding out that people are not as nice as the propoganda says they are feels like a loss, though, as you point out, it is not.
But the fact that the causal explanation for my disappointment in humanity is that I used to be deluded does not logically compel me to change my standards.
Indeed, I think that it is precisely because we are mostly deluded about what our own typical behaviour is, and what our typical motivations are that we even have a concept of goodness. Our concept of goodness is what happens when we believe our own bullshit.