Post: #26

(09-21-2015 12:37 PM)eradicator Wrote:  To the OP, What is this pussy machine you speak of at the gym that will tighten a woman's pussy?

All women should be using this slice of heaven.

Well I can't just let this vital question slip by unanswered.

I'm pretty sure those are the hip abductor machines where you sit up straight and open and close your legs against resistance. They have them here in every UK gym pretty much. Whenever I see a chick using one I get bad thoughts.

If only I could think of an opener...

Post: #27

(09-21-2015 03:09 PM)Blackwell Wrote:  

(09-21-2015 12:37 PM)eradicator Wrote:  To the OP, What is this pussy machine you speak of at the gym that will tighten a woman's pussy?

All women should be using this slice of heaven.

Well I can't just let this vital question slip by unanswered.

I'm pretty sure those are the hip abductor machines where you sit up straight and open and close your legs against resistance. They have them here in every UK gym pretty much. Whenever I see a chick using one I get bad thoughts.

If only I could think of an opener...

You: "How's that working out for you?"

Post: #28

(09-21-2015 01:22 PM)TheWastelander Wrote:  

(09-21-2015 07:59 AM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:  Solid post.

The ideal motto of the 21st century : 'Live and let live'.

I always hated that quote. What it really means in a modern context is "ignore the harms being done to you and go back to sleep."

If I need to clarify, it's essentially: " You do your thing, let me do mine"

Are you a communist? Go ahead and do your communist thing but don't push that on me.

Are you gay? Go bang your boyfriend in the ass, just don't push your agenda on me.

Are you religious? Good for you, that's between you and your god don't try to convert me.

Are you a hardcore segregationist? Good for you but don't tell me who I can and can't date, where to live, or who I can associate with.

And so on, and so forth.

Live and let live

I'm still convinced that this is the best time in history to be alive anywhere in the world (possibly bar the middle east).

The old school doesn't appeal to me, overt racism, deadly tribalism, constant warfare, short brutish lives, overbearing neighbours, diseases blamed on mysticism, the list goes on. Sometimes it helps a little to be grateful for what we have and to appreciate the little things in life.

Post: #29

(09-21-2015 03:29 PM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:  

(09-21-2015 01:22 PM)TheWastelander Wrote:  

(09-21-2015 07:59 AM)DjembaDjemba Wrote:  Solid post.

The ideal motto of the 21st century : 'Live and let live'.

I always hated that quote. What it really means in a modern context is "ignore the harms being done to you and go back to sleep."

If I need to clarify, it's essentially: " You do your thing, let me do mine"

Are you a communist? Go ahead and do your communist thing but don't push that on me.

Are you gay? Go bang your boyfriend in the ass, just don't push your agenda on me.

Are you religious? Good for you, that's between you and your god don't try to convert me.

Are you a hardcore segregationist? Good for you but don't tell me who I can and can't date, where to live, or who I can associate with.

And so on, and so forth.

Live and let live

I'm still convinced that this is the best time in history to be alive anywhere in the world (possibly bar the middle east).

The old school doesn't appeal to me, overt racism, deadly tribalism, constant warfare, short brutish lives, overbearing neighbours, diseases blamed on mysticism, the list goes on. Sometimes it helps a little to be grateful for what we have and to appreciate the little things in life.

What you call the "old school" is reality that's been papered over with the incredibly thin veneer of modern western civilization. People are still fundamentally animals. If you look through history you will see this to be true. Contrary to some postmodernist thought, there's been no "end of history." It's all a house of cards waiting to come down.

Post: #30

Excellent debate....Roosh's reference to the show about Siberian subsistence life versus artificial city life reminded me of the best parts of the Unabomber's manifesto:

Quote:"Human beings have a need (probably based in biology) for something that we will call the "power process." This is closely related to the need for power (which is widely recognized) but is not quite the same thing. The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) "

----

"For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals ( that is, goals that people would want to attain even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the "mundane" business of satisfying their biological needs, but that it is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities."

One doesn't need to go to the extremes of Siberian privation to attain the sense of purpose and meaning...you just need to learn to identify what it is that you do that is a surrogate activity, and keep it in proper perspective in comparison to the sum total of what you do with your life, rather than let it consume you to the point of obsession. If the ennui of your current existence weighs on your mind heavily, the only answer is a change of scenery...and get out of the loop of obsession with pursuing surrogate activities as the sole means of defining your life.

About 6 years ago I moved out of the suburbs and into a place we would consider in Hawaii "boondocks" into a rustic, fixer upper old home. I still enjoy many conveniences of modern existence (like teh Interwebz, electricity, refrigeration, indoor plumbing), but I got plenty of activities, chores and work that are part of living where I do, to scratch the itch of the "power process" Kaczynski talks about. At the end of each day, when I've done something laborious and exhausting...I also find it eminently more fulfilling and satisfying then when I used to close big $$ deals in the air conditioned comforts of a cubicle farm in downtown Honolulu.

Post: #31

It is not my intention to hector and harangue men that I love. When I contemplated responding to all of the intense posts in this thread, everything I thought of writing was warped by undue ferocity or exaggerated politeness.

Allow me to invoke, on this one occasion at least, the right to remain silent and to let the original post speak for itself.

*************

Here is the pussy-machine, also known as the hip abductor:

Post: #32

(09-20-2015 06:02 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  Look around you. Technological advancement, the progress won by centuries and centuries of men's toil and creativity, has not made life less "real", less "genuine", less meaningful -- it has added to the beauty, to the variety, to the comedy of what we are privileged to experience at all times. An air conditioned gym is every bit as much a part of "nature" as any stretch of Siberian tundra; it is nature transformed and enlivened by the most singular and superb of nature's creations, the human being.

The Siberian Tundra will still exist in 10,000 years.

All traces of the gym, and anything else mankind can build in its futile effort to show mastery it over the natural world out of a deep-seated fear of mortality will be erased from natural existence in that same amount of time. All language, all science, all technology, all music. If mankind catastrophically-ends, nothing of it remains.

We all become dust. I find a simpler beauty and peace in understanding and accepting that fact than in artificial environments. I frequently-escape those environments for periods of time to recharge my soul.

Post: #33

If there was such a strong drive to nature and sustenance manual labor that it was so satisfying it was the epitome of man I think you would see more people moving out to buy cheap property in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho.

They would be spending all their weekends making huge gardens both indoor and outdoor as well as raising a cow and some chickens. They would hunt then freeze all the meat for winter.They would spend their time learning to construct and expand their own homes, barns, and storage sheds.

Humans only have a fleeting connection to that urge. I don't think it is coming back unless we are forced by disaster. After a large disaster humans again out of curiosity would build technology. We worship technology and want to press it forward. Look at the medium we speak on.

People have gone on hikes. People have gone camping. People have visited a farm at one point. People have had a neighbor or relative with a vast a garden.

Why don't these people get hooked if it is so satisfying? If it replenishes the soul why sip at the edge of the river infrequently?

Why aren't we Amish?

Have you seen pictures of women before the 1950s?

Hell have you heard of the diseases that existed?

The world is out to murder you one way or another. We just keep putting up a better defense.

Post: #34

(09-21-2015 05:18 PM)Travesty Wrote:  If there was such a strong drive to nature and sustenance manual labor that it was so satisfying it was the epitome of man I think you would see more people moving out to buy cheap property in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho.

People seldom do what is the most satisfying. They don't even take any time out of their lives to try things that they haven't already thought of.

In general people do what is the easiest, as well as what is the most immediately satisfying, which even they know is not the epitome of man.

Popularity is not the only arbiter of worth.

Post: #35

(09-21-2015 05:10 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

...Which is exactly what I mean. Remove the girl from the picture, as beautiful women still exist in harsh environments.

The ash grey carpet resembles a barren wasteland after a fire - an illustration of what I think of a 'Institutional Decorating' - where every choice is designed to squash excitement and passion by dulling stimulus. A neutral, unoffensive paint scheme. The suffocating, relentless, hum of the climate control. The flickering, buzzing, sickly absence of natural warmth from the fluorescent lights. The dull uniformity of a militarised layout - all facing some kind of visual distraction display, like a television, designed to decrease the possibility of eye contact. The blare of television or Techno Music at loud volumes to make it harder to hear each other. The digitisation of music itself: turning natural sound waves into an approximation of the sound waves, thereby turning it into a series of stepping flat-lines, something that doesn't exist in any sound that occurs the natural world.

All of this is simply the absence of natural life, as far from beauty as I can envision. Christ, I can even smell the chemical stink of that newly-laid carpet. This gym resembles a hospital: the sort of place people go when they're dying.

I walk outside - struck by the idiocy of even the doors automatically opening for me at a gym - and feel the light on my skin, the breeze on my face, the natural sounds of the birds in the air and rumbling thunder in the distance, perhaps even the first few drops of rain on my skin, and I feel utterly-renewed.

Alive.

I've laid bricks, I've picked fruit, I've worked on fishing boats. Sun burning my skin, hands cut and callused, beard blowing in the salt breeze. The roar of the wind in my ears as I ride my motorbike in winter, the sharp bite of cold still felt through my leather jacket and mask.

Alive.

I've pushed papers in offices, I've sat in lecture halls, I've sat through tedious tele-conferences, the temperature perfectly-controlled, on ergonomically-designed chairs, with easy-to-reach high-caloric snack treats at my fingertips.

Dead.

Quote:it is nature transformed and enlivened by the most singular and superb of nature's creations, the human being

An experience from a couple of years ago.

I'm sitting in my workroom with a guitar, trying to write a song. I'm struggling a bit. I have the window open, letting the warmth of the new Spring Air in after a cold Winter. With some work, the song starts to take shape, and I'm filled with the thrilling rush of creation. Where is this leading?

After more work, I'm struck by a thought: I am blessed that I can create something beautiful out of nothing, pulling it from the air and shaping it into something that may touch people.

I keep working, and, somewhere during the process, a bird lands on my windowsill. I notice it, not recognising what type it is, and stop playing. The bird starts singing.

I've heard birds before, sure, but I've suddenly realised how I've never actively-paid close attention to Birdsong before. Australian birds don't really tend to sing.

This bird, with a brain the size of a peanut, is singing, pulling the notes out of the air like I am, but humbling me with the beauty of its melody. I could write a thousand more songs, and not approach the easy, effortless heights of creation of this one small bird.

The bird flew away.

I went back to writing, greatly-humbled, the work much harder than before.

Post: #36

Man has lost his higher purpose. Seek the mysteries. Build your internal kingdom. Many will seek refuge in Christianity, but there is a universal unseen doctrine that requires man to grasp at the unknown--leaving religious speculation behind. It is a much harder path. It does not have the promise of Heaven, but you must find this secret place most high.

Post: #37

Delete

Post: #38

With all the good things in the world, the few big bad things can stick out like a sore thumb and bum you out. I think it's good to remind ourselves of that once in awhile and not lose sight of appreciating just being alive. None of us chose to be born and to exist in this world. It's a gift. Enjoy it.

Not to say we should all just blind ourselves in optimism and let the world's problems run rampant, but I think a healthy balance between pragmatism and optimism is something worth striving for.

Post: #39

Modern life has its pros and cons. It's certainly very comfortable, at least. Putting aside the question of whether not it is better than past eras, we can at least say for sure that it is different. It is much different, in fact. And this is really the crux of the matter - whether or not our current lifestyles are so radically different from the past (without most men even realizing it) that we have inadvertently handicapped ourselves and limited our full development as men and human beings. We can say for sure that we have developed in ways that our ancestors have not and experienced things they never did. But we cannot know exactly what sort of personal development we have missed out on due to living in the relative ease we enjoy. We simply don't know.

If I had to guess, however, I would say that today we are incredibly spiritually and existentially impoverished compared to our ancestors. On the other hand, we are extremely spoiled by the measure of knowledge, experience and pleasure. Their lives were simpler and more focused. Ours are scattered and cluttered with inanities. I imagine it would be very difficult (if we had a time machine) for us to socialize with our ancestors. They would probably strike us as extremely boring, simple people, most likely very religious, with little time for entertaining most of the things we find important. We would basically consider them ignorant yokels. In turn, they would consider us shallow, narcissistic, degenerate hedonists, completely unmoored from tradition, community, religion and family, the four pillars which they viewed as indispensable for living a good life. In contrast, we're just sort of aimless and adrift, going through life trying to be "happy" at any given moment, mostly through consumption and indulging in the pleasures of the flesh.

Our realities are so different that we're almost like two separate species. The level of technological development that occurred since 1900 radically altered our experiences. Something as basic for us as electricity was unknown to most of our ancestors. The same for indoor plumbing. Shopping/consuming. Dating. Traveling. Living in cities. Medical care. Reading. Think about that last one. Most of our ancestors couldn't even read. How can we even begin to get inside their heads? They're completely alien to us. Lost forever to time. We've inherited their genes but ultimately we know so little about them. Whatever of them remains in us is clouded, obscured by the blinding luminescence of our modern distractions. It's like trying to hear a whisper amid the roar of a crowded stadium. Even in attempting to escape to some quiet and remote place, as Roosh and Fisto mentioned, we can only hope to capture a partial and incomplete understanding of their experience. Though he venture to the farthest corners of the earth, modern man can at best hear only the faintest echo of his ancestors whispering in his ear. He is too far from us, and we from him. For all of its advantages and pleasures, this is the tragedy inherent to modern life: we are cut off, utterly, from our ancestors. And we don't quite know what that means for us. And we never can.

Post: #40

This is a great thread.

There is a part of nature that men cannot connect to because we live in such a safe environment. It is important to be at peace with where you are, but being at peace varies for everyone. Nature will always be the ultimate frontier for man and that is where we will find our peace. Going into the unknown and using our skills to survive in nature's rawness.

My family family is originally from Eastern Europe. My parents were both raised on rural farms in isolated villages. They had little electricity, no running water, no toilets, and no commodities for most of their lives. On top of that, they grew up with Communism. When they were not busting their asses at school for nine hours a day they were working to help their family survive. There were no stores and there were no safety nets. It was do or die.

Every few years, I go back to those villages to see family. The differences in lifestyle and culture amaze me. My grandfather is in his 80s and he STILL picks up a plow to tend the fields that fed him his whole life. To me, that's surreal. I've never had that type of connection with nature. Whenever I got hungry I went to the store. To tend your own crops and raise your own animals flips my reality on its head.

At my time in those villages, I noticed something fundamental. I was much happier there than anywhere else I've been. Being disconnected from technology was enlightening and my peace was more profound. While technology has it's place, our brains have not adapted to this fast paced environment. We spent thousands of years with just nature and to limit that experience is flawed.

I like running water and electricity as much as the next guy, but because I've never lived without I don't appreciate them. No one can truly appreciate life or grow unless they live without and struggle.

Post: #41

The thing is this: you may not be interested in the war but the war is interested in you.

Ignoring the barbarians at the gate may be the most comfortable solution in the short run. But then you wake up in the middle of the night with a knife slitting your throat and your daughter being raped in the next room. The op would have us believe that we live in a fairy tale land where if we just try to think happy thoughts we'll be happy. But the world is not like that. The unease you feel is not there gratuitously. It's there to warn you that things are not falling your way. If you ignore it, you do so at your own peril.

The lizard is basically saying ignore the smoke from the electrical closet and go back to sleep dreaming of delicious fried pastries.

Edit : I'm specifically referring to the part of his post that urges us to accept and embrace recent societal changes more so than the technology bit. Although some of that bit is a tad out there as well. Following that logic we should be enraptured by being locked up in a maximum security prison, so long as it contains fancy gadgets that are the culmination of centuries of manly ingenuity. It doesn't work like that.

Post: #42

This has been a wonderful thread. From the Henry James essay to the video on stillness by Eckhart Tolle (which prompted me to look into the etymology and concept of nirvana, which literally means "no wind"), the entries here have made for well over an hour of spirited contemplation.

The only contribution I might make is to note that while the man-made world may not be a dream, all man-made things are dream-like to an extent because this is the material, the root stratum, from which they were formed. Innovations, techniques, applications, and improvements -- these are things created when the interior world works on the exterior, forming and sometimes deforming it in an effort to remove some of its innate obduracy.

In this sense, the city is a Babylonian dream. But even the Siberian man's axe is a dream as well, although a simpler and more ancient one. The city is a fractal reflection of the axe, an axe for all callings, axes in every direction recurring, but the dream-root is the same. We are a channel between worlds material and immaterial, and we are not truly at home at either extreme.

Post: #43

I will just leave this here.

(05-12-2015 06:49 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  A major danger of 'The Red Pill' is that all you ever do is talk about it on the internet, or get upset about 'decline' and god knows what, and walk around feeling angry and disenfranchised. Congratulations, you're now exactly the same as the leftist SJWs who allow themselves to be ruled by emotion and a righteous sense of injustice. I think that irony is often lost on many of us, and I've certainly been guilty of it in the past.

And this is the danger, that 'The Red Pill' becomes something you feel about, or talk about, but don't actually think hard enough about or do enough about. You can talk about shagging more girls, or partying harder, or owning more things, or moving to SEA where everything will be gravy, but in many ways all of these things are unbecoming as goals in themselves for a man of potential. All of these things are fine, and even desirable if you're that way inclined, as incidental happenings within the larger tapestry of a life that you are actually trying to do something with.

As a man you should be building and mastering, with everything you do. It doesn't matter if you are a gardener or a banker, you should be mastering what you do and building towards something. And this is a fundamental flaw of 'The Red Pill', that is EXACTLY the same fundamental flaw of the intellectual left, in that all it offers for the most part is criticism and mud-slinging, without placing enough emphasis on something to aim for, to build towards, to achieve.

Everywhere you look on the 'Manosphere' there are blogs and articles and comments about how 95% of women aren't worth a damn. Again, the irony, 95% of men aren't worth a damn, and a lot of the blogs pushing you stuff saying 'you're special and intelligent otherwise you couldn't have stumbled across this part of the internet' are selling you something, you just may not realise it because they are blowing smoke up your arse while they sell you books on 'location independence' or whatever.

In my view, this side of 'The Red Pill' is a huge fucking cop out that stops you ever really having to commit to anything or anyone, or to actually fucking struggling to make a success for yourself, or to build a dynasty for yourself as best you can, with the means you have at your disposal. And achieving anything of worth IS a struggle. You think it's EVER been easy to meet a really quality girl who shares your values and enriches your life and who with you raises your own little tribe, the sum of which could exceed anyone else's? That shit would have been damn fucking hard 3000 years ago, and it still is now. There are some very bright, articulate, and thoughtful people in this community, many of whom clearly seem to have their shit together. There are also a lot who are over grown children talking about how much life is stacked against them, and how all girls are worthless sex objects, and how they are all (fucking thousands of them) going to go to Thailand and live off ebook proceeds.

We've just finished aesthetics week in the 'Manosphere', and if you want the Vita Beata you must actually be ABOUT something yourself, not just be about talking about it on the internet waiting for some collapse or someone to come along and make everything better for you. There are some awesome people on here, many live within hailing distance of each other, yet it seems relatively few are doing anything to build tribe, to invest in creating a real community that they contribute to and work with towards similar ends.

Ultimately the danger of 'The Red Pill' is that all you ever do is tell other people on the internet how smart you are, and bitch about how bad we've got it in the current environment. There's no doubt that it's a bad time to be traditionally minded, and that it is damn hard to find people worth a damn, but hard is not an excuse and if you're really 'Red Pill' you have no business making excuses, you should be out there building something. For me personally, that means my own dynasty - family and friends, tribe. It means adding value and helping others succeed, so that they in turn can help raise me up higher. 'The Red Pill' is in many respects a wonderful thing, but you can get awfully caught up in intellectual masturbation without ever finding yourself a purpose and devoting you life to it.

Post: #44

(09-23-2015 10:49 AM)MaxJames Wrote:  I will just leave this here.

(05-12-2015 06:49 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  A major danger of 'The Red Pill' is that all you ever do is talk about it on the internet, or get upset about 'decline' and god knows what, and walk around feeling angry and disenfranchised. Congratulations, you're now exactly the same as the leftist SJWs who allow themselves to be ruled by emotion and a righteous sense of injustice. I think that irony is often lost on many of us, and I've certainly been guilty of it in the past.

In its essence "The Red Pill" is simply a convenient metaphor used to describe unadulterated understanding of reality (insofar as that is humanely possible). Nothing more, nothing less.

Anything else ascribed to it, or done in its name, is misunderstanding and thus misappropriation of the core definition of that term. "The Red Pill" is certainly not responsible for others' perpetual misuse and violation of its meaning.

"The Red Pill" is not good or bad, it just is.

Post: #45

(09-24-2015 02:19 AM)72 and sunny Wrote:  

(09-23-2015 10:49 AM)MaxJames Wrote:  I will just leave this here.

(05-12-2015 06:49 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  A major danger of 'The Red Pill' is that all you ever do is talk about it on the internet, or get upset about 'decline' and god knows what, and walk around feeling angry and disenfranchised. Congratulations, you're now exactly the same as the leftist SJWs who allow themselves to be ruled by emotion and a righteous sense of injustice. I think that irony is often lost on many of us, and I've certainly been guilty of it in the past.

In its essence "The Red Pill" is simply a convenient metaphor used to describe unadulterated understanding of reality (insofar as that is humanely possible). Nothing more, nothing less.

Anything else ascribed to it, or done in its name, is misunderstanding and thus misappropriation of the core definition of that term. "The Red Pill" is certainly not responsible for others' perpetual misuse and violation of its meaning.

"The Red Pill" is not good or bad, it just is.

Agreed. The Red Pill is just the truth of life. Whether you learn to accept it or not is up to you as an individual. Much of the red pill knowledge can be found in all the great ancient texts, such as the Bible and so on.

There are 5 stages of grief, and I think most men in the west go through them when they discover the red pill truth. How far you go with the grief process is up to each individual...

Denial - Most blue pill men and women. They refuse to accept reality and pretend men and women are the same and that women will be happy and fair when given positions of power.

Anger - Described above. Some red pill men never get past this stage. This might be something we need to talk about more on red pill forums. Getting the new red pill men beyond this step. They have every right to be angry, but they have to move beyond it to make the knowledge of use to them.

Bargaining - When maybe I can find the one good girl out there. Maybe you can, but you must keep pushing to make yourself a better man, not hoping that you find a good woman in this mess. If you are the best man you can be, your chances improve.

Depression - Realizing that even with the knowledge you can't find the one good girl. I think this is when many PUA's in the past talked about realizing that they have learned too much about women and really don't even find them worth while other than to get laid, which makes life so empty. In red pill terms, it is realizing that you can't go back and you can't relate to most of the blue pill people around you.

Acceptance - You fully accept the red pill and the truth to life and you use it to your advantage to make your life great.

Post: #46

This is the best time to be alive, and also the most frustrating. Modern life is filled with comfort - and mediocrity. It is designed to meet the needs of the many but we are left to ourselves to find real fulfillment, which leaves many to take the easy, predetermined path of filling the time left over between sleep and work with television and PTA meetings.

The official world's funniest joke is 'Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gun shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"' Very few people will really laugh at this but almost everyone will chuckle. No one rubs their hands with glee at the thought of going to the supermarket but everyone would take WalMart over wondering whether the parsnips stored in your root cellar will last you through the spring harvest or if your family is going to starve to death over the winter.

I was also going to post the quote from the Unabomber's Manifesto about surrogate activities such as the gym replacing activities which are necessary for survival such as those portrayed in the Siberian show. Highly recommended reading, not because it's gospel truth necessarily but because it makes a reader aware of the pitfalls of modern life to be avoided.

To know pleasure we must have pain, to know happiness we must also have anger and sadness. Air conditioning and scripted sitcoms will make all content but none fulfilled. I work outside and there are plenty of days when it's 95 in the shade and 140 on a black rubber roof and I curse the decisions which led me to be there and would give anything to be in an air conditioned office. There are also sunny mornings in an ocean breeze and I have a moment to look out over a view and get that rush of happiness I never feel when I'm sitting inside typing away like the present moment. There is a balance to be found with enjoying the comforts of modern life which our unknown and unknowable ancestors worked so hard to give us, and also knowing when to escape it and push through the discomforts of hunger and physical exertion to reach a remote mountain stream where we can catch our own dinner on a line and cook it on a fire we started. Even if we use a Bic lighter to do it.

Post: #47

Thanks Lizard,

You're always dropping these bombs that grow on me each time I read them. You sort of remind of Pook from Sosauve. I never read the site, but I always enjoyed his bombast literary posts whenever I'd happen upon them. Thanks for keeping that style alive.

Like Rawmeo said, sometimes you gotta throw your head back and chuckle at the crazy shit that happens sometimes.

Post: #48

What A Wonderful World Lyrics

by Louis Armstrong

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
But they're really saying I love you.

I hear baby's cry, and I watched them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Post: #49

(09-20-2015 06:02 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  When I was a much younger man, the following passage by Henry James (from a literary essay on Turgenev) was probably my favorite passage in all of literature. I considered it my credo, words to live by. Here it is in full:

Quote:Life is, in fact, a battle. On this point optimists and pessimists agree. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally, unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night; we wake up to it again for ever and ever; we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it. We can welcome experience as it comes, and give it what it demands, in exchange for something which it is idle to pause to call much or little so long as it contributes to swell the volume of consciousness. In this there is mingled pain and delight, but over the mysterious mixture there hovers a visible rule, that bids us learn to will and seek to understand.

Now as I re-read it, I find a few things that do not hold up so well and ideas I disagree with. Evil is insolent and strong, yes; but to emphasize this is to understate the less obvious, because more diffusely spread, goodness and kindness of ordinary people that is like an atmosphere in which we walk and which we take for granted; goodness is only "weak" in the way that the air we breathe is odorless. To call beauty rare is a vulgarity; beauty is, indeed, quite common, it is everywhere if you know how to look. People in great places are, in fact, very rarely imbeciles, they are canny and shrewd; to believe otherwise is a shortcoming of a brilliant but literary young mind. And mankind generally is neither pointedly happy nor unhappy, it goes about its business and it does more than well enough for the most part.

But the words I bolded in the passage above -- those remain as true and as sublime as ever. Yes, the world, reality, life as it is, is "no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night"; yes, "we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it", and yes, to welcome experience as it comes and give it what it demands is what we can do, and what we should do -- not because it is a moral duty but because it is the way to live a good, interesting and enjoyable life. Reality, the world as it is, is the font -- the font of all interest, beauty, and knowledge; there is no greater depth and no more meet nourishment for the mind and heart than the profound comedy of everyday life, as it really is; and if we turn away from it, if we come to believe that the thinness of mere ideas can replace the experience of life as it actually is, then the well of our spirit dries up and we lose the world. And spiritually, that is the most terrible and regrettable fate that can befall a man. It is truly a death in life.

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This passage and these thoughts came to my mind as I was reading a recent post by Roosh called City Life Is A Simulation. In it, Roosh talks about a documentary on the life of villagers in remote Siberia who lack all means of modern technology; he is moved to conceive of their existence as a kind of rural fantasia, a life in which man is at one with nature and which is therefore a genuine, and meaningful, life; compared to this, he feels that the life of the city with all its modern conveniences is a mere simulacrum, indeed possibly a "simulation". In any case it is something empty, hollow and artificial, removed from the rhythms of nature. I was especially struck by this paragraph in which Roosh lauds the "authentic" masculinity of the villagers and their manual labor, and dismisses the "make believe" masculinity of merely going to a city gym:

Quote:I must ask myself if I want to continue living a simulated life in which I’m surrounded by comfort, concrete, and electronic screens, or live one closer to nature, where occasionally I must pick up an ax and strike it at a log to ensure I won’t freeze in the night, instead of merely simulating this strike by entering an air conditioned gym with top 40 music playing in the background.

This passage, and the post as a whole, saddened me; and it made me want to say something like this to Roosh, a man I admire and respect -- and to the many other men who, no doubt, feel much like him:

Roosh, and other dudes: look around you. You are privileged to be in an indescribably beautiful, indeed mystical place: a perfectly air conditioned city gym with top 40 music playing in the background. I'm not even going to lecture you about gratitude; I'm not even going to bore you with a long discourse (all of which would be true) about how centuries of work, of thought, of human (male) ingenuity have gone into making every single apparatus you see arrayed before you, how physicists had to invent the beautiful ideas of thermodynamics and engineers had to slave to put those ideas to use to design devices that maintain the ideal temperature for human beings to live and thrive in; how the cloying confectionary strains of "top 40 music" were optimized by canny and skillful operators over time to achieve a kind of sublime banality. I'll even spare you the harangue about the amazing, and constantly improving, materials that went into making your Under Armour tanktop a kind of weaponized weightlifting uniform. Relax -- you've been spared all this.

But look around you. Do you see the mixed raced hottie with her ass in yoga pants bending over, stretching, and seating herself on a pussy machine so that her pussy can get just a little tighter? Do you see the Misc-reading IRT perform his deadlifts with inspiringly terrible form, essentially trying to wreck his delicate subcontinental frame in his terrible quest for muscle; do you see the fag and his mincing bicep curls; do you see the gutted out contractor who looks 60 if he's a day actually squat 225 to the absolute paused bottom for 15 brutal reps? DON'T you see all these things? Don't you see the insane, endless, magical variety of life around you -- life that, as Henry James said, is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night. Life that is as real and as authentic as any ax wielded by any fool in Siberia or elsewhere -- indeed, more glorious, more interesting, more various than any of these villagers could ever conceive of. Don't you see it?

Look around you. Technological advancement, the progress won by centuries and centuries of men's toil and creativity, has not made life less "real", less "genuine", less meaningful -- it has added to the beauty, to the variety, to the comedy of what we are privileged to experience at all times. An air conditioned gym is every bit as much a part of "nature" as any stretch of Siberian tundra; it is nature transformed and enlivened by the most singular and superb of nature's creations, the human being. Don't let mere ideas, in their heated thinness, cause you to lose the world. Welcome experience as it comes, and give it what it demands; don't be so absorbed in your thought -- so often futile and devoid of reality -- that the very ground on which you walk becomes abstracted and unreal, that you fail to see the hottie in yoga pants, and also the ill-fated IRT, the fag, and the contractor. Don't lose the world -- it is as worth living in and attending to as it ever was; more so if you ask me. Give life as it is a chance, in all humility; and it will reward you a thousandfold.

There is good and bad aspects to human civilization. However one needs to only look around to deplore the urban vandalism that I see around me in the form of ugliness in the form of buildings and things made.

Carparks, Basements and various constructions of grey concrete and many aspects of industrial society that although great at generation of wealth nonetheless is itself a thing of ugliness as well as a creator of pollution.

Cutting down scenic trees and destroying landscapes to make way for monotonous strip malls, apartments that looks like prisons and ugly infrastructure is no good thing at all.

Nor is the light pollution that blocks out the stars and galaxies, the garbage micro-pellets in the middle of pacific ocean the plastic garbage that populates the 3rd world,toxic sludge that comes as a result of industrial processes and the air pollution of China.

Post: #50

(09-21-2015 08:19 PM)brob Wrote:  With all the good things in the world, the few big bad things can stick out like a sore thumb and bum you out. I think it's good to remind ourselves of that once in awhile and not lose sight of appreciating just being alive. None of us chose to be born and to exist in this world. It's a gift. Enjoy it.

Not to say we should all just blind ourselves in optimism and let the world's problems run rampant, but I think a healthy balance between pragmatism and optimism is something worth striving for.

I had been spending too much time focusing on bad things. Love what game has done to refocus me on something else.