I give up on trying to understand myself, at least I believe I should. I know that there is practically no limit to the way I can interpret myself to myself and I can't believe my stories anymore.

I seem to be able to make people laugh, if they are open to that. My grim outlook ensures an extremely dark sense of humor, which I usually have to reign in. I guess a lot of what I say is ambiguous; people can't decide if I'm making fun of them. I've been told lately that I'm mean, which surprised me, because I really feel like I give people a lot of latitude as far as their weaknesses go. I suppose that's a pretty mean way to describe it. But people like to do me favors (which is used against me as evidence of my "manipulation"). I try to avoid speaking like I read books, but eg last night I dropped the word "decadent" (and it was actually an ironic usage) to uncomprehending stares. At least my audience thought my vocabulary was a funny quirk about me, and didn't feel threatened. That happens often enough. I've learned not to demonstrate intelligence because it stirs up fear.

I'm sensitive, but I haven't been in a situation where I could be anything but tough for a long time. So I hide that.

I don't let myself complain. I try to get comfortable with the worst case scenario, so if anything better happens, it's like candy.

I move my body like I know how to use it. When I'm feeling good I've been accused of "walking around like [I'm] ten feet tall."

"The high spirits of kindness might look like malice." --Nietzsche

EDIT: I suppose I should mention that my personality around men and my personality around women are completely different.

I don't have nearly this many problems and they're trying to keep me locked up forever. I'm in the wrong state.

Maybe you should just shut up, and like, not draw attention to yourself.

In prison there's a distinction between those who have sex with teenagers and those who have sex with under 12's. It's not only a legal distinction, it's a social distinction among prisoners; at least where I was at, an alright guy who fucked a 15 year old might exist on the fringe of the most powerful group, but somebody who sodomized an 8 year old never would. On the other hand, you're gay, so you'd be dogmeat. Worth keeping in mind if you want to act out your fantasies.

I'm 37 and attracted to teenage girls, but not exclusively. I'm hot enough I get a lot of searching eyes and looks up and down from them. But I want family, and I want kids, and none of that is going to happen if I'm locked up for kiddy porn or consensual sex with a teenager. Sex isn't everything, and you'll probably figure that out when your testosterone starts fading.

You're also offering networking opportunities with the other faithful, possibly superior females to mate with (as far as what I can get), and a convenient marker to distinguish us and them. Regardless of weather or not the content of religion helps in any way, those aren't bad things to gain for a little introspection and rituals.

No, you don't understand. I hate sanctimonious humans and their artificial moralities. Badgers eating baby bunnies shows how amoral the natural, non-human world is. Are you better than the natural, non-human world?

I don't know much math, but I believe the relevant terms are "Cantor's Set Theorem"

Why do people assume the supernatural, or gods, or whatever, should conform to our all-too-human ideas about morality? If religion is a cultural artifact, morality certainly is. Is there not room anymore in the enlightened human mind to see something as amoral as badgers eating baby bunnies as the signature of a god?

I used to identify as anarchocapitalist. I look down on pity, altruism, etc.

But I'm concerned about myself, not society. Why should I care about "society"? It's largely made up of imbeciles and cowards.

Humor is, broadly, an attempt to demonstrate power over the subject of the joke. However, in a lot of jokes dependent on context, it's difficult to pin down what's funny.

I used to be a joker. I treated every situation as if it existed for me to make ironic comments about. It's no way to live (if you stand ironically outside everything, where are you?). I'm still known to make people laugh. It comes in handy.

I reckon this is mostly damnable nostalgia, but I'm sort of digging the icy artificiality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT4XtffirjE

Try this: http://www.northamericannietzschesociety.com/uploads/7/3/2/5/73251013/nietzscheana9.pdf

I think I see where you're going with this--does math exist "out there"? and hence is it prior to biology?--I'd respond, provisionally, along the lines of "we only know math because of our evolved senses" (does time exist? or is it just a biological perception of existence?)

It's impossible to make choices without some rank of values, otherwise why would you prefer one thing to another? The idea that all values are subjective is transitional (Nietzsche viewed it as such); from that point you can go two ways (well, if you have intellectual conscience): schopenhauer or Nietzsche's imperative to find a philosophy that is naturalistic and life-affirming.

Wouldn't we be any and everything that we do?

Well, you could certainly subvert this principle with a view such as "I'm not going to have kids because it's selfish".

I'm trying to transcend social cues. The social is clearly derivative from the biological.

Are you really going to try and tell me my DNA "knows" I have siblings? Tsk, tsk.

I'd still describe it as nihilism, at least in regard to the value of products of the human mind, which, in the case of something like "do no harm", are the elevation of a bit of evolutionary prudence (that only applies within "us" anyway, as opposed to "them") to some kind of dogma.

Your tone of blame implies that you think your view is superior to mine.

I like how you use the word "diagnose", giving the connotation of my views being some kind of sickness.

Anyway, when I said that "nothing has meaning", I really meant something along the lines of "nothing has any value". All human values are equally meaningless, hence the selection of them is more or less arbitrary (they have nothing objectively to recommend them over other values). So why not go prior to the "human" and back to the animal? One of the least controversial things that can be said (leaving aside christians or scientologists) is that humans are evolved machines for genetic transmission. Values based on that account of existence would be prior to any socially derived value.

To be a successful biological organism all you need to do is stay alive. All the other things you mention are optional to your declared purpose.

I disagree. We're not even individuals on the level I'm talking about, we're just machines for the transmission of our selfish genes. So why not accept that, and base one's values around that?

Thanks, I'd never heard of google scholar

They're unsuccessful.

How so? Wouldnt it be dependent on how one defined, "successful" or what entails "success"?

For a biological organism, success is reproduction. With mammals this includes child-rearing. With humans one could argue it includes "culture".

Clearly, being a "successful biological organism" is rather devoid of meaning.

I don't think it does at all. It means my flirting has meaning. It means sex has meaning. It means dominance signaling with other males has meaning. It means procreation has meaning. It means parenting has meaning(since mammals rear their young). It means extended family and clan have meaning. Ultimately it means culture has meaning, in the sense of education as further young-rearing.

Neitzsche's got a line somewhere where he doesn't care if something is true or false, but he looks rather at the functional effect on the species. I don't care so much about the species (or, eg "white people") -- I keep the focus on myself and my immediate kin.

You have taken up an interpretation surrounding the importance of biology and evolutionary purpose, this is also lacking any truth, beyond the truth it has to you as a compelling idea.

Well of course in the long run we're all dead and then the universe will run out of heat but in the meantime we can live our biology. The idea that this is "lacking in truth" -- compared with something like "my vote matters" or "I am a child of God" -- is what I'm saying otherwise about. Biology seems like the default truth, the least arbitrary truth, and hence the surest basis for meaning (purpose).

If those folks have assigned purposes to themselves, then there are purposes, no?

Sure, but the choice of purpose is totally arbitrary, and it's hard to get excited about something superfluous. What I'm saying is that I think I have a way out of this: "being an animal" being my purpose, I'm avoiding the entire mountain of cultural accretions.

Isn't liberty more important than purpose?

Liberty to do what? I've gotten to the point where I'm staring at a glass of water in the bathroom and thinking "Well, should I drink this? Should I prolong this life of meaningless existence? On the other hand, it doesn't make me more holy than existence to die of thirst."

Speaking as a current prisoner of a bureaucracy, I hate them. I don't think the track record of the 60's and 70's bureaucracies are all that great (war on poverty?). They basically survive and grow by inertia.

I mentioned on a deleted post that I think the US is in terminal decline. My scenario for that basically involves bureaucracies being starved of resources and losing the ability to respond. In that scenario, you could have something like the regime I described arise and then evolve.

Would you be a serf, a knight/samurai, or part of the nobility?

Maybe a dumb question as you would be King/Emperor/Shogun?

The point is that the shogun or high king has little authority over the nobility.

I think it's useless to say things like "you might have been born a slave" because if somebody described today as an ideal you could retort: "what if you weren't born in the US?" But I'd like to be either a part of the aristocracy or a freeman associated with a particular noble.

I believe in rule of men (or women), not rule of law.

You stole that from samuel beckett

Sure, not having children doesn't hurt anybody. As a question of biology, not having children being a sign of moral authority is interesting. The fact that an organism would choose to be a genetic dead end and then feel good about it is an evolutionarily curious decision. Not to mention operation of your entire brain evolved for the sake of having kids and rearing them, it just seems to me that it means pulling a fast one on your body. I don't think that's a good idea because I can't think of a reason to live except my biological mission. Other people might have church or something similar.

My generation's accomplishments are not my accomplishments. I mostly reacted against the idea that the hippies were as original as you imply. There was, eg the wandervogel.

Don't worry about it, ezra pound was nuts. There have been a lot of unorthodox attempts to reinstate medieval economic concepts of the church like "the just price" and a ban on usury. Capitalism won out, and now its enemy is marxism, not the church.

"corn"

My father is planting after dark.
Far from the lights of town
the bare earth under white halogens
could be the surface of the moon.

We pop the tops of the implement's boxes
I pour designer seed from a bag on my shoulder
like a voodoo aquarius
flooding the world with civilization

the diesel engine, idling
reflects upon it's lineage
it mutters an oracle:
"all machinery is organized violence"

One tyrant day, mid-July
I looked out at the uniform rows of corn
and saw soldiers
marching to the world's rim

OMG another baby boomer talking about how awesome their generation was

Having children is biology. If you're not going to have kids due to nihilism, it's a short step to suicide. Not that I care if anybody wants to off themselves.

I once read about a guy who did a computer simulation of segregation in urban areas: it only had a handful of transformational rules but you end up with a very segregated city. It was in the textbook "think complexity" which is a free download if you want to check it out.

Aristotle's teaching was the basis of Catholic church doctrine on economics until the reformation. These guys don't get much of a hearing today---check out Ezra Pound's economics.

"march"

darkness
whispers
the unexpected
master your fears
use them

love your comrades
but not for their sake
love without pity
for our sake
which is also yours

there is no hope of victory
it will always be
it is unending
it is paradise

Probably all of our choices are determined. However, we have the illusion of free will. That's all that matters. What use is it to think "I don't control my thoughts"?

I might say, partly in jest, that the world is going to hell in a handbasket because we aren't killing each other on a local level. Peace creates monstrosities. Violence makes people honest (edit: realistic).