One time, I saw a Prager U video where Dennis Prager in what’s the saddest moment ever caught on tape, makes fun of kindergarten and elementary school signs that say “The world is a better place because you are in it”. He chuckles, sneers at the phrase and then, unprompted, tells a story about how his father was an uncommunicative man, and he would have never said something like that to him. I was a new dad to my first born son. In my mind’s eye, I could picture a long chain of patriarchal violence repeated and reinforced with each generation. Men unable to give their sons anything other than tough love and hard lessons, ending in a pathetic loser sneering at children having a better world than he experienced.
To this day, I tell my sons how beautiful and kind the world has become with them here. Somehow I do hope Dennis gets a mysterious ache in his chest, every time I do. Lmao.
Generational Trauma, the only thing literally killed with kindness.
There’s something in my eye.
They say this about wars and genocides and social issues but as soon as booba in video game shrinks 10% we need urgent action on this crisis
It’s just selfishness disguised as philosophical nihilism
The world with 100% boobas in vídeo game
🌎
The world with 90% boobas in video game
💥
voting for 90% boobas is no different than voting for 100% booba
You need to vote for 99% boobler. Do you condemn khabras?
This is the person that argues why moralism of even the secular kind is bad and we need to be unthinking nihilistic robots. These are the kind that tell me my autism makes me some hyper masculine automaton that is not suppose to know emotion.
God I’m so sick of that characterization of autism. Autism doesn’t change whether you feel emotions it just changes how you express them and how you perceive them in others. I find most people with autism (myself included) to be particularly sensitive in fact, in the way that anyone who finds themselves lower on some spectrum in the kyriarchy is.
Wandering the wretched earth with ridiculously overcomplicated thoughts about everything and disproportionate attention to fine details and out-of-place contrast while equipped with overwhelmingly powerful emotions that you process at 28.8k dialup speeds is super fun and exciting and makes me want to live
This description of autism fucks.
The guy who wrote it doesn’t due to his crippling social deficits
Last night I watched the new Amazing Digital Circus and felt that the theme can be summarized as “continuing to live despite your suffering is important because people deserve the opportunity to love you” and expressing that thought to myself has done more to quell suicidal thoughts in me than anything has in months
Wow what an insulting message, shit like this is a hop skip and a jump away from like ecco-fascism.
?Lmao in Italian this just translates to “here’s the dolphin” or “behold, the dolphin”. Both of which are so much funnier than the original
: “LGBT relationships are an AFFRONT TO DA LAWD!”:: “Climate change? Corporate greed? Like, who cares maaaaaaaaan? We’re all gonna die some day. Cantcha just learn to live and let live?”It really is a matter of scale. Even at the scale of society as a whole, you as an individual don’t “matter” in that your presence (or lack of it) isn’t going to impact its course or functionality. It’s literally why we have to organize in order to even have any hope of achieving our aims. We certainly don’t “matter” on a global scale. However, what the person in the OP image said is entirely true. At the scale of our families and social group, and absolutely at the scale of our individual experience, each of us matters profoundly. At the scale of our individual experience, each of us is a universe unto ourselves.
It is infuriating to me when people refuse to understand that what is true at one scale may not be (and usually isn’t) true at another scale, but that this does not invalidate how true things are at any other given scale. The fact that your impact on the galaxy as a whole is so small as to be effectively insignificant does not mean that your impact on the world you live in, literally your sphere of experience and influence, is insignificant, because the truth is that it is extremely significant at that scale.
Western culture and society is pathological in how it simultaneously acts as though the only reality is what exists at the scale of the individual when it comes to blame and “rEsPoNsIbiLitY” but will utterly diminish and demean the experience of any individual that doesn’t spend their existence on this earth in service of the great evil god of capital. It’s Thatcher’s “there is no such thing as society, only individual men and women and families.” Meanwhile every single one of those individual men and women (rather the ones who don’t own or control capital) are treated as nothing more than a cog in a machine, a sliver of utility to be used as such then expended and replaced as such. It’s a philosophy that cherry-picks only the convenient truths of how things work at various different given scales and applies them across the board as if they’re true at all other scales, all of course to serve the interests of the ruling class. It is a source of many of the philosophical contradictions of capitalism and the diseased society that results from it.
Dialectics - transformation of quantity into quality
This reminds me of a logical critique or concept I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now, but having a hard time concretely conceptualizing it or finding other resources on it (I wish Google still worked). I call it a scope error for lack of a better term.
But it’s like, when thinking about or discussing a scenario or metaphysical claim or whatever, usually it exists in an implied scope or from an implied frame of reference. That context may be subjective or intersubjective, but it exists nonetheless.
So for example if you’re asking the question “does x matter” there’s an implied frame of reference and/or scope (to whom might x matter?). In some contexts a technically more accurate signifier for the concept might be 'do I care about x" or “do people I respect care about x” or “does the existence or nonexistence of x bring about pain or pleasure to me or people or things I care about”. Although of course the essence is obscured by the signifiers used, even sometimes to the person using them, so someone pondering such a question might themself be unable to answer it without determining the frame of reference.
As a side note, in Western culture, or at least my experience of Statesian culture, the frame of reference is often (implicitly and usually subconsciously) the christian god. I think even for some devout atheists, it’s just unspoken and unrecognized, like they abandoned belief in such a god but failed to restructure the way they conceptualized things, leaving a god-shaped void in their mind. If it’s not that, it’s usually within the tiny scope of the individual ego. A scope that’s either infinitely and unrealistically large or asocially small.
One popular but vulgar version of nihilism is guilty of this. Should I exercise, should I treat people well, should I contribute to a higher cause, etc? “No, it doesn’t matter because you’ll be dead eventually”, "the plight of any given human is inconsequential and meaningless in the face of the heat death of the universe / climate change / capitalism / multiverse / god. But no one is talking about whether an impact or value exists beyond the heat death of the universe. It’s not only a ridiculous point of reference, it’s non-unique, applying to everything equally, and can thus be eliminated from any consideration.
A concept exists with an implied context, so to address it using a different implied context or scope or frame of reference is a non-sequitur. But because these contexts are implied, it’s difficult to see what exactly is happening in a non-discussion.
I think this happens with so-called “rationalists” too, in the opposite direction. They zoom out the scope of time and reality so they can say stuff like “we need to sell our cat’s organs and donate to MRI for the infinite simulated orphans in the future” despite the fact that’s insane and absurd to anyone who lives in the like, present, earth-oriented scope
In this example they replace God in their minds with an arbitrary moral system that happens to justify worshipping billionaires
Yes. This. This is exactly what I was talking about in my other comment in this thread, posted before seeing this one. I was calling it scale instead of scope, but this is spot on.
People will pick and choose how things function at one scope and pretend it applies at others. A lot of people, even good well-meaning ones, will do this and fall into this trap, but particularly shitty people will do this as a way to justify their garbage beliefs or justify hurting and demeaning others. Exactly like OP image “you don’t matter 'cause the Earth doesn’t give a shit if you’re here or not as one person. You’re a loser for thinking you matter at all.” FUCK that. You absolutely matter, just not necessarily at the scale/scope of an entire planet orbiting a star, that doesn’t invalidate or make meaningless the just as real scale/scope at which you DO matter. Their application of how things function at scale is always used in whatever way is beneficial to them at the moment or to prove whatever flawed, even sadistic point they’re trying to make. Capitalists, politicians, and of course the mass media under their control do this constantly and it infuriates me to no end.
What you are referencing is usually called a ‘framing problem’ or ‘reference issue’, usually the latter. I’ve never heard of it called a ‘scope problem’, but that probably works as well.
One popular but vulgar version of nihilism is guilty of this.
Bring back existentialism! Make philosophy out of my cocktail, and meaning out of life rather than death.
One of the most existentially calming things is learning just how subjective fame is.
As long as I got my friends and family, I won’t lose sleep about not being a celebrity. Would a little bit of recognition be cool? Absolutely, but I don’t think I can handle being under public scrutiny 24/7.
The world exists because I perceive it. You’re welcome!
I actually think both Twitter posts could serve to reduce suicidal ideation depending on the individual.
I like feeling small when I feel like I have big problems. The ocean and/or the stars are good for me at those times.
