Being social is hard when everything you do is evil
===================================================
I occasionally reference that I have pretty bad scruples OCD. When I'm
not careful it means that I'll end up getting stuck in long periods of
being convinced that I'm the most evil person in existence, an absolute
monster who should be put down like a rabid animal.
The way I mostly handle the scruples obsessions is to live by a lot of
restrictive moral rules. Sometimes my strong need for deeply
interrogating the ethics of my own actions is good: I think it's a good
thing that I'm vegan and have been extremely careful of what kinds of
jobs I've taken even when it means I've been very poor. At least I
wasn't doing formal methods work for the military, y'know?
But in the day-to-day it tends to mean I second guess my every thought
and action, I get into arguments with myself constantly about whether my
actions are Good Enough, I try to restrict sources of pleasure or
happiness because I don't have the right to have good things when so
many people still don't.
It's been hard this year having a job that actually pays well, even
though it fits all my criterion for what an ethical-enough job would be,
simply because I can't shake the feeling that someone else might have
needed it more. I can't reason with counterfactuals like that. I don't
know the set of all people who might have needed a job as a community
college professor. So instead I get to stew in the sense that I probably
ruined someone's life by getting this position.
It's also hard for me to be social, to talk to people, when I feel like
I'm a cancer on the world. I tend to withdraw, keep only loose contact,
priortize giving help when it's needed rather than actually having a
real friendship.
This creates a double-bind where I'm evil if I let myself be close to
others and I'm evil if people are hurt by how "cold" I can seem.
It's one of the things I never entirely know how to resolve.
