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Humankind is very, very thrifty. It tends to keep the bathwater even after it's thrown out the baby. What does this mean? Although most of today's cultural values were born long ago from specific, often material, needs, the needs themselves are long gone. These old needs have been replaced by...

Thank you! My mother gave me the flowers, and I was encouraged to go talk to her; I was never too subtle about my crushes.

To follow is a detailed report of my romantic life from age six onward. All names have been changed, for reasons of privacy or whatever. Let me start by saying that every one of my romantic encounters, from my blushing pursuit of the cute girl in first grade all the way to my most recent...

Grandmaster Ferret drags boulders to charities, Shows up an hour too late; They’re shutting it down, so he plasters his frown To the sky overlooking his fate. Conscience, you’ve bitten enough of your stones; Payment—it’s not a rent or a loan. Sisyphus Wannabe, fat as a honeybee, Cries...

I feel you, man. My diagnosis came in the second semester of senior year. All my life I had pretty much done what I wanted, meanwhile sliding by with average grades. But after high school began, I felt awful. My grades plummeted. Turned out I had a long-untreated mood disorder, for...

Thank you both for the advice. I like to think I don't waste time comparing myself to others—but sometimes I do. This is unhealthy. You each recommend I go to college; do you have any recommendations for what I should do in the meantime? Half a year without school, for my part, is...

I hope to write a summary of my present circumstances. After reading it, you can give me as much advice as you'd like. I'd appreciate any at all. Here goes. Note that the first five paragraphs are exposition. I live in one of many small towns that orbit Washington, DC. Much of my time...

- stop wallowing in self-pity - work on screenplay - start ADHD medication - keep up with schoolwork - work on a website I've been conceptualizing - start waking up early - get band together - get better at guitar

Life is the intersection of wrong and suck.

I should mention the whole alcohol ordeal was a shitty joke, and I would never try alcohol because of familial dependencies. I think it's neither. I've confidence in my ability which isn't misplaced. I understand that if I push myself I could become great in whatever field, scientific or...

I slept on it and I feel much better, if a tad embarrassed and regretful. I guess I failed in part to elaborate my main concern, which wasn't really the rejection itself so much as the fact that my competence and my performance seem to be two very different things. In other words, what I'm...

I'm seventeen and in the past half month have experienced more rejection than I've ever experienced in my life. My coping mechanisms are fried like a computer in a swimming pool and in consequence I'm not really sure what to do besides write about the experience. I don't know what anyone can...

I'll have a go at this. First of all, conflict, essentially, is "an incompatibility between two or more ideas, principles, or interests." Story itself is "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment." I'd argue that it is metaphysically impossible for there to...

Ironically, I'm just going to cannibalize another post I wrote at the beginning of this year, also about originality and what it really is to be original. So don't be afraid to reinvent the wheel. Nobody ever reinvented the wheel the same way as anybody else, and so if you think long and...

Fear of death is something I experience on occasion, but that's about the extent of it. I wouldn't in any way consider it "crippling" or debilitating for me, except in the sheer moment when I experience it. There's actually a logical flaw in my own, if not in everybody else's, conception of...

I'm sure the language barrier made it more dry, but I wouldn't argue that that's where all of the dryness originated. Heidegger is just dry, period. Plus, he has a vocabulary endemic basically to Being and Time.

Drinking coffee. Waiting until I absolutely need to go to the bathroom to get out of my seat and go do it. Reading about artificial neural networks, out of a brilliantly arranged, fascinating college textbook about cognitive science which I received for Christmas. Thinking about the design of...

If you can write, too, then scientific research, especially in an interdisciplinary field, is not a bad option. EDIT: Ah, never mind, missed the "low social interaction" aspect. Anyway, why pursue a career that caters to your social weaknesses? I'd suggest at least trying something that...

First of all, rule out the possibility of psychological disorders that impede concentration like ADHD. In such cases, medication greatly helps. Take small chunks at a time, spaced over long periods. Plan accordingly. The human condition is such that people cannot wrap their heads around...

Re: whhat gives you the incentive/willpower/strength to keep going and stay "alive"? Some bastard concoction of intense curiosity, misguided love, and listless habit.

Provided an input, which could be information encoded in any way, intelligence is basically the ability to secure an output, which, again, could be information encoded in any way. Of course, this definition is broad enough to include all organic life, as well as all computational machines...

If you can read, say, half of Being and Time, then you can probably read anything.

What would you guys think if I made passive ability scores in my system more than just 20 - the active ability score? If I allowed some room for variation, without entirely creating another ability? In fact, I could get rid of Spirit, leaving me with only four abilities: Awareness, Vitality...

I would argue that agility and perception are more related than, say, insight into the motives of others and perception; D&D 5e would have both of those under Wisdom. Generally speaking, if one is more aware of his environment, he will be in a better position to react to it. It doesn't make much...

The main imperative of evolution, I feel, isn't survival—it's reproduction. The body deteriorates after the reproductive stages of our life, which shows that evolution doesn't really 'care' beyond that point whether we live or die, though we may cling to life for the same reasons that we did...

If my gut feeling is correct and if death is the end of all experience, then it doesn't seem something to worry about. People who worry about death itself are invariably in the wrong: they worry about experiencing what is essentially a nonexperience, subjecting themselves to the absence of a...

My most common result is H.P. Lovecraft.

I want to be independent and self-reliant, both spiritually and economically; that much I know. I'd like to live as ascetically as is fitting for me, and I'd like to become a writer of stories, essays, and aphorisms. I'd like to be able to develop and cultivate myself as a person. By this...

I wake up at 4 in the morning, consume copious quantities of caffeine, toy with some idea or another, do nothing for a while, go to school and then do nothing some more, go home, take a nap, wake up, do homework, write and possibly read, go to bed, repeat. All the while feeling unremarkably sad...

It's nice to see that the forum is split on this issue. It makes for interesting discussion. I should clarify the difference between menial jobs that do take away a substantial amount of time and energy and those that don't. I certainly wouldn't be content with the former. And although I don't...

The Imitation Game. Before that it was The Double, with Jesse Eisenberg. I'd recommend both, especially the latter, which was darkly enthralling.

Now that I've done my research, I believe my favorite movements are Romanticism and Impressionism, not Romanticism and Classicism. I really enjoy Romantic landscapes. I can also appreciate Post-Impressionism so long as the colors aren't too warm and imposing.

I love D&D 5e. It's a great system which, so far as I can tell, does a great job of unifying the various editions in a way that makes them seem as though they are all part of the same game. But one thing I feel is that abilities aren't as important now as they were in, say, the second...

This measures preferences for a variety of premodern art movements. I thought this test was interesting. The link: http://personality-testing.info/tests/APS.php Here are mine, Romanticism and Classicism being the highest:

Say, working at a grocery store, as a waiter or waitress at a restaurant, at a patent office. Anything that involves little in the way of intellectual effort and is generally looked down upon.

I certainly would. One of the things I strive for is exterior simplicity. I don't need stuff, or a high pay. Being a menial would also give me time to think about what I want to think about. What about you?

Butterfly/Owl/Deer.

Let's see. The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst, by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall. It's about the man who went insane in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, lying about his progress with the use of intricately constructed false logs and then killing himself. The Gay Science, by...

This probably qualifies me as 'aloof', not 'psychopathic'.

Hmm. I'd have to say anything between and including medium roast and columbian.

[/SPOILER] Oh dear; what have I gotten myself into?

Thanks!

Thank you! It's nice to know that other people enjoy this sort of music.

Thank you very much!

Hi. I think I did this a while back, but then I took a long pause from forum-going in general and now I return. I'm JPS. Those anyway are my initials. I'll probably be posting here on a frequent basis from now on. I enjoy certain things. Among those are philosophy, writing, D&D...

To me it means getting over a sort of baseline of spiritual inertia that we all have in some degree or another. It means considering one's existence and one's place in it, or lack thereof, and then making a meaningful decision on the basis of one's considerations. In this society we are all...

I don't believe originality is about establishing ignorance and then proceeding from there. If anything, ignorance begs more similarity than knowledge; those who act as though they know nothing will get similar answers, while those who act as though they already have some base of knowledge will...

Material acquisition, being generally well-liked, inhabiting a high position in society. Needless to say, I don't want success and, furthermore, I'd like to use another word for what I want. Maybe 'self-realization', though I'm assuming here that I can encapsulate my will in a word. Honestly...

Those are three very disparate degrees. Interesting. Do you hold any particular philosophical views? Welcome aboard, by the way.

Are you espousing the idea that 'disorders' are yet another construct used by society to 'normalize' its constituents, hence making them all equally thoughtless and productive? That we as a psychological community have gotten into the habit of medicating what we can't explain? If so, I can't...