I can’t think of extracts from plays right at this moment where apology has calmed an angry spirit, but they are there. — Sunshine Sami

I've retracted my claws after an offender's apology in my own life. It was sincere. It worked. That's when I apologized for being too outraged. (A woman was involved. I might have slapped his face with a dainty purple glove and chose a second and a brace of pistols. An affair of honor. Old school primitive stuff in the blood.)

In that case, can the act subdue a threat? — Sunshine Sami

Definitely. We can accrue a symbolic debt. Others can put us in the maybe-an-enemy category. An apology can resolve the ambiguity and reframe the event as an accident or a misunderstanding.

I think we'd generally rather lose 50 dollars to an error than have 5 dollars stolen from us intentionally. 'Violence is the quest for identity.' A willful violation of our dignity/worth calls the blood to revenge. (We may swallow this rage for reasons of prudence. We may comfort ourselves with a thought that the offender is himself beneath notice. )


(By the way, you can highlight what you respond to and a quote button will appear. This notifies those you respond to that you have responded.)

Good stuff. I miss the flirting stage. Best game in the world, perhaps. At least I can watch La La Land with the Mrs.

You don't ask a woman if you can kiss her. You ask her if she wants to kiss you. Or tell her that she can, if she wants. — Michael

I love it. 'I guess you can kiss me now if you feel you must.'

Is the act of apologizing, assuming it is done in good faith, i.e. genuine, and whether or not the situation objectively calls for an apology, a declaration of equality? — Sunshine Sami

I don't know if equality is implied, but there does seem to be some recognition of worth. I tend to more or less explicitly size up others. Are they truly peers? Or not quite? Or not a chance? Or (exciting and threatening) superior somehow?

I'd apologize to anyone if I felt I had violated the informal but important social contract. I've apologized to 'enemies' as they apologized to me (I apologized for being too counter-aggressive, for instance.)

In much the same way, I wonder, that greeting a stranger with “hello” carries an assumption that the stranger is seen as an equal by the greeter. — Sunshine Sami

Same as above, in my view. No equality implied, but only a basic respect of the other as (at least) minimally worthy of regard. I would not say 'hello' to people with threatening demeanors. I cut off empathy/recognition as a preparation for symbolic/literal violence. Now and then especially certain men remind me of big dogs that got away from their owners. Funny how a whiff of the threat of violence changes all the rules.

Of course, that also assumes that the person receiving the apology does not then manipulate the situation to extract further admittance of responsibility and other unsavory demands from the person apologizing. — Sunshine Sami

Right. And occasionally you might tell your spouse that you're sorry just to stop her acting the fool. You are (in your own mind) justified in faking a sincere apology if an angry friend or lover demands one in an excessive way. All's fair in love and war, etc.

What is intolerable is the inability to connect with others; you can have a partner, family, friends and still feel unbearably alone because there is no genuine love but rather a behavioural programme that promises eventual happiness if you conform to an ideal. — TimeLine

I do think that the gloomy person feels a certain loneliness. But this doesn't have to be the absence of real love. It may instead involve the limits of love. The ideal relationship would be simultaneously the ideal sexual relationship and the ideal friendship. But there is a tension here. Sexual love is possessive. Friendship recognizes the freedom and equal status of other.

I can't relate to the program you speak of. I understand what you mean, but it's not something I wrestle with. For me the 'problem' is the ambivalence of human existence. I want to have my cake and eat it too. I buck against finitude. The passionate imagination is too big for one little life. Or sometimes it is.

One can know the good advice, have read the gurus. The wicked heart remains. Sometimes it's a good boy. It loves what it has and where it is. At other times it hates what it is from a vision of what ought to be. This is good if the ought-to-be can be enacted. (The situation is mendable and there isn't much ambivalence. )

You do what you are told by society and you are told to distrust yourself, to become alienated from yourself as though consciousness is your enemy, that the danger of losing this eventual happiness is you and so you must go. — TimeLine

I'm sure it applies to some, but this doesn't cover all cases. Indeed, it's also society that piles on words against the perception of the darker aspects of life. The life-immersed can all agree that the death-voice must be neutralized with scientific or religious terminology. The death-voice is useless to them, unless like me their project involves a description of this dialectic itself.

Capitalism and our societal norms are like farmers fattening their cows with hormones and rearing them ready for slaughter; you are only worth something if you do what you are told. — TimeLine

I think there's some truth in this. But the dark side of capitalism emanates from our own individual natures. Why do we want others? For sex-love, friendship, and trade. Maybe also as an audience for our personality or as foils for our superiority. So (from another view) we are worth something to particular others in those terms. Sex-appeal, friend-appeal, the indirect appeal of objects and services, and the abstract appeal of audience/foil seem to cover it.

I think younger people have strong sense of the abstract audience. 'They' are watching and judging. 'They' must be appeased or pleased. So maybe they act out against this 'They.' But that's the young stuff. That's the dramatic suicide 'attempt.' The truly darkened mind is quiet in the futility on speech. The young suicide aims his action at someone or something. The old suicide no longer sees anything worth aiming this action at. He laughs a dark laugh at the complacent stuff he used to say, at the wiseman he used to play on TV.

The moment that you stop expecting or working hard to try and be loved by impressing this system through power or attractiveness or having popular traits, and instead start using the faculty or the inherent mental capacity to give love - charity, kindness, affection to all things and not selectively - that social system breaks down and you start to learn this new language, this very 'you' that never had a chance to know. — TimeLine

Right. I'm aware of this idea. The gloomy person is self-absorbed. If they just give themselves in a Christian sort of way, then they find new places in their soul. I'm sure there's some truth in it. It works for some people sometimes. But any project works so long as we are truly invested. Your words may be wise and true, but there is a perspective from which they look like grasping. I'm not saying one is correct and the other incorrect. I'm just trying to describe the situation in its fullness with a kind of detachment. That's my project of the moment.

You cannot help who you fall in love with (I know that from experience) and all is vanity, but it is about the memories we share and make with one another while it lasts that matters (you should read Darkness Visible). — TimeLine

Memories are fine, but I'd stress what's available now. For me the good moments absorb the scheming mind.

I read Darkness Visible many years ago. It's a beautiful little book. Styron was there. That's an example of a married, successful, respected artist wrestling with this stuff. A great example.

So, two people can unite and share in romance and even marriage and those experience can end, but the friendship will never end which is why friendship is a type of love that is eternal. There is nothing greater than finding a true friend to alleviate the emptiness. — TimeLine

I agree that true friendship is one of life's best experiences. I've had several that have come and gone. People change. Kids, drugs, careers, etc. I could probably use another one. That or a mistress that my wife magically tolerates. There was a time when I had several intense friendships (including with a woman in a wife-approved manner) and the relationship was going well and I was creative in several media and my health was great and there were new recreational drugs that worked beautifully with all of this. I worked a part-time meaningless job. I spent more time on the drums than at work. I spent more time on philosophy forums than at work. Good times. I'm more successful and respectable now on paper, but I do miss the social wealth. I'm not sure it can be repeated. For things to be so exciting again would require a revolution in my lifestyle. Some eggs would have to be broken to make that omelette. I'm still young enough to start again (another woman, another career). A truly old man might envy that, just as I envy the 18 year old who hasn't half-wasted his youth yet with doubts and hesitations that hindsight shows absurd.

When goals are "obtained" are often not as good or too fleeting compared to the effort to get it (yes yes, eye roll eye roll... it's not the goal but the process to get there BS., not buying it..just slogans to make people not think about it).. we still need to maintain ourselves, our bodies, our minds, our comforts, our anxieties, our neuroses, our social lives, our intellectual minds, etc. etc. etc. It's all just energy put forth to keep maintaining ourselves, that does not stop until death. Why ALL of THIS WORK AND ENERGY? Does it really need to be started anew for a next generation? — schopenhauer1

This is an excellent description of a mode. I've been there, and I may be there again. But the slogans that this mood doesn't buy are the truth of another mode.

We really are living in the eternal twilight of Christian sentiments. There is "something" special that we are DOING here.. It all MEANS something to "FEEL" to "ACHIEVE" to "INTELLECTUALIZE" to "CONNECT".. all buzzwords of anchoring mechanisms to latch onto as our WILLFUL nature rushes forward, putting forth more energy but for to stay alive, keep occupied, and stay comfortable.. All the while being exposed to depridations, sickness, annoyances, and painful circumstances that inevitably befall us.. It doesn't NEED to be expanded to more people. — schopenhauer1

This captures the religious/philosophical quest. It's a part-time though important game. That small part which is not dog seeks god.

I can't see a clear distance from your position and a late version of this quest. Aren't 'life is suffering' and 'the world is evil' connected to our Christian heritage? Renouncing the evil will to live is an old-school spiritual mission, right? I can imagine a pessimist finding out he is going to die peacefully in his sleep that night and being annoyed that he hasn't finished his pessimist masterpiece.

Ho do we get beyond words and poses? I think we have to look at actions to see beliefs. Some people will suffer greatly in order to survive a threat to their future. Others hang themselves in a situation that others from the outside consider the dream itself. You might call the first person the victim of an illusion. Others would call the other person the victim of an illusion. But who is neutral here?

The project I'm immersed in as I write this involves something understanding as many perspectives as possible (breadth and flexibility of consciousness). I could boil this down further to the pursuit/maintenance of sex appeal and charisma. Philosophy 'should' make one a more beautiful animal, let's say. And sometimes the animal doesn't provide the raw material. Then philosophy helps one die. (That's the voice of a perspective. It sounds good now and might not later.)

In a good mood, you may lose perspective. — schopenhauer1

Sure, you lose the perspective of the bad mood. And in the bad mood you lose the perspective of the good mood.

A lazy but down-to-earth vision of science is (as said elsewhere) technology that works whether one believes in it or not. Philosophy and religion are still valuable to individuals, but I think their effectiveness depends on an emotional investment therein (on believing in them via action especially). This is itself the voice of a perspective. Defining science isn't the work of science. But it is a perspective that keeps its own fragility in mind and strives for expansion on one hand and adaptation on the other. [None of this matters to the person who really wants to die, though. It looks like everything 'rational' is grounded in the threat/promise of the future.]

A miracle is an occurrence that cannot be explained by any of the sciences and therefore cannot happen. — Joel Bingham

By this definition, a miracle would be an event that excited scientists to find an explanation --which is to say an unknown pattern in which such an event fits. Ideally this unknown pattern would extend and not violate the system of established patterns.

It seems to me that the impossibility of miracle as you define it would happen only at the ideal end of science. And then it would rest on the assumption that reality was truly law-like. (See Hume's problem of induction.) Finally, it's my impression that our world is a sort of casino. Extremely unlikely things could happen accordingly to the laws of physics as I non-expertly understand them. The system is not deterministic. 'God' plays dice.

This is where theism came from because of the lack of scientific development in the ancient world as people saw something cool and assigned it to a god because humans have always had the desire to understand everything but haven't had the resources or were not developed enough to do so — Joel Bingham

I'm not a theist, but I think this is too simplified. Religion was not, in my view, just proto-science. We don't just want to understand the world conceptually. We want to feel a certain way in it and about it. We want to feel a certain way about the place of our community in it. If religion is just bad science, then flags and anthems are just bad science?

Perhaps this is useful. You seem to be fretting about (or just objecting to) an impure source of ideas. The biased though-factory outputs bad ideas, you seem to be saying.

But we could also focus on criteria for testing ideas independent of their source. Popper comes to mind. With philosophy as opposed to science that is perhaps more difficult. For how are these criteria themselves justified?

On the other hand, why are we biased against bias to begin with? We probably think bias leads to an output that already fails a functioning if imperfectly articulated criterion.

If we want things other than unbiasedness, then we can just ideas roughly as more or less successful ways to get these things. We might also question whether we value unbiasedness directly or only secondarily. If the point is to make the world nice, then we might only care about accurately modeling the world so that we can effectively modify our experience or model of it. (This is admittedly tangled stuff, but I think looking at motives thins the fog a little bit.)

Is thinking that theism is a mental illness itself a mental illness?

I don't think so.

But if we decide to call vaguely defined metaphysical positions we don't like 'mental illness,' then yeah.

And if you disagree with this (or with any of my barks), you probably have a case of silly-itis. It's a contagious disease of the pineal gland.

Does doing the wrong thing unintentionally (perhaps out of ignorance or fear) free a person from the responsibility of saying sorry? — darthbarracuda

No, in my view. I assume that most people would also answer 'no' here.

I'm feeling for myself, after some deliberation, that apology is part of a ritual or symbolic exchange. You make an apology when you believe that by such a speech act you will place yourself, and the person you're apologising to, in a better relation than your present mutual standing. That's it! — mcdoodle

Well said. There are lots of reasons to say 'I'm sorry' (un-ironically), but I think that covers most of them.

Is rational thought possible without language? — bioazer

I think this is one of those hopeless philosophical questions that depend on what you mean by the terms. If you sharpen your terms this way or that, you probably get different answers or no answer.

Similarly, is thought structured after our language? Do people speaking different languages think in inherently different ways? — bioazer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

I haven't looked into this closely. It came up in a few classes. It sounds plausible. But I'd want some prediction and control before I'd give it serious weight. Else it might just be feel-good-talk or as-you-please. Both of those are fine, but I think you're looking for something stronger. And that stronger seems to boil down to tech that works whether or not you expect it to.

I can love the world I live in deeply and be unbearably anxious at the same time. — T Clark

That makes good sense to me. We are anxious about losing what we love (or perhaps about losing our love itself.) Of course we also fear direct pain to some degree, though we can take passing pain. The loss of power or function is a loss of self, a loss of something we love.

I think there's some real insight in your post, but I read it as directed against a particular type of alienation/frustration. Because it's thoughtful, sincere, and well-written, I'll react to a few passages specifically.

It fosters a faux unity in the hope that it will relieve the anxiety, but automatons cannot love and so we work so hard at selling ourselves to an audience that is never satisfied. — TimeLine

What this misses is the personality type that feels crowded by others. A person can get beyond the need for that abstract audience. I suppose most of us will still want at least a single lover or a single friend. But a few of us could probably be pretty happy alone on a space station for years even, as long as the cultural stain of others was accessible. (Books, movies, etc.)

Our self-satisfied villain, however, is likely to be economically enmeshed with millions of strangers, most of whom he has no use for, neither as audience or sex partner or conversational partner. For an above average fastidious person (our snobby healthy youngish esthete), the average person is gross, sad, and in the way. Moreover, many of them are threats. If they aren't intentional criminals, they drive badly and carry disease.

Why doesn't he go off into the woods? Give him the money and he might. Otherwise he has to get the money in the usual ways that have nothing to do with hanging out with his Yoko Ono in the woods. He's also a fragile beast. Even if he gets his time in the woods with ideal companions (hard work or a risky crime footing the bill), that time is finite and ends in accident or decay.

This self-destructiveness is an unconscious frustration against this reality, a desire to destroy or end the bullshit but turned in on itself because the way that we have been trained, the way that the world functions is distinct from this actual reality that we are unable to confront consciously. — TimeLine

This is complicated. I'm not advocating suicide here, but an argument from the suicidal perspective would be that others aren't confronting the genuine source of suffering, that being embodiment in human flesh. If there is no afterlife (my belief), then suicide is indeed an effective (if costly) confrontation. We apparently have only a choice of deaths. The suicide takes his 'early' on his own moody terms. The non-suicide leaves it to chance (including the possibility of a future suicide.)

I wonder if you have politics in mind as the genuine confrontation. That's a reasonable position, but there are arguments against it. A gloomy critic might say that the average citizen has only a vanishing trace of power to change things. Of course a person may make it their project to become more powerful. No doubt 'being on the way' in this manner provides or is the essence of anti-gloom. The disenchanted mind fails to be seduced by the projects he or she considers viable. Even the gloomiest person (and maybe especially the gloomiest person) can imagine a world worth living in. But they think it's too expensive (in terms of effort) or downright impossible to get this world. They might think this world is a dream that taunts them. It haunts this world as a bright light might reveal roaches on the kitchen floor.

For example, if you are raised in a culture entrenched with the idea that your parents are absolutely and unequivocally right in everything that they say or do and if you think otherwise you are a bad person, whenever you are confronted with the possibility that this reality may not be true, you feel bad, you feel like there is something wrong with you, and the self-destructiveness is really your anger at this confusion; what you really want to destroy is the lie, but you don't know how to because you don't realise that it is a lie. — TimeLine

I'm sure this applies to the 'young' version of despair. At least to some cases of it. But the person with the old version of the gloom knows very well that the 'grownups' are full of shit. There are no gurus, no authorities. Just sinners and fools in costumes in the complacent and/or self-righteous moods that tend to fit with their socio-economic status. Our jaded cynic has no doubt been complacent and self-righteous. He's successfully played the guru for others. That's why I mentioned successful rock stars. Plug in any kind of art you like. Someone rich and recognized has probably killed themselves nevertheless. And who doesn't at least contemplate it occasionally? (I don't know how common it is, but mainstream comedy suggests that it common enough.)


In short, I think you have a point about a certain kind of troubled soul. But (from my perspective) you are ignoring the gloom of the confident, articulate, and popular personality type. To be clear, I don't speak from this gloom just now. I do have mixed feelings about sharing the theory of this gloom. I don't want to depress anyone. Arguably articulating this gloom more fully (capturing what your description leaves out) could help someone feel less alone. I remember Kerouac really nailing the darkness in Desolation Angels. He gets it, I thought. He's stared at it and painted it. That too is a project, arguably one of the least seemingly escapist responses.

Do you think it is short sighted to think that the good moods mean that life must be good? Can evaluation be separated from mood? If not, why not? — schopenhauer1

To be clear there is a continuity of personality through moods. A good mood doesn't wipe out years of linguistic and physical habit. But a person in love can be terrified of death as nothingness. They can be terrified that the species will go extinct and the experience of being in love (and so on) lost forever. Reproduction is our flight from death. Sexual love is arguably our sweetest pleasure. No big surprise that this kind of system would be evolved.

And in a truly bad mood that sees life as a net evil, the fear is that we won't go extinct. I may escape to the grave, but I am also in the others not yet born. Occasionally there's a story about a parent killing their kids and themselves. I can only understand this in terms of a depression that is (in its view) protecting the children from suffering. They all flee to death together. I remember a story where the parent was the father. He did the apparently evil dirty work. He took the guilt and evil on his shoulders to do the misunderstood good. As awful as the crime is, this is one of the more generous readings of the father's motives.

Does mood justify bringing new people in existence? What is the point of more people experiencing life? If my premise is life is survival, comfort, finding entertainment- why should those things be experienced by yet a new person? — schopenhauer1

As above, the individual in a good mood values life. He or she wants to share the experience as a net good. If this person is abstract, he or she may want to give humanity more time. It's possible that most suffering will be eradicated. It's possible that our species is in its technological infancy. We can know start playing with our own code. We are close perhaps to leaving this planet. If we are still here a million years from now, then these times might be the stuff of scary bedtimes stories. But we can only get there is (foolish or not) we persevere. A hopeful (and abstract) person might find extra motivation in this.

How about contingent harms? This would be the classical Western view of "good experience' and "bad experience". Why do the good experiences make up for the bad ones? What about the unforeseen bad experiences? What about the variables of people's psyches, physiology and circumstances that make some people prone to worse experiences than others? — schopenhauer1

Indeed. In a bad mood I tend to think of all the terrible stuff that could happen as well as the terrible stuff that will happen. I also feel for life's bigger losers (we're all at least small or medium sized losers). In a good mood I'm absorbed in the object or project. In this approximately neutral mood I can turn things around in my mind abstractly.

You may not believe me, but I think I understand your position. I think I could argue from an approximation of it. But I could also argue the other side. In my life, my 'real' position varies with my mood. I may write the feel good novel of the year and then get depressed and hang myself. It's possible. The hanging wouldn't necessarily be any more definition of my true nature than the feel good novel. A final action doesn't necessarily have any extra weight, just as death-bed mumblings aren't the sum of a man's thinking. I've known artists whose art was joyful to kill themselves. I've known depressive types live to be old men. I think lots of artist types swing back and forth from higher Heavens to lower Hells.

Forget the theism/atheism debate here. I ask everyone, theists and atheists: does the concept of a being from before time creating everything make sense? If so, why? If not, why? — Starthrower

For context, I'm an atheist. I live as if there is no divine intelligence running the game and looking out for me (or torturing me). That's practical atheism. Some people may be practical agnostics, living and acting as if there's a real chance either way. Practical agnosticism sounds incredibly stressful. It's logically possible that I could change my position. Something amazing would have to happen.

Now to the issue. I for one can't make sense of beings before time creating time and so on. It's a round square. The words snap together on paper but there's no semi-distinct image in the mind to go along with those words.

But is that what all theists mean? I don't think so. I can vaguely imagine an intelligent being within time who created the world and all of us. Where this dude could come from I cannot say. Can I mae sense of a God who was always here?

But can I make sense of a universe that was always here? Or the birth of time and physicists might have it? Or quantum mechanics? Yet I believe QM as a method of prediction and for the design of technology.

In short, I'm aware of no tradition, religious or scientific, that gives an explanation of the biggest picture that fits comfortably within the intuition. Science offers stuff that works whether I believe in it or not, so I have bias in that direction. On the other hand, it might be a little too easy to jump from what science does right to its big picture guesses. Arguably the machines for prediction and control that work whether we believe in them or not are the essence. Religion can be viewed as the kind of technology that may work for believers but is not shaped to satisfy nonbelievers.

So, I'm still genuinely confused about the agnostic, tolerant position you guys seem to be advocating. — Pseudonym

I'm not advocating, though. I am aware that I am conversing with a few individuals. I don't think such conversation will have much of an effect on the world at large. So I'm tolerant of difference here in this little space designed for airing out one's preferences.

I'm sometimes envy those who have the mission of saving humanity from its ignorance via their own wisdom. In retrospect, I'd call that the general structure of religion. It's the confidence and self-importance of the generalized evangelist. I'm not preaching against it. I'm describing it from the outside to share consciousness with a few other word-mongers like myself.

If I thought my posting here really affected the world at large, I might not post. Because I'm not sure what's good for the world at large. It's complex as hell.

But there doesn't have to be waves in the first place. Why should we experience the waves? — schopenhauer1

Why be born? Why leave early once we are born? We can dig for reasons. My point is that these are the voices of moods. If I get disgusted with life, then I'll agree with you. If things turn sweet again, that why will have a largely ineffable answer. And you won't believe the words that I do find. Not unless you are also lifted by a mood.

I have read bad-mood-writing in a good mood and the reverse. It's illuminating. Every passion has a philosophy. Life-love, death-love. If a mood lasts long enough, we begin to believe in substance again. We think that we are simpler than we are and more fixed. (So it seems to me.)

That said, when we investigate logic itself, we find we're immediately involved in a circular argument. Simply put, we need proof that logic is the best mode of thinking but thinking this way presupposes that logic is the best mode of thinking. Note that we're looking for a deductive proof that logic is the best mode of thinking. — TheMadFool

Interesting. I think it supports the idea that we rely on know-how that cannot be justified. It's like the hand trying to grab itself in this case. It's like the eye trying to see itself to make sure it is really there --even though the essence of this eye is its seeing.

This is an example for me of us trying to get behind our own use of language. That which makes explicit cannot be made explicit itself. It functions as the action of insight and not its object, I'm tempted to say.

I think that logic is a better tool to place one's faith in than religion, but that is my opinion. — MonfortS26

To me this is like saying that apples make better banana than oranges do. I'm coming from the perspective that logic is the structure of our reasoning. We have no choice but to be logical. Of course we can take a conscious notion of virtuous rationality as our ideal. This seems like a belief that we should be able to make our reasoning explicit when asked sincerely and meet sincere objections to this reasoning. In short, we prioritize the quality of our reasoning over its tentative results. How and why we believe is (theoretically) more important than what we believe.

To be fair, some religion really does reject this ideal of explicit rationality (logicalness as virtue). In this case we do have being logical as primary virtue versus other goals that put being logical (explicitly, virtuously) in an inferior position.

1. Continue ad infinitum
2. Agree on a starting point (axioms)
3. Enter a circularity

The correct thing to do is 1; it's impled by a logical principle. However, practical difficulties arise. So, we have to choose between 2 and 3. Most opt for 2. As you can see, option 3 (circularity) is avoided as much as possible. It's the least preferred choice. — TheMadFool

I suggest that we don't really have to agree on a starting point. Indeed, the starting point is often invisible (taken for granted). Having to agree sounds like it involves reasoning from these otherwise invisible axioms.

She is better off, clearly, wrapped up in the Baptist Bullshit Calvinist Cocoon. It gives her mental certainty and security. She needs those things (like we all do) and while she is more than intelligent enough to pursue other views, lacks the educational background to do so on her own. — Bitter Crank

A nice description of a situation that can be generalized. There seems to be a limit to the malleability of basic beliefs. People have their revolutions every once in a while, but even that is probably not simply in response to a well argued point. More likely there's a crisis that boils over.

Don't we all? — Rich

Yeah, good point. If things are going well, we can manage more tolerant. But we all have our boiling point.

But that's not the way atheists, or more correctly anti-theists, do it. It seems like the fact that there is no God is more important to them than what there is. It really seems like the hatred of religion came first and the philosophical/scientific superstructure came later. — T Clark

I hear you.

One of the reasons I like anonymity is because I don't want to broadcast my own worldview to just everyone. I don't think I'm wrong, but I also don't think whether I'm personally right or wrong is helpful or important to others. The implicit social contract here is that members may be exposed to ideas that are even dangerous to them. I mention this because I think I share your sense of distance of evangelical atheism or anti-theism. I don't think that any particular 'ism' will 'save the world' by catching on. Our problems/challenges seem to run deeper than any conscious ideology. (So, for example, I don't want to be Mr. Anti-evangelism either, since that has to be evangelical if projected as a universal solution. I'm a sinner and fool, and I suspect that (in some sense) we all are. When we feel our oats, our favorite ideas sometimes look like the all-purpose cure.

I tend to be more sympathetic to a theistic point of view than an atheistic one, not because I am a believer but because they believe in something, right or wrong. They don't define themselves based on the fact that something doesn't exist. What an odd sort of self-identification. — T Clark

But can't the atheist view be easily rephrased as a positive belief? It's a vision of nature in which nature is unconcerned with humanity.

Atheists vary, and some may call themselves agnostics as a matter of taste. But perhaps the essence is that non-human reality is indifferent to humans and also that death is the end. These are 'positive' beliefs that are acted upon. To deny God and afterlife is to affirm nature's indifference and genuine personal mortality --and the reverse. So theism can be framed as a denial of death and cosmic indifference.

Day in day out...Granted, better with a significant other, but still the same instrumental existence. — schopenhauer1

Is it better? I can't compare anymore. I don't remember being single very well. Different comforts, different discomforts.

Either way, the repetitious nature of our striving wills cause no lasting satisfaction, just a new object of striving. — schopenhauer1

Indeed, no satisfaction lasts. Nor any pain. There is no substance. Everything is smoke and music. Waves of Heaven, waves of Hell, waves of Blah.

For each wave its voices and philosophy. The Hell wave sings a song of anti-natalism. The Heaven wave sings a song of reproduction and passing the torch. The Blah wave sings this song of waves and their singing, neutral on the matter.

Depression is the result of inability or willfulness not to change. — Rich

A depression can come and go for no apparent reason. A person can have the same worldview and the same lifestyle afterward. The gloom just clears like fog. They can speak about what happened abstractly, no longer oppressed by the terrible feeling.

It's comforting to think that there's some correct button to push. Our depressed fool must be doing something wrong. Lots of times they probably are. But what can we really be sure of? And how? An otherwise high-functioning and confident person comes away with a new humility. It's not clear afterward that our happiness is something we can take total credit for. That's why I don't focus on the good advice in threads like these. There's nothing wrong with good advice, but it's easy to be complacent and shallow on this issue. I'm not accusing you of that, just adding to your point.

If a person finds something that she's passionate about then that's all she needs to live a fulfilling life. — TheMadFool

Good point.

Both lack any authentic relationship with the external world, that bond formed through genuine love. — TimeLine

I do think it's a lack of love. A person in love with a another person or a cause has pep in their step and purpose. That's why it's hard to empathize with someone in this state. They are gloomy and self-absorbed. Nothing fascinates or deeply pleases them. Maybe half-consciously they are fascinated by death. I remember feeling torn between life and death.

But this doesn't mean they don't have significant relationships. They can have girlfriends, wives, great friendships. In cases like these it's probably a dangerous mix of brain chemistry (related perhaps to lifestyle and/or genetics) and corrosive critical thinking (excluding religious comforts and constrains on suicide as a genuine option).

Most of what people form is really an infantile dependency that superficially attempts to covert this alienation by keeping them preoccupied, following and trying to be close to others and yet no matter how close they try to get, they always feel this sense of insecurity and a deep sense of anxiety because they feel - which is a form of knowing - that this alienation is not overcome. They become jaded, mechanical, and the continuity of their existence is almost entirely based on routine amusements as they passively consume to pass the time. — TimeLine

Interesting line of thought. I suspect it applies to someone, but I can't relate it to my own darker stretches. Or maybe it applies to the young version.

We've seen a few rock stars kill themselves. Chris Cornell comes to mind. This was someone who seemingly lived the dream. He would be roughly my age, and his music meant something to me. I relate to him as the same type of guy as myself, though he was hugely successful as an artist and I turned to less glamorous moneymaking. Does it make sense to call him insecure? I can only guess, but I think aging played a role. We can run out of frontier, become annoyed/bored at/with all the cautious and conscientious maintenance in a respectable age-appropriate life. It's easy to think that things will only get worse. Decay is of course a fact. Death becomes an exciting frontier. One is tempted to run at what one has been tediously and anxiously fleeing.

As St. Catherine of Siena put it, "All the way to heaven is heaven." — Bitter Crank

Nice.

Ah yes, those oxcytocin feelings of love.. that doesn't last, is not sustained, life moves forward, the novelty wears off. In fact, it is these type of enthrallments that beget more life which brings more instrumental existence on a new person. — schopenhauer1

What comes to my mind is the way that lust/curiosity transforms (with compatibility) into what's called love: trust, friendship, warmth rather than excitement. The woman well known and much loved gets cast to some degree as a mother. She's no longer the unknown frontier. Her body might be great, but it's no longer a wonderland for him. It's territory that only becomes exciting within the act or when possession is threatened. (Jealousy sex is psychedelic.) (Yeah, it's occurred to me that I might just be an endlessly ambivalent jerk. Nevertheless, I think I speak from 10 above average quality years of marital experience. Folks is complex in they minds.)

The friendship can be great, but it's not quite like a great friendship with another man. You have to argue with this chick about how to arrange the household and where and how to be. It's like democracy. It's the least worst system perhaps. Sometimes it's paradise. You look over at her to see her reaction to some good TV. Instead of staring at one another, you look out on the world together.

Doesn't have to lead to children, but of course for many it does. I'll let others speak of the satisfactions and frustrations of parenthood. I do love petting the silly bitch who sleeps on my couch. (I don't mean my wife. She doesn't sleep on the couch.)

Perhaps. But it feels good to be working toward one's dream. At some point I stopped working menial jobs and got into a field I really liked. Even though the entry level stuff was annoying at times, I enjoyed a sense of being on the way. My efforts were accumulating. I was paying off the house, not renting.

Of course not everyone is going to love their field. I have occasionally envied those with simpler jobs than my own. I have to continually learn new things. Some of them are exciting. Others boring. I'm also never exactly 'off work,' since I do lots of work at home. I always 'could be' working. So I've envied 9 to 5 types who don't have to think about work in the evening. The grass is always greener, I guess. Or rather we always see how things could be a little better when we're not joyfully immersed.

Depression is a social disease. You get it when people humiliate, berate, and reject you It gets worse when you do not have a friend in the world. It is very bad when you are isolated in the solitary confinement of a crowd. When ten-damned-things-after-another hinder you from every side, and when you feel rejected and despised by all, eventually you are going to feel defeated and worthless. Want to make it worse still? Drink heavily, use recreational drugs to feel better for a little while, gamble for a short high (while you go broke and get something else to worry about). — Bitter Crank

I'm sure that some depression is like that, but I've been hit by it a few times when it didn't make sense on paper. There was also a strong philosophical connection. As far as I could tell, we were 'monkeys' in and from the blind/amoral machine of nature. I knew the retorts and could eloquently mock my negative rhetoric, but those mockeries couldn't get traction. In retrospect, I think death offered a purity and silence in contrast to the impurity and noise of life. Also suicide appealed to me as a decisive action. I think there's a part of us that wants to kill and die. Suicide offers both at once.

I'm not depressed now and do not advocate suicide. But I understand the mood and the fantasy. And it can come when one is otherwise successful. I'd divide it into 2 forms. The young man version involves a disgust at what life requires. The old man version (and I'm not that old) involves jadedness. One has tasted intensities perhaps never again to be matched, been married, proved one's self to a significant degree, had big intellectual realizations. I have had a taste of this, but my father is struggling, I think, with the thing itself. Retired chain-smoker without non-family relationships. I wish he was doing what I think you're doing: reading, learning, staying fascinated, taking care of himself.

I found the opposite to be true. Lack of work is psychologically unhealthy. I recently took a break from work for 2 weeks over the Christmas holidays, and I was restless because I didn't know what to do with so much free time. — Agustino

I hear you on lack of work. Perhaps it's a matter of having good work. Or if the work is unpleasant, there had better be a nice home life as a contrast.

It's interesting, the process of songwriting: it happens in all sorts of ways, but I'd say 6 or 7 times out of 10, how it happens is that someone has a kernel idea, a sort of nugget that's a fusion of a snippet of lyric conjoined with a snippet of melody, rhythm and harmony, even a tone sometimes, and the song sort of "unfolds" from that nugget - you follow the internal logic of the thing wherever it leads from that initial nugget. Usually, with this method, the lyrics start off as open syllables and vowels that work well with the melody, but you're playing around with them with the background meaning of the song in mind, and with the "nugget" as the thing you're eventually going to "land on" (as it were), and precise words, and other sections of the song, gradually coalesce out of that. And you generally tend to have (for pop music at least) 2 or 3 "main" sections (verse and chorus, or verse, bridge and chorus) that get repeated a lot, and one extra section ("middle 8") that provides a break, and a little excursion away from the main themes for a while.

Damn, giving away the secrets here :) — gurugeorge

I recognize that process. For me the instrumental players would offer up some riffs they had written. I'd improvise some lyrics over the music, suggest changes in the structure perhaps that facilitated the vocals. Sometimes we'd play the songs for months and I'd find a better lyric to replace something that wasn't quite right but the best I could do. Some of our best stuff was completely improvised, though. And sometimes we could never quite capture the magic of that first recording (I tried to record all 'pratices' that were just as much parties). Unfortunately, we had a little too much fun, and the recordings aren't generally studio quality. We weren't responsible or worldly enough to really even try to make a living that way. This didn't mean we weren't full of ourselves.

I also play guitar, and I have written a few songs completely myself. But I worked with two great guitarists (to my taste), so I tended to do it the aforementioned way. Of course this was also good for morale. We were great friends, and we all wanted to be songwriters on our instrument.

*For what it's worth, I like that album you linked to in one of your older posts.

Aim for the wellroundedness. — Noble Dust

I agree. I put up with a certain amount regimentation to afford a lifestyle free enough of worry, etc. There's a foggy calculation involved. This one particular life feels almost randomly plucked from a thousands lives I could enjoy. A man has a good wife, a particular woman with her particular quirks. But he sees here and there other women with whom a different and at least equally interesting adventure could be had. Same with careers or artistic paths.

But relationships, careers, and media are structured like ladders. They increase in value as one puts time in. I'd suggest that an innate wellroundedness opens up a perception of the problem in the first place. If you think you could be good at a lot of things (or with a lot of different types of women), then you a certain ineradicable buyer's remorse. That's probably where dreams and fiction come in. Metaphorically we can think of a splintered blob-human whose splinters we are in our individual lives. Then one version of God is just this infinite species blob, transcending any particular voice and including them all.

Most definitely. To quote Cornel West: time is real. Perhaps others can relate. A person can be young enough to still dream of a reinvention or two and old enough to really see the finitude of that ultimate resource.

As I get older, I also see the jack of all trades versus master of one dilemma. Of course it's good to keep the brain lit up as a whole, but our culture rewards specialization professionally. In private life, at least, wellroundedness is rewarded. One can relate to more types of people, etc.

Yeah. If I can find the time. I put my creative ambitions on the back burner to climb the big boy ladder. I did just spend a month getting high and pecking away on an Olympia SM3. But vacation is over, so it's back to sciency stuff.

[replied when the question was for someone else]