On solitude and social conformity

I used to be desperate to be with people just not to feel alone, I was so fuarrrking socially awkward to the point where I lost my best friend for constantly stalking him out of sudden obsession. So I went into a bit of solitude and started getting addicted to read lots of different books from all over the internet and I felt like I became completely different from everyone, including you lainons. This might feel pretty great as you're not like everyone else, but social conformity exists in virtually every society so that people can belong. For example, despite that I'm into GNU/Linux, do love Lain (primary thing), have no social media and hate the urban lifestyle yet I feel like an outcast even here somehow (sadly many Lains are really into videogames and entertainment, a thing that Aldous Huxley in Brave New World warned us about while I thought lains struggle to exit the urban lifestyle and live in the country) and here I kind of lost the point of what Lainism is (if it even existed as a pseudo-socio-political ideology/philosophy). After this prolonged period of solitude (which probably I'm still in since I've literally no friends fortunately) I get so fuarrrking confused about whether one must sacrifice specialness in order to belong to a community that cares or rather everyone must just be alone which is fuarrrking soykaffy and sad. I think theoretically that every person in any community must be aware of social conformity and think critically about everything while simultaneously each member of the community have common values and common cause to collectively fight for. What do you lains think?

>I get so fuarrrking confused about whether one must sacrifice specialness in order to belong to a community that cares or rather everyone must just be alone which is fuarrrking soykaffy and sad. Your desire to maintain your specialness is an attachment to something worldly and ephemeral:your identity as an outsider. Attachments like this are a source of suffering. Have you asked yourself, why did you stalk your friend obsessively? Partly, it was because you were afraid of losing them and part of it was because you wanted to loose them. Subconsciously, you wanted to push them away to maintain your identity as a friendless outsider who doesn't fit in and deliberately wounded yourself in pursuit of this self-image. Walter Benjamin once compared modernity to a phantasmagoria, an optical illusion device that projected shadows to create the appearance of something real. Our modern industrial mode of production creates illusions of choice, individuality, and authenticity, but at the same time kill off real choice, real individuality, and real authenticity. Modern urban people begin to define themselves by the objects they possess. We find our soul in our tech devices, clothes, the arbitrary tribal identities we buy into (e.g. the whole I use arch btw meme). In other words, when we think we are being original and individual we are simply buying into an one or another section of the culture industry has packaged and sold to us. We become what Marcuse called one dimensional men. Retreating into a self-imposed solitude of online communication and niche consumption like a hikki is just another type of shallow conformism to a pre-existing template dangled before you. In this case, the cold intellectual outsider, Dostoyevsky's underground man who is outside normal society. >I think theoretically that every person in any community must be aware of social conformity and think critically about everything while simultaneously each member of the community have common values and common cause to collectively fight for. What do you lains think? There's a difference between belonging to a real community and social conformism. A community is built on mutual recognition and acceptance of personal difference while being part of the same general value system. In society, your just a faceless statistic. You can ride the subway with the same people every morning and nobody knows or even remembers anyone. There's no mutual acknowledgement of each other's existence.

>>76414>>76414 >I get so fuarrrking confused about whether one must sacrifice specialness in order to belong to a community that cares or rather everyone must just be alone which is fuarrrking soykaffy and sad it's a personal choice. i think you'd be surprised how many people roll with the crowd despite holding zero attachment to the status quo. it's survival. it's common for people who want to live civilized and comfortable to join the winning team. depart that, and your options are find a new team, or be an observer to the benefit of ???. it could be for yourself if you crave a type of esoteric wisdom, or you're a sick bastard looking for new ways to ruin people, but otherwise, it's time for some rehabilitation. some of us are born sheep. that's not a bad thing, but a sick sheep can be.

>>76414 don't forget, this is a public forum. anybody at all can roll up looking like lain and spout whatever they want. example: me i dont know what a lainism is. i saw the show once and found this place. now i'm here posting uneducated opinions in your thread. there's a good chance you're like me. the only place you belong is in your own head. if that's true, you're screwed. the best you can do is make the most of it. art's a good option if you're into that. if not, you'll probably wind up addicted to a video game or a fictional character like the rest of the confused weirdos on this site.

>>76420 Solitude to me was an effect of losing my friendship; back then I was much of a normal person and had no idea what "Lain" even is. It all started as an argument but I screwed it up. While being socially awkward I literally did manipulation techniques I didn't even know I was doing (until I read a book on mind control way later when it's all over) (maybe I had given myself many excuses to stalk because "I had to"). You can't imagine all the shame I felt then. I just used to attach with people like crazy seeing them as "irreplaceable" >>76425 >i dont know what a lainism is. This term really came after some lain-obsessed guy called it as a religion where loving Lain is the condition to be a Lainist (fauxx.neocities.org). When I watched SEL I thought it's a covert call for an anarcho-primitivist revolution or something, yet others see it as a Gnostic show (Masami Eiri, etc), and some just liked (aka. "loved Lain") because this anime is unusual. Thus you get a bunch of "lains" who each sees the world and their lives fuarrrking differently, and there are other people on the Instagram soykaf with profile pictures. Yet I feel like this place has something common, which is that each of us is some outsider so-called paranoid schizo who struggles with life. I don't know.

For me, It's just that the (western) society and most of It's people are sick in the mind and the body right now, willingly walking to be slaughtered in order to "belong". Why would I want to be part of a sick society? I don't feel lonely at all when thinking about that. >>76427 >Yet I feel like this place has something common, which is that each of us is some outsider Yeah, you are correct there, but.. >so-called paranoid schizo who struggles with life. I don't know. No, not really. I would say that most of the genuine posters here are the healthy ones that have been driven away from the society by the truly sick ones. When you think like this, It all starts to make more sense.

>>76414 Explore Hermeticism. Might be a perfect fit.

>>76414 >>76427 Assuming you're the same lainon I believe that no, you weren't just a normal person. You were concerningly needy with your friend back then and you appear to be right now while trying to get your "specialness" validated. Instead by wary of making "being special" your personality as it will most likely do you no good and only pose a source for more grief. And also by means of just reading a bunch of books? Unlikely as well as I'm yet to find one that possesses that sort of magical ability instead of merely articulate what you've already holding within you. But I'm open to recommendations. The closest that I've gotten were books on evolutionary psychology but that only showed to me how truly similar we all really are on our most fundamental level, with people maybe being divided by survival strategy like the occasional case of psychopathy. My take is you obsessively craved validation and are still doing so. So maybe try on reconciling with that shadow of yours. Like >>76424 pointed out, it's not an either or between being a normal person and some sort of profound philosophical hermit edgelord but probably just you not being properly socialized for whatever reason and thus unable to read cues, personal boundaries and communicate with others. However I do understand wanting to be reclusive but that from a perspective of simply not wanting to engage with anybody due to disinterest. And that's warranted in many cases when the elderly, who're supposed to be full of wisdom are more like talking to the news caster they watched the previous evening. And the occasional aggressive oversocialized behavior of so called "Karens" when they feel the need to enforce the current norms of a society which acts suicidal in an attempt to retain its conformity with whatever stupid narrative the news cycle is blasting people with at the given moment. It's very tiring and frustrating to have to deal with not the people themselves really but this beast that is the crowd if it is suffering some malfunction. However, if you are truly that special, then you ought to be able to do something. That I suppose would be a good litmus test. Regarding "lainism", it's the first time I'm seeing that term and I also hope it's the last since I don't think it's sensible due to the vastly differing interpretations people have. But the reason I believe Lain gets entire online communities/places being named after her/it is due to the common interpretation of her being pretty much a deity who attempted to contact humanity through the show's person of the internet and technology. That's the closest I can think of when you refer to this as a "laininist board" and why there's this appeal to it. Not the Unabomber's manifesto, regardless how unfathomably based it was. Either way, I'd say places like this are the least "hivemind-ey" by virtue of its design.

>>76420 Please refrain of psycho-analyzing others or offering quack social commentaries. It only makes things worse. That said, I mean no ill will and just want to provide a reality check/opposing thought to your ideas since that's what I believe the global consciousness (niche anime image boards) are after all what they're good for. Now here's my own meager two cents though. Solitude is an interesting thing. You can physically degrade someone's mind by forcing it on someone. Solitary confinement has shown to not only be a cruel punishment but also makes people come out of it with impaired cognitive abilities and mental state. But then also I know how one can find peace within that. It's sometimes something that you do need to embark on for a while if you need to reflect on something deep seeded and difficult to grasp. It's maybe the most focused state you can be in to resolve a problem within you if you have nobody else to help you with your particular problem or need to tap into a deep well of creativity. General Yamamoto supposedly spent days naked in a dark and shut room where he essentially single-handedly reinvented naval war. But going into it out of pride of being special or a "lone wolf", now that I don't think is a good idea.

>>76439 >>76440 Same lain btw. Apparently the spam filter gets triggered if you say "w*rthless" or "P*arl H*rbor". Funny how some things work here. >Inb4 flood detected Stop adding silly rules then, Appleman!

>>76438 I know bits of Hermeticism and read the Kybaion a while ago but don't understand it well. I liked the law of cause and effect but got confused that so-called God is "the all" and "As above, so below". I can't even distinguish it with Gnosticism as they have very similar concepts. I've been comparing the main religions for a while and became a Mohammedan (Moslem) (Well I technically was since birth but I started questioning everything) and yet I am still interested in reading whatever esoteric soykaf. >>76439 >The closest that I've gotten were books on evolutionary psychology but that only showed to me how truly similar we all really are on our most fundamental level, with people maybe being divided by survival strategy like the occasional case of psychopathy. My take is you obsessively craved validation and are still doing so. So maybe try on reconciling with that shadow of yours. Fuarrrk yes. We all have at the end of the day the same instincts (survival,satisfaction,love,etc). Even "normal people" are at some point different between each other: one likes a lemon ice cream and the other likes a chocolate one. Just sometimes people could give up their own belief just to follow the crowd and we should be aware of this by looking at the Asch experiment. >However, if you are truly that special, then you ought to be able to do something. I really have no answer to this at this moment; at many times I feel being just the same as every other lain here but have some plans of mine to do and ceteris paribus, I make a little further step to develop myself regardless of others' positions. >But going into it out of pride of being special or a "lone wolf", now that I don't think is a good idea. I don't really like the idea of "lone wolf". No one really wants to be alone and that's why I started talking on this board when I used to know and browsed it for months. Spending a week alone is a good idea, and then you contribute to a community that shares the same values with you. >Same lain btw. Hello.

"The assumption that everyone else is like you. That you are the world. The disease of consumer capitalism. The complacent solipsism." The problem of individuation in a world that selectively seeks the illusion of entropic wholeness (notice your own judgements, notice His Majesty the Ego with its uniquely grown and patterned thorns lamenting its uniqueness) to the point of dullness of course being a very Lain thing, in itself unrelatable beyond the abstract due to the many different and divinely selected paths available to each, themselves a ceaseless progression of reflexive change that all signs say does not stop even with death. Though: there is a paradoxical need for and an unavoidable meeting with this same individualization we reject so vehemently. A wish for mercurial equity and its safety while the reflection cracks and distorts soon turns into a desire for more, for the unique, for the own and the external in schizophrenic dance. These are instincts that overcome and surpass us. This is the face of the fight against unstoppable disintegration happening every uncountable microunit of time, and of and our foolish nature. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

>>76442 Might mix religions but one god is "all" interpretation is basically god was the big bang. Meaning at the start you have everything contained in one thing and so its by definition all powerful and all knowing since it contains all there is. As above so below is just "patterns repeat" like a single cell has a cell wall defining its border. The government has a border. Your body has an immune system. Gov has police, etc.

>>76442 Hermeticism is very similar to Sufi. The Kybalion is a very modern text which is not fully accurate. I recommend Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum by Georg von Welling or Alchemy Unveiled by Helmond if you want true cream of the crop Western Hermeticism.

>>76464 >I recommend Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum by Georg von Welling or Alchemy Unveiled by Helmond if you want true cream of the crop Western Hermeticism. Thank you lain :)

>>76469 I have read an dozens and dozens of texts on the subject and those are some of my top pics, you should be able to find them both free online if you hunt around. The first book was the one that Faust was reading in the beginning of the story about him, the latter is from the 20th century but is so good I thought it was hundreds of years old at first.

>>76469 If you are Muslism, check out The Conference of The Birds and The Gospel of Barnabas, two of my favorite Muslism texts.

>>76472 I know them both and read bits of the second one which was pretty good. Though I liked this one more which claims that Islam alone is the truth and nothing else. Doesn't look that good on the cover but it fuarrrking made me tear for some reason. It has some topics on the origin of religion, along with comparative religion and how "all religions were of the same origin" but then got "corrupted" and has also some philosophy and science. Anyway I'd read some Hermeticism cause truth is absolute and we all know it.

>>76483 I am not Muslim myself but im an Abrahamist and a Hermeticist. Your not as alone in your thinking here as you think you are fren, but I can relate a lot to feeling out of touch with this community. Frankly I only post here because its less degen then a lot of other chans, I never watched lain once and I doubt I ever will. Planning to leave this site and all chans mostly for the new year myself, since it seems they have run up ther course in my life to be honest. Downloaded that book, thanks.

>>76484 >Planning to leave this site and all chans mostly for the new year myself when you do it please make a thread explaining how because i seem to be unable to find any alternatives/ways that would provide me the same whatever the heck the brain requires to make up for imageboards.

>>76464 Don't forget the Corpus Hermetica itself and if your interested in the Middle East then Ibn Arabi and Mulla Sadra are good to look into.

>>76489 Will do, ill try to type it up later today >>76492 Right on that one is good as well

>>76483 Fren if you have not already read The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion. You will not be disapointed. you seem like one of the few people who would get the value of this book, and the value of it is not to make your life full of anger and misery but to help you avoid the wave of anger and misery that has come upon the world.

>>76624 >The Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion >antisemitism >written century ago looks interesting. too bad jews have already taken over the world. there is no hope of salvation. read the bible. jews are the chosen of god. their bloodline goes as high as to Abraham. he was blessed by the god. the god has told Abraham that he'll be his god and the god of Abraham's children and a powerful nationality would arise. with the help of the god, they have this life in a cheat mode. they can't be beaten. they can't be stopped. they can't be even hindered. god will destroy all the bad humans and his own pet nationality will prosper. cry in terror, you fools, for thy time in nigh!

>>76625 The protocols of the learned elders of zion is not about Judaism, its about Satanism. Literal repentant Jews will receive salvation, as it says in the opening surah of the quran, likewise all Abrahamic folks who are truly in the service of God and repent of sin will receive salvation as the same line tells us. "62. Those who believe, and those who are Jewish, and the Christians, and the Sabe- ans—any who believe in God and the Last Day, and act righteously—will have their reward with their Lord—they have noth- ing to fear, nor will they grieve." The reason the Protocols are important is because the correctly describe what has happened since the date of its publication (roughly 1900) and the present day, and the correctly describe the prophecies of the end of time that are described in the Bible and in the Quran and other scripture. I believe that all true Abrahamic variants will receive salvation as the Quran teaches, but the "Jews" of "Zion" are only in name only, but practice Satanism in its most literal form.

>>76625 >bloodline back to ancient times western "jewish" are a bunch of fakes, stolen valor gypsies, the real tribe lost in time same as original chinese. The reality is nobody managed to preserve anything but broken pieces of the past. A simulacrum worshiped as real in absence of knowing the real thing.

>>76627 Blessed post. This is the truth. Jews are not the real Jews. Zionism as understood as the establishing of a city-state-ethno-state is a joke. The Jew is a state of spiritual existence, likewise the Goyim. To believe these things are to be understood in the literal manner they are and deemed paltry or biological and not states of existence is a joke and a sham of modernity. Merry fuarrrking Christmas.

Here is a lesson in social conforming frens, hope yall enjoy! >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQWk3Gfhi5E >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXJyr-oGZ8w

>>76630 When I was growing up, I really did not think in any way, shape, or form, that niggas was gonna be wearing dresses and getting tootie fruity right and left. But lo and behold the day has come. Social conformity can fuarrrking off. They call it clownworld because I can not stop laughing. Also consider how this whole shtick directly relates to the Protocols of The Learned Elders of Zion, if the book is not real then why does it mention that the plan was to do soykaf like this? >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7fBPNCqm60

>>76632 You see cause life is like 3 doors. The One Straight ahead, you on ya own (but God is always with you), to the right, now thats just some homo soykaf, and to the left, thats some sacrifice soykaf (satanism) goin on.

Nihilism and its little sibling hedonism are coming for you, modernity, and they are coming to test your ability to conform. "I see the combine coming, its gonna dust us all to nothin." - john maus >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4XGbZ7IrC8 >https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kF2-Cr6yX4

>>76429 >No, not really. I would say that most of the genuine posters here are the healthy ones that have been driven away from the society by the truly sick ones. When you think like this, It all starts to make more sense. This is only the upper bracket of us though, the rest of "us" are legit mentally ill, drug addicts, alcoholics, and self destructive weebs who are being so in response to the "truly sick ones". That is the reason why I do not see any reason to continue coming on here. The best of us come out in threads like this and talk the real talk and God bless you all for it, but at the end of the day THIS is not doing much progressive or developmental or evolutive for any of us, but often it is helping us to be more stagnant and complacent and pacified. So fuarrrk it.

>>76489 Well jannie came and deleted my quitting chans thread, just on time as I expected. Goodbye lainchan and goodbye other chans, the last good thing about you (free speech) has been completely destroyed.

>>76661 whoops sorry that was just a glitch, sometimes I notice that the site glitches and doesnt show certain threads when I refresh. Please nignore this poast.

>>76659 >This is only the upper bracket of us though, the rest of "us" are legit mentally ill, drug addicts, alcoholics, and self destructive weebs who are being so in response to the "truly sick ones". I myself was talking about more of an spiritual sickness, not really categorizing anything in those type of lockers. I would also say that speaking of mental illnesses, many of the people here might be on the spectrum only. And I don't mean that as the new popular insult on the interwebz, but it should be differentiated between other types of illnesses that exist even more so. Actually, most of my theming in the original post was really just talking from the aspie/autist perspective in regards to the "us vs them"-debacle, so you might be right in that regard. >but at the end of the day THIS is not doing much progressive or developmental or evolutive for any of us, but often it is helping us to be more stagnant and complacent and pacified. So fuarrrk it. If you mean generally talking about being different from everyone else, I think most of the time posts like OP are also trying to just connect to someone.

This has been keeping me up lately. Another year started and I asked myself if I should make friends and start relationships. I used to have many friends, but now I live alone in an old appartment where all my neighbors are poor and people keep to themselves. I can afford better but I don't see a reason to because people leave me alone here. Thinking about where I could have been had I actually been social (and not as autistic) I could be happily married with children and a social life. I think I started down this path when I was in school. There were so many girls who were into me that I just outright denied for who knows what reason. Some of them were pretty funny looking back. >when I transferred schools and an upper classman asked me on my first day of school if I liked to masturbate when she saw me alone at lunch and sat down next to me, I thought it was a prank or something, so I said "What?" and then she said "because I really like to, it feels amazing, you should try it" and I was like "uhhhh...cool" and then went back to eating >my friend in my final year economics class who during a group project forgot to close the porn which was interracial WMBF then took a minute to close it before saying "hehe I watch too much porn *wink* (I was the only white guy in that class and one of only a few in our school, my mom always asked why I never dated her because she was smart and pretty) >The cute weeb who always wanted to play with my hair during class and would hide cute notes in my pockets about how her day was going and her thoughts during class or pictures of anime characters she would draw and wanted me to hug her every day or she would be sad. In my adult life I just don't meet any women or really people worth spending time with. I went to a pub with coworkers for someones birthday and some lady came up to me and we started talking and she was telling me about her son who was around my age and how when he was in school he got bullied. Other times I get approached by drunk gays who question me not approaching women. I didn't want to connect with others and now there isn't really a way or a reason for me to even if I wanted to. I don't mean in just a romantic sense, because I don't do sports or hobbies like cards or board and table top games. I only feel comfortable by myself kyaking or reading, which are very solitary hobbies. And even though I have good relationships at work, I have nothing in common with my coworkers except we work together. They all have wives and children and like sports and videogames. A doctor told me it is amazing how I'm not depressed for being a single man in my 30s but I would rather be alone than unhappy in a crowd of strangers. I guess people crave connection at some level, but I'm not compatible with people in the real world. At least I have you lains to keep me company.

The pleasure of socializing increases the closer you are to the mean. The more you are like the average person, the easier it is to relate to others. But if your "true self" is just a bunch of jagged edges you have to sand off in order to socialize, you would do well learning to enjoy solitude. Kinda just depends how weird you are. If you are too weird to have friends, it'll become pretty obvious eventually

living in the country fuarrrking is like kicking dead whales down the beach dude, its not like you think. you think its some peaceful romantic crap but its just boring as fuarrrk until a tweaker tries to break into your garage. the people who are around here are dumb as soykaf and annoying and if you want to do anything fun youre soykaf out of luck. No theaters, no restaurants, no events, no culture. Everything cool happens in the city. The ideal place to live is on a few acres an hour or less from the city.

>>76414 I'm struggling to rip myself away from internet bollocks to read any books. I admire you

>>76837 >no theaters, no restaurants, no events, no culture personally already got bored of it by age ~15, its just like hollow rituals everyone copies thinking this is what people do so i should too. Only real good aspect about city is hobby clubs which can't exist in low population areas. Also the biggest pain of remote life is groceries. There is incredible comfort in being able to shop anytime walking 15min living in a big city. On the reverse the benefit of remote life is cheap land, its where you go if you want to do farming or have a workshop. And let me tell you food tastes 5x better than what i usually get when i visit my retired aunt who did this. The perfect play is probably stay in city young / while you have kids, retire remote. (Kids will hate you if you push them remote)

I sort of disagree. I'm an introverted misanthrope who enjoys being alone and dislikes most people, but I feel much happier and healthier when I take the time to visit family and friends, and my girlfriend brings me happiness, too. I also have a brighter mood when I go to my local table tennis club where I socially interact with other people. That said, I understand where you're coming from: I live in an urban city where none of my family/close friends/girlfriend live and it's both liberating and depressing. My family and friends live somewhere where I wasn't happy for various reasons, such as said family and friends being parochial and anti-intellectual. In some respects, I'm happier in this new city for reasons including being able to focus better on my intellectual/athletic pursuits. But the loneliness gets grating after a while. I'll probably be better able to cope when my GF moves and lives with me, but we'll see. Concluding, I think extreme solitude is detrimental to mental health, and excessive socializing is detrimental to intelligence; especially if said socializing is not the most intellectual sort. (That isn't to say that every time you hang with friends that you should be having spirited debates about Hegel; just that only going to bars and getting drunk gets old fast)

>>76837 Cities do not have any kind of distinctive culture either, i mean not anymore at least. If you are talking about the different group and their symbolic soykaf being banded together to create insider trade rooms similiar to old bar culture , then yes there is a culture but why would you want this? I mean i am not advocating for the countryside beacuse i think if one is not born into it there is a high chance one will be bored of it. But there is no overarching cultural narrative in the city either, the theathers, restaurants and most of the events are there for to cope with this blank sheet of a lifestyle so most of the people try to romanticize countryside as a way to cope. Not that i don't understand them but countryside is the same soykaf just painted with different colours, it's kinda like the mark fisher's essay, terminator v avatar. The modern man has to see avatar in order to cope.

>>77007 i would say countryside is like this: +better air +less noise pollution +cheaper land - deadly animals/insects/plants - pesticide clouds from farmer fields are even worse than city smog so whether its better or not depends on whether you can avoid these negative conditions.