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?
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Notes -
Does anyone else feel like there is some indulgent aspect to posting? The whole reason I began posting on the motte was that "iron sharpens iron", but talking about the same CW issue for the 100th time isn't helping much more in that regard. I realized that as of late, I have been putting comments out there just for the sake of it, even when I don't have anything meaningful to add to the discussion; With the faint rationalization that "I can be someone else's iron".
I am not making some grand announcement to the world, but rather want to hear if anyone felt as such as well. I am going to reduce commenting for a while. Instead, I'll go back to reading more. I'm going to finally address my growing backlog of books and papers to go through. I will still participate in the motte once in a while, but only if I deem it to be meaningful participation and not just pseudo-socialization. For the near future, the motte is going to be partially read-only for me.
Partially related to this, I have had some severe panic attacks and anxiety about the way I am living my life (details not necessary right now). I realized that I am not "happy" , and that around 90% of the world has a life much worse than mine. The weight of this realization is heavily weighing down on my conscience, Just the sheer volume of suffering. I don't understand the psychology behind this, but my gut tells me that living a simplistic austere life more in service of others than hedonism (even small ones such as spending too much time scrolling Instagram or ordering takeout too frequently) is the remedy.
That's been my approach for approximately a year now. Rather than getting into randomish arguments for the sake of practicing argumentation I'll try to focus in on topics I actually have insights on by dint of my career or location or experience.
Lately that's had to do with Ron Desantis and Florida politics in general, it's actually amazing to see so many people who don't seem to get what people who live in the state are experiencing and the political shenanigans that were occurring in the leadup to his first election. But that's presumably near-mode vs. far-mode issues.
I'm happy to try to clear things up if I can.
Since he's a likely presidential candidate I expect this will remain relevant and keep me posting around here for the next couple years.
Of course I still fall to the temptation of "SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET, THIS MUST NOT STAND" urges.
I went through this a while back. Based on my experience you're on the right track in reasoning. I've never had an instagram account and plan to never get one. You also have to scale back on almost all social media use. And phone apps in general.
What you are likely experiencing is basically the realization that you're not 'doing' anything with the blessed life you've been given by dint of being born in a first-world country. So many aspects of your life are likely based on interacting with the world in a 'superficial' way, likely mediated by an app that makes you feel like you're doing something meaningful but leaving you with nothing to show for it. Many apps are literally designed to get you 'addicted' to making a digitally displayed number go up, and once you leave the app... the number means nothing. You're tricking your own brain into feeling a sense of achievement without any notable personal development or tangible result. You're running up the hedonic treadmill without actually increasing the amount of joy you experienced. You fall into a routine that reinforces patterns of behavior without moving towards a particular goal or endowing you with a purpose for it all.
A few thoughts on how to improve (all things I have done myself):
A) Find and cultivate meaningful and lasting friendships. The one MAJOR benefit of social media and information tech is that if you form a strong bond with someone, you can keep in touch with them anywhere on the globe. Instead of forming dozens or hundreds of weak and ephemeral connections, work on finding some people whose lives can intertwine with yours without making either of you worse off. And avoid forming parasocial relationships with streamers or other influencer personality types.
(Easier said than done, locating 'quality' people is the hard part)
B) Engage in tasks, projects, endeavors that leave you with something tangible or some notable improvement in your quality of life once completed. Exercise is the obvious example, but it could be as basic as building something that you will use regularly from your own two hands, from scratch or close to it. This develops skills, gives you a goal/purpose in the short term, and leaves you with a meaningful/tangible result.
C) Try to minimize consumerist clutter in your local environment. You can probably, with some effort, figure out what 'objects' you own are actually contributing to your mental wellbeing and which are just taking up space and you bought on a whim but had no actual use for. Donate, sell, or throw away the stuff you own that is not contributing to your wellbeing, is not serving a useful function, or you don't have a genuine emotional/sentimental connection with.
This is HARD in practice, I have a decent urge to hoard things. And on the front end, you must work on resisting the urge to buy useless shit in the first place.
Small point about your local environment: lighting and scents are often overlooked (especially by males) for their emotional regulation effects. A space that has pleasant lighting and smells 'nice' tend to make you feel much more comfortable.
D) Spend more time in natural spaces. Maybe it's just me, but being surrounded by greenery and wildlife (even the more boring types) and 'authentic' natural spaces (vs. curated gardens, for instance) is inherently relaxing to me. If you have no access to such spaces within an easy walk/bike/drive... move.
E) A pet, if you can manage it. Constant companionship, a modicum of responsibility and purpose in ensuring another creature's wellbeing, and they can just be damned fun.
There's a meme about the modern male turning into a "bugman/soyboy" who has few useful skills, defines himself via consumption, and is thus entirely reliant on the 'hive' (i.e. mainstream culture) to tell him how to behave, what to think, believe, and what to buy. I think there's some truth to it. If you're heavily plugged in to mainstream culture, and mainstream culture isn't healthy... it will negatively impact your health. I think this is self-evident.
I think mainstream culture is not healthy along virtually any axis that actually correlates with human happiness/flourishing.
Cutting out most of said culture and limiting your exposure to it (not cutting it out entirely!) seems a necessary precondition to achieving your personal happiness.
Just some thoughts.
That is some of it. But the entire feeling is hard to describe, It feels like a guilt response. I have a tendency to complain about things a whole lot. And it feels like I used up the limited amount of complaining allowed in the universe when there are so many people who deserve to use that specific resource more. As you can tell, it's not exactly a rational thought process.
In the lowest resolution view, it's the stereotypical first-worlder realizing that his phone had child labor embedded in it. But it's not exactly that, I know being in a mining camp is preferable to that kid than starving. My dread feels more abstract, that kids have to be in mining camps at all. Of course, I know there is no quick fix to this. The problems of the world are far too large for one man to bear, regardless of how arrogant he is. I just had that realization at a very visceral level, which is a trip regardless of how you try to rationalize it.
Since we are talking about feelings. It feels disrespectful to all the suffering souls, if I just sit on my ass and eat takeout, scroll videos for hours, argue with strangers online, or just drink and render myself retarded for significant portions of the day. I should be at the front lines fighting to reduce that suffering. Who else is better equipped to do it? I understand this is supremely naive and arrogant.
I appreciate your advice. Making my immediate surroundings better is the correction to my internal miscalibration/confusion as opposed to becoming a fulltime volunteer monk.
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