Working with people, like working with wood, paint, clay, or any other task, is a skill that can be learned. I am not particularly drawn to that endeavor, being an introvert by nature, but in the wake of repeated catastrophes in my life have recognized the importance of the people I live amongst to my life. While I have developed skill at carpentry and the use of tools to make and repair structures, despite my natural preference for such work I have become assiduous about working with people.

Regarding the circumstances under which working with people can become successful, it is the case that all people have very similar needs and environments in which we live. We have many basic similarities that make working together easier, and there really aren't circumstances in which people can't improve their lives and happiness by working together to produce economic benefits and social comity. If people are at each other's throats, either some of them are simply pathological and cannot comprehend and avail themselves of social comity, or they aren't trying very hard to understand and work with others and are being set against each other by an external power. Such external influence can be overcome locally by diligent and informed action, because people in your neighborhood have far greater ability to affect you then those distant from you.

I have very little in common with addicts. It makes it difficult for me to relate to their concerns and interests. Something we do have in common is a desire to aid and assist those they love, their families and friends, to be well and enjoy their lives. Because I do what I can to help them, even such inveterate ne'er do wells appreciate that work I do, so they have good reason to care that I have the tools and means to do that work. I have had things stolen by addicts in the past, because addiction is a terrible motivation that disregards even familial bonds, but by application of the skills I have gained through diligent practice, I did recover what was stolen eventually. What has been taken from me I have not recovered was done maliciously, intentionally to harm me, and such malevolence is usually able to be perceived and avoided through due diligence. It's why I don't use banks. Banks are ubiquitously malevolent and cannot be trusted. I find that institutions are all that way, while almost all of the people working in them - at least those not executive officers of such institutions - are ordinary, good people.

Even those we have come to regard as terrible people, whether through reputation, or direct experience, have ordinary human motivations and needs. Finally, in extremis, there are people we just cannot abide or work with, and sadly this is a lot of people. Those folks I just ignore as possible, avoid as necessary, and am particularly vigilant when I am confronted with them. When I am building stuff, some boards are just rotten, and I don't use them.

Community is our only chance to survive right now. We would all more or less quickly die without being members of a community that provides all the benefits of civilization we depend on every day. Even introverts like me can learn to operate and succeed by diligent practice in the community of good people we are in. It would be a terrible place indeed that was mostly pathological people, and if we are in such a bizarre and horrible community we should get the hell out of there without all due dispatch, because such places are few and extraordinary and most places very different.