Human Nature

[Alan V]

Expectations are built up by experience, so I find that position hard to understand.

You expect to have expectations?  At least one should be reasonable in expecting that the world will not be defied by the artificial impositions of our experience.

Ultimately, our knowledge of the world is descriptive, not prescriptive; and we exceed that remit at our peril.

The world's great religions all suggest we temper if not wholly abandon our expectations.  From the moral humility asked of a Christian who expects redemption to come from outside themselves through grace, to the Buddha who teaches us to detach ourselves from Dukkha and the illusions of the ego, to the Taoist who tells us to be as the uncarved block.  Even the best of our science tells us that we are to measure real success in terms of failure and surprise, rather than confirmation and fulfilled expectations.

I expect to still have to deal with people on a day-to-day basis, and I think that my assumptions about how to do so have become outdated.  So I need to reset.  I have a hard time understanding how and why people react to me as they do.

This is not an unreasonable question: How do I reset?  People have other experiences than I do, and might have some useful suggestions.

So minus avoiding people altogether (I don't own a dog and our cat hates me), I wonder how well other atheists get along with regular people.

(I am quite sure I would still be disappointed with people even without specific expectations in certain situations, by the mere fact that people so often surprise me, as if they were speaking a different language or didn't live in the same world.)