People like me aren't like me

I was delighted to discover that similar interest matching was working again (if you're a paid member).

Fantastic, I thought. I quick click there will find me loads of people like me.

Dammit, my interests aren't specific enough. The people like me aren't like me! Or maybe my interests don't actually represent me.

I'm gonna play around with my interests and see who I can find.

The Perils of the Rich

This was originally a comment to the journal of gomichan

We live in a fantastically rich world, whereby we have incredibly safe protected lives, access to foodstuffs that Kings would have problems getting hold of, access to technology that people 150 years ago would consider magic, and legal/social systems that are pure utopia compared to 99% of history.

We've also removed most of the risk in life, and most of the meaning.

It's not surprising that people feel directionless, lacklustre and unsure of what to do with their lives, when there are almost no direct threats to us. We don't need to work that hard and we're constantly told by all the media around us that money is not the answer, and success is not the answer and (frequently) love is the answer to all of our problems.

The problem being that (a) love isn't the answer to most problems and (b)what with people nowadays frequently expecting the world on a plate and the inalienable right to be themselves at all times, the compromises necessary to create a workable relationship don't exactly come naturally.

In my experience, it tends to be the smarter people who are subject to this anomie. This is because they're capable of shedding the cultural baggage that provides people with meaning in their lives. They think too much, and realise there isn't an intrinsic reason to keep them going. Many people can then produce their own reasons, but to many (and sometimes to me) producing your own reasons to live by seems like playing a game when you wrote the rules- not totally satisfying and too obviously arbitrary.

Another thing smart/creative people tend to do is to wonder about what lies outside the possibilities they have. To try and reach out for more. Realising, then, that society isn't set up for people like you, doesn't help to maintain a feeling of chirpiness. If you never think about your lot in life, and just get on with it, assuming the people in charge know what they're doing, then you're probably not going to have such existential problems.

Modern society is obsessed with education. Both because it's an excellent way of increasing productivity and because it's viewed as a right. I sometimes worry that educating too much of society to too high a level will lead to too large a chunk of society being unwilling to live within its constraints. A small chunk of society pushing at the edges of it leads it into interesting new places. A majority of society pushing against the constraints could just lead to the whole thing falling apart. Or possibly to its transformation into some new, better and more free. Which one remains to be seen.

I highly recommend reading Brave New World, in which Huxley talks about the problems of designing utopia, about how you have to design it around people, and build in goals and meaning and drive, or the people grow bored and the whole thing falls apart.

Goddamn I'm rambling on today.

Fear and Loathing

I originally wrote this in email with broin, who then posted it in his Livejournal. I want a copy for me too, so it's going here.

I ought to note that what I say here applies largely to me too. And when I say largely, I mean entirely.

Most of the people I know (and most of the people I am, too), are neurotic cowards, who have just about latched onto a few people that they get on with passably well enough to stave off the utter loneliness of being entirely by yourself.

They don't understand the people around them, they live in fear that something they do or say will cause them to get upset and lash out (which, after all, seems to happen to reasons that seem entirely trivial to the person who caused the upset) and leave them alone, or even worse, that their other friends will take the upset person's side and not talk to them either.

They don't trust that their friends aren't up to stuff behind their back, and secretly don't like them, and are just waiting for the right moment to stab them in the back and go off with everyone else, who has been secretly laughing at them behind their back the whole time.

Why write?

Again from email with Broin. I was having an inspired day. No idea why, but I suspect that it's all Broin's fault

It's usually unformed in my skull. Or at best semiformed. When I write, it's more like I'm pulling it into shape as it comes out, so that the semi-formed fluid thoughts sloshing around inside become crystallised as they are written down. I can then examine them in detail and edit them to make more sense. There's only so far I can take a thought internally before I can't see both the beginning and the end at the same time, and it gets confused. Which is why I find that both writing it down and talking it over with other people is a great way to understand stuff.

Also, communication is a great way to find like-minded people. I don't know nearly enough people that think like me. If I can put
stuff in a public place, people like me may find it, and engage in conversation about it.

Oh, and because I'm very rarely convinced that I'm completely right about something. I'd like other people to chip away at my ideas and
help them become more than they could be if it was just me looking at them.