savryn
Violence must be met with violence, enough said there... A weak person needs support for that, and that's the issue.
Elon's biggest problem in life seems to have been his garbage narc creep of a father, who I recall even managed to blame that incident on little Elon! saying 'oh well the boy who did that said Elon made remark on a family member's sensitive passing or something, so you have to understand it was a matter of honor see', blah blah....
the vast majority of human beings can not "fluently" navigate social situations either...
the very small elite percentage of those who can are the 'social butterflies' that become actors, politicians, perfect 1950s social calendar wives, etc all depending on the culture they live in.
They are mesmerizing to watch, and rare like a lovely dancer or magician or elite athlete is rare. This is not normal, it's a special talent at the tail of the bell curve.
most ACTUAL normal social interactions involve simultaneous friction of many kinds under the surface-- as people have opposing motives (money, power, sex, pride etc) and limited face-saving default tools to navigate, dismiss, avoid, or paper over that friction.
(Maybe that's the difference, autistics suck at using or accepting the use of these shoddy tools as 'fake' and give resistance to all the sub-optimal goings on??)
fake small talk and go-to phrases and jokes and polite chuckling and fake smiles and happy voice intonation ---these are the bread and butter of getting thru a interaction / dance while trying to still get what you want, balancing long term and short term incentives etc
Both people know it's fake and that's okay
----- it's exhausting to normal people too, at the 'end of a long day' it's not the physical toll
it is not evolutionarily normal to meet so many goddamn strangers every day and try to smooth over endless bits of friction (esp from so many cultures fundamentally at odds in core values and goals, but that gets into politics, so)
'normal' people deal with others sub-optimally and then let off the steam/ bitch and moan / insults and slurs to get out how they really feel in the safe space at home/ their tribe
Places where this is always at max capacity, it bubbles over and you see the failures and stress marks, i.e. strangers screaming at each other in new york traffic, littering and destroying things, unspoken boundaries (turf) being tested etc
Most of the time, 'normal people' don't know what or why they are feeling / acting out the way they are either, they just relieve their tensions any way that comes up, when they are angry at X person but take it out on Y person instead.
(hence all the psychological patterns like projection, transferring, passive ag, guilt complexes, attention seeking etc)
galloway then wants reassurance about his first big art purchase,
Saltz pseudo-approves saying well despite all your self-loathing you perfectly bought a painting that represents you
(swisher is dead wrong, this response is masterfully tactful in the most new york way, brilliant)
How much does it cost, 6K?
Gallawoy says to add a zero and laughs nervously... Then he says the artist of the painting is just so stunning and brave and really he bought it to support the artist and all they represent...
So I look up the artist, it's Grayson Perry and I guess that speaks for itself and the state of the arts world....
MDIIAMDIRuined
Ironically, modern art is the one field that I do not think it's wise to 'separate the art from the artist' without losing most of the magic, whereas films, music, books etc the works feel like contained mini-worlds, can be transmitted as complete, stand alone.
Modern paintings don't have the 'density' for that without the story/aura, so getting the right work with the right story to unlock it for you can feel really special. (That ineffable specialness is what you're really buying imo)
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p.s. My favorite easy-to-read book for cynics trying to understand why 'who the artists is' matters so much in the 'aura' of art is The Accidental Masterpiece, by Saltz's competitor, Michael Kimmelman.
The essays capture the essence of different types of minds at work very vividly. Can't remember the names of the artists or their paintings, yet a decade later I'll randomly think of the 'types' of people from the book.
Everyone who makes things probably wonders how other types of people make things, since it feels so impossible to describe.
I've put my email in my profile if you still want to say hello
P.s. there were no google results for your username but I kinda suspect "ihoafw" likely stands for In Hopes Of A Future Wife, not sure how I feel about that on a 3 year old account ;)
elites 'let you win' some games for all sorts of ulterior motives, implicit or unconscious even.
Vincent barely wins for a small time, he almost collapses on the treadmill lmao
My point is they left the exclusion / ruthlessness dial at level 7 when they could choose to crank it to 9
Vincent takes advantage of that temporarily, next guy and group will be punished for it.
no he isn't, he is merely exploiting the compassion of the society of the fittest that allows the less fit/ gifted /engineered to live / work near them.
Vincent uses criminal connections to pull the entire scheme off (the german), just like a bank heist in a film it feels fun for reasons that don't work without a movie's magic 'genre' control of tone/sympathy/agency etc.
similar to other problems we have today where 'compassion' politics actually harms the fittest members most
An old homeless loony stabbing a brilliant healthy young person today isn't a show of the former's fitness, it's because (their are other incentives for the) the fittest of society choose to not wipe out/exile/enslave the unfit for various reasons (inextricable from the society itself)
Gattaca in the opening even says it's only because he was born in the 'early stages' of the transition
Actual 'meritocracy' safety and other values require ruthlessness and violence, which we already have as all states do, just distrubuted in one configuration (gattaca) versus another configuration (chaotic US today, versus say the safety of singapore, or dictatorship of north korea, or some other gattaca where the Vincents aren't born at all because fertility is managed)
A society can distribute it's coercion/violence in different ways, vincent is just a defector in a trust game.
Always reminds me of that lame Feynman negging woman at a bar thing, how is defecting on social norms clever? that's literally the point of lying/cheating/stealing/littering etc, one individual wins at the harm of the environment / culture. Once a few men are rude / cads, reputation of the place declines and fewer girls show up, or only certain types and not others, etc.
'we live in a society'
do not lump lesbians with gay men, that was a temporary political tactic of the rainbow umbrella. The social concerns, risks, contributions, and damages of those groups are totally different.
Don't surprise pikachu that resentment builds and the world doesn't want to become your folsom fair
why not just get stuck on 'what IS culture even', 'what is a trend Really??', and other forms of useless filler-think that magically only crop up when middle class people are made uncomfortable by the working class actually 'noticing things' with their eyes and ears...
Policy-wonks aren't gonna be in the family rooms where people say things that matter to them, where populism and/or prejudice brews.
Get to know some immigrant communities, they don't understand english to watch fox or cnn. Black folks didn't make vaccine decisions based on what channel you think they should watch. Wealthy white people buying property or voting with their feet/dollars aren't going to tell all the friends they went to college with exactly why, revealed preferences and all that.
I'm a radical feminist, if american conservatives/rep have common cause then all the better
Imagine understanding capitalism, the state, warfare, or the history of any nation.... and still having party loyalties??? sad :)
Physical violence (and any indicator of physical needs- shelter, food, safety) basically signals 'cheap animal unit', and animals are useful tools to be managed by the machinery (of capital, patriarchy, globalism, blah blah etc whatever left or right wing flavor of 'power structure' you mentally choose to sketch it out, it's there churning, by whatever name you like)
you seem to confuse elite signaling and countersignaling with personal sufferings when in reality, both are exactly how it's supposed to go
The cultural machinery works thru contradiction and desperate elite mimicry, people trying to aspirationally sound like the class right above them, leading to tragedy of the commons, for example:
Rich women support bail reform/ islamic immigration/ transgender craze/ porn-culture that gets poorer women raped/ scared/ fired / cheapened, and that's the new feminism
Pragmatic feminists/terfs/lesbians/mom groups/anti-vaccers are the new witches to be burned as the purity test for desperate psuedo-middle-class aspirational women, supplying the cultural fodder content mill, while Republican women/Christian evangelicals make popcorn...
Abortion rights are a cheap voting lever, the more passionate you are the more the machine knows how to use you, people are putting their carrots and sticks in their bios, announcing the best ways to control them with a smile lol
Women in Iran and Afghanistan not allowed to go to school, that is defacto no longer a feminist issue but something something 'why not both' meme-mumbles by nonbinary mental illness connoisseurs.
Gays getting beat up by rural whites so they move to metropolis and work for the rainbow utopia of corporate America is exactly how the machine eats :)
'When I wrote 'In Cold Blood' many were critical,' Capote said. 'I spent six years on that book wandering the plains of Kansas and nearly went mad but I saw it through. (Fellow author Norman) Mailer called it 'a failure of the imagination,' and now I see that the only prizes Norman wins are for that very same kind of writing. I'm glad I was of some small service to him.'
anyway great capote interviews are paris review 17 and especially controversial Playboy 1968 interview.... you can't believe the actual meat and saucy opinions this guy really said out loud...
Compared to the insipid say-absolutely-nothing-that-could-upset-anyone insipid 'i love puppies and rainbows' interviews of writers today
The costs / risks of trusting important matters to average middling people makes it not worth it.
It's not a horror show, it's just a waste...
The reputation of therapy came from the top/excellent practitioners in the field over several decades.... and now it's a cheapened wonder-bread experience and even app based, lmao
The hype needs extreme push back.
you are full of self pity.
and it is charmless and icky and will ruin any other good social aspects about you, and your sense of self alone too.
I tell you this bluntly because someone on a zoom call two years ago made an off hand comment like that to me, which kept scratching at me for a week till I accepted it as absolutely true, and so I changed.
I truly had never noticed in my tone, which I thought was 'misanthropic/grumpy' but actually read differently to others-- it made a huge difference once I started noticing the whiny aspect to my communication everywhere and just changed it, since that tone did not reflect how I actually felt inside.
My negativity is in purest form anger and contempt lol and the attempt at softening my cosmic-feeling rage made it come out as whiny 'misunderstood' pity party tone, passive-aggressive twist to hating society in a juvenile entitled sense in my case. Glad I finally forced myself to grow out of that.
(Also dignifies my anger rather than warping it to something lesser and lame.)
Better to figure out how you really feel and strategize if/how to express that than let it turn into repressed soul-deadening whiny sour tone.
I know you'll have a million 'you don't even know me!!!' mental rage at this, so be it. Accept this bitter post now so in a year you may be different.
I'm grateful to the asshole who told me, so I'm passing on the favor ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm shocked at how high quality the correspondence was, makes friendships of today feel kinda cheap
Paperback layout feels like a workbook, not overwhelming-- beginner friendly
in person therapy is a waste of time/money for most people unless you're so wealthy you can afford the wise old superstar in their field (most of the best have already dropped dead of old age).
less charitable: those who knock the easy/free/practical-yet-harmless-woo are kinda just protecting the value of their profession / special modality, consciously or unconsciously imo, like doctors who don't accept basic fasting thats been around a thousand years, eating keto/carn, or benefits of natural immunity... lol
I say don't be loyal to any 'experts', steal whatever works from their cheap books and youtube and other resources across modalities and put together a hodgepodge of stuff for yourself!
Buy their book instead and do it yourself.
more ranty side points----------
therapy is like the 80-20 garbage/quality ratio of all fields, especially the affordable ones most likely a mediocre broken person with their own baggage/desires/ego they'll project onto you.
Good luck being a hot girl, philosophically and politically anything but a very liberal humanist, having any personality type that isn't already a feely crier who understands your emotions, any one with working class common sense, anyone with aggression, bitterness and/or less 'nice' presentations of symptoms or a myriad other demographic factors. These aspects SO OBVIOUSLY influence the undercurrents between mediocre therapists and patient but they swear as professionals do not or are just further 'grist for the mill', eye roll...
You're not gonna magically book an appointment (with or without insurance) and get like Irvin Yalom or some other wise soul, or the smart self-dignified composure of Melfi/Paul HBO fictional therapists that created standards of excellence not realistic in real life....
Most practitioners are kinda weak people seeking status and comfort and easy wins, difficult patients annoy them subconsciously, and do nothing to earn the trust necessary.
(Everyone recommending "get therapy!" on every thread online is just a middle-class reaction formation, now automatic unthinking advice against the uncomfortable pain and grim reality of being an individual in the world.
Every time a horrible cringe/guilt memory comes up, instead of expletive Fuuuuuuu (mental or out loud) literally reprogram yourself to immediately say "I love me!" or "Different now" or something else that's positive.
Thoughts and feelings that fire together wire together, so you MUST to break the connection of old shit spiraling into bad mood, paralysis, etc in the moment.
This is daily housekeeping for mental health. No one has endless time to meditate or waste money on therapy
once you have a few of these solid habits, you feel strong enough to do the heavy murky freudian trauma whatever unraveling that lasts a lifetime and releases the tight gordian knots from childhood etc.
But daily tools DO work and are just as important.
aggression turned outwards --> anger
aggression turned inwards --> depression
i wish some of these super smart people weren't so afraid of the harmless 'woo' that costs next to nothing, like read some old 70s book on primal scream into a pillow or try a radical keto meat diet or weird mental re-framings from people who are total quacks
The internet is full of 60 plus years of this stuff since the 60s, books and lectures and diy reprogramming you can find for free.
random 'outdated' books where 80 percent is fluff i've stumbled on one page of a random client story that just cut through time and space to reach me at that moment. I can't even remember the book title but I still remember the page layout, reading a paragraph at 2am and started bawling after feeling numb all year.
I've pieced together little bits of insight this way and each feel like growth and knowing some secret unconscious part of myself better. You never know what will crack the ice and get thru to you.
like who cares about evidence when that has gotten you nowhere in matters of the mind?
Hell, you can build a life going from placebo insight to insight if that's what it takes to keep on, why would that even be different than the lives on 'normal' people chasing hollow consumer goods?
it's still a life of trying things out to better know yourself and your world, which is plenty meaningful
this bit from the latest Cormac McCarthy seems fitting:
"The horrors of the past lose their edge and in the doing they blind us to a world careening toward a darkness beyond the bitterest speculation.
It’s sure to be interesting.
When the onset of universal night is finally acknowledged as irreversible even the coldest cynic will be astonished at the celerity with which every rule and stricture shoring up this creaking edifice is abandoned and every aberrancy embraced.
It should be quite a spectacle. However brief."
I'd be fine with the new surveillance state if it actually delivered some safety-dividends, but i guess lawlessness keeps the working class in line
emotional flinching
distraction is just running away from a feeling. I don't actually care about the content of the new tab, i'm not addicted to the internet, blah blah
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BTW, The old book Focusing by Eugene Gendlin really helped me here-- it's on libgen or you can youtube the authors name to see some of his one on one sessions he did with people before he died. (You can do it yourself without a person tho, it's just having a kind listener helps you stick with it)
it's NOT about adhd or focusing on stuff lol, it's the name for his diy technique of 'figuring out what the feeling is' and unlocks all other therapy stuff that you may do after
"If you can't be happy with a coffee, you won't be happy with a yacht."
somehow this makes me naturally gauge if I'm enjoying the present as a question "am I enjoying this coffee / new fountain pen / crunchy leaves?" and I actually feel the happiness bubble up in present sensory focus.
Doesn't last long yet works for me.
I didn't want to get deep wrinkles (female vanity) or hold angry look (stress headaches/blood flow) because i think that posture towards work is damaging and subconsciously enforces notions from culture/childhood that doing/learning is "hard" "battle" "tough" etc, and
this starts the cascade of physical effects that those states would, like "bracing myself", changing breathing patterns to shallow and stiff, rigid muscles etc, leaning head forward a stupid degree, adrenaline/ anxiety chemicals, harming eyesight with needless strain etc.
Also increases procrastination because you've decided everything is difficult and risky and dangerous, which your ego wants to avoid at all costs.
I reprogrammed myself with thoughts about "childs mind" "how would a kid savant see this puzzle" and "what if this is super easy???" regardless of evidence haha...just mimicking the face and mannerisms and sounds like some form of method acting. Face muscles are like a curious zen baby buddha now lol, open and relaxed but wide eyed, and I have a set of funny/curious gestures too lighten my own mood during long sessions, exaggerated hmmmmmmmmm????, "curiouser and curiouser!!!" type stuff I stole from movies and happy memes
(and the muscle movements I remapped to ones that aid vanity (girls know this as facial yoga lol, work cheekbone muscles etc instead of furrowing brow)
beware of differences between home/office tho,
I literally gave myself 'Tourette's' when i reprogrammed myself to say a certain thing (OUT! and related easy to say exclamations) when upsetting negative/thoughts/memories intruded on my mind during a difficult time, and it worked wonderfully to dispel thought immediately and stay on task/positive when I'm working on work/hobbies at home.
Bad thing is I realized I kept doing it on outside on walks I was using to think thru problems, and a few times someone actually turned there head when I was talking to myself. Just pretend to be on a phone call/blue tooth .... So I re-mapped the more common ones to deep breath exhalation and more subtle "tics" that have no social cost
I also save the "talking to self" for heavy stuff that only comes up sometimes. If you're working thru mental baggage, you can literally say stuff like "get out of my head ghost of shitty father" when you catch yourself ruminating on the past or feeling criticized or becoming like a bad parent etc. Fer example I renamed a certain recurrent figure "Iago" as short hand, which helps me create emotional distance and feel more in control. You can name 'characters' depending on how imaginative you are.
(I don't have any history of schizophrenia and never use drugs so I guess I'm not worried about this getting out of hand, shrug...)
All these are ways to just keeping your mental landscape clear, maybe ten years of meditation would do the same but this suits me just fine for now.
I even prevent doom scrolling sometimes, "nice try culture war ya almost got me!" when I feel outrage and escape just in time. Catching your own mental reactions becomes easier as you practice the muscle.
In the kingdom of your skull you can think anything you want and create your own tools. Life is a state of mind.
I don't know if this helps most or if you need a certain temperament. My mindset is somehow both extremely open AND extremely judgmental at the same time, so I'm very friendly to all woo that may help, which the more 'rational' folks I've tried to share with are allergic too
...I require no evidence to try anything that has essentially no harms / costs / cults and just take the good, cut out the bad of anything and tailor it to myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's like a partial 'loss of innocence' limbo, puts you in a weird danger zone that is more vulnerable than either polarity
-- actual innocence (i.e. children) rightly elicits strong protection and guidance
-- completed loss of innocence/full acceptance/adult cynicism is being totally okay (and no longer upset or bitter) with the world not owing you anything and there being invisible unfair rules of status games everywhere.
These people are adults climbing the status games they're born into and earning points at their own pace are basically happy and making progress, even modestly or fake/meaninglessly (consumer goods etc)
Getting stuck somewhere between these stages, tho, is painful because every human interaction pokes at an open wound.
(I'm working thru this myself so I empathize)
If you can't stop seeing beyond the game, wishing for a different cards, bitter at the rules being a certain way for your society/geography/time, being contradictory, or changing too quickly etc, you won't be good at the game because your spirit is essentially undercutting you at every play. "Your heart isn't in it" so to speak.
It's how the most sensitive see-thru-the-matrix type children end up when they grow too old for anyone to care, because they just won't let go of how they (idealistically) wanted it to be. A rare amount of these people also have amazing talents, so their insights combine to create art, but the vast majority that can't outgrow it or sublimate it basically just get stuck.
There comes a point where you decide you have to play the best you can with real spirit of society as you find it, so as to win the prizes available.
I remember once I finally handled myself well at a party, was the right amount of cute girl/ charming/ sophisticated/ intriguing/ status signaling stuff to kinda prove to myself I could put the effort in.
And what was discouraging was not that it was 'fake' which was my original juvenile complaint, but rather that the prize for doing really well at a social game is ...being invited to another party to play again next time.
This prize is everything to some people (who can turn each game into endless secondary benefits/opportunity) but pretty disappointing to other types who keep wishing the prize was different, deeper, or magical somehow
They could make themselves play and win if only the prizes were better...
on the other side of the spectrum, it's like how young natural 'politicians' can fully see that socializing is transactional and instead of being upset their thinking attunes to those invisible lines of power like a duck to water: wow the world is one big competition, wow that's so neat, hmm lets see, what do i have to offer and what can you do for me?
there is something to at least seeing with curiosity other people's survival strategies and emotional different reactions to the lay of the land, so to speak. Not to become them, but at least to see the options.
You know how therapy people say acceptance is letting go of the hope for a better past?
in a way, lonely/cynical/bitter people have to let go of their hope for a better game.
for self 'therapy' I highly highly recommend the book Focusing by Eugene Gendlin, it is the unlock key for all other self-help. Jump to ch3 and read a dialogue example, it's figuring out the inside forces, underneath the words and 'theories'.
You can do it by yourself (I use a stuffed animal) and there's a pdf on library genesis.
(Honestly better than pay-a-person therapy for me, where i just wasted time trying to out-smart my therapist with insightful theories, intellectualization is a defense mechanism, as is self-pity i realized of late)
A huge amount of 'distraction' is just emotional flinching in my experience.
the order i would do things
--Get the magnesium and the all the b vitamins (get the methyl b12 and methyl folate b9 if u can, they are the superior forms and cheaper than genetic testing),
--get on animal meat and fat keto or the carnivore diet, with fasting when the food is too boring. The high animal fat/ meat version is a must try for anyone with any hint of mental issues. Plus just eating one thing (meat) is easy, no planning, no distractions. If vegans don't like that, feel free to stay sick i say, it's your life...
--read the Gendlin book and do the process every week, instead of 'meditating on your breath' and other stuff that takes ten years to get anywhere. Focusing will bring up lots of dark emotions, good thing no one can see you sobbing so it does not matter
--Quit all caffeine, all my anxiety disappeared after a month.
These are all the interventions that legit helped me, take it or leave it
good luck
every family that dragged their feet on vaccines are feeling really damn good about it now as the whispers of blood clots, young athletes dropping dead, cancer rates etc go around...
and are these concerns valid? time will tell
These people don't need p-values, they share their suspicions and worries amongst each other, as real communities tend to do.
Check in with any working class whites, immigrants, and black folk you know (the ones who aren't playing middle class status games)
Russell Brand is right on the pulse of sentiments I hear from actual working people way too old to know who he is. He's giving that voice a fast paced funny vibe to grab the new young/based audience.
p.s. fishers essay hit a nerve w/everyone who felt drawn to those scenes by temperament but too savvy about human nature to get sucked into the vortex, or too actually-working-class to afford time in activist circles. The rebuttals are insipid, just noise eager to get second hand clicks.
Dying by his own hand was weak af, compromised the aftertaste of his writing, tho he always had that 'too old to be new too new to be classic' self-pity vibe of the aging professor...
(It bothers me aesthetically the same way seeing my beautiful kate spade handbags does, but I digress)
for that type of person, what it really means = you're dead to me
hence why they mention mourning as a key feeling. I think I'm like this too.
also, if you want to understand power, you've got to take off your engineering hat and start thinking in psycho-social fairy tale logic.
(p.s. the concept of anarcho-tyranny is the best thing i've heard from the peter thiel types)
Remember the brown bodega owner that fought back against the black attacker trying to murder him, and was still arrested? and how deeply unfair that felt, making protecting yourself a crime?
someone on twitter had an incredible comment that summed up his ideological sin in stabbing the criminal: "he killed the king's deer"
you'll understand the world much better if you stop willing it to be fair (this is a need of our inner child) and just observe how it works first, like an alien anthropologist...
but just like talking about a dream you had, it won't be polite or even possible to explain or discuss what you see with others, sadly
this is my favorite eric quote, which he also just applied to the ftx mess.
Eric's way of seeing things isn't a linear thing I can summarize, there's a few youtube vids you can search for the concepts of Kayfabe or his anger at the Consumer Price Index methodology which he's been making noise about for a decade, way before all the cool kids today tweeting about inflation.
It's about seeing narrative frames and language games that institutions play to intrinsically hide (to others and themselves) the mechanics of power/money.
He calls his own podcast The Portal because to see these patterns you need that moment where you step out of the calcified frame of current understanding, like in those kids books where youre stuck and drab and then find a magical portal to narnia, can return transformed.
(You have to have those moments yourself, it usually feels like a loss of innocence imo)
the entire film thus far about destiny, fate, making our own paths... and then to pinch a bit of flesh and understand what we are. magnificent and sorrowful, all at once