It is normal for people to have anxiety about death. Libido and fear of death are two massive motivations. Sometimes they are unconcsious motivations. Marketers mess with our ability to know what we need and what will be satisfying. They tamper with our imagination as the result of the void. It shows up in weird ways. We fill the void with imagination and consumption. Imagination in the creation of art is good. Imagination in unrealistic expectations for consumption is bad.
I have clothes. I have plenty of clothes. I have an understanding of color theory and can generally dress myself to be passable in society. There is no such thing as authenticity in this regard. Unless maybe if I got my clothes from a small indigenous group of people in South America who custom made me some outfits. Any magazine, any shop, any online store is going to command the title of "purveyor of taste." Personally, I think just wearing white t-shirts and blue jeans everyday is better than falling into the consumption trap. But, in bourgois life there are dress codes...
Oh, geez, they are just clothes, this is embarrassing. If I was a farmer this would not even be on the radar. I am not a farmer though. I am a poor that wants status but not in the conventional ways. Although, wearing business casual and having a 4 bedroom house and a 401k would be nice. Only if I can also afford the servants to clean the house, mow the lawn, pick up dog shit, you know the drill.
I fit into the local gym community, the local neighborhood dog walkers community, the read alone by myself community. I fit into the alienated labor community but that does not help anyone. We are all atomized, isolated, and estranged. There is no alienated labor community.
Last edit: 31/03/2025 17:41
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PuertoRican United States. Apr 01 2025 05:24. Posts 13181
On March 30 2025 18:57 RiKD wrote:
It is normal for people to have anxiety about death.
If you're reasonably healthy and you're not old, then you shouldn't be thinking about death.
If you can't write something clearly, don't write anything at all. I think Wittgenstein said something like that. That's about as much as I need from him for now.
Most people are perfectly happy to repress death among many other things. Although we are not really consciouss of what we repress until it shows itself in plain day, if it ever does.
These days it seems like most people don't care about anything. What about making humans freer and happier? There is a lot of debate about what this entails but I don't think it needs to be perfect or utopic. I asked a friend to lunch the other day. I picked up a piece of dirty paper towell on the floor at the gym. I waved someone ahead at a four way stop. These are all very basic things but they set a tone. I'm trying to move from someone who doesn't care about anything to someone that is trying to make humans freer and happier. So, go ahead and read Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Nozick or Theory of Justice by Rawls or don't read anything. I think there are some common grounds that most can agree on.
Oh, and another thing. Just because someone agrees with a lot of what Marx has to say on Kapital or capitalism doesn't not mean they are for Soviet communism. I've actually met some people who do agree with Soviet communism and that is unfortunate but thankfully this was a small pocket of leftist circles. Some leftists are a bit deranged. It's not a competition of who is more deranged. Maybe we are fucked but I'm sick of being skeptical and cynical of everything under the sun. How do we really make humans freer and happier?
Byung-Chul Han on a talk at Korea University talks about handwork. Using one's hands versus digital / fingers. He talks about playing the piano and gardening. 2 things that make him happy when he was never happy before.
Besides social connection and some exercise / meditation these are all individual endeavours. We must overcome atomization and alienation.
I was blindfolded throwing darts at the wall. It was between Simone de Bouvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity and Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation. I kept missing though. Then, I realized I don't want to read either at this point in time and it was back to the drawing board.
I decided to go ahead and read the Baudrillard. It's pretty good so far. I've always liked Baudrillard. My therapist says philosophy is mind candy for me. I was thinking about it and I am not sure what she means. Whether she just means it's intellectually stimulating for me or that it is merely candy including excitement without much nutritional value to it. She is pro me reading philosophy so it must be the former.
I think I have found myself in a bit of a melancholy. I try really hard not to be skeptical and cynical of everything but it is difficult for me. I never have any gratitude. My passion for making humans freer and happier has subsided. My friend asked about it. I sent a small manifesto. She responded saying everything was truthful and logical but then asked if I was hypomanic and made fun of me for using fancy words. I was not hypomanic and I did not think that I used fancy words. I went out to lunch with her the next day and had about as much fun as humans in their 40s can have. Then, it's back to going on walks and reading. I am atomized and alienated. I have no power. There is no instant gratification with making humans freer and happier.
"The Good Life is freedom from toil, dependence, and ugliness." (Herbert Marcuse)
My gated community is a caricature. It takes away from the beauty. The only thing out of place are some deteriorating snap dragons (winter flowers) by the entrance to one of the neighborhoods. I live in a simulation.
There is always toil. Either you toil to find the job or toil at the job. There is no end in sight. I am dependent on my parents. This is not good. I am working on it.
So, I toil, I am dependent, and I live in a grotesque simulation. No wonder it feels a bit like depression. A bleak fatalism. Some form of nihilism. Melancholy is just a depressed vita contemplativa that lingers in a self-centered sludge.
I'm not actually depressed. I crushed a shoulder workout today. Where as last chest and back workouts I ran into a brick wall of non-progression. It actually does not feel that bad physically. I reap the benefits of a high intensity resistance training session. The grind through all that volume and to not improve hurts the soul.
Existence is a struggle. Some may say it is a beautiful struggle through years and years of evolution. Others may say it is a meaningless struggle through a grotesque simulation.
Anyone remember that website where people would orgasm and it would just be their face and sounds. That is an interesting piece of humanity. It was beautiful ( ). Anguish? Beautiful Agony!
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United States. Mar 30 2025 19:57. Posts 9242
