💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › replies › 8317 captured on 2024-08-25 at 05:25:35. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

To my current way of thinking, the superstructure is an emergent property of the mathematical integral of many self-centric behaviors.

At first I was inclined to agree, but on second thought...

Yes, this "superstructure" I talk about is an emergent property of very many individuals acting apparently on their own, but that is not to say it doesn't actually exist. I recall the materialistic position that consciousness is an emergent property of neural synapses firing here and there. Likewise with the "superstructure", which even though it is an emergent property, it is still a real thing. It exists in the form of github, AWS, electron (or whatever all that crap is called), in ECMAscript 6 (I think? I keep losing track of iterations of programming languages and hollywood films, how many pythons are there, how many perls, how many fast & furious?), all of these enforcing the current state of affairs.

I also do not think it's quite self-centered behaviour. All of this seems to be done within the cult of the money god, which people follow even though it sucks on their lives and souls and it's slowly killing them. That hardly counts as self-centered behaviour. I am selfish, I don't work "for the benefit of society" (I still have my doubts as to whether making marketing campaings for sugary drinks or adulterated tobacco really is a benefit to society, but it's my word against that of 6 billion people!), I am self-centered and that is why I don't put myself through the trouble of installing a buttload of different "frameworks" to provide me with basic functionality.

Actually I think it's often the opposite. Most of what "most people" (and by most people I mean what seems to be the mainstream as put forward by the biggest online activity hubs) seem to do is to always follow the crowd where it leads. A lot of the things people do appear to be done in order to please the crowd, rather than personal choice. Why would I use discord if IRC is good enough? "because everyone else uses it!" why would I want to join facebook which does literally nothing? "because everyone else is there", why would I want a bloated web browser that leaks memory and consumes cycles like a emaciated hog? "because every site now uses cloudflare", you see my point? why does anyone buy gucci stuff if it's expensive and fugly? "because that's what OTHER people value". And so on and so forth. You could take any example and it would be more or less the same case.

Yes, arguably, money promotes self-centeredness, well, that is the dominant narrative, that it encourages a sort of extreme individualism, yet I don't see much individualism as much as I see personality cults for the likes of Melion Husk and Mcdonald Dumb.

Ultimately the malady of money is that it forces you to hoard, but, well, that's another topic for another day! (maybe?)

Oh yes I do. It's really the only topic that matters should we wish to persist without going sufficiently crazy to annihilate ourselves and/or others.

Okay, I don't think any of us is really "mentally ill", we are thoroughly sick, from the moment of birth they toss us into a machine of sickness, and it's half done on purpose in order to, well, keep up the superstructure of medicine and the very profitable pharmaceutic industry. The other half is just that humans ABHOR nature. And we fight our own nature. As I said, we set up a completely unnatural setting for us (laboral, affectional, even in our primarly landscape) and we hold fast to structures that are set up to keep as much distance as possible between us and nature, and I don't necessarily mean "mother nature" (I do, though), but our own nature. We avoid listening to our own body and psyche as much as possible and thus we become sick.

But mental illnes as it is called is, I believe, not at all sickness, but basic human behaviour, our human nature. Take ADHD, for example. I am told that "not being able to do what I really don't want to do and which I feel deep inside is ultimately stupid and meaningless" is a symptom of a mental illness. And that wanting to make money for a guy who already has a lot of money, that is normal human behaviour. I don't give two fucks about the meaningless inane shit people put so much value into? autism. I keep having instrusive thoughts because I'm deeply dissatisfied with a sterile environment? OCD. And so on and so forth.

Furthermore, I understand I am incomplete and I need to grow, that I may have to unlearn many behavioral patterns I have picken up from a bunch of equally sick individuals and advertising campaigns designed to mislead me, but the suggestion that I need to go and pay for "therapy", in order to heal "trauma" seems to me like just another block in the superstructure designed to make me walk the treadmill of money that is slowly killing everyone on this planet. And I am supposed to do all of this for the sake of society.

So yeah, there goes a little brain dump, there's more of that where it came from, if that is what you really want.

* * *

By the way, I know my post may come off as hostile, or at least jaded, it's just the tone that I adopt when I address what I think is a topic that is beyond hope and repair. Please don't take it personally.

Stay safe.

Oh, and

It's just that I've been on a sort of textural quest since "local BBSes" in the early 1980's / late 1990's,

I have a bit of an infatuation for that "scene", even if I am a bit youg to have lived that. One thing that I've always been fond of, though I don't use it nearly as much as I would like to, is MUDs/MOOs, but they hardly get any traffic these days. Also it dumps a lot of text sometimes: "detritus just entered from the west, detritus just went east, there is a larva here".

One personal project of mine (more like a pipe dream) is to make a MUD entirely in the only programming language I like, but I am too lazy to do... anything really :^)

Write a reply

Replies

~inquiry wrote:

> Yes, this "superstructure" I talk about is an emergent
> property of very many individuals acting apparently on
> their own, but that is not to say it doesn't actually
> exist. I recall the materialistic position that
> consciousness is an emergent property of neural synapses
> firing here and there. Likewise with the "superstructure",
> which even though it is an emergent property, it is still a
> real thing. It exists in the form of github, AWS, electron
> (or whatever all that crap is called), in ECMAscript 6
> (I think? I keep losing track of iterations of programming
> languages and hollywood films, how many pythons are there,
> how many perls, how many fast & furious?), all of these
> enforcing the current state of affairs.

It amazes me how people can have such varied views on concepts like "exist" and "real". To me there's so huge a difference, for example, between some*thing* I trip over existing, and something like a website existing. To me the latter would be more accurately referred to as being "said to exist". Because where is it? How can I trip over it? Is there any accessing "it" apart from a whole lot of mediation by way of software, hardware, and connectivity? Don't the twain (chair/website) illustrate kinds of existing so radically different that the word 'exist' is practically on the verge of coming apart at the seams to accommodate both?

To me, the "superstructure" we spoke to "exists" in a way much closer to "website" than to "chair".

Except for Midnight Pub, of course... although of course it's closer to a stool than a chair.... ;-)

> I also do not think it's quite self-centered behaviour. All
> of this seems to be done within the cult of the money god,
> which people follow even though it sucks on their lives
> and souls and it's slowly killing them.

I've not been sufficiently clear. What I was hoping to communicate is all acting/behavior as though from an individual self is necessarily self-centric for that self being the center of its story, as it were. Yes, we can distinguish degrees of selfishness, categorize and rank them, etc. But their common denominator is the conviction of being a being separate from what is considered not that being.

> Okay, I don't think any of us is really "mentally ill", we
> are thoroughly sick, from the moment of birth they toss us
> into a machine of sickness, and it's half done on purpose
> in order to, well, keep up the superstructure of medicine
> and the very profitable pharmaceutic industry. The other
> half is just that humans ABHOR nature. And we fight our
> own nature. As I said, we set up a completely unnatural
> setting for us (laboral, affectional, even in our primarly
> landscape) and we hold fast to structures that are set
> up to keep as much distance as possible between us and
> nature, and I don't necessarily mean "mother nature"
> (I do, though), but our own nature. We avoid listening to
> our own body and psyche as much as possible and thus we
> become sick.

At some point I became fascinated with how the mentally ill were simply called "mental", which had me wondering if mentation were itself an illness. The phrase "all mental is illness" came to mind (har har), and I became rather fond of it.

But that also ties into the aforementioned teachings, which typically see thinking/thought as a barrier to a deeper experience of, well, <ineffable>... in other words (har har again) that the deepest reality can't be access via words/mentation/conceptuality for being a re-present-ational overlay thereof.

> But mental illnes as it is called is, I believe, not at all
> sickness, but basic human behaviour, our human nature. Take
> ADHD, for example. I am told that "not being able to
> do what I really don't want to do and which I feel deep
> inside is ultimately stupid and meaningless" is a symptom
> of a mental illness. And that wanting to make money for a
> guy who already has a lot of money, that is normal human
> behaviour. I don't give two fucks about the meaningless
> inane shit people put so much value into? autism. I keep
> having instrusive thoughts because I'm deeply dissatisfied
> with a sterile environment? OCD.  And so on and so forth.
>
> Furthermore, I understand I am incomplete and I need to
> grow, that I may have to unlearn many behavioral patterns
> I have picken up from a bunch of equally sick individuals
> and advertising campaigns designed to mislead me, but
> the suggestion that I need to go and pay for "therapy",
> in order to heal "trauma" seems to me like just another
> block in the superstructure designed to make me walk the
> treadmill of money that is slowly killing everyone on this
> planet. And I am supposed to do all of this for the sake
> of society.

I hear you.

And yet might not what's seemingly missing actually always be present, but obscured by thinking about what we are instead of wordlessly being what we are?

Might what we think we are be a model that we've come to believe to be the reality?

> By the way, I know my post may come off as hostile, or
> at least jaded, it's just the tone that I adopt when I
> address what I think is a topic that is beyond hope and
> repair. Please don't take it personally.

We're good.

It's just that I've been on a sort of textural quest since "local BBSes" in the early 1980's / late 1990's,

> I have a bit of an infatuation for that "scene", even if
> I am a bit youg to have lived that. One thing that I've
> always been fond of, though I don't use it nearly as much
> as I would like to, is MUDs/MOOs, but they hardly get any
> traffic these days. Also it dumps a lot of text sometimes:
> "detritus just entered from the west, detritus just went
> east, there is a larva here".

Oh, wow, I've not seen those acronyms in ages, and never really knew what they were referring to.

> One personal project of mine (more like a pipe dream) is
> to make a MUD entirely in the only programming language
> I like, but I am too lazy to do... anything really :^)

I'm here for you whenever you need additional procrastination. :-)