Notes 05/08/2012

• By calling others' social interactions shallow and alienating, you ignore that as social beings, people need to communicate well and develop relationships with other people to live a good life. You also misunderstand how selves are produced: they aren't shaped privately, it is and can only be an intensely "interpersonal" process. That means that if you don't engage on that level, your development will be limited, something it makes no sense to aim for. If people don't interact with each other how you want (and who says it should be up to you, or that perfection is attainable), you can struggle to build alternative forms of socializing, but you can't just retreat into your ego without neglecting some of the participation that is necessary to meet peoples' social needs.