So, Yang is continuing his crusade against smartphones and is platforming conservative Arthur Brooks on his podcast. *sigh*, how far you've fallen, Andrew. Anyway, I couldnt even finish this one. I havent even been listening to much of Yang's podcast since I've found it boring lately, but I didnt have anything else i wanted to watch this morning so I gave it a chance. UGH.
So...this is more smartphones bad, living in the moment good, saying "it's good to be bored", that sort of thing. And sorry, I just hard disagree. I will admit, my own happiness went down the second the internet became prevalent in a way, but that was because I tried to pursue online relationships with girls my own age range, and....that sucked. Dont do it. LDRs suck. That's one thing I will be conservative on.
But honestly, yeah, this guy is going into things like meaning and purpose, and IRL social contact creating oxytocin, and it's very traditionalist. It has very traditionalist vibes. Like, you're supposed to get meaning from your job (not explicitly said but I could infer it from his worldview), and oxytocin from a romantic partner, smartphones are an addictive drug and the devil, yay lifescript, blah blah blah.
Now, on outofplatoscave2012.blogspot.com, we do things differently here. We question the lifescript. Because that is the cave. This conservative idea of what life is...is the cave. And I reject the cave. I dont really even like the idea of meaning. In order to leave the cave, I had an existential crisis. This led me down a path of nihilism and absurdism. And now I don't really believe in objective purpose. I believe that life is a sandbox, and whatever you wanna do is what you should be doing in that specific moment, and sure, we do need to be functional enough to live in this shared reality and make society work, I do make concessions to that, but at the same time, I'm also like, DOWN WITH WORK. We should get rid of work and purpose and all of that protestant work ethic BS. Because to someone as enlightened as me, that IS the cave. That is what i call "sisyphusian hell", and keep in mind, for me, the lesson isnt that sispyhus is happy when hes forced to work for all eternity for no reason, he's PISSED. He doesnt wanna be there. And if the alternative is sitting there with a cell phone doomscrolling media, yeah, I'd rather be free to choose to do that, than to do all that traditionalist nonsense. That's the thing. If there is no objective purpose, there is no life but that which we make for ourselves. If there is no purpose but that which we make for ourselves, than we can spend our lives doing whatever we want, as long as we are happy.
And while Brooks would argue social media and the like makes us unhappy, uh, I've thought about this philosophically too. What if we could be happy all the time and we had forced injections of happy drugs to make us happy all the time? Kind of like "joy" from "we happy few"? Does that make our existence better? No, it's better to be socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied. Theres higher pleasures and lower ones, and a lot of that meaning and purpose might be fulfilling but it also keeps people intellectually dumbed down. Keep in mind, for me, I frame things as the PURSUIT of happiness. Ie, a dimension of freedom. Rather than to be told what makes us happy and be forced to do it, we should be able to figure that out ourselves, without do gooder paternalistic conservatives telling us what a good life is and not allowing us to opt out. Because conservatives are masters at that. "You must be forced to do this thing for your own good." Screw off, and shove your sisyphusian dystopia where the sun doesn't shine. That's what I say, as someone who sees myself as one of the enlightened.
Conservatives see my idea of a good life as "Wall-E", I see theirs as the matrix. Again, I say we give people FREEDOM and let them decide.
Now, on the dating thing. Because that comes up. We're too busy on our phones, blah blah blah, social anxiety and depression, blah blah blah. 2008 was great, 2019 was horrible, blah blah blah.
Okay, so, while the digitization of our lives may have had an impact on our well being, and dating sites have replaced traditional ways of meeting people romantically, I see things a bit differently. Dating sites suck, dont get me wrong, you probably arent gonna meet your spouse from them and the younger generation is particularly dysfunctional because of the zeitgeist of the times. BUT...I'm gonna chalk this one up to SJWs. I mean, I am kinda ahead of the curve. My own experiences with romance and relationships is kinda gen Z-ish. My first girlfriend was a teenage online relationship, we broke up over the distance, it sucked, never again. And yeah, I just...never really met anyone after that. I mean there was that one girl, who ironically blew me off for an online relationship of all things, but yeah. I mean, I'm socially awkward, probably autistic, and I never really had success with girls.
And ya know what? Im gonna call it. THEN the feminists come in. "Oh, you can't just approach women! That's creepy!" Remember elevator gate? We're all suffering the sins of elevator gate and SJW culture IMO. Traditional dating mechanics. Men get attracted, pursue women. Men are expected to make the first move. Then feminists comes in and say we can't. It's creepy, unwanted advances, blah blah blah. It screws up dating mechanics. Remember that commercial where the guy is trying to pursue a woman and then the other guy goes up to him and puts his hand on his chest and stops them? That's wokeism in a nutshell. And the current generation came of age in this generation of not just digitization of our lives, but wokeism. It's confused gender relations and mangled them. Again, men supposed to ask women out, but now struggle with even approaching them, lest they set off a landmine that pisses off the woman they approach. This leads to tons of sleepless nights and what ifs, low self esteem, and then people like andrew tate and jordan peterson come along and end up turning them alt right.
And yeah, I will say this. Dating apps. They suck. Men in particular likely arent gonna meet anyone on them. Totally in favor of women, who have such high standards and then swipe...reject (right? left? i dont even remember which is which) on everyone.
Everything is messed up. Again, it's all of this wokeism and toxic gender dynamics. WOmen get woke, become assertive, have unrealistic standards, make men feel like crap. Men become resentful, regress to traditionalism (also bad btw), want to force women to like and date them and marry them and never be able to leave. Both attitudes are unhealthy, and all of this social stuff has led to a very unhealthy society. The internet has just exacerbated that. But those dynamics are why things are so unhealthy.
This guy claims that unhappiness comes when we approach right brain (emotional) problems with left brain logic (rational). To me, this is a rejection of rationality. Again, my whole thing is I use rationality to see through the veil that is this conservative lifescript and question things more deeply. I admit, being intelligent is more likely to make people unhappy, but that's really because society sucks, not because we just need to turn our brains off. Again, this is "we happy few" "you need more JOY" mentality. Meanwhile Im like "well maybe that pinata really IS a dead rat!" Sure, maybe im a kill joy, but again, better to be socrates unsatisfied than a pig satisfied.
Ugh. Andrew Andrew Andrew, like wtf are you doing with this stuff? It really is sad to see this guy fall so hard. Even though we have a common ideology as a starting point he goes in a weird conservative direction while i go full progressive. I think tech enhances our lives, and i hate to see all these weird luddite types going on about how AI bad, smartphones bad, let's live like it's the 1980s again. Nah. The past was not always better. I aint saying the modern day is perfect or doesnt have challenges...trust me, it does. But people seem to be taking the wrong lessons here and demonizing the tech itself when the tech is just a tool. The problem is the underlying zeitgeists that are driving us into a very bad place. I really do blame 2016 for the encrapification of everything. Sure, without cell phones maybe it couldnt have happened as it did, but again, the problem is these bad ideas. Wokeism has been a disaster for the left. Traditionalism is a scourge on the right. If anything, we need to embrace more modernity and have a view that fits the times, rather than trying to force society to live according to past standards that dont work, and never were great in the first place. I know conservatives dont like change, but the answer is MORE change, not less.
No comments:
Post a Comment