Discussion What is one (or multiple) event(s) that you became disillusioned with life?

[TAW122]

What is one event (or multiple events) that caused you to become disillusioned with the world itself? There are many events (including current ones and even the future events) that shaped my perception of the world and how I view, interact, respond to it. I will give a few examples.

Back when I was an elementary school student, as young as 8 years of age, I was told that some reality shows are fake and that bothered me for a while partly because I was naive enough to have just 'believed' without question. As a kid and in general, I lacked critical thinking skills and skepticism, the ability to be introspective. However, as I grew older, I started to doubt and question things, more so during my adolescent years. I confirmed my doubts by what was shown in a reality show to be real because it was the same footage from a real event. I could go into more detail of the story, but I believe I already covered my points thoroughly, so I won't be doing so.

Another event that has dismantled my belief in a just world and further sowed disillusion in my life was when I learned about how people are deceptive towards what they meant about consequences. No one ever (directly) told me that "help" was paternalistic, invasive, degrading and humiliating, violation of privacy. By help I'm referring to the aggressive forced treatment of someone against their will or wishes. Fortunately, I was never involuntarily nor voluntarily ordered to seek treatment, but it was still jarring to have experiences of people trying to peddle the idea of "help" being a benign event/action being imposed on others. Ever since then, I have always looked at psychiatry, religion, and other fields as nothing more than a nuisance, hindrance, and at worst, even a threat towards my freedom in a sense.

A common one was when I heard the platitude of "nothing is impossible" (and so many other clichés) which is devoid of logic and reality. In my experiences in life, if you are given a bad hand, unless you have extraordinary luck, extraordinary talent, and circumstances that you capitalize on, you just aren't gonna be very successful or do very well. I'm not only talking about finances, but education, social life, and other aspects in existence. Like if you wanted to follow your passion and dream, sometimes you won't be able to have a successful or (financially) stable life. Not everyone can pursue their dream and become successful. For there to be successful people, there are (many) others that paid the price in order for them (the very few) to enjoy their successes. I digress though but this is one of the examples in reality that has further reinforced and confirmed my disillusion of the real world and how life sucks.

There are more examples and stories, but I believe these three are enough to get my point across. I have become cynical, apathetic, and generally pessimistic (yet realistic) about the world and life in general.

What event(s) caused you to become disillusioned with life and become cynical, apathetic, pessimistic towards the world?

 

[Lily (Osako)]

Marriage. He was addicted to porn, prostitutes, cheating.
I was married for 29 years. He totally broke be.
I don't think I'll ever be able to trust anyone ever again. At least not with my heart.
I am completely disillusioned with love, committed relationships, honesty, integrity, you name it.

 

[eve2004]

-My former therapist was gaslighting me for 5 years.
-Humanity and society is going down the drain. I want out.

 

[GenesAndEnvironment]

Playing detective to find out what people are doing in romantic relationships (especially with people I know of IRL). Seeing displays of incompetence and nescience from myself and others (especially those granted authority and status).

 

[foreverfalling]

I think my disillusionment comes from realisations that I get when contemplating on my life or things that have happened. At a young age I had certain thoughts which I believed seemed contrary to how other people would think, making me feel alien.

Sometime early high school, I wondered why people liked songs that were top of the music charts. Was the music ranked highly because many people liked them, or was it that people liked them because they were ranked high? I concluded that since there was no way the TV station could know what these school children liked, that it must be that these kids liked the songs because the TV station ranked them high.

I also wondered why people drank coffee. To me it was akin to smoking, a habit propagated by what was seen on TV, or what everyone else was doing. Or perhaps it was some sort of symbol of adulthood which you had to demonstrate to other people. It didn't particularly taste good and was so expensive. I couldn't understand the other reason of it for waking you up. At best the effect was very mild for me, but why wouldn't you just sleep and get better rested, instead of making it feel like you aren't tired?

These were early signs of disillusionment of life, seeing things for what they are. I'm pretty sure I had made those observations independently. I couldn't grasp exactly what these observations actually meant until much later in life. Now I understand it as living in a dystopian world of lies.

 

[Dead Ghost]

I have been a determinist since I was 13 years old. I know that free will is a fallacy and that overthrew everything, absolutely everything I believed in.
Even the words of this answer were already decided long before I signed up for SaSu a few months ago.

Sorry, I just curse today this universal system that forces me to live the desires of who knows what.

//

Sóc determinista desde els 13 anys. Se que el lliure albir és una fal·làcia i això va enderrocar-ho tot, absolutament tot en el que creía.
Inclòs les paraules d'aquesta resposta estaven ja decidides molt abans de que m'inscrigués a SaSu fa uns mesos.

Ho sento, es que avuí maleixo aquest sistema universal que m'obliga a viure els desitjos de ves a saber que.

 

[FuneralCry]

Just hearing about all the awful things that others go through and all of the cruelty that exists in this world is enough to make anyone feel negatively towards existence. I've never wanted to be alive and even when I was very young I saw life as being pointless. I think that being suicidal is seeing the world for what it really is.

 

[Celerity]

I had some rough times as a child with my abusive father. In the most repetitive, boring, and predictable cycle in family dynamics known to man, he was repeating what was done to him by his parents.

That said, what really broke me as far as trusting people goes was an episode of bullying at school that wasn't even targeted at me. I took a classmate under my wing who was being viciously bullied. She exhibited a lot of negative, attention-seeking behavior, so I understood to an extent why some individuals in our class genuinely hated her. I myself had struck out at people verbally and physically when I was angry in the past. Pushing back against someone you feel is disrespectful made a modicum of sense, not that it justified what they did.

No, what really messed with me was the time a few of her enemies whipped the whole goddamn class into a frenzy. At about 15-20 kids per class, between 45 and 60 kids surrounded her in a huge circle on the playground and told her to kill herself. It was simply an excited, bloodthirsty mob. I looked at their faces and saw no malice there or cowardice, which would also have been understandable. They all, whether they disliked her personally or not, just wanted to see her suffer for the fun of it. The gentlest, nicest kids in the class were just as vocal as the ostensibly vicious ones.

To add insult to injury, they also said that they wished her mom had succeeded in killing her as a baby. Her mom, suffering from psychiatric issues, had tried to do just that to her children, and she and her father were actually hiding from her.

I tried to intervene that day, but no one would listen. It was like they were possessed. With no other choice, I reported it to my teacher who said that it was "just words" and to "let it flow off like water off a duck's back". My friend and I were 11 years old.

I think my disillusionment comes from realisations that I get when contemplating on my life or things that have happened. At a young age I had certain thoughts which I believed seemed contrary to how other people would think, making me feel alien.

Sometime early high school, I wondered why people liked songs that were top of the music charts. Was the music ranked highly because many people liked them, or was it that people liked them because they were ranked high? I concluded that since there was no way the TV station could know what these school children liked, that it must be that these kids liked the songs because the TV station ranked them high.

I also wondered why people drank coffee. To me it was akin to smoking, a habit propagated by what was seen on TV, or what everyone else was doing. Or perhaps it was some sort of symbol of adulthood which you had to demonstrate to other people. It didn't particularly taste good and was so expensive. I couldn't understand the other reason of it for waking you up. At best the effect was very mild for me, but why wouldn't you just sleep and get better rested, instead of making it feel like you aren't tired?

These were early signs of disillusionment of life, seeing things for what they are. I'm pretty sure I had made those observations independently. I couldn't grasp exactly what these observations actually meant until much later in life. Now I understand it as living in a dystopian world of lies.

You can make the same argument for alcohol. It is an "acquired taste" in the sense that your mind starts to associate the bitterness of the brew with reward, and some people (like myself) have a very high tolerance for bitter tastes. Caffeine also gives me a little bit of a high. It amplifies any good mood I have going and makes me more dynamic. However, you do have a good point about peer pressure. I started drinking coffee and alcohol because I saw it as a rite of passage, not because I necessarily expected to enjoy it. Years later, I'm an avid coffee drinker and alcoholic.

 

[Neneko Izumozaki]

I loved mathematics and dreamed of becoming a mathematician in the future.
But after entering college, I discovered that I had no talent for mathematics. This fact devastated me greatly ...

 

[Disappointered]

I remember how there were always kids in elementary school who were bullied outcasts and noticing that it was in large part thanks to the schoolteachers themselves. One instance in kindergarten was the first and most disturbing. A nice slightly chubby kid had tried to remove the skin from his apple with his fingers and had placed small peels on the floor. I can't remember if he had already been identified as weak or somehow disrespected but I remember that this instance was a turning point and it was early in the year. The semi-retarded teacher (aren't they all though?) saw the peels on the floor and threw an abusive fit, yelling at him to clean it up. I was a bit shocked. I remember noting the change in his face. It wasn't fear, it was more an internal darkness, eyes narrowing. I did not consider the teacher's reaction to be remotely acceptable and I felt bad for the chubby kid. But what I also noticed was that this POS schoolteacher had just set up a premise for the other children to scapegoat him and it actually worked. I saw some of them begin to look at him with hatred. One of them repeated the teacher's disgusting orders to clean up the peels in a hateful tone, with demonic sickness in his eyes. At no point did the POS schoolteacher correct the abusive scenario she had created and that only a literal retard wouldn't have noticed. That chubby kid's life was permanently altered because of that filthy schoolteacher. It was like a sort of "new normal" in my child mind and obviously in those of the other children as well. Different people reacted to it in different ways but no one tried to correct the human sacrifice that was unfolding. It unfolded on an ongoing basis for the next six years, along with those of a couple of other sad souls who I guess just had no place in this world, a world run by liars who should just come out as satanists but because they're not clowns doing mock satanism prefer to ruin all potential for a better world while pretending to improve it, in more genuine satanic form. I don't know what happened after grade five because I moved away but I remember seeing him a year later in a comic book shop and he seemed okay. He'd grown and was a taller person even if not much slimmer. I was happy for him but I wonder if he ever fully recovered.

I use the word "satanist" with a small "s" because I don't subscribe to any religion but evidently there are demonic people who fit the description. I saw it again many years later at the other end of my sad educational trajectory...among adults. It's a good thing I'm someone who can be easily discredited or dismissed, so that order can keep puttering along.

I suppose a part of me always hated the authority figures in my life, parents included, for their treatment of those deemed less respectable. But I also came to hate how easily anyone, including myself, can be contaminated. Doesn't that really mean I hate life? Are you a fun-loving life-affirming adult? Consider yourself lucky because your attitude is predicated on other people's misery. What a bad person I am for trying to push that immature negativity. I guess bad people should be put down humanely. So should people who can't get over "hang-ups".