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Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

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Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#161

Post by endswapper »

randomsearch wrote: post #73

As others have said, don't look for goals look for a lifestyle. Understanding how best to live your life is a gradual learning process and is not really so complicated. The school of life video on it is 60 seconds and covers the basics: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iUdhJ_S_z3w

"As others have said, don't look for goals look for a lifestyle." is really bad advice.

A lifestyle merely describes and/or quantifies the way one lives.

I'm not sure how you get to this conclusion based on the post or the comments, and I am not sure what value it provides. I think this is the precise mode of conformity Thompson is railing against.

Currently, conformity is the common path, "the floating," Thompson describes. It seems to me the outliers with a purpose and the will to swim to their goals find fulfillment along the way.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#162

Post by jshevek »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #148
scalio wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have found happiness when the idea "life is meaningless" seem obvious and irrelevant. Precisely. To the best of our knowledge, we're just robots. There is no meaning behind the universe, it just kinda, is . The realization that the only sense you can find in life is the one you create yourself, makes a lot of things clearer. This is also why it should be irrelevant that life is meaningless, since what do you ca…

I'm curious as to why, when faced with unpredictable phenomenon, you chose to go with the hypothesis "everything is random" rather than "everything is choice" when you have an experience that appears to be choice, and would probably have a hard time naming a truly random phenomenon.

The parent didn't say "everything is random", nor anything that absolutely requires this viewpoint.

To declare that "everything is choice" strikes me as putting one's beliefs ahead of inquiry.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#164

Post by AstralStorm »

FungalRaincloud wrote: post #116
Fraterkes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a large part of the problem is that when people talk about finding "happiness" they are actually talking about "winning at life". Which is impossible of course. Every time that you do something that you think will make you happy, and you ask yourself 'is this it?' you allready know the answer, because someone who's satisfied wouldn't ask 'is this it?'. And if you spend years thinking about "finding happiness"…

In my personal experience, I agree, it's a misunderstanding of what happiness is, that causes people to miss the mark when trying to find it. Happiness isn't something you find, it's something you make. The universe is meaningless, it exists, devoid of any reason of its own, and yet, it exists. Your job, when trying to become a happy person, is to find your own meaning, and work at that, until you master it.

This way lies hedonism.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#165

Post by jshevek »

njloof wrote: post #128
mr_overalls wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thrill-seeking and "yawning void of nothing" are a bit concerning. Have you ever looked at the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder? http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/antisocial-per...

Please don't try to diagnose people on the Internet.

I agree strongly that trying to diagnose people of the internet is unhelpful behavior. However, from the tone of Andrew's comments on this page, it would seem he is interested in improving the quality of his experience of life by seeking greater self understanding. I take the parent comment as merely the offering of yet another possibly helpful direction of inquiry for Andrew, and not an attempt to diagnose.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#166

Post by yojex »

ycombinatorMan wrote: post #157

Reminder: this is a man who killed himself

Funny you should bring that up, considering the circumstances in which he did so.

I recommend everyone do some research on his suicide, it's very interesting. Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_S._Thompson#Death

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#167

Post by AstralStorm »

devuo wrote: post #144
swombat wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In one of his books he says the meaning of life is "about experiencing existence, in all its angles and glory, for the sheer and pure sake of experience itself! We don’t eat a nice meal, make love or travel to beautiful locations just to understand or make sense of something. We do these things because the experiences themselves imbue our lives with a kind of timeless meaning, independent of comprehension." -- Kast…

> What if you were in a simulation so that it seemed like you were doing all these things with other people, but you knew that you are in a simulation all alone? Would these things still have meaning? Would the experience be worthwhile? If it is in fact a perfect simulation, and you as the actor in said simulation cannot detect a tear in the fabric of the simulated reality, you will, in due time, repress any prior kn…

That is one strong assumption to be tested. Sadly we lack the technology and are in general loathe to run experiments on humans.

Except raising kids, that is.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#168

Post by dmix »

pimeys wrote: post #37
e15ctr0n wrote: post #23

For those not familiar with Hunter S. Thompson and looking to get an understanding of his outsize personality and cult following, I highly recommend watching the 2 movies in which Johnny Depp played his character: * Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120669/ * The Rum Diary (2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376136/ If you are not already a fan of Johnny Depp, these movies should do i…

Yeah, nice movies. But damn, read the books! Adding to those two, I'd definitely read: * Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_and_Loathing_on_the_Campa... * Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell%27s_Angels:_The_Strange_a... His ability to just push himself into the situations and into what…

His collections of letters and journalistic work is way better than his books. He always hated writing books and was much better in short brilliant bursts. He wrote extensively to his friends (some very famous friends like Tom Wolfe and other great writers).

Both the letters and articles were released in 3 book series each. These are my favourite books from each series:

(letters) The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967 (The Fear and Loathing Letters, Vol. 1

https://www.amazon.com/Proud-Highway-Desperate-Gentleman-195...

(articles) The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Shark-Hunt-Strange-Tales/dp/074...

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#169

Post by AstralStorm »

njloof wrote: post #130
jrcii wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not about the destination it's about the journey" is extremely cliche in my experience, though it may be good advice.

It may be cliché, but it's still hard to comprehend until you reach a life goal and have to ask yourself, "Wait... Now what?" It's much easier when there's a milestone -- just pick another one. (Graduated? Graduate again!) Then you run out of milestones and have to ask more difficult questions.

The real question is one of assigning value to each goal. The valuation changes as do you.

It is easy to get into a local trap of running for a goal you no longer value. It is also easy to get trapped in switching between goals without progress.

Re: Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose (1958)

#170

Post by scalio »

jshevek wrote: post #162
CuriouslyC wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious as to why, when faced with unpredictable phenomenon, you chose to go with the hypothesis "everything is random" rather than "everything is choice" when you have an experience that appears to be choice, and would probably have a hard time naming a truly random phenomenon.

The parent didn't say "everything is random", nor anything that absolutely requires this viewpoint. To declare that "everything is choice" strikes me as putting one's beliefs ahead of inquiry.

Indeed, when I say life has no meaning, I don't mean that it is devoid of rules. Quite the contrary is true, since our modern life revolves around mathematics. In that sense, the universe is exquisitely meaningful, it's full of mathematical meaning, but that's not massively useful for us humans trying to figure out how to spend our time.
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