Bukowski/Watts on Humanity

[7Wannabe5]

Happy Independence Day!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gao7FlscV7M

[Stahlmann]

This is very clichéd.

[BRUTE]

brute has never been lonely. he's been in a room -- he's felt suicidal. he's been depressed. he's felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but he never felt that one human could enter that room and cure what was bothering him...or that any number of humans could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something he's never been bothered with because he's always had this terrible itch for solitude.

[7Wannabe5]

@Stahlman: Maybe that feeling is due to where the thumbtack was pushed into the timeline? Too much Grandma's polyester panties rather than Great-great-grandma's silk corset?

@BRUTE: 7Wannabe 5 has developed the perspective that "In nature the skin is as much a joiner as a divider, being, as it were the bridge whereby the inner organs have contact with air, warmth, and light.”

This juxtaposition of Bukowski and Watts kind of reminded me of the juxtaposition of "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" and "The Moneyless Manifesto." If we start from the premise that the ideal is "self-aware self-care" and define "selfish" as something like "boundaries placed too near, rigid and impermeable" and "self-less/self-indulgent" as "boundaries placed too distant, flimsy and permeable", then maybe we could crudely sort thinkers into preferred pattern advocacy boxes on this basis.

IOW, if we are hoping to create a lifestyle system that will maximize the quality of "freedom", how does this relate to social "response"-ability and/or/vs. contract?


"I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!”-Bukowski (and BRUTE?)

“Money is an abstraction. It cannot, of itself, buy any pleasure whatsoever. Because all pleasures involve skill and love.”-Watts (and 7Wannabe5?)

[ThisDinosaur]

I'm intellectually "distant boundary" , but cognitively "near boundary." IOW, I buy the Gaia Hypothesis that all living things + the planet itself are part of a superorganism. There is no self. But I don't particularly enjoy being in crowds of humans.

Also, that Watts quote is nonsense. Lots of pleasures involve neither skill nor love, and you can have both of those in the absence of pleasure.

[7Wannabe5]

@ThisDinosaur:

I get what you are saying about the Watts quote, I immediately came up with a few counter-examples myself. But, I think it depends a bit on the definitions you apply. I gave him credit for meaning something more like what we might now choose the word "flow" to describe. Flow is supposed to occur at the intersection of maximized skill and arousal. "Skill" and "love" are also often used in the stead of concepts such as masculine/feminine energy or "doing/being" in new age-y east/west morph writings. As in, "If you fully relax in your feminine energy, you will be love."

I found the Bukowski quote BRUTE borrowed interesting because as somebody who is fairly neutral, balanced on the E/I spectrum, I don't find the "itch for solitude" the antidote for "loneliness." IOW, people who "need" solitude seem just as needy to me as people who "need" sociability. It is pretty obvious to me that I am correct in this supposition because both the acquisition/maintenance of solitude and company can cost money. Just like heat and air-conditioning and analogously depending on context.

However, I don't mean to pick on extreme extroverts/introverts. Any sort of imbalanced functioning will add expense. I am practically handicapped due to the fact that I am 98% N and only 2% S, so I have to "pay" other people to be alert for me. I think maybe this also causes me to get more pleasure from fireworks displays and less pleasure from baseball than the average human.

[ThisDinosaur]

"Flow" is distraction. Maybe even confidence. Its not the same thing as happiness, which is how I've seen it defined elsewhere. There may be something to be said for being too busy to think about whether or not you're happy.

Without getting too semantic, you are using some specific cultural assumptions about what masculine and feminine characteristics are. Bukowski complains about marriage and children as false victory or whatever. Jordan Peterson argues that the most reliable course to happiness involves the standard, culturally accepted life path: 1)career where you're respected, 2)spouse you're attracted to, 3)children who are healthy. I think both are arbitrary opinions but I lean more toward Peterson being correct because it fits with my view of humans as social animals.

[7Wannabe5]

@ThisDinosaur: I suppose it is true that the flow state isn't the state of happiness, but it seems to me that I am usually happy in direct proportion to the extent to which I am experiencing flow.

I was "married" to a Persian-born ENXJ for a few years, and have also been in relationships with men from other cultural backgrounds, so I am well aware of how cultural assumptions regarding gender behaviors/roles, and also what constitutes "marriage", can vary. One thing I have found to hold true about male behavior cross-culturally is that it is almost always the case that men believe that men from other cultures (classes/high-school lunch tables/sports teams) do not know how to be men or how to treat their women. It is boring for me to have to listen to that sort of thing again and again, but it comes in handy sometimes. I would also tend towards agreement with Peterson, but would wonder if there wasn't some room to pick your own culture first? Kind of sucks if the only way you can reliably steer yourself towards happiness is largely dependent on circumstances at birth.

[BRUTE]

I am practically handicapped due to the fact that I am 98% N and only 2% S, so I have to "pay" other people to be alert for me.

brute is practically handicapped from being 98% introvert.

[BRUTE]

Jordan Peterson argues

"argues" is a strong word for what Peterson does. "says loudly" fits better. at least Bukowski never pretended to have more than an uneducated opinion.

[ThisDinosaur]

Peterson is a good example of how smart you can sound while saying nothing with a big vocabulary and lots of name drops. For someone who hates postmodernists so much, he sure communicates like one.

Nevertheless, I think he's on to something. I think there is a sort of Basic Human Nature that can be gleaned from patterns in literature and history. There are things that reliably correlate with human happiness nearly universally. Maybe not as universal as Plato would think, but common enough that they look like a list of clichés. Things like having a family and a community. It's why being different can feel lonely, even for introverts (brute notwithstanding).

[BRUTE]

brute would agree that certain patterns of behavior are "good" on a biological basis, if the goal is for humans to to survive and procreate. for example, eating and sleeping are "good" because they are biological needs for survival. community is also a biological need, though slightly different in implementation and consequences. but to lock in a specific model of community (nuclear family + church + career) seems a bit hasty to brute. as far as brute has learned about humans, the nuclear family hasn't existed in its current form (and by current, brute means the 1950s form, as it's already changed) for very long, and most humans outside the west still don't experience it. their families are often organized differently.

if "well-being" is the metric, the nuclear family has no chance compared to the clan-like extended family structure of many Asian or Mediterranean cultures, for example.

[ThisDinosaur]

Doesn't have to be a nuclear family. But a close tribe and occasional coupling off are nearly essential to subjective well being. (I'm now curious if Asexuals have significantly more depression than gen pop.) If you've been so fortunate to watch any Hollywood movie ever made, you'll notice that they almost always have to have a love interest for the main character. Notice that the relationship tends to be in its earliest stages. Its rare to have a couple with years of backstory unless THAT is the source of conflict. I think that's because a new romantic relationship is one of those things that is near-universal appealing.

[7Wannabe5]

Meaning is the most profound manifestation of instinct. Man is a creature attracted by the unknown; a creature adapted for its conquest. The subjective sense of meaning is the instinct governing rate of contact with the unknown. Too much exposure turns change to chaos; too little promotes stagnation and degeneration. The appropriate balance produces a powerful individual, confident in the ability to withstand life, ever more able to deal with nature and society, ever closer to the heroic ideal. Each individual, constitutionally unique, finds meaning in different pursuits, if he has the courage to maintain his difference. Manifestation of individual diversity, transformed into knowledge that can be transferred socially, changes the face of history itself, and moves each generation of man farther into the unknown.

Doesn't really sound like Peterson is calling for blind conformity to cultural script and roles here.

My parents were both raised in the Catholic church and even attended a Catholic University. They converted to Episcopalian when I was around 10. I was given permission to leave the church after my confirmation at age 14. I practiced no religion for over 30 years. Then shortly after I read a book on the science of happiness that recommended adopting a religion, I fell in love with a practicing Muslim, and reverted myself. Then after a couple years I couldn't suspend disbelief anymore. Then a short while later, a man with whom I was on a second date, who was a practicing Catholic (church organist, in fact) took me to see the beautiful architecture of a local Cathedral, and it seemed so weird and utterly alien to me. Like I was viewing the icons in the realm of the rituals of some culture to which I had never belonged.

I think this is related to the concept that "Marriage is for amateurs." I agree that there is something in us that seeks a meaningful narrative for our lives, but sometimes in spite of good intention, and dear hopes, the struggle to achieve happiness within culturally assigned narrative often results in pure misery. I remember the occasion when my ex-husband informed me that we couldn't have a happy family because he was not a happy person. I sat on the basement stairs and cried for about two hours, then I made plans, did stuff, thought twice-three times, and eventually left him. He ended up hospitalized with severe nervous break-down 3 months later. I don't talk with him very often, although we are on friendly terms, but rumor has it that he is still a very unhappy person. So, I think that marriage tends towards averaging out the happiness level of the two participants in the marriage.

[BRUTE]

I'm now curious if Asexuals have significantly more depression than gen pop.

wouldn't asexuality imply a lowered desire for, and therefore being OK with not having (as many?) sexual relations?

[FBeyer]

Well if you need hormone A to awaken the desire to do activity Aa then you will feel less inclined to to activity Aa.

If activity Aa is responsible for the release of chemical B, which causes happiness, then the net effect is a person that is not at all motivated to do activity Aa that releases B, possibly resulting in a deficiency.

Being unable to make oneself do things that are beneficial is not a rare occurence at all. Why couldnt asexuality result in higher levels of depression?

[ThisDinosaur]

Less Wrong has a write up that summarizes the current evidence about what makes people happy. Among the variables you can control, the top two are love/relationship satisfaction and career satisfaction. Obviously that second one will fall flat on this forum, but I could reframe it as a satisfying Calling or a challenging but attainable goal. (i.e., Flow)

Remember the thread about supernomral stimuli?
viewtopic.php?t=8997

A couple things we talked about there were that dopamine is released while we are *seeking* reward. This jives with having a goal/purpose that we work toward regularly. Once its achieved, the opioid system kicks in but then quickly fades out. The enjoyment of attaining the reward is fleeting, and then we realize we've lost our purpose.

The other thing we learned was that supernormal stimuli are like hacks or shortcut to the desired response. Its conceivable you can find fakes and shortcuts to happiness, that are separate from the typical associations. Like, we can find out what it is about good relationships and good careers that are satisfying, and we can stimulate the brain correctly without putting in the work to get those exact things.

[7Wannabe5]

Since there are otherwise healthy, happy individuals who experience a sex drive that is approximately 5x greater than average, it makes sense that there would be otherwise healthy, happy individuals who experience a sex drive that is approximately 1/5 of average. So, if the average cultural hurdle to actually engaging in sexual behavior is set to approximately average, there would be a percentage of individuals, because only possessing V2 engines on a track built for V6, who would never be able to power over the hurdle, but wouldn't care. OTOH, sexual dysfunction in many varieties (depression, body loathing, anxiety, break-down of physiological mechanics) would be a much more common reason for lack of sexual interaction. Also, "not wanting to want" sex is likely much more common than simple "not wanting", and there is a very high prevalence of individuals who spend much of their adult life locked in masturbatory fantasy mode because they only want a variety of sex that they can't "afford."

I didn't do a very good job, but what I was trying to get at with my last post, is that if you live long enough you will get cancer, and you will also find that the conventional narrative will change underneath your feet as society changes around you, and also disintegrate in front of you on your own personal path as it increases in complexity. Jordan Peterson kind of reminds me of the Reverend E.P. Roe (19th century minister/gardener in town of West Point) and Ian Kerner (author of "Be Honest-You're Not That Into Him Either: Raise Your Standards and Reach for the Love You Deserve") I think he is underestimating the extent to which his own spot on life path is influencing his perspective on societal change, increasing the possibility that a good deal of what he is proposing will someday be read from the same perspective that a 21st century devoted gardener might bring to E.P. Roe's learned 19th century perspective on the theory of evolution, or the perspective that an experienced 50-something year old woman might bring to Ian Kerner's intelligent 30-something year old man's take on female orgasm.

Let's say I am sitting relaxed in a cafe and a male peer in his early 50s walks in pushing a baby carriage. Because I have been a parent, and I have been the younger half of an older male/significantly younger female relationship (negating resentment), the perspective I can bring to this brief encounter would allow me to fairly accurately intuit whether this man is on late first-round fatherhood, or late second-round fatherhood. Jordan Peterson vibes more like the man in late first-round fatherhood who is taking himself very seriously.

Jonathan Franzen has been described as the last of the post-modern novelists, with "The Corrections" book-ending Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh" (circa 1880.) Vonnegut's first novel "Player Piano" was published in 1952. However, I would note that Trollope's "The Way We Live Now" was published in 1875, "Tristram Shandy" was published in 1759, and Moll Flanders was published in 1722. I could go on and on, my point being that there is a consistent, long-established line of human intellectual thought that does not err on the side of taking itself too seriously. I don't know why, but it seems to me than anytime, anywhere, anybody, whether liberal political-correctness zealot, anti-post-modern mythology-as-reality advocate, Marxist, Nazi, person who only has the Bible or "The Fountainhead" on bookshelf, or young man who has just discovered the relative efficacy of cunnilingus, who takes themselves too seriously, will eventually turn out to be laughably and/or tragically wrong.

IOW, if you have reached the point where you still recognize the value of the romantic (or any similar) narrative, but you are also fully self-aware that you are choosing to inhabit the role of the ingenue (once again...) then your perspective has become unalterably post-post-modern.

[ThisDinosaur]

Doesn't really sound like Peterson is calling for blind conformity to cultural script and roles here.

if you live long enough you will get cancer, and you will also find that the conventional narrative will change underneath your feet as society changes around you, and also disintegrate in front of you on your own personal path as it increases in complexity.

I'm not saying following a cultural script is the only path to happiness. I'm saying cultural scripts partially reflect how people find happiness.

Firstly, people seek to conform. To be part of the herd. Even the western ideal of a nonconformist individual is a specific cultural role in the tribe. Second, the drive to couple off can conflict with other drives in the individual. Like how men are driven to reproduce and then flee the resulting commitment. Its what I was getting at with the comment about asexuals. Fbeyers analogy is good enough. Like a plant that develops a trait to grow AWAY from sunlight instead of towards it could either exploit shady areas with good soil that other plants ignore, or it could grow itself into darkness and wither away.

To a darwinist, diversity in a population is a good and desireable thing if the goal is to preserve the population. But it can result in drives that contradict eachother. Women who have lots of children are physiologically stressed and it impacts their health negatively. But women who have no children and don't breastfeed are at higher risk of uterine and breast cancer respectively. Likewise, reproduction is fatal to a female octopus. Executing and fulfilling your most natural biological functions uses you up. Its supposed to be this way. A parent is supposed to be The Giving Tree. Individualism is supposed to conflict with community. Your drive to have as many reproductive partners as possible is supposed to conflict with your avoidance of using up resources on too many offspring.

[BRUTE]

Well if you need hormone A to awaken the desire to do activity Aa then you will feel less inclined to to activity Aa.

If activity Aa is responsible for the release of chemical B, which causes happiness, then the net effect is a person that is not at all motivated to do activity Aa that releases B, possibly resulting in a deficiency.

Being unable to make oneself do things that are beneficial is not a rare occurence at all. Why couldnt asexuality result in higher levels of depression?

possible of course. but it's also possible that lower sex drive is a symptom of lower amounts of sex for the same hormone release. for example, humans that don't have sugar cravings - depressed because they don't get enough sugar, or "lucky" because they don't require as much sugar to sustain dopamine balance?