roseweird posted:

my earliest media memory is actually the little mermaid

INteresting, so, ariel (elian) emerges from under the sea (cuban rhythms) to the wonderful world of humans (america) and eric the prince (miami-dade cuban expats) but ursula (fidel castro) desires the prince for herself, and lets not forget triton (uncle sam and badcop) preventing her from being on land, at all!

but now that ursula is dead, you have an unconcious longing for the story to conclude, but it wont because ariel fucking hates the people on land now, because her home is half algae bloom and half oil slick thanks to them.

Themselves posted:

roseweird posted:
who the shit are you


oh look a gimmick post by a gimmick poster

the only reason i registered here anyway was to see GF's, Henry, and BHPN posts, I don't remember you from lf roseweird and your posts are bordering on ignore status

just act normal you dont have to impress me

ok, once again, not from around here, don't know all yall, and all that, but if you seriously hang around here specifically to see baby huey p newton post. well.

consider me a tpaine convert.

roseweird posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:

are you really sorry?



occasionally, for a moment or two

I don't quite understand this. If you dislike men so much then why feel bad for rustling their jimmies?

shriekingviolet posted:

Themselves posted:

roseweird posted:
who the shit are you


oh look a gimmick post by a gimmick poster

the only reason i registered here anyway was to see GF's, Henry, and BHPN posts, I don't remember you from lf roseweird and your posts are bordering on ignore status

just act normal you dont have to impress me

ok, once again, not from around here, don't know all yall, and all that, but if you seriously hang around here specifically to see baby huey p newton post. well.

consider me a tpaine convert.

I expected rosewierd to upvote thi spost, but not you FAILAIDS. you disappoint me FAILAIDS...

tpaine posted:

i've been so sorely disappointed in even the rote, token obfuscations you idiot trash people have offered me. is that it? i can impugn the entire human race in a breezed out sentence and all anyone can say is "you sound sad, maybe you need to drink a nice refreshing coke?" IVE HAD THOSE. THEY'RE GOOD BUT THAT'S IT

I doubt any of what follows is new to you but your position has always struck a chord with me and is something I've been dealing with off the forums for a while. I can't say I've figured out how to move past it - most advice I've gotten has been unfounded optimism or variations on micro-level focus, which to me is basically be an "ignorance is bliss" maneuver.

Your argument is "people are shit" and its a good one that I tend to agree with. But why does that make you sad? I would posit that it's because you can't do a damn thing about it. I think the underlying problem lies in the fact that the limits of our comprehension are and always will be far greater than the limits of our potency. The most extreme example of this is the ability to comprehend the concept of infinity while simultaneously knowing that humanity is decidedly time-limited (both individually and generally). On a lesser scale, the problems of our time are understandable to various degrees but even those are so large that a lifetime of work could very actually not move us closer to solving them one iota.

Put differently, we bear witness to mountains of evidence of helplessness and internalize that negatively. The greater the problem, the greater the helplessness and the greater the negativity; this explains why "get lost in minutiae" advice has any effectiveness. But frankly, having the capacity to comprehend these problems and choosing to ignore them strikes me as a massive disservice; we can go there mentally, so perche' no?

Where I'm at right now is that this is the double-edged sword of sentience. I don't believe that our current situation is special; in other words, I think that generations have lived and died with this cognitive problem that they apply to their specific situations. People are shit has almost certainly been a trope for as long as there have been people. Did you miss that scene in Gladiator where the pleb stayed home instead of going to the Coliseum because "what the fuck is wrong with Roman society?"

Previously, I subconsciously held out hope that we could overcome the agency/control problem; it seems to be society's prime preoccupation and We've Come A Long Way. But I've since come to feel that said hope is misplaced and detrimental to my core wellbeing. We've Come A Long Way, But Not Really.

I've found some resonance in the Kübler-Ross model/5 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) because I consider myself to be going through what amounts to existential grief (the death of the illusion of potency). I definitely went through denial/anger/bargaining and am solidly in the depression phase. I think society will be forever stuck in denial. Acceptance requires me to "be ok" with the scaling lack of control I have over everything of objective consequence; that's quite a hurdle and I am not confident I will ever get there. It will be a constant struggle in the face of everything we do to convince ourselves otherwise.

But I believe there could be honor in the struggle for that acceptance, even if it is never attained. Whether I ever get to that point, thereby spending the balance of my numbered days with an active appreciation of the decidedly tiny limits of my agency, is almost irrelevant; succeed or fail, "dealing with it" could be my greatest achievement. I'd obviously prefer to succeed, but who gives a shit what I'd prefer?

To bring it around to you: people are shit, but you have zero ability to control aggregate humanity in any meaningful way, so perhaps you can find value in the struggle to accept the shittiness. Or you can try leaving Florida.

Sent from my iPhone 5C while drinking a Coca-Cola

Edited by LaserJew (Jan. 8, 2014 22:56:03)

babyhueypnewton posted:

shriekingviolet posted:

ok, once again, not from around here, don't know all yall, and all that, but if you seriously hang around here specifically to see baby huey p newton post. well.

consider me a tpaine convert.

I expected rosewierd to upvote thi spost, but not you FAILAIDS. you disappoint me FAILAIDS...

sorry, but I"m a sucker for owns..

roseweird posted:

Ironicwarcriminal posted:
I don't quite understand this


it's complicated

fair enough, but imo being a rhizzone poster means never having to say you're sorry

tpaine posted:

the only difference between us and the warlike, rapacious chimpanzee is that we know better and we have the capability to destroy ourselves and will assuredly do so. i think this explains the lack of intelligent, spacefaring life in the universe: we have to evolve the ability to think and solve problems, but we can never become intelligent enough to build that kind of technology without also having the ability to destroy ourselves in the stupidest fucking way possible, because life is inherently predatory and we're apex predators

agreed, but the fun part of life is distracting yourself, so maybe you should take up a hobby like cooking or dedicating your life to the cause of revolutionary socialism.