Existencial Alienation: a cry for help

24 years passed and i feel like this life wasn't mine. Everyone has something that make them feel alive, a light wich resonates with others. I always felt as if i was something strange, as if i couldn't be happy nor truly loved. I'm trying everything, but i think i can't improve my situation (i don't know what's exactly my fault, and how to fix it). It's my fault? It's me, my own head, that is making up these ideas inside of me? How can i revert all those years of complete isolation wich started in my childhood? I never felt as if i could rely in someone, i often feel misunderstood or distant (i don't want nice words really, just people to come and to be a "family" with) but i crave for understanding, for affection, and everything outside seems fake or just "good manners". It's like i was lost, searching for an answer, for a meaning. I want to find something that can only be reached through the arms of others. I have to learn how to love (and to live) again. That's why i always wanted to be a good friend and help those "in need" as long as i could. If i cannot be happy i'd like to see others be. I want to be the figure i needed when i was in my darkest places. I don't feel like a victim, and yet i feel this world isn't somehow for me to be happy. It's weird for me to experience long-term happiness. Every time i try to express this feelings i have with a friend (that i'm not free, that i'm, somehow, rooting; that this isn't my life) they doesn't get it, they tell me to just accept the circumstances, to accept the unfair world we're living in: always working, always tired, never living. I don't know what to do, but i feel so alienated, so distant. I'm scared, but i want to live, to choose, to change, to feel alive, to love, to contemplate nature. I hate to be in a soykafty job 8 hours peer day just to pay the rent. I hate this life. And then i have almost no one to speak to, or to be with, to feel understood, to love. If that's everything, why should i keep it? At least, i know i'm not the only one Do you ever felt like this? What did you do? What could be done?

Be careful. The scent of a vulnerable person seeking affection attracts human predators like the scent of blood attracts circling sharks. This kind of low-level depression, anxiety, and poor self-esteem is unfortunately not uncommon. A good therapist, if you can find one, might help.

>>84404 Take this lain. I don't know what to say, I'm somehow also alienated but have hope, I think and plan for an escape... I've suffered from analysis paralysis, I just didn't know what to do anymore, but strangely I coped with that with boredom. Again, I don't know much about your situation, but I truly wish we could talk to each other sometime. I don't know... lulz. >>84405 Come on...

You have to break the external locus of control. No superman's coming to save you. God helps those who help themselves

>>84405 Quiet, you. >>84404 Hey, buddy. Sounds tough. And you're totally right - that the outside world seems distant, hostile, if not outright hollow. And that's because mostly it is, or, at least because most people are that way. Like there is this invisible wall around everyone, which is cutting us all from seeing the others as real, flesh and blood beings experiencing themselves. It's like all of us are donning a mask, a fake persona, through which they begin to relate to the world around them with a gray, ironic detachment in order avoid the facing the fact that we're all snails dancing on the edge of a razor blade, just barely able to consciously cope with, or even to conceptualize the fragility of life, its highest highs and lowest lows, and how constrictive and suffocating the borders of our bodily existence can sometimes get. It is because of this collective self-delusion—almost bordering on a master conspiratorial scheme in its scope—that those of us who don't know how to "play along" or run with the charade haven't managed to find our places in the world. And that is the reason we aren't living, and I mean *truly* living. If all the narratives surrounding us are part of the charade, doesn't that mean all the narratives are also just a mere sham? But the average person hasn't realized that. Not yet, at least. To him everything that appears is presented as a matter of fact. As "just how the world is", that is, what's normal, natural, and how it should be for everyone else as well. To even suggest otherwise can be an awkward, uncomfortable, if not outright threatening an experience to such people who've had no hangups or any hesitation to "go with the program", which is why they are keen on downplaying and dismissing feelings, ideas and viewpoints which might disturb the stable comfort and security they feel about their lived existence. It is also the reason why some people either avoid having an intimate relationship with certain kinds of people (namely the "pessimists", the "realists", the "outsiders") or keep everyone indiscriminately at an arms length, opting out for a general "bourgeoisie" false courtesy, toleration and good manners, and being comfortable and content with the alienation, the quiet desperation as well as the pastel-colored surface-level experience which they call a life. And it's not about people in general not being able to address, witness or experience horrific, grotesque, or existentially disturbing things: some of them can watch, for instance, all the mexican cartel beheadings in the world, read the most perverted, sickening and nihilistic books ever composed, and have their existential sense of security and comfort be disturbed not in the slightest because of their ironic detachment and alienation from their conscious, living and breathing existence in the here and now.

>>84404 So, no, there's nothing wrong with you, but rather with the world we're living in, and all you need is a place where people share your level of consciousness and manner of experiencing reality. Now, it just so happens that I'm working on building a community of like-minded people who share of the same burden and would like to see the world changed in the shape of our image. Would you happen to be interested in joining this little totally-not-a-cult I'm trying to create? https://a-com.neocities.org/ Totally up to you, but we've got cookies and kool-aid ;)

>>84404 You now catched me in a pretty too close to home way, i can't elaborate on my feelings or ideals so elegantly like the other person in this thread did but i wanna talk about this with someone like you. A like-minded lainon, a maybe kindred spirit which i can count upon without bearment of any kind of judgemental view. My discord username is ananisikeyimtuccar but if you don't like discord for privacy reasons or somerhing like that we can talk on any other platform too. I hope i didn't seem like a glowie kekw

>>84404 > they doesn't get it *they don't

>>84413 >>84413 Nice aesthetic, quote unique. The texts all blew donkey dick though. The section on the spectacle in /trash/ was slightly engaging because Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle is immensely important. But you seemed to want to reinterpret it into some inner monologue or Voice of God lecture from A Clockwork Orange above

>>84420 Sorry for the late response. Would've responded earlier, but I didn't wanna hijack the thread, so I waited if other people were going to comment on OP. >Nice aesthetic, quote unique Thanks. Kinda pleased with what I've come up with as well, although there's always room for improvement, and I'm sort of in the process of intending on a total overhaul of the website - something more dynamic and stylization, like tilted panels and stuff like that. >The texts all blew donkey dick though. Wait, all of 'em? I'll grant that maybe 75% of it is either dumb or trash, but maybe the first 3 and the fifth of the Philosophics texts and the index page are from the better end of it all. Manifestations were all dumb, because I intended the page as "the most recent happenings around the world from our perspective", but doing so would've required having a coherent ideology in order to interpret events from its point of view. I have yet to complete it, after running into insurmountable conceptual difficulties. Moreover, it has been hard splicing poetic language with philosophically sound thoughts, so there's also that. Could you perhaps point out the "donkey dick'dness" of some of the texts so that I know how and where to improve? I'd appreciate all the pointers you can give. >The section on the spectacle in /trash/ was slightly engaging because Guy Debord's Yeah, I hear that a lot, and I know my additions do not do much for the original ideas of Debord. But I've been trying to make a break from Debord, because his ideas are already "done". Not only in the sense that you can't move a lot further from his original framework without either turning into a cultural Marxist, Unabomber ludditist or an outright nihilist/accelerationist, but also, in the spirit of Debord, in the sense that theories are to him like arrows in a quiver: you shoot them one by one, hope that one of the stick, but once you've shot your shot, the theory becomes redundant, you can't reuse them (and since all of Debord's thinking has already been laid bare, there's no point trying to rehash it all (and yes, I do notice the irony in whatever I tried to do there)). > But you seemed to want to reinterpret it into some inner monologue or Voice of God lecture The one opening I saw in Debord's work was to take some of the premises outlined in SotS to their logical end point, namely 1) images and 2) alienation. The other aspect I also took heed of was the trajectory which Marxist theory had taken so far: first from Spirit to material subsistence (the original turning of Hegel by Marx) and from material subsistence to cultural expression (that is, from Marx to Frankfurt school and beyond). Well, take one more step, and where else do you get other than from culture to psyche/the individual? The result was me trying to combine Baudrillard, a bit of Hegel and Discordianism in order to make the next turn within the Marxist theoretical chain: from culture to psyche, and from psyche to spirit, coming full circle from the other end back to Hegel by somehow dislodging the alienatedness by going even deeper into it. Now, in retrospect, my mistake was to mix Discordianism into it, lingering too much on exploring the "woe is me" aspect of alienatedness, and giving precedence to "what sounds cool" instead of substance, which is why I never got to the "solution" (which is also hard to do if you accept Debord's original radical framework - you have to either take it as a whole, or move to greener pastures). Either way, there is a reason why I moved it all into /trash/, even if I recognize the importance of Debord's unadulterated ideas in our times: none of it simply put works.

isolation is such a beast. modernity's grind / lack of free time combined with the entertainment colossus is another layer of chains. im a similar age and have occasionally felt as you describe. admittedly ive had good luck in terms of birth and now work. i think the only surefire way forward is to learn to cope with reality, to not intellectualize it into an active torture. find a regular activity or two that bring you in regular contact with people (hobby, religion, sport/club, community). lately ive felt great relief and communal support in zen buddhism. (important to note, regularly practiced with others, plus studying the doctrine.) life is suffering / stress / dissatisfaction. this should not be something to fret over. (ofc theres good stuff too.) intellectualization and ruminating can constitute more layers of the hurt than most appreciate. i also think its probably a good idea to develop a healthy degree of separation from the Wired. the collective human mind and the collective machine mind are in many ways at odds with one another. >>85007 interesting stuff. a bit too philosophy-oriented for my taste, but i hope you stick to it and theres soon more to read. not to be too damning since i appreciate the effort, but to those outside of your narrow target audience the volume and tone of text seems a bit self-indulgent! i feel like you could say more with less, especially on the landing page, keeping the bulk of your hard work for when someone more fully committed is digging. id be curious what sort of practical solutions you recommend. also could you recommend some fiction that gels with your ideas? just out of curiosity :) rn im reading sirens of titan. not loving it so far lol but i find his prose super comfy

>>85015 >interesting stuff. a bit too philosophy-oriented for my taste, but i hope you stick to it and theres soon more to read. Why, thank you :), and yeah, it's totally okay if it ain't your cup of tea. I've also been meaning to try a strain of writing which would cut back on the overt philosophizing, but since I'm still in the "basic/original research" stage, I haven't gotten around to it yet, which is further postponed due to irl stuff getting in the way :/ >not to be too damning since i appreciate the effort, but to those outside of your narrow target audience the volume and tone of text seems a bit self-indulgent! You are probably right. Of course, creating a personal website in itself might be considered a bit... I dunno, "self-absorbed" and indulgent, which doesn't provide an excuse for mine, but part of creating something, even something with political implications, I think, should be something you want to do, or something that brings you enjoyment, and finding pleasing ways to express my thoughts is probably a part of that. But yes, I'll consider the feedback and try to find ways to balance the need for simple, clear and less masturbatory writing and my personal writing style. >id be curious what sort of practical solutions you recommend. There are at least two, more practical concepts I'm really stoked about, but which I haven't had the time to flesh out for the website: "transsubstantiation" and "circuit-breaking". To give context, transsubstantiation is basically the theological process within the Christian ritual of turning the substance of wine and bread into Christ's blood and flesh, which got me thinking what it means if you decontextualize it: you have an object which turns into another object simply by believing it turns to that other object. Sure, not really happens to the object (the bread stays bread no matter how much you want to eat your Christ), but you *feel* like it has, and you start experiencing the object in a wholly another way. So, if you want to experience your life in a different manner from how you do it right now, one way to go about it would be to start "transsubstantiating" everything around you into something completely different from how you're used to think and give meaning to them? And that's one of the more interesting things about consciousness: the fact that the manner of experiencing the life one's immersed in can be so radically altered with something so simple and dumb as rethinking it seems very powerful to me. And the other interesting thing about it is the fact how you can "raise your experience" by cultivating your own mind: by coming into contact with more complex concepts and ideas you get the chance to experience the simple things even more profoundly and intensely. A crude illustration: take the bread and wine example, and imagine you're in the church as the priest blesses the wine and bread. As the priest utters "this is Christ's flesh and blood", you tune out, because none of it is engaging and you don't really buy into any of it. Well, how would you experience the same situation if the priest were to tell you "this is the embodiment of your hopes and dreams" or "this is the expression of my love and warmth for you", or even still "this is part of the divine"? Out of context all of these might sound like utter gibberish, but after a while of pondering, you'd start to see the "truth" of these claims - it's only a matter of you having reached the certain kind of level of thoughtfulness/vibrancy/complexity/stimulatedness of mind required that will enable you to see the sense in them. So, apply this thought scheme to literally anything and everything, and things start to get very interesting and intense very fast! As for the the "circuit-breaking", it has to do with how people are slaves to their habits and our everyday thought-patterns, which typically assume the repetitive form of either bigger or smaller circles. For instance, going to walk your dog is a circle, getting groceries is another, and then of course the sleep-work -routine is one more. And then there are corresponding thought-patterns you encounter in your day to day life, like my habit of always watching something as I'm eating, which can be broken down into habitualized stimuli-reaction-outcome chains. So, in order to live a more fulfilling life, or if you want to change your life, you must first become aware of these patterns and then chart out the individual links within these chains. Doing so thus makes you able to identify the weakest links in the chain and break the unwanted habits that way, and reorient the freed-up energy to other worthwhile things. And yes, I'm perfectly aware these aren't exactly original ideas, but the point is rather to come up with a neatly packaged system that makes it easy to fight boredom and apathy, where some of the most relevant concepts to manage that are collected under one roof. >also could you recommend some fiction that gels with your ideas? Okay, that's an interesting question (and very much in keeping with the spirit of "anti-comallodianism", which is all about trying to make things a little bit less predictable :D). Perhaps the closest that a book has ever come to conveying the kind of structure of feeling behind the system (or what I'm going after for it) have been David Lindsay's A voyage to Arcturus, Hesse's Glassbead Game as well as Steppenwolf, and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Mirbeau's Torture Garden and Mike Hockney's The Bling King would also fit the bill.

>>85080 >the point is rather to come up with a neatly packaged system that makes it easy to fight boredom and apathy Then why attach a cult to it? why are there no simple instructions? Why is the language so vague? Is that your only goal? What steps are you taking towards achieving it? Why is the name so unpronounceable? Are you taking this seriously? ?????

>>85007 I recommend a) that you read that one guy's work on Baudrillard as a Black Gnostic and b) change the name. It's hard to build a community based on a raw negativity, it's why there's never really been a lasting anti-communist or anti-fascist community, only temporary tendencies. A 'real' community has to be oriented around a material somehow constructive project, even if that construction is the community itself. I am gonna look more closely at your work, it is interesting.

>>85082 >Then why attach a cult to it? For the funsies? What's more exciting than being part of a cult :D? Also, we're living in the golden age of cults, and it seems like everyone's got one, so might as well make your own right? >why are there no simple instructions? Like I said above, still in the R&D stage. Everything's experimental and in the process, so it's difficult to "instructify" any of it when you still need to test it all out. Like with the "allocative function", although I've managed to imbue it with a lot of meaning (like a generalized principle to apply to almost any situation), I've also noticed how clunky and needlessly unintuitive the concept is to use in practice. >Why is the language so vague? Again, part of the early hurdles of R&D. But for the parts where it has been intentional, the reason is that vague language allows a person to create their own meaning for some of the concepts, which in turn connects into the concept of transsubstatiation process above: like with the knife symbol I've heavily employed, to a normal person knife's just a knife, but within the ideology even a knife isn't just a knife - it's a fuarrrken "allocative function" that defines everything. You can't get that kind of experience if you just analyze concepts into bits and lay their contents bare on the table for the reader to munch on. Just look: knife is a tool for cutting carrots and fish heads into our stew. In philosophy we do conceptual analysis, which means reducing them into their elementary constituents to help us work out definitions for things. In mathematics there is a mathematical operation we call division, which splits amounts into certain portions. Without vague phrasing, none of these concepts would interconnect (other than by spelling it out like this, which, in turn, leaves the philosophical insight flat and sterile - just like what Analytic Philosophy is today: pontifications over the placing of dots and commas), which is why it's better to leave it vague and let imagination to fill in the blanks by free association. It breathes life into the whole thing, or, rather, you breathe life into it by thinking about it. >Is that your only goal? What steps are you taking towards achieving it? Why is the name so unpronounceable? For the A-Comist project, yes. Which is not to say that I wouldn't have ulterior motives beyond that. The ideology is sort of built out of my personal struggle with apathy, boredom and "depression" (never clinically diagnosed, just to be clear): it is me waging war on the boogey-man I'm calling "comallodianism", an "ideology" which advocates and encourages people "to wallow in comfortable acedia" (comallodianism = comfort + wallow + acedia + ism), so nearly everything I've written down or thought of for my "anti-ideology" is something that links into my experiences and is directed against combatting apathy, sloth and laziness. And in respect to the name, you must admit, at the very least it stands out, does it not :D? ...as for the "ulterior motives", I naturally have my own political opinions and religious views, which probably shine through some of the texts and which I'd like to see other people adopt as well, but I've been trying to keep the A-Comist ideology as a standalone one, which you could, in principle, synthesize with any ideology or religious worldview you might happen to hold; want to be a libertarian anti-comallodianist? go right ahead, no contradiction there, even though I hate you for it. Want to be a communist anti-comallodianist? well, all the power of the working class to you (you flatheads)! Want to be a christian anti-comallodianist? that's kinda iffy, but if spiritual slavery is what you really wanna go for, by all means, put on those chains, and be the best little slave you could possibly be! As for what my political and religious beliefs are, I'd rather not say here - not that it matters anyway, because, in my mind, very little of it shows in the system at this point. In the future, I might advocate for them intentionally and explicitly, and even if people were to walk away with only the A-Comist part in their hands, I'd be more than content, because I managed to do what I originally set out to do: killing comallodianism. >Are you taking this seriously? If I were to say that I'm "seriously playing", would that answer your question? >????? !!!!! >>85092 >a) that you read that one guy's work on Baudrillard as a Black Gnostic Ohh, sounds interesting! Is it this "Aaron R Biddle" guy? "CRYPTIC ABORTIONS: MEDITATIONS ON BLACK GNOSTICISM"? > b) change the name. It's hard to build a community based on a raw negativity Yeah, I know. But as I said to the the other lainon, it comes from the situation I'm faced with. It's not really a "love and light" type of stuff, but a vicious, unyielding struggle against something, just like you playing DS and trying to desperately avoid turning hollow. One of the reasons I'm in the process of intending on a total overhaul of the website which I previously mentioned, is the realization of how hard it is to make a cold-turkey break from the old habits, and the name still sort of reflects this attitude. I want to keep holding onto this attitude, because framing it as a war really keeps me motivated, even though I've found it a lot more productive if you ease out of your... well, "comallodianism", rather than cut it out abruptly. And this newer, "easing out" sort of approach is reflected in the new symbol for the system I attached here >>84413 : although the knife still plays a large part within it, the emphasis is moving over to the flame. At any rate, the name is what it is until I come up with something better to go along with the slight shift in the... "structure of feeling" for the system.

>>85092 > I am gonna look more closely at your work, it is interesting. I have to add that I really hate how much stuff is still missing from the site, and I'm sorry you have had to dig into something that is so badly incomplete. Like with the transsubstantiation and "circuit-breaking" concepts I expressed above, you see almost no mentioning of them on the website, despite how central they are to the whole framework. Genuinely sorry about that. I'll have to try and pick up the pace soon.

>>84404 >Do you ever felt like this? All the time. To the detail. And I don’t want you to feel like I do. >What did you do? I’m double your age and listen carefully. Be descerning and very cautious. Trust is not an everlasting resource, don’t wear it out. With each mal treatment you can build up less belief in others and your place in the world, until you only feel the alienation without the will and faith to find a resolution. >What could b e done? Try to look out for likeminded people who have the sensitivity to see the creative potential behind and can move a bit to give you some space to grow. You don’t need those who keep you stagnant, neither the ever hungry ones who leech onto you for their own. I don’t know where you can find the others. But if you do, there will be a permeability, a space you can expand and fall safely, get up and shake off the impact. I think a community to bounce and experiment with as opposed to sit alone and crack the code is deeply freeing and accelerating growth and resilience. >>84405 Everyone is soykafting on this post but there is a truth to that, that is painfully underrated. even if they do not mean to, in the grand scheme of life you can definitely be used for someone’s agenda and for you it’s one more reaffirmed experience of alienation, that gets woven into your fabric of self. Don’t let your yearning overrun your mistrust. Have them hold hands guiding you through.