Why do people think I should die?

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In prehistoric times, resources were far more limited and thus had to be rationed carefully. Equitable distribution as we would consider fair would doom the whole tribe. The first civilizations were created through what we would today call slavery. Once they were created, they only had enough resources to support a limited number of people. In order to do this we developed cruelty. You shut off the part of your brain that feels altruism, this allows one to dehumanize others in their minds.

I was picked on in school. It didn’t bother me too much, but when it did, I would retaliate. Some kids were poking me in the back during a lesson, I turned around all of a sudden and punched him in the chest. I got sent to the principals office and was given detention or suspension, I can’t recall which right now. He never bugged me again and life got easier at that school until I transferred.

I have meditated on cruelty and violence, one of the things I realized is that I have that same cruel streak that the kids had, the same ability that allowed me to turn around violently and take a swing at him. When I focus on this cruel streak and let that part of my brain express itself in meditation, I realized that cruelty is most often applied to people who are perceived as defenseless.

When you are in semi-desperate situations, altruism shuts off and cruelty becomes the overriding impulse. Nobody is starving, but people do suffer a lot emotionally. If you think about emotional health as a resource, many people live in areas that are utterly devoid of good feeling. Their parents may lack empathy, there’s not much among their friends, the only way they have to feel good is to put each other down.

I hope I have adequately expressed why people are cruel to each other, I must now tackle the more difficult task of explaining why you in particular are getting targeted for this kind of abuse.

Personal growth takes a lot of emotional resources to follow through with successfully. As a result, not everybody can do it. But if you can do it, then you essentially cut yourself out of peer groups. Going back to prehistory, gangs had ways of distributing resources to those who needed it and settling who gets what afterward. Since these resources are finite, the group needs to be able to make sure that everyone plays by the rules they decided on. In this frame of mind, someone who decides that altruism is more important than the rules of the gang deserves censure.

We think that we are civilized, that we are above the brutish politics of the gang. But we’re not, we’re just better at pretending because we have houses and aren’t starving. But most of America exists in a kind of emotional poverty and so the rules of gangs predominate among these impoverished peoples.

I will now outline a few tactics you could adopt to cut down on the volume, from worst to best.

The first approach is to stoop to their level. Inherent in cruelty is the belief that those who are the targets of cruelty deserve their treatment. You could dehumanize these people yourself, in your mind, and cease having positive feelings towards them. This would allow you to fight back against them as I did in high school. It may earn you discipline from the rule-makers, as happened when I got punished for retaliating, but it will make you feel better and allow you to carry yourself with a more confident bearing. Remember, cruelty is applied to those who gang members believe are weak. If you are not seen as weak then you won’t get targeted.

Second is a success mindset. You have taken steps to provide yourself with sources of emotional support, first and foremost your animals. This is impressive to me and the more privileged members of Quora because it displays resilience and inventiveness. It is not enough for people who are emotionally impoverished. They want to be convinced that your way of seeing the world is actually better. They want to see the outward indicators of success. Fancy car, lots of money, swank pad. So the second path would be to acquire those things so that you can convince them that you are someone to be admired and not ridiculed.

I don’t like either of these methods, because they involve changing who you are to fit the whims of idiots. I only articulated them to provide a contrast for what I feel is your best path forward.

Your best option is to be bigger than these morons. Bigger in a way that removes all the negative feelings caused by their stupidity. You don’t need to change yourself, you can become more yourself. See all the head space you devote to haters as nothing more than a waste of time, and decide to spend that on things that make you happier and better and more you.

When I retaliated against the kids that had me pegged as easy prey, I only had to do it once. I didn’t bother analyzing or worrying about the consequences. I just did it and went right back to my life, which at the time was a lot of reading and playing video games. I did not let stupid kids get into my head. I did not let them convince me of anything. I saw them as stupid, and me as just correcting their stupidity. They weren’t worth any more consideration.

In a way, you are dehumanizing them, deciding that their opinions are not worth your consideration. But there are no negative consequences to this path. Simply ignoring them and focusing on being your most authentic self is the path that will bring you the most joy in the long run. The people that matter will notice you and help you out, everything else is just noise.