Just a shout out for unity, from shell to shell, Egg!
"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
i would like to sarcastically note that actually, the investment advice should be not in egg timers but in the unlimited degeneracy, if we went by revealed preference rather than stated preference; but to do so feels wrong given the obvious intent
it's a nightmare that enforcing discipline is not as easily rewarded
every modern masculine channel is a means of suppressing a potential revolutionary
Things were meant to end. Seems like the Spirit of the Age is to avoid ending: sequels, prequels, spinoffs, all to keep it "alive" because we don't want it to end. Maybe there's a reason why you need to be in the presence of God to have a good time in eternity - you literally can't handle it on your own.
Gooning = Infinite Jest! David Foster Wallace predicted this world and I am going to re-read the novel starting February 1st for its 30th anniversary. Spoiler: yes, the book is 1000+ pages and loads of suicide, dysfunctional families etc BUT Wallace' empathy for our malaise is healing and super entertaining!
Sympathies from a fellow "strategy wars 5" (lol) addict. It wasn't until I dabbled with alcoholism that I realized how addicting computer gaming was/is. Whiskey at least gives us a hangover; we feel the pain from the pleasure. With the goon complex, the delivery system - games, social media, whatever - dulls the perception of the pain. There is no hangover. Or at least, it takes decades, and by then the time is gone and all we have left is an old age full of regrets.
Practically speaking, I had to cull strategy games. They had to go. Now I only play coop controller games with my kids or the occasional game with a definite end. Elden Ring has an end. It's made to be finished. Also had to cull social media.
I suspect it's worse than this ... a lot of scrolling/media viewing seems to fit more into maintaining a sort of grey equilibrium rather than entering any sort of enjoyable state. It makes me think of how repetitive behaviours like scrolling or nail-biting become addictive, because they will keep you *just* out of boredom and also bring down anxiety. Both stimulatory and calming depending on the need, but never enjoyable.
“Sabbe sankhara duhkha” is a Pali phrase from Buddhism that translates roughly to “all conditioned phenomena are unsatisfactory”. In other words, there is no climax in worldly pursuits. Or, everything is gooning.
Buddhism offers a way out through the pursuit of enlightenment, which is a spiritual reality not subject to the unsatisfactoriness of the conditioned realm. It is the unconditioned, the non-gooning. But like all other religions, it is a “second world” philosophy. It only holds true if you believe in this posited unconditioned spiritual realm. If that realm does not exist, religious/spiritual practice too is gooning.
My point is- the gooning problem goes much deeper than social media and video games. Sure, there are activities that require deeper and more refined states of concentration that can lead to higher degrees of subjective wellbeing. Gooning is on a spectrum.
But, unless these more refined states lead to some paradisical second world, it’s all gooning. To be in this world is to goon. It’s a perennial problem going back to the dawn of self-awareness. And no one has found a solution. Because, without a true accessible second world, existence is gooning all the way down.
To be or not to be. To goon or not to goon. These are the same question.
You make an excellent point about if depression “feels” like depression. I often try to convince people they are depressed and stay depressed because being depressed is amazing. It will kill you but it feels amazing. Same thing with revenge or holding grudges. People think they can’t be someone who seeks revenge etc because those things “feel” bad. Um, no, they feel great. That’s why people do them. They feel amazing. They will destroy your life but you will love every second of destruction, every tiny step backward will be another jewel for your crown. A person being unable to see that they’re having the time of their life is what locks people in these states perpetually. That’s the paradox, if one could even call it that.
According to Buddhism every moment of contracted samsaric existence is gooning, protraction of a deliciously miserable experience you could drop at any moment.
Just a shout out for unity, from shell to shell, Egg!
"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.
The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.
You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.
This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.
The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.
This Is Our Country Not Theirs
This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.
We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.
Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.
Remember who you are. You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.
Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.
Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf
i would like to sarcastically note that actually, the investment advice should be not in egg timers but in the unlimited degeneracy, if we went by revealed preference rather than stated preference; but to do so feels wrong given the obvious intent
it's a nightmare that enforcing discipline is not as easily rewarded
every modern masculine channel is a means of suppressing a potential revolutionary
also see: opium in the Qing/KMT/early CCP
Things were meant to end. Seems like the Spirit of the Age is to avoid ending: sequels, prequels, spinoffs, all to keep it "alive" because we don't want it to end. Maybe there's a reason why you need to be in the presence of God to have a good time in eternity - you literally can't handle it on your own.
Hell is gooning.
oh shit, the current obsession with longevity is just an extension of gooning isn’t it?
Brilliant
For the love of God write more and restart your podcast
so we can goon and never stop reading
Finishing an essay is the climax, no
Gooning = Infinite Jest! David Foster Wallace predicted this world and I am going to re-read the novel starting February 1st for its 30th anniversary. Spoiler: yes, the book is 1000+ pages and loads of suicide, dysfunctional families etc BUT Wallace' empathy for our malaise is healing and super entertaining!
Excellent, thank you. Very insightful.
Sympathies from a fellow "strategy wars 5" (lol) addict. It wasn't until I dabbled with alcoholism that I realized how addicting computer gaming was/is. Whiskey at least gives us a hangover; we feel the pain from the pleasure. With the goon complex, the delivery system - games, social media, whatever - dulls the perception of the pain. There is no hangover. Or at least, it takes decades, and by then the time is gone and all we have left is an old age full of regrets.
Practically speaking, I had to cull strategy games. They had to go. Now I only play coop controller games with my kids or the occasional game with a definite end. Elden Ring has an end. It's made to be finished. Also had to cull social media.
It's really the only way to stay sentient.
I suspect it's worse than this ... a lot of scrolling/media viewing seems to fit more into maintaining a sort of grey equilibrium rather than entering any sort of enjoyable state. It makes me think of how repetitive behaviours like scrolling or nail-biting become addictive, because they will keep you *just* out of boredom and also bring down anxiety. Both stimulatory and calming depending on the need, but never enjoyable.
“Sabbe sankhara duhkha” is a Pali phrase from Buddhism that translates roughly to “all conditioned phenomena are unsatisfactory”. In other words, there is no climax in worldly pursuits. Or, everything is gooning.
Buddhism offers a way out through the pursuit of enlightenment, which is a spiritual reality not subject to the unsatisfactoriness of the conditioned realm. It is the unconditioned, the non-gooning. But like all other religions, it is a “second world” philosophy. It only holds true if you believe in this posited unconditioned spiritual realm. If that realm does not exist, religious/spiritual practice too is gooning.
My point is- the gooning problem goes much deeper than social media and video games. Sure, there are activities that require deeper and more refined states of concentration that can lead to higher degrees of subjective wellbeing. Gooning is on a spectrum.
But, unless these more refined states lead to some paradisical second world, it’s all gooning. To be in this world is to goon. It’s a perennial problem going back to the dawn of self-awareness. And no one has found a solution. Because, without a true accessible second world, existence is gooning all the way down.
To be or not to be. To goon or not to goon. These are the same question.
Guess I'm gooning all day
I'm pretty sure many of my employers have gooned me with a barely (if at all) livable wage in order to manufacture desperation and subservience.
Banger. Now back to gooning.
“Nothing ever happens”
You make an excellent point about if depression “feels” like depression. I often try to convince people they are depressed and stay depressed because being depressed is amazing. It will kill you but it feels amazing. Same thing with revenge or holding grudges. People think they can’t be someone who seeks revenge etc because those things “feel” bad. Um, no, they feel great. That’s why people do them. They feel amazing. They will destroy your life but you will love every second of destruction, every tiny step backward will be another jewel for your crown. A person being unable to see that they’re having the time of their life is what locks people in these states perpetually. That’s the paradox, if one could even call it that.
According to Buddhism every moment of contracted samsaric existence is gooning, protraction of a deliciously miserable experience you could drop at any moment.
You have been missed