I surround myself with people who agree with me – this is the only way to survive

A bubble is necessary. This is a “safe place”

November 25, 2024, 6:00 am

What are you doing, just sitting here and reading an article that roughly matches your worldview? Haven’t you heard that we all need to get out of our bubbles? Or are you too scared to hear what people outside are saying? Search! Look outside! The Enlightened Ones are here to help!

You are right. I’m in a joke bubble. But there seem to be a lot of people, especially after the US election results, who are telling everyone else how important it is not to be isolated, not to be in an echo chamber, not to be a mental hermit. but a citizen of the world, somehow inhabiting every point of view it contains.

This can certainly be very good advice. When you’re involved in national politics, you certainly feel obligated to be aware of other points of view than yours, to value different experiences, hopes, vulnerabilities, thought processes, constituency concerns, and to develop your campaign – and perhaps even your policies. after that – with the goal of covering as many of them as possible, not fewer of them.

If you’re running a really large organization where hundreds or thousands of employees depend on you, then again it’s probably better to surround yourself with someone else rather than a handful of sycophants, because that usually means your organization is one year away from exploding, leaving you. stood in the middle of the ruins and wondered how this happened when everything seemed to be going so well.

Macrocosmically, the bubbles must burst. However, on a microcosmic level they are vital. A person cannot live on bread alone – a support system of three, four or five like-minded people is also vitally important, to whom you can call, let off steam and/or drink yourself into unconsciousness at any moment. We used to call them “friends”. Now they are viewed with disapproval as comrades. Bubble blowers. Furious diggers of the ditch in which you all want to dig in.

The idea that not carefully managing your life to get to know all people and all things is slightly immoral, that spending time with people on the basis that you like them and have something in common with them is dark suspicious way to move on. it cannot be allowed to gain momentum. Personal bubbles are absolutely essential. This is the only way to live life with a little comfort, ease and pleasure.

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This doesn’t mean your friends have to agree with you on every point, although to be honest, the older I get, the more I want to – I’m so tired. Luckily, so does everyone else in my bubble, so I figure it’ll work out either way. But it does mean that you mostly agree on the big things (left/right/centre, the death penalty, reproductive rights, parenting styles, the place of scented candles in a civilized society) and also on a lot of little things – scoring enough points. difference for a heartfelt discussion about stupid things that does not have the potential to escalate into real conflict or division.

Dear God, if I couldn’t lean on the people around me, talk, cry, and not be afraid of arguments at every corner, I would go crazy. Polarized debates are all around us. If you use social media, it is constantly raging in your pocket. If this happened on a purely social and not media level (“real life,” as we called it. Sometimes just “life”), it would be unbearable.

My bubble is full of bookish, atheist/agnostic, conflict-avoidant, vaguely left-wingers in the sense that old Michael Foot had in his duffcoat days, people who, if they have children, are non-helicopter, multi-child people. everything because we keep losing type of things and if they don’t have kids they quite rightly won’t babysit. I keep one extrovert so she can run around and bring us gossip from the wider world when we need it, but otherwise it’s definitely a homogeneous group.

The idea that you have some kind of moral obligation to surround yourself with people from all different religious, political and sociocultural backgrounds in order to be seen as a caring, well-rounded, decent person who supports a decaying world rather than helping to destroy it ignores our need for connection. not in confrontation, in comfort in our personal lives, not in conflict.

Perhaps it’s part of our era’s obsession with constant self-improvement. The same cultural atmosphere that says a full-time job isn’t enough, but you should also have a side hustle, and it wants you to turn your personal life into a learning opportunity (if you can then find a way to get on Instagram and monetize him, congratulations! You defeated late Western capitalism).

Resist. If the bubble can be strengthened, strengthen it. Maybe we’ll move to the bunker, if not. Echo chambers sound like they might have beds in them – that would be nice. The point is that on an individual level, likes, calls to like, and the occasional bubble are normal. A bubble is necessary. This is a safe place. Although no one is allowed into mine who uses a phrase other than irony.