Being young today feels like showing up at a party late because you got stuck in traffic and joining a game of monopoly that’s already halfway finished, because it’s just too awkward to have you sitting around doing nothing. The others are telling you: “No we just started like ten minutes ago, anything can still happen.” But it’s really obvious who’s going to win.
Bosses today complain that zoomers are not motivated at work. Why would they be motivated? When I realized how much my employer pays out in dividend and how my employer has no intention to pay me a pension, I realized the game is rigged and I’m going to half-ass anything I do.
The statistics say that Zoomers want to be “influencers”. And who can blame them? The main reason people marry is because it is an insurance against being alone. But if you’re famous, you never have to be alone. Once you have 10,000 subscribers on Youtube, you have a community. You’ll have people in every Western country who’d be happy to meet you.
Frankly, I find it fascinating our society has managed to function for as long as it has. When you truly realize what it means, to be a Henry Kissinger, a Charli XCX, a Marilyn Manson, an M. Night Shyamalan, a Kim Jong Un, a Harisson Ford, a Princess Alexia, a Marina Abrámovic, anyone whose name rings a bell really, you have to wonder, how do generations of people just accept being nobody?
Society has to beat you into accepting being unknown. That’s really what the schooling system is designed to do: Turn people into obedient working bees, with that defeated sullen look in their face. The war on drugs serves that purpose too. I don’t even mean it in the sense so much of making you question authority, or preferring nature over civilization.
No, people who take stimulants become too full of themselves too. You can have the traders in the City of London snort some coke, you can have the politicians snort some adderall before an important speech, sure. But you can’t have all the teenagers snort cocaine, they’ll become convinced they’re destined to be cloud rappers and models and won’t settle for less. You need some of them to be convinced to operate the counter at a convenience store in a dying town.
People think the ego death triggered by psychedelics is incompatible with this society of ours. But any sort of ego inflation is just as dangerous. When you have a college student who can pay her rent with her Onlyfans, there’s no going back. Your mind won’t accept a normal job anymore, even when the wrinkles start to show up. Celebrities die young for a reason. It’s the most cruel thing you can do, to have people’s lives peak in their twenties. The 27 club is for rock stars, the rappers die at 21.
There’s really a pretty narrow band of mental states compatible with our way of life. Think too deeply about climate change or animal agriculture and you can’t really go through the motions anymore. Be too racist and you can’t function in this society, despite your views being widespread one or two generations ago. Inflate your ego too much and you can’t do it anymore either. Kill your ego and you end up living in a van by the side of the river. There’s a handful of people we need to feed Adderall, a handful we need to feed prozac, to shift them back into that narrow band of compatible mental states. But it’s surprising, how many people we end up able to fit within the narrow band.
It really amazes me, how a society like California manages to function. You live in San Francisco and there are billionaires everywhere, but you accept that it’s your job to maintain a database. You live in Los Angeles and you meet people who spend their lives doing tours or playing in movies, but you accept that it’s your station in life to operate the local Walmart, walk their dogs or write speeding tickets. I understand it better in the Netherlands, because everyone you run into has a shit job and is barely scraping by.
What surprises me about San Francisco is not how many homeless people there are doing fentanyl. What surprises me is how few there are. If you’re an autistic engineer who manages some database for Google with an Asian wife you met through a dating app, why are you NOT quitting your job and doing fentanyl in a tent on the sidewalk? What do you have to lose exactly?
If you live in California, are you not confronted on a daily basis with what life could be, versus what it actually is for you? In a country like the Netherlands, most of us have the comfort of only seeing these people through our screens, a Taylor Swift or a Hulk Hogan might as well be aliens from outer space for us. But for you, they’re actual people. How do you accept that?
The different levels in America in close proximity might seem really jarring, never thought of it that way.
I was down and out in Seattle, home of the original Skid Row, for quite awhile. One of the many billionaires in the city worked in a building just down the street from me but I never saw him. I was friends with a millionaire but mostly I knew a whole bunch of criminals: rapists, bank robbers, murderers. I knew a Ukrainian hit man with dot tattoos and a killer featured on America’s Most Wanted who got out on a technicality.
Yeah, it was “interesting.”
This comment of yours makes you suspect in my mind, Chuck
Mehen, in what way?
Yeah, I’m not a normal person.
“ When you truly realize what it means, to be a Henry Kissinger, a Charli XCX, a Marilyn Manson, an M. Night Shyamalan, a Kim Jong Un, a Harisson Ford, a Princess Alexia, a Marina Abrámovic, anyone whose name rings a bell really, you have to wonder, how do generations of people just accept being nobody?” What a hallow husk thinks.
Hollow ha ha. ????
I accept all of this, because I know, deep down, when the time inevitably comes, I can simply go to China and sell my un-injected pure-blood organs to rich Russians. I will be a multi millionaire at my funeral.
Good questions.
I’m middle aged and questioning my life choices.
My life has taken some weird turns due to my psychological issues.
I had many opportunities, but I burned through them all
I was coming around to the idea that being some sort of computer programmer would be the best fit for me
But then I read about how the field has been outsourced to India, and that there is much ‘ageism” in the field, which makes sense since you would want young guys with electrified minds being at the forefront of any and all tech.
Sucks to be me.
I think I’ll just keep drinking myself to an early death.
I think I understand you, because of a comment you made in the past. I don’t want to remind you, bc lingering in the past is not good, but I will dare give an advice: Get married to a girl with whom you will love each other so much that sex won’t be the first thing coming to your mind. Maybe a Serbian girl from Serbian Bosnia or Kossovo, or an Antioch Christian from Syria, Lebanon (they are the most recent martyr Church due to the ISIS) or immigrant to the US.
I’m serious, though I know it’s difficult.
As for IT, I really can’t give advice about the future. Linus Torvalds (the inventor of Linux) claims that AI is just marketing at this point (90% marketing). We have to wait 5 years to see if it actually delivers.
However, with your level of perception, I think you can do anything.
There are interesting things happening: e.g. RISC-V is an open source processor, which worries Intel. Also, they say (also Radagast here) that AI spends so much energy, they have to find a way to bring consumption down; one way might be to make approximate calculations with integers instead of with decimals…
And video games are one of the biggest industries, though I don’t like modern games.
+ + +
Radagast is not very fond of marriage, but they have found it spares you from dementia. Actually, they said that loneliness accelerates dementia.
+ + +
On the question of fame vs “anonymity”, one could find comfort in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, and Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”.
Life is so easy. Unhealthy people can sit around and bitch like this all day. They have their vegan food and meds delivered right to their door. They’re so lazy and pampered they can do nothing all day but be jealous of others.
At the hiking trail yesterday, there was a sign telling us about the 3 brothers who first settled there in 1848. I looked around as I walked. There is nothing a human could survive on. Grass and leaves that only animals can eat. You would have to carry in and plant seeds. Find your own water and hope it’s not polluted. Build a log cabin. Build shelters for any animals you bring in. No time to whine about richer people unless you like starving and freezing to death.
“Society has to beat you into accepting being unknown.”
Being unknown is easily avoided. All that you have to do is to move to a small town in the U.S.. My town had 4,000 inhabitants when I was growing up and it has 5,000 now. When I talk with my mother a particular guy will occasionally come up; probably because she taught one of his kids and ran into the kid at the grocery store. As a way of identifying him, she will say that he was the guy who was arrested for having sex with so and so (a local lady) behind the post office. She mentioned him a few nights ago, and also reminded me that his wife, who reasonably divorced him as a result, then married a sailor who was twenty years younger than her; the ex-wife is a happy lady to this day.. You can move there tomorrow and you will immediately become part of a web of observation and report; you don’t have to be born there to join in.
That is why I left!!!!!!!!!! I couldn’t picture living there and managing to never do something humiliating.
So the guy working in the convenience store in the dying American town is not unknown; he is as known as can be.
“If you live in California, are you not confronted on a daily basis with what life could be, versus what it actually is for you? In a country like the Netherlands, most of us have the comfort of only seeing these people through our screens, a Taylor Swift or a Hulk Hogan might as well be aliens from outer space for us. But for you, they’re actual people. How do you accept that?”
Years ago I asked my father, who was a social psych professor, what would happen if society fell apart. Would people kill the bad people who had run things in a terrible way? He said no; what would happen is that people would kill the neighbor who had always annoyed them with his (fill in the blank, e.g. loud music or messy yard). People notice the people right around them; they are real to them. I live in CA and I have never seen a movie star or famous musician; they are just as unreal to me as they would be to someone in the Netherlands. Rich people here live in big houses away from other people for a reason. They are apparently horrible neighbors and are constantly suing one another. It is important to have neighbors who can’t afford to sue you, or who have some other inhibition against doing so.
I just watched the movie “Quo Vadis, Aida” ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8633462/ ) tonight. Helps put things in perspective, so I can briefly shake my head at the existential dilemmas of people with easy lives, and move on.
What’s your take on pitbulls, Rad.
I think your answer to this simple question will prove illuminating to your readers.
Yeah, you’re all Green and Extinction Rebellion pilled
But you never saw “The Last Chase” starring Lee Majors, Christopher Makepeace and Bruges Meredith.
It just might change your mind (much as Neil Peart’s “Red Barchetta” did for me.)
Nothing can compare to a sports car, with an internal combustion engine, flying you along the highway.
Yes, yes, the oil is limited, but you should experience it at least at one point in your life.
https://youtu.be/X4eQsgudVhY?si=n5PI6N7OA8a_D4Io
The system needs to die so that we can live the kind of free, dignified and meaningful lives that are necessary for psychological wellbeing.
In the meantime, hang in there: hopefully, it will die soon.
In 50 years maybe. Meanwhile, there is a huuuuuge age pyramid bulge of elderly drudging their days into their last months. They will do what they did during the last 20 years. Their behavior is the bedrock of that weird middle-state system. Not ok, not kaputt, it just works (TM).
We will have a wild EOL (finally something happens!) if you are on the younger end of that generation, but I pity Gen Alpha, who will be re- and depressed into that state of being described in TFA, and suddenly wake up at the end of their prime into a fundamentally different world. 1789, 1919 and 1989 will be nothing compared to what will happen.
Gen Z wont notice. To them, everything is surreal. They’ll wonder if that is another round of bullshit thrown at them like the last 50 years and then they will be dead too.
Perhaps the system will last 50 years, but I remain hopeful that it won’t.
“Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost.”
Uncle Ted
I remember reading that. He mentioned the Scottish king Robert the Bruce and I think the Bolsheviks, as examples of people who “played to the whistle” and didn’t throw in the towel. He wrote that when he was already rotting in the slammer. It’s amazing how people being tortured in solitary confinement can stay lucid enough to write well.
>But it’s surprising, how many people we end up able to fit within the narrow band.
Coercion, Nudging and Incentives are hell of a drug.
> But any sort of ego inflation is just as dangerous. When you have a college student who can pay her rent with her Onlyfans, there’s no going back. Your mind won’t accept a normal job anymore, even when the wrinkles start to show up. Celebrities die young for a reason. It’s the most cruel thing you can do, to have people’s lives peak in their twenties.
Many of these Hollywood stars are deeply unhappy/stressed even during their “prime”, before their career ever starts to go downhill. Matthew Perry couldn’t remember filming 3 entire seasons of Friends because he was consuming so much alcohol and opiates, the whole thing was just a blur to him. Famous Nickelodeon actress Jennette McCurdy’s autobiography is literally titled “I’m Glad My Mom Died”.
And I’m sorry but it’s extremely difficult for me to have sympathy towards Only Fans whores once they start to lose their looks. Not that men are in a much better position. This whole notion that “women age like milk while men age like fine wine” is complete horseshit and MGTOW cope.
>According to U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, Perry paid the two doctors $55,000 in cash for ketamine in the two months before his death.
what… wow.
How lucrative. TIL. But stupid too. Lass dich nicht erwischen, as the Germans say.
Since I am not allowed to reply to my own unapproved comments,
Here is The Master
Neil Peart
“My uncle has a country place, that no one knows about, he said it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law”
https://youtu.be/_LXKZq0fYDw?si=j7A3DnKEMB3Y0voY
It is true that someone has to run a database while Elon Musk is famous and rich.
But Elon Musk just told Joe Rogan that he feels much better eating protein for breakfast instead of carb. Eggs and bacon.
Having protein as your first meal. Walking in the morning sunlight. Not allowing evil doctors to mutilate your son (happened to Musk). Database guy can do that.
Money ought to be more equitable. But we are in control of quite a bit.
This one was brutal rintrah
It’s simple, my dude – equality is not real.
A billionaire has an easier life than me, but I affirm his right to have a vastly larger portfolio than I do, so that I too have a right to my own wealth.
The step that matters for me is the one right in front of me. Another white person’s progression is none of my business, unless I can help in some way.
Class is a stupid metric for detailing whether you should like someone or not. There is no such thing as true communism/classless society, so it’s good to accept that equality is not real and that a hierarchy is inevitable. However, if the ruling classes act in opposition to the interests of things that are more important than themselves; the nation, eugenic breeding, Nature, than they should be opposed. Billionaires generally nowadays act to destroy everything meaningful and good in the world, so they should be hated.
There’s no reason to work for people that want to use you up until they can replace you with machines. There is nothing mutually beneficial to that, it just makes you a cuck.
The ruling classes should be landed aristocrats who have their power founded in the basis of the military rather than in the production of consumer products. Monarchy is the best system yet devised, the feudal contract the best system for ensuring class harmony. We should have something like Sparta, but less gay, cruel, and without slavery.
….OR….just do what I do, DON’T GIVE A FUCK. Your life will have the same meaning no matter what you do if you GET IT. Nothing you DO matters, it’s all about what you were given, how fully do you accept it. There is a reason FEAR is a handy tool. It works. Reject fear, remember…you are a ghost, driving a meat covered skeleton made of stardust, surfing a rock hurtling through space. Fear nothing.
Born into the world 2,000, 1,000, 400, 200 years ago, what would be your lot in life? What Monopoly properties would inherit? Would you make it past 3 weeks of age?
Today, you have free time and a full belly. What could a billionaire possibly have over you? Everyone he befriends is a potential gold digger, drawn in like magnets. You have to impress others with impressive charisma after working to grab their receptive attention. You have the gift of anonymity.
You have this entirely backwards.