brute journal

[FBeyer]

... brute did abso-fucking-lutely nothing for almost 2 years. in the beginning it was great fun, and he spent lots of time with (new) friends, learned languages, lost weight, worked out, blablablablabla.

but after about 1 year of no external constraints, brute realized that being completely free didn't allow him to be "himself". there was no "himself"...

Positive Psychology has boiled people's happiness down to three major components: The Sensory, the Engaged, and the Meaningful life.
Sensory: Eating, sex, hiking, good company, concerts, exhibitions etc. These things you get better at by training your ability to appreciate them ie Mindfulness. The primary pitfall of this is Hedonic Adaptation, naturally.
Engaged: Flow, put shortly. Something that really engages you and challenges you at the same time. Something you get good at by repeated practice and by seeking out challenges that are intellectually challenging to you and also fit within your framework of interests.
The Meaningful: Doing something for others while experiencing and appreciating the effect it has. Help someone move ahead in life, do something that reaches beyond you and help your community, for any given of definition of community.

You can probably think of a prototype human who engages solely in one of these disciplines. Then try to imagine what kind of person does all of it at the same time.

Have you made these three primary modes a part of your web of goals?

Did you regularly appreciate your non-need to go to work during your time off work, or did you immediately take the free time for granted and goofed off with no sense of appreciation for the accomplishment?

[BRUTE]

@brute do you think your perspective would be more positive if you had a partner you liked spending time with?

brute wouldn't know. so far, most relationships seem more taxing than beneficial to brute.

[classical_Liberal]

...

[Ego]

Ooooh.... two great responses from classical_Liberal and FBeyer. The melding of hormesis with positive psychology. Nice.

[BRUTE]

You can probably think of a prototype human who engages solely in one of these disciplines. Then try to imagine what kind of person does all of it at the same time.

it's not that brute is unable to feel biological/momentary happiness. in fact, day to day, brute is usually very happy, and has been. he's been taking care of himself pretty well during the last few years, lots of working out, eating healthy, stress free, friendships.

but like brute mentioned in another thread, all these things are clearly distractions from the FACT that everything is meaningless. brute has merely fallen through the cracks of the hamster wheel, only to discover that there's no meaning to be found either.

[BRUTE]

.. hormesis ..

probably right. brute has always despised humans that are just running after a carrot dangles before them, but maybe that's just what they're wired to do. recognizing this does not invalidate its mechanism.

[sky]

The good thing about realizing that there is no meaning out there, is that you get to create your own meaning from within.

[FBeyer]

... all these things are clearly distractions from the FACT that everything is meaningless...

Yes, in the grand scheme of geological time scales, entropy of the universe, footprint you will leave on the history of mankind etc.

So you are now faced with a binary choice:
1) Be happy while doing meaningless tasks.
2) Be unhappy while doing meaningless tasks.

[BRUTE]

brute is not sure it's a choice

[FBeyer]

brute is not sure it's a choice

Until you have certainty, hedge your bets...
Your suffering is also meaningless, might as well not suffer.

[BRUTE]

point being, if it's not a choice, how would brute decide to do it?

[C40]

Brute can make it a choice.

[cmonkey]

cmonkey was browsing through books he thought he'd enjoy and this one reminded him of brute.

[neutral]

You can probably think of a prototype human who engages solely in one of these disciplines. Then try to imagine what kind of person does all of it at the same time.

it's not that brute is unable to feel biological/momentary happiness. in fact, day to day, brute is usually very happy, and has been. he's been taking care of himself pretty well during the last few years, lots of working out, eating healthy, stress free, friendships.

but like brute mentioned in another thread, all these things are clearly distractions from the FACT that everything is meaningless. brute has merely fallen through the cracks of the hamster wheel, only to discover that there's no meaning to be found either.

I just drop by to tell you that i like your journal and your various interventions on the board.
I can relate in that i am also usually quite happy and i take care of myself, have learned to significantly decrease my stress level and keep working out. "good boy" The flip side is that i also often feel like "i am simply not there". This strange feeling that i lack a serious goal a kind of epiphany to wake up and act.

[7Wannabe5]

Consider this. How is your lifestyle different from that of a lady-who-lunches or a kept sugar-baby? Maybe the fact that past-you is keeping current-you doesn't make enough of a difference.

[BRUTE]

@7Wannabe5: brute does not understand

[FBeyer]

A pampered life can often feel unfulfilling.
The past-BRUTE that saved money is now pampering current-BRUTE who doesn't HAVE to do a lot of things and is now feeling void of purpose.

Working with a purpose seems tremendously more fullfiling than idling without purpose.

[7Wannabe5]

My odd commentary was based on the fact that your description of your state of ennui reminds me of the state of ennui I found myself in around 5 or 6 years ago when I was focusing on extreme minimalism and then found myself in the position of being a "kept" woman.

I might not be able to explain very well, but to offer an extreme example, imagine waking up in the morning to the lifestyle of a pioneer woman living in a sod house with 5 children under the age of 8 vs. waking up in the morning to the lifestyle of a sugar-baby being kept by an affluent older man who is not around most of the day. Whatever your philosophy may be, it would be difficult to FEEL (achieve bio-chemical state) like you were useless or dispensable or light-weight or not-the-adult in the first circumstance, and it would become increasingly difficult to not FEEL that way in the second circumstance. I think I might have somewhat of a unique perspective on this sort of thing because I had a good deal of responsibility for the care of others relatively early in life, and then rather suddenly found myself in the opposite situation early in mid-life.

Okay, so if you are a sugar-baby, one of your few primary responsibilities is to maintain your Zone 00 (skin sack) reasonably attractive to your "keeper." The process by which you accomplish this is going to be at least 80% impossible to distinguish from the process by which any person with a good deal of free time would behave in order to maintain himself as healthy and reasonably presentable/groomed. So, maybe you spend most of most of your mornings at the hot yoga studio. Then you go get your nails done or buy a new dress or out to lunch with some girlfriends who are also underemployed. Then you have to figure out how to keep yourself entertained or occupied until your keeper comes home and takes you out for dinner. So, you might choose to do something with your time that would have virtually the same biochemical effect as playing a video game.

Money is a stock that has a different set of flows and regulating feedback loops than the biochemicals in your brain that determine the complexities of your mood or emotional outlook. So, what I am theorizing is that there is a limit to the extent to which work you did in the past and stored as a stock of money, can contribute to a biochemical state of feeling "useful", or as though your behavior is tied to something "meaningful" in the present or future.

However, I absolutely don't mean to convey that endlessly taking on responsibility or focusing far beyond self is highly functional, or likely to create ideal biochemical balance either. "Bleak House" by Dickens is on my list of 20 Best Novels Ever. I frequently reference his character of Mrs. Jellyby , who is obsessed with political/charitable action to benefit an African tribe to the extent that she completely neglects the care of her own body, family and home. A person with adequate funds (or financial support of other individual with adequate funds) could also choose to spend all time and energy on virtually nothing but care and maintenance of their own physical health and appearance, and could similarly be offered up as a humorous character. When any system is optimized in one dimension, what will result is a feeling associated with a visualization of lack of depth, domain or fully developed complex character.

Something like that...I currently find myself in a bit of a funk and/or tangle ( or situation like that created 2/3 of the way into "The Cat in the Hat") from which I am not at all sure how to best extricate myself, so take with huge grain of salt.

[BRUTE]

..take with huge grain of salt.

brute loves salts.

what 7Wannabe5 describes sounds pretty close to what brute has been doing. brute has recently returned to a job, and currently is looking into wasting his time in more fulfilling ways.

[BRUTE]

The answer always seemed obvious to brute. There is no threshold that makes humans greater than the sum of their parts, no inflection point at which they become fully alive. they can't define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. Humans fancy that there's something special about the way they perceive the world, and yet they live in loops, as tight and as closed as the hosts do, seldom questioning their choices, content, for the most part, to be told what to do next.