‘In the Miso Soup’ by Murakami Ryu might do what you are looking for. Found it by accident looking at Murakami Haruki. Japanese guy is a local guide for an unusual american.
I didn’t finish it but there is also ‘Baby Jesus Buttplug’ by Carlton Mellick. Been meaning to get back to it at some point. WTF is his whole schtick.
The works of Cormack McCarthy are also wtf books, but less in the ‘WHAT THE FUCK!’ more in the vein of ‘Oh, god. What… the fuck…’
I sound like a broken record but, BAN ADVERTISING. Along with all the pretty well established secondary bad effects of advertising, the most basic direct effect of it is lying to people. If people weren’t deluged daily with lies about how they should think of this or that company, they wouldn’t be so readily deluded into thinking of a company like a person with a positive effect on their world.
It can be very hard to disentangle the cause and effect of ‘not wanted so it doesn’t count as a failure to not get it,’ vs ‘can’t do it, so won’t say I want it,’ vs ‘might want to do it but everyone and everything is getting fucked so hard these days and I don’t want to watch my kid get fucked, so not going to bother having one.’
Imagine for a moment you are sitting there, reading this comment, and a stranger comes up and sticks their finger up your nose to look for a bogie. They’ve just done something that minimally inconveniences you for their benefit. It probably didn’t do you any serious damage and almost certainly didn’t kill you. When you ask, ‘what the fuck?’ they say ‘I don’t think sticking my finger in your nose is as big of a deal as you make it sound.’ You didn’t do anything to them. They just decided to do it because they wanted it right now rather than waiting to generate their own. Do you really think you’d take such a philosophical view as to say ‘Oh, well. They, legally, should have just picked their own nose and not invaded my physical space, but it would have taken them time to secrete that mucus so it’s fine.’ I doubt it.
The problem is the medium of memes doesn’t convey ideas well, if at all, and helps promote thought-terminating ideologies and ignorant partisanship. If you can fit the idea into a meme, it’s probably oversimplified to the point of uselessness, and if the meme relies on you already knowing the real idea, it’s not informing anyone of anything.
All those visitors enjoying the park and basically one guy with a $5 website to make it ‘controversial.’ Advertising has ruined the news.
Really important for you to understand: Not likely to kill you is not the same as not dangerous. So many people end up in low speed collisions which, while having an infinitesimal chance of death, cause them non-lethal pain, stress, financial harm, legal trouble. These are dangers. The existence of death does not negate the suffering which does not cause death.
And that is absolutely not analogous. The inattentive driver isn’t analogous to someone coming in one minute late, and the other driver is not analogous to the doctor. He’s doing an analog of coming in half an hour late, when the doctor has already made the reasonable assumption he is not coming, (He’s already at the intersection by the time he’s trying to make the lane change.) and started seeing the next patient. (The other patient is the other driver, following the expected rules of courtesy and appointment keeping.) He is then making an invasive entry into the doctor’s exam room (analog to the space they each want to use, the turn lane) and expecting to be seen ahead of the person who was on time for their appointment. (cutting in on the mutually desired space without regard to anyone else) He was inattentive and failed to arrive on time. (He failed to get into the correct lane at an appropriate time) The only reason a person would let him barge in is out of fear he might be even more dumb, aggressive, and inconsiderate than he already appears and hurt them, whether through selfish ignorance or active malice.
This is not a blind choice between adding a minute to one person’s commute or adding ten seconds to five people’s commutes. This is a man who failed to do the most basic, bare minimum cost of driving around in a machine that can and does kill people on a regular basis: paying attention. Others shouldn’t be endangered to save someone from an inconvenience. A sudden, illegal maneuver, even at low speed, introduces more danger and unpredictability where we want less. Why give MORE trust to someone who is actively engaged in demonstrating they should not be trusted?
Now I wonder what it would be like to go inside of a mirrored sphere wearing a glow in the dark jumpsuit…
I have low affect so it’s usually along the lines of “Wow, so you aren’t going to wear my skin like a mask. You’re actually nice. I never would have guessed.”
Or your dad could accept that he’s going to travel a tiny bit further than he originally intended, and reroute with a u-turn, or a block circle, or a parking lot turn, or something similar. No invasive lane change. No need to apologise for an invasive lane change. No need for a special horn to communicate an apology for an invasive lane change. You don’t need to apologise for something you don’t make into someone else’s problem.
I would advise you not to ruminate on the incident, even with the friend. Just hang out and chat with them. It’s about reminding yourself you are not defined by what one particular person felt about you on one particular day. When you are feeling that urge to hide away and shut down, you need someone to connect with, face to face if possible, on a voice call at barest minimum. Just connect.
Isn’t part of the problem with capitalism that there are fewer/no breadlines but poverty remains? The capitalist ethos pushes toward libertarian economic ideas, which remove social welfare programs and expect you to just disappear/die if you ‘can’t make it’ in the capitalist regime.
The world run by MBAs…
If you are old in a professional field, you have years of experience they have to pay you for, so they hire the young guy to make the payroll smaller, even if it causes problems for some other department, because no one high enough to do anything about it is going to catch it.
If you are in the general labour space, making min wage, they know they can’t expect the same energy, and can expect you to know the ‘advancement’ they dangle over ambitious min wage workers’ heads doesn’t actually exist, so they will get more labour out of a kid for the same money.
Got my first win in Noita recently by stopping attempts to do more interesting variations and just going to the ending boss. Now to figure out New Game +, the metaprogression of the orbs, the suns, parallel worlds, and the myriad ‘lesser’ bosses.
Do you have someone you can trust to talk to in person, like a friend? Sometimes the best balm for the burn of a rejection is the acceptance of a friend.
There aren’t enough guys. We have billions of people. Too many of the ones we have heard of are related.