TP’s work used to be a delight, but there’s a very strange disconnect between the cynicism of the characters and setting, and the optimism of the stories themselves, that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So TP is a bit like eating a lot of cake: sooner or later your tongue starts feeling weird.
Ritalin
Karma: 1,094
I don’t think you’re getting this. You are a meat sack of chemicals. “Being depressed by the realization” means that your meatsack chemistry shifted.
Well, assuming that said shift was long lasting, I want to shift it back into something more conductive to a productive and enjoyable life. Being miserable feels miserable, and, worst of all, it’s boring.
the problem is that your ability to consume and digest that happiness is impaired.
On the contrary, I consume and digest the happiness way too fast. It helps me for a short while, and I feel gladness and joy and merriment and flow… and then I’m hungry again. I’m like an insatiable happiness sinkhole.
Right, but there’s a difference between being depressed by the realization, or finding it depressing because there’s something wrong with your meatsack chemistry.
I wish to believe that which is true, but getting tested and diagnosed for depression is expensive, and so are the chemicals often prescribed to treat them, in money and in secondary effects.
Forgive me if I seem a little impatient, but I’d rather focus on the stated purpose of this thread: media that will help me feel better about myself and the world and foster in me a sense of curiosity, hope, and discipline.
I like to think it’s not some chemical imbalance, but a philosophical, existentialist despair. Think Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Rick & Morty, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett’s work… “THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US.”
Hi! I’m an electrical engineering student close to finishing my MsC. These days I feel really, really tired and disenchanted with my work, in spite of it leading to one of my childhood dreams of working on green energies and/or electric transportation.
The same happened when I went to see a couple of museums involving Norway’s naval history, Amudsen’s arctic expeditions, and the epic journies of the Kon Tiki and the Ra. Despite all the pain and hardship those stories portrayed, I left full of energy and determination.
Over the most recent years, most of my media consumption, both fiction and non-fiction, involved delving deep into the complexities and flaws of human nature, both on an individual and societal level. While that has helped me become somewhat more socially functional, it has also sapped my optimism and energy to the point that I’m not sure why I get away in the morning, or why bother making any kind of effort beyond ensuring survival when everything is absurd and pointless, and everyone, myself included, is irredeemably stupid and evil in ways that cannot be fixed, only mitigated.
I want to feel hopeful, optimistic, interested, engaged, and growing. I want to learn shit that makes me want to strive and thrive.
Cosmos-like works: for inspiration and fuzzies
The other day, I was watching NDT’s Cosmos, and even though it taught me absolutely nothing new, it was so gorgeous and beautiful and inspiring that I couldn’t help but feel reinvigorated, and tackle my hard, painful, frustrating work with renewed zest and zeal! I’d like to know of more works like that, *especially in Audiobook format, to listen to while bothering with the mundane daily tasks that don’t let me hold a book or a computer in my hands while doing them.
This is the most terrifying comic SMBC has made yet How much of a point does Zach have, here? Can this be the shape of the future?
A self-improvement inquiry. I’ve got an irrational tendency to be too relaxed around other people; too sincere, transparent, and trusting. In general I’m very uninhibited and uncontrolled, and this goes to spectacular levels when I’m the slightest bit intoxicated. This has come back to bite me in more than one occasion.
I’ve had trouble finding documentation on how to improve on this. “Being too honest/sincere/open” doesn’t seem like a common problem for people to have.
“Beyond good and evil, there is awesome and lame. Don’t be lame.”?
The primary two biases in question are that humans take threats from intent or agencies much more seriously than threats from random chance.
Could you refer me to the relevant bibliography?
It is time for man to fix his goal. It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.
His soil is still rich enough for it. But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there.
Alas! there comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whiz!
I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.
Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.
Lo! I show you the Last Man.
“What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?”—so asks the Last Man, and blinks.
The earth has become small, and on it hops the Last Man, who makes everything small. His species is ineradicable as the flea; the Last Man lives longest.
“We have discovered happiness”—say the Last Men, and they blink.
They have left the regions where it is hard to live; for they need warmth. One still loves one’s neighbor and rubs against him; for one needs warmth.
Turning ill and being distrustful, they consider sinful: they walk warily. He is a fool who still stumbles over stones or men!
A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death.
One still works, for work is a pastime. But one is careful lest the pastime should hurt one.
One no longer becomes poor or rich; both are too burdensome. Who still wants to rule? Who still wants to obey? Both are too burdensome.
No shepherd, and one herd! Everyone wants the same; everyone is the same: he who feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.
“Formerly all the world was insane,”—say the subtlest of them, and they blink.
They are clever and know all that has happened: so there is no end to their derision. People still quarrel, but are soon reconciled—otherwise it upsets their stomachs.
They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health.
“We have discovered happiness,”—say the Last Men, and they blink.
Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
I read this from the comfort of my couch, and I blink. Isn’t that the right way to live, the model of polite society? Is it wrong to want to live that way?
EDIT: I have no idea how this weird formatting thing happened or how to undo it.
Indeed, I have very little to contribute on my own. I’m mostly here to learn.
I’m not generalizing from the Joker’s reflection. Rather, I’m using it as a springboard to talk about an issue that concerns me; namely, what triggers fear and warth and outrage in people and what doesn’t. I think this is a different kind of bias from just scope insensitivity or fundamental attribution error or overconfidence bias or anything like that. Those can be overcome by just explaining the facts. This one, however, can’t; explaining stuff and putting numbers forth will only get you accused of sophistry. I find that very frustrating.
I think most LWers can be expected to know about those. I’m just curious as to which biases are involved specifically.
… And Everyone Loses Their Minds
Could you elaborate on any specifics? Apparently the plant is legal in most of the world and only prohibited in very few countries.
Actually exercise has been suggested to me as the alternative to drugs. “Spinning”, specifically. Addictive, very pleasurable, and makes you healthier (unless you overdo it, but sports are much more difficult to overdo than drugs, for some reason).
Describing myself as a “rationalist” pretty much automatically makes a bad impression, no matter how much you explain afterwards that you value emotion and passion and humanity and you’re totally not a Straw Vulcan or an Objectivist.
The Anti-Drug
I’ve seen that a lot of drugs seem to act like “gratification borrowers”: they take gratification/happiness from the future and spend it all on the present, sometimes extremely quickly, then leave you feeling miserable for a certain duration, the “low” or “hangover”.
I was wondering whether there was any drug that did the opposite, that functioned like delayed gratification: a drug that makes you feel utterly miserable at first, then eventually leaves you with a long-lasting feeling of satisfaction, accomplishment, and joy.
Does anyone here know of such a thing?
Court OKs Barring High IQs for Cops
An aspiring cop got rejected for scoring too high on an IQ test.
I cannot begin to understand why they would do that.
Why do you get up in the morning?