Silvi Simberg's Blog, page 2
November 1, 2022
Festival
Generated this colorful lady from internet artwork that already had a face – although it was a stone and looked quite male, no post-processing done.
Text prompt: head and shoulders portrait, 8k resolution concept art portrait by Greg Rutkowski, Artgerm, WLOP, Alphonse Mucha dynamic lighting hyperdetailed intricately detailed Splash art trending on Artstation triadic colours Unreal Engine 5 volumetric lighting
Seed: Random
Filter: K_Euler_A
The post Festival first appeared on Silvi Simberg.
October 31, 2022
Transformation
This was my first attempt at Stable Diffusion, used via nightcafe. Started with a personal thumbnail sketch photographed and desaturated. Did some post-processing to fix some features of the face in Affinity Photo. Might use it for Eysin’s cover sometime – that is if I can generate in a similar style for the upcoming volumes, as well 
Text prompt: head and shoulders portrait, 8k resolution concept art portrait by Greg Rutkowski, Artgerm, WLOP, Alphonse Mucha dynamic lighting hyperdetailed intricately detailed Splash art trending on Artstation triadic colours Unreal Engine 5 volumetric lighting
Seed: 2285037144
Filter: K_LMS
The post Transformation first appeared on Silvi Simberg.July 18, 2021
A Little Bit of Money
I just realized that a lot more people are bordering poverty than I had previously thought. And for a very long time – I have been there, too. I don’t come from a family who had the mentality to savings, but like so many others here in this country, a family who lived on a loan.
I was still a baby when we shifted from the soviet regime to a more capitalist one. My parents (and grandparents) had earned an apartment for some working points (I guess that was still a socialist thing?), so, they did own something – but they never earned enough or cared enough, just the bare minimum – living conditions were fine – and to me that was normal (I had my toys – and mom even built me some neat barbie furniture – something you can’t buy anywhere!) but once I was big enough to go visit the neighbour kids, I saw how others were living, dressing, eating, what sorts of things they did together with their families – I did find my place “sucked”, and quickly found the difference between my parents and theirs was that of habitual smoking, drinking and games which I later would learn are related to gambling.
Interestingly enough, the only other kid to ever try to discriminate me based on that (called me poor and bullied me in other ways – I cried easily) was one who came from an even shittier household (added to all the bad habits with the adults, they also seemed to be bandits, and it was all dirtier).
The other kids who were better off didn’t really seem to mind or care, they were happy to invite me over and the only time I was excluded from some new form of play was indeed due to a small issue in wealth – but that’s also actually quite a funny story, because they all got into big problems with their parents because of that.
There were some 4 girls who had loads of these Kinder Surprise figurines, and I think it must have been the girl from one of the wealthier families (but still in an apartment) who came up with the idea to sell them to each other. They didn’t trade the figurines (there were these collections you could collect – if you’re an American, you may have missed out ;)) – they sold them to each other.
In any case, the sums reached a few hundreds kroons, I suppose one of the girls may have had regrets, felt scammed or maybe their mother started asking where the money has gone – and boom, they all got lined up, lectured, and had to revert all their transactions. Hilarious.
Another initiative from the same household that had started the figurine selling was one that I was involved in, too. We’d taken over one of the basements of the big apartment buildings, and we had our very own nice underground street festival over there. Some of the older girls (one also from the same “entrepreneurial” household) were involved too – I guess they organized it.
I participated, too – I had my drawings, they were put on the wall and if someone wanted to buy, I got my 1 or 2 kroons from it (I recall it was one of those metal coins), and then at one point I had like 5 kroons even, trading here and there – and then the “entrepreneurial” teen sold me on a haircut.
That was the most hysterical state I had seen from my mother (as sober) when I went home that night. I also was feeling a little sick, because we’d stayed in the basement all day – and it’s not just a funky smell – it’s actual mold. I vomited into the bath.
My mother was really upset about what I had done to my hair, so she had to correct it. A little while later we had the photoshoots at school.
So, while it was a fun initiative on the end of the girls from more entrepreneurial families, it ended up being a little more traumatic me for very different reasons. The very girls who were behind the basement event also were the ones who got me in trouble two other times, by the way – once, when I followed them around over a creek, I fell in and got stuck – they ran away (trauma-learned that ladies be not reliable for help! My big brother heard me release the trauma siren and he came get me!); in the other occasion they were organizing something around my father’s snow-piercer truck, lifted me to sit on the high step (it was a huge truck, you need to climb a ladder to get into the cockpit), and I immediately fell down, and knocked my chin broken to the roadside pavement. BLOOD EVERYWHERE. The same girls – they ran away, again! I still have a scar, but it’s barely visible.
Anyway, none of that had anything to do with money! But who knows in what ways my brain might associate these events with their more entrepreneurial games. I might have an unconscious aversion to… Well, shitty people. They were not responsible in any way – not in their dangerous plays, not with money. And I never ratted them out and they never got punished for it. So, that’s what my brain is rolling on.
***
Fast forward to the end of high school, I lived in a slightly nicer home, but the mentality was largely the same. I had gone through a lot of other non-money related events, too, but I’m going to leave those out, for now, because I’m trying to dissect a little bit of money.
I came from a poor household, but I had options. I had been sponsored with an expensive guitar by people who had no business sponsoring me with an expensive electric guitar, I could go to university if I liked (and for a while, later, I did – and my living got sponsored by brother (you either gotta learn or you gotta work – but you can’t do nothing! is what he said).
The university bored me, and my working options were – to my knowledge – not so great. The world had also recently suffered this recession thing, and I was not at all interested in doing what many others were – going to work abroad.
So, I worked full time and earned so little that alone I couldn’t have supported this activity – I had moved to Tallinn, had some kind of a boyfriend who didn’t seem to mind carrying the rent alone, I had a student loan to repay and I guess I had also leased a laptop (I made a lot of music at the time – but not in an entrepreneurial sense, of course I hoped someone would help me sell it, eventually, but I never knew how to do so myself, so).
There was no way for me to save. I just didn’t earn enough – I had my loans to repay, phone bills, I wanted to eat (I didn’t spend much at all on partying), and occasionally needed new clothes (second hand stores, mostly – these places are GOLD).
More twists and turns in life not directly related to the financial angle, but I must say, the only way I could ask for a salary raise was because I was useful enough for the (psycho) boss, my second ever serious long-term (2 years lol) boyfriend told me to fuck off (right after my 2 bands disbanded), and with the salary the psycho was paying, I could never afford living in that town. So, he made some stupid calculations and added to my salary the worth of rent.
It felt like good progress at the time (it was) – for the first time in my life I felt that I was able to keep myself alive. I did not have to rely on some guy or brother to be able to afford some stupid small apartment, food, internet – and I was quite contend with myself. I didn’t have to take any shit… Apart from the shit I had to take at work!
I earned enough to “make ends meet”. Sometimes I still had to borrow some lunch money from a co-worker. I did buy crap for food and occasionally drank light alcohol when the home entertainment of MMO fell emotionally short – but still I had not the mentality to “spend it while I have it” – I was pretty budgeted… Yet, there was no way I could save.
I felt relatively free, but there was one more squeeze – I couldn’t walk away from that piece of shit boss (the job itself was fine, and the coworkers were increasingly fun and nice, too – I should sometimes see what they are up to, these days, a bunch of us grew pretty close due to the terror). Neither had I any confidence in the marketability of my skills (I had plenty, but I thought the skills were very specific to the job (warehouse, supply chain, operations programming (excel is great), ecommerce, product photography) – besides, I was self taught, I had no papers to show, neither a portfolio).
How I saw myself socially and skill-wise back then also squeezed me, really – of course, working for psycho bosses tends to have the side-effect of starting to think of yourself as a worthless piece of shit, because “the house” never tires of repeating it to you – so getting over that wall, or breaking that ceiling was the next big challenge.
I didn’t know that there was a wall, that there was a ceiling – I didn’t know that the limitations existed, even less so that they were “psychological” – but for very different reasons I did start seeing a psychologist (the prolonged social exclusion mixed with a dramatic schism in my online MMO community (and they are usually as fucked up as you can get, these games generally do not attract healthy, happy people – but don’t let that discourage you from trying them out – ocasionally, and in some lucky communities it can be quite fun) I returned to suicidality (not my first time), I lost sleep; the psycho boss accused me of drinking out with friends late at night and kept going around looking for other things to whine about, I became ill with a mystery inflammation and eventually that “rock bottom” prompted me to start looking for alternative ways to tackle life).
Within the next one and a half year, as I was trying to put myself back together, the employer also offered salary raises as I indeed did prove my work as helpful and having a great impact on their operations. I did a lot in that firm, and it was uplifting to experience that it did not go completely unnoticed. I did things in there no one else would have, could have – it was probably worth a lot more than I was payed for! 
I had no more loans to pay off, but instead of saving I spent it on some stuff that I thought, at the time, were nice to have (computer stuff, new bedsheets, better shoes) – I felt a little more relaxed, yet, I still managed to end up at zero more or less every month – not because I could consistently spend 900EUR on the same things over and over again, but because I started getting unexpected expenses. I had to move again – and BOY, moving is expensive when you’re living alone in a city and barely make ends meet!
Other than that, the stupidest place I spent my money was for breakfast in kiosks and gas stations (their shit is very overpriced), and cherry beer (8 eur a bottle). But I had started to buy a lot of books, too; and also started getting some stuff to make my home look a little better, and some good kitchen utensils (even though I didn’t cook almost ever for the entirety of living alone), there must have been some other stuff I really felt that I needed and will serve me for a long time.
At work – we all started looking how to get out more or less at the same time, so I drafted a new CV, I put some things in my portfolio – and boy, was it a diverse one – glamorous product photos, posters, and the re-design of a warehouse ordering system with automated sheets and whatnot. I applied to some places.
Eventually, I got hired by a company to whom I told during the interview that it won’t make sense for me to move if the offer is under 900, they offer me 1200. It got me very excited!
Now, by the time I changed jobs, I had also started dating with the man who I am now married to. He is the kind of a man who can make it work EASY with a whopping 900EUR (and bare in mind, that’s also WITH a car and gas!). My expenses went down with him not because he payed for half the stuff, but I took note of his spending habits.
We lived together for a while and the two of us spent less on living that I had alone – there finally seemed to be a good reason to do the cooking at home – he taught me some really nice cooking tricks and that made it all the more fun (he has chef papers and all!). Other than the decreased expenses, what really boosted my capability to save was the bonuses at the new company. Of course, I did a few stupid moves first with the bigger amount of idle money on my hands – bought a stupid tablet which I ended up never using, and for another bonus I bought a tiny laptop (that wasn’t stupid, actually, but it wasn’t a pro-saving move – I still use that very laptop right now :)).
Quite near at the beginning of the relationship we did talk about money and there I decided that I should try to aim to have at least 2000 eur savings all the time.
It was difficult to start saving at the beginning – mostly because growing out of the habit of buying gas station coffee (and I didn’t drop my daily red bull until recently), or switching buying clothes from second hand stores to those where they sell brand new “cheap” Chinese production – let’s say, I had to go through a few phases. I must say some of the dresses I got (not expensive at all, 8 eur a piece) I’m still happy to own. But at one point I thought to revert back to second-hand stores… And well, now I haven’t visited one for 1.5 years.
The pandemic, ah yes. Thanks to that shit I reached and exceeded my goal of 2000 and having a bit of savings like that has dramatically increased the quality of my sleep. I also started saving because I thought maybe I could save enough to go stay in NY in July 2020 – to enjoy the many thousands of dollars gift from Nassim – so, I had already started saving (FOR SOMETHING) more aggressively right after he commented on my smartass comment on someone’s tweet comparing car accidents to viral infections, that I get a scholarship. I did not want to pass on that.
I ended up not having to spend a cent of what I had saved, because they couldn’t do the course in real life – they had to move it remotely, and boom – the very course that teaches principles of saving, hedging, risks – caused me to reach my very first saving goal. A magical coincidence, I’d say.
It does feel easier to save when you want to do it for a specific goal. It makes you more aggressive. It will be easier for you to cut down on redbull consumption if you seriously want to have enough to survive New York for two weeks (I had absolutely no confidence in reaching that goal – I really wanted, to – I just didn’t earn enough per month – but my husband would have supported, so, that’s fine). Still, I didn’t spend on many things anymore, because I assessed all those things as “want less than being able to go to New York and meet those people and do the course.”
Because of the pandemic, however – I just haven’t had so many opportunities to spend, we mostly keep cooking at home, I avoid shopping malls and hence I accidentally buy a lot less stuff, too. I did “invest” in some biking stuff (and now I have decided I want a different bike, but I won’t get it before I’ve sold the one I have now) – and a table so I can have my remote work stuff here, and I’ve spent a bit to make this rental place a little cosier for ourselves – but that’s about it.
After this critical point of 2k it’s just slowly ticking up. I stopped being interested in buying shit.
However, having a bit of that still doesn’t make me feel like I could walk out from the company on an uncomfortable whim (no psychoes, but conflict occasionally happens for entirely idiotic reasons as it probably does anywhere).
But it feels good not to be in debt, and it feels even better to have a cushion to fall onto, should something happen – I am no longer ruined at the end of each month, and that feels wonderful.
But I just don’t know what’s next. It’s a bit of a mystery, a conflicting problem – I’d like to have a small house. I’d like to make it pretty. I’d like to have it with my family. A house, mostly because I am tired of the tyranny of smokers and late night rude people – with the current rate that I am (we are) making/saving money, I don’t see that a house will be possible without a loan. Most couples around our age seem to have gotten some support from their able parents – that must be helpful… But I don’t feel like rushing into a loan… Unless I see a house that I will want more than I want to avoid the loan.
Other than the home, the other shit everyone and their dogs are raving about is investing. When I listen to some older, experienced people talk about these things – I get a very different picture than when I hear people my age talk about this. You think people are gullible with only bitcoin? Nah… Elaborate schemes cluster anywhere around money, where money can be bought and sold and gambled with.
Now, I get it that the comparison is unjust because the markets are fat tailed, and the casino business is not – and the latter is which I am more informed about for the last 3 years, because that’s just the kind of industry I went to work in (and knowing Incerto, having learned a lot from RWRI) – fat tailed or gaussian – doesn’t matter – I can recognize a fucking gambler (generating reasons for your investment opinions does not make you not a gambler, it just makes you a gambler who likes to tawk).
There could be a threshold, but I haven’t decided where it is. How much savings would I need to keep as savings before I start putting the excess into some kind of investment – because when you have saved your first, say, 5000 euros – and that took a while, the first thing you shouldn’t do is put it away somewhere where you could potentially lose it all (by all means, do what you like, buy the bitcoin, maybe that 5k will turn into a 25k, maybe you never need to touch it, and that will be good) – but as soon as you place your savings away, I think if I did that – I would mentally be back in the state of being squeezed – by my own dumb decision.
Now, I do understand hyperinflation is a possibility – a war could start or whatever. Although I feel EURO is quite okay for now – I’m not a fan of what the union itself does and stands for, but having trillions of contracts backing up trust in that currency makes me feel… Well, not anxious.
***
Getting from there to here or up above is tricky of course – some people will have more limitations than I did – so much is up to all sorts of weird circumstances. We get random options that are ridiculously boosting to us – and when we are in a good enough mindset, we will not blow it, either.
Had someone handed me, idk, 7000 euros when I was working at a music cd store, and earned below the line of even surviving in the city, I might not have done anything wise with it. I might not have saved any of it. Sure, I’d pay off my loans, first thing – but I probably would have spent it on something stupid, like pointless tourist travel to Easter Islands and Sri Lanka, and gotten hair extensions and fake lashes and nails. Maybe I’d try doing the driving school shit again or whatever crap I don’t really want to deal with, at all.
Anyway, I never travelled because I never had the money to do so – not wanting to so was just sour grapes talk – so many other people were doing it, after all! The TV and magazines was full of that stuff! All the local stars were doing it! It felt like some status thing, a good signal! Bleh! I didn’t know why I secretly wanted it. Maybe I wanted to be like the cool girls who could sell their fancy Kinder Surprise figurines to each other and then get in trouble with their fancy haircut moms. x)
But one other thing that’s been good – that I didn’t want some things too early, and I don’t want them at all right now – say, was I a male, with a pregnant girlfriend, wanting to look good, needing to get this grey fresh box of a house in a new suburb to look good and respectable among the other males – how do you skip all the shit I had to go through in between?
Investing? Don’t make me laugh. Business? Please. Most seem to take the option that’ll forever ruin your sleep: scam people for money. I’d rather beg.
***
Starting a business is another thing that I still feel falls out of my scope – but because I occasionally get into some artisanal activities, bit by bit I might get into it. I could write a business plan, and I could write it in great style – but I just don’t have any idea about what I’d want to do. And I don’t want to start a business just to start a business – I think it would just make me hate everything 
A consultation thing? Help someone else write a spectacular business plan for a fee? Dunno – it’s a cool idea, but I never wrote any actual business plans, and I don’t think it’s the kind of a thing I’d be interested in, anyway – although I’d be delighted to help someone see a better way to frame what they are trying to do. Just not something I’d like to do for a living.
I don’t want to do things for money. I never liked offering to do anything in exchange for money. I don’t know what I can do is worth, and I don’t know what I want to ask. I do want a house, right? So, I could base what I ask, on that. But then – how many people will I have to serve, will they pay with delight or will I have to keep chasing that money for 3 years? See, I don’t feel like doing anything like that. Just not the best use for my time
Maybe that’s stupid of me, maybe that’s lazy. Maybe I’m leaving money on the floor – dunno. But how I feel about myself or, say grandly – what I stand for – I don’t want to sell it for money. I can’t. I think it would just kill me.
***
I wonder what the real amount of time and money is for an individual – so they get all their basic-ish needs satisfied – they own enough things, they have achieved the kind of stability in which they can easily spend less than they earn. Of course, that bar depends on many things – prices in your area, salaries in your area, the overall economy, the limitations that you personally have to overcome – cultural, familial, commercial, communal – more difficult yet should you have some serious problem with your health – it costs money and often even limits you from earning as much as those who can without such health concerns.
And on the other hand – none of that would be a problem at all – we would not be talking about a bar from which saving starts coming easy – if it wasn’t for the society of strays, hyper-urbanization, nuclear families, divorced nuclear families and culturally getting kicked out of your home, into the water, so you’ll prove your worth if you can swim – kitty cat, will you survive or drown?
Strange times – then again, maybe a layer like this has always existed in society. It’s just getting normalized now that there are so many of us.
The moat is full of stray cats – be careful, some of them are willing to bet on your gullibility, use your head as a stepping stone for a sec to jump to the illusory sleepless shore – scamster scat will wear a tie, share travel pics, get a wife with a hairdo and make a child or two, and pound a lover in a cheap hotel.
And some have made themselves quite comfortable in the moat – they will usually be quite welcoming, even though they’d throw you under the bus if the deed grants them another hit of amphetamine or a steady flow of hard alcohol. The last crowd you wanna get stuck with – because you’ll start feeling too comfortable – the drugs and the alcohol just make you forget about the murky water fucking up your life, your soul.
I am happy for people who never had to worry about money, who never had to figure it out. Who never got tested in the waters – who never were tempted to join the bottom feeders, or never got tempted to get to the sleepless shore over dead and dumped bodies. It’s not an experience worth having, there’s nothing to miss out on.
And those people usually aren’t judgemental, too. Just like back in the playing grounds – the most toxic ones were the ones who came from the same place as you – and are ready to snap your neck if it benefits them a cent, a step closer to the sleepless shore. The meanest girl in the playground works at town council. The meanest boy appeared on advertisements, with a tie. I guess they can say they’ve made it. They can be proud.
I row steady, row steady – and I think I’m more or less prepared for a storm.
Thanks, and…
The post A Little Bit of Money first appeared on ishirubi.May 28, 2021
Challenging Information
What do I imagine I do a little differently from other people – to prevent myself from falling into the sides that are fighting – the packages offered – and why do I even seem to be doing it? The laziest jumps in thought I can make is when thinking “critical thinking” – it points to “do your own research” – NO. Critical thinking and challenging the information you get is not about “doing your own research”. I mean – sure, go ahead and read around the web, see differing viewpoints, google answers that you don’t like, google mindsets that you feel disgusted by – maybe you’ll get something, but is that really the point?
There’s information that I receive faster and information that I take in with a yellow or a red light – my gut says – something’s not right here. Something doesn’t add up – I can’t place my finger on it – but something is missing.
And you know what? Often it’s not about the methods used to bring some “scientific information” to the public – I mean, I can’t say whether there was something wrong in the methods of collecting that data. Now, do not misunderstand me – I do understand that “scientific method”, how experiments ought to be collected, how data can or shouldn’t be collected. For some reason I have found myself looking “into it” – I guess we did cover it a bit in school, too.
But for me it’s not these methods that usually light up the red or the yellow. It’s the delivery. I will naturally want to challenge the information I get based on how and where I get it from. But I don’t challenge the “how” and “where” – I don’t challenge the methods of marketing. Just that when something needs to be marketed on me so hard – when the salesman feels the need to use tricks to convince me – it feels wrong.
Try me with sincerity – can you sincerely explain to me why I need this or that. Or why the world needs me to do this or that. Or something in between – but if you can’t do it sincerely – sorry, but it just feels like you’re trying to feed me some foul smelling onion, telling me it’s a fresh apple.
I am possibly not the only person who gets their alarm bells going as soon as I feel someone may have an incentive to trick me. Now, you know what’s so damn appealing about some “independent thinkers”? They have absolutely nothing to gain from you following their thought, they don’t care to sell you anything – their process and delivery – both, are sincere and they don’t care to persuade anyone of it.
This is why – even when your research is scientifically sound and what you are trying to impose on the world is for the greater good with relatively low chance of individual risks (let’s say – jabs to end a certain ongoing situation in the world) – if you’re trying to market it on me like I’m some dumb fuck – I will naturally feel put off by it.
Be careful about trying to trick people into doing things – it might feel awesome short term – but it can turn out catastrophic long term. You trick people into wearing data-collecting collars today, you’ll have chaos and destruction soon enough down the road. Worse yet if you won’t be there to take the beating – but someone else inherits from you.
Tricks being used for stupid, harmful or very selfish things – that’s just ugly.
Tricks are better used to keep yourself healthy and engaged.
Otherwise – it’s been a while. I’m publishing the first book of my science fiction adventure – the process has been quite fun and educational (about layouts, design, editing, waiting) – so, let me present to you my carefully crafted lottery ticket: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095Z69FJY
I’ll keep on writing the series once I’ve gotten the first print book in my hands. I’ve been thinking and writing the story almost every day – right now it’s scattered all around the place on post-it notes and torn notebook pages. But this time I think I will already have figured out a system for myself to pull it off – meaning the following episodes should come smoother.
I also worked on the site and made it free to read: https://eysin.ee
If you need some quick tips with that kind of stuff, hit me up on twitter – while I still remember it fresh in my head.
The post Challenging Information first appeared on ishirubi.April 20, 2021
Tribal Spirit
I’ve taken some time to really take in the current situation. But what is the current situation, other than what I can absorb of it in my small office room, various faces of media, conversations with family members, and the sunny weather outside. Because I was somewhat fasting the last week, I also didn’t frequent the groceries – I haven’t seen or worn masks much, because I either stayed inside or we just when biking with the man.
Practically speaking – my life has not changed much – other than the walking and biking – which has made me physically more active than I was when things were still “normal”. I have also decided a long time ago that I will avoid reading the news – because they are mainly garbage and I happen to believe this:
The real good information is scattered and hidden. Rarely makes it to the mainstream.
— Silvi Simberg (@ishirubi) April 16, 2021
The first time I ever thought about it when I read what Maestro Taleb wrote: avoid news, read old stuff – old books are more relevant today the freshest news.
But there may be an exception – especially when you start feeling out that the news you get blasted from TV, radio, paper and protests – there’s a catch. It is not raw information – it is edited, somehow. And mostly due to incompetence – no one is calculating it much (unless there REALLY are information-agents who create options for their own country by destroying the sense of credibility of our own media and government).
It’s a different kind of information – but here I’m not so sure that I can reliably read out of it whether there will be an uprising or a sudden change of government, or even war – or not. I mean, above all – it’s still noise, annoying noise. In any case, no matter how you look at that information, it always carries along this one certain effect: outrage.
I wouldn’t say I’m outraged, I’m partially even inspired. I guess I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the few old books I have been inhaling – some great ideas, buffing up the perspective. Making me realize that I can be wrong now, I have been wrong in the past, and I will be wrong in the future. As will be everyone else around me – which reminds me that all this squabbling going on around (not in my immediate closeness, but through media) is going to be a bullshit thing that passes.
Some recklessness may, however, come with dire consequences – and I guess that’s what I’m really trying to look out for. Maybe I’ll see something that will help me prepare – get in and out of positions – but mostly, to see how much longer I can relax. Something is telling me that my way of life is under threat… Just a feeling.
Where do I think that feeling comes from? The general outrage – I see it in comments sections, news, and sadly even in some of our own conversations at home or with friends and relatives. What I think about now, though – what this outrage is about… Or maybe I worry less about what it is about – but how it expresses.
This current form of society has brought people up by constantly undermining anecdotal evidence (it has a very bad rap – yes, it is basically useless in statistical terms – but an individual should not worry about that – but we are often pestered to do just that!) and any form of self-reference.
What seems to be happening in the media comes from the same nature. There probably isn’t a board of evil master-minds who decide what they write about today to further fragilize the society and prepare the people for a hostile takeover, so their mysterious favourite führer can take over leading the country. But they all seem to be following the same metrics. Looking for clicks, repeat-visitations (enabling comments achieves that – people return to sites to see if they got any responses to their clever comments).
The information that I have access to is much the same everyone else here in Estonia has access to – the media, the internet, their 4 walls. Their work, if applies. And their personal contacts (and depending on your contacts – that’s the only possible place the real good information can really flow). For some it will be strangers on the internet (and I have the best strangers on the internet, I couldn’t be happier about it), or family members and friends, otherwise.
Now, people have friends in different kinds of circles – and some of them will be activist or political circles. Politicians are currently surrounded by politicians (and many of them by their big-business owning friends). We also have police-circles, medicine circles, first-responders circles (I mean firefighters and those kinds), military circles, gun enthusiasts, feminists and social science students, university faculties, media circles, theatre and other inner-circle arts… It’s all clustering – and that’s also why it might seem the polarization has risen.
I am happy to hear that there’s a chance that mainstream media is no longer being consumed by too many people. Because what is happening on that front, along with what they display about politics – is just plain incompetent and ugly as fuck.
It’s like kids slinging shit at each other. But it’s not kids. And in the midst of all this turmoil many people seem to fall into this little tribal instinct. And I can understand that instinct very well – I have been overtaken by it a few times too (e.g. I’ve made fun over Steven Pinker without knowing anything about him or his work, personally, just because it seemed to be a fun pass-time in my circle of internet strangers). This spirit comes on quick – and once it passes, I feel even a little disgusted with myself.
It’s as if I wasn’t being myself. I went with some kind of a current. For the record: now that I think I understand how and why it happens, I try to stop myself from getting into it UNLESS the cause some group appears to be fighting for is something I already innately believe in, as well – not just plain ol’ bullying for the sake of it. There are better ways to have fun, and I’m trying to be a better person, ok.
It looks like this similar tribal spirit has taken over many groups, however: you can instantly tell that’s what’s going on is when someone is quickly attacking another person’s argument by calling them a “flatearther” or a “antivaxxer” – even when the arguments have nothing to do with the shape of the Earth or with the pandemic or viruses in general. Fucking bleach drinkers. You get other shit slung from the other side, too, of course, “libtards” and what not.
(have you noticed – “nazi” has been going out of fashion, lately?)
What all this means – the conversation is no longer a conversation – and just as it is no good use in consuming the media from any front right now, there is absolutely no good information going on in the shit-slinging social-media conversations when it comes to topics like the pandemic, lockdowns, laws around it, viruses and vaccines, politics and the hottest burning social issues.
I guess the only reason I was curious to get a sense of the ongoing pulse was to see if I should prepare myself to survive some kind of terrible uprising or a change of government or not. I must say, it is a little exciting.
In other news – we have had 3 good weathered days in a row, think I will go enjoy some nice outdoors and talk about fighting stances in an imaginary RPG with the husband, that we’ll never make, or something.
Love you, good circle of internet friends and strangers.
The post Tribal Spirit first appeared on ishirubi.March 21, 2021
A Family of One – The Life of a Stray Cat
Someone describing herself as a “lone wolf” might usually be done for a mysterious effect. On one hand, it might want to signal the capacity for self-sustainability, on the other – it has romantic undertones. A careful person would take from it another signal altogether – she must be a sociopath – can’t keep a pack.
I’ve never felt like a lone wolf – if anything – I’d be a dog – I wasn’t brought up in the wilderness by wolves and rabbits – I was a baby and brought up in a home – decently domesticated.
But what is a domesticated cat that no longer has a home? A Stray Cat.
A Stray Cat, too, in some sense has a romantic flair to it. Her pain is the fact that she is incapable of feeling at home anywhere – always a guest. Sometimes even an unwelcome one. The romantic part in it all is the hope that one day there will be a place she could call home again – with a partner, a family.
The effect of a person’s parents divorcing when no longer in any mood, position, or capability of figuring it out and going on together – has a wide variety of effects that can happen afterward.
Optimistically, the kid from the broken-up home might think to herself, that alright – let’s see the good in bad – at least I have two homes now!
That’s not how it played out in reality, anyway. There were two houses where each of my parents lived – with new partners, families – and I became an unwelcome guest in one and a piece of baggage, like a piece of furniture that occasionally went around and left things in the way – in the other.
Rationally speaking – you could argue I had nothing to complain about – a roof above my head, clothed and fed. But those who know no better may discount the effect of human connections, the effect of a family – a little too quick. The tones that play in your head and shape your thoughts, hopes, beliefs that start bending your perception…
Why am I not welcome at a place that used to be my home? Did I do something wrong and get banished? No, I simply got in another woman’s way. Perhaps another woman that was desperately trying to find for herself a steadier spot to live at… And to achieve this – aggression towards me was her way.
A strange lesson right there – I am extremely lucky to have not experienced much male physical violence – but the kind of shit women can do to you without touching a hair – terrifying. I’m not saying it’s worse than physical violence – I wouldn’t compare them with each other at all – but unlike physical violence – fucking someone’s brains doesn’t leave visible marks and you can’t exactly call the police on them. Sneaky shit.
I cannot say whether someone who suffered much physical violence in their childhood has it worse, or whether orphans have it worse, or maybe those who simply have whole but fucked up households – because I have not experienced such lives… So, with this piece that I am writing – I first want to make it clear that I am not trying to say the life of a Stray Cat is the worse and that I’m now trying to start a competition based on who has it worse… I don’t really know what’s the benefit of doing that.
But I want to think about the life of a Stray Cat just to explore it – the strengths and vulnerabilities, causes, effects, hopes, and dreams – take a guess at what kind of a function it has in the wider scope of the society – and should you identify as one – perhaps inspire or give you hope, too, if you happen to be going through one of the lower lows.
I think it is a cruel thing to first domesticate a kitten – give them everything easy while they are young, never making them work for it, never making them MOVE, never challenging them – just handing them all the food they need so they can return to sleep or play with a candy wrapper – and then – suddenly – abandon them.
What does a domesticated kitten do outdoors? Most of them die. Many become feral – very violent. They get into fights – with other feral cats or other wild animals – and very likely – they will also get some bad disease. They carry it around. Very few of them survive decently enough and find a new home with a great owner.
I’m not saying that I – a domesticated human – lost on the street – was ever looking for an owner – but I was looking for something. Whether the idea of a home is something that’s there for everyone in the same way – maybe even those who don’t feel at home who have not gone through this whole divorce thing and experienced new parasites taking over… Maybe we all worry about the same thing and this has nothing to do with my particular past… But all I know – I was looking for something – and I had absolutely no idea what it is and where I should be looking from.
I was at a place in life where I could no longer stay – but where I would end up – I have no idea.
But when you are this kind of a person – no pack, no family, no home, always a guest or a stranger… Now, once again, I don’t know how such a condition affects a male – but I have a good idea about how this affects a female.
This condition made me, makes anyone in such a situation – extremely vulnerable. To absolutely any kind of exploiters and abusers, there are out there. And it’s not like a person who will want to exploit you dashes in with an ax and severs your limbs – they come smiling, bearing gifts, they say you’re wise and beautiful – whatever they think it is you want to hear… And maybe you didn’t expect to hear it at all – but it surprises you. This all song and dance draw you in… Into something, you’re utterly clueless about.
You have not a single soul around you to say, “Hey, there’s something fishy about this guy,” or “how did your date go?” Nothing to hang onto to make sense if something was out of the line, whether there were any red flags… Because a young person – without the knowledge of those who came before her – simply is clueless.
I was clueless.
And it’s not just the cluelessness that makes a Stray Cat vulnerable – the vulnerability comes from the same fact where the cluelessness comes from – there is no pack, no family, no old wisdom. You’re starting from scratch. And when the glass breaks, the blood is out, the little heart and gold you had, robbed from you – you have nowhere to return – no place to lay low for a while, to process what had happened, to get a 3rd perspective to get a clearer picture to understand where you made the mistake – and how you should have detected that this is exactly how this situation would end up… You’re down at the bottom of the pit, bleeding out (mentally!), no energy, no will, no home, only contempt… Towards your self, and the abuser, and to all humankind.
Should you survive, maybe that’s the point you’d turn feral. A domesticated cat that has turned crazy.
But how did I bounce back and not become feral? I owe it to the kindness of strangers. I don’t think there was anything special in me to go further down one or the other path – the options certainly were there – all you have to do is fall and accept everything the schmucks offer to you.
Occasionally, here and there – I have met kind people – however long and short they were there – they didn’t exactly offer me what I wanted – a home – but whatever they did offer – other options, other ways, other things to do, other places to go – it kept me from falling to worse crowds, it kept me from ruining my health, it kept me from opting out entirely.
Getting burned enough times, I learn the tendency to want to keep my head down and not bother anybody. Maybe I have asked for something in the past and that caused another person to pack their things and leave. And I don’t recall ever asking something out of the line. I have always wanted to belong somewhere, which is also why I was super sensitive to group dynamics anywhere – I could see rejection and exclusion from miles away. People just vibe a certain way and you’ll know it – they don’t want you there, you’re not welcome, not even as a guest, go away.
Possibly – they were strays, too – and were just being protective of their newfound place. Nothing personal. But until I didn’t know that part better – I always thought it was personal. Do I stink? Am I sick? Do things around me start rotting and die?
Nope – as it turned out, maybe I put it to a test. I took care of my surroundings, of things that I got involved with – I discovered it through WORK. I built something and took care of it and it would benefit others involved. So, my exclusion from packs had never anything to do with my capabilities. Well, do I have a shitty personality, then?
There was a period I got accused of negativity, a lot. Why are you always so negative? I didn’t think I was being negative, I opened my mouth because I was unhappy with the shit bargain I was being offered. Shut your mouth, do what your told (and we still won’t accept you as our own).
Being unwelcome to circles, homes, groups – this motive, this pattern has followed me for a long time. I do have a home with a good man, now – and I do feel at home here – but outside of it – even though I am not looking for a home, anymore – the sense of being an unwelcome guest – persists. If I am bothering you in some way – well, I don’t want to be there, either. Not good vibes.
Even though I now am at a good place, comfortable and safe – achieving this state was a long journey, a series of failures with different people and other life choices. I gave up on myself and humans and the idea of love, motherhood, home, community, collaboration a couple of times. But every now and then, there was a sliver of kindness – from a stranger, a neighbor, or a brother. There was no home to turn to – but there was random kindness – and that kept me going.
Still, a bad day and a catastrophic mood can make me a little crazy. I feel like I’m back in the wild, unequipped to deal with the draconian challenges. These moods don’t come out of thin air, though – when I feel something is wrong, it’s usually for a reason. But the whole wave becomes a little more volatile when the problem is a little difficult to define.
Something is wrong and I want to feel right again – not understanding what it is – I start throwing shit and things and see what sticks. Sometimes shit sticks to the wrong places and it triggers problems that originally weren’t even there. All this can happen inside my own brain when I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong. I’m wrong. I’m a piece of shit. And hooooo here we gooo, I might get upset, furious, cry, want to throw something, punch something, scream… And to a bystander that might look like something very ugly. Throwing a fit like a confused baby who has not yet learned the words to speak what ails her.
But it’s not some type of aphasia that stops me from seeing what the problem is – and I am not IMAGINING PROBLEMS – and while it occasionally may be some temporal blindness (I misinterpret something that was said or happened) – this situation is caused by completely new problems – something that I have not yet personally experienced before… The problems are real and they cause pain – now, or in the perceived future – and I NEED to define them and once I have defined them, I can set the course or apply a fix.
Maybe – had I access to some old wisdom, lived close to generations of a family – such episodes would be greatly reduced. But that’s just not possible for me and millions of others. Besides, even those who wouldn’t define themselves as Strays will often find themselves lost in new situations – in complete darkness – and their go-to method of trying to figure out what’s what is just the same randomized fashion – sling some shit and see what sticks. Innocent and not so innocent bystanders may get involved – and the problem-solver finds himself or herself straying further from the original pain.
But this doesn’t mean there was no problem, that the pain was imagined. The pain is real – we just need time to figure out where it’s coming from.
I had no control over becoming a Stray – I couldn’t stop my family from making the choices they did (and I bet they couldn’t stop themselves either). It was a fragile family and there was no helping it. It seems cruel and wrong in some way – but in another sense – how the times were, and how times are – these sorts of families did emerge, they weren’t planned by some secret government org – so, this all is natural. It does suck, though – and it creates a lot of pain and confusion among people. At least, it did for me – and I believe this to be the case for many others.
Severe vulnerability makes them take the sucker end of the stick – and those people aggressive and sociopathic enough can’t stop themselves from exploiting that situation. Personally, commercially… Cruel, but fucking natural.
While I’m sure I have accumulated quite a nice mound of experience with my journey and it will serve me well – I want to add that none of it would matter at all if it wasn’t for the kind people, kind neighbors, strangers, or even an occasional brother once a full moon.
A family of one doesn’t work, really. It is impossible to survive as a stray without the random acts of kindness of strangers.
The world is going crazy – but it’s going crazy from the bottom-up. You can also fix it from the bottom-up – with occasional kindness towards those in need.
The post A Family of One – The Life of a Stray Cat first appeared on ishirubi.February 23, 2021
Fresh! Refresh! Refresh!
I’ve been wanting to post something for a while now – and I’ve started like 5 blog posts with different topics, but soon saw how they got derailed from the topic I wanted to talk about – it got me all confused – and then I realized I simply had nothing to say and felt the necessity post just to keep the page fresh.
But fruit that rots fast can hardly do. It’ll spoil the whole page in a few days – the topic becomes stale, and I become unsatisfied with it rather quickly.
Can’t recall ever having thought about this topic before – freshness. I love anything that’s fresh. It makes my soul sing. A brain nerd would call it a dopamine hit, I guess? I love fresh ideas, fresh takes, fresh food, fresh people, fresh socks. I love the smell of fresh coffee, cool and clean air in the early morning, a fresh cup of water from the stream, fresh content with fresh ideas and fresh takes by fresh people… FRESH!
Maybe the effect of me loving the freshness is also why I always wanted to rush releasing the new songs or posts. And why I kept refreshing and refreshing the adventure story. The first version of the story stopped being fresh to me, personally. The song I created 2 weeks ago stopped being fresh to me… So – the best thing I thought then – that I could do – release it while I still feel it’s fresh to me – otherwise I’ll be too late.
Now, whether someone else will find it fresh after 2 weeks (having no prior contact with the material) is another case. Some content we produce will seem “fresh” because it is a sort of a “take” or commentary on current, relevant events, politics or culture. We often write or create things, or even simply have an emotional reaction to things that are acute. They will become irrelevant in a week – just like daily news.
The same is with books about culture, politics or business – and blog posts – they are relevant only for a short while – or if it is a recurring issue within the population (e.g. a topic about Narcissists) – it will be read by many – but only once. I’ve read all the things in psychology that I thought were relevant to my situation back in the day – but I see no reason to go over any of those materials again. Which doesn’t mean it has no value to someone going through what I was going through in the past.
It’s just a phase. Like daily news is just a phase. Possibly, if you knew the contents all all the newspapers throughout time – millions of articles – in the end, they, too, would not produce anything new – it’s probably the same 100 things people keep talking about every day. Someone doing a corrupt thing, someone getting exposed doing it, someone being suspected of this and that, someone shooting another person.
All the scandals – played out the same way, like in theatre – started by the same old motivations or situations – and ending up where they always do. It gets old after the first time.
My work, too, has become a little old to me. While during the first year the tools and the base material was interesting to work with, because I was still working out how to work with it, what to do with it, what could be done with it – by now it’s all settled and there is not many ways I am interested in spicing it up with. I’m guessing that some other dude in my position, wanting to keep things interesting, would prefer to learn 3D and then start over-doing the marketing videos with fancy stuff.
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that – but I personally don’t find it so interesting. I don’t think there will be any benefit in making more expensive advertising videos – all it will end up achieving is loss of my time and energy and a skill that I likely won’t be interested applying anywhere else. 3D stopped being fresh to me even before I started getting into it.
Some things are new and alien to us – and yet – they don’t feel fresh and attractive to us. And some things that are fresh to me might not be fresh to someone else (e.g. what Jordan Peterson created was fresh to me, and it was not fresh to many others – maybe these people knew Jung or got to those ideas through some other mediums – which is fine – but it’s true – JBP stopped being fresh to me after the first round, even though the ideas were great and I gave them quite some time and space in my head – but I am unlikely to return to his work).
So, what makes something fresh, attention-worthy – and something not?
Our awesome circle has accepted the funny thing NNT has said, paraphrasing – a good book gets better on the second read. Most books I never even wanted to give a second chance – because they got over their point and I didn’t think it can give me any more than it already did. But take the Bible, for example – or Nassim’s work – indeed – on a second read, there still can be surprises.
But whether I can tell that this will be the case after the first read – that is beyond me. Picking up JBP possibly would have me find ideas in it that I had forgotten about, too. It would surprise me again as it did the first time. But why am I not returning to some books now, then? Well, the problems they are talking about are no so interesting to me at this time.
I don’t think I will pick up a book just because, or start learning something just because. I’ll leave the learning and reading to when a topic interests me – and usually that happens when I feel stuck. I need more ideas. I need to test more things…
But that’s not the case with fiction… What makes a piece of fiction fresh? And what would it be that gives a piece of fiction a value of re-readability? Writing the stuff myself, I don’t believe I can handle it the same way I do when reading other people’s work… Unless I forget my own work with the same pace – but instead of getting surprised on the re-read, “oh, what a clever thing I have written,” instead, I get surprised by, “oh my, what a low-effort chapter that was.”
And “move to trash” it is.
But then again, maybe I forget – what seems low effort to me now may not have been low-effort to me back then. And it may not be so to another reader. Maybe I’m still growing. Or maybe creating something fresh is just not attainable to anybody. I hope it isn’t so, though.
But whether it makes sense to hope to arrive to that point – where I will still be surprised by the ideas I wrote weeks or years ago – I’m not sure either. Can there be a clear end to a problem?
Well – YES – if the problem is something clearly defined…
May be my problem with not achieving long-lasting freshness is because I have no yet found a very clearly-defined problem?
So, is freshness really my problem? I could keep fresh by saying something that sounds new or profound every day, if I really worked at it. Maybe freshness isn’t the problem at all – and maybe it wasn’t freshness that I liked about the Incerto – and maybe JBP was interesting for something else than the freshness it didn’t have. The problem I might really have, that keeps me spinning, refreshing, iterating, trying again: they can be fresh, but my ideas are not yet ripe enough.
Didn’t pass enough iterations – I can post something fresh – but it will stand still, rot and die. So, in a way, all these posts that have gone to trash – that’s nothing to frown over – and all these chapters I have failed to release – again, nothing to be sorry about – it’s just the good old iterative process – sorting out the fruit that’s raw and sour…
No fear in posting something that’s not fresh – but finding out that the thought was unfinished.
I’m posting a lot of unfinished work. But maybe that’s fine, for the time being.
The post Fresh! Refresh! Refresh! first appeared on ishirubi.January 27, 2021
I Demand Empathy!
Now, isn’t that an oxymoron. Here’s a fact about me that I am shy to confess: I have seen a psychologist. I went to see her for half a year. It was years ago, but regardless. Many people would say only weak people go get that kind of help. And others might say the usually make things worse. In my experience – it was alright, it didn’t make things worse, she didn’t impose any analysis on me. While I was seeing her, I was also digging deep into various concepts around mental health – looked what cognitive behavioural therapy is about, learned everything a psychiatrist and a layman both have to teach about personality disorders, concepts like self-esteem, mindfulness meditation, compassion, empathy…
I did most of it to figure out why I was having a hard time with people, with work, with interests – and of course, who could avoid the temptation on trying to figure out if the problem might be the other people, instead (everyone else being selfish and mean and mentally ill, of course).
Unless you have a holy father, a pastor or a fun aunt to talk to about your problems – in cases where the problems are the kinds you don’t want to talk about to someone else of significance in your life – or if you simply do not have anyone to talk to – I don’t see a problem in talking to a psychologist (or a fortune teller – choose your pick, doesn’t matter much).
I believe, when a person is determined to figure shit out – she’ll find something from these conversations, and will do her “own research” as well. You’ll find good ideas, bad ideas, hit your head, get inspired, feel enlightened, fall back into the dumps, maybe try again, maybe eat some sleeping pills or take some boosters. Hopefully you won’t fall into a bad crowd partying with psychedelics every weekend (it takes a toll, it really does).
The important thing to keep in mind – neither the psychologists or the fortune tellers, the sleeping pills, psychedelic gurus, books about self esteem or mindfulness meditation are hills (to die on) – they are stepping stones. They are tools, oars and sticks and ropes TO PULL THE BOAT you’re lost floating on. All sorts of techniques and therapies out there to help yourself – temporarily.
There seem to be two recurring issues which seem to point at why people get depressed or secluded. The times we live in, the culture, the scale, the way of life.
ONE: While technology has made things simpler and easier, we may fail to notice how it has also made us weaker. Because we are not forced to plow our way to food or feed the cattle to seize another good day in triumph – we have so much more idle time that we simply do not know what to do with it.
The good health gurus do have a good point – we have to come up with challenges on our own – something that strains us and beats us up – achievements that are difficult to achieve. Build muscle, run a marathon, fast, build a house, learn a science and try to invent and discover something new… Find a problem to solve.
TWO: It is not so simple to do any of that when we are alone with it. The second problem is people – while we are no longer forced to remain with the people who are in our village or neighborhood – it is relatively cheap to move away, and it is relatively cheap to survive on your own in a nice bachelor’s apartment – the real cost is something a little more difficult to pin down. We simply are incapable of holding ourselves accountable when there is no one else around. No one to work with, no one to share things with, no one to build something together with.
Introductions made – focusing on those two problems, and if you figure these are not your problems, everything must be alright – wrong. This is where I finally get to the empathy problem.
Thinking about it makes me feel a bitterness in my mouth.
…
Maybe I am not ready to write about it? I don’t know.
…
You’re not even wrong when you say, “you don’t understand me.” People jumping to call you a snowflake about it are equally snowflakes. Up to who is the onus on trying to understand (and show, clearly, that you have understood) first, anyway?
My first bulb went ashining back at that psychologist’s cabinet. I was discussing with her about arguing with people on the forums (or in real life, or over voice chat). I had been irritated with something – I was tired of hearing all the same old lame, naive, lazy arguments about a thing. I said, but I already know what they are going to say.
“But how can they know you know?”
…
So, there are two ways you can take someone’s dumb, naive and lazy arguments – you can be a snowflake and take it as an insult to your intelligence… Or you can slow down, articulate their feelings or points back to them, confirming that yes, indeed, you do understand where they are coming from.
Because what happens if you don’t do that – instead of assuming you must know something better – you fail to even connect with them, you have no idea why they are saying what they are saying. They won’t THINK neither FEEL that you have better information, better experience than they do – they will THINK and FEEL that you are an arrogant piece of shit who doesn’t know anything and simply loves to dump on people.
The same seems to apply on delivering criticism. If you first bother to SHOW them you understand that they were struggling with a thing because they were focused on trying to eliminate a problem in some certain way – you might say, that caught off-guard, in a similar situation, you’d definitely be tempted to do the same – the trick appears to be on ignoring that particular problem and focusing on this, instead.
Because when we don’t deliver a criticism delicately like this – once again, even if you really do understand why the person would have missed a mark – they don’t know that you know. And instead of seeing you as being helpful, pointing out a trick, they see you as being condescending, unempathetic, blind, arrogant etc.
Having empathy inside your head, knowing and understanding where people come from will be pretty useless when you never express it and make it clear. If you do, however – you’ll see how the tide turns.
“That’s right.” And the walls come off. They’ll hear your side of the story now.
Even so – doing all that takes patience. We’re all rushing so much – and rushing like that makes us seem careless and arrogant. Imagining that it is always I who has to put in the effort to have a good conversation, is taunting. Wouldn’t it be a delight to have someone else do the understanding and reflecting part, first? Oh damn it would be a fresh breath of air. How I would love it if someone took the time to curiously investigate or accurately reflect on my situation – for over a very long time I’d be surprised – that someone is SEEING me.
It is very likely that people around us SEE us all the time – and we see them. Why it doesn’t seem like it – almost no one slows down or stops to mention it. A sad side-effect to the delightful technology, the fast-paced world – and too few relaxed people around us to automatically start imitating.
Do you think you become someone imitation-worthy, like that?
PS I learned “tactical empathy” from a negotiation book. Tawk in the Twitter comments, if you’re interested.
The post I Demand Empathy! first appeared on ishirubi.January 26, 2021
Morals and Cheating
Entertaining the idea that our morals are whatever lets us sleep at night. I started reading a book, “Passions Within Reasons,” by Robert H Frank – without having any clue where I got the recommendation from. I’ve not read so much of it yet, but I intend to finish it – as it proposes interesting ideas such as much of our actions based on how we will feel about things. E.g. we save our children from drowning (and risking our own lives) not because we want our genes to keep living (neither for material gain, e.g. to have them plow the fields for us or make us money in our retirement), but because we’d feel terrible if we didn’t try to save them.
Now, if anyone ever cheated me – so be it, but congratz, they never got caught. I have never cheated either, but I have actually left one guy for another – and suppose from the perspective of the guy who got left may have thought of this as cheating. Or if not that – it certainly was, in his perspective, betrayal. Now, someone dropping the ball altogether is something I have experienced in various contexts, too, but I am not going to make the thread too long with this, so I stick to what I thought about cheating.
I have definitely THOUGHT about cheating (it was the same relationship I traded for another, but I didn’t think to go for it with the same guy I actually left with). And when I was still very young, I also met someone who actually had a woman back at home (which is a strange experience, as well – out of the scope for this post – but I have you know there is absolutely nothing good about this on any level, nor from any perspective.)
Now, when I think about my current relationship – I have no desire to cheat or check anyone else out, so I wonder why that is – what makes someone actually want to cheat? As the book discusses, it’s not as simple as “I could get away with it, no one would ever find out, it’s free money… Err… Sex (or emotional roller-coaster ) on the floor.”
The key seems to be contempt. You look to cheat or look elsewhere when you feel towards your partner that feeling, the bitterness, the hate. But it’s not as simple as a partner being hateful or contemptible, either – it’s more about the dynamic, the relationship – it has to do with both participants (or if you happen to have more – children, making it a while family).
What could be the reasons for someone to start feeling contempt towards their relationship and their partner? Well, maybe they finally realized they were tricked into this relationship – the advertisement was something else. They got fooled by the partner OR, what’s more likely – they got fooled by their own willful blindness.
What causes someone to be willfully blind? Well, they must be in a hurry, desperate to get somewhere, fearful of missing the train, as everyone else around them already seemed to have gotten on one.
There are other common reasons – some that I might be more familiar with – asymmetries in the gains or enjoyment, incompatible interests, bad dynamics via psychopathologies or disorders – call it all chemistry, if you like. It would be rational to just break up – but these asymmetries are never apparent when you’re actively inside it, I guess.
Another common problem that might produce contempt is the incapability of having a conflict. So, what do you do with a guy who already on his first date says he will not tolerate any confrontations? Well, you make that first date also the last date. Because the unwillingness to have difficult conversations is a big deal breaker. And pay attention – I say unwillingness, not incapability. Difficult conversations are difficult because they are ugly, emotionally volatile. They are fights, they are not very graceful. But that’s fine – anyone can learn to do better when they don’t shy away from it…
But pairs who can’t have difficult conversations, they can’t disagree with things – and they can’t leave – suffer a certain doom.
Often the difficulty in initiating those conflicts, of course, is only a problem in the head of the person. Their tolerance for volatile emotions is so low they’d rather avoid the discomfort of having to deal with it – they don’t want to see the other person lose their control.
Yet, in other times the threat might also be real: you disagree with me? I beat the shit out of you. Do you want to leave me? I’ll kill you (or me). Whether the coercer will actually carry it out is another issue, but a dramatic, criminal threat like this alone already shuts down any desire to rock the boat in any direction. Domestic violence domain – also, out of my scope today.
So, for silly reasons or less so – people avoid rocking the boat, and in turn, they become hateful towards that relationship and their partner, they feel trapped and helpless in it.
Now tell me whether in such a situation there’s any relevance to the virtue called Loyalty? Cheating that person will no longer make you feel terrible, it might even give some kind of satisfaction. Tastes like a tiny dose of revenge.
From here I quickly jump to the idea that people we see as immoral might often just be trapped living lives they do not want to be living. Instead of going through the discomfort (or danger) of changing it (and I do understand it (which does not make it right, regardless) – some people really do not see a way out through the dark), they stay and start slipping and slinging on the side.
So, I hope YOU have yourself a very loving, respectable, and fun relationship, in which both participants tolerate discomfort and conflict so you can have some nice solutions and ideas on how to make your own lives even better.
We get back to antifragility, in a way – a relationship that survives small fights – and even welcomes them (when appropriate) – makes that particular union stronger! Avoiding fights at all costs doesn’t make a good union, it achieves nothing but avoids exposing the possible fragility of the relationship…
Maybe that’s why it happens, though – fights are avoided only in relationships in which both participants really sense that it wouldn’t survive boat rock – the wood is brittle and the water is too salty. La La La.
Take care of your partners o/
The post Morals and Cheating first appeared on Silvi Simberg.
November 24, 2020
Singles go to Neverland
A new trend looks to be on the rise, once again, where women with children have started to try to shame or make fun (and not in a light spirit) of women who are 30+ and have no children, have not settled, have not married. I do not like this trend, as I don’t see this shaming anything but petty – as in the real world, pointing out their situation – it will not help any women 30+ to actually get to all that. I will also leave it out here – maybe, indeed, I have a bit of a bias, as I, too, am 30+, and yet, no children (and Lord knows I do want them);
But why I keep coming back to thinking about this, the silly clash between antinatalists, imaginary antinatalists, and the red-pilled ladies, isn’t personal – as in I am not getting attacked (at least for now) – the way it is done now, the antinatalists might as well counter the winger-waving by doubling down, ah, see, these women regret having given up their independence. They wouldn’t be so bitter at us, otherwise!
I had my first serious crush when I was 14 – the guy was just so dreamy! But life was pretty messed up back then, and I was a confused girl, looked 4 years younger than I was, and often would escape to my Neverland where I’d actually made up a world, people, friends, enemies, and of course, even a partner inspired by that very same crush.
But I didn’t go to Neverland because I wanted to avoid growing up. I went there because I had fuck all to do – other kids my age wouldn’t invite me to their late night parties where they drink and smoke and fuck around (and I heard there even were fights!). I have no idea what life was like for other teenagers. Mine was in a school of war magic, and going after an evil spawn of it with the love of my life.
I thought about it just the other day – coming back to what being introverted means. It used to go along the lines, “I am more interested in what’s going on inside my head than in other people.”
That’s wrong, and it’s always been wrong. That statement above has just been something I say to myself to soothe my lack of options. I have always wished to connect with people – on such a level that I understand them, they understand me, and there is mutual interest – I have always wished there was someone I could build something together with. But somehow these kinds of connections never happened – most connections there ever were, were very shallow – and when we start to think why there were not any connections – I was just not a very useful networking node – I fell to the edges of the network, and eventually fell out from all of them.
If you wonder how this has anything to do with settling down and having children – then I’ll say – if you don’t understand this on your own, I won’t bother breaking that part down much more than following: human networks are a part of finding a partner – for most people, anyway.
The slightly longer part of my teenage wasn’t spent in Neverland, but I actually did manage to find some kind of a network – or two. But neither of those converged into something long-lasting, either. The first guy I ever held hands with and hiked the town – well, there was something off-putting about him, and he disappeared anyway. The first guy I actually had for a boyfriend checked himself into a new network just after 4 months and found a better girlfriend from there. Good riddance, though – he only had complaints, anyway!
And he wasn’t the last boyfriend who was like that. Looking back – I was willing to take a lot of shit just to keep a guy. Complaints, demands, and the conditions that I eat the pills to prevent pregnancy. And this is the point where many so-called red-pilled people like to wave their finger, that I have been stupid for selling myself short, and it’s all my fault.
I don’t deny my responsibility, either. Neither the fact that I was stupid. I also happen to know that there was absolutely no scenario where this would have gone any differently, unless…
Unless the people I met on the way were different, unless there was a guy who had their shit together better than I did. By saying this I am not trying to discount my part in my failures – but my point – a lot of our life, and those big decisions – is purely up to chance. You either meet the right person, or you don’t.
And if you are not very sure what the right person should be like, you don’t even know if he would exist. You might humbly accept any dude that gave you some good attention, and assume this must be it, and will work out somehow. Even when the guy demands you must eat the pill and never ever bring up the topic of marriage again (and maybe even say that you’d make a terrible mother), you hope, patiently wait, maybe one day he’ll wisen up and present the ring and willyoumarryme.
I have tried that! And innit just another Neverland
What I find the red-pillers seem to miss out is that finding the partner you can and want to have kids and all that isn’t something that can be achieved by trying it systematically. As much as antinatalists are overly-rational with their reasons-to-not-have-kids, I find the red-pillers, looking from the sidelines and forgetting about all their own shit (unless they were lucky enough to not experience any) – their reasoning about just leave the wrong guy and don’t give up – are equally over-rational.
Life is messy, if you’re in the wrong relationship for 3 years, and then in another wrong relationship for another 3 – maybe even with people you aren’t particularly attracted to, but for some reason it seems to work “good enough” (apart from the complaining and lack of syngery) – your first thought after breaking up with the latter might not be, “okay, I’m going to find a guy on MY terms, this time.”
By this time, let’s say, our Neverland Miss has broken up with the second “long term” guy, and maybe she’s something like 26. Still young, still time to find a guy to get children before 30!
Rationally, yes. In real life, not always so. A person who has been going in the wrong direction, and once again, has dropped out from any or all social networks (and I mean the people kind, not the ones you find in the internet) – will not have much motivation or incentives to find any connections again. Make no mistake – that’s all she wishes – a meaningful connection with mutual interests and understanding – but at that point – it seems impossible. She might even think that there must be something wrong with her, she’s mentally ill, not fit to be a partner, neither a mother.
So, we’re back to Neverland, for a while. If a person is left alone after such a caroussel ride – there might even not be any coming back. It is especially dire if you do not have a family to turn to, to stay in touch with – if even they do not try to connect with you – or for various reasons you don’t want to (life is messy, there could be grudges – and for good reasons).
It could also be at such a point, for whom it was at 26, or for whom it was at 30 – because surely, some girls stick around in relationships that do not work for longer than I did – and once they come out, they have a lot of cleaning up to do. So, in that sense – I see nothing wrong with the image with a wheeled suitcase and a glass of champagne. Or a headset and a mustard-stained shirt, fronting a computer, playing Neverland games with other Neverland people.
But it will only remain a phase if something starts shining through. A phase that might very well be necessary after a long series of poor choices that couldn’t be helped – so, instead of judging them, maybe reach out to them and offer company when they come back from their trip. If they say they never want kids of a husband – consider it’s not something they are really convinced in – it’s something I’ve said when I felt utterly defeated.
I was so utterly defeated I was even looking to become a nun, youknow!
The transition from there to here, however, happened in small increments, at start. I tell you – every time a person actually does invite you out to talk about whatever, even if it will be a one-off only – it changes things. It won’t of course go from a few years of neverland and not wanting to have anything to do with the opposite sex and what they could build together to totally wanting it all right after one tea-date with an old friend – but it’s a start.
If you can ever be that friend to anyone – you have no idea, how powerful that is, even if you don’t see the feedback right away. Maybe you see it in 2 years, or less, or more – but it changes things.
My first date after a long period of not seeing absolutely anyone (aside from two very terrible one-offs during the Neverland time), was incredibly horrible. Talking about this makes my heart sick, I didn’t trust my gut – which told me to turn that ask down, and got date raped. The guy didn’t disappear right away, though – and for whatever the fuck reason, neither did I – back to the old version of me where I was going to endure whatever shit just to keep up a relationship…
If that guy hadn’t called the whole thing off a month later – and he did so with a great number of complaints on my account – that I wasn’t taking care of him enough and all that (I was still recovering myself! wtf man) – I wouldn’t have had the guts to break it off, either. I just didn’t have it in me.
And when I had some time to think about what had been going on, and despite how horrible it all had been from the first day – I tried to set up more dates with different people… And after consulting strangers on the internet, I heard one of the wisest things – something that is very helpful to someone in my position.
“Stop worrying about whether he likes you. Make sure you like him.”
And as silly as it may sound, the other piece of advice came from broken-hearted listening to some JBP, where he had spoken of some good values, morals, that kind of thing, and his question was, “well, what kind of a man do you want?”
Strangely enough, as soon as I had thought about it, made some kind of a list of red and yellow flags – made rules for myself to cancel a guy as soon as something was fishy, made sure I can at least try to view people impartially, and for the sake of long-term, I shouldn’t HOPE to see the ideal guy in anyone that I come across… The universe no longer challenged me and somehow sent me a guy without any of those flags.
Two years later, we married. Now I’m waiting for scientists to teach me how to have sex so I can have those damn kids too.
Anyway, this personal account now exists to illustrate why it doesn’t help anyone, mocking single chicks, but may be just spewing more hatred and contempt.
If you have a single friend who may have found the church of antinatalism or just insists on staying single or wanting no children, one thing that you could actually help them with is with similar lines of thought I got from internet strangers or that line from JBP…
It will be very difficult to pin down what kind of a man someone wants – because no matter how many positive traits there are – it could all be set off by one red flag… So, the most important perspective would be from the Via Negativa – when dating, never go in without knowing what you definitely don’t want. Just keep it to that one date and then delete.
And never – Ever – Go to a private place for a first date.
The post Singles go to Neverland first appeared on Silvi Simberg.Silvi Simberg's Blog
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