Thanks for sharing your difficult realization and process. I admit I have worked through from the other side: a habitualized misanthropy and difficult acceptance that it's alright to accept love and sensorial life as necessary to being a real human, rather than only as a consumer fightbot. Contemporary thought almost always begins as some kind of competition and few people really can let go of the one identity/ideal that defines their competitive identity, let alone giving up the coerced belief that individualism is important at all. (letting go of ego).

Now, even when we realize that we are not supposed to be in an arena, everyone around us and the arena itself ( System of systems) insist otherwise. "The only way to win is not to play the game." , but we are forced to fight our way out of it.

Cruel streak is worshipped in this arena, so be wary of that.