LastThursday

I need to get myself a cook, both metaphorically and in reality.

Get at least half an hour of full daylight every day. Even on a rainy overcast day, it is still much much brighter outside than indoors. Regular exercise does help. I've also taken St John's Wort tablets daily with some success, but effects take about three weeks to kick in (for me). You may be able to get it in your country, but it varies; here in the UK it's easily available. There are warnings of some side effects, but I've never experienced any.

I've been on this forum a long time now. Originally, I was just watching Leo's videos and I couldn't get enough of them. At some point, I believe around the time "What is Islam?" video came out I pretty much ran out of steam and stopped. I think soon after that I discovered the forum and I just lurked for a long time. Then something must have piqued my interest and I started to post. I find it amusing that even Leo himself seems to have run out of steam with his videos. I see my relationship with the forum in kind of the same way as I had with my relationship to smoking. I smoked because I was addicted and out of habit. But the benefits and reasons for doing so were hard to pin down - but I felt there were some. I stopped smoking in the end, but other than to my health and pocket, I feel the same as I did then. In other words smoking had a net-zero effect. I like to call this "empty calories". There are a lot of activities which are empty calories, but we do them anyway. We do them to fill time, or because we believe it's doing something for us, but the actual benefit is always hard to pin down. Now, the activity may actually have good or bad effects, but they are side effects. So I call smoking empty calories not because it had no effects, but because the main reason for actually smoking was hard to pin down. Being on this forum is also empty calories for me. There are side effects yes, like improving my writing, getting things off my chest, interacting with people and on and on. But it's definitely hard to pin down why I'm on here. If I stopped (which I have in the past) it wouldn't make much difference to me in the long run. There's definitely something here which I've yet to explore more deeply in my own psyche. I think a lot of my malaise is to do with the notion that everything I do is "empty calories". It's like I'm eating, but not getting full. It's hard not to compare myself with my peers and they seem to "get full" on what they do in their lives, which I'm envious of. But my envy isn't really about what they have but the fact that they seem to be satisfied by it. I can't get no satisfaction - and even thinking about that makes me emotional and frustrated. To swing it back to forum. I see a lot of questions being asked and a lot of answers, but very little dialogue and exchange. Often an OP will ask a question, get ten different disjointed answers and that's that. The OP has seemingly no interest in replying to the answers, and the answerers have no interest in each other's viewpoints. Often the OP has to be goaded into replying. There is also often an absolutist sense to a lot of the answers: "this is the way it is", rather than a more nuanced and relative standpoint: "what if it was like this?" and exploring that. I think this really comes from several places. First, that people really don't know how to converse properly especially on a digital medium. People are so brainwashed in to posting "status updates" that other ways of communicating seem alien; a lot of answers are in the style of a status update: this is what I think and that's that. Second is that there isn't any amount of deep thinking going on, but it is often dressed up as that. The upshot is that people (often aggressively) defend views that are shallow and illogical or just taken verbatim without much thought. I'm guilty of this, but what gets confused is that I'm not coming from an absolutist standpoint, my views are generally subject to change and really are about "what if it was like this?", but I'm forced to follow the implicit forum style. I want dialogue but I don't get it and it's empty calories. Lastly, there is a lot of immaturity in the forum. To me it's blindingly obvious (because I'm older and more mature), but you can't blame others for not knowing what they don't know. I very often feel for others because I have experienced the same things when I was younger (especially anxiety and stress and social problems), and I want to get hold of them and say "honestly, it's fine, it will work out in the end". To that end I try and impart my knowledge but it often goes over people's heads; there's only so much that can be done via text. I need to be satisfied and full and consume real calories in my life. I just don't know how or what that should be. Until then I'll carry on as I am. Enough rambling!

Neither. I don't know your history, so it's hard to comment on it. Everyone procrastinates at one time or another. But procrastination is actually a fiction. The underlying assumption is that a particular task must be done. If the task were optional, and you chose not to do it, then there wouldn't be any procrastination. Apart from doing things which maintain your survival such as eating and having a roof over your head, all other tasks are in fact optional and fictional (and mostly imposed on you by others). Related to that is that tasks stop being tasks when you actually want to do them. Bingeing on the internet is also doing a task - which you don't seem to procrastinate about. You already have the solution. In my eyes the psychology of procrastination is this: You/someone needs to invent a "task". You put off doing that task. You wait until you can bear it no longer. You do the task. (Or you let it slide) You or someone who invented the task, gets angry or stressed for not doing it quickly and/or efficiently. You beat yourself up for getting angry or stressed and concoct stories about being lazy, stupid or worse. @Husseinisdoingfine what do you think?

Some random thoughts today. I was chit-chatting to a work colleague last week. We were on the tube in London going to a work's do. She mentioned that after going to university she'd racked up an £89k debt (loan). I was gobsmacked. I didn't get the impression that she was profligate, it was just the cost of doing education nowadays. I imagined myself at 22 and having to pay back a debt for a large part of my life. The thought fleetingly crossed my mind of giving her my savings so she could be debt free - it would make more difference to her than it would to me. It's disgusting that this is what the UK government is doing to their future workforce. (rant mode off) I definitely had some wild dreams over night. In one there were two diseased rabbits lying on the floor, one dead, one barely alive. Between them my sister was lying in some sort of box or something. Despite not actually seeing her, I thought she was dead. My parents were around and I tried to explain the situation, I even began to cry but they seemed cold or non-understanding. I looked around and realised that I could see my sister on the floor curled up and noticed she was breathing. I felt a strong sense of relief. I think I better contact her... In a different dream I was on a push-bike and looking for a place to park it. I turned left onto a busy road, unsure of where I was going. I then had to go uphill, but realised there was water gushing down the road, it looked like a ladder of weirs going all the way up. But somehow I found it easy to peddle up and I even bunny hopped over the weirs. I woke up. I have been thinking about time. Specifically about entropy and degradation. Hypothetically if I had a lump of matter, say something with a rigid crystal lattice (a crystal perhaps?) and was inert, would it experience time? The thought was that if none of the crystal's constituents got disrupted in any way, then even if it's constituents (atoms) jiggled around it would keep its identity indefinitely. In other words it would be immune to increasing entropy. Of course nothing is ever completely immune to its environment, but during the time a lump of matter is not "interacted" with, it would in effect be outside of time itself. You could argue that the thermal motion of atoms in the lattice act like little timekeepers, being as they are subject to the speed of light. But taken as an average over all atoms you couldn't actually tell the time with them, although time may sneak in because the thermal motion has an average speed. However, the thermal motion can be changed by increasing the temperature of the lump of matter and the average speed would be higher. The upshot is you can only use thermal motion to mark time, if you know the temperature, but you can only know the temperature if you "interact" with the crystal. All temperature gauges work by waiting for the thermal equilibrium with your measuring device, and so all temperature measurements affect the system they're measuring. It could be argued that you could use thermal imaging to gauge temperature, but then photons would have to be given out by the crystal, but I'm not allowing that because the crystal is completely inert: it does not radiate. In practice everything radiates photons. All this is a long-winded way of saying time=increasing entropy.

I wonder if wildebeest believe in gods? When you're regularly hunted you have to be on your guard at all times. So you must have sharp perceptions and a good imagination. If the rustling in the grass could be a lion you'd better be ready to run. But it could just be the wind instead. The wildebeest must conjure up a lion from the movement of grass, and act on it. The wildebeest has to believe its imagination even if it's a false positive. Humans are the same, except our imaginations are wild. We were prey to lions, snakes, spiders and scorpions when we lived out in the open. We let our imaginations get the better of us and can believe there are invisible entities everywhere. Animism was the first religion. Either that or gods are real.

The beauty of reality is that it is both fragmented and unified at the same time. Completely still and in complete motion at the same time. I agree that spirituality is a fragment realising it was unified all along.

@k-ahmadzadeh to re-iterate what @flowboy is saying: apply your military discipline to working through your traumas and unmet needs and you'll see good results.

Whatever you think, you're wrong. I don't have a hidden agenda in any way with you. My style is to quote the parts of what people write that take my interest nothing more. If you're going to be aggressive or behave like a fool then that is going to get my interest. That is an explanation thanks. A belief. A fucking thought . A fart in the wind. OBVIOUSLY! Then you haven't thought very deeply about it. And if you have, you're being intellectually dishonest in owning up to what you've discovered.

You're hilarious. We must be kindred spirits. Anyway seriously, I'm not ramming my ideas down anyone's throats, you can take it or leave it. I suspect you just choose not to understand it further or are unwilling to let go of the story you're clinging on to. And since you're so keen on explanations and stories what is your explanation then? Why does death never come eh? What does death even mean to you?

Zzzzzzz

Exactly. If that isn't death then I don't know what is. Everything is concertinaed into this. It's this which is the source of everything including the sensation of being "me" and all my memories. Anyway, we've had this conversation before about death, and you know my views. See above.

Death = Change. It's really that simple. Becoming a corpse is just a more deliniated change than other forms of change. The subtle point is that the sensation of being "you" will die, but awareness may be eternal. I don't believe for a second that @LastThursday will continue indefinitely. For example, the child version of @LastThursday already (literally) died when he became an adult.

If that narrative helps to motivate you then use it. I would see it in a similar way, but less of a war and more of a balancing act. You want to stack all your resources both mental and physical onto the "positive" side of the scales, to counteract (and outweigh) the heaviness on the "negative" side. When you lose your motivation or values, then you need to build up simple habits that you can do daily, without too much thought or effort. This will at least keep you from sinking lower. And it helps stack things on the positive side. This can be as simple as walking every day, painting, making good food, treating yourself, making plans with others, looking after a plant or a pet etc. But things you can do regularly and enjoy and fit with your lifestyle. It's definitely possible to overcome it. There may be reasons for that sadness and having therapy can help you overcome it. I don't know your history so I couldn't recommend anything specific. Maybe's there's unresolved trauma, or negative patterns of thinking, or something physical, or there could even have been a single trigger in the past. But you should try and uncover it, even if just to know what you're dealing with.

When it comes to bad mental health having a healthy psychological attitude is actually the solution or end goal. So how do you achieve the contradictory goal of a healthy psychology using an unhealthy psychology? I'd say that's very difficult. One answer is to become aware that your own bad mental health varies throughout the day and the week. There a good days and bad days. This should be a flag that shows you that bad mental health is not a fixed entity. And that should give you hope that bad mental health can actually be changed for the better. The other thing to be aware of is that the mind and body form one system, one thing affects the other in a reciprocal relationship. Even if it's difficult to think your way out of depression, it can be a lot easier to keep the body healthy. Eat properly and exercise well, get enough daylight and get enough sleep, meet people regularly. This requires some amount of consistent discipline - but discipline itself can be good for depression. There's often an element of helplessness to depression and self-discipline directly confronts this. A lot of bad mental health is caused by negative ideation and rumination - especially depression. It can be extremely difficult, but becoming aware of the triggers of negativity can help in overcoming them. Also the obvious routes of therapy and working through past traumas can help immensely. The point is that being helped by others can be an easier road to take, than trying to solve your problems alone. It's completely possible to eliminate the worst negative thoughts. It's completely possible to love yourself and have a good self-image. It's completely possible to solve a lot of the problems in your life. Staying calm and confident requires you to learn to be calm and confident even in the middle of ruin. That requires a certain amount of detached awareness of what is going inside and outside of you. Meditation and self-enquiry can be helpful too.

Sometimes aggression shouldn't be tolerated. Bullying and corruption gets normalised because people tolerate it. Isn't it so?

It's natural to want to immitate who you admire either conciously or unconsciously. Also, the people on this forum are not random, they are the people who most closely align to Leo's ideas or values in some way. It's no surprise then, despite it being irksome. I'm shaving my head now.

What I like to call "Air Music".

Yes! But not for everything. My thoughts seems to get "stuck" at certain physical locations: one outside the gates to a park when I was young seems very persistent. And that location seems to get attached to abstract thinking. There is a theory (I forget where I read it) that says that all memories are stored spatially like this. Indeed, a "Memory Palace" explicitly uses this technique to remember a large amount of things. And a story is memorable for the same reasons. If you think about it, it makes complete sense. Certain things happen in certain places, it would seem natural that a location would trigger all the memories associated with that location - even abstract ones. Those associations are two-way.

I should write love poetry for a living ha! Anyway: I took your smile and put it in my pocket. Your glistening lips pinned on a loop of memory. Sniff sniff, that perfume soaked into my very being. Every idle wandering thought ends at then. All those partitions in time paper thin but impenetrable. Even if we returned we would forever be disjoint-strangers. Would you even remember me? Should you even remember me?

@integral I liked your video, slickly done. Future-gazing™ (mine!) is a fun activity. The idea of having new perceptions is good. Although I think that each thought or memory we have is essentially a different perception. Consciousness is unbounded in that respect.

I'm fortunate to have been on the wrong side of privileged when I was younger, and that makes me appreciate what I have all the more now, and make it hard to give up or change. I think we all have our problems and to belittle them or dismiss them doesn't help us. If complaining helps then do so. I've done many things which seemed like they would go on forever, but eventually they ended. It's no different with breaking out. I suspect it will happen in an unexpected way and probably in a way that I won't even notice at the time. But I'll see. I do know that even this situation will change with time. @Snader what are your experiences on your own questions? I'm curious to know.

Partially yes. Wage slavery is just not for me, it doesn't suit my temperament. Due to my history I've always had to be and like being self-sufficient. To have people "lording it over me" and for me to make them money just sticks in my craw. But, it's convenient and it's stable and it's what everyone else does. The alternative of working for myself, whilst it would probably suit me more, is more difficult and unstable. The self-worth angle is interesting. I've always known my own worth in that I've never particularly needed external confirmation of my worth or capabilities. In that sense I'm confident. But, I've had a lot of experiences, especially when I was a teenager/young adult, that constantly ground down on that self-worth. So I've learned to not expose myself too much and I've tended to just go along with the flow and stick in the background. It's only now more recently that I've felt more comfortable stepping up and exposing myself. It's opposing forces causing paralysis I think. Because of my difficult teenagehood I've constantly yearned for stability and to be free to pursue my own interests. So I have a strong sense of wanting comfort and stability in my life - which I've largely achieved. Giving that up in any way is difficult. Also, my attention has always been quite scattered. I have so many interests and avenues of exploration that doggedly fixing myself to one thing and just pursuing that as my "purpose" just doesn't gel with me. The only thing I've managed that with is my interest in computing, and indeed that is my day job now, and I'm thankful for it. But there are many times when I've wanted to just give it all up and do something completely different. Society seems to want to bludgeon me down a particular path of working and spending and buying houses and having a family and having no time to do anything else with: I reject it all, and yet I still do it to an extent. It leaves me with a strong feeling of being in limbo with no real resolution other than to upend it all. I don't see myself as unfortunate, in fact I know that compared to many people I'm in a privileged position - and I did it all myself in spite of everything. I'm grateful for it. But my upbringing, parents and the society I found myself in have "programmed" me in a certain way. I've done a huge amount of work to undo some of that bad programming, but there is a core that still needs fixing so to speak. I have a conviction that if I can just fix that remaining part then I'll get going. Society just wants me to grind and spend. I want to have joy and freedom. The two seem mutually incompatible to me.

I dunno man these are some hard things to answer and contemplate. Without it turning into too much of therapy session (I don't need answers here thanks!), I'll pick on this point: The sensation of feeling trapped, like in a spider's web and of having been foolish enough to get trapped in the first place. It's partly to do with circumstance (society) and my lack of willingness or ability to get myself out of, or commit to, any course of action to untrap myself. This goes along with a strong feeling that I should have "been someone" for most of my life. A good friend of mine recently called me a "genius". The CEO of the company I do work for said I was the second most intelligent person he'd met, and said this in front of his entire workforce (the first being his finance controller apparently). So what do I do with all that? (rhetorical question lol). I ask myself surely I must have the brainpower to get myself what I want or to where I want? But no it's not to do with that, it's just prolonged commitment and perseverence, I'm learning. The only conclusions I can draw is that in general society doesn't reward outliers, but just your average jo/e and brute subservience to its mores. The other is that there isn't anyone to blame except myself, I'm the one that suffers and the one that has to do something about it. There's no fallback and no-one to give me a leg up. However I'm not a victim. I know the answer to my situation is to uproot everything I've built up around me. I'm just not ready to do that (yet).

This is good. You want to take the middle way. Removing the objects in life that burden you (even if just to stop thinking about them), makes life simpler. This extends to non-tangible things too: commitments, bad relationships, addictions, unwanted responsibilites. But don't remove the things that actually make life simpler: washing machines, good relationships, a paying job etc.