Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Where are you and where are you going?
7Wannabe5
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Suo:

Gotcha. I am also trying to turn a further block corner from using otherwise attractive psychological dumpster fire men as easy source of free Thai food. Makes me feel a bit too much like an asbestos covered 90 year old.

Jin+Guice
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Jin+Guice »

I think “work on yourself” and “be yourself” are sort of bad advice. Definitely work on yourself. Definitely be yourself. Unless that self-work includes developing emotional and social skills specifically tailored towards your goals, you’re going to have a more difficult time building successful relationships.

Most influence/ persuasion/ social skills books are about manipulating instantaneous social/ emotional factors. The goal is to flip a few subconscious switches to bias someone towards liking you/ doing what you want. Getting them to “do what you want” sounds shady, but again, it’s really hard to get people to do things they actually don’t want to do. Someone might be looking for an investment opportunity, why should they invest in you? Someone might want to sleep with someone, why should they sleep with you?

@Biscuits: I agree that building a strong romantic relationship is based on self-disclosure, vulnerability and honesty. I used to assume that learning about influence meant I was somehow changing myself or being dishonest to my own identity. Now I look at it like investment or gardening or any other skill. If anything it’s allowed me to be more “myself,” because I’m less worried about hiding aspects of my personality from everyone, because I’m more attuned to if they might be receptive to something.

The idea that gaining social skills or learning about how the process of dating or other social processes work in our society requires you to sell out some part of yourself is false. Seeking casual or transactional relationships does not stop someone from seeking deeper ones, though the skills required for each may be different in some aspects.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

It’s also the case that most people possess more vulnerability to reveal at 16 than by 56. I think because your perspective becomes more outward directed. Also, you can even come to value the increasingly rare event of somebody having the power to push one of your buttons. Also, blah blah blah my parents, blah blah blah my ex, blah blah blah other people’s politics...life is short, let’s find something fun or interesting to do together.

Miss Lonelyhearts
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Miss Lonelyhearts »

YOLO is not to be underestimated, but it can also be the case that if blah blah blah my parents blah blah blah my ex are the most exasperating, exhausting topics imaginable, proactive steps to extinguish smoldering embers of resentment/disillusion may be necessary for next stage of romantic maturation, much as clearing outstanding credit card debt would be necessary for graduating from salary-dependent to skill-dependent lifestyle.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Miss Lonelyhearts:

I’m not sure I follow. Do you mean that there is a further level up where listening to somebody complain about having to listen to people complain is also boring? That makes sense. I very much need to break the bad habit of allowing men to believe that I am an empathetic listener. Maybe it’s kind of the conversational equivalent of faking an orgasm when all you really felt was a bit of wet?

suomalainen
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by suomalainen »

Apropos to the conversation above about relationships with others: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/arch ... le/618529/

The article isn't all that insightful or anything, more of a timely reminder.
Recognizing this gender pattern, and also that both of us could benefit from deeper friendships, my wife and I started organizing our social life specifically around conversations about more profound issues. At the risk of becoming Mr. and Mrs. Intense, we directed dinnertime chats with friends away from trivialities like vacation plans and house purchases, and toward issues of happiness, love, and spirituality. This deepened some of our friendships, and in other cases showed us that a more fulfilling relationship wasn’t going to be possible—and, thus, where to put less energy.
Heh. I'm Mr. Intense. It does have the benefit of weeding out people who don't have the same philosophical interests as I do, which tends to be a dividing line for me between "deal friends" (my "friends of convenience") and "real friends".

ertyu
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by ertyu »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Mar 21, 2021 3:07 pm
@Miss Lonelyhearts:

I’m not sure I follow. Do you mean that there is a further level up where listening to somebody complain about having to listen to people complain is also boring? That makes sense. I very much need to break the bad habit of allowing men to believe that I am an empathetic listener. Maybe it’s kind of the conversational equivalent of faking an orgasm when all you really felt was a bit of wet?
as someone still in the blah blah blah my parents stage, I think I got her. She meant that yes, it might be exhausting, but if you haven't outgrown it, you haven't outgrown it. If you still have active pus festering under there, pretending not to notice it will only make the abscess worse. Before you can get to the stage of, "bah, life is a fucking bore when all you're focused on is this abscess," you need to drain the damn thing and you need to take some time to let it heal.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@ertyu:

I agree and friend hugs. I was actually more pointing to my own dysfunctional tendency towards too much trading “fake” empathetic listening for something else I want such as hawt sex with a depressive but otherwise sexy musician/artist type or free Thai food from an otherwise attractive man who is still in his recovery from first divorce phase. Actually, my empathy is not always fake, but there is definite possibility it will become fake or vaporize completely if over-tapped. Also, I have too often been in relationship with others who believe empathy means inhabiting same emotional space. For extreme instance, my very dysthymic, very I, very F, ex once told me that he was envious of the fact that I enjoyed sex more than him, even though he was the one with whom I was having sex!?!? :lol:

Jin+Guice
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Jin+Guice »

Money Isn't Real:

I’ve recently had the fortune to almost entirely escape using money. The two changes that enabled me to do this were 1) moving onto my friends urban garden and 2) dumpster diving. My friend allows me to work for him to pay for rent and all utilities. I hadn’t quite realize this, but I’d reduce my only recurring non-work expenses down to food and housing*.


*I still pay for cellular phone service and a Spotify subscription. I also pay rent on a rehearsal space. None of these are strictly needs, but it would drastically degrade the quality and convenience of my life if I didn’t pay for this space and those services. I also bike everywhere and pay for the occasional ferry ride, so my monthly transportation costs are not zero, but close.

To say that I don’t use money is untrue, but I’ve effectively escaped using money to satisfy my baseline needs. Instead I’ve tapped into the large unused resources and waste streams of our industrialized society.

The two things I’ve learned from this are that 1) Money is not actually real and 2) resources are abundant and everywhere.


I used to think “money isn’t real” was just something communists said to me without meaning. But it is factually true that fiat currency is a human construct. It’s a story. A myth. Money only possesses the power that we give to it and that collective narrative is what makes it real. As long as it retains the power we’ve imbued it with, money remains a useful tool. But now that I don’t use money every day, I can start to see how something that has largely defined my life and the lives of those around me is just that, a tool. It is not the resources that it allows us to purchase. Those resources are available by other means.

I think money is the most abstract concept that most people are comfortable with. No other animal can understand money. No other creature will exchange pain today for anticipated pleasure tomorrow in quite the same way we will for money. And we have become obsessed with it.

People symbolically assign money different meaning. For some it represents safety or opportunity. For others it represents fun, excitement, danger and even attraction (I have multiple friends who like to have sex on large sums of cash and have met several strippers who say money itself turns them on).

In the most recent iteration of the Wheaton Table, Jacob said his goal is to escape from industrialized consumerism. I believe examining the realities of money, what it is and isn’t is important for those who want to achieve this goal.

Before not spending money became built into my daily life, I invented a mental framework to examine whether or not to use money to accomplish something. The two questions I asked myself were: 1) What are the characteristics of the thing I am buying and can I find those elsewhere? And 2) Is it possible to achieve these characteristics without money?

I’ll use eating out in a restaurant as an example. Eating out in a restaurant provides food, but that is really very little of what’s purchased. What it really provides is an experience. It’s the experience of having someone wait on you, a specialist prepare your meal for you and someone else clean up for you. It’s also a social experience. The atmosphere and decor of the restaurant, the other tables and people around you. Perhaps it’s also a gift to yourself or a way of showing someone else you care about them or sharing the experience of a meal that neither of you had to prepare or clean up after with them. It’s possible to recreate certain aspects of this with a meal prepared at home with friends, but the entire experience itself is very difficult to recreate without a restaurant. However, this also means that I eat out infrequently, because while I do enjoy the experience, I’m never in need of all of them. Sometimes I will eat out just to satisfy some of those needs, but this is really inefficient, you pay for the full experience no matter what.

It’s possible to run this type of analysis for every purchase. After awhile you will realize that you do not need money to eat or do something interesting or accomplish your goals; however, sometimes it is the most effective method.

The second lesson I’ve learned is that resources are abundant. If you can define your true needs and figure out how to satisfy them from a waste stream or self-production rather than a purchase, you’re one step closer to escape from the industrial consumerist cave. Doing this isn’t easy. I failed at dumpster diving for years and had all but given up before I found success. The more creative you can be and the more success you have, the easier it gets to find other sources. After 6 months of dumpster diving > 95% of my food, I can say that resources are abundant and they are out there. We will not always live in the time of abundant oil and rampant consumerism, but in the time that we do, it is very difficult to go hungry.

I was inspired into this line of thinking by something Jacob said in the Wheaton Table discussion. Me paraphrasing: It’s very odd that we, the most economically rich people in history, spend most of our time obsessing over an abstraction, when the resources for our most basic material needs are most accessible. I’ll add that once our needs are met, I think there is very little utility derived from trying to increase our economic stature and that this is used as a poor substitute for satisfying our non-economic needs, which our money obsessed monoculture is uniquely bad at.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Great post. I agree with most of your observations. My only note would be that you maybe have some built in security that is not as available to old ladies attempting dirt-bag ERE.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Honest question, not attacking at all: are you happy with this lifestyle? It must have ups and downs. It is definitely a great experiment and I'm sure you are experiencing another an aspect of life that is inaccessible working for pay.

basuragomi
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by basuragomi »

The Romans spent most of their anxiety hoping the slaves didn't notice how much they outnumbered the citizens. It's telling how so much sheer effort goes into convincing people that our society has a real shortage of anything at all.

You can totally train dogs to compete with each other for tokens exchangeable for food though.

white belt
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by white belt »

While I do agree with much of the perspective in the previous post, I do find myself pushing back a bit on the “resources are abundant” piece. Yes, in a country like the USA with extremely high per capita GDP that exists almost entirely because of fossil fuel extraction, it does appear resources are abundant. The original abundance of the New World only existed because it wasn’t densely populated like the Old World and because its indigenous inhabitants were easy to kill with disease and war. But in other parts of the world, harsh competition over scarce resources is the norm. When viewed through a historical lens, the current American prosperity/exuberance is an anomaly.

So living off waste streams is possible in current highly wasteful American society, but in a low energy intensity future it likely won’t be since everyone will be trying to do the same thing along with waste already being reduced at earlier levels. Nevertheless, I think things like dumpster diving are probably fantastic tools for breaking someone out of mainstream perspectives about money, as you said.

Edit: I’m curious what a 95% dumpster diving diet looks like. What kind of foods are you eating? Is it mostly staples? Or mostly processed foods that are thrown away? Something else?

AxelHeyst
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by AxelHeyst »

white belt wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 7:21 pm
Nevertheless, I think things like dumpster diving are probably fantastic tools for breaking someone out of mainstream perspectives about money, as you said.
To add to this, I see it as a skill/practice of transition, in the same vein as JMG's transitional civilizations in 'The Ecotecnic Future'. I think the next one according to his framework is The Salvage Society - an organization that runs on dissassembling and repurposing all the materials that industrial society left lying around. So yes - in 100-500 years, there will be no dumpsters to dive, but it's a fine strategy now, in some places, while we wait for ecosystems to recover and population to decline (/fill in your particular hopes/vision of the future here).

white belt
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by white belt »

@AH

I’ll have to dig more into JMG because I know his writing pops up a lot on the forum. I think predicting timelines for collapse can be tricky because certain events can dramatically accelerate things. An example I’m thinking of that I’ve posted elsewhere is how Cuba quickly turned into a Salvage Society after the fall of the Soviet Union (in a matter of months/years, not centuries): https://youtu.be/v-XS4aueDUg

Also I’ll add that scavenging for food is quite different from scavenging for parts/other materials. The former stops working at the first sign of food shortages, the latter could still be viable for a long time like you said.

Jin+Guice
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Jin+Guice »

Gilberto de Piento wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 6:10 pm
Honest question, not attacking at all: are you happy with this lifestyle?
Ya I thought it would suck, but it is excellent. Which part sounds like it sucks? I rely extensively on my social network, which maybe is the missing piece? Like not for food or, I mean I live with my friend, but what I really mean is most of my enjoyment comes from doing things or socializing with them.
white belt wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 7:21 pm
While I do agree with much of the perspective in the previous post, I do find myself pushing back a bit on the “resources are abundant” piece. Yes, in a country like the USA with extremely high per capita GDP that exists almost entirely because of fossil fuel extraction, it does appear resources are abundant.
This is true, but I think it's a bit dangerous to think like this actually. This is not a plan that will work in all places currently or over all time frames. But it will work in most places where people possess the technology to access and internet forum. I would encourage people to retain the ability to buy food and also learn how to grow food. 3 sources are better than one.

Also, currently dumpster diving removes items from the waste stream, so it's kind of a huge ecological win imo. It does rely on a system that is a huge ecological loss, but me not dumpster diving doesn't stop that system.
white belt wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 7:21 pm
Edit: I’m curious what a 95% dumpster diving diet looks like. What kind of foods are you eating? Is it mostly staples? Or mostly processed foods that are thrown away? Something else?
I had my grocery shopping regime down really well. Like low expenditures and exactly what items to get to not waste anything. Changing to dumpster diving, the hardest part is not being able to get what you want whenever you want it. If I had like 3 refrigerators, I'd be set, bc everything is there in an upsetting amount. I am eating more processed food both because of ease and the novelty of finding expensive shit I would never buy. In general I eat pretty healthy with a lot of vegetables, which are abundant in the dumpster. The hardest things to find are tofu, peanut butter and cheese (cheese is supposed to be easy, but not in my area for some reason). I did also learn to make my own pasta and tortillas, partially out of interest and partially to have a more consistent supply. I also utilize community fridges mostly for beans and cheese. I contribute a lot to them as well as help manage one (I could live off of the extra food from the one I manage, probably, bc it is under used and over donated to).

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun May 23, 2021 4:16 pm
My only note would be that you maybe have some built in security that is not as available to old ladies attempting dirt-bag ERE.
I am def benefitting from being a fit mid-thirties white male in a rich nation. Sleaze easy mode.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Jin+Guice wrote:
Mon May 24, 2021 1:13 pm
Ya I thought it would suck, but it is excellent. Which part sounds like it sucks? I rely extensively on my social network, which maybe is the missing piece?
I had too narrow a vision of what you are doing. Your responses to some other people talking about using communiy fridges and the abundance and scarcity of certain foods gave me some more info. I'm also guessing you can garden year round in your location which isn't really possible in mine.

Jin+Guice
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Jin+Guice »

@GdP: If I was doing this out of necessity it'd probably suck. We can garden year round, but the garden is really not necessary or very productive. We probably get <10% of our food from there collectively. My friend grows a number of semi-rare crops and makes deals with local restaurants to trade them "local organic" food for free meals. That def the highest ROI on the garden. It does add redundancy to the system though.

The dumpster and community fridges have vastly more food than we could ever garden. My main problem is that I like dumpster diving which causes me to do it more often than I need to, which wastes time and then I have too much food. This is with giving away a large amount of food too.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but I also live in a trailer, which I quite enjoy. There is def a negative reaction to living in a trailer, so if I need to impress someone I make sure to have a picture of it through some papaya trees and other plants on hand. My friend lives in a tiny house made out of a shipping container on the same property, which is effectively the same, but evokes a more positive response (I told my parents I live in one too).

Jin+Guice
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by Jin+Guice »

I'm reading Charles Hugh Smith's "Survival +," which has been heavily recommended on this forum. He's got some quotes which resonated with me and partially captured what I was hoping to say in the last post so I'm including them here. Any emphasis added is my own.


Charles Hugh Smith wrote: Full spectrum prosperity is simply the recognition that "real wealth" cannot be measured by the size of one's home or range of possessions but by health (the only irreplaceable wealth), access to the FEW essentials (food, energy and water), meaningful skills deployed in meaningful work and a network of people who care about your well-being. Such mutual concern is founded on reciprocity, i.e. that you actively contribute to the well-being of those who contribute to your well-being.

Charles Hugh Smith wrote: The known sources of happiness require little to no consumption: 1. health 2. friends 3. free time to pursue interests 4. spiritual communion/worship 5. exercise/sports/play 6. gardening 7. meaningful work (unpaid qualifies).

Charles Hugh Smith wrote: If "my stuff" is no longer "me," then who and what am I? And indeed, what can I sell you if all you really need to be "yourself" and happiness is friends, minimal shelter, unprocessed food, homemade music, a library and an Internet connection and spiritual communion/worship? How much profit can I make selling you a used guitar, a DSL connection and a bag of carrots?

Charles Hugh Smith wrote: Self-reliance--what I term radical self-reliance to differentiate it from the simulacrum of "self-reliance" used to mask various levels of dependency--flows from the inner sources of security: experience, belief in oneself and a sturdy belief in the goodness and importance of positive actions, on one's own behalf and just as importantly, on behalf of others.

Charles Hugh Smith wrote: An experience-based understanding of happiness is ontologically structured around the experiences of well-being, warmth and satisfaction offered by true friendship, accomplishment, generosity, romantic and spiritual love and the humility of worship. The acquisition of externalities and superficial markers has no place in this understanding. In a parallel fashion, an independently constructed sense of self--what we term an individual's identity--grows from humility, accountability, responsibility, self-knowledge, and the strength of personal integrity, not from an illusory simulacrum of identity conjured by pronouncements ("I am a member of...") and possessions. Indeed, all that is truly valuable in one's self and identity can never be taken away or even diminished: integrity, experience, self-knowledge and humility.

Charles Hugh Smith wrote: Lip service is of course paid to such non-quantifiable measures of well-being, but the admiration and respect of the status quo, including many churches, is nonetheless reserved for the financially "successful." Those who aren't wealthy are marginalized in a Darwinian metric derived entirely from financial statistics. This is not accidental.

Water and food in their natural forms simply aren't profitable, and a low-energy intensive lifestyle is equally devoid of profit potential. If we state that the most valuable possession one can have is personal integrity, this is essentially meaningless in financial terms and therefore it is valueless in the current consumerist frame of reference. Our integrated understanding is that unprofitable concepts, experiences and objects are derealized in favor of services and goods which can be sold at enormous profit via pervasive mass media marketing. Thus personal integrity is derealized and tap water is filtered and sold at a stupendous premium in plastic bottles with a brand attached. Real food plucked from the earth is derealized in favor of packaged food loaded with an engineered mix of salt, sugar and fat that is carefully designed to trigger the "reward" centers of the human brain even as it causes chronic disease and deranges the mind.

The goal of the mass marketing/propaganda system is to create what I term an imaginary causal connection between an internal state of satiation/satisfaction (in the adolescent framework the system has established as "obvious," this passes for "happiness") and the purchase of profitable goods and services. The imaginary/fantasy character of advertising/marketing is well-known but less well known is the divergence between the initial causal connection--buying this brand of brandy causes the consumer to experience a sense of coveted elitism sorely lacking in the rest of his/her life--and the quick degradation of this initial reaction into the background insecurity of ennui (boredom)/dissatisfaction/deprivation/pain. The sad irony is that the marketing/consumerist version of happiness is actually only a facsimile of true happiness. The "consumer" experiences happiness only for the fleeting moments of selection and purchase. The inner poverty of this simulacrum remains, gnawing away at whatever fulfillment is left to the incurably insecure "consumer."

This simulacrum of happiness has been distilled down by the marketing/advertising complex to a simplistic, superficial formula: 1. You are a consumer 2. A consumer's worth is measured externally by what is owned, worn, displayed, and by what high-status markers are certified by authority (diploma, elite membership, etc.) or the mass media (desirable avatar, high profile, etc.) 3. Self-worth results from the acquisition of goods and external markers 4. The internal state of consuming/owning scarcity-valued goods and high-status markers is happiness What is left unspoken is the motivation for this formula: 5. The purpose of this formula is to profitably sell the insecure consumer an unnecessary good or marker which has an entirely imaginary connection to self-worth and happiness.

Being social mammals, humans' reproductive success depends to some degree on the level of status, power and material wealth each individual reaches; thus some 8% of the men in a wide swath of Asia carry genes which trace back to the extraordinarily prolific conqueror Genghis Khan. But to equate high social status with happiness is to confuse two complex issues: higher status may well provide more access to material sources of well-being, but happiness--a state of mind, an understanding, a practice and a process--cannot be reduced to material ownership. Indeed, numerous studies of the multi-faceted inner sensation we call happiness (which I would term well-being) conclude that the sources of happiness are largely internal and relationship-based rather than material or status-based. Common sense suggests that the security offered by wealth and income boosts well-being, but studies find additional wealth provides diminishing returns. Beyond a certain relatively low level, additional wealth in any form (cash, goods, travel, etc.) offers little improvement in well-being.

Factors often listed as sources of well-being include: Meaningful work, recreation, love, friendship and worship. We might ask: since shopping did not make the list, how did the pursuit of happiness shrivel to the pursuit of goods and services? The answer is self-evident: a secure individual identity does not require status or limitless externalities, and thus it does not offer many opportunities to sell unneeded goods and services at a profit. The first project of the marketing/advertising system is to break down internally produced self-worth and identity and replace it with a permanent insecurity.

Convince the target audience that their worth is not internally sourced but totally dependent on externalities, and you create a fundamental insecurity: one can never have enough external goods or markers to establish enduring inner security. A new fad or status marker will soon be introduced, driving down the value of whatever you own and thus your own "value" will plummet. Gratitude is impossible when there is never enough. In a peculiar dynamic, the derealization/undermining of inner security--that is, of an independently constructed sense of self--by relentless marketing has sparked the emergence of a simulacrum of identity and self-worth: the so-called self-esteem industry.

Such is the perfection of the marketing/advertising system's induced insecurity that the connection between relentless marketing and our culture's pervasive sense of inner worthlessness is never made. Rather than identify the root cause--the marketing/advertising complex--the self-esteem industry focuses on the symptoms, which it attempts to ameliorate with simplistic "feel-good" slogans ("you can be anything you want!", etc.), a counterproductive reduction in standards and a profoundly distorting goal of eliminating all metrics which might introduce a sense of diminished self-worth. Just as the marketing complex purposefully confuses happiness with consumption (and indeed, citizen with consumer), so too does the self-esteem industry confuse external metrics and slogans with inner security and well-being.

RoamingFrancis
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Re: Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Thanks for sharing. I particularly like the bit about the seven known sources of happiness. Though I might add art to that list.

Any big takeaways from the book? How has it influenced your journey, and what could those of us who haven't read it take away?

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