"Video Games Are Not Self-Improvement"
I don't play video games as much as I did when I was a kid or a teenager, but I'll never agree with men who give them up completely in the guise of being an adult, which I've seen more with older men. If they use the argument that gaming is not self-improvement, I can use the argument that self-improvement is warranted useless by death, or the better argument that perpetual self-improvement connects to stress, which breaks down cells and also leads to neurosis, which is contradictory to self-improvement. So the best argument that gaming is not in league with adulthood falls short, and it is further destroyed when the history of non-video games is taken into account and their role in self-improvement via the ability to abstain from consistent stress.
Disproving Misanthropy: The Fondness in Inaction
I believe the primary drive or one of the primary drives of human beings is connection or the need to feel it, which is pitted against the need to survive, and the conflict of these two needs potentially creates negative emotion. The need for survival and connection also play off each other; for instance, those who are suicidal perceive a future of permanent disconnection. I believe that primarily because of the survival drive, the majority of human fondness for other people and living things is kept in a state of subconsciousness until they die. When someone you know dies, you eventually have strong emotions come around which show you the value you placed on them. Detachment is also sometimes used to honor a platonic or romantic relationship, or keep a relationship closer to its present stability, rather than potentially damaging a relationship with failed attempts at connection, where past experience affects what kind of action or lack thereof is taken.
Where we see fondness through action, we have ignored the possibility of fondness through lack of negative action. The lack of hostility in human inaction can be an indication of fondness; a calmer tone, calmer words, or relaxed body language, can be indications of fondness. A lack of aggression towards other living things in an environment, is always an indication of some amount of fondness in a living thing towards those other living things. We could take this fondness in a radical case, lets say someone was very angry at you, and carrying a gun, but decided to talk to you before pulling the trigger; the inaction of the gunman or gunwoman is space for communication, and I believe the right words, whatever they may be, would get you out alive.
Human beings are inherently connected. They have a solidarity that isn't extended to other life forms, and they have a solidarity which extends to all life. This solidarity likely has to do with sharing genes, in the sense of human solidarity, it is a lesser form of familial solidarity; where the closeness we might feel with siblings is partly because we share genetic makeup, and then also partly because we've grown up with them. In an apocalypse scenario where very few people are alive, we would see loneliness set in to some degree, and people respond to one another in a non-hostile way because of this human race based solidarity, even if they might've been enemies prior to the apocalypse happening.
Although mental distraction plays a role in indifference as well, it doesn't take away from the lack of hostility in human indifference, which shows inherent connection and fondness. Its a threat to our own survival and wellbeing to show too much fondness, but its also a threat to be disconnected because we were too busy trying to survive potential threats. Its liberating to have the idea that love or fondness can be masked in some way by the survival drive because it paints a more optimistic picture of human inaction than that of loveless indifference.
Where we see fondness through action, we have ignored the possibility of fondness through lack of negative action. The lack of hostility in human inaction can be an indication of fondness; a calmer tone, calmer words, or relaxed body language, can be indications of fondness. A lack of aggression towards other living things in an environment, is always an indication of some amount of fondness in a living thing towards those other living things. We could take this fondness in a radical case, lets say someone was very angry at you, and carrying a gun, but decided to talk to you before pulling the trigger; the inaction of the gunman or gunwoman is space for communication, and I believe the right words, whatever they may be, would get you out alive.
Human beings are inherently connected. They have a solidarity that isn't extended to other life forms, and they have a solidarity which extends to all life. This solidarity likely has to do with sharing genes, in the sense of human solidarity, it is a lesser form of familial solidarity; where the closeness we might feel with siblings is partly because we share genetic makeup, and then also partly because we've grown up with them. In an apocalypse scenario where very few people are alive, we would see loneliness set in to some degree, and people respond to one another in a non-hostile way because of this human race based solidarity, even if they might've been enemies prior to the apocalypse happening.
Although mental distraction plays a role in indifference as well, it doesn't take away from the lack of hostility in human indifference, which shows inherent connection and fondness. Its a threat to our own survival and wellbeing to show too much fondness, but its also a threat to be disconnected because we were too busy trying to survive potential threats. Its liberating to have the idea that love or fondness can be masked in some way by the survival drive because it paints a more optimistic picture of human inaction than that of loveless indifference.
We Are Not Your Enemy
Be confident at all times.
Women like confidence,
and the measure of a man
is his ability to sway women.
Do not criticize women as a whole,
that is misogyny.
Criticize men at your leisure,
that is comedy.
Don't take criticism so harshly,
be a man and don't talk about feelings.
But be open about your feelings,
regardless that we will criticize you.
We do not want you to be weak,
we only want to control your strength.
We do not want you to kill yourself,
we only want you to be dead inside.
We are not your enemy,
because your father had no friends.
Women like confidence,
and the measure of a man
is his ability to sway women.
Do not criticize women as a whole,
that is misogyny.
Criticize men at your leisure,
that is comedy.
Don't take criticism so harshly,
be a man and don't talk about feelings.
But be open about your feelings,
regardless that we will criticize you.
We do not want you to be weak,
we only want to control your strength.
We do not want you to kill yourself,
we only want you to be dead inside.
We are not your enemy,
because your father had no friends.
Childhood Had Its Perks
We have immense power available to us in our independence as adults, but most people are afraid of that because death is real, and pride and personality can and has resulted in death for human beings. But without a sense of pride and personality, there is no source of power in the animal-- inclusive of the human animal. We have the capacity to own and expand upon our greater freedom as adults, but it comes with the price of abandoning the ability to connect with others, in this way its sort of a wonderful, but tragic play. Conflict is as serious as the threat of being permanently erased, whether or not that's real, but conflict is also as futile as a forgotten match in a board game, a source of warmth for others in its entertaining or mysterious quality which does not fully apply to their life and may be corrected by them-- where they are the source of love in their ability to correct that conflict. Maybe the true measure of adulthood is the ability to erase or correct conflict, rather than disconnect from or erase life, or maybe that's something beyond being an adult. Childhood certainly had its perks.
Gloom
Though I haven't wrote anything new, I had 4 page views today, and 5 yesterday, 199 last month; so last month couldn't all be bots, but I do wonder who's reading, or who is not reading. I wanted to go through and delete posts I no longer agree with, including those that fall under "single gender fallacy", but as of writing this on March 8, 2015, I haven't got around to it just yet.
I feel like shit, but I don't know why I feel like shit. I've been trying to regularly take Vitamin D, working out more, and eating a little bit healthier, trying to meditate and having my regular spotty success. But something that has followed me around for years is this emotional sludge that feels as though it exists not only in my being, but in my perception of time itself. The remnants of when I was severely depressed, this gloom that infected all of my adolescent memories, and who knows what those memories are like without its unwanted presence, they exist for a person, or an aspect of a person, that is legitimately dead.
This sense of gloom lives in me, I can't ever shake it, but at least I can put it into music, visual art, or words; I'll probably be mostly putting it into words until I die. Gloom is a part of me, it is me, but if it will attack me and try to make me catatonic than I will drag it along with me by its own chains, like a slave who is stronger than their master.
I feel like shit, but I don't know why I feel like shit. I've been trying to regularly take Vitamin D, working out more, and eating a little bit healthier, trying to meditate and having my regular spotty success. But something that has followed me around for years is this emotional sludge that feels as though it exists not only in my being, but in my perception of time itself. The remnants of when I was severely depressed, this gloom that infected all of my adolescent memories, and who knows what those memories are like without its unwanted presence, they exist for a person, or an aspect of a person, that is legitimately dead.
This sense of gloom lives in me, I can't ever shake it, but at least I can put it into music, visual art, or words; I'll probably be mostly putting it into words until I die. Gloom is a part of me, it is me, but if it will attack me and try to make me catatonic than I will drag it along with me by its own chains, like a slave who is stronger than their master.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)