ripsawridge

Since social contagion is part of the problem, that would already be an improvement.

I scrolled many pages for this. It is true!

Information wants to be like an "earworm"...an annoying and "false" song that you just can't shake. Because then it's not anodyne. It has a personality. It will be remembered, not merely incorporated. In truth it is the purveyor of the information that has this desire, and it seeps into his leavings on the internet. In his many thousands of iterations. And so we are here.

After the third "I'm just SO ANGRY" I had to stop reading. Look, we all get angry, right? It is not a revelation to me that somebody living is feeling angry. Once they told me 3 times they are angry, I realize they are enjoying themselves. And then I leave, because I've lived too long to enjoy that vortex anymore. Have fun though!

You are tone policing. How do you know she didn't "think just a little bit more"? You assert that she didn't think enough because you don't like what she had to say.

Ascribing bad intentions off the bat to someone who wanders into a topic "unprompted" (how do you know? Do you talk to her daily?) is a poisonous attitude. Why are you the judge here? And the trans issue is not a "weird topic." It is highly topical. Many are talking and thinking about it. That just bothers you, apparently.

edit: s/off the bad/off the bat

I've had my site (https://www.mountainwerks.org) going since 1998, and for sure, I am myself the primary user. But over time, my gosh, there is a lot of content. It started as a log of trips to the mountains. I found religion through trying to pay homage to nature by remembering each "piece" of it. Because an attitude of thankfulness gradually became nature (thanks to going out so danged much).

I wouldn't know any other way to live. Old ideas are often gold.

I don't think the pastors admission is as bad as it sounds at first blush. A religious man is likely to believe that the best "food" is the knowledge of God. That is, if the spirit is fed, and the mind looks to higher things, then order is restored in the organism. That being will begin to act rightly somewhat more often. It will use the food packets to add to an ordered life, and eventually become a source of food packets or other good things.

Viewed with the worst glasses, this motivation can be viewed as "growing the religion," as if its a pyramid scheme with no other motivation than its own growth (ie, cancer). I'd just like to add that it is possible to regard the growth of the religion as a truly high aim.

I'm not saying any one thing is true, only that it is possible that the pastors aim is high and heartfelt.

Where I live, people pulled down AfD signs or defaced them. The unpersoning is not helpful. The ideas won't go away, and the people who think the AfD raises good questions will only feel persecuted (because they are).

The worst part is that the ones who hate the AfD don't know why they do and are unable to counter their arguments.

So much agree. Naussica and Toroto capture the highest expressions of depth and delight. Though Spirited Away speaks to me more and more...there is a tenderness about the human condition in that film, which becomes a call to courage.

Keep in touch with your friend. A lot of times, they are wracking their brains to find a way. The weird thing about stepping away, is that the sacrifice of supposed "needs" turns out to be the sweetest benefit.

Sigh. So I'm writing from a position of privilege (I'm often accused of this).

However, if MY attitudes are adopted, then the locus of control returns to the individual. Who will do better in the end: the one who goes home every night feeling that the "enterprise [is] badly suffused with exploitative and adversarial interactions" or the one who takes personal responsibility for each interaction in which he or she is involved?

I know who I think will do better. Who will have a more positive impact on their surrounding environment. This may be unsophisticated.

> perhaps like some progressives, I am not sure there is as big a difference as we'd like to believe between selling one's spring days to be a cog in any commercial operation and selling participation in sexual gratification.

There is! In the first case, you work with colleagues who may become friends, you learn how to treat people and build stronger relationships. The "cog in [a] commercial operation" quip is an abstraction. Generally, people have relationships with their peers and are not "cogs."

Whereas on the other hand, the sex worker deals with people who treat them badly precisely because they've paid to do that. They even enjoy it. This is a twisted model of human relations, and the sex worker is both the enabler of that awful exchange and has a target on his or her back.

So the progressive "view" of this thing is absolutely insane. It's constructed from a position of privilege where the reality constructed by toying with such ideas need never be encountered.

Our aspirations might be vaunting past what humans are generally capable of. I completely agree with you, but since I see over and over (and over) that only direct relationships engender change, I finally conclude that this is where humanity is at. We can call it a bug if we like, but it doesn't mean we can change it.

It only looks like a bug now because we are insisting on building complex, globalized societal configurations which don't play well with that limitation.

It was useful, thanks! I've definitely seen this in tech, esp. the latter case, which I've seen make smart people who deserve better miserable.

I'm interested, and will probably try it. But! I'll keep the # of sick days the same. They are wellness days, when I take care of other business.

Yes. All that aggressively postured success creates feelings of alienation, not only from your friends but the whole society. The people doing it don't understand how it looks on the outside. To rediscover the joy of people, I had to leave those places they built.

The south is very friendly. I think it's because people have time...somehow not hooked up entirely to the cult of productivity.

Why is this downvoted? As an American (48 yrs) living the last 15 in Europe, I see it exactly the same as vlastjj here.

Munich is the same (as Kiev).

I quit social media after divorce, recognizing that no one could have had any idea we were struggling as a couple. I found our projected persona to be sharp-edged and inhuman. Such tools create more isolation that they appear to alleviate.

I've often thought that the loss of smoking means less mixing of classes that wouldn't have reason to say one word to each other.

Smoking creates small favors and the need to ask for them. Phones don't do this.

Your comment is delightful.

It is not possible to over-post Adam Curtis. The range of ideas in his videos is fantastic.

Those loopholes are features, not bugs. They allow the mind to close the door to consideration of reflexive problems. Those with a feedback loop back to the self. It really simplifies existence! xD

I think your buffer has overflowed. If living sustainably within limited resources were merely a "thing" to take care of one afternoon, or even in 1000 afternoons, then we probably would have done it by now.

Consider that the need for this "new thing" (Martian living) may have only arisen from the failure to solve the first thing.

Ha!

Yes, everything 'steals time,' but the biggest time stealers are those things which chemically alter your brain, such as alcohol, cannabis or other drugs. They alter the organs of perception in ways that reading a book or walking a dog do not.

Of course this is the fun of them. But also the downside.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is so wonderful, I highly second this recommendation.

"Dark Age America" is a fascinating book by John Michael Greer that goes into the wicked dependencies in our technology stack.

Thanks for sharing this. I totally agree.

TL;DR; Ben Kenobi had his Darth Vader, who he didn't give a fk about.

I like it for sure, but let me take devil's advocate position! :)

You've got a value scale telegraphed through your essay: edgy and dangerous is much more what a human should be rather than safe, complacent, comfortable.

I think it's something you desire to be/have, and that's fine, but you wouldn't say that unless you felt that this is something far, far away from what you are now. You must feel that you are unimaginative and more of a consumer than a producer. I wouldn't blame you for feeling that way...one of the neat tricks of our system is that we are supposed to individuate deeply (dangerously, rowr!), however every single way to do it is co-opted by some marketing identity. Try going to do some yoga in just ordinary pants not branded as a "lifestyle."

If you feel like a non-entity in this way, it's good to have an enemy. A "man" to keep you down. This is the "they" in your essay. And indeed, he runs rampant through all of our thoughts.

But in reality, they is you. You participate in this internet economy. You take the "free" things that are offered. What I mean is that this system serves you more than you want to admit: it gives you a reason to fail to find out who you really are.

Because, be honest, do you really want to be this edgy and dangerous person you are putting forth as an ideal? Are those people the best dads to their kids, the best wives to their husbands? Isn't there also goodness in the individual who shows up at the median of all these increasingly insidious schemes to harvest data.

Maybe, just maybe, this character shows up as so bland and useless because her attention is focused elsewhere. She doesn't care that she's tracked. Her opinions are bland because she doesn't strive to "cut a profile" in a place which would be visible to observers in the system.

It could just as well be that true freedom is in that.

And further, who is more free: the one caught and victimized by one of these totalitarian webs you describe (and they are scary), or the one who is so savvy about avoiding the webs, the mistakes, the many trip wires that eventually lead to disgrace, prison, whatever.

So I have been caught. So what? Was that the purpose of my life? To adroitly avoid the traps of my enemies? I suggest it's possible to not care about them. About what they do every moment.

I think life may lie in a completely different direction.