> Who do these people think they are?
Precisely what they think they are. Do the details really matter given the self-referential flimsiness of the mechanism?
I think the more important question is: why does it bother you? You think you're a specific person too, right? Should I be upset with/over who you think you are? Isn't that your mental business?
Now, if they're harming you in some way, that's something else. But if you're harming you over who they think they are, well... sounds like maybe some meditation on the underlying mechanism is in order.
Said another way, who you think you are seems to include taking issue with what others think they are.
Yeah, I know... it gets weird quickly when you lift the hood. But perhaps it beats remaining puzzled?
BTW, money isn't a problem: it's a medium for negotiating need and greed. It works pretty okay for need, but greed vastly overvalues it, which tends to be a problem. Cease and desist the greed, and money no longer seems to be a problem.
FWIW, the greed itself is closer to the actual problem, which is the conviction of being a free-willed being separate from all else, and thus in perpetual greedy need of other-than-self. That lift and separate (as it were...) from the rest somehow generates an unquenchable longing. But it kind of makes sense it should work that way, doesn't it? I mean, wondering why one is without/wanting in the shadow cast by considering oneself separate from the rest?
> I remember the old times when they spoke of the highway > of information, now it looks like the streets of some > anglo-american city, full of trash, tents, and rocking > fentanil addicts. Only here it is not fentanil that they > are addicted to, but something a lot worse. They call > it "algorithms", but I know what an algorithm is, and I > know what they are really addicted to, and, oddly enough, > it is frustration. I never ever thought anyone could be > addicted to frustration, but here they are, and they are > all making a big profit from their frustration addiction.
Where is this highway? Does it exist if you stop thinking about it?
Let the thoughts about it go, and "Poof!" it's gone.
Same with who others think they are.
Maybe take up whittling, or some other mind diversion?
I say these things because I'm on and off anxious about doing this online stuff. I can't decide whether it is or isn't a waste of time mostly frustrating the hell out of me. But note the word 'decide'. Once that happens (and it's purely a mental operation), the anxiety is gone for having let the cat either live or die. Boom!
Damn, this fence sitting! But nobody's making me do it but me, so....
Maybe something similar is going on with you?
Beat 'em, join 'em, or forget about 'em seems a reasonable set of anxiety-terminating options.
NOTE: I'm not saying I'm any good at that. It's just thoughts coming to mind, fingers teaming with a keyboard of a computer allegedly connected to something bigger and beyond-er, and... well, it - doing this right now - has been fun so far!
> I really can't believe so many people have opted into this > world of pain, and on top of that, make it their lives. I > am glad I dodged the bullet by being born some 10 years > before it would be too late.
Me too! I don't know how many times I've told my wife I'm pretty sure we're amongst the lucky ones scheduled to pass just before the entire shit show collapses upon itself, because the only other solution is for all of us to become other than as we are, but each of us believes who we think we are is too special to give up on doubling down on who we think we are.
So collapse it shall/must be!
Try not to think about it, though.... ;-)
I argue that you are wrong about money. Sure, in principle money is just a tool for mediating value, for setting up prices, which is after all how the market operates, blah blah blah, modern economic theory...
But money also encourages one little thing, which is, I believe, at the heart of why money is so harmful: hoarding. Money encourages hoarding, not only encourages, but actually makes it a necessity. For one thing there is inflation, for another the fear that tomorrow all your wealth may disappear (ironically, that hoarded money itself runs the greater risk of disappearing), so you need to hoard as much as possible, and the best way to hoard it, is by the use of money. There is also the fact that wealth is worth nothing anymore, only money. Real wealth has been reduced to it's ability to produce money, not the other way around.
So yeah, money is the problem.