The error here is in assuming that you’re a reflection of those you spend time around, rather than the obverse, that you spend time around people who reflect you and your behavior. It’s a cop-out–”I’m not responsible for who I am and what choices I make, those are due to the influence of others…”. No, sweetie–Those “others” are the people you chose to hang around with, and who let you do that “hanging around”.

Of course, the people who make these claims are such weak-minded twits that they probably would be the sort to turn into deviant sociopathic rapists if they hung around deviant sociopathic rapists, so perhaps they can be forgiven for extrapolating their weakness of mind out into the general population…

Western “civilization” is apparently such a crappy construct that such people can pass for members of its “intellectual class”. Thank God I never wasted the time trying to become a member of that weak-minded mass of poltroonery…

As an adult, I choose the five people I spend the most time with. They don’t determine my nature. I determine whom they will be.

I have a lot of appreciation for meetup sites. They help me find the sort of people I want to be around.

I’ve known a handful of people who, were they much more plentiful, would give me reason to have faith in humanity. I cherish these few. I have never, ever, found an organization that was worthy of my trust. The ones that start out okay go bad after a while. The good people get fed up with a bad organization before I do and they move on. Then there’s no reason for me to stay, so I move on.

(Loyalty is moral duct tape. It will hold broken things together for a while, but it doesn’t really fix the problem. People who value loyalty as a virtue are worshipers of shortsighted expediency. The Church of Red Green.)

This is how bad people in control make it harder for good people to connect and maintain connections. But they can’t make it impossible. We just have to make more effort to cut the gatekeepers and organizers out of the loop.