I remember when I didn't have social anxiety as a kid, and I got along with pretty much everyone and was super social, fast forward to today and now I wish I was never born in the first place.
Due to (or better put, mostly due to) my social anxiety I barely have anything resembling a life going on. 99% of the time I'm either at home, or at work. At work I'm largely just minding my business and waiting until I can go home, and when I'm at home I'm mostly just doomscrolling and trying to force myself to spend time on my interests, the enjoyment of which is decreasing all the time as well.
Doesn't really matter whether it's sludge metal, noise rock, post-hardcore, pigfuck or anything else along these lines.
My current golden standard is Big Black, but sometimes I'm just itching for something heavier and more modern in sound.
Not just looking for music that's dark and depressing, but I still want to rock out and headbang to grooves and riffs.
I recently switched from an old 60Hz monitor to a 240Hz VRR one and I'm not sure whether using VRR with mpv is a good idea or not. Tried asking a few LLMs and one was like "yeah use it and disable display-resample, enjoy", while the other listed all kinds of technical reasons why it's better not to use VRR and instead just rely on the 240Hz refresh rate to handle most framerates flawlessly.
In my opinion either position is too rigid. Natalists seem to have an overly optimistic view of life and argue that it's always good to give birth, while antinatalists do the exact opposite. But what frustrates me is that both are really stuck in their own ideas; natalists will always argue that antinatalism is simply the result of a bad mood or a negative personality, while antinatalists will always bring in the optimism bias and call natalism naive.
From my pov there's some grain of truth in both, but I dislike the rigidity. Are there any third options that reject the absolutist claims of either?
Haven't really dug into these genres very far yet but I have a very specific ideal I'm looking for.
Basically, I'm looking for a female fronted band with a vocalist who could lift you up like a little boy in terms of attitude, accompanied by songwriting that equals MCR at their best with super strong choruses and melodies, good production values, and a mix of more fun and energetic, and emotional and bittersweet songs, a strong sense of character and style, and also some screams here and there to switch up clean sections.
Songs I already like in these kinds of genres to give you an idea of what I already like:
Hey Monday - How You Love Me Now
My Chemical Romance - Helena, Dead!, This is How I Disappear, The Black Parade, Drowning Lessons
Saosin - You Are Not Alone
Icon for Hire - Get Well
Blood Command - High Five for Life
The Used - The Taste of Ink
Paramore - Hallelujah, That's What You Get, Misery Business
Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness, The Middle, Lucky Denver Mint
Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue
SeeYouSpaceCowboy - Chewing the Scenery
Story of the Year - Until the Day I Die
The Fall of Troy - F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X
Pierce the Veil - Bulls in the Bronx, King for a Day, Hell Above
Silverstein - Don't Let Me Get Too Low
Lostprophets - Most songs on Start Something
Haven't really dug into these genres very far yet but I have a very specific ideal I'm looking for.
Basically, I'm looking for a female fronted band with a vocalist who could lift you up like a little boy in terms of attitude, accompanied by songwriting that equals MCR at their best with super strong choruses and melodies, good production values, and a mix of more fun and energetic, and emotional and bittersweet songs, a strong sense of character and style, and also some screams here and there to switch up clean sections.
Songs I already like in these kinds of genres to give you an idea of what I already like:
Hey Monday - How You Love Me Now
My Chemical Romance - Helena, Dead!, This is How I Disappear, The Black Parade, Drowning Lessons
Saosin - You Are Not Alone
Icon for Hire - Get Well
Blood Command - High Five for Life
The Used - The Taste of Ink
Paramore - Hallelujah, That's What You Get, Misery Business
Jimmy Eat World - Sweetness, The Middle, Lucky Denver Mint
Yellowcard - Ocean Avenue
SeeYouSpaceCowboy - Chewing the Scenery
Story of the Year - Until the Day I Die
The Fall of Troy - F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X
Pierce the Veil - Bulls in the Bronx, King for a Day, Hell Above
Silverstein - Don't Let Me Get Too Low
Lostprophets - Most songs on Start Something
I still find it interesting how obviously antinatalist the main antagonist in the game (Seymour) is. Kinda curious what others think?
Basically, someone living in spite of meaninglessness, revolting against despair. Preferably with a villain who embodies the worst of traits: cynicism, misanthropy, sadism, etc, with the core of the story being the protagonist's rebellion against the darkness.
For example, TTGL. Or, NieR Automata.
I like the analog yet futuristic sound, memorable songwriting with actual melodies and bright, ethereal atmosphere.
The game looks really fascinating to me, but I have severe arachnophobia and I heard it's an important element in the game, with jumpscares nonetheless... any mods that'll help me out?
Like, it's not exactly surprising that (at the very least) a lot of pessimist thought concludes in a gloomy outlook and attitude towards life, but to me, even though it's easier said than done of course, it seems way better to embrace some kind of inner peace-seeking mindset precisely because you already have the awareness that life is a rigged game.
Perhaps I'm not really a "proper" pessimist, or even one at all to begin with, who knows, but the way I see it, the true gold in pessimism lies in giving you the motivation to reduce suffering as much as possible. And what better way to start than try and cultivate inner peace through philosophies like Epicureanism, which emphasizes a simple, minimalist approach to life to reach a state of ataraxia?
If the world outside is uncontrollable and violent, the next best thing one can do is to focus their attention inward.
My philosophical stance nowadays is that the core problem of everything is that the universe is fundamentally indifferent, chaotic, and constantly biased toward decay and disorder due to entropy. This means that, given the practically infinite nature of the universe, countless atrocities can, in principle, take place, such as the sheer chance that you could happen to be one of the employees working in the Twin Towers on the day of 9/11, or being born Jewish during WWII in Nazi Germany. You could also happen to be struck by lightning while riding your bike, or be brutally tortured and murdered by a cartel in Mexico, and so on. It is all pure, dumb luck arising from complex interactions between all kinds of phenomena. In fact, the universe is a sort of constant RNG dice roll with a negative bias.
On a more local scale, there are also the problems of nature, consciousness, the Will, etc. Nature is essentially a miniature version of the universe in terms of its traits; consciousness brings us the experience of anxiety, depression, pain, etc, and the Will constantly makes us desire and move without any prospect of reaching a state of contentment. In fact, all living beings are trapped in a kind of cosmic hamster wheel. The cruelest part is that these desires seem to have originated largely (or even entirely) 'outside of yourself'; you don't choose whether you like a certain piece of music or not, that’s just something that either is or isn't. You can't determine your sexuality either, your favorite color, your favorite dish, etc, which in some cases forces you to continuously chase after things you never even asked for in the first place, and even more so when those desires clash with reality (imagine, for example, being born with autism and an introverted personality, later developing social anxiety disorder, but also just happen to have a strong sex drive and a longing for intimacy, while also struggling with alienation because most others are neurotypical, extroverted, and have different interests and priorities than you, and so on).
And when you factor in all of these elements, I come to the conclusion that we are better off renouncing unnecessary, pointless nonsense like power, status, ambition, excess material possessions, competition, etc, and choosing compassion, justice, inclusivity, and equality instead. After all, we are all in the same sinking ship, so why make it even worse for each other? Just be kind (though that's always better anyway regardless). However, it is a problem that plenty of assholes roam around and will continue to do so (from bullies in primary school to serial killers and dictators, and everything in between), which makes it somewhat difficult to maintain hope and empathy for humanity as a whole. But in the end, the best thing to do is simply look at what you can do yourself on a more local scale, treat the people in your own life as well as possible, and not stress too much about the world as a whole.
Furthermore, I would encourage everyone to live as authentically as possible; be who you want to be and do what makes you happy. As long as your lifestyle doesn't cause harm to others, at least. For me, that just means a small, simple life with as little friction, conflict, stress, anxiety, and pointless nonsense as possible, and just enjoying the things that personally interest me and the people who matter to me.
Alongside all of this, I am also highly anti-absolutist in my thinking and view my entire philosophy as just one possible interpretation among countless others; I don't want to present my ideas as some sort of ultimate truth. Because what I notice myself is that when you look at the 'default' mentality of humanity (optimism), there is a tendency to view pessimism as a kind of glitch; a pessimist is then no longer seen as a rational thinker, but merely as someone with a bad temper, someone suffering from depression, someone with a difficult past that influenced their thinking, etc, and so pessimism is quickly laughed off without any real attempt to understand it. On the other hand, I see pessimists doing the exact same thing, just in reverse; optimists are viewed as people sustaining themselves and each other through irrational illusions that arose purely for evolutionary reasons, without approaching optimism on a deeper level. Both camps see themselves as enlightened seers of the real truth, yet they fail to question their own assumptions and truly analyze those of the other side. Because of this, I highly doubt whether any sort of ultimate stance can be found at all; in the end, we view everything through our own (limited) perspective anyway. But even so, the aforementioned stance I described still seems the most plausible to me.
Despite Zapffe’s work as a philosopher, although not in an occupational role (he earned his living by writing poems, plays, stories, and humorous pieces), he is better known as an early ecologist who popularized the term “biosophy” to name a discipline that would broaden the compass of philosophy to include the interests of other living things besides human beings. In this capacity, he serves as an inspiration to environmentalists who worry about the well-being of the earth and its organisms. Here, too, we catch ourselves—and Zapffe himself, as he affirmed—in the act of conspiring to build barricades against the repugnant facts of life by signing on to a cause (in this case that of environmentalism) that snubs the real issue. Vandalism of the environment is but a sidebar to humanity’s refusal to look into the jaws of existence. In truth, we have only one foot in the natural environment of this world. Other worlds are always calling us away from nature. We live in a habitat of unrealities—not of earth, air, water, and wildlife—and cradling illusion trounces grim logic every time. Some of the more combative environmentalists, however, have concurred with Zapffe that we should retire from existence. But their advocacy of worldwide suicide as a strategy for saving the earth from being pillaged by human beings receives no mention in “The Last Messiah” and was probably not on Zapffe’s mind when he wrote this essay. As appealing as a universal suicide pact may be, why take part in it just to conserve this planet, this dim bulb in the blackness of space? Nature produced us, or at least subsidized our evolution. It intruded on an inorganic wasteland and set up shop. What evolved was a global workhouse where nothing is ever at rest, where the generation and discarding of life incessantly goes on. By what virtue, then, is it entitled to receive a pardon for this original sin—a capital crime in reverse, just as reproduction makes one an accessory before the fact to an individual’s death?
In its course, nature has made blunders in plenty. These are left to die out, as is nature’s wont. Perhaps this will be how we will go—a natural death. It might be idly theorized, though, that nature has a special plan for human beings and devised us to serve as a way of revoking itself, much like Mainländer’s self-expunging God. An offbeat idea, no protest, but not the strangest we have ever heard or lived by. We could at least take up the hypothesis and see where it leads. If it is proved unviable, then where is the harm? But until then, might we not let ourselves be drawn along by nature’s plan, which includes our sacking the earth as a paradoxical means of living better in it, or at least living as our nature bids us to live. We did not make ourselves, nor did we fashion a world that could not work without pain, and great pain at that, with a little pleasure, very little, to string us along—a world where all organisms are inexorably pushed by pain throughout their lives to do that which will improve their chances to survive and create more of themselves. Left unchecked, this process will last as long as a single cell remains palpitating in this cesspool of the solar system, this toilet of the galaxy. So why not lend a hand in nature’s suicide? For want of a deity that could be held to account for a world in which there is terrible pain, let nature take the blame for our troubles. We did not create an environment uncongenial to our species, nature did. One would think that nature was trying to kill us off, or get us to suicide ourselves once the blunder of consciousness came upon us. What was nature thinking? We tried to anthropomorphize it, to romanticize it, to let it into our hearts. But nature kept its distance, leaving us to our own devices. So be it. Survival is a two-way street. Once we settle ourselves off-world, we can blow up this planet from outer space. It’s the only way to be sure its stench will not follow us. Let it save itself if it can—the condemned are known for the acrobatics they will execute to wriggle out of their sentences. But if it cannot destroy what it has made, and what could possibly unmake it, then may it perish along with every other living thing it has introduced to pain. While no species has given in to pain to the point of giving up its existence, so far as we know, it is not a phenomenon whose praises are often sung.
Like I think the series and him are incredibly aesthetically compatible; it's just that SH always has a sort of humanist ethos underneath all of the industrial grime and abandoned hallways, which Ligotti completely disregards in his own work.
And it's not that I dislike that aspect of SH, in fact I think that's one of the reasons why (in particular) SH2 is such a masterpiece, but that sort of underlying humanity and warmth does sometimes feel like a bit of an ironic contrast when you look at the sheer nightmarish terror that is the actual atmosphere throughout the games.
Just for once, I'd love to see what a hypothetical SH game would look like if you let go of any and all restraints and just let it go all the way down into the abyss. And like, what better way to do that than to get someone like Ligotti to handle the writing? Idk if he would ever do that though, I have no idea how he feels about games. And likewise, I also don't really see Konami being that risk-taking, even though they're a lot more open to experimentation nowadays than they've been in ages.
I've seen hard determinists argue that if free will is an illusion, then it follows that it makes no sense to hate or punish (retributively at least) criminals, as they had no choice to have been anything else.
But what I wonder is, why isn't this logic followed all the way? Like, if we technically can't hate those we view as evil as they never were able to be anything otherwise, why doesn't this extend to the good as well? I.e someone like Nelson Mandela wouldn't be "good", he would just be someone who was bound to do what he did. And this would also follow in relationships (after all, your SO doesn't love you because they chose to but because they could never do otherwise, and so on).
Basically, why does blame dissolve more strongly than praise?
I'm currently reading The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Ligotti and am curious about other interesting reads for later.
Preferably not too academic and lengthy though, I'm just an average joe, not a philosophy student.
Personally I'm kinda on the fence regarding to whether I support antinatalism or not.
In all likelihood I probably lean more in favor of it than against it, but the main thing that bugs me about antinatalism is that in many cases it comes across as rather dogmatic and universal, like "I've logically come to the conclusion that it is unethical to have children, so therefore anyone has to comply or is acting unethically" which I'm not really a fan of, as I prefer for a kind of plurality to exist where this is one possible way of thinking, and not The Single Absolute Truth. Like I think Benatar's asymmetry argument is persuasive, but it does seem like the moment you buy into it you kind of have to accept that it can't possibly just be a personal preference or decision anymore as it pretty much asserts an universal principle, and that's where I struggle with it.