problem_redditor
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User ID: 1083
I don't disagree that your average Place, China is almost certainly going to be more third-world than your average Place, Japan, and there are very real issues there, many of which are a result of the PRC's truly disastrous policies. But considering how many people go to Southeast Asia and absolutely love it, I'm not necessarily sure first world-ness is something people are generally looking for (as tourists, not as inhabitants). People travel en masse to places like Bali despite the fact that "real" Bali isn't something to look forward to; poverty is pretty rife in many parts of the island and Denpasar is packed full of slums. But travelling to Bali has effectively become something of a fashion trend, Bali is the buzzy tourist-friendly place you go to see the good side of Indonesian culture, and you can ignore as much of the mundane or the bad as you want. I grew up in Malaysia, a country people tout as a good place to visit, and what Malaysia is really like isn't necessarily what most tourists experience. In other words, people go to shitholes all the time, ignore the bits they don't want to see, and love it. There's nothing wrong with travelling like that, either; you're not obligated in the slightest to do things that'll make you feel miserable. But I'm not sure if China's third-world nature is the main factor here.
When I talk about finding "bad takes in travel forums", I mean the stuff I've seen is as bad as stumbling upon threads asking why it is that China has seemingly no truly historical sites, just hollow recreations and cash grabs. Then someone else says the Cultural Revolution destroyed absolutely everything in China, then someone else comments down in the thread "You know where the real historic stuff is? Japan." This despite the fact that many Japanese sites are also just recreations and reconstructions; places like Senso-ji or Osaka Castle were rebuilt in concrete in the 20th century. Kinkaku-ji is a new construction, Takkoku no Iwaya in Hiraizumi is a new construction, and so on. The majority of historical sites in Old Kyoto, despite it being spared bombing during WW2, don't predate 1788 due to a fire that ravaged the city. People still travel to these sites in Japan in spite of the fact that much of what's there isn't exactly original, and enjoy it, and that's fine, and of course there are also authentic historic sites in the country (Himeji Castle, Golden Hall of Chuson-ji, etc). But I'm wondering how in the world people forgot that there's an entire ancient walled city, Pingyao, in Shanxi province, that still houses 20,000+ people while retaining all of its traditional architecture and its urban planning from the Ming and Qing dynasties. It is not only the best preserved proper city in China, but all of East Asia. Then there are towns in Anhui like Xidi and Hongcun, which are representative of traditional non-urban settlements in China during the 14th to 20th centuries - many of the buildings there are very old, and a lot of these towns still have traditional economies and clan-based social structures. Then there are the old tea forests and ethnic minority villages of Jingmai Mountain, where the locals still cultivate tea using methods dating back to the 10th century and perform Tea Ancestor ceremonies and festivities. The thought that crosses my mind is disbelief in the vein of "you seriously couldn't find anything to your taste in all of China? What the fuck it's the size of ten countries how is that possible". There are many authentic places where old China can be found, they're just a bit farther out; you can't expect to visit Beijing and get that kind of experience. The CCP sucks, but they don't possess MCU powers; try as they might they can't snap their fingers and make literally thousands of years' worth of rich historical and cultural heritage vanish overnight.
Then there's the example of South Korea, which is basically a first-world economy comparable to Japan at this point (in fact, its GDP per capita overshot Japan a while back, and its self-reported happiness levels are comparable last I checked; granted, they do have an ongoing military draft which certainly isn't ideal). As a tourist I had a great time there, and was surprised at how well maintained it was and how much traditional culture there was. The density of UNESCO sites there is higher than anywhere else in East Asia, and two members of my family (one of whom went on that trip with me) have travelled both to Korea and to Japan, and both preferred Korea. But we were actually almost discouraged from travelling there after coming across many threads which followed the same pattern - invariably, a poster would ask whether they should choose Japan or Korea for an East Asian trip, and almost unanimously the comments on such threads would advocate Japan as a destination, and state South Korea was comparatively boring, soulless, lacking in historical sites and nothing special. Our friends and coworkers who had travelled to both places also offered up the same opinions, and the only reason why we ended up picking Korea as our destination of choice was because said family member had already travelled to Japan before, and wanted something different. Frankly, I'm flabbergasted by people's lukewarm reactions.
In other words, I'm not so sure if Place, Japan is based so much in the actual reality of how Japan is, or is basically a fashion trend driven by Japan's dominance in media and electronics exports for much of the late 20th century. And I like Japan! I think it's a country with a lot to offer. But the way people endorse it over virtually every other East Asian country gets ridiculous sometimes IMO.
I think this is probably the answer in the thread that best captures what I think about this. China does produce a fair bit of good media of its own, it's just that it is exceptionally insular and most of the media that gets made domestically also gets consumed domestically. And once you add some cultural unfamiliarity into the mix as well as a Place, China effect that creates a bit of an aversion to most native Chinese media, virtually none of their media ends up making it into the Western cultural consciousness. It's basically the opposite of Place, Japan.
The funny thing is that our attitudes towards China used to be the opposite of what they are today; Western countries had a fascination with everything Chinese for a long while. Sinophilia basically infected the entire western world throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, to the point where Louis XIV adopted Chinese-style ball attire and ordered the Trianon de Porcelaine to be built on the grounds of Versailles, a building that was meant to emulate the Tower of Nanjing. Chinoiserie spread throughout Europe and hugely influenced the development of the Rococo style. Granted, the influences it included were not limited to Chinese culture, but in the main Chinese styles were the trends Western artists and architects borrowed from when developing their syncretic fusion.
Then the Opium Wars happened, disrupting trade, then after a brief resurgence in interest in Chinese culture, China became a Marxist state and self-mutilated a whole bunch during the Mao era. Meanwhile, the Perry Expedition (initially just meant to secure a safe harbour for America in the Pacific) opened up Japan and the Meiji Restoration propelled it at turbo speed into modernity. And now people seem to view everything Chinese as nothing but authoritarian PRC bullshit, whereas even after the stagnation of Japan's economy people seemingly can't get enough of Japanese culture, both traditional and modern - I mean, look at how many words for snow there are in Japan. And Korea, apart from a number of its pop culture exports, may as well not exist as a country in most people's minds - despite its recent modernisation, there's still this lingering idea of it as an insignificant Asian backwater in all other respects. Korean traditional culture? What is that? What are you even talking about?
It's fascinating to me how these fashion trends evolve overtime, and it seems like people's perceptions are very tenuously linked to the quality of that country's output at best. They reflect geopolitical relations more than they do any kind of impartial evaluation of quality. (It's not just media either, I've been on a bit of an East Asian travel kick recently and have visited some travel forums as a result, and it's this phenomenon on steroids; I could document some of the truly terrible takes I've heard but we'd be here for hours.)
I'm not saying a better firm is common, but would moving after busy season be something you'd be interested in doing? Using your expertise as a Consultant to make more money and do more varied work?
I've considered it before and think it's a good idea, in fact I've been in the process of remodelling my CV in order to apply to other jobs.
The inertia sometimes does feel a bit overwhelming and there's the fact I do like a good amount of my coworkers, which does make it a bit more difficult to leave, but jumping ship is probably the best option. I don't think I could stay in this role for much longer without hollowing out entirely, and in terms of wages many jobs in the same field offer better salaries than mine currently does, so it's a course of action I certainly can't argue with.
Sorry for the late response, could barely get up the energy to respond to these the past few days. I was partially venting, but also did want to crowdsource solutions.
Regarding your suggestion, I think it's probably the best way forward. My firm really doesn't pay much or offer much in the way of career progression because it's a small/medium size firm (albeit one which poached clients from a larger entity when it branched off from them, so it handles a much wider and more complex array of tasks than your typical small accounting firm), so I know I'll eventually have to move anyway if I want a better deal. The longer I stay here the more pigeonholed I'll be. Moving is just not that easy, especially when you actually like some of your coworkers and have grown somewhat fond of them.
Still, I can't argue against the logic of the decision, and I think if I stay here any longer I'll be a shell of myself.
For the record, I wouldn't consider you a leftist and I do enjoy seeing your comments, even if I sometimes disagree with them. I would consider myself generally aligned with classical liberalism as well and am not explicitly pro-Trump. It was never my opinion that the Trump administration would align with me on many or even most issues, and even if he and I do incidentally align on multiple points of contention, my support is primarily down to the fact that I hate his opposition more and want to see their hegemony in the opinion-setting parts of the media and academia wiped out, along with their lobby groups who exert influence over government and society through wholly undemocratic means.
I think there should be room for considered criticism of the Trump administration here, without accruing -2000 downvotes and accusations of being a bad faith troll. I do differ with you in that I don't believe the current changes being wrought are representative of an overcorrection to the right, however, nor do I think the woke have come anywhere close to drawing their last breath, nor do I think the Trump administration is even close to being as bad as the progressives. Their hegemony among the PMC is well-entrenched, and I consider them such a threat to my value system that I am willing to sustain a few short-term blows in order to root them out entirely. Trump might be a correction I don't 100% agree with on every front, but it's a correction that absolutely needs to happen.
You can think that an irritating, sniveling, weak man is responsible for his wife‘s infidelity and his family‘s downfall without making it about all men. ... you have to go along with the world presented in the film, especially if it conforms to reality: and the husband would indeed be expected to be the protector of the family.
This is true, but his critiques have an unambiguously political angle to them, and he also makes it very clear here that his selective assignation of responsibility is not just because of the submissiveness of the man in question, it's also due to his evaluation of the man as responsible for the protection of the family - his gripe is that they are no longer taught to be masculine, and are as a result derelict on that front since they can no longer be a bulwark for their families and societies at large. Further, he often makes it quite clear within his analyses of films that the perceived erosion of the male gender role is a disaster, and upholding it is certainly an element of his own personal philosophy.
Additionally, he notes that the assertiveness the husband lacks has been ‚bred out‘ of men – imo he is more highlighting the contradictory demands society places on men, than blaming them for their failure to fulfill them.
I do think Drinker's critique is meant primarily as a systemic one, and he certainly places a large portion of the blame on society's attempts to undermine these norms and not on the individual man. Still, the fact remains that this is a male gender role he's decided should be enforced. Hell, I do appreciate and agree with some of his points - such as the acknowledgement that traditional masculinity was in fact a social good, but I do hugely disagree with the seemingly unilateral upholding of these gender roles, wherein no role will be enforced upon women at all. I kind of understand why people don’t express these sentiments - the Overton window has shifted such that enforcing a complementary role on women would be political suicide - but it’s still cowardice.
In general, my view is that both mainstream conservatives and feminists are quite similar in this regard (men should protect and provide for women in various ways, without receiving many of the traditional benefits that made that role palatable to them). Conservatives are just moderately better because they enforce that role on men while allowing them to gain a modicum of token respect through it, feminists have only vilification to offer them with the utterly condescending title of "ally" as the carrot on the stick to make them comply.
I realise this is a month-old post, but I haven't been super active on this forum for a while and have only come across it now.
This segment is united with progressives in maintaining that Women are Wonderful, and are more than happy to punish and vilify men for women’s coffee moments. Men aren’t entitled to anything from women, but men as a whole should subsidize women, and any given man should be ready to launch himself into action like a zombie from World War Z to serve as a meatshield for any random woman in distress. Instead of thot-patrolling girls and young women, they’d rather blame boys and men. Instead of reducing the freedom of girls and women as a tradeoff to increase the protections afforded to girls and women, they’d rather keep or increase female freedom, increase female protections, and reduce both the freedom and protections afforded to boys and men. See, for example, the excommunication of Trevor Bauer—who as the result of false rape accusations—got relegated from the Los Angeles Dodgers to the Yokohama DeNA BayStars and now wears a red hat as a scarlet letter for the Diablos Rojos del México.
This is one of the most exceptional examples of an ideological horseshoe in existence today, and I notice such opinions plaguing conservative forums (including this one) as much as I do progressive ones. Recently I watched a video by the conservative reviewer Critical Drinker about the American remake of the Danish-Dutch film "Speak No Evil". He correctly identifies it as missing the point of the original, but his interpretation on the original film diverges heavily from mine. The original film follows a family who are targeted by another couple with a history of serial-killing, it's effectively a satire of over-politeness in culture - the family lets the other couple victimise them due to the fact that they're too worried about stepping on toes despite the increasing amount of red flags showing up. Drinker's opinion, however, is that everything that happens in it is the father's fault. He failed to provide for his family properly due to his declining career, he failed to satisfy his wife's needs and made his poor wife have an affair with another man, he failed to be a Chad who would act as a bulwark for his own family against the offending couple, and so on. Here we see a brief outline of Drinker's expectations for men, and it's quite far-reaching - the entire burden of his family's wellbeing falls on him and him alone, and everything that happens is his responsibility. I've watched a number of his other videos as well, and if you're curious if he has a similar list of onerous roles he would expect women to fill, he does not. He effectively upholds the role of man as unquestioning protector and provider, but makes it such that they will receive nothing substantial in return from women for doing so.
It's quite clear that many mainstream conservatives seem to enjoy selectively invoking gender roles and sexual dimorphism only when it could justify further benefits for women. They'll selectively absolve the woman of all responsibility and place all fault on the man when these poor darlings are "pumped and dumped" and taken advantage of and supposedly manipulated into sex acts that get retroactively interpreted as predatory once the outcomes of the sex don't result in what they want. They will put out pieces of special pleading explaining how women's more delicate sensibilities justifies them being treated more lightly when dealing with them in multiple contexts, sexual, professional and so on. The same people who pull such shenanigans will generally not acknowledge that women's lack of agency and weak constitutions should ever affect how they get treated when they are in the running for leadership roles or positions which require one to take on a huge amount of responsibility. The acknowledgement that "men and women are not the same" only ever gets used to exclusively benefit women.
This kind of thing is everywhere and it's really hard not to notice it once you're aware of it. I distinctly remember seeing a comment under one of my posts here which basically said "Actually, male pedophilia is more damaging than female pedophilia", an assumption made with not a shred of support provided for it, and it is in contradiction with some quantitative and qualitative research showing the effects are actually very similar regardless of sex of perpetrator (you can find some studies I collected on this general topic here). There are so many more examples I can bring up, including but not limited to things like sex-differential treatment of infanticidal mothers and fathers "she was sympathetic and distraught and hormonal, she had no true free will or agency in the matter and Regretted It, he was a horrible abuser who deserves to be put in jail forever" (this despite the fact that men do experience postpartum depression, and despite the fact that even in its absence literally everyone is puppeteered by their hormones all the time yet it doesn't seem to nullify their agency in virtually every other situation when their biochemistry pushes them to commit crimes), etc.
I sincerely did not realise the sexes are only different in ways which justify special and preferential treatment for women. The sheer amount of Women-Are-Wonderful in virtually every political camp is quite ridiculous, and it's one of the many things that have made me skew further from the right as time goes on - over the years I've realised that mainstream conservatives and feminists exhibit many similarities on gender issues.
My job as a tax accountant is killing me with its sheer, soul-crushing boredom and monotony. Starting out it felt much better due to the fact that I actually had to pick up many aspects of the job on my own, but at this point absolutely no part of the job surprises me or challenges me at all, and it's effectively become a huge production line where I optimise for efficiency in tax preparation (sometimes even over the quality of the work, since I've gotten some comments that I should be striving not for perfection but trying to balance that with output). I'm certainly not the fastest employee in the firm in terms of efficiency, but as it stands I'm currently burning through all my jobs faster than people can allocate me new work (our billing/charge-out rate is still so high relative to the amount we actually end up charging the client that there are still write-offs). My managers state they're impressed with my ability to pick up concepts and the high quality of my workpapers, I personally think this is called not being retarded.
I was recently assigned one of the toughest workpapers in the firm. I looked through it. It does not look difficult. They're thinking of making me reviewer on certain jobs because they think I know the job enough well to do a high level review. I should be happy that they feel confident enough about my work to do such a thing, but at the same time every part of the job is an utterly predictable slog. It feels like they're essentially paying me to be the accounting version of a code monkey. Working for even 1 hour makes me feel like I'm being suffocated and I barely recover over the weekends. I keep myself awake through the workday with enough coffee to make my hands shake.
There's also the fact that I feel like people have effectively taken much of my work for granted - there was a time early in my career where I was working on one of the most demanding clients, and helped a superior of mine complete some work that was their responsibility by working until 4am on Friday and coming in on Saturday, just one day before I was supposed to travel for Christmas. That very same year, I effectively got a "Meets Expectations" (a score of 3) on my performance review, and a bonus... of 2% of my already-pretty-low salary. After many experiences like these I no longer care about going above and beyond, but even with that mindset I can't help but be bored to tears with the repetitious and unchallenging nature of my current work. How people can find this in any way rewarding is beyond me. It's fucking obscene.
I guess I should feel lucky I'm not saddled with super long hours (not typically, at least). It's certainly not the worst work out there - most jobs are pretty terrible. But the malaise from this is bleeding into my everyday life.
I think the reality was more like "territorial disputes got violent and that snowballed".
This was essentially what occurred, yes. Democratic Kampuchea and Vietnam initially had an alliance, but the Khmer Rouge harboured a belief that the VCP's goal was to start an Indochinese federation with Vietnam at the helm, so they started purging their own Vietnamese-trained members and attacked Vietnam multiple times in fear of their expansionism. These acts of aggression by Cambodia was what got Vietnam to take action, it was not because Vietnam was so appalled by the behaviour of the Khmer Rouge that they did not believe it could be allowed to stand. Keep in mind also that the VCP did participate in persecutions (though not to the same degree as Kampuchea) and was so hell-bent on collectivising the means of production that they almost let it starve their nation.
In general, with regards to these things it's helpful to assume they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. It's all realpolitik and always has been. Communist nations are often prone to mutual distrust and territorial infighting in spite of the shared ideological well they draw from - another great example is Ethiopia and Somalia. Despite the fact that Somalia is often brought up to take unearned potshots at libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism, if you look at the history Somalia as it is now was actually created by the infighting of two dictatorial communist governments - the Derg (Ethiopia) and the Somali Democratic Republic, governed by Siad Barre. In short Barre attempted to invade Ogaden on the basis that Ethiopian administration of the region was essentially tantamount to an African colonial occupation of a primarily Somali-occupied area, promulgating a war which he couldn't win once the USSR backed Ethiopia. This defeat, coupled with a refugee crisis created by the war and extreme disregard on Barre's end toward the Isaaq people (who were largely the ones who bore the cost of the crisis) was the catalyst that resulted in the blossoming of a full-scale civil war and the complete disintegration of Somalia.
I think the point that Hitler has an unjustifiably outsized reputation as the face of evil isn't unsubstantiated, but a far better example of a communist regime that far outstripped Hitler in terms of proportional body count would probably be Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge at large, who killed approx 25% of their population (among working-age men, the primary targets of the genocide, this figure rises to an astonishing 50-70%; very smart choice to absolutely decimate your main worker base in a primarily subsistence agrarian economy) while having power for less time than the Nazi Party.
They also grabbed infants by their legs and smashed their heads against chankiri trees to stop them from taking revenge after their parents had been killed, practiced Unit 731-like human experimentation including vivisecting people alive and injecting coconut juice into victims' veins, etc. It’s almost comical how exaggeratedly evil they were, and all these factors taken together probably makes them a very strong candidate as the worst regime in history. In this light, the fact that communism has a better reputation than fascism in the current day is beyond ridiculous - McCarthy, ironically enough, really did a great job inoculating them from criticism.
EDIT: Additional, unrelated thought: The Khmer Rouge were highly influenced by French communist schools of thought; many members of the party studied at the Sorbonne. I always wonder how the intelligentsia who promulgated such ideas managed to live with themselves upon seeing the fallout. Frankly, imagining myself in such a situation makes me viscerally understand the appeal of seppuku as a practice.
Different strokes I guess. I'm also not primarily evaluating if the exhibited technical/music theory prowess of the songs in question are particularly impressive - most music isn't particularly rich in complex composition, and mediocre music is inevitably going to represent a large part of Udio's dataset. I consider all of the linked songs to be about on par with a lot of the music that gets released. Instead, I’m evaluating on the basis of “could this be a song that I’d hear out in the wild?”
I'm more interested in including music (notation) and getting music (notation) back.
Ideally, that'd be the goal of a machine learning-driven plugin. Unfortunately I'm not aware of any notation-producing ones worth their salt yet, but I do know that there are a number of very competent plugins which have focused on the generation of sound design.
Grok seems to be schizophrenic when it comes to me. I put in the prompt and asked it to analyse my posts on TheMotte, and asked the question three times. I got Herbert Marcuse the first time (lol), Thomas Sowell the second, and George Orwell on the third go. These are all people with wildly varying politics on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Then I asked it to give me an ancient historical figure and it spit out Thucydides.
Is your plan to refrain from watching on the weekly episode release dates and wait for the whole thing to release before consuming it? Because I actually think that might be a good idea (if you're confident about not stumbling upon spoilers). One of my biggest gripes about this show is the way Apple TV has decided to release it - I find Severance hugely benefits from being able to build momentum through a couple of episodes, and watching episodically is a good bit more disjointed than having an experience where one episode dovetails into the next. I watched S1 in one go and prefer that experience, as opposed to S2 which I'm watching as the episodes are being released.
Honestly, I would probably have DNF'd the first season if I had been forced to consume it episodically. This season, in contrast with the previous, seems like it's trying to mess with your head every episode - the weekly instalments feel much more idea-rich and complete narratively, and I still feel slightly frustrated with having to wait through a week-long break every single time.
I have continued to play around with Udio music generation recently, and the stuff it spits out is... disconcertingly high-quality. Its auto-generated lyrics continue to be truly awful, though, so what I do to circumvent having to rely on Udio lyrics or write my own is to ask it to generate a song in Japanese, a language where the insipidness of the lyrics will be lost on me. It absolutely nails the musical aspects of its generations, though; I often like the musical content far more than I do many actual songs.
There's still some artifacting in its generations, but on the compositional level alone it's begun to ape human-created music so well that I think it clearly passes the musical turing test. If it managed to improve the fidelity of its generations and had a lyric generator that wasn't so trash I can see this being a dangerously addictive superstimulus for me. It's easy to fall into states wherein none of the media out there seems to appeal to you, and with generative machine learning the solution to that kind of malaise becomes "just prompt until the prediction machine spits out something you like". It feels utterly solipsistic and also very tempting at the same time.
Here are a number of funk/jazz fusion generations I got over the past couple of days:
Is it just me or are these generations, musically speaking, genuinely really decent? They're still slightly genericised, but no more so than most music out there, and I was not expecting its generation ability to get this good this fast. Despite the fact that I am not an amateur when it comes to music, I like these, and this is something that makes me think that perhaps my music taste has been irreversibly broken.
IIRC, there is a properly drafted plot from start to end, or so I've heard. This isn't a Lost scenario where the writers basically write themselves into corners they can't satisfactorily resolve.
That being said, the quality of the show is going to heavily depend on how they handle the overarching mystery.
problem_redditor
12d ago
Just from this alone, you would probably enjoy what they're doing in S2 far more. Most of S1 is setup, whereas S2 dives into far more of the lingering questions that were set up in previous episodes (and in doing so creates more questions than before). The pacing feels much faster in this one, significantly so, and several things have already happened within the first couple episodes of the season that I only expected to happen in the season finale.
I won't say they never string the audience along with plot points, but there's certainly a lot more moving parts in this season than in the deliberately slow pacing of the previous one.
This is a fantastic recommendation, and I do want to offer a counter-opinion to the negative reviews of Season 2 below; personally, I'm still enjoying it, about as much as I did Season 1 at this point. I don't really think they could've continued to showcase the daily lives of the severed workers without killing much of the momentum they built up in Season 1, and there's not too much they could've shown in the lives of the severed employees which they already didn't cover. Episode 4's execution was impeccable, despite building up to a reveal that was largely predictable, the way the episode proceeded was deeply uncomfortable. It felt like a horror movie.
One of the bigger gripes I do have with the season so far is that I think the hard narrative cut between Episode 3 and Episode 4 was weird, but the quality of the episodes have been great in my opinion.
I haven't wiped any people from my shots, that wouldn't be an honest depiction of how the trip actually was, after all. SK in general was just shockingly empty and quiet, we visited destinations from dawn to dusk (and sometimes at night, too), and most of them received little foot traffic. No doubt this is in part a consequence of going off-peak, but getting a whole UNESCO-listed royal palace almost entirely to ourselves (Changdeokgung) was an unprecedented and surreal experience I've never had anywhere else. It's right in the historic district of Seoul, too.
So it's often very quiet even around well-known tourist sites. It's possible to go even further off the beaten path and find remarkably isolated corners of South Korea that receive almost no international tourism at all (sometimes even locals seem absent). The country is absolutely littered from top to toe with ancient historical sites that I'm convinced would be a big deal anywhere else, but in SK most of them aren't marketed well. Some of the sites around Gyeongju are so obscure that I only found them by scouring Google Maps or the Korean heritage service, and posting the Hangul into search engines just to obtain more information about them.
If you're lucky, it's sometimes possible to stumble upon them randomly, but in my experience putting in the work to actually seek them out is worth it.
Didn't expect my random travel post about South Korea to appear here - I was just spitballing about a place I enjoyed a lot, but I appreciate that people thought it was interesting enough to nominate.
I do have some photos of the trip which were not included in the initial post. Here's a link to them. Frankly I hesitated from uploading them initially because I was skeevy about how amateurish they look, but perhaps they help provide some context for what the trip was like.
This is a very recent one, but Louis Cole - Life. He's one of my favourite modern jazz fusion artists, and the sax solo towards the second half of the song is absolutely tremendous. The underlying chord progression moves very quickly and isn't a particularly easy pattern to improvise over, yet the sax player almost seems to glide around all these constant key changes. Another great, albeit discordant, version of this from the same album is Bitches.
Oh, also, here's one actually from the 80s - JAGATARA's album The Naked King has some killer sax solos on it. Some good examples from there are the songs Hadaka No Osama (the sax solo in this one goes on forever, just wait for it) and Misaki De Matsuwa.
Also much of what Colin Stetson makes is achieved only with saxophone, so it's technically 100% sax solo, though his output is quite ritualistic, soundtracky and meditative and almost certainly not what you're looking for. It is beautiful music though; it's almost religious in quality.
This is a depressing answer, but as the hardest of hard materialist/physicalist atheists, I don't have anything to soften the blow. I can't convince myself of there being any observable meaning or purpose to human life, some metaphysical telos behind everything that would impart order onto it all. I think life is pure, unadulterated chaos, a blur of noise and fury that mindlessly hammers away at you until it all finally stops. My death will have meant nothing at all when it happens, and the world will go on without me.
How I find comfort in my inevitable death is the fact that I already feel tired, even at the age of 23. Somehow I have become ridiculously jaded, and I don't particularly find a lot of value in things that make other people happy. I've become deeply cynical of the idea of effecting any meaningful change on the world, which is part of the reason for my slow withdrawal from political discussion on TheMotte and elsewhere. So much is out of your control, and things that once were cause for joy begin to lose meaning as you go on. Celebrations, for example. Birthdays feel... annoying, frankly. Christmas and New Year and every other holiday custom are chores to participate in. Days repeat, over and over and over again, you're anchored down by a million life obligations that keep you in some mildly uncomfortable local minima that requires a lot of activation energy to escape, and regardless of how much you try to take comfort in the small things you can't avoid the fact that your life is running on an endless loop.
It's not that there's absolutely nothing to feel grateful about. But the longer you live, the more fed up you get with the entire thing. Sometimes I look at photos of myself as a kid, running down a hill or feeding koi in a pond, and that doesn’t even feel like me anymore. It almost feels like a memory from another life, one where the days were longer and the sun was brighter. These days already seem impossibly distant and out of reach, and I wonder what would happen if I added 1000 years on to that. Every finite physical system has information-storage limits (see: Bekenstein bounds), and the limits of memory exist far below that. How long would it take for me to forget my childhood completely? How tired and jaded would I get seeing empires rise and fall, people slipping into the same failure-modes over and over again; what happens when I experience everything there is to experience?
This isn't to say that death is a desirable condition - for most people, it's unwanted and it comes far too soon. But at the same time endless life would be an interminable, inescapable hell, and I can't think of any condition where that wouldn't be the case unless I, myself, changed via genetic modification or augmentation sometime far in the hypothetical future - at which point, I would have been thoroughly ship-of-theuseused, and I wouldn't be me anymore. Somehow, that makes me feel better about eventually not existing someday.
South Korea Travelogue
It's always weird trying to talk about a destination you think is both overlooked and absolutely fantastic. Part of you wants to keep the destination to yourself, prevent anyone else from travelling there and crowding the locations, and yet another part wants to scream from the rooftops about how the destination in question is being criminally slept on and how everyone should experience it at least once. This time, the latter impulse wins out, so here goes: I travelled to South Korea with my sister over Christmas break and it has been one of my favourite travel experiences of my life. And I've travelled a lot. It took us by complete surprise what a delight it was to travel there.
Seoul was one of the only major cities I have ever enjoyed travelling to. I don't usually enjoy cities, but Seoul was surprisingly quiet and relaxed and had a whole lot of character I didn't expect. Many neighbourhoods are full of sleepy little cafes and teahouses and restaurants, and they look so enticing you can't help but pop in for a look. And it's well worth it doing that. One time we ducked into a small, unassuming teahouse, and ended up drinking omija tea in a cosy tearoom all to ourselves. Yet another time we did this, we found a traditional foods store where we did a makgeolli tasting (probably one of my favourite alcoholic drinks of all time, to be honest). Places like Ikseon-dong and Bukchon are extremely charming and feature many modern buildings in the traditional Korean hanok style, and I recommend visiting those.
In addition, logistically speaking, Seoul is easy. The train and bus system is very well connected in the city, and it's easy to make your way everywhere you want with minimal effort. Some aspects of getting around can be annoying, such as the fact that many ATMs don't seem to be able to work with foreign cards, so it's not uncommon to go ATM-shopping for a bit before you're finally able to withdraw any amount of money. You often need cash to top up your transport (T-money) cards in Korea; you can top up your balance in convenience stores all around the country, but these only accept cash for top-up. In general, though, Seoul shouldn't pose many problems.
For the history and architecture buff, Seoul is a goldmine. Historical buildings can be found all over the city, particularly in Jongno District, and a lot of them are hardly visited by tourists. On our first day in Seoul we stumbled across Unhyeongung (a Joseon royal residence dating back to the 14th century) on our way to another destination, and were floored at how beautiful and quiet the site was despite its central location in the city. We spent 30 whole minutes just exploring the tranquil grounds of the residence and the little museum connected to it.
Even more intoxicating was Changdeokgung, a proper Joseon palace and the most authentic example of a royal palace in Seoul, having been rebuilt in 1610 after the highly destructive Japanese invasions of Korea that saw every Joseon royal palace destroyed. In spite of the importance of the site, again, there was barely anybody there. We had the whole site almost entirely to ourselves, and we could appreciate the palace courtyards virtually in complete silence. The whole palace is intricately painted in vibrant dancheong colours, and every part of it is breathtaking, but the most decorated and my favourite part of the palace has to be the Injeongjeon, the throne room of Changdeokgung. From top to toe, the throne room is covered in murals and carvings and other beautiful ornamentation. It was seriously stunning, to the point that I'm convinced I could stand and look into the room for hours on end examining every corner.
Also on the Changdeokgung grounds is the Huwon Secret Garden, a garden that was used as a place of leisure for the members of the royal family. It's intimate and naturalistic and filled with beautifully landscaped pagodas and ponds (the area around Buyongji pond, in particular, is exquisite). I highly recommend doing this if you're at Changdeokgung - you have to pay for a tour to get in, but once in you can actually choose between following your tour guide and also exploring on your own. You are also allowed to wander around after your tour ends, which was what we did and what I recommend anyone else also coming here does. The gardens also harbour resident cats, which is, in fact, the result of a single Joseon king (King Sukjong) who was so fanatical about cats that he kept these animals beside him and petted them while conducting state affairs.
Even if you're coming in winter like we did, I highly recommend it - the gardens are still incredibly beautiful, especially if you arrive in early to mid December when there's still some autumn colours on the trees. Also, there are other royal palaces in Seoul we visited during our trip - specifically Gyeongbokgung and Deoksugung, but out of all of them, I recommend Changdeokgung the most. It's extremely quiet for such an important historical site, especially if you travel off-peak, and it's very worth your time.
Our next major non-palace historical site, visited on the second day in Seoul, was Jogyesa Temple, situated conveniently in between the two major palaces of the Joseon Dynasty. We were fairly surprised to find that the decoration and painting on Korean Buddhist temples are even more ornate than that of their palaces (due to their Confucian ideals, Joseon held that the king should set an example for the people and not inappropriately flaunt their wealth). When we arrived, there was a ceremony going on, and inside the temple we could hear loud chanting and banging of drums. The amount of energy coming from this temple was absolutely electrifying, and yet again, tourists were absent - everyone who had visited alongside us seemed to have gone to pray, and they were standing in front of the temple with strings of prayer beads clutched in their hands and their heads bowed.
Near Deoksugung Palace, we visited yet another relatively unknown site: Hwangudan Altar, a sacrificial altar for the Joseon Dynasty, built by King Gojong in 1897 upon his ascendancy to the throne and his establishment of the Empire of Korea. He performed the Rite of Heaven at this site, the first time a Korean monarch had done so in centuries. During Japanese colonial rule, much of the site was demolished, but the Hwanggungu - the octagonal three-story pagoda which stood on the site - still stands, surrounded by high-rises. You can even still see the drums for sacrificial rites there beside the pagoda. I highly recommend pairing this with a visit to Deoksugung Palace, it's extremely surreal to see this piece of historical architecture surrounded by modern buildings, with nobody around - many of Seoul's residents themselves don't even seem to know it's there.
On our second and final night in Seoul, we saw a lantern festival at Cheonggyecheon, the 10-km long rehabilitated stream that runs through the city. A whole parade of lanterns, made out of traditional lantern paper and placed in the water, lit up the whole stream in red and yellow. These lanterns were modern ones, designed and placed so as to recreate a Joseon royal procession, and despite the fact that the festival was busy it was still a very good experience.
Next day we went to Seogwipo, on the south of Jeju Island. While the town itself is significantly less well-kept than Seoul, it's still a lovely place to visit in winter - the whole island is filled with blooming camellias this time of year, and you can see rows of these flame-red trees lining the streets and alleyways of the island. Tangerines seem to grow everywhere, on roadsides and in farms and every nook and cranny you can imagine. And these tangerines are the best tangerines you'll ever taste in your life. Some varieties are sweet and mild, others are tangy and strong, every single one is delicious.
While Jeju is a great destination to travel to - don't get me wrong, it is beautiful - do note that some of the big tourist sites are a bit commercialised and it's a bit difficult if you don't have a car (we can't drive, so this option was closed to us). Buses on Jeju are somewhat few and far between especially in rural areas, and you can find yourself having to wait a bit especially if you want to travel to particularly remote parts of the island. If you're doing Jeju, I'd imagine the best way is to rent a car and drive yourself to every destination or perhaps get a taxi app like KakaoT so you can go directly to all the sites, instead of having to wait 40 minutes for bus 220 to arrive so you can begin to travel to your destination.
The coastline is spectacular at many points, and since the entire island is one big shield volcano extending down to the ocean floor, black sand beaches and rugged volcanic cliffs can be found encircling the island. Some notable places we visited include Jusangjeolli, a columnar basalt formation plunging straight into the ocean, Oedolgae, a volcanic basalt pillar standing tall near the coast, and Seongsan Ilchulbong, a heavily eroded tuff cone which is a popular place to see the sun rise on Jeju. Oedolgae and Seongsan are particularly scenic and I highly recommend them, especially in winter when Seongsan Ilchulbong is relatively uncrowded.
One of the most memorable experiences I had in Jeju was walking up to a small snowy hermitage (Jonjaam) on the upper slopes of Mount Hallasan. We walked along a forested path for about a kilometre or so, and ended up stumbling upon a colourful gate covered in fluffy white powdered snow. A few hundred metres up from there, a whole series of small shrine halls emerged from the icy forest, painted in traditional Korean dancheong colours and almost entirely smothered in snow. A traditional and ancient Buddhist stupa, made out of Jeju volcanic rock, lay at the very back of the temple grounds. We removed our shoes and escaped the cold by darting into the main temple hall, and inside was a colourful little chamber, with a number of people inside praying to a figure of Buddha.
Later that day we took a bus to Samseonghyeol, a shrine dedicated to a folk myth about the founding of the Tamna Kingdom. Tamna was a sovereign state that existed on the island of Jeju from ancient times up to its absorption by the Joseon Dynasty in 1404, though for much of its history it was a tributary state to many other larger Korean kingdoms. There's no record of how it was founded, but the folktale holds that it was created by three divine founders that emerged from the ground in the 24th century BC, and the holes they supposedly arose from are still preserved in Samseonghyeol. The site is pretty diminutive in and of itself, but it's guarded by dol hareubang statues and situated in a small, enchanting forest, and an array of Joseon-era shrine halls surround the site. Memorial services are still held here, commemorating the founding of the island. I can attest that walking here at dusk felt like being in a scene from Pan's Labyrinth. It was pretty magical. If you're already in Jeju city, I recommend seeing this.
Seogwipo is surrounded by waterfalls, the most famous being Jeongbang and Cheonjiyeon. Jeongbang is part of the Yeongjusipgeong, the ten scenic wonders of Jeju Island. It empties straight into the ocean, with a storied history and many legends relating to it. Probably the darkest bit of history relating to the site is that it was a place where civilians were executed during the 1948 Jeju uprising, with their bodies disposed of over the waterfall. Jeongbang, however, is fairly crowded at times, and of the two, I much prefer Cheonjiyeon, which was much quieter and surrounded by a lush subtropical forest and a small stream filled with huge ducks. While walking to the site, you can also see a little cave which Paleolithic humans on Jeju used as a settlement. Much more interesting and pleasant, in my opinion.
In Seogwipo proper, we found that the Seogwipo Maeil Olle Market was one of the most interesting places to explore. It's a charming local market in the centre of the city, and the middle of the street is lined with little benches set beside a stream so you can eat whatever you buy in situ. You can find a lot of fresh tangerines and persimmons from there, as well as a lot of famous market stores selling various food items like bakery items and fresh mandu dumplings. Jesong Bakery sells a heavenly black pork bun - I could eat that for days on end, it's highly recommended. There is also a five-day market in Seogwipo (and Jeju) which opens once every five days, based on a traditional Joseon-era model, but unfortunately the one in Seogwipo wasn't open when we visited. But it's very nice to see that in spite of how modernised South Korea is, these Joseon traditions still continue up into the modern day.
The final region we visited in Korea - and my absolute favourite - was Gyeongju. This city used to be the capital of the Silla Dynasty, an ancient Korean state whose history extends back into 57 BC and who once ruled the entire Korean peninsula until its breakup in the late 8th century and its surrender to Goryeo in 935. If in Seoul there was the very distinct possibility of stumbling upon historical sites, in Gyeongju you literally can't miss it even if you try. The city is filled to the brim with the tombs of ancient Silla kings and their shrines, and you can see these gigantic tumuli and beautiful painted shrine halls juxtaposed against streets filled with modern cafes built in the traditional hanok style. There's also a large amount of archeological sites in the eastern historic district of the town, and you can wander through the site on your own seeing the moats and gardens of ancient palaces (now reconstructed), the ruins of pagodas from ancient temples, and even the oldest astronomical observatory in East Asia. Hell, even Gyeongju's KTX train station has a stone chamber tomb on the site. I am not joking.
One of the most interesting places in the entire region lies just outside of Gyeongju, called the Five Royal Tombs. The Samguk sagi (History of the Three Kingdoms) states that these are the tombs of the original founders of the Silla Kingdom, specifically the first Silla king Park Hyeokgeose and his queen consort Aryeong, its second king Namhae, its third king Yuri, and its fifth king Pasa. That history is now impossible to substantiate and it may be that the site was built later during the 6th century to honour and commemorate the old kings of Silla, but exploring this place was a great experience - the tombs on the site are surrounded by a peaceful little forest, and the shrines and steles on the site are beautiful. There's even a small, intimate bamboo forest near the shrines which we walked through, it's an experience that's very quiet and tranquil. We strolled in the site for a while, taking in the atmosphere, and we were rewarded with a sighting of a deer. The ever-so-popular Arashiyama forest doesn't have anything on this.
Gyeongju is also filled with spectacular Buddhist temples, the most important ones being Bulguksa Temple and Seokguram Hermitage. Bulguksa is historically significant as the site where the oldest extant woodblock print in the world was found - this discovery was only made in 1966, when the Pure Light Dharani Sutra was found during repairs of Seokgatap Pagoda. Historical significance aside, though, this is just a great temple to visit. Even the temple grounds themselves, absent the temple, are gorgeous. Before we even caught a glimpse of the temple proper we had already passed through gates painted with elaborate dancheong, and saw a small but impressive Korean temple garden out front, complete with landscaped ponds and a small bridge. But it's the front facade of the temple that's most impressive - it's large and imposing and adorned with an array of stairs and balconies. A variety of colourful lanterns were hung up inside the corridors of the temples and out in front of the shrine halls, and when the sun shone through them they cast ever-changing patterns of colours on the ground. Entering the shrine halls revealed many Buddhist statues and murals on the inside, about as intricate as the throne room of Changdeokgung. Again, you could admire this place for hours.
Further up the mountain that Bulguksa is on (Mount Tohamsan) there's the nearby Seokguram Hermitage. The path to the hermitage is lined with more lanterns, and there's a small bell tower which you can pay a fee to ring (we did). The hermitage on the outside is small and unassuming, but it's actually just the entryway into an expansive 8th century grotto which contains a large statue of Seokgamoni-bul (The Historical Buddha) calling the Earth to witness, surrounded by detailed reliefs of devas, bodhisattvas and disciples. We couldn't actually enter the grotto, due to concerns about preservation visitors can only view it through a glass pane, but it in no way takes away from the beauty of the site - we were still able to get close and see just how impressive the Buddha inside is.
One of my most favourite unknown and completely untouristed places around Gyeongju is Mount Namsan, a sacred site for the Silla Dynasty which contains many ancient carvings, sculptures and statues many of which are so old that they predate Charlemagne. We visited the west side of Namsan first, taking a route up the mountain that started from Sambulsa Temple and descended via the Samneung valley. There's a large number of Buddhist sculptures and carvings on this route through the mountains, such as the Stone Standing Buddha Triad in Bae-dong, the Stone Seated Buddha in Samneunggye Valley, the Two Line-Carved Buddha Triads, a headless statue of Mireuk-bul (Future Buddha) and a relief of Gwanseeum-bosal (Bodhisattva of Compassion). There's even a bunch of royal tombs at the base of the mountain and a charming little working hermitage, Sangseonam, up in the peaks. Visiting the west side of Namsan is an embarassment of riches.
The east side of Namsan contains some of the most spectacular single sculptures on the mountain. We first visited the Stone Seated Buddha of Mireuk-gol Valley, which is a single Buddha statue dating to the Later Silla period, backed by a nimbus adorned with heavenly carvings of flowers and vines. It's an impressively detailed sculpture, surrounded by a small temple and the forests of Mount Namsan. Next up were the Rock-Carved Buddhas in Tapgok Valley, a stunning 9-metre tall rock covered from top to toe with carvings of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, heavenly deities and pagodas on every side - the south face in particular was particularly impressive, with a standing sculpture of a Buddha carved straight out from the rock and a triad of reliefs to its right. The last sculpture we visited on the east side of Namsan was the Rock-Carved Seated Buddha in Bulgok Valley, a humble Buddha sculpture inset into a rock with a small candle placed in front of it. I have to say it felt extremely surreal and dreamlike to see these ancient carvings and statues in situ - empires have risen and fallen since then, and yet these statues are still there sitting quietly in the forests and valleys.
On our final day in Gyeongju, we visited Yangdong Folk Village, a Joseon folk village from the 15th century filled with picturesque hanoks and village shrines. It's fairly isolated - you have to take a long bus ride from Gyeongju that passes through farms and mountain ranges - but that also means it's been able to maintain a good amount of cultural preservation. The town is populated by the descendants of its original founders, and the hanok houses of the village date back to early Joseon; they've adopted some modern technology but they still maintain the traditional clan structure and still practice the rituals and folk customs of the yangban, the traditional Joseon upper class. There was, again, hardly anybody there when we visited, and most of the people we saw in the village were not tourists, but villagers, working the farms, hanging up their laundry, and so on. It was serene and extremely quiet, and the village was most definitely not a manicured tourist site; there was limited tourist infrastructure, and it had a distinctly lived-in and slightly messy feel to it that made walking around feel all the more voyeuristic. The fact that we were strolling into people's courtyards and houses was made all the more apparent because of this, and despite the beauty of the architecture it barely even felt like a destination - it felt like a place where people just lived day-to-day. Despite the fact that Korea is often seen as a hyper-modern society, this is a fairly recent development; even now there's a weird, intangible feeling that old Korea still lurks behind every corner, and nowhere was the feeling stronger than it was in this living echo of the Joseon Dynasty, nestled deep in the mountains.
People stated on travel forums that two days was plenty for Gyeongju and that there was really not that much to do, but I'd wager they were unaware of how much there was to see in and around the town (to be fair, none of it is well-marketed to international tourists, you have to do some serious sleuthing to find them). For our part, we spent four nights and three days in Gyeongju and felt it was not enough - we sought out sights from 9am to 9pm every single day, and still we missed so much. We didn't have time to visit many sites, such as the grotto of Sinseonsa Temple, Chilburam Hermitage and its Buddhist carvings, Oksanseowon Confucian Academy, Golgulsa Temple's cave shrines and bas-reliefs, Girimsa Temple and its beautiful Vairocana Buddha triad as well as its statue of Avalokitesvara, the underwater tomb of King Munmu, and so on. Even if we'd spent a whole week there, we would not have seen everything - there are literally over a hundred ancient historical sites in the mountains around Gyeongju, and if you enjoy history and archaeology more than doing Cool And Buzzy Tourist Things, they're worth visiting.
These are not all the places we visited in Korea, but adding them all would take too long, so I'll start wrapping things up here. A few final notes on Korea: Aside from the very strong Miyazaki vibes much of the sights in the country have, there's a lot more to note that I haven't had the opportunity to expound on too much. Firstly - this is just a piece of advice - if you ever want to go to Korea get Naver Maps and the Kakao taxi app. Google Maps alone is insufficient for getting around SK, and can't give you very accurate directions or bus/train times. Secondly, the food is fantastic - do try the black pork barbecue, braised cutlassfish and Udo peanut makgeolli in Jeju, as well as the ark shell bibimbap and hwangnam-ppang in Gyeongju. Finally, Korean people in general are ridiculously nice. We've had more random acts of kindness towards us in this holiday than in any other combined, and the people there are sometimes comically direct but they will go out of their way to help you. The second we touched down in Incheon airport and had trouble finding the airport bus, some random Korean guy saw us struggling and helped us find it. Bus drivers have gone out of their way to help us find the right bus routes for our destinations. Just really fantastic.
Lots of people on travel forums who have travelled to both countries seem to think Korea is a worse Japan, but my sister has visited Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka before and preferred her experience in Korea by miles - found it far more tranquil, untouristed and comfortable than Japan. But that's the end of my rambling about Korea - I think it's worth every traveller's time, and it's no skin off my nose if people don't go since it means I have it all to myself for the foreseeable future, but damn it's a great destination.
My business is much simpler than this car dealer's. And yet, I spend on the order of 50-100 hours a year on taxes and other government bullshit. I hate every moment of it.
It boggles my mind that there are people, millions of people, who do this full time. What a horrible waste.
I do this full time (don't worry, it's not too bad, it's only endless pain and suffering) and I endorse the sentiment in your comment wholeheartedly. Ideally tax should be easy, but it's prone to accrete over time and increase in complexity as politicians play political football, and in addition there are a massive amount of anti-evasion mechanisms in the tax code in order to try and cover up every loophole as they're discovered, like trying to plug a pipe that keeps springing leaks. The legislation inevitably becomes an unwieldy, incoherent mess that most people would give their left testicle never to look at again.
In addition, tax collectors' incentives are so ridiculously misaligned with that of the rest of the public that it's often farcical. Their leniency or harshness is highly dependent on their revenue collection targets at any given point, their audits can be capricious and arbitrary, and in cases of conflict between the tax office and a business (I have actually seen this before) they'll try to wear said business out through attrition and limit the avenues for appeal. Contesting them in court is difficult because they have a practically endless reserve of public money to fight you, and if you're a small business lacking knowledge of the intricacies of taxation law and accounting, your best course of action is to submit to the terms of the tax office. The whole thing is fucked beyond belief.
Trying to manage end-of-year job burnout at the moment.
I'm pretty exhausted and can barely even bring myself to competently write this comment, let alone work on clients' returns. I've been making an oddly large amount of stupid errors recently, which isn't really common for me; I'm generally known for having a fairly high quality of work, and often catch other people's mistakes rather than the other way around. My job has a very production-line quality to it; there is always another job, and the goal is to get the greatest amount of client work done with a high accuracy and in the shortest amount of time.
This failure to focus is... quite bad, considering that my job is one that requires a pretty large amount of sustained concentration - for every client I handle, I receive on average like forty different financial docs, each containing disparate pieces of info about their financial situation. I get provided with a gigantic corpus of tax legislation and accounting best practices (the former, especially, can get indecipherably complex) and have to identify which laws and guidelines to apply. There’s a lot of info missing often, and the gaps necessarily have to be filled in with some assumptions. My job is to receive incomplete and poorly arranged info from the client, decipher how to treat it based on a knotty, vague, conflicting tax code, and transform it into something comprehensible. When you're burned out, this appears almost insurmountable, paralysing to the extreme, and doing it quickly doesn't seem possible.
That level of concentration is really hard to maintain day after day for a sustained period of time; the job is monotonous and taxing at the same time (as much work in such fields is, to be fair). This funk has been slowly settling in throughout the entire year, but it's begun to really hit me after rushing out a bunch of urgent client work last week, and I've gotten into a pretty big slump. Even after work I can barely focus on anything I care about, and it feels almost like my brain is buffering whenever I try to concentrate at all. I find myself staring passively at my screen a lot, I've done that multiple times now writing this embarrassingly short comment.
This fucking sucks. Any advice for how to force your brain to hard reset over Christmas break? I'd very much like this feeling not to carry on to the new year, I don't think a whole year of running on fumes would be particularly healthy.
Ironically enough, the woke succeeded partially by making this very argument. There was a long tradition in the Frankfurt School of actively trying to undermine liberalism, their explicit rationale being that "liberalism has failed before, therefore it can fail again; and we need to put in [authoritarian system] to maintain social order".
The example they loved to use in all of their writings was the liberal Weimar Republic being usurped by the illiberal Nazi Party, and they used this to argue that the liberal system was obviously insufficient to guard against such abuses. Their claimed solution to this problem was that the information environment needed to be selectively seeded with
propaganda"emancipatory" ideas which liberated people from their false consciousness, not terrible oppressive reactionary ones which maintained preexisting power structures and produced things like Nazism. Herbert Marcuse in particular loved using this argument, and it was so successful that it resulted in the domination of all of our major institutions by wokeness. They have become the "hegemonic power structure" they once criticised despite the fact that they are still masquerading as a subversive grassroots movement, their deep will-to-power makes them fail to abide by their own standards and instead suppress any kind of counter-narrative thought which might act as a check and balance to their worst impulses, and I think we both agree this was not a good thing in the slightest.I'm very aware of the many failure-modes of liberalism - they've been discussed here at length, and I think they have credence. My counter-question is "if we get rid of the woke, what do you propose to replace it with, and if you've discarded liberalism as an idea how do you plan not to fall into the same trap the woke did?" Because there's a real risk of that, and using the fact that authoritarian systems have managed to succeed in some places as a reason for why an illiberal ideology should be introduced is the root of many of the harmful social trends that are occurring today. The woke obviously thought they were doing good - virtually everybody who does harm thinks so. What kind of self-correction mechanism would this new proposed hypothetical system have to prevent false dogmas from going unchallenged? Because while the left's unhinged dogmas are most salient in today's environment, dogmatism is not the exclusive preserve of the left.
Of course, some very doomer part of me does indeed think all this debate is pointless and that people have an inherent bent toward constructing sacred cows and adopting them in a quasi-religious manner, so we're doomed to swing from dogmatic idea to dogmatic idea and the idea of constructing an environment meant to guard against any given ideology's worst tendencies is a utopian abstraction that will never materialise in the long run. As always, the only thing that ultimately matters in this dynamic is making sure you're the one on top.
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