idealizations are safe. Heightened, but safe. Actual erotic encounters are encounters. (provided we have a truly willing erotic partner to whom we're attracted)The real mccoy fails to live up to the ideal (the anticipated, the expected) to the extent that one retreats from the actual to the fantasy. (which isn't to say that fantasy and fantasy-founded games don't have a part in irl sex.)

Id kill to see a post where you skewer (some aspect of) your conceptual milieu in order to advance your own take. Its a forum so the usual scholarly caution can be safely bracketed here.

The difference being its easier to find audiences unfamiliar with this conflict than those unfamiliar with the civil war.

I’ve been trying to cut back on the meta shit, but oh well relapse is part of recovery.

I agree with your op. But you’ve said it before, a bunch of times, in different places.

Problems - true problems - inspire and compel (not unlike a physical force); they take us beyond, into the new, the unexplored, the unfamiliar. And this is, at minimum, what philosophy does best. — StreetlightX

This is the the inherent tension of deleuzian post-deluzian scholarship right? The more everything sediments the higher the risk of conceptual hagiography - radical gestures become canonized and kept safely under glass. After a while attacks on aristotle feel like highbrow versions of civil war reenactments - but now its the 1960s and its deleuze et al vs the-then french philosophical canon

In short: the realist’s retort would be: maybe (literal) tokens are needed to talk about this stuff, but they point toward (real) universals already at work.

All good points but I think this shift to a heideggerean approach actually highlights the point I was trying to make. I think you’re saying something similar, actually, to what I was saying with Hegel. in any case - in these examples, some kind of implicit and universal-ish preawareness has to be at work in order for misrecognition to work, for the ready-to-hand to become present-at-hand. This is the realist’s in : yes token-type ‘talk’ - explicit reflection on token-types -is already outside a ready-to-hand approach. But, as you say, it ‘falls out’ of more primitive as-perception. The monkey might quite easily recognize boots as boots without needing a physical boot-token. However, he might need a token to start leveraging that implicit knowledge for higher level tasks (like seeing pairs)

and also the drunk would-be philosopher comforting himself to sleep:

two i keep coming back to over the past couple years:

Also that list of philosphers - I didn't knock for political reasons. They're all just messengers of higher more mystical intensities. Any good mystic (from the kabbalists to Gurdjieff) will warn against dabbling in that as a way to escape depression.

philosophy doesn't help with depression in my experience. it can make it worse

I hear you. but i think the more practical life advice people have been giving will be more helpful.

I feel like I'm getting a 'vibe' from the thinkers you've mentioned. evola, stirner, deleuze, schopenhauer, land etc. Very potent mix. You're getting that from somewhere. Where? And why are you linking it to a request for depression advice? This isn't adding up to me.

jk

Why do you think philosophy will help?

Schopenhauer def won't

Does Schopenhauer have a good message to life I can use as a guide — nazgul

That could be a one liner at a philosophy stand up show

No, I mean. I feel like I don't quite understand what you're looking for. What are you looking for?

If peterson isn't working, I'd recommend eight hours a day of land, some amphetamines, and a mean dog.

I think this is a function of your stance towards the thread more than anything. It is a very unusual thread, a nauseating psychological hall of mirrors. Is it possible for you to see yourself as one of the reflections? In it rather than beyond it.

I wonder what came to be to make this thread how it is. Very strange.

its been dizzying to me. It feels kind of like what I felt the first time I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, though I couldn't quite say why. It's hard for me see reflections in general - I'm trying, but it keeps sort of slipping away

You know, I think you're basically right about humor, its uses and abuses. I didn't intend to paint too thoroughly damning a portrait. I think what happened was something like: I was trying to validate Tclark's complaint by focusing on one potentially negative use of humor and that laid in place some conversational rails which made it easier for me to then continue on that theme.

Essentially, it is all about intent and our individual motives and the culture or social conditions must provide the platform that is conducive to good behaviour as much as it is responsible for the bad. There are bad people making bad jokes, but we do not eliminate jokes to eliminate the bad. We challenge the motives. — TimeLine

I agree with the point about motives. I hesitate to talk in terms of bad and good people. I don't mean this as an ivory forum thing where I get to pretend I'm above all condemnation and take in all the world in an understanding embrace. In real life I get caught up in this stuff all the time, and online sometimes too. It's just that I've learned, through bitter experience, that if I get too used to characterizing stuff in absolute moral terms, and sort of look out and see people through that lens, then I'm strengthening a sort of moral/emotional muscle, Condemnation+Shame, which works fine until I find that I've slipped up, again. Then - bam - that same muscle I've built up is now turned against me.

My posts certainly had some good/bad connotations, which I wish I had softened a bit. I may have contributed to introducing that good/bad chill into the thread. I think fdrake's posts about bullying exemplify the approach I would like to take: a kind of objective, nonjudgmental look at how this stuff functions. With the intent to stop engaging in it as much, of course, but without making its uses symptoms of an inherent badness. More like unfortunate patterns that we all get caught up in from time to time.

I like distance. I need to observe. It takes time with me, which is why friendship is paramount. We build walls to protect ourselves and we protect ourselves because we know how terrible it can feel when our trust has been betrayed. I give hints here and there, but the question is what exactly do you want? And why from me? Do you say the same to your male counterparts or are you suggesting that I need to give you more than just the words that I write? .

Yeah, I like distance too. Or, I don't know if I like it, but I certainly have trouble functioning without it. I'm not sure what I want. I've been on a kind of boundary-shaking tear these past few months, at least on here. Not just you, by any means: I've been doing the same kind of thing, in different ways, on quite a few threads, with quite a few different posters (male posters, I'll add!). It doesn't feel all that good and it all really caught up to me the past two days and I've just felt gross about it. I have lot of recent discussions here, about people not confronting stuff, about presenting their selves falsely, about approaches that try to neatly organize the world at the expense of real life - certainly all seems to point to something I need to address, I just can't quite figure out exactly how to. I stand by most of what I've said in this thread, but I don't think my last post was really necessary.

Optimism vs pessimism regarding global government was what I was looking for. Syria is a good vehicle for exploring the issue (from my point of view).

hmmm, but what do you mean by 'global government'? Are you talking about stuff like the UN? I think one of the biggest things to take away from the syrian conflict - as with so many middle eastern conflicts - is that the local texture of the conflict determines a lot. There's no easy external solution that can be draped over.

(a better historian than me could thread a strong narrative linking the conditions of the existence of a thing like the UN to the destabilization of the whole middle east region. )

Been going over your post. Thank you for it, gives good background to understand where you're coming from. I made similar use of humor, growing up, for similar (if different) reasons. It does deflate the seriousness of the world around. But.

It gives you power, right? What I get from your post is that you were coming from a position of powerlessness. That's where I came from too. Humor and philosophy, both, provide a sort of power. Words too. They're a kind of mesh, if you can access it, that lets you pull yourself out of whatever you were in. People respond to this as well: If you can can master these tools right, people will take you at your word. This is a weird thing: If you're sufficiently smart, able to do things with language, people will believe what you tell them.

Humour can free you from this defensive mechanism, a type of abstract thinking.

Yes, but...It can itself become a kind of defense mechanism. I'm not trying to knock humor, by any means, but ---maybe you can relate to this: home-life is a bust. Just bad news. However: you find that if you can make people laugh, then they're on your side. If you can make people laugh and also make people think - then you're in the money. That's the positive aspect.

But every good thing tows its shadow behind it. Here's the shadow: If people get too close, then you can use the same tools. Anything perceived as a threat gets automatically linked back to the ur-threat. This is a state of emergency and justifies whatever means. Humor, intellect etc - aimed like a laser. If you've survived something horrible, its natural to fall into this.

The hardest part of all this is that what you do may not fit well with who you think you are.

The same tools of humor and intellect you used to defend yourself against a legitimately horrid world are repurposed in order to represent yourself to yourself. I did this for a long time. I was so good at talking that I could talk to myself about who I was and convince myself, in the same way I convinced others.. The better you are at this, the harder it is to stop doing it.

I mention all of this only because I think I relate to what you're doing. But [cards on the table] I don't always believe the stories you tell about yourself. I think some of your self-summations sit unquietly with the body of posts you're trying to sum up. I'm trying to figure out who I'm talking to here. I don't buy a lot of what you say about yourself. I think you're probably much more interesting than how you self-present (which is, frankly, boring.) I think the qualities that attract people (and posters) are ones you cover up when you talk about who you are.

For the most part, the world's response to the crisis in Syria was to make it worse. I continue to wonder what it means that we weren't able to come together as a species and create the healthiest outcome.

I'd like to try out arguing that these things are inevitable and we'll never have the wisdom to avoid tragedies like the Syrian disintegration. Anybody want to argue that we actually can take that creative power?

Everything about Syrian conflict is super complicated. I don't know how helpful an example Syria is if you're trying to start a broader discussion about [humanity-good] vs [humanity-evil]. It's definitely not like there was some moment where humanity had a choice : good vs bad, and then they just opted for bad.

Not sure what you're looking for tho. If you want to make a broader point about how evil arises out of [ complex situation where no one moral agent is responsbile, but collectively, [bad thing] happens] then maybe, but you didn't seem to be doing this?

It's a weird thing. This thread has caused me to kind of mainline self-reflection. I realize that my approach to posts is to do a sort of meta-reflection on them - not agree or disagree but... flip things around and recontextualize stuff in a meta way. I'm not the only one who does this. @unenlightened does it too, and you have a penchant for it as well. But in this concentrated crucible type of thread, all of that breaks down. It's a little bit like a storm. Or 'sweet hellfire.' My gut reaction is to pull back and be like, whoa whoa, actually we need some boundaries, or limitations on this meta-stuff. But this is kind of hypocritical considering my usual m.o. It's something like: I want most people to not be doing the meta-stuff, so I can do it comfortably. The meta-position is a position of power, right, or like @unenlightenedsaid, it's the view of the charioteer. It's kind of freaky when everyone seems to be in on it. It's like someone came in and turned all the lights on, bright flourescent. Suddenly everyone can see my trick, and dammit, I don't like it.

For better of for worse, this is the most stressful thread I've ever participated in. A conversation about patterns of conversations. Every post is both part of the conversation and also an object to be talked about as example within the conversation....ahhhh

it's very simple. I want the tclark book of

Five Tips For Being Married To Someone ( Its Ok Even Though Its Been a Long Time, We Love Each Other But Sometimes Still..)

can't help but think that, to a good extent, the content of this thread is a great showcase of its title

I'm in a weird mood tonight --down for any outside analysis, however brutal.

One thing that I want to know, for my own purposes, is how you and your wife kept it going through all of that? For real! It's (no-irony) heroic. My girlfriend & I have been through all sorts of ups and downs. It's hard to love a person through all of those tectonic shifts (especially when you think, deep down, they might deserve something better)

Well-said, for sure.

You seem very smart and well-poised, so I want to challenge you - you can handle it. I read your post and I have nothing to say. It's all quite right. It's all exactly the thing to say. The more I try to respond, the more I slip. There's nothing to disagree with. It's all quite perfectly said.

So: I feel like I'm looking at a linguistic photograph of yourself, one you took. I go to respond to you, and I find there's no one there. But I do know there's someone there. Still: I'm confronted with a criss-cross rhetorical net of the 'right thing to say.' I know this could quickly make me the bad guy in the convo, but, w/e, its a philosophy forum:

What are you saying? I legitimately don't understand. You're talking about your posts, and how your posts, but I feel like --- it just feels like a platonic..post. I feel like I'm lacking nutrients.

Thank you, no I think this is an awesome place to start. I saw a study somewhere, can't remember where, that talked about how classical gender differences are more pronounced in lower-middle class families. I wish I knew where - I'll try to find it - but that mirrors my experience as well.

I was born and raised in a solid middle-class family. My parents got divorced when I was about 14 and things fell apart. Lots of social stigma (we were catholic) + dad made most of the money, so now we were poor, really poor. Actually, I'm not sure how much that matters. Because I spent time at both well-established and not-established friend houses all throughout my childhood. Just more, after the divorce.

Gender differences are real, super real, in non-middle-class families. It's hard to put it into words. It's just woven into the texture of the house. I hesitate to even call it patriarchal - the wife has tons of power. It's just --- i don't know, its this palpable unspoken thing.

One thing I noticed, shuttling back and forth between these communities: the middle (or upper-middle) class guys, a lot of them, seemed dimly aware of some.... we lived in a small town, everyone ran into each other at town events: the 4th of july parade etc. There was a lot of class criss-crossing, just because of how small the town was. The wife of so-and-so had her [x] repaired by [y] and why couldnt her husband have done it. etc.

Classes weren't separated geographically, like they are everywhere else.

So: The wives of the middle class men had a sort of nuclear weapon, which they would use. I saw it. In my own mom many times, but also with others. If the husband stood up for something then: 'oh tough guy can't even [x] like [y]'

I think this is a mean-spirited move. I don't see any benefit to it. But I've seen it happen many times. And I think it's unfair. Deeply, i do. Because the thing goes like this: If two men compete for who can do this meaningless task --- the wife looks on and says 'oh men, fighting over who's best at this stupid task"

but then in a different moment, woman and husband alone, the wife asks her husband to to do task [x] and he struggles and he says: I'm looking up how to do it. 'oh of course, he has to get the manual' the wife says, or something like that, and now it means 'you can't do it right, like the other guys can' and suddenly this meaningless thing which can be laughed at as 'oh, just men' has been elevated into a hyper-meaningful test of masculinity.

And the worst thing is when you get caught in between. Taking something seriously (because you know you'll be appraised on it seriously) but judged for it because, right now, the game is something different, where what you're doing is seen as just goofy.

I've been thinking about this more. It is true, I was ridiculing your point, I thought in a gentle and friendly way. Teasing is a rhetorical device I use often. That doesn't seem like the bad kind of humor to me. If it does to you, I'll at least plead nolo contendere.

It's ok. & Actually this might be an fortuitous thing, one way to get at this. So I wasn't personally offended (or, ok, maybe just a little) but I saw that you were offering a certain view of things that I didn't agree with, and wanted to counteract it. I got frustrated when the response to my version was that you were just joking. Going over this, I totally believe you, that that's how you saw it.

My experience was something like: He's saying I'm doing this to make a point, or to bolster a point already made. but when I say I'm not, he says he's just making a joke. So what moves are left me? I think this is kind of the same experience, right, that we're talking about?

For instance: Someone could respond to what you're saying by: we’re just laughing, wacky men etc. it's a joke and so forth

So I think we both kind of have a common place to start from: what is it about that 'wacky men' thing that irks?

Well, maybe I was. I was caricaturing your position as a way to lead into my point. Is that what you meant? Is that a bad thing.

I don't think its a bad thing, necessarily. Caricatures help sharpen the edges and make the point more palpable. It can be a good thing. But if you caricature to make a point, you have to falsify what the person you're caricaturizing was actually saying. That's ok, but they might have legitimate complaints about being fit into that mould.

For example: Take men.

It appears to be easy to make them look ridiculous. I don't like that — tclark

None of us do!

awright awright. I do want to say: I didn't think your intention was to try to put me in my place or anything, I'm not that self-conceited. I thought you were making a broader point about the flow of the thread, and fitting me in it in a certain way, one post among others, all illustrations of that point. If you weren't doing that, then that's my bad.

Ahhh but this is exactly the kind of 'joke' I was talking about! :joke: You created a clear narrative - an emoticon or joke isn't a charm that prevents people from contesting it. Your narrative was meant as a build-up illustrating a point you took seriously. :rofl:
I objected to the narrative :razz:

I think I was pretty measured in my response though. I don't think I was just hand-wringing for recognition, as your post suggests. I do feel guilty, but only because I've done that same thing syntax was describing. Exactly. I regret doing it, but don't think I'm inherently bad. I just think it's a bad coping device. I felt guilty before this thread but the discussion just helped crystallize what was irking me.

And I don't feel bad because I'm a male. I think it's a game men are prone to play, but I think women are prone to play equally problematic games. I wrote a paragraph explaining why I think your frustration was valid, and what I saw in it. And I meant it. I like men too.

Let's not forget humour (what counteracts depression) and positive relationships between people either, otherwise culture deteriorates and we would live within a mechanistic environment where responses are without quality of character. You breed weakness on both ends of the spectrum, so it is about achieving the balance between the two.

For sure. Don't get me wrong: I love humor. Some of my best friends are humorous.

But humor is a double-edged thing. It can be cathartic if it's a shared thing: the virtue of stand-up comedians is that they can deliver, on stage, to a crowd, a version of the same thing that crowd experienced but was too nervous to talk about it. There's a release.

There is another sort of thing that goes by the name 'humor' but is really just [lets treat this thing this person said in a humorous light so its not taken seriously]. I'm focusing on this type of humor, just because I think it syncs up with what tclark was talking about.

There are a billion and a half forms this can take. So talking with Tclark I identified one. It's a way of deflating someone something brings up because that same comment, in a broader perspective, can be seen as [dumb male being dumb]. This isn't the only form of this tho. There's plenty of misogynistic variants of this as well. In a [serious men discussing serious problems] context, the serious men might respond to a good point brought up by a woman as [rolls eyes, of course she'd say that. Typical woman, am I right?]

All of which is to say: humor isn't just humor. There's a whole jungle of things that are brought under that one umbrella.

tldr: I think you're absolutely right, what you said, but its complicated. Humor can be helpful, but it can also be harmful. It all depends.

Yeah, those men. Ha, ha, ha, ha. LOL. So funny. Ha, ha, ha. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I hear you but I also think it depends on why are these comments being made. So Syntax initiated this line of thought, but did so in response to pretty specific thing: games people play. I haven't read the book, but I understand it to be something like a taxonomy of ritualistic 'games' that let people maintain certain identities at the expense of their well being. Fdrake had brought up that book as a means for identifying bad coping mechanisms and, in that light, I think the post about male egos fighting for the authority-position made sense. I liked Syntax's post because I recognized myself in it. Since reading it, I've been much more cautious not to fall into that kind of pattern (1) because I recognize I'm prone to (I got bitter-mean at Streetlight a few months back, for no good reason, very much in the vein of that 'game,' and am still embarrassed) & (2) because it hurts me. It's a bad coping mechanism. I resort to it when I feel defeated for one reason or another, and want to symbolically assert myself somewhere else. It's good to see the dynamic spelled out. Next time I feel myself tending that way I can think 'oh man, this is just like that thing from that post.'

But I also think that, sometimes, this kind of thing can be done for this reason: To try to undermine the importance of an issue a male raises. Some guy might bring up something difficult for them - they may even do so in questionable language; not all of us were lucky enough to get properly socialized about male/female issues - and then 'oh, men, lol' with a certain tone or expression just utterly delegitimizes what they're talking about. Which isn't good. Because that problem doesn't go away. Instead they retreat back to the safety of [wherever] and nurse their problem until it maybe metastasizes into something worse (misogyny, misanthropy etc.)

I'm guilty of doing this kind of thing to people too, in different ways, so I get the urge. I don't think - I'm not sure - that Timeline and Sytax have done this (tho maybe the 'calm yourself' response is bordering on it.) I do think certain ways of tackling this thing are profoundly damaging, even if they feel justified and good in the moment. But I also don't think these kinds of discussions are bad tout court

Forgive me for unloading that. It's been building up in my head since I watched Phantom Thread (definitely see it, its great) the other week and I seized the opportunity.

I will say this

the choreography of his beast moments enraptured me.

Talking about his movies on the level of plot does miss this altogether. He's incredible at this kind of thing - Punch Drunk Love captures the feeling of bubbling rage like no other movie I know. I don't want to spoil Phantom Thread any more than I already have, but I think he captures another sort of moment, on a visceral level, just as well.

I want to try to bring this all back. The pessimist view is centered around a demand. The pessimist is someone like Barry, hounded by anxiety-eliciting phone calls. Besieged constantly. What he does isn't confront Hoffman. Instead he says: Listen: life consists of these awful, immiserating phone calls. Do what you will, the phone calls will keep coming. What you need to do, then, is always be aware that no matter what you do, a phone will eventually ring. That's what it comes down to: we run around all we want, but all we're really doing is ignoring a ringing phone.

Or in other words: They've settled down and set up camp at the beginning of the whole thing. And the culture of it: don't try to figure out where the calls are coming from. They're just bad, is the thing, they hurt. The point is to recognize they hurt.

For me the basic threat of the nihilistic vision settled in after a sincere teenaged attempt to get religion. I've read lots of thinkers, but really they all seem like footnotes to Nietzsche, at least as far as salvational force is concerned. 'Live well or off yourself ' was the take-home. The intermediate states basically lost their appeal. And that's where a soft version of embracing the monster slips in. Yeah, the world is 'evil' and 'fucked.' But Jesus the devil hates lukewarm ideology! Don't hurt non-enemies, but reach guiltlessly otherwise.

I think I'm in pretty close to the same boat, through (maybe) a different path?

I was raised religious (not super-strictly, but religious enough) and had the nihilistic vision in response to that. I guess more accurately it was visited upon me. We had been studying the egyptians in school and I was like man they really believed in that stuff, as much as we believe in christianity. Wait, how do we know we're right?? It sounds pretty quaint now, but it really shook me (I was little). I did the angry fuck-you-dad New Atheist stuff, but it was preceded by a real trauma. But anyway, got into Nietzsche because I thought he'd fit my angry atheist thing, and was quickly, blessedly, disappointed. I was disappointed with that disappointment at first, but then it was great. Lucky enough to have a few friends in high school who 'got it' too. Strangely, I got into pessimism after Nietzsche. (was really into it, which might explain my impassioned responses here) But then got Nietzsche again, better, after that. I think Pessimism is kind of great as a station along the way. Affirmation is great, but pure Affirmation, without building up the pessimistic antibodies, can wind you up self-poisoned at the foot of a charismatic leader.

For me, the master is the 'male' who narcissistically enjoys himself from the perspective of his ideal admirer. And the admirer is a chaos who thirsts for an escape from an unbounded cognitive dissonance. (For me this touches on the treacherous terrain of the heterosexual situation. In short, men and women use another as flattering mirrors.)

I agree with both characterizations. I am wary of reading it along hetero/homo lines. Not signalling here, I swear, but I've known both homo and hetero couples who exemplify both kinds of relations. I would agree, tho, that hetero relations, in general, seem more often to reflect this pattern. I don't know if that's an essential tendency or a social one - not rhetorical, I'm really not sure, don't lean one way or the other.

This sounds right. There is also the possibility of a dangerous alignment of the superego and the inner child (of authenticity and criminality.) There is a personality type that can be ashamed of its virtue as a kind of compromise or cowardice. 'I should be true to my anti-social desire to get the most out of this life. I should just let my rage or my lust run free, even if it gets me killed.' .

Yeahhh, agree. There's some literature (mostly french) on the Marquis de Sade along these lines. The weird thing about his monstrosity is how meticulous it is. 100 Days of Sodom, for instance, doesn't feel all that animal at all - it's more like an exhaustively worked out system of perversity.

Now I'm not personally this 'crazy,' but I understand the position. I can hear that monster grunting in the basement. On the other hand, I think being aware of that monster is one way to keep that monster in check. This is just the old idea that large scale evil tends to be done in the name of the good. Mobs and fanatics can become this monster all while imagining themselves the agents of virtue.

Very much agree with this as well. While the tendency of my post was to try to minimize the element of monstrosity, I think it would be dangerous to propose some state (of being) where everything's been smoothed out so well that there's no longer any need to take into account monstrosity at all.

Oh yes. Great director. I watch everything he does. — syntax

Ok awesome. So of course there's a lot going on in his movies and they can't be reduced to any single theme. Nevertheless, I think there's a very strong through line that deals with exactly the kind of stuff we've been talking about. Let me know to what extent you think this reading (inarticulate child/controlling parent) works:

Starting with

Punch-Drunk Love.

Starting here because I think this is where PTA really begins to deal most explicitly with the inarticulate rage of the child-like part of ourselves. Barry is a kind of caricature of those who meet the demand that we become an adult with an anxious superficiality. Everything about him is low-rent and just-barely-making-it (selling crap out of a garage etc) but he still insists on his fancy suit, even when everyone around him sees it (rightly) as laughably out of proportion to what he actually does.

His relationship to women is totally tarnished by his sisters. They mercilessly undermine him, at every term. His whole existence is an attempt to maintain a facade of legitimate adulthood while dealing with a simmering rage in the face of these humiliations. These humiliations largely come, unannounced, through the phone. His way of expressing his frustration is through simple, unthinking violence.

And, significantly, the only way he can think to attempt intimacy is also through the phone. He deals with intimacy the same way he deals with business - he wants to keep things at a safe, superficial level. But it doesn't work. He taps into a deeper structure with a severe, threatening core (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), which assails him brutally trying to get payment. He was looking for intimacy but we got was: manipulative woman trying to use him, backed by an almost archetypical vengeful force.

But Barry doesn't confront. Instead he looks for an Elsewhere he can go by quietly manipulating the world. Find the inconsistencies (like a poorly calculated pudding promotion) and use to it go to Hawaii.

This is a false solution. As soon he's back, he's still hounded by p hoffman et al. Everything comes to an end only when he confronts him with the phone.

It'd be a happy ending, only he promises to stay close to Lena by using his frequent flier miles to accompany her around the world. I don't know if this intentionally symbolic, but by using something ill-earned (earned through quiet manipulation ) he undermines his heroic standing-up. And I think it does matter because

There Will be Blood

The role of the protagonist has switched. Punch Drunk Love sees PTA identifying (or asking us to identify with) the impotently-raging schlemiel, against the malevolent controller. Here things get switched around. We recognize Daniel Plainview's massive flaws, but we still respect him, or are at least in awe of him. (want to emphasize this. There Will be Blood is certainly not a celebration of Plainview, but its most sympathetic to him.) Paul Dano, on the other hand, is seen as a shrewd manipulator. He's contemptible, and the movie is basically about how Plainview's skilled attempt at control is ever-shadowed by a weak manipulator with whom he has to vie.

The way I understand this is PTA identified with Barry in Punch-Drunk Love, embraced his standing-up to the distant controller, but has now go on to identify with the controller himself, and to be haunted by the strategms of the weak, manipulative part of himself. The outcome is sheer bitter humilation (the bowling scene, i drink your milkshake.) The end is so absurd and comical in relation to the tenor of the rest of the movie but I think that's the point. All of this struggle ends in a bizarre, childish humiliation that the director and audience recognizes has been won at the expense of Plainview's soul.

There are no women, really, in There Will be Blood

So The Master: Already mostly said what I wanted. But instead of identifying with either character, the movie focuses on the dynamic itself, and what's gone wrong.

Skipping Inherent Vice for now

Phantom Thread

So the protagonist is also super concerned with control. Also super concerned with an endless supply of ideal women, each of whom he can use as a muse, for however long it works, then discard them. I have a lot to say about this movie but I'll try to sum it up quickly, because this post is out of control. One woman is not discarded. Why? Once she realizes that he's not going to come out and dance, or do anything enlivening ever, she very firmly begins to negotiate with him (in a very weird, maybe unhealthy way, but still) He will be in control when he needs to make the dresses. She will stay on for that, but only if he is willing to weaken himself and depend entirely on her, periodically.

Personally I think this kind of thing is only the beginning of a potentially much more healthy negotiation, but its at least a right step. They do go out and dance, but its a slow waltz in a mostly empty place. Baby steps tho.

geez, tldr; But basically I think that this movement kind of works as a intricate dramatization of this:

So the monster I mention is also a friend. We've got to negotiate with the little bastard. He's a threat to life and yet the source of what makes life worth preserving. (Or is this little bastard a she?)

One way to interpret savage flair-ups on forums, for instance, is in terms of two big daddy-egos trying to parent one another. Neither 'omniscient father' will cede the other the phallus-conch, so the ostensible 'content' is thrown away and the essential desire to humiliate/subjugate/parent is manifested in 'castrating' insults.

Oof, hits close to home. Think you're right tho.

I can't stress how much building a daily routing out of the above will benefit your life. Try it for a week or two and report back. — Dogar

Also second this. I have a lot of problems with Peterson on an intellectual level, but I think a lot of his life advice is really good.

Other than that, if you have no trouble with helping others emotionally - or at least find it easier than helping yourself - try to think of yourself as another person and ask how you'd try to help them... Then do it, as best you can. — fdrake

Second this. Something that helped me immensely was looking at my self-talk, and then imagining saying the same things to someone coming to me for help. Holy moly.

Another method is to imagine you and your friend who needs help having a conversation. Maybe you've found a quiet warm-lit place in a room away from the rest of the party. And then someone mean-spirited walks in and starts berating your friend. You wouldn't argue with this person, because he clearly just feels like being mean. He'll twist your words one way or another, even if you make a valid point. Engaging won't help. Instead you'd just help you friend ignore him while you offer him your advice.

One last approach. Imagine that the person who walks into the room is drunk and confused. He thinks there's something dangerous out there, but he's afraid to tell you what it is. He wants to keep your friend safe, to make sure he doesn't leave the room, but the only way he can think to do it is tell elaborate tales of the danger, and how your friend would never be able to deal with it. You can then recognize his good - if confused - intentions, but nevertheless disregard them. 'Thanks man, we got it' then turn to your friend 'he means well, he's just confused, he does this all the time, now back to what we were talking about'

The solipsist, meanwhile, will just say that any trump card he confronts, he must have played himself.