Life

>be me >work an already crappy factory job that pays $15 >lots of overtime when I want it and the 12 hour night shift schedule is awesome, so I stay and work there despite hating it. >have only $40 in my pocket til payday >struggle to save up to go to a college to better myself in the field that interests me >parents tell me I'm "successful enough" anyway, not to be so down >my boss treats me like soykaf but says I'm her best (fuarrrk her) >think of suicide daily, but I can't leave a sibling behind who needs me >deal with hopelessness on a daily basis I'm burned out on my job, my life, my hobbies, and have no means of self betterment. My younger sibling loves me though, so I endure it all. How have we let this world come to this? I know I'm not the only one with these struggles.

I wish i could give some advice but, as someone who has been in this situation for years i know how exhaustive it is to do anything outside work. I hope life brightens in the future, Lain.

>>12221 This system is broken. Going to school, working harder, and doing 'better' isn't going to fix it. I feel more and more hopeless everyday. I can't tell anybody around me, because there isn't anybody who listens.

>>12222 What really helped me was making meaningful connections. I know it won't give you any money, but it certainly makes it easier to endure.

>parents tell me I'm "successful enough" anyway, not to be so down The thing is, fuarrrk this. What is success without happiness? It's a spook. Society has some pretty limiting success stories. Mainly for the people with money from their parents. Live your life guys, don't despair. And I'm telling this to myself as well, I'm not some enlightened personality. Train yourselves for the good life, don't compromise in mediocrity they want us in. Re-program ourselves to the our true needs. We are definitely but maybe not irreversibly brain washed. We have to try and fix this. They've put so many spooks on us. A scholar learns something everyday. A zen student forgets something everyday.

I'm not facing your exact situation, lainon, but I def know that feel. I'm hoping to get a decent IT job (sysadmin/securty or something) but I don't have and can't afford to get a degree. I deal with the feeling of not doing "something substantial" or having a "real job" a lot, but as time goes on I just say "fuarrrk it" more and more and focus on living a fufilling and enjoyable life. We shouldn't worry so much on achieving goals that society forces upon us by force and shame. It's all soykaf. Let's all just focus on having a good life instead of a well paying one.

>be me >uapologetically a fed >gubmint shuts down >sorry folks, you wont get paid and we dont know when you will >still have to go to work or get in trouble >politicians playing stupid games At this point im a wageslave but without the wage. And our boss told us he did not have a problem with us getting other jobs outside of work. The urge to quit and find a new job keeps growing, but I have very limited skills, and I cant afford to be out of a job for too long, and I have never gotten a loan (lived with parents while going to community college that I worked to pay cash for) I dont want to be homeless, and I can barely afford food. Such is life...

>>12228 >uapologetically a fed You deserve it.

>>12231 There are a lot of different government jobs and many of them are just as bad as the wage slaves that empty the trash can in my office space. In some places beggars can't be choosers from a jobs standpoint.

>>12220 I don't have any advice for you. I live on my disability now and am hopeless despite not wageslaving anymore. I wageslaved for years but had (literally) abusive bosses and coworkers who saw me as a threat and always tore me down. Also got torn down by my family over the years. I only recognize futility now; I try so hard to be positive and appreciate the little things that have to to with the grind of life, but there's nothing there. I don't like to admit this, but I kind of feel cheated out in a way. I felt like if I had long-term partner and we both cared for each other that I'd feel like life mattered. This is kind of normal person af to say, but it is what it is. I did everything I was supposed to, I worked hard, saved all of my money and created a secure life. I work out and am thoughtful and considerate towards others. I unfortunately have trouble relating to people who haven't been through really bad soykaf now, and I was also born in the era of tinder and degeneracy and it's just pointless. The world is soykaf. The best bet at a comfy life was having a safe home and someone to love and care for. Many of us have been cheated out of that by cultural programming. I probably will kill myself before I'm 30 (another 4 years).

>>12252 > I felt like if I had long-term partner and we both cared for each other that I'd feel like life mattered. It wouldn't have helped, Lain. Although we are always connected, we can never fully understand each other; someone else cannot give you meaning. >I did everything I was supposed to, I worked hard, saved all of my money and created a secure life That's a problem though. Thinking as if the universe is judging you in some way, that if you follow some arbitrary path things will work out fine... Life is a lot more complicated. >I unfortunately have trouble relating to people who haven't been through really bad soykaf now That's normal, i think. I once left a relationship because my partner was rich, had loving parents and it was just.. hard. It's not as if people need to suffer, but it's really difficult to communicate to people who have had the american dream life, in the day to day sense. Things get lost in translation, communication becomes a burden. >And I was also born in the era of tinder and degeneracy and it's just pointless. I don't know what you mean by degeneracy that is exclusive to our times (nor what the problem is with that). People want warmth, connection, meaning. Even if it lasts a night. This ideal relationship that was sold to us by media and religion is just not real, Lain. You can't work hard and get someone who loves you unconditionally and will always understand you and be there for you. Just as you won't love this person unconditionally nor always be there for them. Being in a relationship with this ideal in mind would only hurt both parties, this ideal blocks you from sometimes recognizing that things aren't really working out, for example. The human condition is complicated, it's inevitable to disappoint the people we love the most. Tinder is just a method of connection, it doesn't remove any value from the interaction. Sometimes a one night stand is all we need to keep ourselves sane. >any of us have been cheated out of that by cultural programming. Lain, i don't know you, i wish i did, but i don't. But let me give you this advice: Nobody cheat you out of anything but yourself. At the end of last year i left friendships i had since childhood, i left my job and a loving relationship. I've been at home struggling to motivate myself to get another job before my savings go out. Living is really, really hard, Lain. A loving relationship won't solve that nor give it meaning. You have to find this meaning by yourself. I've lived traumas that left me catatonic for weeks, things hurt so much i tried to kill myself thrice now, only to give up at the last second each time and feel like i don't belong even more. Disappointments build up and meaning becomes abstract, and nobody, nobody but yourself can truly understand you. Nobody but yourself can give life meaning. I've been in loving relationships, i thought i'd have a family with three people now and truly only loved one of them. I've hurt people deeply when they thought i'd be there for them. My point with all this is that this idea you have of an ideal relationship that will make your life worth living doesn't exist. This type of relationship is no different than work, you force yourself into obligation and end up telling yourself that that's the meaning of life. A healthy relationship implies in two equally independent people who have their own goals, two people who respect each other not because they're bound together but because they see value in the other individual for who they are. And if things don't work out, two people mature enough to accept it. >I probably will kill myself before I'm 30 (another 4 years). I genuinely hope you don't, Lain.

>>12252 >>12256 I begged my father to kill me in elementary school. In high school I tried to rip my wrist open on the prongs of a wire fence and after college I tried to OD using prescription meds. I honestly think suicide is how I'll die, but I think there's also a way out of it. I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately and I think it may be useful to pass some of those ideas along. Buddhism, especially in the West, has become kind of a form of fast food spiritualism. Aside from this, there are ideas that are useful to adopt. These include the use of meditation to become aware of your own thought and emotional processes and engaging in evaluation of what is important and not important in life. These ideas were also covered by the Greeks, particularly with Stoicism and Cynicism. Both of these philosophies emphasized tranquility through doing away with the unimportant and nonvaluable. This was determined through rigorous self-analysis and regular re-evaluation. There's a book to pick up: A Guide To The Good Life. It's something of a reinterpretation of Stoicism for the modern life. Maybe you both will find it helpful. I hope so. Best of luck to you both.

>>12256 >someone else cannot give you meaning. This is one of those "proverbial" tidbits of wisdom that everyone hears so often we assume it must be true but it isn't.

>>12260 Would you like to elaborate on that?

>>12265 Not him but many people live purely for others and deflate quickly once left alone. Generalize more and you could say the majority just follows expectations instilled on them. Most are taking university degrees cause they get told this is how it's supposed to be for example. A more philosophical approach would be to say meaning is a subjective value derived from your personality which is shaped by your environment. Thereby external factors always shape your meaning.

>>12266 This is why a flexible but relatively cohesive philosophical framework is necessary. Most kids learn by osmosis and thus are dependent on outside judgement. A good framework for processing the world would give people a personal fallback when life gets hard, confusing,or painful. What that framework is or should be is up for debate, of course.

>>12260 it's more of advice to be honest. Internal motivation is almost always stronger than external motivation. Anyone "great" you've ever heard of had a strong internal motivation... they were changing the world to be what they wanted, not the other way around.

>>12256 I agree with a lot of what you said, but it seems we just have fundamentally different views on some things. When I mention cultural programming and degeneracy, I'm basically alluding to the fact that I don't think having tons of sexual and romantic partners is natural. This isn't really anything I've read though and is largely me projecting how I feel onto the world. I never wanted to have sex with as many hot people as possible, etc. I just wanted a caring relationship with one person. It's kind of Freudian and I'd never admit it in person obviously, but I had an extremely close relationship with my mother as a kid. She turned out to be a textbook narcissist and really screwed me over at a crucial time in life (and my dad is somewhat similar to her, but different, wasn't as close with him). That unconditional, extremely close love I had with my mother as a kid until I was 11/12 is something that really messed up what I base my expectations of relationships off of. It turns out that I was a golden child to a narcissist parent (pretty simple concept if you wanna google real quick), and it's just not healthy. So I admit that the way I view some things is just my projections and stuff like that. I don't need the whole world to be how I want it, I just wanted to have my own little world where me and somebody else loved each other unconditionally. It seems like everyone is looking for someone who's perfect instead of learning to love someone's flaws, and I just want a normal person to work things out with. All that considered, I'm not as clingy in a relationship or anything, I could see how one might think that. I'm actually pretty normal, but relationships as I become an adult seem to be more transient in nature between people for whatever reason and I hate that. When I was younger before tinder and all of that stuff it was not at all like that. I think people just have too many options and it has messed everyone up. I agree with some of the more existential stuff you said though, and you sound like an awesome, thoughful, lain.

>>12271 >I don't think having tons of sexual and romantic partners is natural. really depends to be honest. It is absolutely harmful to isolate the sexual and emotional aspects to an interpersonal relationship. IMO sex without any emotional connection, which doesn't "mean anything", is really unfulfilling and generally bad. But some people are just able to keep up many emotional/sexual relationships, or find that they are only able to maintain them for short periods even with people they genuinely love, which is perfectly natural and fine.

>>12271 > I'm basically alluding to the fact that I don't think having tons of sexual and romantic partners is natural. We as humans don't act like that, other animals don't either. So that nature you're referring to would be better contextualized as personality, the type of person you would rather deal with, not necessarily how people should function. Some people don't like having lots of sex for many reasons, and if you'd feel better with them, that's no different than preferring to deal with people who like books or traveling, you know? Sex feels good, just like using drugs or eating delicious food. It's not a problem to want to do it. >I never wanted to have sex with as many hot people as possible, etc. I just wanted a caring relationship with one person. A lot of people are like that, Lain. You're unlikely to find them on Tinder though. But it's.. normal, man. There will always be a lot of people who want to have sex as much as possible. There will always be people who prefer to have sex when they have an emotional connection. There's a name for this (people who only feel sexual attraction when there's an emotional link), but i forgot. Point is: this is normal. Enjoying sex for the sake of it is also normal. Neither are indicative of other personal traits. Nobody loses anything from having a lot of sex, neither does anyone gain anything from having no sex. It's just preference. >That unconditional, extremely close love I had with my mother as a kid until I was 11/12 is something that really messed up what I base my expectations of relationships off of. And that's completely natural, Lain. My family always treated me like a bothersome goblin, this makes me an extremely difficult person to deal with intimately. I don't trust people, my first relationships were difficult because i was afraid of people leaving me alone when i needed them, like my family did. I definitely don't trust people who actively try to get close to me. And that's just what it is, you know? As long as you know yourself, as long as you understand yourself when dealing with others, that's fine. You must accept your flaws and grow over them. People who had other types of experience are no better or worse. You have your characteristics, they have theirs. There are a LOT of people who expect the same things you expect from a relationship and might give themselves into you just as you're expecting to give yourself to them. But that takes time, trial, error and maturity from both parties. > I don't need the whole world to be how I want it, I just wanted to have my own little world where me and somebody else loved each other unconditionally. But you can't rely on that, Lain. If you do, you will always have this emptiness inside yourself. If you start a relationship expecting this to happen, it weighs down on the whole experience, people notice. I know it's not easy to let go from it, but it might help you become a more complete person. >I'm actually pretty normal, but relationships as I become an adult seem to be more transient in nature between people for whatever reason and I hate that. Imagine all the problems and expectations you have towards others. Everybody is like that, that's what makes most relationships transient. Understanding is difficult. It requires effort, luck and empathy. It's not something easy to come by for anyone. When you're a child or a teenager it's easier to love unconditionally because you've never been hurt before (or at the very least you don't understand how soykafty your childhood was because you have no parameters), there's no complexity, understanding requires little to no effort. You like marilyn manson and another kid likes him too? soykaf, that's enough for a deep intimate relationship as a teenager. As an adult, that's not so simple, man. People have more expectations, traumas, interests, flaws and scars. You gotta accept that. It's inevitable. Life tears you the fuarrrk down, it tears everyone down. All we can do is surround ourselves with people who make us better as people, instead of people who are just there, or worse, people who bring us down. >I think people just have too many options and it has messed everyone up. I'm sorry to say it this way, but trust me when i tell you it comes from a place of kindness: this is just plain cowardice. This is that inner voice telling you that if everybody else was worse, you would be relatively better. If people had never had a great relationship with someone they deeply admire, you could be that person. And that's coward talk, Lain. You don't need that trash. The more options people have, the better they can find themselves, understand what they expect of others, understand what they expect of a relationship. You don't need people to have fewer options Lain, you just need to become someone better, you need to reach a point where you love and value yourself, just as you would love someone else. Otherwise it's just a relationship based on insecurity, dependence and distrust, you know? You need to know your value, otherwise your value will be dependent on someone else's judgement.

>12273 >Sex feels good, just like using drugs or eating delicious food. It's not a problem to want to do it. Dosage. The debate should be whether more control is beneficial. It's the "you're obese" vs "my body is perfect" of eating. Pure indulgence has clearly defined adverse effects. The personal subjective matter in this is how much you value benefits & downsides and this will lead you to different conclusions. I think the other anon has however a point about cultural programing. From my understanding older times tried to program into getting a family & raising kids while modern times promote more fuarrrking around and staying single. There's also the whole economical tail to this on why but it's not really this threads topic.

>>12276 >Dosage. The debate should be whether more control is beneficial. My point is that this is for each individual to figure it out, there are no moral implications in all of those scenarios. Specially in sex, having as much safe sex with consenting adults as physically possible means nothing, it's no different than playing monster hunter for as much as physically possible. You might prefer some emotional connection in your sex, but once again, that's your choice, just like it's your choice to fuarrrk the entire town if everybody wants it. >From my understanding older times tried to program into getting a family & raising kids while modern times promote more fuarrrking around and staying single. This is fairly recent and intentional, and while the nuclear family was an intentional cultural shift (you can read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_structure_in_the_United_States for post ww2 cultural shift, and caliban and the witch for the capitalist transition itself), i don't think the "staying single with no kids" was intentional, just a natural consequence of a generation with more agency than before, incentivized by the fact that most young adults have no fuarrrking money. Raising a kid is a luxury.

>>12277 i would contest the idea of safe sex. Statistically the more you fuarrrk the more likely you collect std's at exponential growth rate. Publications on a few common std's suggest adverse effects on the brain. Personally i judge the entertainment value not worth the risk as I'm willing to do anything to improve mental performance to pursue my primary goals. As for moral implications - it's pretty easy to see that promoting more sex promotes spreading std's which has a cost on society. In addition there are old statistics showing that the more partners you have the less likely you will be happy in marriage and divorce rates spike with this too. Of course this has some chicken&egg problem but i think there's a rational explanation: The bigger sample size you have for partners, the less likely the last one will be the best. Regret therefore will be natural. It may be somewhat questionable to promote ignorance to keep people in marriage but it's really a question of what you want for society. Small sidenote: excessive gaming has also it's effects. You're burning out your reward center and this can be helpful (investing without emotion) but it's not without trace. >i don't think the "staying single with no kids" was intentional, just a natural consequence of a generation with more agency than before, incentivized by the fact that most young adults have no fuarrrking money. Raising a kid is a luxury. That new livestyle was promoted in media throughout music&tv. They sold it as freedom but the goal was profit. The party industry benefits maybe the most but they are still a small segment. Industry in general promotes women primarily to dump wages by increasingly supply. Gov is happy cause they can tax the same family multiple times now - both parents work and cause they have no time you can tax them again buying services for taking care of kids & home. Same thing with singles - student's still live together but once graduated at a job they all get their own home/apartment as advertised and supposed to. More singles means doubling your sales on a lot of products. The tldr is the whole economy can make more money from this development and i believe this was the real incentive for most involved pushing it. The current business model is fleece them as much as possible and import replacement so you don't have to pay them enough to afford raising children. Basically outsourcing childraising cause it's cheaper like for everything else.

>>12278 >i would contest the idea of safe sex. Statistically the more you fuarrrk the more likely you collect std's at exponential growth rate. You have to be careful with your food, house, bathroom, car, you have to be careful with your computer software. Why would sex be any different? If you take the right precautions, sex is as safe as anything else in life. Definitely safer than driving a car or eating at a new restaurant. >Personally i judge the entertainment value not worth the risk as I'm willing to do anything to improve mental performance to pursue my primary goals. That's on you though. You're free to never have sex in your entire life if you think that's the best way to live your life. Just as other people are free to have as much sex as they can possibly have. >As for moral implications - it's pretty easy to see that promoting more sex promotes spreading std's which has a cost on society. That's an entirely irrelevant point. Before sex becoming a cost on society, the cost of war should be reduced. The quality of our food, water and air should be increased. All of these would massively reduce the costs of modern society, require a lot less effort and promote better health across the board for everyone alive. And you wanna focus on sex? That's either uninformed or ill intentioned. It's the equivalent of drinking diet coke to lose weight after eating two entire large pizzas. >In addition there are old statistics showing that the more partners you have the less likely you will be happy in marriage and divorce rates spike with this too. This is not how studies or life works. What you're saying is the equivalent of "Didn't you know that meat causes cancer? I just read it on the news, they made studies on it!". You can't take data in a vacuum and interpret how you see fit. >The bigger sample size you have for partners, the less likely the last one will be the best. Regret therefore will be natural. It may be somewhat questionable to promote ignorance to keep people in marriage but it's really a question of what you want for society. I.. what. I want society to be free to live the life they want, experience reality, deal with consequences, become better and expect better from others. Making everyone incompetent won't turn you smart. Having fewer partners and settle for less is not growth, it's just cowardice and weakness. "If people don't know better they won't know what they're missing". Can't you see how intellectually lazy, not to say morally bankrupt, this is? Why don't we all live in a cave looking at a wall? That way we'll never experience life and never be disappointed. C'mon man, it's like you're trying to say anything just to make your point, instead of telling me what you really, individually think. You seem to just be guessing what sticks instead of legitimately making an effort to think about it and say whatever makes sense to YOU according to your life experiences, not conjecture. Conjecture is dust, i can make conjecture about life on mars, it has no value. >excessive gaming has also it's effects. You're burning out your reward center and this can be helpful (investing without emotion) but it's not without trace. Everything has consequences, people should live and judge what is best for themselves. >That new livestyle was promoted in media throughout music&tv. Do you have any..proof of that whatsoever? This argument is the same since ancient greece, "the kids don't know better they just wanna fuarrrk and party, it's absurd", "elvis is immoral, johnny cash is influencing our children", "theater is a sin", "doom is raising a generation of serial killers, its a satanic game!" C'moooon man, you can do better than that. This isn't even an argument. Media industry sells a mirror, if all the kids get hyped up on nerd culture, guess what, we'll get a lot of geeky media, because that will get them more money. If kids start loving soap, i don't give a month until cartoon network has a soap-related show. Can you point a single moment in our entire society where what popular media promoted was ahead of society? Where they started promoting something nobody gives a soykaf about? Not 15 years ago geek culture was a stereotype of weak pathetic people, a show like big bang theory would be insane, yet culture was changing quickly and media is just, as always, providing the mirror as long as we throw money at it. Memes and reaction images was something exclusive to imageboard culture, 4chan grew like a motherfucker, now we see imageboard culture in fuarrrkign ellen degeneres. Your point, not a paragraph before this, was that less agency promotes more happiness, if people fuarrrk less, live less, they won't have a parameter of judgement, they can settle for less and be happier. Now you're accusing the media of doing that? C'mon, it's nonsensical dude. Just..think about it. Do you honestly believe that, or are you just repeating a talking point?

>>12279 You wrote that it's not a moral question and save. That's why i brought up the consequences. I don't care which path you take, i merely want to state this is the decision you have to make and it's not right to say there is no cost to it. The existence of bigger issues also doesn't change the choice on this matter either. Also my point wasn't about happiness. Nothing has objective value including happiness. It's just a question of what you value and steering society into the direction you want. Media is for that purpose a tool as much as the education system itself. People internalize what is normalized through exposure and follow that path. Talking about whether people care about it is not the crucial point. It's not hard to hook up people on joy. The question is if you should. The debate ended with a no for smoking. Again: what matters is what you value. Everything else depends on that.