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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   20625 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

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Is this sarcastic? Do you genuinely not understand that many people live lives of despair and feel they have no hope of things ever getting better?

Most people don't want to OD from drugs or commit suicide. They do because their lives are purposeless, hopeless, and devoid of meaning.

"They do because their lives are purposeless, hopeless, and devoid of meaning."

Y'know, most people would say that people kill themselves because they feel their lives are purposeless, hopeless, and devoid of meaning.

Or alternately, because they think doing some drugs would be fun or cool, and pick up a habit.

I doubt the Stanford freshman son of the CEO of YouTube had nothing to live for.

Why doubt that? Just because he had status and wealth doesn't mean he had anything he cared about deep inside. Our culture is corrosive to purpose and meaning, I'd think wealthy scions would be more susceptible to a lack of meaning in some ways since so much is handed to them.

"Purpose" and "meaning" seem to be used here to refer to some sort of internal phenomenon which could probably be produced by the right drugs.

Oh I’m not disputing that the rich can be suicidal at all, just that if he was, it probably wasn’t because of a lack of opportunity in his life.

Yeah, I think we're talking past each other a bit. Opportunity =/= purpose and meaning. If anything a massive amount of opportunity can drain purpose and meaning, as you get slammed with the paradox of choice.

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim.

Maybe this is an obvious reference for the Anglophones, but why not just post the poem in its entirety?

You actually misspelled Cal with Stanford. Which is sort of curious because even though I’ve heard Stanford is no fun now her son would have seem connected enough to get into Stanford with a mere mortals test scores. I would assume 99% of people who get into Stanford and Cal go to Stanford.

Yes, I read somewhere it’s typically considered easier for extremely well-connected Silicon Valley individuals to get kids into Stanford than Berkeley, private colleges having more flexibility. Seems he was probably pretty smart then.

Material success is not known to prevent suicidal ideation. Humans require a purpose greater than “make widget, do drugs and women”.

Yeah if anything, it's probably living too much that got him.

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