Another worshipper at the altar of Ukrainian IKEA.

Yeah…

Life’s fulfillment is in many ways measured in the quality of your relationships. Frankly, if you want to make meaningful relationships, you need to be the kind of fellow you or a regular person would want to be around.

You can’t really be a different person and you shouldn’t try. Instead you need to be the best version of yourself you can be. The one who listens well, or does nice things for others without expecting a reward. You have some positive instincts in there somewhere, but if you indulge selfishness, it will drowned out any of the positive aspects immediately.

Don’t do this attention seeking bs. If you want help, get help. The world is full of others seeking connections and you’ll break the hearts of family if you take the way way out. Maybe that’s what you want? Have an impact just by inflicting harm? I hope not, that’s what bad people do.

Get into bird watching or any other hobby. There’s tons of poor, interesting, people with deeply filling lives out there. You’re not uniquely suffering I’m afraid. Just pittying yourself.

My favorite part of this AEI op-ed (look up the fellows of this august think tank institution if you have a minute) is that the author lists no notes, references, or citations for a single claim in the piece. Now that’s how you do it! Start a Hudson Institute it Heritage Foundation and once you’ve got the banner to put behind a panel of prestigious sounding fellows, bam! You’ve got the patina of credibility! Back it with a couple hundred million in tax-cheat lobbying endowments and you’ve got a stew going baby!

If you ask a Marine they’ll confirm that they’re a department of the Navy, but then qualify it as “the men’s department” before devolving into a yut-fest