"For philosophically pessimistic dissidents networking is much less about power or money acquisition than about spiritual growth - to think in new ways, to learn previously unconsidered topics, perhaps thereβs an element of emotional camaraderie as well, as no one wants to feel totally isolated."
Anyone who hasn't changed in the past few years (repeatedly) isn't using their brains. The optimists whether eternally blind, daft, or just greedy (many know they're fucking with their readers for $) will always find the arrival of friends and riches effortless because people will never abandon hope for isolation, no matter how wrapped in deception that hope is proffered. Coping is stasis doping. But isolation is a gift, not a curse. And it is the reward for those who value truth above all else. A purified conscience canβt stray from truth without rewiring itselfβor corroding slowly under the weight of cognitive dissonance.
I'm optimistically pessimistic about all this, but if I'm still optimistically pessimistic in a year, I'm not using my brain.
Ernst Junger argued that the spiritual depth of a person is in one's relationship to pain; is one able to sit with it, metabolize it without pushing it out and rejecting it, or spinning it off into fantasy? I would argue it is both one's ability to sit with pain *and with ambiguity* that determines to a large extent one's spiritual depth. "Extraverted as Hell" America (per Jung) has no experience with this as it's been so materially successful and dominant military for so long - it has forgotten how to deal with pain...
Fair assessment, if I'm honest I'm utterly pessimistic about the system and where things are headed with it. But I'm pretty optimistic in my personal life as things are improving there so I get your perspective.
Not sure, I can only pick up what skills I can, improve my personal situation and go from there. If things fall apart, they fall apart if they don't they don't.
Interesting. I gravitate towards people who seem to get to the bottom of things better than others; people who have extreme amounts of knowledge and enormous attention spans, because I think those are essential requirements for any kind of wise take. Articulating it in a compelling post is essential as well.
We all need reason to hope and not give up, but it's hard to maintain an optimistic worldview after you pass a certain threshold of awareness.
I'm a huge fan of Jasun Horsley but I almost never watch movies anymore because it's pretty clear even the most artful films are incredibly well made psyops and/or propaganda.
Still, I'd like to know what's actually going on. There's no sense in being delusional.
But what to do about it? That's the question that won't go away, and nobody seems to have the answer.
To me Jung's individuation process is the answer -- reinchanting the nihilist, secular, materialist world cannot be forced into existence the way so many try to do, change cannot be forced, it must be lived individually via initiation, by silence, by metabolizing pain and living in ambiguity and contradiction and the constant circumambulation process around the Self...this isn't something that can or will be done in a day, a week, a month, a year, or a decade, and the change starts from the individual, from the bottom; these things take centuries to play out on a larger level if they happen...
I feel like what's missing here is more focus on the question of intentions, motivations, & authenticity. The field of internet dissemination is inevitably rife with dis as well as mis-information, much of it unwitting replication of bad ideas, but some of it done knowingly by self-misrepresenters.
Another point is maybe one I brought up in yr first iteration of this topic, that "pessimism" and "optimism" are relative terms that finally must be situated inside a question of realism; when I am lumped in with pessimists, I agree and feel "vindicated" only insofar as I know you are specifically talking about sociopolitical pessimism, which I, naturally, call realism.
Yet to me, such pessimism is not only compatible with but inseparable from and essential to spiritual optimism: the acceptance of the nature of "this world" as under Satan's dominion, in the New Testament's terminology (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11; Ephesians 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4) being what opens up that space of hope to a "not-of-this-worldy" solution in Christ.
The part about community is esp relevant to me. I seem to seek & offer (to seek by offering) a kind of group interaction that is almost universally off-putting, not because it is pessimistic, however, but because it is the opposite of passive & is highly demanding.
It's possible, however, that there's an unconscious self-isolating that happens from not wanting to "play the game," & that does relate to pessimism, or even defeatism. I have wondered if I should make it easier for people to attend meetings by lowering my standards. This always feels risky, however.
I agree with you that intent is among the deepest questions, which can only be partially ascertained about others using intuition and perception - this is because we don't even know *ourselves*, the Self is infinite and morphs under observation like a spiritual Heisenberg principle. Typologies can be helpful, but they are merely rule-of-thumb heuristics, they break down too the deeper one delves into them, because humans are fundamentally filled with contradictory impulses and most do not even try to synthesize them...
I am optimistic that the current shambolic society will collapse. What comes after is where my pessimism comes into play. Will we be able to free ourselves from the international usury cartel? Can Mammon finally be destroyed? Once one realizes how much of what we've been told is fake and gay, it's hard to hold on to hope.
Whether or not political and cultural change happens isn't really so much of a problem as the underlying base reality, I think: we as humans are either always striving for an object or bored, never satisfied; that this world is fundamentally about our relationship to suffering, and that one cannot uphold the Golden Rule even if we wanted to because we must consume other living creatures in order to survive (even plants scream on a wavelength when they are being eaten). No political or cultural regime will alter this reality.
Edenic climate conditions aren't neutral, but the result of planetary scale forces colliding and equilibrizing as thousands of times that amount of energy is blasted wastefully into space by the Sun. Our existence is an arena for self-discovery, and and heaven and Earth have moved to provide it for us.
What if unlimited accumulation of wealth is not actually property, and is not the result of a free market, but instead a system of oligarchic power? What if socialism wasn't the only alternative?
As for my pessimism, I'm very concerned the robot police are coming and we're not going to collapse in time to stop it. I'm very pessimistic about Gen Z manager track types, who have no awareness of 9/11 or 2008 and are buying back into elementary war propaganda and American success gospel. I think of all the books I read, the thousands of podcast hours to "get informed" and maybe in the end the whole internet thing will turn out as a wet fart.
Thank you for the shout out. I think I have probably become more metaphysical since that original post, and maybe even more optimistic if simply because the left does not control the federal government.
Though an optimist generally, I am not much of a networker, and my best writing is not in the "right dissident" sphere, or rather, ascendant right, as the Librarian likes to call it. It is enough for me here to support and encourage others on the right, and try to encourage pagans and Christians to come together behind belief and faith, to lay waste to the neoliberal order.
Yes, Christianity originally was a synthesis of a lot of different and contradictory traditions, and I think whatever comes next will also be a synthesis of wildly different ideas. Christianity won't be fully rejected in what comes next, nor will a retreat to "paganism" be that embodiment -- this is why I lean into Jung's individuation process, as I see it as a synthesis of opposing and contradictory traditions...
Every new empire requires a new religion. America mostly rejected true Christianity for liberal secular consumerism, which has not aged well, turning into a late stage death cult sacrificing children. But America's empire heretofore has been Faustian, which is to say European in its essence. The new American empire will be wholly American, with a new religion based on this continent. But that is a long process, which I see much of the dissident right as the seed of.
America is Luciferian. Our colonial heritage is a feather in our cap, but our cloak has names like Nabisco, Kellogg and Rockefeller. We had a work ethic and Mammon was dangled in front of it and we are ruled by Mammon.
I was arguing with an evangelic who had to grind to get a job and was calling out everyone else without work for being a loser. He said he'd do anything to provide for his family. I asked if he would work at an abortion clinic if that was the only option to get a paycheck. Then he called me disingenuous and sperged out.
In our country, the ability to acquire Mammon is seen as a mark of virtue and essentially heavenly.
IDK, That is a way of looking at it. Seems bleak. I hope you don't think like that all the time I prefer to look at the world as divine, enchanted, beautiful, wonderous, a glorious mystery. I guess thaf makes me an optimist.
That Librarian post reveals a sophisticated group of Zionists and subverters working for Con Inc. Confirms the conspiracies about this so-called Dissident Right. Their views are mercenary as Iβve personally known some of the people on that list and their opinions in private are drastically different from what they now post.
We must move past the idea that writers and pundits have βopinionsβ honestly held and believed in.
False hope serves no purpose except to further demoralize the proles. Look what a disaster "Mr. Hope and Change" turned out to be, as the Orange Turd became his legacy.
Instead of carnival barkers, grifters, and shameless liars the plebs need to be provided with an untainted picture of reality along with a logical clear cut agenda for the future rather than another "con job."
Of course, this is absolutely not possible when society devolves into Caligula's Circus and the morally depraved clutches the reins of power and money with veiny swollen voracious claws. This is when hope merely becomes an addictive narcotic
for the blurry-eyed who are always in search of a new "big daddy." π
Yes, hence the Current Thing -- a constant and reoccurring shift from one exciting media narrative to the next, where each prior one is discarded and forgotten with no resolution or follow-up. It seems to work well for the masses; bread and circus...
βThe horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.β Orwell
We're sort of living in a dimensional synthesis of Huxley's βBrave New Worldβ and Orwell's β1984β utilizing 21st Century AI surveillance technology. π΅βπ«
I have long believed that the madness commonly referred to as TDS (but it's really much more expansive than that) is at its root a reaction to that rug pull. The baizuo were led to believe their long dreamt future was at hand, that all opposition in their way had been defeated/marginalized, then almost violently, really in just one evening, a few hours, disabused of all of that. It's not about Trump, it's about them.
I think it's also about him, as his followers were willing to overlook an "Orange Monstrosity" as long he appeared to be a lightning rod wreaking havoc on the national security state. The shock of "The Rump" being an O'Brien is too much to bear. π
When I look into the future, I see us spending our days posting about clown world, year after year, as we have been, and then one day, like The Zman, we keel over dead.
Is that pessimism? Or just a more than likely accurate extrapolation of the last decade into the future? Because unless clown world changes into something else (and I don't believe it plans to do so) then our relationship to clown world is also unlikely to change.
And this is how we relate to clown world. We rightly don't want to go out and be a part of it, because it's detestable. No person of conscience could be part of it. Even the church is corrupted by it and full of NPCs. Yet in our refusal to be part of it, there isn't a whole lot left. Unless you're Amish or something.
Thanks for the mention, this was a really interesting piece. Overall, I'd certainly consider myself an optimist, although admittedly it might just be out of psychological survival. I do think that belief has the chance, however small, to impact material outcomes. That's enough to sway me to the optimist side. When it came to networking and comedy, I think I was more of an idealist than a pessimist. "It should only be about the quality of the art," I told myself, ignoring everything else that goes into making someone successful.
I don't explicitly write about politics, only when it intersects with humor and comedy. But I can assure you I am, thankfully, neither an NPC or a shitlib.
Can't believe I made any sort of list on your stack good sir!
As to the article by Celaeno I quite liked it, though I've since then become ever more pessimistic. I'm still a nationalist but shrug my shoulders ever more at the larger world's development/problems, they're too big for this little artist to change as they always have been. The important thing is to secure a house away in the woods, build up family and develop skills like William Hunter Duncan has. Thanks for pointing me towards him.
Once more I really appreciate you tagging me here, it's very kind. I must admit to flirting with the dark side ever more, as I come to a better understanding of it (thanks to stacks such as yours among others). My fantasy serials and studies into history, and culture are devouring more of my spare time not working.
I also wanted to say thanks for including me in such a list.
Maybe the reason power finds its hosts in optimists more often is that power seeks to reproduce itself as widely and deeply across as many different fields as possible, and pessimists/isolationists aren't good vehicles for that sort of thing. Or, at least, the latter seeks or to imbue with a different type of power β one that is more distilled and perceptual β which doesn't replicate as easily.
I have encountered distinct phases of my life; in some, I am more focused on introverted spritiual seeking mode; in others, more on extroverted network development mode. They're both important.
Yes, Jung argued that the first half of life one is focused on achieving external validation and success, that we wear our persona; it is only in the second half of life when we feel the approach of Death that we start asking the deeper questions about whether we are living our life in the way we are truly meant to according to our unique life paths and destinies...there is also a cultural element, as America is far more extraverted than Europe or other countries (reflected in the collective unconscious of each individual).
At around the point you wrote "People require hope to live," I was thinking, 'Kumbaya bitches!', but then you ruined it with "and this is a dark, cruel world;" and I was like, 'how dare you!' :P
So basically this piece could be construed as an unconscious attempt at networking. It's actually quite good.
It makes reasonable sense for optimists to gain more traction. Although it's just as reasonable to point out they get swept up into a frenzy of the passions and then inevitably find themselves with the need to grasp at something solid as a cope when the inevitable reality of the abyss stares back. So maybe as we age and mature we seek moderation, although this can be interpreted as selling out.
Yes, this was an attempt at network for pessimists, which does not happen naturally or easily for us (based on my experience). Optimists chase the shiny object until reality smacks them in the face, after which they grasp onto pessimists momentarily (the highly dissident film Angry Birds -- yes, I'm not joking -- delves into these dynamics) before they can't handle the pain and ambiguity and they glom onto a new shiny object to chase.
Nonsense! You're not a pessimist, you're actually an optimal-realist! I've learned so much from reading your substack and found a vast number of other crazy authors through your suggestions and musings. I'm laughing and smiling while writing this, so you're doing something right!
The world's topsy-turvy. So actually the optimists are the real pessimists, they just don't know it. They're a leg up from the NPCs, but let's face it, anyone who actually wants to live in this grit mundane bullshit illusion and call it reality, there's some neurons not working somewhere. Humans weren't created to work jobs, pay taxes, buy a TV, a car, a washing machine or use handheld monoliths! And yet here we are.
The doom and gloom (I think) you're referring to is the inevitable pain derived from medicine we'll all have to drink when reality comes knocking, either by way of the tech bros techopticon or episode V Return of the Masiach or ww3 West vs the rest or some elite nobility pulling a fast one or some other freaky weirdness. As Gibran says, drink the medicine and stfu.
I used to have a German friend who would tell me: Stefano, you need to not give a fuck about 40% more. Coming from a German, you know right there I had it bad. But it's a great reminder to smile and carry on.
ps You're going to probably disapprove, but this song came to mind when I was thinking about my reply.
Philosophical cynicism is optimal realism, that midgets call pessimism. Why do you think Diogenes felt compelled to search high and low for the real human?
Would have been fun to see Dr Livci from the Institute grafted onto the chart now that he's on Substack.
If you want to peruse his writing and analyze his philosophical position a bit, he put out precisely the kind of piece to do that with about a week ago:
There might be a few hangups about the ESL style, but I personally quite enjoy it as a Slav.
That said, I really wish I had joined Substack a lot earlier. Seeing the site quality and user experience degrade (sometimes by my own hand, I shamefully admit) doesn't exactly fill me with inspiration to start building my own body of work.
We are nearing the end of the great cycle. Having burned through the majority of our natural resources, humanity must ascend to the next level, or we will end up forever chained to this planet, destined to eventually perish.
Based on the last few years, I donβt think we have what it takes to pass the Great Filter, so pessimism seems like the correct approach.
"For philosophically pessimistic dissidents networking is much less about power or money acquisition than about spiritual growth - to think in new ways, to learn previously unconsidered topics, perhaps thereβs an element of emotional camaraderie as well, as no one wants to feel totally isolated."
Anyone who hasn't changed in the past few years (repeatedly) isn't using their brains. The optimists whether eternally blind, daft, or just greedy (many know they're fucking with their readers for $) will always find the arrival of friends and riches effortless because people will never abandon hope for isolation, no matter how wrapped in deception that hope is proffered. Coping is stasis doping. But isolation is a gift, not a curse. And it is the reward for those who value truth above all else. A purified conscience canβt stray from truth without rewiring itselfβor corroding slowly under the weight of cognitive dissonance.
I'm optimistically pessimistic about all this, but if I'm still optimistically pessimistic in a year, I'm not using my brain.
Ernst Junger argued that the spiritual depth of a person is in one's relationship to pain; is one able to sit with it, metabolize it without pushing it out and rejecting it, or spinning it off into fantasy? I would argue it is both one's ability to sit with pain *and with ambiguity* that determines to a large extent one's spiritual depth. "Extraverted as Hell" America (per Jung) has no experience with this as it's been so materially successful and dominant military for so long - it has forgotten how to deal with pain...
Fair assessment, if I'm honest I'm utterly pessimistic about the system and where things are headed with it. But I'm pretty optimistic in my personal life as things are improving there so I get your perspective.
But how will those things last if the system fails?
Not sure, I can only pick up what skills I can, improve my personal situation and go from there. If things fall apart, they fall apart if they don't they don't.
Interesting. I gravitate towards people who seem to get to the bottom of things better than others; people who have extreme amounts of knowledge and enormous attention spans, because I think those are essential requirements for any kind of wise take. Articulating it in a compelling post is essential as well.
We all need reason to hope and not give up, but it's hard to maintain an optimistic worldview after you pass a certain threshold of awareness.
I'm a huge fan of Jasun Horsley but I almost never watch movies anymore because it's pretty clear even the most artful films are incredibly well made psyops and/or propaganda.
Still, I'd like to know what's actually going on. There's no sense in being delusional.
But what to do about it? That's the question that won't go away, and nobody seems to have the answer.
To me Jung's individuation process is the answer -- reinchanting the nihilist, secular, materialist world cannot be forced into existence the way so many try to do, change cannot be forced, it must be lived individually via initiation, by silence, by metabolizing pain and living in ambiguity and contradiction and the constant circumambulation process around the Self...this isn't something that can or will be done in a day, a week, a month, a year, or a decade, and the change starts from the individual, from the bottom; these things take centuries to play out on a larger level if they happen...
I'm reading The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts at the moment. Very similar themes, or least at first glance they seem so.
"I'm a huge fan of Jasun Horsley but I almost never watch movies anymore"
Why "but"? Seems "and" would fit just as well.
I agree, but if I could edit my reply, I would. π
I tried to explain what I meant and say some nice things but Substack glitched on me.
I'm going to "rage quit" the app for the moment.
I feel like what's missing here is more focus on the question of intentions, motivations, & authenticity. The field of internet dissemination is inevitably rife with dis as well as mis-information, much of it unwitting replication of bad ideas, but some of it done knowingly by self-misrepresenters.
Another point is maybe one I brought up in yr first iteration of this topic, that "pessimism" and "optimism" are relative terms that finally must be situated inside a question of realism; when I am lumped in with pessimists, I agree and feel "vindicated" only insofar as I know you are specifically talking about sociopolitical pessimism, which I, naturally, call realism.
Yet to me, such pessimism is not only compatible with but inseparable from and essential to spiritual optimism: the acceptance of the nature of "this world" as under Satan's dominion, in the New Testament's terminology (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11; Ephesians 2:2; 2 Corinthians 4:4) being what opens up that space of hope to a "not-of-this-worldy" solution in Christ.
The part about community is esp relevant to me. I seem to seek & offer (to seek by offering) a kind of group interaction that is almost universally off-putting, not because it is pessimistic, however, but because it is the opposite of passive & is highly demanding.
It's possible, however, that there's an unconscious self-isolating that happens from not wanting to "play the game," & that does relate to pessimism, or even defeatism. I have wondered if I should make it easier for people to attend meetings by lowering my standards. This always feels risky, however.
I agree with you that intent is among the deepest questions, which can only be partially ascertained about others using intuition and perception - this is because we don't even know *ourselves*, the Self is infinite and morphs under observation like a spiritual Heisenberg principle. Typologies can be helpful, but they are merely rule-of-thumb heuristics, they break down too the deeper one delves into them, because humans are fundamentally filled with contradictory impulses and most do not even try to synthesize them...
I am optimistic that the current shambolic society will collapse. What comes after is where my pessimism comes into play. Will we be able to free ourselves from the international usury cartel? Can Mammon finally be destroyed? Once one realizes how much of what we've been told is fake and gay, it's hard to hold on to hope.
Whether or not political and cultural change happens isn't really so much of a problem as the underlying base reality, I think: we as humans are either always striving for an object or bored, never satisfied; that this world is fundamentally about our relationship to suffering, and that one cannot uphold the Golden Rule even if we wanted to because we must consume other living creatures in order to survive (even plants scream on a wavelength when they are being eaten). No political or cultural regime will alter this reality.
Edenic climate conditions aren't neutral, but the result of planetary scale forces colliding and equilibrizing as thousands of times that amount of energy is blasted wastefully into space by the Sun. Our existence is an arena for self-discovery, and and heaven and Earth have moved to provide it for us.
What if unlimited accumulation of wealth is not actually property, and is not the result of a free market, but instead a system of oligarchic power? What if socialism wasn't the only alternative?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-168534108
As for my pessimism, I'm very concerned the robot police are coming and we're not going to collapse in time to stop it. I'm very pessimistic about Gen Z manager track types, who have no awareness of 9/11 or 2008 and are buying back into elementary war propaganda and American success gospel. I think of all the books I read, the thousands of podcast hours to "get informed" and maybe in the end the whole internet thing will turn out as a wet fart.
You Hope Too Much.
Thank you for the shout out. I think I have probably become more metaphysical since that original post, and maybe even more optimistic if simply because the left does not control the federal government.
Though an optimist generally, I am not much of a networker, and my best writing is not in the "right dissident" sphere, or rather, ascendant right, as the Librarian likes to call it. It is enough for me here to support and encourage others on the right, and try to encourage pagans and Christians to come together behind belief and faith, to lay waste to the neoliberal order.
Yes, Christianity originally was a synthesis of a lot of different and contradictory traditions, and I think whatever comes next will also be a synthesis of wildly different ideas. Christianity won't be fully rejected in what comes next, nor will a retreat to "paganism" be that embodiment -- this is why I lean into Jung's individuation process, as I see it as a synthesis of opposing and contradictory traditions...
Every new empire requires a new religion. America mostly rejected true Christianity for liberal secular consumerism, which has not aged well, turning into a late stage death cult sacrificing children. But America's empire heretofore has been Faustian, which is to say European in its essence. The new American empire will be wholly American, with a new religion based on this continent. But that is a long process, which I see much of the dissident right as the seed of.
America is Luciferian. Our colonial heritage is a feather in our cap, but our cloak has names like Nabisco, Kellogg and Rockefeller. We had a work ethic and Mammon was dangled in front of it and we are ruled by Mammon.
I was arguing with an evangelic who had to grind to get a job and was calling out everyone else without work for being a loser. He said he'd do anything to provide for his family. I asked if he would work at an abortion clinic if that was the only option to get a paycheck. Then he called me disingenuous and sperged out.
In our country, the ability to acquire Mammon is seen as a mark of virtue and essentially heavenly.
IDK, That is a way of looking at it. Seems bleak. I hope you don't think like that all the time I prefer to look at the world as divine, enchanted, beautiful, wonderous, a glorious mystery. I guess thaf makes me an optimist.
That Librarian post reveals a sophisticated group of Zionists and subverters working for Con Inc. Confirms the conspiracies about this so-called Dissident Right. Their views are mercenary as Iβve personally known some of the people on that list and their opinions in private are drastically different from what they now post.
We must move past the idea that writers and pundits have βopinionsβ honestly held and believed in.
One mans pessimism is another mans realism
Pointing out the fact that things suck doesn't make me a pessimist. It just makes me an observer
False hope serves no purpose except to further demoralize the proles. Look what a disaster "Mr. Hope and Change" turned out to be, as the Orange Turd became his legacy.
Instead of carnival barkers, grifters, and shameless liars the plebs need to be provided with an untainted picture of reality along with a logical clear cut agenda for the future rather than another "con job."
Of course, this is absolutely not possible when society devolves into Caligula's Circus and the morally depraved clutches the reins of power and money with veiny swollen voracious claws. This is when hope merely becomes an addictive narcotic
for the blurry-eyed who are always in search of a new "big daddy." π
Yes, hence the Current Thing -- a constant and reoccurring shift from one exciting media narrative to the next, where each prior one is discarded and forgotten with no resolution or follow-up. It seems to work well for the masses; bread and circus...
βThe horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary.β Orwell
We're sort of living in a dimensional synthesis of Huxley's βBrave New Worldβ and Orwell's β1984β utilizing 21st Century AI surveillance technology. π΅βπ«
I have long believed that the madness commonly referred to as TDS (but it's really much more expansive than that) is at its root a reaction to that rug pull. The baizuo were led to believe their long dreamt future was at hand, that all opposition in their way had been defeated/marginalized, then almost violently, really in just one evening, a few hours, disabused of all of that. It's not about Trump, it's about them.
I think it's also about him, as his followers were willing to overlook an "Orange Monstrosity" as long he appeared to be a lightning rod wreaking havoc on the national security state. The shock of "The Rump" being an O'Brien is too much to bear. π
When I look into the future, I see us spending our days posting about clown world, year after year, as we have been, and then one day, like The Zman, we keel over dead.
Is that pessimism? Or just a more than likely accurate extrapolation of the last decade into the future? Because unless clown world changes into something else (and I don't believe it plans to do so) then our relationship to clown world is also unlikely to change.
And this is how we relate to clown world. We rightly don't want to go out and be a part of it, because it's detestable. No person of conscience could be part of it. Even the church is corrupted by it and full of NPCs. Yet in our refusal to be part of it, there isn't a whole lot left. Unless you're Amish or something.
Thanks for the mention, this was a really interesting piece. Overall, I'd certainly consider myself an optimist, although admittedly it might just be out of psychological survival. I do think that belief has the chance, however small, to impact material outcomes. That's enough to sway me to the optimist side. When it came to networking and comedy, I think I was more of an idealist than a pessimist. "It should only be about the quality of the art," I told myself, ignoring everything else that goes into making someone successful.
I don't explicitly write about politics, only when it intersects with humor and comedy. But I can assure you I am, thankfully, neither an NPC or a shitlib.
Can't believe I made any sort of list on your stack good sir!
As to the article by Celaeno I quite liked it, though I've since then become ever more pessimistic. I'm still a nationalist but shrug my shoulders ever more at the larger world's development/problems, they're too big for this little artist to change as they always have been. The important thing is to secure a house away in the woods, build up family and develop skills like William Hunter Duncan has. Thanks for pointing me towards him.
Once more I really appreciate you tagging me here, it's very kind. I must admit to flirting with the dark side ever more, as I come to a better understanding of it (thanks to stacks such as yours among others). My fantasy serials and studies into history, and culture are devouring more of my spare time not working.
I also wanted to say thanks for including me in such a list.
Maybe the reason power finds its hosts in optimists more often is that power seeks to reproduce itself as widely and deeply across as many different fields as possible, and pessimists/isolationists aren't good vehicles for that sort of thing. Or, at least, the latter seeks or to imbue with a different type of power β one that is more distilled and perceptual β which doesn't replicate as easily.
I have encountered distinct phases of my life; in some, I am more focused on introverted spritiual seeking mode; in others, more on extroverted network development mode. They're both important.
Yes, Jung argued that the first half of life one is focused on achieving external validation and success, that we wear our persona; it is only in the second half of life when we feel the approach of Death that we start asking the deeper questions about whether we are living our life in the way we are truly meant to according to our unique life paths and destinies...there is also a cultural element, as America is far more extraverted than Europe or other countries (reflected in the collective unconscious of each individual).
> we feel the approach of Death that we start asking the deeper questions about whether we are living our life in the way we are truly meant to
For some us , we are forced to ask these questions beginning at 23 π
Very interesting!
At around the point you wrote "People require hope to live," I was thinking, 'Kumbaya bitches!', but then you ruined it with "and this is a dark, cruel world;" and I was like, 'how dare you!' :P
So basically this piece could be construed as an unconscious attempt at networking. It's actually quite good.
It makes reasonable sense for optimists to gain more traction. Although it's just as reasonable to point out they get swept up into a frenzy of the passions and then inevitably find themselves with the need to grasp at something solid as a cope when the inevitable reality of the abyss stares back. So maybe as we age and mature we seek moderation, although this can be interpreted as selling out.
Yes, this was an attempt at network for pessimists, which does not happen naturally or easily for us (based on my experience). Optimists chase the shiny object until reality smacks them in the face, after which they grasp onto pessimists momentarily (the highly dissident film Angry Birds -- yes, I'm not joking -- delves into these dynamics) before they can't handle the pain and ambiguity and they glom onto a new shiny object to chase.
Nonsense! You're not a pessimist, you're actually an optimal-realist! I've learned so much from reading your substack and found a vast number of other crazy authors through your suggestions and musings. I'm laughing and smiling while writing this, so you're doing something right!
The world's topsy-turvy. So actually the optimists are the real pessimists, they just don't know it. They're a leg up from the NPCs, but let's face it, anyone who actually wants to live in this grit mundane bullshit illusion and call it reality, there's some neurons not working somewhere. Humans weren't created to work jobs, pay taxes, buy a TV, a car, a washing machine or use handheld monoliths! And yet here we are.
The doom and gloom (I think) you're referring to is the inevitable pain derived from medicine we'll all have to drink when reality comes knocking, either by way of the tech bros techopticon or episode V Return of the Masiach or ww3 West vs the rest or some elite nobility pulling a fast one or some other freaky weirdness. As Gibran says, drink the medicine and stfu.
I used to have a German friend who would tell me: Stefano, you need to not give a fuck about 40% more. Coming from a German, you know right there I had it bad. But it's a great reminder to smile and carry on.
ps You're going to probably disapprove, but this song came to mind when I was thinking about my reply.
https://youtu.be/R-ZplG81oZg?feature=shared
Philosophical cynicism is optimal realism, that midgets call pessimism. Why do you think Diogenes felt compelled to search high and low for the real human?
Would have been fun to see Dr Livci from the Institute grafted onto the chart now that he's on Substack.
If you want to peruse his writing and analyze his philosophical position a bit, he put out precisely the kind of piece to do that with about a week ago:
https://open.substack.com/pub/drlivci/p/about-the-death-of-god-hating-on
There might be a few hangups about the ESL style, but I personally quite enjoy it as a Slav.
That said, I really wish I had joined Substack a lot earlier. Seeing the site quality and user experience degrade (sometimes by my own hand, I shamefully admit) doesn't exactly fill me with inspiration to start building my own body of work.
We are nearing the end of the great cycle. Having burned through the majority of our natural resources, humanity must ascend to the next level, or we will end up forever chained to this planet, destined to eventually perish.
Based on the last few years, I donβt think we have what it takes to pass the Great Filter, so pessimism seems like the correct approach.