I believe you should have had it better,

Maybe I should have, but I didn't. Life dealt me a hand, and I'm playing it as best I can for myself and for the people I've chosen as my own.

The proof of it is exchanges like this online, which likely aren't benefitting anyone. Yet we both wasted time engaging in it.

You wasted your time. I got the same illusion of social engagement I might have gotten from sites like Reddit, but with less BS. A few idle minutes well spent while keeping an eye on the stove.

We'd have both done greater service to the species doing the bare mininum

It's your life, and you can concern yourself with the good of the species if you like but don't expect me to share your concern.

The species cares nothing for individuals; why should I therefore care for the species? It's not like I've got skin in the game; my wife and I didn't get to have kids so what happens to humanity after I'm dead isn't my problem since we've no empirical evidence of an afterlife other than earthly fame.

I've noticed from your other posts that you're somewhat more of a traditionalist than I am, and we're not likely to agree on a great many issues. Nevertheless, I wish you well because you've done me and mine no harm. I think I'll leave you with a quote from /The Count of Monte Cristo/; maybe it will help you see where I'm coming from:

“Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are, but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and, since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.”

Incidentally, if you begin a line with an asterisk the Midnight will treat it as a bullet point even though you have another one at the end of a word or phrase because you intended Markdown-style italics, because this site treats all text input as Gemtext, not Markdown. If you used Org-mode slashes /like this/ the format wouldn't have gotten mangled.

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~inquiry wrote (thread):

> You wasted your time. I got the same illusion of social
> engagement I might have gotten from sites like Reddit,
> but with less BS. A few idle minutes well spent while
> keeping an eye on the stove.

Okay, I hereby refactor my original "wasted time" comment to feeling glad to have engaged, because I'm rather enjoying the exchange.

> It's your life, and you can concern yourself with the good
> of the species if you like but don't expect me to share
> your concern.

It's not an expectation. You ever stumble on something - a thought/practice - that really works for you in some way, and you can't help but wonder (or is it hope?) it might for others as well, so you share it in a public space so whoever wants to can try it and maybe benefit similarly?

So the "how I was feeling about what it had accomplished for me" was more along those lines. I was high on having (at least temporarily.. doubts are never far..) thought/acting somewhat less selfishly than usual.

Of course, as I re-read the post I don't see much if any of that therein. It does sound more an indictment of others for not ceasing hiding from some sort of responsibility toward the species.

But, hey... that's part of getting/feeling "high": very easy to take a set of words as though representing inner feelings, but to an onlooker sans the high it looks altogether different.

(*Damn* I need to keep that in mind....)

> The species cares nothing for individuals; why should I
> therefore care for the species? It's not like I've got skin
> in the game; my wife and I didn't get to have kids so what
> happens to humanity after I'm dead isn't my problem since we've
> no empirical evidence of an afterlife other than earthly fame.

Makes sense.

> I've noticed from your other posts that you're somewhat more
> of a traditionalist than I am, and we're not likely to agree
> on a great many issues. Nevertheless, I wish you well because
> you've done me and mine no harm.

Hey, same!

Although* you might be surprised. Somewhat along the lines of that "high" stuff, I can be rather all over the place.

I think mostly I just enjoy intelligent exchange. So maybe I'm actually chameleon-ic? ;-)

> I think I'll leave you with a quote from /The Count of Monte
> Cristo/; maybe it will help you see where I'm coming from:
>
> “Perhaps what I am about to say will appear strange to you
> gentlemen, socialists, progressives, humanitarians as you are,
> but I never worry about my neighbor, I never try to protect
> society which does not protect me -- indeed, I might add, which
> generally takes no heed of me except to do me harm -- and,
> since I hold them low in my esteem and remain neutral towards
> them, I believe that society and my neighbor are in my debt.”

Nice!

> Incidentally, if you begin a line with an asterisk the
> Midnight will treat it as a bullet point even though you
> have another one at the end of a word or phrase because you
> intended Markdown-style italics, because this site treats
> all text input as Gemtext, not Markdown. If you used Org-mode
> slashes /like this/ the format wouldn't have gotten mangled.

Thanks. Hopefully I'll remember. I knew more about Gemtext in the past for a while, but then got away from the pub, and forgot it all. But I do keep past posts, so I'm hoping what I've tried this time accomplishes what I want, which is more the way quoted material looked in USENET posts (by enclosing a block of text in a pair of three backticks).

We'll see.