Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
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User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
1d ago
Rush Limbaugh’s words continue to echo: “When Democrats win, they’re in power. When Republicans win, they’re just in office.”
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
1d ago
I’ve started seeing a therapist. If you had told me 6 months ago that I would be in this position today, I would have called you insane.
I’m still fiercely critical of the “medical model” of mental health, and find much in contemporary “therapy culture” that is deeply disagreeable to me. You can’t manufacture human subjectivity on an assembly line. But, the fact that I’m seeing a classically trained Lacanian psychoanalyst rather than a more “mainstream” therapist is part of what allowed me to reconceptualize the enterprise enough that it became palatable.
I don’t have much of a point in posting this besides: if you feel like you’re stuck in a rut and things will never change, you can have hope. Sometimes radical change can happen very fast if you just give yourself a little push.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
2d ago
Be the change you want to see. Post it in the CW thread. I used to make a lot of philosophy top level posts there but I just haven't been participating as much as of late. But there's no reason we couldn't restart the trend and start changing the quality of the CW thread. Essayposts used to be a lot more common before current events took over.
As long as the post is at least tangentially related to the culture war it's fine (pretty much anything about politics would count, but e.g. obscure analytic metaphysics puzzles I would put in their own thread).
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
3d ago
This is often a difficulty in "magical realism" novels, because the most realistic thing that would ever happen in a world with hidden magic would be for that magic to be exposed and, then, for the world to be thrown into upheaval and chaos as it adjusted to the revelation.
I’m struggling with this exact problem for my own “magical realism” novel! It’s a real conundrum. I never stopped to think as a child about what a huge plot hole it was in Harry Potter (why would some wizards not just use their overwhelming strength to rob muggle banks, for example?).
There are some easy solutions that spring to mind (e.g. have all the magical weirdness sequestered in a pocket dimension that is only connected to the “real world” at a few carefully hidden locations) but nothing I’m really satisfied with yet. I intend to keep plugging away at it until I find a solution though.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
6d ago
There's no real plot climax, no resolution to character interactions (such as they are). It all feels superfluous.
?? The climax to Braid was great, one of the more memorable video game endings I’ve seen imo.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
6d ago
Is it just possible that the rewards on offer aren't really enticing given the 'skill' required to get them?
It’s quite plain that you think that the rewards on offer are enticing, given your persistent and vigorous interest in this topic.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
6d ago
Isn’t this just the male equivalent of a woman saying “I can’t go to parties or bars or walk alone ever because you never know when a rapist will jump out from around the corner”?
It’s just paranoia + skill issue.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
6d ago
From a certain perspective and to a certain limited extent, this is just things working as intended. The men who are stupid enough or paranoid enough to allow themselves to be totally stymied by the propaganda (i.e. undesirable men) will weed themselves out of the dating pool, leaving only the men who are savvy enough to actually navigate complex and adversarial social dynamics (i.e. more desirable men).
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
6d ago
Veering a bit off topic I suppose, but isn't the idea of "respectability politics" just hypocrisy?
If women were as sexually available as men, then straight men would largely act the way that gay men do today. Female reticence is the only thing that keeps male sexuality in check.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
Funny enough, prep has increased the transmission rate of non-HIV STDs because guys think it makes them invincible to everything.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
Remove the economic privileges that make it preferential to hire women over men
Sure, I'm down with that.
No sex before marriage solves the problem for both sides.
Ok but like, how? How is that a workable policy proposal? How are you going to enforce that? "Cultural norms"? How do you intend to put that particular genie back in the bottle?
I frequently run into this same frustration any time I'm talking to someone who wants to turn back the clock to before the sexual revolution. They have many goals they want to achieve, but are somewhat shy about detailing how they intend to actually go about achieving them, outside of gesturing in an increasingly fervent manner that Something Must Be Done.
My impression from reading your (unrelentingly dour and pessimistic) dating posts over the years is that you're really chomping at the bit to implement some policies that would be broadly considered to be outside the Overton window (whether that be anything from making premarital sex illegal, all the way up to government-mandated breeding programs), but are perhaps a bit reticent to discuss them publicly. If that is the case, then my only advice to you is, discuss them! We are blessed to be on one of the few public forums where radical ideas can actually receive a fair and rational hearing. (It might help you release some tension too, you always seem really wound up in these dating posts, jeez.)
You're already on record as supporting the death penalty for men whose (consensual!) sexual behavior you disapprove of. That's pretty extreme. What principle of bodily autonomy do you hold to, then, that would prevent you from supporting forced marriages for women, especially considering that such an arrangement would be done in the service of ameliorating such a dangerous impending social catastrophe?
We could try making marriage a stricter, more meaningful contract again, too.
See above. Stricter how? Who enforces it?
We're already restraining male behavior
Restrained in the sense that a prospective employee is restrained relative to large corporations, I suppose. But that's just what you get with a free market.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
I'm not aware of a single other forum where both sides of trans issues can be discussed.
Technically /lgbt/ on 4chan I guess, but, it’s 4chan, the quality of discourse is nowhere near as good as it is here.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
Kinda funny how his biggest blowups have been against people who are largely aligned with him on AI issues.
Narcissism of small differences I suppose.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
Seconded!
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
you still have to incentivize women to actually pick and settle down
Incentivize them how?
You say that "culturally enforcing monogamy" is equivalent to women being "restrained"; ok, by what mechanism will you restrain them?
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
7d ago
Well, there were weekly threads back on reddit that were getting 3k comments, so there has been a decline in activity compared to the reddit days.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
8d ago
if nothing else, heterosexual male sexuality and heterosexual female sexuality are different, and I find it plausible that female sexuality is, in some contexts, 'rougher' or 'nastier' than male equivalents.
Lol. Nah.
Just visit /d/ sometime, I'm quite sure that the commentariat there is like 99% male.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
8d ago
it's more common for the young man to get sucked into some community that tells him that he is fucked if he doesn't looksmax his way to being a 6'2" male model with a square jaw.
I don't get that one, because it's obviously just empirically untrue if you've ever gone outside.
There are so many funny looking schlubs who manage to get married.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
8d ago
But when, on paper, you already possess the things that any reasonable person could expect - you're healthy and have a job, friends, hobbies, and so on, and yet you're still coming back to your apartment feeling horribly empty and unmotivated as if the things you were doing only served to prevent you from having to deal with yourself, there's nothing to work towards.
I think it's just obvious that such a life would feel empty. If the best you can say about your life is that you've got "health, a job, friends, and hobbies", then of course something is missing. Without a higher purpose to tie it all together, then it's just a loose assemblage of unrelated experiences.
For some people that "something higher" might be as simple as their family. For others it might be politics, or a creative calling. It'll be different for everyone. But you've gotta have something, and millions of people even in our "modern nihilistic age" do find something, so you don't have much of an excuse to not get to it.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
8d ago
Utterly wild to me.
More things in heaven and earth, Horatio.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
8d ago
Perhaps I need to get checked for depression
Maybe, but, I'm deeply skeptical of the over-medicalization of normal psychological variance. Honestly I think you're closer to the population norm than I am. Everyone's always talking about how depressed they are and how meaningless everything seems. I feel like the odd one out in that I've never struggled with any of that. But on the flip side, I do struggle mightily with anxiety issues, and a few other types of mental health issues besides, so it's not like I got off free or anything.
I have no interest in life outside of what it means I can provide for my wife and family
You perform a vital evolutionary function. If your barometer for responding to external stimuli was too sensitive and hyperactive, it would only get in the way of the fulfillment of your duties. I'm deeply appreciative of people like you who are capable of performing the vital functions that I myself would only be able to perform with great difficulty. (My own designated functions, should I have any, are not nearly so vital.)
If we think of human civilization as a single living organism, then the various personality types and psychological dispositions that we find among individuals define the cell types; different individuals are specialized for different functions. Diversity (and experimentation, and mutation, and tragic ends) is necessary for the organism as a whole to function.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
8d ago
I’d say that what saves the Twilight-style of fantasy (“powerful people are fighting over little ol’ me, my goodness”) from being purely fluffy and self-indulgent is that an internal psychological conflict replaces the external conflict for mastery and power. That internal psychological conflict could be anything ranging from a simple fear of literal physical danger, to more abstract concerns about how one relates to one’s own agency, one’s own sense of dignity, etc. There’s usually a “hitch” somewhere, some sort of internal tension between acceptance and reticence. So the two types of fantasies are actually more structurally analogous than they appear. It’s just that in the Twilight-style fantasy, the struggle is harder to see (for an external observer) because a lot of it happens in the MC’s internal monologue.
I dunno. It just seems like first world problems or a skill issue to complain too much about the modern world in any way (I'm only talking about first world western nations for the entirety of this conversation). It's a really nice world we've been given. Just the right difficulty setting, so to speak. I think the years from 1985-2005 in particular were essentially a paradise, real "peak of human civilization that will never be reached again" type stuff. (I've talked to both Gen X'ers and boomers who have similar nostalgia for the 90s, so it's not purely me being nostalgic for my childhood.)
I could see people killing themselves after the ASI singularity. When you've become such a god that the only challenge you have left to surmount is your own self-destruction. But we're not nearly there yet.
I'm approaching this as someone who is trying to build a mental model of a phenomenon that is deeply foreign to me. I am fantastically in love with life and fantastically afraid of losing it, so I think my threshold for when I would consider suicide is simply higher than many other individuals. Even many types of emotional and existential "pain" serve only to sweeten life (Nietzsche correctly identified that melancholy is a positive emotion). I will again reiterate that an "increase in suicides" by itself doesn't mean much without knowing what the base rate of suicide is in a wider range of cross-cultural contexts. (We also have to define what a "suicide" is. Is a Hamas suicide bombing a "suicide"? Is it a "suicide" if a young Russian man signs up for the front lines because he doesn't care much either way if he lives or dies? There are certain death-inducing phenomena that are present in other cultures but not our own, and that should probably factor into the conversation at some point.)
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
9d ago
One of the issues I keep coming back to is the unspoken assumption a lot of society have that stupidity is a moral failure.
Not nearly as much as laziness!
If someone asks "why didn't you complete the assignment correctly?", "I'm incompetent" (phrased in a more tactful mannerof course) is actually a pretty decent answer. They'll be sympathetic (depending on context) and will help try to ameliorate your incompetence.
But if you say instead "I'm perfectly competent, and could have completed the assignment correctly, but instead it seemed more fun to just sit here and do nothing," that's a totally unacceptable answer. Many people just won't understand at all. They'll assume that you're being actively malicious.
Life is hard for us lazy people.
I think it stems from the fact that weakness of the intellect does not present as many philosophical difficulties as weakness of the will.
I'm well aware that the field is very scientifically minded. In fact, that's the problem! It's too scientifically minded!
Science requires measurable outcomes. But human subjectivity can't be subjected to measurable outcomes. How can you quantify the value of a life, or a particular form of life?
I am personally unaware of any instance of someone visiting a (mainstream) mental health professional and being unable to walk away with at least something, whether that be a medical diagnosis of some sort and/or medication. It seems to me that virtually 100% of people who show up can at least get some SSRIs. How often do mental health professionals tell people "actually, there's nothing wrong with you and you don't need any treatment"? I'm sure it's happened before and I'm just ignorant. But it's incredibly striking that I cannot recall a single anecdote of this ever happening, meanwhile I can recall countless anecdotes of people getting prescribed SSRIs.
EDIT to try and lay my cards on the table a little more. I am perfectly aware that some people have very debilitating psychiatric conditions that prevent them from functioning, and modern medicine has produced at least some interventions that allow these people to begin functioning again, and it’s a real lifesaver in those cases, and that’s all great. I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that large segments of society have been brainwashed into an almost cult like mentality that keeps them on the therapy treadmill for years because they’ve been lead to believe that any sort of pain or negative affect at all is pathological. No one ever sat them down and said “look, pain is a part of life kid, get used to it”.
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