i think i have a good idea to summarize the world i lived in that shaped my default worldview for the worse

imagine a world where most everyone your age rejects you for being different, and everyone older than you is either extremely unreasonable and unthinkingly authoritarian (rules and laws are king even if they're terrible and hypocritical, even if we all know they're bad) or they're the few who at least hear you out, even if they're beholden to people who are also like that and their hands are tied

you sure get some very cynical, jaded and dark ideas about people by default, and you pre-emptively dismiss them

and you kind of become one of them yourself, which is the insidious thing!

even if you're like i was and still am, deep down someone who is really lonely and wanting to work with people in good faith, you lose touch with that

and it is extremely difficult to really change, especially when people still appear to be just like that! but one starts to see different perspectives and it at the very least becomes clear why they're like that, and it isn't a deliberate malicious choice on their part

it's just tragic all around, tbh