Has anyone ever felt this way? I’m always feeling that way. How do I win? I try to believe life isn’t serious and most of the times I manage to. Still, sometimes I feel like I am against everyone and everything. How do you win?
You change your perception. You work hard when the situation looks bleak. You try to make peace with everyone. You amaze yourself and prove your “feeling” wrong.
Sj - If you want to be a philosopher, and I don’t know that you do, of course, you encourage it. Foster it. Nurture it. And enjoy it.
I always feel this way. You know, except with mom and…no, maybe it’s just mom.
No one knows the loneliness of the philosopher. It’s one of the achievements of good philosophers.
if you can’t beat’em, join’em 
I’m the only one in my whole family who is an atheist. I’m actually agnostic but it’s either black or white for them anyway. I don’t enjoy the conversations I use to with my friends. I’ve gotten somewhat beyond them. I get judged for reading the books I read. I read books that interest me and they say it’s because I have no life. I agree, I guess. When I’m socializing it’s all a big act. I created a whole character just to get me through the bullshit they think is suppose to be life. I am probably incapable of falling in love, because every girl I interact with is just an act on my part. It’s like everyone is a zombie thinking that everything is a big deal which I think is not. I like my mom though. Just the rest of the world. I don’t like the portrayed image of how the ideal 18 year old is suppose to be. I don’t like the portrayed image of how anything is suppose to be. Certain things just seem futile to discuss when there are greater things out there. Celestial objects that extend farther then we can comprehend. A limitless universe. The high improbability of there being life. Uncertainty of how we got here. So many things I wonder about. I don’t care about trivial things. But they keep trying to make me care. And everyone is always putting me down. And when I get into the same state of mind that they do I start to hate myself. Am I making any sense?
I’m the only one in my whole family who is an atheist. I’m actually agnostic but it’s either black or white for them anyway. I don’t enjoy the conversations I use to with my friends. I’ve gotten somewhat beyond them. I get judged for reading the books I read. I read books that interest me and they say it’s because I have no life. I agree, I guess. When I’m socializing it’s all a big act. I created a whole character just to get me through the bullshit they think is suppose to be life. I am probably incapable of falling in love, because every girl I interact with is just an act on my part. It’s like everyone is a zombie thinking that everything is a big deal which I think is not. I like my mom though. Just the rest of the world. I don’t like the portrayed image of how the ideal 18 year old is suppose to be. I don’t like the portrayed image of how anything is suppose to be. Certain things just seem futile to discuss when there are greater things out there. Celestial objects that extend farther then we can comprehend. A limitless universe. The high improbability of there being life. Uncertainty of how we got here. So many things I wonder about. I don’t care about trivial things. But they keep trying to make me care. And everyone is always putting me down. And when I get into the same state of mind that they do I start to hate myself. Am I making any sense?
It is ‘you against the world’. We may find companions and those who will help, but, ultimately, we’re alone on this journey.
Yes, it’s called being an intelligent adolescent who doesn’t know which fights are worth it and which ones are a waste of time. Trust me, you’ll grow out of it soon enough.
By picking and choosing your battles. And not getting angry about it. Learn to love the fact that other people believe different things to you, no matter how crap their reasons for believing whatever it is. You may not believe in God, or just be unsure either way and have therefore elected to suspend judgement. So be it. Why care about what your sister might think?
You don’t. You can’t beat everything so stop trying. Pick a fight that you don’t know that you can win but if you do win it’ll mean a lot to you, and focus on that. Or, burn up your frustration by tearing into people’s arguments here at ILP. Don’t tear into them personally, but rip their arguments to shreds and you’ll feel better. Or take more exercise. Most of us here should take more exercise.
Like I say, pick and choose your fights. Think of it in the same way as physical violence, or a game of football. You may be a tough person but that doesn’t mean that you’d go into a pub and simultaneously, or even consecutively, pick a fight with every person in there. Likewise you may be a good dribbler of a football but that doesn’t mean you just try to dribble all the time. Some fights just aren’t worth fighting, or are so easy to win that winning them counts for next to sod all. A lot of people out there are idiots with idiotic opinions. You aren’t going to change that by arguing with them. You might change it if you argue with the right person in the education system, or a political department, or a corporation, or a media organ, or…
Do you see where I’m going with this?
sjstudy - I know exactly what you mean and how you feel about socialising. My advice is: don’t waste your time with the “sacks of spuds” who comprise the majority of people, and don’t worry about their arbitrary opinions. Keep an eye out for people who’ve got things in common with you (online or RL) and spend your “social time” with them. Don’t worry if this latter group is small.
Bloody isn’t. Even solitude is a philosophy invented collectively…
Are you schizophrenic?
You cannot win, so you take as many of them down with you as you can, in what ever way that you can, or they will eventually take you down with them in their own way of you stop “fighting”.
You need the world, thus the world can deny you and destroy you at any given time, but this depends on each situation.
There is absolutely no escape and you are stuck.
If you deny your need you will die, but what you need is poisoned.
The air you breath, the food you eat, the people you love, the media taht you take in and the water that you drink, all can and will be poisoned, wasted, sold, contaminated, denied and altered by the people and forces that YOU cannot do ANYTHING about.
That is what the most powerful people on earth have sometimes done, they “joined the dark side” and it worked.
Zarathustra came back down the mountain, did he not? He renounced his solitude, did he not?
As Aristotle put it - even the hermit relies on other people - to not be wherever he is…
I understand. I recognize the importance, even the necessesity, of others. It seems you’re focusing more on what I have entered as my location than what I posted above: ‘We may find companions and those who will help, but, ultimately, we’re alone on this journey.’
Only you are facing your own death, facing the possibility of your failure, enjoying a given moment, reading this, thinking what you are, manufacturing your next move. You have no assistance in this; there’s only one ‘you’ in your head. If that’s not ‘alone’ in your view, we’re simply speaking on different terms.
I’m not going to explain the exact problem I have with the terms of your description, I just go with Wittgenstein and say that such a subject (by which i mean a topic rather than a moral or grammatical agent) is nonphilosophical - there’s nothing to say about it. So no matter what terms you use, I’ll find them problematic. You see where I’m going with this?
As to death - pah! who cares? Life isn’t important because we’re going to die, it’s important because there’s the imminent and permanent possibility of it being better. Or so I believe.
Yeah, I think so. You’re saying you don’t feel inclined to discuss this with me.
I’m not sure I said anything like that - but, whatever. You’ve already ensured this conversation goes nowhere fast. See you in another thread, my friend.
ok so moving on…
sjstudy, I understand some of the problems you said, mainly on your feeling of loneliness and not being able to connect with others.
Alas take comfort that you’ve found ILP 
your amongst friends here, and the kitchen is always open 
I’ve felt like ya dude, and the way I live with it is I don’t make anything personal. When socializing, try to not judge those who you meet. The world is a stage with all kinds of characters. But at the same time don’t lose what mental capacity you have. One thing about the mind is that you don’t realize your degradation, you get used to it as it happends.