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Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 30, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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On mobile, at gym, sorry for gaps in the explanation, but The Last Psychiatrist (Edward Teach) talks about pretty much only this, in a hundred different ways. In the absence of any higher moral principles, you don’t even know how to desire things, and so the consumerist system steps in to teach you what and HOW to desire. All it cares about is keeping the money flowing, so it’s not weird that no one actually becomes happier, and it substitutes the much easier illusion of happiness by making identity (as divorced from actual deeds) the centrepiece of satisfaction. People allow this because the system promises absolution without requiring action, and people hate hate hate actually doing something to change their lives.

I'm following. I'm trying to get at whether it is as common as it seems to be or if that is more an artifact of my own perception.

I also see people who, from the outside, appear to be locked into lives that they are fully content with and thus they have "solved" for their own personal happiness. And I envy those people a bit. No more searching? Sounds nice.

But more common seems to be those who are wandering around in hopes of stumbling into some kind of contentment and not having any decent search strategy.