EVERYTHING DOES NOT SUCK

I've been seeing a lot of negativity and defeated mentality lately on this board lately. Let's fix that. You have the capability of doing something great. Repurpose an old computer you haven't used in a few years. Contribute to the community, whether online, in person, or here specifically, Lainon. Be content with what you have already. Do not mourn for what has been lost, build toward a better future. Love your computers, don't throw them away or abuse them. Upgrade them. Use them. Install a free operating system on them. So much of what we have and can have from the internet is free. We have free music, free videos, free content, free hangouts, free artwork, etc., anything is at our disposal to enjoy, just find it! If you were last happiest when you were a child or when you were a teen, bring to your remembrance things of your youth. Surround yourself with what you already enjoy. Don't sulk or complain. Not everything is like kicking dead whales down the beach. You still have us. You still have yourself. You still have your computer(s). Be content!

>we have free [...] I need spend approximately $500 on insulin every single month or every single cell in my body will die of starvation / dehydration within 24 hours. A further $2500 goes to my single occupant apartment rent, and the collapse of the coastal city rental model means that prices surrounding me are going up rather than down even while banks and businesses whinge endlessly about central metropolitan rent threatening to go down by a couple of bucks. This ties me immediately to obligations over which I have neither power nor control with no options to develop a sustainable lifestyle except perhaps if I were to murder a significant but not staggering number of people in order to sustain my own life through the total surrender of liberty to the prison system.

>>72060 Your circumstances are not ideal, but certainly not the worst. Your suffering is of your own accord. Stop wallowing in self pity and take a look around, the world is at your fingertips. There are many who would give everything they have to be right where you are. Learn to appreciate what you've been given and the world becomes a much brighter place

>>72061 >your suffering is of your own accord. stop wallowing anyone ever notice that every single uplifting optimist always opens their outreach with sneering derision and immediate dismissal of physical circumstance? yeah i don't have a heroin addiction unlike Emperor Marcus Aurelius but y'know his daily use of massive quantities of opium every single day for his entire life was also what granted him that stoic positivity. You wrote a post about being content with material possessions and material circumstances and current material potential such as loving the computers you currently have in a tone echoing Marcus Aurelius' daily meditative waves of contentment from his heroin. You're responding to someone identifying his material possessions (incl. job, health insurance) as an increasingly tightening cage bounding him with literal physical death on the outside, like a more serious version of Marcus Aurelius' occasional experiences with heroin withdrawl when he thought he might finally be stoic enough to not do drugs every day. Maybe there's a common thread between the social system that inspired heroin use and the effect of socially unsupported heroin withdrawl on a guy, and maybe it's not wrong to want a solution that doesn't involve either doing heroin or l i t e r a l , p h y s i c a l , d e a t h , and maybe it wouldn't be bad to pay a little more heed and a little less sneed when Marcus Aurelius talked about the physical pain of opium withdrawl even if a lot of less fortunate people would have had a blast being emperor and doing drugs every day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlM0vahvauU

>I've been seeing a lot of negativity and defeated mentality lately on this board lately. Let's fix that. >You have the capability of doing something great. I agree! People here, on lainchan and imageboards at large, tend to be very resigned to soykafty fates. Unfortunately, the rest of your post tries but fails miserably at being supportive. >Be content with what you have already Contentedness is a stagnating force, not a developmental force. >Do not mourn for what has been lost That's an awful idea. Repressing emotions is genuinely going to hinder most progress one can make. >If you were last happiest when you were a child or when you were a teen, bring to your remembrance things of your youth. I kind of agree with this. It sounds like you're just pointing in the vaguely correct direction. Things like this more obviously promote blind nostalgia chasing than they do the actually productive activity: learning what made you no longer happy and addressing it to the best of your abilities. >Surround yourself with what you already enjoy. Don't sulk or complain. This is also really bad too and often leads to deepened anhedonia and/or dopamine chasing. Filling your color-blind life with colorful things won't make yourself see the colors. You have to learn to appreciate your issues while still acknowledging the bad. You have to learn to give them time without letting them hold the mic forever. It's an incredibly hard process that can be undergone by just wishing for it or mantrically telling yourself it's the case. And people have more than their rights to complain and they should exercise it, but they should indeed learn not to ruminate. >>72061 >Your circumstances are not ideal, but certainly not the worst. That's another awful way of looking at things! Plain and simple, that lainon is enduring some pretty damnable injustice. Your response shouldn't be "but what about african babies" or some such. You should at least feign some kind of sympathy. No amount of comparative health and wealth legitimizes undue suffering. >Learn to appreciate what you've been given and the world becomes a much brighter place I've always hated when people say they count their blessings and that others need to be grateful. It's just not true. Nobody who says it is truthful. Best you get is that they say grace before supper. People who claim to appreciate their privileges are claiming to defy the human mind's undivertable focus on the bad parts of life. And worst of all, it's a sentiment that perpetuates society's toxic obsession with modesty in the process. Peace and health of mind can only come from understanding the self and others, not from blindly accepting the axioms of existentialist writers. I will attach two very different works that have helped me a great deal with my mental health in hopes they can help others likewise. You too, OP. I think you're just repressing your negative emotions instead of allowing them to be a part of a healthy person. That's just a guess, though.

>>72060 You've gotta start buying your insulin in Mexico. Go once or twice a year and get what you need. It's all OTC and the government price capped the retail prices to something like $50 per 10ml vial. Might be less. Math it out and you'll probably find you save $3000/year even with travel expenses. As far as I know they aren't hassling diabetics buying insulin yet. Bring your ID, passport, Rx, insurance card, doctor's office phone number, etc. just in case some asshole feels like challenging you. Insulin tourism has been a thing for years. Also remember that Walmart now sells a rapid analogue insulin (ideal for insulin pumps) for $70/10ml vial retail, but you need a prescription. Coordinate with your doctor. Walmart also sells crappy oldschool R and NPH insulins OTC (Reli-on brand) for I think it's around $30/vial. They aren't ideal, but they'll save your life if you're broke. You'll have to figure out the dosing conversions. You might be young enough that you never had to take those insulins, but you should figure out the SHTF medical plans. Don't die. Don't even joke about committing crimes to get healthcare. We're not there yet. Be a little fish who slips through the holes in the nets.

>>72071 Isn't Mexico dangerous enough to not even get near its borders?

After deleting my Google account and installing GrapheneOS, everything I need still works and I no longer feel anxious about phone spying.

>>72067 >I love my computer, it never asks for more >I click and you just go away That's not quite what computers are like nowadays. I thought this was meant to be a positivity rather than a nostalgia thread.

>>72079 Not even close. I'm an American who got my bachelor's there (cheap and good option). Traveled all around while I had the time there. Really, all of the most dangerous people out there don't fuarrrk with randoms, especially if they're white. It's not hard to spot cartel guys either so just keep to yourself around them, everybody with half a brain does that. I made out without ever even talking to cartel guys to my knowledge much less getting scalped and castrated on liveleak. Honestly, Mexico was a great country in my experience and the presence of crime there felt lower than in America, though I'm sure there are stats that would correct me. There's a lot of cool places to visit out there too and it's dirt cheap if you have American salary (everything except gas that is). I've even thought about doing the most American and retiring there. We'll see.

this thread is as stupid as the sad ones. hyper positivity and hyper negativity are both bad for you. get real. and then you have people like >>72061 saying that you should compare your suffering to other, completely different kinds of suffering. i don't care about the little starving children in africa, that's not my problem to solve. i have real problems now, and i want a plan to solve them, in the real world. can you do that?

>>72058 Thanks OP I was getting tired of that "everything is stinky dogsoykaf" thread (´･ω･`) Sure life is like kicking dead whales down the beach here and there but as long as I have my little corner to myself everything's ok. Just recently found out a classmate from high school is terminally ill so yeah I'm glad I'm doing okay. Gonna go throw FreeBSD on an old macbook and soykafpost on Heyuri.

>>72083 But on the other hand it's literally under reign of criminals. All that scary stories about cartels give creeps. This is also a place where American criminals like to run away if my knowledge is correct. Are you really sure you want to retire there? Cheap doesn't always mean good.

>>72058 Bloat conformist >>72058 >Surround yourself with what you already enjoy I do, but this doesn't make me incapable of having an opinion about the soykafty state of the current world.

>>72090 NTL but I think that in general this sort of fear is unnecessarily holding people captive financially. A while back I bought a very inexpensive place in a poorer area (within the US). I did some basic research to avoid major red flags (low crime rate, lack of mentions in local news or social media of gang violence etc). I was still a little worried at first, and my family was very worried. But I'm fine, I am not being harassed, assaulted, robbed or murdered. On the other hand, the financial threat, like what >>72066 describes as a cage of physical death, is essentially lifted for me, in no small part because I have reduced my expenses to almost nothing. It's hard to overstate how oppressive and confining financial obligations can be, especially if you don't feel like a willing participant in what is happening, and can't see any way out. Even where there might be real risk/danger it would be worth it for a chance to escape, if the alternative is that your life isn't really your own.

>>72090 That's all a part of the libertad, my friend. Money = power in a much less biased way there. Just don't fuarrrk with the cartels just like how you don't fuarrrk with the cops. Best part about it is that you rarely see the cartels unless you go to one of the really infested areas. Can't say that about America. >>72093 Yes! I spent my teens in the ghetto because poor soykaf upbringing. I honestly was terrified that I'd get drawn and quartered by a flock of negros in mustangs. In reality, they were just a little distrusting of you until they got to know you. Crime inside of the community was very low. Definitely the best part was the extra money that such cheap living brought, although the housing kinda sucked seeing as it was a rental.

>>72060 This. The trend of "don't worry just be happy", or if you can't how 'bout some pills? has to end. Your artificial optimism won't solve poverty, unlivable wages or ever growing social isolation. If your goal is attainable happiness simple ignorance without change will not help. And the "old golden days" rhetoric is much more dangerous and in long-term more depressing then any other facebook tier life advice. Even if you somehow find your way out of issues caused by our modern situation, being content takes practice and deconditioning. For example by philosophy or other form of (self-)education

>Repurpose an old computer you haven't used in a few years. >Love your computers, don't throw them away or abuse them. Upgrade them. Use them. Install a free operating system on them. And if the worst comes, reuse components from broken computers. find them new foster homes in your own systems. :) >>72083 This is nice to hear. Me and a significant other always talk about me visiting them back in Mexico. I just need to do some more research on the country, but hearing your testimony, maybe it's safer than I think. (I'm not too worried about the cartel stories and crime stuff. I'm more worried about the language barrier. All I need to do now is get more familiar with the language. I already know French, so it shouldn't be too hard once I set my mind to it.)

>>72092 Both a positive and negative attitude are bloat compared to a neutral one!

>>72169 Yah, Mexico isn’t that bad. There are actually cities in the US with equally high murder rates. St. louis for one. All the worst stuff happens near certain parts of the US border but the rest of the country is generally very safe. Even at the border if you just keep to yourself and aren’t doing any shady stuff yourself you’ll be fine.

>>72169 You can visit Mexico, welcome and have fun. But we don't appreciate americans comingto LIVE here so please go back to your side of the wall when you're done.

>>72060 This. I don't need insulin, but everything is so expensive it is near unattainable. Cost of living where I am has skyrocketed over the last 5 years and wages don't increase in turn. I know it's easy for people to say "just move to a lower cost of living place", but what happens when those places skyrocket too? Where do I go? The job market is like kicking dead whales down the beach ass if you aren't a software engineer, and even then it still is like kicking dead whales down the beach ass. I am a network engineer trying to make more money and every company wants to lowball me on salary, often below median income relative to where I live. The world is dying due to rampant unchecked consumerism. Giant billion dollar corporations making a new phone every year, new laptop every year, sometimes multiple times a year. And yeah, I know the whole "vote with your dollar" thing but I can only do so much. How about literally everyone else? Plastic bottles in the streets, plastic everywhere that will exist for much longer than I ever will. It's disgusting. Gross. Nobody knows how to do anything anymore. All my coworkers are computer nerds but don't know how to change a tire or the oil in their car. They don't know how to grow a tomato. They don't know how to fix anything unless its behind a keyboard. What happens when soykaf hits the fan and you can't login to work and check in on Slack? What do you do? So many people are unprepared for the harsh realities of the world. Want to buy a house? Jokes on you, unless you make 200k a year you can't afford a nice house in a nice place to live. I have 30k saved up for a down payment and in my area that is nothing. My landlord told me he makes 70k a month in rent. 70k! Because he bought a bunch of houses when they were cheap. Jokes on him, he's crippled with Parkison's and will a leeches death.

>>72066 Never heard about Marcus Aurelius having an opium addiction. Looking it up it seems to be true. Well, thanks for sharing that info, I'll keep it in mind next time I consider stoicism. Seems more like a soma regimen from brave new world now

>>72058 >Repurpose an old computer you haven't used in a few years. wow i can do retro computing this totally solves the problem that i want to get actual work done but cant due to the infelicities of every single piece of tech wh*te people ever made. but you bring up a good point, all computing is just retro garbage like setting up an amiga emulator that will never be secure. thats what un*x and all its retarded children are (including windows, mac)

>>72060 damn so this it what its like being a genetic garbage lifeform

I like unix and linux, even if they suck ass, I just happennto enjoy them, and I don't care if by enjoying it I'm making life mkserable for al the lisp weenies who can't deal with the fact that their preferred solution is not the dominant paradigm. Regardless, I wouldn't want to work with people who all they can do is complain and not actually work with the rest of the world in making it better but entrench themselves in their own camp which is to be divorced from he rest of the world to remain "pure" (because in essence their perceived superiority lies in the fact that their unpopular language will remain untainted by the contraints of the real world, they once tried to do stuff in the real world and it all resulted in a decade-long winter that at least fixed them in their position of a tragic superior technology that the dumb masses were too stupid to appreciate).

>>72070 I appreciate your healthy positivity in this thread, and you echo my thoughts on OP very closely. I will check those works out, thank you for sharing.

>>72276 >Nobody knows how to do anything anymore. All my coworkers are computer nerds but don't know how to change a tire or the oil in their car. They don't know how to grow a tomato. They don't know how to fix anything unless its behind a keyboard. So what? This is such a stupid argument, embarrassingly so. You're an idiot, you're genuinely a complete idiot. Nobody knows how to do everything, our civilization is so complex that it's virtually impossible and this is why we specialize. You have a smith, you have a farmer, you have a knight and you have a software developer and an auto mechanic. Without farmer the knight and the smith will starve, without the smith the farmer will not have farming tools and the knight will not have a sword and without the knight the farmer and the smith will get killed by bandits. Point is, we all rely on each other you dumbass neglected child. >What happens when soykaf hits the fan and you can't login to work and check in on Slack? What do you do? So many people are unprepared for the harsh realities of the world. That will never happen. Nothing will ever hit the fan, it's a quasi-religious fantasy. Dot-com crash is about as bad as it can get in the tech sector and it's not happening again, it's a mature industry now.(USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST,Always argue in good faith and avoid using personal attacks.)

>>72608 >That will never happen. Nothing will ever hit the fan, it's a quasi-religious fantasy I'm sure the Russian nobility were utterly convinced of this in 1900.

>>72608 I really enjoy your metaphor about knights and farmers and smiths. I guess the problem is we got overrun by bandits.

>>72608 "You believe in x, well what about [logical extreme]?" Saying that someone should be able to change a tire is not the same as saying every person should be able to every single thing in the world, it's a complete logical extreme. The number of things the average person can do is becoming smaller and smaller therefore growing a larger and lager dependence on others, and when those "others" are governments and companies, that don't necessarily have your best interests in mind, it becomes a problem. >That will never happen. Nothing will ever hit the fan, it's a quasi-religious fantasy "This will never happen because... it just won't, ok??" Covid-19 and the lockdowns disrupted a lot of things for 2-3 years, and that was just something big in the last 5 years. The idea of never preparing because it's "too big to fail" is a stupid argument because it isn't an argument. What's wrong with preparing for something? If everything goes to soykaf then you did good by preparing if not then you've wasted time learning something valuable, how terrible. Maybe you're idea of soykaf hitting the fan is sudden nuclear fallout, but it can be something as simple as mass shortages of something essential. Both ultra-independence and ultra-codependence is stupid, who would've thought? Just like everything it must be taken in moderation. I've seen people refuse to learn to cook because it's easier to order take out, which is overpriced and not good for you either. You should accept that you cannot do everything but you shouldn't be utterly dependent on others for every little thing. Your metaphor is nice but the knight can be corrupt, the farmer can scam you, and the smith can be simply bad at his job. Will you resign your fate if the knight doesn't wish to defend you? Wil you starve if the farmer sells you overpriced produce? Will you be ok with the smith selling you soykafty tools?

>>72608 >So what? This is such a stupid argument, embarrassingly so. You're an idiot, you're genuinely a complete idiot. Nobody knows how to do everything, our civilization is so complex that it's virtually impossible and this is why we specialize You talk with a lot of passion and vibrato but your understanding is shallow and uninformed Specialization isn't passed on with generational knowledge and a lot of people forgot specific specializations due to complexity of things. Look at this video for more information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko&ab_channel=DevGAMM

>>72846 I think it's dishonest of you to paint the original statements out as not hinting at some kind of systemic collapse, especially when phrases like SHTF are used primarily by people who are prepping for exactly that. And for someone who professes moderation, your views of the world are very oriented around others being useless, dumb, lazy, and/or corrupt. Your certainly balanced misanthropy also casts your SHTF comment in a certain light. That's not to say I disagree that people should know how to cook instead of order food online or what have you. In fact, I think most people should have a pretty large degree of independence if they can manage it! But I think it's a dysfunctional belief if it comes from or leads to despising people for their choices not to do what you think is best for them. It also leads me to wonder as to how much of this stuff you actually know/do yourself since it doesn't seem like you actually have a strong motivation to from your posts. You just strike me as someone who loathes others and uses these values to do so on other fronts as well.

having tried many things and done them adequately I have trouble respecting specialization as much as I might otherwise would have. Logic is logic, if you have it then you can apply it in a lot of places and it seems like itll get you pretty far. Skill is important but a smart person can do a lot of tricky things if he tries a bit. If you can't keep a small garden change a tire and the oil in your car and cook a decent steak then there's something seriously wrong with you. Maybe you don't want to do these things, thats fine, but they're easy, you must be able to do them.

>>72276 I would first like to say that I'm not >>72276 >I think it's dishonest of you to paint the original statements out as not hinting at some kind of systemic collapse, I said it doesn't have to be a systemic collapse. I didn't exclude that. >your views of the world are very oriented around others being useless, dumb, lazy, and/or corrupt Again, I said people can be like this, not that all people are. There will always be these types of people, people are free to choose what they do and so with that sometimes they'll do things at the expense of others. If this is possible then becoming entirely dependent on people is just asking for problems. For example, >>72060 has to pay $500 a month for his insulin, who's to say that price isn't suddenly hiked up (remember when Martin Shkreli raised Daraprim by 5000%)? He's in the unfortunate situation of not really having a choice in the matter (he could go elsewhere but the problem still stands). Now, for things which we have some control over we should not let ourselves become entirely dependent. This is not to say that you should learn everything and anything, just enough to reasonably get by on your own. >despising people for their choices not to do what you think is best for them >You just strike me as someone who loathes others If the world is going in a direction, which I believe to be bad, I think it's only natural for me to not like people for their choices and actions which contribute to this. It's probably true that I simply loath people, and I should probably work on not being like that, but I can't help but feel that way. There are things I think people should be able to do, even if it's not an expert level understanding. I guess the question becomes what's an acceptable level of independence/dependence (or knowledge and lack thereof). People give away their independence/knowledge, and thus become ignorant on things , and delegate it onto others and eventually this becomes the norm. You can certainly choose to have other's do most things for you, while you have your niche that may or may not become irrelevant, but what happens when you don't have that any more? The problem isn't giving and taking and helping others in a society, it's being entirely dependent on that society and not being able to function without it.

>>72854 I still think it's dishonest to phrase it the way you did. You went overly vague in order to downplay someone else's (admittedly bad) point. Additionally, I think you misunderstood what I said. I never said that you think everyone is stupid and lazy. I didn't even say you think most people are. Rather, I said that your views focus on the stupid and lazy people in the world. The rest of that paragraph is just begging the question so I won't bother with it. I agree that your disdain for others is natural, but that doesn't make it good. In fact, like many other grooves the mind naturally falls into, I think it's probably more self-harmful than anything. You go on to use a slippery slope fallacy and ask some of the questions you were begging earlier. Then you also ask a question that puzzles me: what will other people do when their plans don't work out anymore? I struggle to see why you care! It's not your problem at all and even if you do care out of base empathy it's still confusing that the lack of a concrete answer for some people makes you mad at them. I'd think that you'd lean towards having a desire to help these people instead of hating them. Regardless, you say that the primary problem you have is with others being completely dependent on society. I personally don't think there is anyone who isn't completely dependent on their society. And I want you to ask yourself how much you really depend on society. For example, if your career plans suddenly vanished into thin air right out of undergrad, how would you pay off your debt and survive in a society that didn't have a use for what you were trained to do anymore? I don't know if growing your own tomatoes and changing your own oil would cut it, at least in this economy.

>>72855 You are right, I largely don’t care what happens to other people and my problem is when what they do affects me, but doesn’t this all stem from the idea of depending on other people? If we are to depend on other people caring about what happens to them and how they affect you is important, stupid and lazy people create problems and so it’s only natural to focus on them. It’s not nice to be in poverty and see people struggle because the things they depend on fail them, especially because I agree with you that you almost have to depend on them. I certainly depend on them. There will always be people who are worse off, but depending on more and more things just makes the problem worse. My career vanishing can be described as SHTF, for me personally, and so I should have the capability to get a job in something else if that happens. You are also right about me having a large dependence on society, like housing and electricity and jobs etc. I will admit that I’ve probably tried to stick to point that isn’t what it should have been. My main point is that society does and should provides us with things that we either could not do on our own or things that are too inconvenient to do on our own. My problem is that we give the control of these up too easily and to people who don’t really have our best interests in mind and we have no way out. I wasn’t trying to use a slippery slope argument. You even said that people should have a large degree of independence, is that not setting a level of independence/dependence? Me choosing a career in is me giving up career options in other areas because it’s too hard to do everything on my own but it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to do many different things. I wasn’t the one who made the argument about tomatoes and oil changes, but my interpretation was giving up things for convenience. It’s easy to give up too many things for the sake of convenience and lose your independence. My problem with people is that they give up independence simply for the sake of convenience too easily. Everything is done and thought out for them by someone else who most likely also doesn’t care what happens to them. Cooking is one of them and you could even argue that something like what people think and what they see online is served by an algorithm which is convenient and strengthens whatever biases they have.