What's Your Perception of the Social World Around You?

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Thanks for the answers, everyone

The social world, I don't get it, well actually I do get it but i don't understand why many parts of it are so important. So much time and effort seems to be placed into establishing pecking-orders, coercing individuals into group-think and group-behaviors deemed appropriate by the alpha male or female, (oops, strike alpha male or female and replace with trend setters and opinion leaders). I especially don't get why not at least pretending to follow the group-think and group-behavior makes you a pariah. Personally I find the mindless lemming like behavior superficial and tend to embrace individual differences that enrich our society. I find social interactions that strive toward an uncoerced consensus preferable to alpha dogs dominating all interactions. Meritocratic ranking preferable to Machiavellian.

i do not perceive the social world. i perceive my idea of it. they are 2 different things.

i see people everywhere who are facing each other and talking.
then, after they finish, they turn away and go off in their respective directions, and the look on their faces returns to a default neutral expression.
they seem to have so much involvement in their interludes with other people, but as they walk off, their minds seem to forget almost immediately what just happened.

when i was a child, my parents used to go to their friends houses and sit around in a circle at a table, and they used to natter on for hours about things that seemed to randomly pop into their heads.
they never planned what they were going to talk about before they got there, and neither did their friends, but somehow, they seemed so sure that what they were talking about was the only thing to talk about when they were talking.

i never understood how all the gabble just magically sprang from their mouths, and why it was automatically taken as the correct thing to say, and they expressed interest in each others talk as if it was planned and agreed on before hand.

i never fully understood the urgency for my parents to leave our house (i had to go too because i was little) and go to another persons house just to say things that they had no idea they were going to say before they got there.

i did not often listen to what they said because i found things in their friend's houses to play with, but on the occasions i did hear what was said, i remembered clearly when it was said, and on what day it was said, and who said what before and after they said what they said.

when i sometimes talked to my mother about things that were said only 2 weeks before at someones house, she seemed not to remember the setting in which it was said, or why it was said, or any of the things that were said after or before.

that baffled me because i thought that if they are not going to even remember what happened when they go out after a few weeks, why bother?

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another thing i do not understand is gesticulation. when i was a child, i thought it was some sort of sign language, and when i tried to learn it, it became apparent that it was never consistent from person to person. some people moved their hands one way while saying a sentence, and others moved theirs differently.

i asked my mother to teach me how to gesticulate, but she said it is something that is different for everyone, and there are no rules to it.
i wondered how anyone could understand what gesticulation meant if there were no rules for it and it could not be taught.
she said it is just something that people subconsciously do.

well i do not do it. i never move my arms and hands when i talk, so i resigned myself to never knowing what a person is feeling when they wave their hands about.

gesticulation is a retarding distraction for me now because i am aware that it means nothing, yet it distracts my focus away from what is being said.

some people gesticulate to a ridiculous degree like italians arguing over the price of something.
it looks like they are conducting an orchestra, but there is no music, so it sometimes makes me laugh because it looks like madness to me.

anyway, i will never know what impels a person to gesticulate, so i will die stupid to the matter.
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i do not know what makes people smile when there is nothing funny happening. i asked my mother about that too. she said they smile because they are happy. i do not smile when i am happy. do they continue smiling when they get home and no one can see them anymore? i bet not.

if someone is happy for weeks, then do they smile for weeks continuously? including when they are on the toilet or in the shower or cooking their dinner or looking for goods in a supermarket?
no they do not. i have seen many instances where people smile as they talk for the whole duration of their encounter with another person, and when they part company, the smile drops off their face and they return to neutral.

i suspect people smile because they think it is advantageous for them and they will get a superior response from others if they do. in that case, the smile must be fake, yet others respond to it favorably.

the whole world of social intercourse is seemingly a facade as far as i can see, and i am glad when i am behind my closed door playing with my toys.

Where I live, people are rude and it's not the best place to learn social skills. I've been to other places where people are nicer and it's easier to practice. It just depends on where you live and the cultural mindset of the place. Some places are more open and friendly, while other places have people with these semi hostile mindsets. Of course there are hostile people everywhere, but in some places, they predominate.

I love threads like these. Everybody has a different flavour to add to them.