This was going to be a comment but it kept going and going, so it gets its own blog post. Groundwork: I want to be clear that I'm not hatin' on @Xoic or the video's creator. I think ideas are good, period. People should have more ideas and think more in general, and both Xoic and the creator are very smart people who have lots of ideas. That said, I wholly disagree with the video. The video in question: . Good for context. Problem 1: You cannot take Jesus out of the Church. Sorry Jehova's, but there is no virginal scripture. The essayist suggests people not learn from organized religion, but mysticism/spirituality derived from source texts. It's a Martin Luther appeal. However, books like the various bibles and koran have only proliferated and lasted generations due to organization. The best that essayist can say is for people not to look to recent organized religion. Problem 2: Paraphrase: "Meaning requires religion, and lack of meaning makes people abuse substances and seek shallow pleasures, therefore a lack of religion is an illness to the individual." That's a hard beg. "Meaning requires religion" is the lynch pin of the entire argument, and it's scrawny. Meaning can be something as universal as trying to improve health. Health is a real thing; you don't have to adopt any religion to recognize it and there is nothing supernatural about it. Meaning requires only requires its observation and a personal sense of agency. That will involve philosophy, yes, but certainly does not require the religion aspect of philosophy. Matter matters, we perceive matter, and we already have emotions (short and long-term) hard-coded into us to know what materials and matters mean to us. My thoughts: Humanity into its nihilistic adolescent stage. It isn't just religion people don't believe in anymore, everything else has been torn to shreds. We're taught to dismiss a good chunk of our history, our ancestors, our parents, our nations, to accuse entire sexes of transgression—of course it's hard to find meaning! Everything is bad, unworthy. The only thing that is sacred anymore is groups (they are liquid, you can retroactively join and remove members), which is why everyone tries to join one kind of category or other. Jesus is the training wheels. He's perfect and he's dead. Dead people stay perfect. You strive to be like Jesus and perfect, but of course never attain it. The human psyche has to learn that a person's failings don't limit his successes, that you can strive strictly for someone's positive qualities. Humanity has to outgrow Jesus (and the other analogues) and find ironclad meaning by accepting the imperfection of self and heroes while still working to reduce said imperfection. True strength comes not when your idol can't be torn down, but when you have the constitution to independently maintain a drive for good even when your best idol has been rightfully torn down. Humanity isn't there yet. It needs to learn. If this is offensive to anyone please note that I accept your offence as fully justified. I also have no credentials or authority. I might not even have an education, and am merely a random person soapboxing that has no effect on anything.
I’m avoiding studying as if it were bubonic. This led me to playing a computer role playing game called The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind all morning. Your avatar arrives on a hostile island. Everyone hates him. He jogs at 1km/hr and is bad at everything. A single rat could defeat him in a duel, he can’t even use a mortar and pestle properly (how do you do that wrong?), and he will break ten(!) smith hammers before being able to work out a single dent in his armour. At the end he’s fulfilled an ancient prophecy and saved the land from immortal danger. That’s all par course for role playing games. Here’s what’s odd, these little messages that you don’t see elsewhere: You know that prophecy I mentioned? It’s a self fulfilling one; you are told the parameters and you’re only the ‘chosen one’ if you succeed, if you do the work and tear yourself away from that captive mirror. Work will free you. The mirrors in our houses and our pockets aren’t the cause. Anything that presents a superficial reflection will substitute—the daffodils will always be there. Get away from them. Stop looking.
He doesn't practice clinical psychiatry anymore. His near-death scare combined with age has tipped him over that knife's edge, the one he walked between philosophical and literal interpretation of the bible, the one he walked between passionate practical discourse and stirring platitudes. His weakness made him susceptible to the constant, eroding mirror that burdens a 'Youtube personality.' The fans hold it up and angle it just right to burn the distinct features right off their target's face. He's just a cartoon now, a Flanders of his old self. View attachment 23077 Credit: not me. What does he talk about now, other than platitudes? Politics. Lots of politics. And that's fine. It's okay. It's also low-value, disposable content. Anyone can talk about politics. See: Thanksgiving. He at least hasn't fully dropped the 3rd dimension like Shapiro or worse, Crowder. View attachment 23078 Even without the benzodisasterpenes, he was at the end of philosophy. But that's not how it works. You don't just stop philosophy. You've built up a tolerance over the years, and a dependence. The ideas need to be wilder, more abstract, more compelling. You pull in all the other ones, at least the ones that fit the new model. They get contorted into your interpretations, sliced out of context, jammed in to a model that serves you and the other chicken-chokers. Somewhere along the line your mind realizes that you actually make the rules. An expertise in comprehension becomes and expertise in manipulation, and there is no way in the world you would let yourself know that. View attachment 23076 "There was a small increase in the octopus' serotonin after three days of exposure to Beyond Good and Evil, but day four onwards actually saw a net decrease." Criticism aside, I think he's a great person. Smart, compassionate, articulate, and most importantly hard-working. He can maintain velocity for now, as there is always another social study to cite and his charisma is still quite prevalent, but he would be wiser to dip out of view once he's finished selling another book or two. Leave while the room is full and all that.
I have been accused, on multiple occasions, of having Aliens versus Predator disease. Okay, that’s a mouthful. Let’s call it AVPD instead. View attachment 23073 "Why are you avoiding me?" There are problems. Some aren’t so obvious. 1. We don’t consistently respect disease. The accusations have not come from a health professional, but their seriousness invokes the need for one to treat it. Anyone can tell you if you’ve just lost a limb—it’s actually quite patronizing. Consider, however, your best friend diagnosing you with cystic firbrosis because you’re constipated. He can’t help you, though. He’s not qualified to provide medical therapy, as it would require years of training and professional competence. So why did he start talking in the first place? The best thing he can say to you is: “Woah bra, you should go see a qualified professional about that symptom(s).” Specificity isn’t very useful. Or is it? And for whom? 2. We lob diagnoses at each other not due to ability, but Inability. Eugene the bank clerk isn’t saying you have AVPD because he knows so much about it, he’s making the diagnosis because your behaviour has fallen out of what he can parse as socially normal, his own personal bell curve. See the problem? Yes, he’s not claiming he’s as qualified as a professional, but he is claiming he’s qualified on the full breadth of social interaction. At least Mr. GP might refer you to a specialist when he’s stumped. Eugene isn’t making that diagnosis for your sake, his making it for his own. There is no WAY that you just don't like predators, and don't want to spend any more time with them. "Everybody should be themselves, unless it makes me uncomfortable, then it's not themselves, it's a disorder," says Eugene. View attachment 23074 "The initial tests came back negative, so your symptoms must be from Jesus-no-likey-you disease. You need to see a pastor." 3. Oh shit, what’s stopping me from doing it to myself? Well, ideally your friends. But they’re going to encourage or inspire it so long as it keeps things lubricated. Now, this doesn't mean you or them are wrong all of the time, but it certainly should be criticized more than it is.
...or "You don't even have to read between the lines anymore." https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kelseyweekman/instagram-avatars-meta-facebook Sure, Buzzfeed writers definitely don't represent their generations (and this one quite clearly has a Zuck-positive agenda), but I can't ignore how illustrative this is. From the Author: "My experience with online avatars started in elementary school, when I used my profiles for online games like Millsberry and My Scene to determine if I really hated wearing pink or just wanted to subvert gendered expectations. In college, my little brunette Bitmoji one day magically became blonde, and weeks later I did too (though it involved a lot more chemicals and money). Even now, I hop onto the website Picrew when I would rather look at a cartoon version of myself with perfect makeup clutching an iced coffee than scroll through a thousand imperfect selfies that don’t reflect how I want people to see me." Questions lurk. 1. Only selfies. Why is no one else taking pictures of her? 2. How can, out of thousands of pictures, not so much as one of them represent her? 3. Note the word usage: "...when I would rather look at..." turns into "...imperfect selfies that don't reflect how I want people to see me." Her, other people, or both? She goes on: "Justin Hochberg, CEO and cofounder of Virtual Brand Group, told me that the self-expression allowed by digital avatars can be 'life-changing.' 'It’s terribly unfortunate that people cringe at the thought of allowing people to be who they are and not who you expect them to be,' he said. 'I think that says more about how they feel about themselves.'" This is satirical, truly. You could be reading this and thinking, "So what? Avatars aren't a big deal. It's harmless fun." You are correct. The harm has already been done decades past.
Just be confident. Intuition vs abstraction. He never had to do his homework, or worse he did and then forgot. He's either A: skilled at the discipline and a bad teacher, or B: So ignorant w/respect to the discipline that he's actually an obliviously poor actor. Confidence comes with skill, but association gets it all back-fronted in people's heads. It's possibly good advice for a con man, but even then the bulk his confidence comes from understanding how to find and exploit marks. Solution: Use repetition, exposure, and knowledge to increase capability, which will be followed by confidence. Related: Just be yourself Same problem. "Yourself" is constantly changing to adapt socially. "Yourself" as a teenager did not meet the standards that you and everyone else expect, that's why we change/mature with age. Regardless of age, "yourself" could be a serial butt-slapper. Don't be that. When someone says to just be yourself that means his ego has retro-established that he was always as functional as he is now. It's great for him, but useless for you. Solution: focus more on the people around you than yourself. Be receptive, but maintain boundaries and assertiveness where appropriate. Bonus: while the confidence line is oft applied to most subjects, it's definitely best to stop listening if someone tells you to just be yourself when behind the wheel.
1. "What's for dinner, Not the Territory?" "Vegetable burgers. They have chi—" "I know what's in vegetable burgers!" His voice stretched thin, point of tears and all that. Spoiler: Ahah! It's a surreal, illustrative exchange. I was going to tell him about the vegan recipe the missus and I found in an attempt to save money. We tried it, found it was garbage in every practical sense, then added oil and eggs to make it stellar. Now we mix 24-27 chickpea chorizo burgers at a time. Economical. Delicious. Sometimes we use a different bean, because they're all the same rehydrated starchy mush anyway. I could have booted up the Empathizer 2000, flick the rocker switches and turn the key like any good enabler: "He thought I was patronizing him about the contents of a store-bought soy burger. Poor guy." That's probably the adult thing to do. He was born five years prior to myself, of course, but most young adults quickly learn age is a number and hardly more. That's a lesson I should have applied. We need to use compassion to read the interaction and find out how to raise each other up, not flounder in the darkness that is low self-esteem. On the other hand... 2. He didn't ask me a question about me, or even supper for that matter, which is confusing from a practical perspective. I couldn't get 4½ words into my answer without invalidating him. How can I feel anything other than used? But that's not fair, Not the Territory, maybe he was just trying to "get to know someone." "Getting to know someone" as it relates to himself, just like all of those other humans. He's a symbol nymph as are the rest of us, randy for simplistic definition via tertiary elements at best, and looking for an opportunity to exhibit primary definition at worst. The former is: "Ahah, I'm the kind of person who knows a NOUN." The latter is "If I convince this person (especially a younger one, that should be easy) I am a NOUN, then I am a NOUN, just like on TV." He was chasing the latter, of course, and I ruthlessly aborted the attempt. 3. If this only happened once, and strictly with regard to the culinary, then there would be no reason for a blog post. It would be a localized problem. Maybe his mother yelled at him for not knowing what goes in a hot dog. But it obviously isn't. This was a weekly, even semi-weekly dance. There's a larger manifested problem, which is likely a lack of pursuit, a pursuit of anything at all. Our minds do not forgive those who've done little work, especially when the low-work perp is that bastard in the mirror. I don't mean work in the modern sense, like a job, though it could be. I mean work in any internally meaningful sense. The work that reflects on the individual, makes him grow through challenge adaptation etc... It's tricky because the individual has to seek it out, question himself and only himself if he's doing enough. That itself is hard. It's why we fall back on persuasion, comparison, definition from dissimilar peers (oxymoronic tandem, I know). It's not isolated to him, he's just overt with his reaction. Humans are experts on being threatened. They have many ways of keeping score. 4. The solution? Not very good, but it's the best I've got right now. "What's for dinner, Not the Territory?" "I don't know. How about yourself?"
Credit to The Sun (who retrieved this from Twitter). A bronze founding father being upended. It's a virtuous act, right? It has to be. He owned a lot of slaves. He probably abused or murdered them. He shouldn't be glorified via statue. It takes someone of proper ethical standing to do the right thing and knock him down. From aforementioned The Sun article: Indeed. While we drink our coffee, drink our hot cocoa, eat our refined cane sugar. Luxuries such as those. Luxuries with a capital L. Affordable and ubiquitous for all class thanks to... I'm sure you're better than George Washington. After all, you don't have to look at your slaves.
Lately I've been seeing narcissism as a misnomer, not only for the fact that it's become a catch-all term for neurotic behaviour in general. I think the story of Narcissus and Echo is a greater caution for the latter. To very broadly sum up the 20th and 21st pervasive 'narcissist:' he has a strong narrative about himself and does insane things to project/protect that image. Grandiose or otherwise (sorry, DSM gets an F from me), the story he's trying to serve is not objective truth, and he tries to propagate via pretty shallow methods. But Narcissus was the most beautiful man, he was the best hunter. Narcissus wasn't starved of identity. The modern 'narcissist' is. Who can only copy archetypes? Who has no substance (body) of their own? Who is unreasonably enchanted by those that do have a strong self? Narcissus rejected the love of others overall because he was blinded by love for himself (except for Echo, he was revolted by her because she appeared to be entirely lacking individuality). Those we call narcissists today reject the love of others because they don't have a self. They are not narcissists. They are echoes.
