Do you think our culture mythologizes marriage and life in general?

[onesteptwostep]

A lot of consumerist culture is about providing some kind of betterment in life, or at least the illusion of it, and a lot of our entertainment and entertainment figures try to ellude to a full or fruitful life, whether by the example of wealth, extravagence or filial or family bliss. We are sort of conditioned from birth to respect the influence of the power of wealth, and that's what we generally seek or want to accomplish to acquire the benefits it allows.

But what's that all for, is that something that can be universally achieved by everyone? Any young adult by now knows that society is stratified and that status manifests because of hierarchy, not merit. Thus in this culture it is man vs all and the most psychopathic or Machiavellian the man is, the more successful he or she becomes.

Generally, I think we fall to one of two general assumptions about life: that we should stay within our own sphere and control only what we can control and be content and thankful for it, such as raising a family or a business, or enter a career to devote him or herself to a mix of capitalistic life within some kind of corperate function, or within the cogs of it or in government. Both generally do not understand the grand narrative playing out in this modern civilization, nor can they really steer the will of mankind.

So in a sense another question arises: does this macroism of 'humanity' have a function, whether or not this function is somehow dictated by singular persons, but beyond that, where are we going as a species?

If there isn't a rational reason to procreate, why keep sustaining humanity?

Metaphorically speaking, if life is a gift, who is giving me that gift and what's it for? Do we keep on giving gifts to our children, telling them to give gifts as well, for a reason that cannot be rationally defined?

 

[Black Rose]

The individual runs like a cog in the machine. But some cogs seem to benefit more from psychological/material health factors. The work is hard but they come home and have all the treats of life. It seems the merger poor have little to come home to.

The mere ability to exist might seem pointless. But only a few take notice

Are we all just purposeless automatons?

 

[dr froyd]

the millennial generation is so demoralized that they don't even mythologize life nor marriage nor anything related to the individual. When you believe that you are helpless, powerless, all you can do is yap about the environment, the planet, and how all power should be transferred from capitalists to the government.

and that's not a consequence of the actual state of the world by the way, it's a consequence of the thoughts and ideas put into the minds of these people from the day they were born: you have limitless opportunities, you have limitless options when it comes to education. Just pick the right one and you will become a superstar, you will change the world. Then they wake up one day and realize: the world is a tough place, there's competition, there's limited demand for the kind of talents they have.

 

[Cognisant]

Price gouging is common practice these days, things aren't priced fairly they're priced based on what the consumer is able to pay. Groceries have different prices depending upon the wealth of the neighbourhood, airline tickets cost more depending upon the nationality of your IP address, landlords are constantly incrementing rental agreements.

We live in a world of employers and the working poor, sure some people are able to find success as highly valued employees but they're the minority and they have to work incredibly hard to get there.

 

[Hadoblado]

As a trend yes but as a rule no.

I don't think it's wise to ascribe a single perception to a large group of people like "Any young adult by now knows that society is stratified and that status manifests because of hierarchy, not merit". People's experience differs a lot.

I see people swing hard one way or the other and I feel alienated by both. It's the over-generalisation of others' experience of meaning(lessness) that grates. Like their outlook is some sort of universal principle rather than a direct result of their lived context.

This is something everyone figures out for themselves. There isn't a useful grand narrative for our direction as a species IMO, but you get to decide what to do with your life and what that means for you. Personally, I haven't married and I haven't had a child, but it's never been a good idea for me. If my context changed I would probably reconsider.

 

[Black Rose]

The all-American family with the white picket fence was invented in the 50s in a response to the problems of capitalism to try and regulate goods. This involved home goods and distribution centers. People need to buy products and so advertising was used to create demand.

The federal reserve was setup in the 30s because of the 20s
The marshal plan in Europe from the 40s

 

[Black Rose]

What I said could just mean that American propaganda mythologized the nuclear family.

The new wave of propaganda is still embedded in the terrorists and communists, and trump still got into us China. Biden left Afghanistan.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

"Do you think our culture mythologizes marriage and life in general?"

Yes.

"Do we keep on giving gifts to our children, telling them to give gifts as well, for a reason that cannot be rationally defined?"

I don't know. I am choosing not to (for now), personally. Also it doesn't align with my interests. I am not interested in procreating in the space of memes rather than physically.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

The individual runs like a cog in the machine. But some cogs seem to benefit more from psychological/material health factors. The work is hard but they come home and have all the treats of life. It seems the merger poor have little to come home to.

The mere ability to exist might seem pointless. But only a few take notice

Are we all just purposeless automatons?

Serving butter is a purpose.

 

[Black Rose]

Serving butter is a purpose.

meaningful purpose?

something worth the cost or is everything a nihilistic waste.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

Serving butter is a purpose.

meaningful purpose?

something worth the cost or is everything a nihilistic waste.

What makes a purpose meaningful?

 

[Hadoblado]

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

 

[Cognisant]

Meaning is derived from the future, the meaning of passing the butter is that Rick will get to butter his toast, the act is not meaningless but the meaning of it is largely irrelevant to the robot. A meaningful occupation would be one in which the robot works to it's own benefit, the meaning being that it will be better off for having done so.

 

[scorpiomover]

Do you think our culture mythologizes marriage and life in general?

If it did, then the opening post would go something like this:

"All my friends want to get married. They all think being married is great. But I know plenty of people who are married, and ever since they got married, their lives went completely downhill. Do you think our culture mythologizes marriage?"

"All my friends who think life is great, are miserable failures. The only people who seem to be happy or successful, think life is horrible. Do you think our culture mythologizes life in general?"

A lot of consumerist culture is about providing some kind of betterment in life, or at least the illusion of it, and a lot of our entertainment and entertainment figures try to ellude to a full or fruitful life, whether by the example of wealth, extravagence or filial or family bliss.


Do you think our culture mythologizes marriage and life in general?

One of the most popular films in America is: "It's a wonderful life", shown in 1946.

In the film, the protagonist, played by Jimmy Stewart, had the chance to be an architect, but gives it up and chooses to be poor, to help people. He has a crisis of confidence, where he is going to go to prison because he doesn't have enough money. But instead, the towns people rally around him, and help him. He has a wonderful, wife, wonderful children, wonderful friends, and lives in a town with wonderful people, helping people.

The story concludes that he is poor, married, and and has a wonderful life.

In the 1940s, American culture mythologised marriage and life in general.

Contrast that with modern films, such as 2Fast2Furious, or the Iron Man films, or the Thor films. Tony Stark is portrayed as having had sex with lots of attractive women, doing whatever he feels like, and generally having a good time. The poor married doctor who saves Tony Stark's life, is portrayed as having a miserable life.

Modern culture demonises marriage, and demonises life in general for everyone except for the uber-rich oligarchs like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

If there isn't a rational reason to procreate, why keep sustaining humanity?

Now do you understand why suicide rates in young men are very high in the Western countries, and why a minority of those young men commit suicide by killing lots of people and getting shot dead by a cop trying to protect the other people?

Metaphorically speaking, if life is a gift, who is giving me that gift

Your parents and G-d.

and what's it for?

Whatever your parents and G-d wanted for you.

Do we keep on giving gifts to our children, telling them to give gifts as well, for a reason that cannot be rationally defined?

Of course not. That's why more and more people are turning to religions.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

I am not interested in procreating in the space of memes rather than physically.

Sorry, I meant "more interested".

 

[Rook]

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

just wondering, seeing as we have no choice in birth, is life in itself not an imposed purpose? being pushed from the womb and placed in a cot then in a school isn't so different from an alcoholic being so lazy a fuck as to invent a robot for something which take humans mere seconds to accomplish.

but i'm just saying this for the sake of saying it, agree with meaning coming from within, tho external factors definitely have great shaping power over this inner meaning, if you find yourself in the trenches of ww1 then inner meaning will mean very little unless you can use it as a driver for survival.

 

[Rook]

or is it more like, we can shove a shotgun up our throats any day while butter robot can't?

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

Meaning is derived from the future, the meaning of passing the butter is that Rick will get to butter his toast, the act is not meaningless but the meaning of it is largely irrelevant to the robot. A meaningful occupation would be one in which the robot works to it's own benefit, the meaning being that it will be better off for having done so.

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

just wondering, seeing as we have no choice in birth, is life in itself not an imposed purpose? being pushed from the womb and placed in a cot then in a school isn't so different from an alcoholic being so lazy a fuck as to invent a robot for something which take humans mere seconds to accomplish.

but i'm just saying this for the sake of saying it, agree with meaning coming from within, tho external factors definitely have great shaping power over this inner meaning, if you find yourself in the trenches of ww1 then inner meaning will mean very little unless you can use it as a driver for survival.

As meaningfulness comes from personal values, us being beings with purpose (imposed purpose by a divine order, by evolution, or those pesky supernatural bureaucrats) is immaterial. Even with no purpose (or even with a meaningless purpose), if we can find meaning in some goal, we can define our own purpose in terms of such meaning. However to truly know what we find meaningful, we must know ourselves. Our true will need not be too obvious and at best it can be inferred through investigation and experimentations.

 

[Rook]

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

Meaning is derived from the future, the meaning of passing the butter is that Rick will get to butter his toast, the act is not meaningless but the meaning of it is largely irrelevant to the robot. A meaningful occupation would be one in which the robot works to it's own benefit, the meaning being that it will be better off for having done so.

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

just wondering, seeing as we have no choice in birth, is life in itself not an imposed purpose? being pushed from the womb and placed in a cot then in a school isn't so different from an alcoholic being so lazy a fuck as to invent a robot for something which take humans mere seconds to accomplish.

but i'm just saying this for the sake of saying it, agree with meaning coming from within, tho external factors definitely have great shaping power over this inner meaning, if you find yourself in the trenches of ww1 then inner meaning will mean very little unless you can use it as a driver for survival.

As meaningfulness comes from personal values, us being beings with purpose (imposed purpose by a divine order, by evolution, or those pesky supernatural bureaucrats) is immaterial. Even with no purpose (or even with a meaningless purpose), if we can find meaning in some goal, we can define our own purpose in terms of such meaning. However to truly know what we find meaningful, we must know ourselves. Our true will need not be too obvious and at best it can be inferred through investigation and experimentations.

is breathing not a purpose? shitting? if we don't breathe and shit our survival rate drops to zero. so why make distinctions between shitting and painting the mona lisa? if it was never da vinci's purpose to defecate, would he ever have become so polymathical? no, he would've burst open as infant. ah, but autonomous actions of the biological shell can not be seen as purpose, can not tie into meaning?

mammothshit on the level of soul-belief. there is no disconnect, no barrier between bone cell and brain, no id conveniently inserted into the cortex by mighty Zeus. We are merely more apprehensive than other animals, and so can form meanings and purposes more complex than eating and shitting and fucking, tho at times some choose to keep to the basics.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Thus in this culture it is man vs all and the most psychopathic or Machiavellian the man is, the more successful he or she becomes.

But that is said in psychology literature is it not?

However as usual psychologist contradict themselves.

They measure success as what?

Money and status? But then those people are economical success.

But who defines economic success?

The economist or psychologist?

But are successful companies made of psychopaths and Machiavellian people?

Then who does most of the work to build those companies?

I don't think status translates to success or machiavellianism?

That would mean that most successful people were automatically such and they aren't.

So who actually made this claim?

If there isn't a rational reason to procreate, why keep sustaining humanity?

What does this even mean?

Metaphorically speaking, if life is a gift, who is giving me that gift and what's it for? Do we keep on giving gifts to our children, telling them to give gifts as well, for a reason that cannot be rationally defined?

Gifts usually have meaning when they are given.
They are symbolic.
Birth does not.
Unless you are claiming you remember your birth or your current understanding of life is as a new borns.

We don't live in biological reality we were hardwired for.

So nothing we instinctively do makes much sense in larger scale.

Procreation least of all, since so many people die and yet there are is surplus of people on this planet.

IN a world where there is no medicine, famine a yearly occurrence, war a common occurrence, and pretty much life comes and goes faster, procreation was a kind of imperative.

In these times you could take out 30 million Russians in world war II and it barely made a dent in Russian existence in the long run.

The war probably did the damage, but - 30 million people speaking strictly demographically means very little.

 

[Hadoblado]

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

just wondering, seeing as we have no choice in birth, is life in itself not an imposed purpose? being pushed from the womb and placed in a cot then in a school isn't so different from an alcoholic being so lazy a fuck as to invent a robot for something which take humans mere seconds to accomplish.

but i'm just saying this for the sake of saying it, agree with meaning coming from within, tho external factors definitely have great shaping power over this inner meaning, if you find yourself in the trenches of ww1 then inner meaning will mean very little unless you can use it as a driver for survival.

My views are nested within a deterministic outlook like the one you describe. We might be talking about meaning differently. The meaning I am talking about is that which is experienced and does not exist outside of the subjective. So if I never have any agency over the meaningfulness I experience, that doesn't make it less meaningful. It's still coming from within even if my internal state is dictated by causality beyond my control.

Internal and external are simplifications, it's a causal feedback loop but that's messy to convey.

Purpose can be derived internally or imposed externally, and often these two will align. Congruence between the two benefits you. But when these two factors are incongruent your mind is ripe for detachment. This occurs when people leave their bubble, when people have strong innate tendencies in conflict with social context, or when people experience a deficiency in meaning (nihilism/depression).

Normies are just people for whom their internal and external meaning align. Character is achieved through the cultivation of the experience of meaning.

//guruspake

 

[Black Rose]

I think it is a balance between whether you are experiencing a crap time or not. Enjoying yourself is good but then you realize the inequity and want to change things. But it is not simple. War hunger boredom shelter jobs from economic collapse. This is not black and white. It bothers me and others. Church will not do anything politics won't either. Realizing the discrepancies mean you become unsettled. The point of hope is to get to the next stage of human development. something you want to do and have that feeling of value appraised to it. Balance of the individuals in society. health and betterment.

How to Maximize Dopamine & Motivation - Andrew Huberman​

 

[EndogenousRebel]

yes, but that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy life. I personally think those things are overated. Focusing on process rather than outcome is always better for experience of anything.

 

[DoIMustHaveAnUsername?]

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

Meaning is derived from the future, the meaning of passing the butter is that Rick will get to butter his toast, the act is not meaningless but the meaning of it is largely irrelevant to the robot. A meaningful occupation would be one in which the robot works to it's own benefit, the meaning being that it will be better off for having done so.

It's an imposed purpose and therefore lacks meaning.

Meaning is a perceptual process and comes from within.

just wondering, seeing as we have no choice in birth, is life in itself not an imposed purpose? being pushed from the womb and placed in a cot then in a school isn't so different from an alcoholic being so lazy a fuck as to invent a robot for something which take humans mere seconds to accomplish.

but i'm just saying this for the sake of saying it, agree with meaning coming from within, tho external factors definitely have great shaping power over this inner meaning, if you find yourself in the trenches of ww1 then inner meaning will mean very little unless you can use it as a driver for survival.

As meaningfulness comes from personal values, us being beings with purpose (imposed purpose by a divine order, by evolution, or those pesky supernatural bureaucrats) is immaterial. Even with no purpose (or even with a meaningless purpose), if we can find meaning in some goal, we can define our own purpose in terms of such meaning. However to truly know what we find meaningful, we must know ourselves. Our true will need not be too obvious and at best it can be inferred through investigation and experimentations.

is breathing not a purpose? shitting? if we don't breathe and shit our survival rate drops to zero. so why make distinctions between shitting and painting the mona lisa? if it was never da vinci's purpose to defecate, would he ever have become so polymathical? no, he would've burst open as infant. ah, but autonomous actions of the biological shell can not be seen as purpose, can not tie into meaning?

mammothshit on the level of soul-belief. there is no disconnect, no barrier between bone cell and brain, no id conveniently inserted into the cortex by mighty Zeus. We are merely more apprehensive than other animals, and so can form meanings and purposes more complex than eating and shitting and fucking, tho at times some choose to keep to the basics.

Some actions are means to an end.

 

[Hadoblado]

We are merely more apprehensive than other animals, and so can form meanings and purposes more complex than eating and shitting and fucking, tho at times some choose to keep to the basics.

Beautiful in its brutality.