61–70 of 112 posts
Authoritarians always want you to embrace a nihilistic apathy. It makes you easier to rule and guarantees their continued power without challenge.
It's what happened to Russia. And now we see the Russification of America.
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That’s backwards. Our fight isn’t against “blob forces, but instead against human nature and regression to the mean. My dad’s village in Bangladesh is the default state of humanity. The life you have in San Francisco or wherever is a bubble of order and flourishing in a hostile world, like the inside of a single cell organism.
The life possible in San Francisco is possible in large part because of the entropy it externalizes to "somewhere else", a place many in SF and the US more generally prefer to ignore, and which includes Bangladesh, alongside as much of the "global south" as can be coerced into lopsided agreements, and much more generally the possible futures available to humankind. Cell membranes externalize entropy in the same way,…
San Francisco is not rich because Bangladesh is poor. This idea is not only wrong, but dangerous. I’m stuck in America because my parents and grandparents in Bangladesh were infected by such stupid thinking. Other people in the “global south” that rejected such victimhood leapt ahead. When we came to America in 1989, China’s per-capita GDP was a little higher than Bangladesh, but a little lower than India. Since then, China has become a livable place, while Bangladesh and India remain impoverished. Your mindset is a roadmap for the global south to remain poor and backward.
I used to think stoicism was great. But now I think that it’s not so great. In retrospect I should have focused on changing my situation in stead of learning to live with it. Compared to Aurelius - I am not living around 0 bc - in today’s world I can change a lot of things.
That doesn't sound like stoicism to me. At its core stoicism is about having the best possible judgement and taking the best possible actions. Sometimes acting makes a situation worse and so patience or restraint are what's best. It seems you've confused this situational wisdom with a universal principle. Everything I've learned about stoicism has taught me to not waste energy on things I can't control so that I can…
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If you are american you'll probably never notice how off-putting is the american niceness. And it's not natural if you ever traveled and seen the world a little bit.
Genuine question as an American- why would niceness be off-putting? What would you prefer? I'm guessing neutrality or formality, as opposed to outright rudeness... is it because it feels too familiar, and a bit of arms-length distance is more your custom? Again, genuinely curious as an outsider.
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The life possible in San Francisco is possible in large part because of the entropy it externalizes to "somewhere else", a place many in SF and the US more generally prefer to ignore, and which includes Bangladesh, alongside as much of the "global south" as can be coerced into lopsided agreements, and much more generally the possible futures available to humankind. Cell membranes externalize entropy in the same way,…
> The life possible in San Francisco is possible in large part because of the entropy it externalizes to "somewhere else", a place many in SF and the US more generally prefer to ignore, and which includes Bangladesh, alongside as much of the "global south" San Francisco is not rich because Bangladesh is poor. This idea is not only wrong, but dangerous. I’m stuck in America because my parents and grandparents in Bangl…
I'm saying the US does what it can to keep itself richer than other countries all around the globe by immoral means. It is not unique in this. This is not the only reason the US is rich or the only reason any other is not.
I'm also saying that this is a really bad strategy if the goal is humankind flourishing on this planet. People already enrich one another in many ways. We have to stop warring on one another and nature, thoughtlessly dumping entropy where we can't see it, etc.
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Genuine question as an American- why would niceness be off-putting? What would you prefer? I'm guessing neutrality or formality, as opposed to outright rudeness... is it because it feels too familiar, and a bit of arms-length distance is more your custom? Again, genuinely curious as an outsider.
In most cultures, smiling at someone means, you know them personally. So, when you smile at a stranger, the stranger gets confused. They might think you are crazy. Also it could make them uncomfortable about how to respond. If they smile back, it means they know you, which is not true. Infact, if you smiled at a stranger of opposite gender, it could lead to other complications depending on who are with them, and they…
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If you are american you'll probably never notice how off-putting is the american niceness. And it's not natural if you ever traveled and seen the world a little bit.
Genuine question as an American- why would niceness be off-putting? What would you prefer? I'm guessing neutrality or formality, as opposed to outright rudeness... is it because it feels too familiar, and a bit of arms-length distance is more your custom? Again, genuinely curious as an outsider.
Books are same as TV shows - more about sounding weird to catch the fish (audience). I don't read any of those self-help books or seemingly philosophical notes. The Western world has invented too much of self-awareness and social reflection. People smile too much, smile at strangers, worry about social acceptance, worry about self, go crazy about all thing cosmetic in life and at work. You don't need to think too muc…
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“ People smile too much, smile at strangers…” How dare they.
If you are american you'll probably never notice how off-putting is the american niceness. And it's not natural if you ever traveled and seen the world a little bit.
Where is being nice unnatural? Russia?