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
8hr 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
8hr 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
12hr ago
Utterly wild to me.
More things in heaven and earth, Horatio.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
13hr 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
14hr 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
16hr 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.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
16hr ago
Why is there more stress and suffering now that would lead to the tripling of teenage suicides?
Objectively, the conditions faced by Americans from 1980 to the present are not stressful. Ask an American teenager today if they would like to switch places with an English teenager from 1346 (during the plague), or a Russian teenager from 1939, or a Yemeni teenager today.
It recently occurred to me that there are perhaps individuals who choose to commit suicide who are actually not suffering all that much. Implicitly we have a mental model that says that suicide is an extreme option that is reserved only for cases of the most severe suffering, but maybe this is not the case. Maybe people do it on a bit of a whim more often than we think. (I have little doubt that the suffering experienced by a young person who receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, and who so desperately clings to their final months of life in spite of its futility, is greater than the suffering of at least some individuals who actually do choose suicide.) There are many individuals who, by their nature, do not experience deep passions. They don't get particularly attached to their career, to their favorite TV shows, to their friends; all of these things could be swapped out for alternatives, it's a matter of some indifference to them. Perhaps there are also individuals who do not experience a deep passion for life as such, and for these individuals it would be much easier to simply give the whole thing up over a minor inconvenience.
At any rate, suicide statistics in a vacuum are meaningless without a cross-cultural and cross-temporal comparison of suicide rates in different times and places, cultural attitudes towards suicide, motivations for suicide, etc.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
17hr ago
Well it’s supposed to be on the nose and self-indulgent, it’s a sexual fantasy.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
1d ago
Thank you so much for that! It makes me happy to know that people enjoy these posts.
It’s a divisive issue, like any other divisive culture war issue. Some people are fine with AI content and some aren’t. It’s somewhat falling along existing culture war lines. Many people in leftish spaces, or spaces that you would expect to attract a lot of lefty people, proudly adorn their creations with “No AI Used” tags, or they’ll leave random unsolicited “so glad this shit isn’t AI” comments even on posts/works that have nothing to do with AI at all, and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon.
I strongly doubt that Malfoid has converted anyone to the pro-AI side who wasn’t already inclined that way in the first place, especially because the meme seems to have a rightist valence to the extent that it has any political valence at all, and it’s largely the right who’s already the most in favor of AI art.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
1d ago
The Malfoid phenomenon is the consequence of aging Millennials re-interpreting the Slytherin ethos.
Isn’t it just the consequence of someone drawing a cute anime girl based on a well-known series?
I mean I love over-analyzing but this seems like a stretch.
Most people reposting the pics probably don’t even remember any of the worldbuilding details from the books.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
2d ago
I think there's a general principle that exists that the more impactful (I searched for a better term and could not come up with it) the thing that is being planned is, the greater risk of the conspiracy falling apart
Sure, that’s a reasonable thing to believe. But now we’ve moved from “people can’t keep secrets” to “well they couldn’t keep a secret that big”. Now we’ve entered the domain of qualitative judgements.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
2d ago
"Believe" is a strong word.
I would like aliens to be real, but I recognize that the probability that we've actually had contact with them is ultimately very slim.
I believe in a battery of familiar "right wing conspiracy theories" about racial replacement in western nations, but, similar to what Brainwavez described in his post, I believe that these are more "emergent phenomena" rather than people literally conspiring in a dark room.
I have a "religious predisposition" and feel the gravitational pull of various religious/spiritual beliefs despite consciously assenting to atheism and materialism, which has nothing to do with conspiracy theories per se, but is probably a related phenomenon with a similar underlying neurological basis.
large groups of people are generally bad at closely cooperating without leaking information.
But wouldn’t business be impossible if this were true? Wouldn’t the notion of a trade secret or an agreement with confidential terms just not exist?
Some software projects (e.g. highly anticipated new video games) are in development for years before their existence is made public, and the interested parties do manage to keep it a secret before the public announcement. Presumably, there were some such projects that got canceled before the announcement, and they were doomed to permanent obscurity.
Or think about source code. Surely there are some highly valuable commercial software packages whose source code has never been leaked, yes? (Ignoring recent advances in AI reverse engineering.)
ADDENDUM: Although I’m certainly not unbiased here, I imagine that there’s an equally strong reciprocal bias among some individuals of a more Rationalist bent towards believing that conspiracies are impossible; if it is possible for groups of people to successfully hide valuable information, then this would mean that social and political factors can stymie the free flow of information, which runs counter to the dream of completing a fully rational and scientific analysis of reality that is unencumbered by social limitations.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
2d ago
I recognize within myself a psychological disposition to be drawn to topics and thought patterns that would often be classified as "conspiratorial" (I don't know if anyone here still remembers my UFO posts from a few years back), so I have a personal interest in this.
Some people believe in something akin to the Generalized Anti-Conspiracy Principle: "It's impossible for conspiracies to exist, because large groups of people can't keep secrets; the information will always become public". But, I don't see much of a reason to believe that the GACP is true. You and your bank and the government have kept your social security number secret enough that your bank account is still intact. (Your SSN might be floating around on the deep web somewhere if it was part of a large breach, but, that seems to me to be different than it being widely available public knowledge.)
Much like the term "pseudoscience", the term "conspiracy theory" is primarily a social/political category, rather than a value-neutral epistemological one. People make all sorts of false claims all the time, and the plain and simple word "false" is sufficient to describe most of them. Calling something "pseudoscience" or a "conspiracy theory" rarely adds additional semantic content beyond calling it "false", except to bring attention to it as a dangerous type of wrongthink that must be suppressed. (For most people here who hold any type of anti-woke belief, it wouldn't be too hard to find someone in The Cathedral who would indict them of conspiratorial or pseudoscientific thinking. Perhaps moldbug's notion of "The Cathedral" is a conspiracy itself? Who knows.)
As for the "personality type" you identified, I'm not in too much of a rush to find a term to label it. Perhaps some of these people are on the "schizophrenia spectrum", perhaps some are not. (Hilariously, I was watching a youtube video of a woman describing her experience with schizophrenia. She said "I often have trouble taking my anti-psychotic medication on schedule, because one of my frequent delusions is that my doctors are using the medication for mind control", and I thought to myself "...I mean, I don't want to scare you or encourage you or anything, but I can see how that's an exaggerated version of something that has a kernel of truth to it. I mean, have you seen the side effects of the shit they're feeding people these days??") People are going to come up with terms for it anyway, because it's a salient social pattern that people are going to notice. But I don't want to contribute to the medicalization and over-pathologization of what I see as normal psychological variance.
Are you sure you don’t want to post this in the CW thread instead? It’s more substantial than a “small question” and would get more exposure there.
EDIT: Yeah, please just post it in the CW thread, it’s literally a CW post and I think we can get a really good discussion out of it.
I just read the moderation log because I want the tea on who’s getting in trouble.
In the heroine's journey, the young woman is already flawless, but she is not recognized by society (or at least the social class she aspires to). Instead of struggling against adversity to improve herself, she struggles against society, changes society, and is recognized and accepted.
I think most of your post is spot on and I agree heavily with it, although I'd quibble with this. "Changes the opinions and views of those in her immediate social circle", maybe, but isn't "changing society" in a broad political or ethical sense also a quintessentially masculine sort of project?
This dichotomy of "it's myself that needs to change" vs "it's society that needs to change", I wouldn't even say that it's particularly gendered. You can find plenty of men on both sides of the dichotomy. People are probably drawn to one side or the other based on more fundamental underlying factors (although it's also dependent on the context of the specific situation of course). This particular dichotomy (you see the problem as self-change vs you see the problem as other-change) is a recurring theme in Jungian typology, where various traits are ultimately explained in terms of underlying perceptual dynamics.
A woman will write a story about a woman who struggles to be accepted and recognized in spite of her inherent goodness. Men read that same story and see a faultless female protagonst who undergoes no challenge and no growth.
Well, it all comes down to how the author handles it. You can write a psychologically realistic and aesthetically deep story about a woman who's basically already inherently perfect and just has to get others to realize it. That's fine. There are a lot of different ways that story could pan out and they'd all be fine. But the generic girlboss who's CEO of the firm and runs for president and has a perfect family life and has no other real flaws to speak of isn't one of them; that's just a childish power fantasy.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
5d ago
I don't actually think that one's pro-trans either; there's a bunch of stuff Mahiro does that doesn't make sense if it was. A guy who plays a thousand ero-novels (or is in it for the sexual pleasure) should know perfectly well how female anatomy works and not be turbo-embarrassed about being the opposite sex
I mean, if it is anti-trans, it's not for these reasons. This is a very common emotional beat in AGP erotica (meaning, stories that are very explicitly written by AGPs for AGPs). The psychological discomfort is part of the eroticism, it would be too boring if the guy was just totally ok with it right from the start. "Oh nooo I've been turned into a girl, this is so strange and alien, whatever shall I doooo". But of course the guy (usually) comes to like and accept it by the end.
I know there was a chapter later in the manga where Mahiro was visibly uncomfortable when his dick spontaneously regrew, beyond what would be required by simple practical concerns about being "found out".
Frankly, I think it's structurally analogous to how in erotica for straight women, the female character is often just a little bit reluctant before the action starts. "I mean I'm not reallllly into it, and he's kiiiinda pissing me off, and oh who am I kidding yes I'm totally into it haha". Sometimes, you'd just rather feel like you're being coerced into it (even though the final act is ultimately enthusiastically voluntary); the "detour" is important for the eroticism.
The V'ehxness route from Hundred Line is this at its most blatant.
That route was fire I'm so mad that it wasn't longer.
My hopes of her getting DLC have unfortunately dropped to zero at this point.
I found it out of place because from a purely tactical standpoint it makes literally zero sense to do what she does
Well the "sense" is that it was just a pretext so we could see her acting like a dommy mommy to Takumi.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
5d ago
“Troon” simply is a slur, I don’t think there’s any ambiguity there. Has nothing to do with phonetics. It’s just… that’s what it is. I don’t have a complete theory of how a word becomes a slur or what makes a word a slur, but, we can recognize them when we see them.
“Trans person” seems to work perfectly fine to me as a neutral term.
BRUH.
#FreeDase.
And #FreeHlynka too while we're at it.
I will again go on the record and say that I think that permabans simply should not exist (especially for such valuable posters), although I've accepted that the mods don't agree.
Eventually we're going to get to the point where we've banned everyone who doesn't just talk about zoning laws and HOAs and local elections.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
5d ago
One thing that frustrates me about media criticism is how interesting and nuanced concepts get abused and boiled down to lowest-common-denominator imitations over time
Most people don't know the half of it!
The term "gaze" that would go on to inspire the film/media studies concept of the "male gaze" was originally introduced by Lacan in his Seminar XI. Lacan was interested in exploring the way in which there's always a reciprocal interplay between observer and observed: you distort the image you receive (unconsciously), and the image in turn distorts you. The street goes both ways. There's no "I'm the Subject and I'm looking at you like an Object so haha I win" because that way of thinking is thoroughly un-psychoanalytic.
In our relation to things, in so far as this relation is constiuted by the way of vision, and ordered in the figures of representation, something is transmitted, from stage to stage, and is always to some degree eluded in it — that is what we call the gaze.
[...]
Maurice Merleau-Ponty points this out, that we are beings who are looked at, in the spectacle of the world. That which makes us consciousness institutes us by the same token as speculum mundi. Is there no satisfaction in being under that gaze of which, following Merleau-Ponty, I spoke just now, that gaze that circumscribes us, and which in the first instance makes us beings who are looked at, but without showing this?
The spectacle of the world, in this sense, appears to us as all-seing. This is the phantasy to be found in the Platonic perspective of an absolute being to whom is transferred the quality of being all-seeing. At the very level of the phenomenal experience of contemplation, this all-seing aspect is to be found in the satisfaction of a woman who knows that she is being looked at, on condition that one does not show her that one knows that she knows.
The world is all-seeing, but it is not exhibitionistic — it does not provoke our gaze. When it begins to provoke it, the feeling of strangeness begins too.
Any originality or nuance that may have once existed in the concept was excised by the Studies crew so that it could be turned into a political cudgel.
Primaprimaprima
Temperance; The Two of Wands; The Hierophant Reversed
5d ago
No rush! But if you do have a reply to the other thread I would love to read it.
Lol. Nah.
Just visit /d/ sometime, I'm quite sure that the commentariat there is like 99% male.
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