Your hypothesis is based on some utopian assumptions. I can't tell you how many people whose views or mannerisms I hate, and who I can't stand being around. Forcing me to eat with anyone, let alone strangers, would only make me dislike them more and cause tension. My utopian solution is for people to have more space and be farther apart, rather than everybody crammed up in cities.
> I can't tell you how many people whose views or mannerisms I hate, and who I can't stand being around. Forcing me to eat with anyone, let alone strangers, would only make me dislike them more and cause tension.
I think you are either an unusual outlier or are very much underestimating how well you can get along with people different from you when sharing a meal with them in person.
I can get along well if I have to, but I was responding to a comment that talked about these forced dinners being good for society. I get drained enough getting along when in day to day life, which is minimal because I have built a life where I can be very secluded and avoid social interaction unless I want it. Now stick me in these forced dinners and I'll lose a lot of mental health, just like working in an office is a significant and constant drain on my well-being (hence why the pandemic and lockdowns have been the best times of my life, by far).
You never spend dinner with people who spent that time being condescending or insulting something close to you?
You can get along with them easily. But then it ends and you are happy it ended and never want to be there again.
Because getting along with them requires you swallowing all above, pretending it is ok. Acvepting situation in which they talk and you are silent or submissive.
> You never spend dinner with people who spent that time being condescending or insulting something close to you?
Oh, sure.
I've probably also inadvertently been the one who was condescending or insulting before too. People are fallible and some fraction of them are pretty shitty.
But my experience is that the fraction is low enough that it's worth rolling the dice to find new connections with the larger fraction of people that are generally pretty good. I can take an insult or a boring conversation.
> Acvepting situation in which they talk and you are silent or submissive.
I think human interaction is a lot more varied than a binary choice between arguing or rolling over.
We’re all different and if this is who you are/how you’re most comfortable, congratulations on figuring yourself out. My experience is different than yours - people are tremendously interesting, especially over a meal.
I’m not sure that anyone involved in this is making utopian assumptions. Rather, we’re all different and just know ourselves. I’m likely as ‘correct’ as you are - we’ve both figured out how we’re happiest around others! That’s a net win for us.
I don't quite see how people being interesting relates to the thread. I said that forced dinners with strangers is bad, in response to a comment that said it's good. You then responded saying people are interesting. My comment about utopianism isn't that I think it's utopian to believe people are interesting, it's that I think it's utopian to believe that forcing strangers to interact is necessarily constructive.
As to your point itself, I would say I find most people painfully uninteresting. I once read that humans are generally interested in people or objects, and I'm much more interested in objects. This has naturally developed into life choices that minimize my interaction with people (besides loved ones) like working in software and having interests I can pursue by myself (rock climbing, studying languages, lifting weights). My mid-term life goal is to buy a remote-ish house in a low-population density state with multiple acres and work remotely so I can ideally go days without seeing another human. My dream would be to own and live in the middle of a forest or on a mountain so I could go weeks or months without seeing another human (again, besides my loved ones). If you're the opposite, then I agree we're just different and I hope you're able to achieve your version of an ideal lifestyle.
