Happy Birthday! Sounds like you’re having the kind of birthday you want to have today.

I relate to this heavily, especially what seems like your guilt about it which I relate to the most.

In my case I was raised in an emotionally neglectful environment which suppresses the generation of the self during childhood. As a result, I learned (unconsciously) that I personally have no inherent value, so my value to the human race was tied exactly to my “objective” provable contribution to it. If I could demonstrate my value by helping others, then perhaps one day I would earn the love from somewhere that I didn’t receive from my thoroughly traumatized parents.

There are a few problems with this trauma logic. First, it doesn’t work. People appreciate good deeds, but love and appreciation come from compatibility and trust which I learned that I don’t actually have to work toward to earn. I found that people whose relationship was based on my service to them (like I was raised to seek) aren’t actually connected to me in any way. Second, it is disturbing to live this way because it feels as dishonest as it is. It felt like I was tricking people because I actually was presenting to everyone an image which was cultivated for personal safety as a child rather than for actual connection. I could sense (due to my heightened awareness of other’s emotional states, again, for childhood safety) that others knew I wasn’t being completely genuine and could never truly connect with me. Finally, this approach generates self hatred. Why would I have to hide my true self from the world if my true self wasn’t awful and horrendous? I can tell you I have had thoughts so disturbing I would never commit them to the written word. I thought that was my true self that I had to constantly work against with my paragon persona. As I’ve been getting away from co-dependent and people pleasing behaviors and expressing myself more genuinely, those thoughts that came from me feeling isolated and cornered have lessened. Those thoughts were and are nothing more than the consequence of trauma, not my true self.

I have no idea whether you would relate to any of the above. But I can say that people don’t get to the point where you are and where I have been multiple times in my life without trauma being involved. Trauma fucks you up, makes you feel guilty, and makes you want to isolate. This makes it tricky to find others who are as fucked up by trauma as you are. I have by some fortune found a few of them. It can be incredibly cathartic to talk to other traumatized people and joke about things that the rest of the world would never willingly even think about. It also gave me some perspective. I always assumed my childhood experiences weren’t that bad because my parents always compared what they did to me to what their parents did to them which was even to a child an obviously far worse. By sharing with others what I experienced, I’ve learned that it was actually very bad, I’m not over-reacting, and it makes complete sense that I would come out the other end traumatized with the feeling that living life is a constant struggle which I would be relieved to be absolved of.

As far as systemic issues, what we’re living through now is more typical of the human experience than what our parents experienced. The world is a vastly intricate web of beauty and horrors. We have the advantage and disadvantage of not flinching at the horrors and taking them completely on. This gives us a better perspective of the world’s problems, many of which are frustratingly fixable, but also gives us the consequence which everyone else intuitively avoids. I would never suggest to anyone to bury their head in the sand, only to suggest that there is a greater reality intermixed with and beyond the horrors.

I watched a video of dozens of Palestinians joyfully dancing and celebrating with their friends and family during the height of the genocide. I can’t forget about it because even through they were living through one of the worst things which can be inflicted on a group of people, they understood that joy and community was what they were preserving and could help them all through. I’ve personally never had that, hence my solution to the problems of the world being similar to your solution. Escape them since there’s not much to lose anyway. That’s pretty sick that you and I would ever think that way and the circumstances which caused that are beyond unfair.

I’m far from out of the woods myself, but exposing the parts of myself which I’ve always been ashamed of to people who understand what we went through has hinted to me that some kind of reclamation of my right as a human being is possible. If no one has ever told you, Pete Hahnloser, you deserve to experience some measure of joy and comfort in this life and you deserve to believe that you deserve it and can have it. I’ve never had faith of been very hopeful in my life, and those things have always felt foolish to me, but I’m starting to understand why those things are important for most people. I hope you can find some comfort, whatever you decide.

Will it be powerful enough to kill Son Goku?

Having to reliably listen to bigotry and nonsense that you are obligated by social conditioning to nod along with is not only draining but an attack on your own identity by yourself. Either you’re torturing yourself by continuing to put yourself in this uncomfortable situation or you will come to tolerate it and not be as bothered by it and corrupt yourself that way. It’s worth finding someone with some clippers that doesn’t give you an identity crisis on a regular basis.

There’s weird as in unusual, which I appreciate. Then there’s weird as in creepy.

If you see two people in a park and one is an adult skipping around catching butterflies and the other one is trying to follow women around without them noticing, that is two totally different genres of weirdness going on. I’ll happily skip around with the person following their passion without fear of judgement, but the other weirdo needs to be kicked out of the park.

This comment is beautiful in every way. I wish being strong didn’t have to be an obligation. Thanks for the support!

This is my other reason for framing it in Dnd terms. If it’s experienced in a game hopefully more people are going to understand the real dynamics of stuff like this. I sure wish I was able to understand this decades ago.

Cool, I only ever watched Ghost in the Shell but have recently seen some of the creator’s other work which was also great. Appleseed is next on my list.

This is interesting to think about because I might be one of the last generations of people who existed physically with one another more often than we would text or message one another. Since my old man hat is on, back in my day if you let one fly like this there were immediate social consequences. Everyone would go silent and look at you in disapproval and the person who was really invested in expunging the word would, at that moment, explain why saying that word was unacceptable. The person who said it of course wouldn’t have a change of heart, but they would learn that if they wanted to participate socially they would have to watch their language.

Now that it costs $100 to leave the house and most socialization takes place behind in a non-rich communication medium there isn’t really a consequence like there used to be. In most online “communities” no one is actually in community with one another and have no reason to be pro-social other than wanting to be pro-social. Trolling has always been a problem, but now that more of the population in general is communicating primarily on the channels where trolling is happening, trolling is now a political and social problem.

This could actually happen soon. Outside of office use most casual users in younger generations are using laptops. Desktops are getting to be more niche and associated with computer builders and power users. As Windows gets shittier, Linux gets easier to use and customize, and desktop use shrinks to just enthusiasts, we could very well see Linux on the majority of desktops.

“I’m an ally” is the US way of saying “I’m part of the oppressor class but have exempted myself from criticism for my participation in the oppression.”

L-theanine stops the conversion of dopamine into adrenaline. This is why green tea isn’t as stressful an experience as black tea or coffee. You can buy l-theanine tablets all over the place. I take one with coffee every time and that has resovled the issue of coffee stressing me out.

1. Forget about everything regarding the word “should.” In your opinion whatever “should” be happening, whatever you “should” be doing, and whatever you “should” be able to do are all not only irrelevant but directly counterproductive. The disparity of how things are, how you think they should be, and how you lack the ability to reconcile these things however hard you tried is why you’re in this mess. Those expectations were probably unfair to you anyway.

2. Understand that your thoughts are not necessarily true. It’s natural to assume the things you are thinking are true because you’re thinking them. You actually don’t know if your conclusions are correct just because you intuited them. Especially the thoughts generated by a depressed mind should be put to scrutiny. You don’t have to lie to yourself and tell yourself things aren’t as bad as they are and you absolutely shouldn’t even try to do this. The thoughts to challenge are the ones saying it will always be this way no matter what you do or knowing what you know or experiencing what you experienced has made this kind of depression your fate. Your depressed brain doesn’t know this for sure however sure it feels. I used to believe these thoughts and I haven’t had reason to for a long time.

3. Starting over sounds way worse than it is. The way you were approaching things until this point put you on the path which lead you into this depressive episode. Whatever brought you to this point is clearly not serving you or anyone else and can’t continue. This may take some therapy, acid, or mind-journeys to figure out, but you may be able to cease or greatly mitigate the situation by making major life changes. Whatever you’re afraid of by making these significant changes, your present situation (bedridden with depression) is worse than anything that can happen when you start fresh doing things differently. Nothing could be worse then being unable to move and wanting nothing more than death to free you. Nothing about this state is natural, and although aggravated by the outside world, is also majorly influenced by your interaction with the world. It’s fully possible to get different results by doing different things or even dropping worthless self-destructive thought cycles.

4. Put yourself under the sun. Advising any kind of physical activity to someone whose depression is so severe they can barely move is silly. That kind of thing is further down the line. For now, you just need sunlight. It helps. Everything above is much easier to do laying motionless on the ground under the sun than it is in your dark bedroom.

This kind of depression sucks hard, I’m sorry you’re having to go through it right now.

Of course. By suggesting that I don’t think this will do anything about corruption and will if anything be a tool used for corrupt purposes, I don’t mean to suggest that there is nothing to do about corruption. Even though I think the solutions to social and economic problems are rarely solved from the top down, I do think the issues can be addressed bottom up. The people have the power and it’s only by circumstance that some people appear to hold the power.

After the Panama Papers and everything like it I’ve experienced in my life, I truly believe it doesn’t matter if very wealthy or powerful people are exposed on anything they do unless it involves what Epstein did. Financial crime is not generally of interest, regardless of how interesting it might be to you and me. Sure this can be used to fight corruption, but why is the system corrupt in the first place? Is this really going to be used against those corrupting influences or is it going to be used as another of the many tools in the drug war?

Importantly, the golden age is mythological. Since evidence is irrelevant to conservative beliefs, rather functionality is relevant, the narrative of a golden age is appealing because it is achievable since it was already achieved in the past. What I mean by functional is that it is important that their beliefs serve a purpose but it is not important whether their beliefs are based in objective evidence. This is why conservatives who are fully aware of the complexity of US history want to propogate a sanitized version. They believe the sanitized version instills correct values while telling the whole story would influence people to perform those bad behaviors. It makes sense if you don’t think about it, and thinking about it is inherently traitorous.

It’s really a game of chicken. I’m not about to say I’ll give Biden my vote as long as there’s a genocide and this primary is the safest way to send that message. However, they know that we don’t really have a choice to avoid what could be a catastrophe so they could very well assume we’re bluffing as they usually do. This is why I can’t afford to indicate if I’m willing to vote for a genocide to prevent a worse genocide because they will take any evidence that we’re not serious to not take our demands seriously. Why would they change anything if they know we’ll vote for them regardless? Importantly, I’ve engaged this conversation in February during the primary. The most I’m willing to say is that I’m not arrogant enough to be absolutely certain about anything. Actually driving off the cliff with Biden’s campaign would be a disaster. I’m really hoping we can swerve before the chips are down and we find out how many people are serious.

Thanks for the support, although I wish it was a happier topic. @Schmoo@slrpnk.net made the excellent point that direct action has historically been majorly significant to affect US policy and is in my view the best path for right now. It’s time to escalate.

I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said here, and I agree that more extreme protests have historically been highly influential regarding governmental policy. This is probably the more important part of trying to redirect Biden’s behavior. There have to be some consequences or there is no incentive to change course, and a major public uprising could possibly be more significant than an election loss when considering policy. I suppose to avoid having to do what I’ve been discussing, leaning harder into public disruption could cause some changes without having to risk Trump. It’s definitely Plan A.

If Biden changes course in a major way I won’t have to risk a Trump presidency just to prove I am serious about not rewarding genocide with my vote they need for elected positions. If they actually believe us rather than making us prove it and take every measure to end this genocide economically and in international court, it would at least quintuple my faith that our democracy isn’t doomed. My cynical side thinks that they are confident it’s all a bluff and will make no changes, but I would highly prefer the good path.