Author Topic: Methods For Defying Social Pressures  (Read 860 times)

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Nation of One

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Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« on: September 20, 2015, 10:37:12 am »
I may have stumbled upon a way to overcome the social pressures that lead to feeling guilt or shame about living an uneventful life: using a search engine.   

I type in "the joy of being a deadbeat geek" and all the hits have some kind of condemnations of deadbeat dads.  If I replace the word deadbeat with unemployed, there are links about how to find a job.

Maybe one of the few ways to overcome what I will call "the job-interview syndrome" is to present oneself as a comedian.  Satire.

I guess those who defy social pressures and elude the traditional traps may keep it a secret so as not to draw attention to themselves.  That's how someone spends 20 years "looking for work" as opposed to just referring to themselves as a "former student."

What if one were to embrace their failures rather than feel as though they ought to live differently?

This is my attack against those who would make searching for a job our full-time jobs.

Then there are those who see collecting "disability for bipolar disorder" as a huge scam where one is made to feel like some kind of con-artist unless one is trying to figure out ways to "fit in", like volunteer work.

Is it such a radical lifestyle to actually embrace one's outcast status and spend one's life studying?

We know how Schopenhauer was able to pull this off: an inheritance from a father who committed suicide when Arthur was 17.  OK, but how did Cioran pull it off?   Does he actually suggest living with wealthy friends ? ... living in college towns and eating in student cafeterias ?

In the small town I grew up in we had a "working class hero" who hit the big time with his rock band, and yet Mr. Springsteen, as he prefers to be addressed (not as Bruce), only held a job for 2 weeks.

Why are there not more Deadbeat Heroes?

There are, in fact, several deadbeat heroes in the world of literature.  Count them.  A few of them are in dark satires.

Are they deadbeat heroes or more like antiheroes?

In my own imagination I am a shameless deadbeat protagonist.  Can't this just be enough?  Why must one be told, "You ought to write a book."

Aren't there enough books?   Have you seen the kinds of books that flood the bookstores these days?

Self-help ...

The best books I explore today are technical books and manuals. 

I am starting to understand why Cioran never attempted to write a novel, and usually just wrote aphorisms and short essays. 

I don't want to write a book.  It is such a relief to write that!

I get a kick out of writing short little math functions or even studying modules of math functions that some others have written. 

Of course no woman would want me as a husband!  So what.  Is that suppose to bother me?

Not everyone wants to be a judge or probation officer.  Not everyone wants to be the president of "Amerika," for that matter.

Then there comes the question I have been hearing since I first started to question social norms as a teen:  "What if everyone thought the way you did?"

Maybe more people think the way I do than i could ever realize.  Society is a farce.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2021, 03:08:22 am by Sticks and Stones »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

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Holden

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2015, 12:34:46 pm »
Very difficult to say what is genius.Gorts would say someone like Eistein..here is the list which he made for his wife-

 You will make sure:

- that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order; - that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room; - that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only. 

  You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

 - my sitting at home with you;  - my going out or travelling with you.   

You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

 - you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;  - you will stop talking to me if I request it;  - you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it. 

You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behaviour.

A genius would know better.
I think you are very intelligent for you have dedided to:
1.Not take up a job
2.Not marry or have kids
3.Keep social interactions to a minimum.

You are saving yourself from a lot of certain pain this way.

I have been engrossed in The Cambridge Companion to S.Splendid work.
S.  maybe  easier to comprehend than Hegel but there are portions in his work which could be difficult to grasp.This book is making things easier for me.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

forthebirds

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2015, 01:43:37 pm »
I will share with you an excerpt from my favorite series of books, Conversations with God, that touches on the subject of doing what people would call "nothing."


It is not yours to judge what is a life wasted. Is a life wasted if a person does nothing but lie around thinking of poetry for 70 years, then comes up with a single sonnet which opens a door of understanding and insight for thousands of people? Is a life wasted if a person lies, cheats, schemes, damages, manipulates, and hurts others all his life, but then remembers something of his true nature as a result of it—remembers, perhaps, something he has been spending lifetimes trying to remember—and thus evolves, at last, to the Next Level? Is that life “wasted”? It is not for you to judge the journey of another’s soul. It is for you to decide who YOU are, not who another has been or has failed to be.

Nation of One

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2021, 04:28:08 pm »



(my apologies to Senor Raul if some of these songs do not make it to your ears/mind)

Life seems to be overwhelming once again.  My attention is consumed with raw emotions and moods.  There has been little in the way of "scratching the paper" (what the Mother of Holden calls it when one engages with any mathematics exercises)


My own mother has been driving me crazy with her indecisiveness.  She has trouble swallowing some foods, but has been eating nonetheless - and yet she continues to complain to her friends that she is dizzy and confused, hungry and sleepless ... and so these ladies are suggesting she be driven to the Emergency Room even as I know she is eating.   It is all starting to wear on my nerves to the point that I threw down a pint of brandy last night and headed into the woods during snowstorm with waterproof amplifier blasting obscure music and screaming my lungs out.   I had discovered a hole in the Matrix, so to speak.  There were more holes in the Matrix leading out to the parkway.

I will try not to make a habit of this.   :-[

I was careful, making note of my wandering, so as not to get lost and die in the woods.
« Last Edit: February 01, 2021, 04:37:31 pm by Sticks and Stones »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2021, 12:07:13 pm »
I hope that you are feeling better now. My suggestion, such as it is, would be that one could use a single in-ear head phone. These are not very easily visible and one ear would be there to listen to others, should they require any kind of assistance. Using this one can keep listening to books which interest one even when one in presence of other people. One could focus simply choose to focus on the voice emanating out of the head phone.

Second, you could think about getting a cheap GPS  device so that you could keep track of the path back to the house. I assume, based on what you have said, that the forest close to your home is very big.

I recently came to know that Baudelaire was shipped off by his Army General step father to a city in India where I have myself spent many a sad day. ( He never reached the destination and ran away from the ship),I imagine him reaching that city and, after a couple of centuries,  perhaps walking  the same streets where Baudelaire might have walked .

I think the intensity and depth of my sadness would equal that of his heart’s.

The Carcass:

Remember that object we saw, dear soul,
In the sweetness of a summer morn:
At a bend of the path a loathsome carrion
On a bed with pebbles strewn,

With legs raised like a lustful woman,
Burning and sweating poisons,
It spread open, nonchalant and scornful,
Its belly, ripe with exhalations.

The sun shone onto the rotting heap,
As if to bring it to the boil,
And tender a hundredfold to vast Nature
All that together she had joined;

And the sky watched that superb carcass
Like a flower blossom out.
The stench was so strong that on the grass
You thought you would pass out.

Flies hummed upon the putrid belly,
Whence larvae in black battalions spread
And like a heavy liquid flowed
Along the tatters deliquescing.

All together it unfurled, and rose like a wave
And bubbling it sprang forth;
One might have believed that, with a faint breath filled,
The body, multiplying, lived.

And this world gave out a strange music
Like of running water and of wind,
Or of grain in a winnow
Rhythmically shaken and tossed.

Form was erased and all but a vision,
A sketch slow to take shape
On a forgotten canvas, which the artist finishes
From memory alone.

Behind the rocks a fretting ****
Looked at us with fierce mien
Anxious to retrieve from the corpse
A morsel that she had dropped.

Yet to this rot you shall be like,
To this horrid corruption,
Star of my eyes, sun of desire,
You, my angel and my passion!

Yes, such you shall be, you, queen of all graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath the grass and waxy flowers,
To mold among the skeletons.

Then, oh my beauty! You must tell the vermin,
As it eats you up with kisses,
That I have preserved the form and essence divine
Of my decayed loves.

Charles Baudelaire
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2021, 04:56:20 pm »
Quote from: Holden
My suggestion, such as it is, would be that one could use a single in-ear head phone.

I do not care for headphones of any sort, especially single-ear headphones.  The voice amplifier I use does not have "headphone jack" ... I prefer listening to music through the line-in AUX or even USB or TF card.   So, I usually use the amplifier outdoors.   The further away from people, cars, and houses, the better.   If I ever need to use headphones, I can access the same "files" with a Voice Recorder (which can, in turn, be plugged into the Voice Amplifier).   By the way, this little waterproof amp cost only about 6 packs of Natural American Spirit cigarettes.   I call it my Dogg, my Music Box.  I refer to the voice recorder (with AUX-IN wire) as this dogg's LEASH.   I take my music box for walks.   :o






Quote from: Holden
Second, you could think about getting a cheap GPS  device so that you could keep track of the path back to the house. I assume, based on what you have said, that the forest close to your home is very big.

That will not be necessary.  The "forest" is not a forest at all.  It is just a stretch of woods along the Parkway, far less woods than what I had been used to between the infamous "Route 9" and "Freehold-Englishtown Road" AKA "Throckmorton Street" in Freehold, the road that leads to the Monmouth County dungeon on "Waterworks Road" ....   >:(

I call the place I am now "Bizzaroland" ... The woodlands are sparse, and there are always fences to deal with, some rather high fences, indeed.

It is what it is.  Maybe I subconsciously wished to die in the snow storm.  Today I have been resting my animal body under my most cherished aphgan, getting up only to feed it soups, cream of wheat, chopped spinach, and good old reliable EGGS.   

Thanks for receiving my cries in this cybernetic wilderness.  It is not my intention to seek advice or council here.  I am simply an animal crying out in this wilderness, defying social pressures to "roll over and play dead" (roll over and play Everybody Else).   ;)

There are many sides of us, and there is this side of me, Holden, which is not altogether tame and domesticated.   There is "Mr Hyde," after all, to consider.   We will try to keep such aspects of our "personality" on a tighter leash, but I still say NO to headphones unless I absolutely MUST remain silent.









If the people in your monkey-sphere don't stop abusing you, Holden, we may end up saying, instead of Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle, Holden Will Have His Revenge on Northern India.    :(

PS:  I have tried to read Baudelaire many times, and yet I have trouble spelling his surname; hence, were I to be completely honest, I must say that perhaps I have not been ready for it yet.   
« Last Edit: February 03, 2021, 03:42:27 am by Sticks and Stones »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #6 on: February 03, 2021, 12:59:02 pm »
Schopenhauer describes the following as immortal romances-Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Heloise, and Wilhelm Meister.
I wonder if you are acquainted with La Nouvelle Heloise and Wilhelm Meister.I think La Nauvelle Heloise was authored by Rousseau and Wilhelm Meister by Goethe. I think ,to a degree, Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard’s lives were similar. Both had affluent fathers so they did not need to work and could devote a lot of time to writing. While Kierkegaard might appear overly religious at the first glance,he was not an optimist, or at least ,not a shallow one.

Many people use the same terms to describe quite different things.  Kierkegaard used a lot of phrases which the State Church of  his country must have used a lot too,but Kierkegaard was its bitter enemy( his elder brother was a pastor) and comes across as an honest thinker.

The problem is, I feel hemmed in from all sides.All I could do ,in all honesty, is to leave copious notes (anonymously) and hide them somewhere just like some of the gulag victims appear to have done. I can very easily relate to what Solzhenitsyn has to say.

Most people assume the gulags could only be found now in the dustbin of history. But the truth is, I am living in one, every single day.
Today, in the afternoon, I was doing something in the office that was distasteful to me and yet had to be done and I thought about Kierkegaard’s ideas,some of them, and it helped me feel better.

Words and ideas could be more intoxicating than any substance.
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

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Re: Methods For Defying Social Pressures
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2021, 11:16:02 pm »
The very act of keeping these communications going (and preserving them for our own erudition) may be considered a method for defying social pressures (to conform to mass society).

Note on changes in title of message board:

definitions

parrhesia -  In classical rhetoric, parrhesia is free, frank, and fearless speech. In ancient Greek thought, speaking with parrhesia meant "saying everything" or "speaking one's mind." "An intolerance of parrhesia," notes S. Sara Monoson, "marked tyranny of both the Hellenic and Persian varieties in the Athenian view... 

(source: Richard Nordquist)

Cornel West: Malcolm X is the great example of parrhesia in the black prophetic tradition. The term goes back to line 24A of Plato's Apology, where Socrates says, the cause of my unpopularity was my parrhesia, my fearless speech, my frank speech, my plain speech, my unintimidated speech. The hip hop generation talks about 'keeping it real.' Malcolm was as real as it gets. James Brown talked about 'make it funky.' Malcolm was always. 'Bring in the funk, bring in the truth, bring in the reality. . . ."

Parrhesia is borrowed from a Greek word that means “to speak boldly, freely, or with bombastic bluntness.” It is saying something boldly and freely without leaving any doubt behind. It involves not only the freedom of speech, but also implies the use of truth in speech or writing. In Parrhesia, writers open their minds and hearts fully to the readers or audience through discourse, and a speaker makes it clear what his opinion is. In simple words, it is a direct expression shown through words.


epistolary


1: of, relating to, or suitable to a letter

2 : contained in or carried on by letters an endless sequence of …

3 : written in the form of a series of letters
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~