image attached for ~~engagement bait~~ related reasons (we'll get to it later, i promise)

hi hello, I'm back, little bit of a break between postings i suppose. What is life buy a series of inevitable delays. Anyhow, I've been thinking a lot more about philosophy and our physical world lately and have some thoughts i would like to share.

wonder is an interesting concept, it's a mix between an emotional experience, and the rationalization that we humans engage in every day. There's an intersection between your rational and logical understanding of the world, and your emotional experience of it that combine into this sometimes overwhelming, but inspiring feeling of wonder.

I've heard from numerous people that they no longer get the same sense of wonder as they once did in childhood, and especially how that sense of wonder is what seems to romanticize certain ideas to us. A common one is people going back and playing games they once played in their childhood, only to discover they no longer experience the same sensation of wonder and awe in it. There are probably hundreds of video essays about this specific topic. But i think it's not just limited to your childhood and previously had experiences, thinking about it like that is a way to poison your experience of the world.

I think wonder is a fundamental aspect of the human experience, wonder is arguably a very large part of what initially drove early science and it's developments. We didn't know what fire was at one point, but we wondered what it could've been, eventually someone figured it out, and now we have a plausible, yet still fascinating conceptualization of what fire is. I think it's the same today, it hasn't changed, it's just been refocused into other areas. The image attached to this post is one such example, most people probably don't know about rigid body airships, or at least know very much about them. Let alone the construction and fabrication of them. The concept of a rigid body airship is wondrous in it's own right, that would be why so many attempts were made. Reportedly even the top of the empire state building was intended to be used for docking of airships, although that never came to be (primarily due to wind)

another example. and one that i find fascinating is the production of "surface plates" extremely precise flat surfaces used as a reference surface for machining/manufacturing. If you've ever wondered how those are made, you'll be pleased to know that you can just take three semi pseudo flat surfaces, and then abrasively rub them against each other in an cyclic manner, which will eventually wear down the high spots, and produce a flat plane, purely because it's the only common plane between three nondescript objects.

I think in adulthood we don't lose wonder, we lose the ability the utilize it. You look at a tree and think about the fact that it's a tree, you think about it in passing, you don't spend any time thinking about why it's there, or what it's done since being planted, and what it could do after being planted. Trees are a really fascinating organism to me. You plant them in the ground, and then just, grow. No questions asked, no intervention required. They barely require anything, they just grow. It takes 20 to 30 years for them to grow to a moderate size, though they don't exactly stop growing either. If you live anywhere near a natural wooded area that hasn't been farm planted, those trees are probably as old as you, if not older than you. They've been around for the same amount of time as you, and haven't gone anywhere.

Continuing on a little bit further here, trees are also very valuable and extremely flexible, they can be used to block wind, sun, and even rain/snow in some cases. They also provide a massive habit for animals and insects to live in. They provide physical support for the ground underneath them which is why they're often near embankments and ditches. They can be used in construction, in fact it's just about the cheapest form of construction available. You can burn wood for heat or power. You can turn it into any number of paper products, paper, cardboard, card stock, etc. It's such a versatile and valuable material. yet every time you see a tree you don't spend very much time thinking about it. It's just something in the back of your mind.

getting away from trees here, i think there are plenty of examples of things that can be a continual cause for wonder. Even the planet that we live on is cause enough for an existential amount of wonder. Astronomy is a particularly fascinating one for me. Just a short example, even though we're approximately on the same page here. The circumference of the earth is approximately 40,000 kilometers. 1 light-year, is approximately 9,460,730,472,580 km, assuming you could circumnavigate the earth at the equator in 1 second. It would take you approximately 236,075,520 trips to complete 1 light years worth of navigation around the earth, and approximately 7.5 years worth of time. The earth is so big that we literally cannot tell that we live on a sphere unless we try to prove it. Yet using even a rather small unit of astronomic measurement, it is still so incomprehensibly large that we simply cannot fathom it. The speed on light, on earth is so small, it's practically instant. (this isn't quite true, but that's also paired with more complicated reasons) moving a little bit further out, radio transmissions, since effectively the beginning of time, we've been transmitting radio broadcast (to some degree) into space. The earth from the perspective of the universe is a chatty radio somewhere in the middle of an empty field at night. And has been since the beginning of radio. We have sent satellites into space, and they're still operational almost fifty years later.

moving outside of space and astronomy here for a second, lets move to something more tangible, construction. In the US alone, judging by annual concrete usage figures in the year 2023, we have produced approximately 90 million metric tons if we only include domestically produced concrete, which if we were to convert into a rough volumetric equivalent, would be about 37,500,000 cubic meters worth of concrete. If we were to put all of that concrete into a singular cube of concrete, it would be approximately 335 meters (366 yards) in every direction, Which is a lot of concrete.

alright enough of these shenanigans, I've had too much fun with this post. Before i give my usual end of post recommendation here, i just want to leave you with this one idea. You haven't lost your sense of wonder, you've lost your drive for wonder. It's still out there waiting for you to find it. Whether that's with astronomy, biology, or even something like fabrication. There's plenty of things out there, that can instill you with a proper sense of wonder, you just have to find them.

I would like to remind everyone, that we're a species of unusually intelligent and physically capable mammals. We have outclassed every other life-form on our planet by sheer luck and determination. Even through egregious inter-species conflicts, we've triumphed where others haven't. And yet, we have no idea why we're here, what reason we exist, or whether we're the only ones out here. We don't even know what the implication of that is. The only things we know for sure, is that we exist, and we do things.

and with that, end of post recommendation time, the next time you're outside, or inside, or find something interesting, i want you to take a moment and sit down, and really think about that thing. Not only what it is, but also what it means at a grander scale, how it's utilized, and what it can represent.

alright a bit of postscript, it's 2AM now, i need to sleep, no reading through this post, it's long enough as is, as per usual, yell at me if something is wrong and stupid, i'm going to sleep.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/3132208

it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

Not that anybody asked, but I think it's important to understand how shame and guilt actually work before you try to use it for good.

It's a necessary emotion. There are reasons we have it. It makes everything so. much. worse. when you use it wrong.

Shame and guilt are DE-motivators. They are meant to stop behavior, not promote it. You cannot, ever, in any meaningful way, guilt someone into doing good. You can only shame them into not doing bad.

Let's say you're a parent and your kid is having issues.

Swearing in class? Shame could work. You want them to stop it. Keep it in proportion, and it might help. (KEEP IT IN PROPORTION!!!)

Not doing their homework? NO! STOP! NO NOT DO THAT! EVER! EVER! EVER! You want them to start to do their homework. Shaming them will have to opposite effect! You have demotivated them! They will double down on NOT doing it. Not because they are being oppositional, but because that's what shame does!

You can't guilt people into building better habits, being more successful, or getting more involved. That requires encouragement. You need to motivate for that stuff!

If you want it in a simple phrase:

You can shame someone out of being a bad person, but you can't shame them into being a good person.

It was nice to see this put so clearly. This election cycle has left me exhausted and demotivated, and this hits it square on the head.

stolen from https://grungekitty-77.tumblr.com/post/754482938951892992/fun-fact-that-was-literally-what-inspired-me-to

hi hello, rather ironic title, considering i spent the last day and a half on my feet continuously (i'm a chronic chair sitter, as of the last year or so) and so my physical body is kinda fucking through the wringer right now. Plus i'm feeling kinda shitty right now for one reason or another. And also i've got an operation tomorrow, which will rock my world for a bit, i'll be fine though. No worries about me.

also some context here, anytime i say "body" i'm referring to the whole physiological construction of yourself, body and mind included, though not explicitly mutual. There are instances where it wouldn't be.

Anyway, i wanted to talk about something i don't really see anybody talking about, or at least i feel like people should consider more frequently. This would be utilizing a better understanding of your body and how it works, as a method to improve your life (hence coping in the title)

As someone who probably has ADHD and/or autism, as well as some other unimportant distinctions here, i would like to complain about the incessant pushing of "habits" and "big pharma" solutions, not to knock on anybody, i just don't know if it's the correct solution. (rest assured, no pharma talk yet, it's too much to get into for this post)

Particularly with habits in this case, i find that people often tend to use them as a stop gap measure to prevent certain problems from arising (forgetfulness for example) and while it's often useful to do such things, i think it's also important to consider what causes these problems in the first place. I feel, at least for me, and i imagine some others as well that often times you don't need a habit to exist, you just need a cooperative environment. (let's call them environmental habits for now)

Let's take a simple example here a cluttered desk. A lot of people would probably start at "well you should regularly clean it" which isn't bad, as well as "you should be careful to not clutter it" however this is where i differ. I think to the best of your ability, you should configure it in such a manner that it minimizes the potential for clutter. This doesn't just force you to build habits, but will also subconsciously reinforce them.

in my case, i have a rather large desk, it's very messy. It always is. Were i to rebuild it i would build it smaller, and designate certain spots for certain things that need to be on it. Which will help to fundamentally minimize the clutter on it. Another example would be an organization system for something like KNEX (if anybody remembers those) The simplest most fundamental solution here is what i want, bins with pieces sorted by type. Trivially accessible, ideally through some sort of shelf that enables them to be individually slid out. Anything more and i won't build, and less and i won't be building productively.

Any who, enough of this boring chitchat, let's apply it more broadly, that's more exciting! I'll call it auto-physiological research for now. I think there is considerable benefit to be had from applying this train of thought in a more broad fashion. One thing i like to do every couple of years or so is to change a significant aspect of my life, just to see how my body handles it, how i handle it, and how it impacts my life. If i drink coffee, i might stop drinking coffee, if i have a regularly scheduled sleep cycle, i might try a natural schedule to let my body deal with it instead. If i socialize a lot one year, i might spend another isolating more.

Research is often times about trying to forcefully separate the conjoined variables and constants of any given concept. You can apply this to your body in a similar manner, in order to "reverse engineer" how you work as a functional person.

Here's a rather trivial one to mess with, most people have pretty regular and strict food consumption schedules. We generally consume the same foods everyday at the same general times. Literally just change it. See what happens. The body is a remarkably adaptable organism. (just don't hurt yourself, that's no good)

Tidbit of the day:

Find something in your life that bothers you, or that you don't understand, and try different things, see how you handle them, see how your body responds, and most importantly learn something and try to use it to your advantage.

It's important to constantly learn new things and keep your brain busy, it helps your mental health and prevents cognitive decline. Thusly it should apply doubly so when it's your body that you're learning about.

ok, goodbye now, i will return later once my lucidity returns :)

Couple quick notes, this one is expanding off of my first two posts, though primarily my first one here. As well as some thoughts i've been ruminating on for a while. And as per usual, tends to be a little winding, but that's how we roll here :)

One thing i've noticed throughout my life is that we have a very rigidly structured system of your level of intimate knowledge on another person. It ranges from mutual friends, to people that have been married for 30 years. It's interesting to me to see that this structure has sort of "naturally" developed around the human experience. But what's more interesting to me is the fact that people seem to uphold it by default. There is a value in it as a system. For example it's a great system for introducing two people who know each other as a mutual friend.

Personally i hate classifications, I think any system where you intentionally create an explicit point across a spectrum, is like schrodingers binary answer. You can try and classify something that doesn't have an explicit boundary well. It's probably not going to be great, and even if it is, you'll find something that defies it. This only gets worse with scale, you need more and more classifications, and suddenly they no longer serve a purpose.

The reason i mention this is because i find it often negatively influences my interpersonal relationships with other people. The system that we currently have often lays out very explicit expectations in romantic relationships particularly, though this can also be present in mutual ones as well. People often say that communication is the sole defining factor of what makes a relationship. You ever wonder why? It's because people have a certain expectation of how that relationship will work, and it's those expectations that cause problems. Now to be clear, even without these expectations, communication is still very important. It's a must for all relationships.

The primary thing here is that if you go into a relationship without expectations, communication is much easier, arguably it's the default as nobody has any idea of what to expect. It's a much more personable way of looking at relationships. It allows you to focus on yourself, and the other person, rather than both of you collectively as a unit. Which is important, because you're removing a layer of abstraction within that relationship, which more than likely means that it's going to work better.

Likewise, along with this, you also focus a lot more on the actual interactions themselves, which are what I personally value in an inter personal relationship, to make my point here, let's say i'm a hypothetical friend of yours. I don't care about you. You as an individual are simply a person, what i care about is the interactions that we have. I don't care about you, i care about what you have to say. There is simply little to no value in simply, being around people. (this is why driving, or being in crowded areas often feels inhuman) The reason why we find friendships to be valuable is because we talk to other people. If you still don't understand it, what i'm saying is that you can care about other people by simply caring about what they say.

to throw in a little tangent here, keep all of this in mind with gossip, and relevant social communities. There are things worth talking about, there are things worth being mad about, and there are things that aren't. Gossip is not one of them.

This may sound really counter intuitive, depending on how you view other people. But what i can say from experience, as a person with somewhat high charisma is that it has done nothing to my interactions with people, aside from potentially being beneficial. It removes you a little bit from the interaction, while also allowing you to be much more focused on the person themselves. There are a lot of people out there, not all of them think and experience the world in the way that i do. i would venture most people here probably think i'm insane, and that's fair honestly. But my point here is that, you will meet a lot of people like me, in various stages of their life. You'll probably meet a lot of normal people throughout your life as well. At the end of the day we're all people, and we all enjoy human interaction.

Personally i've found throughout my life that i like interacting with weird people a lot more, it gives me a more complete worldview, makes me more compassionate for others, as well as puts some magic into human consciousness and interaction itself. Human relationships should be cherished, they are not a normal everyday occurrence, even though we're social creatures, built to experience them daily, we can still conceptualize them, and utilize them in a way not known to be possible in any other form of life, as far as we know. It's important to remember this, And it also allows us to appreciate the much simpler forms of life, animals, plants, insects, etc.

and for the usual outro segment regarding some of this stuff: Here's my usual parting statements.

If you'd like to interact with weirder people, or just learn more about people in general. Here are a couple of tips:

• most importantly, getting someone talking, if you can get someone to talk about the things that interest or bother them, or the things that they like. You will learn the most about them this way, as well as strike the most interesting and engaging conversations.
• finding people to talk to is a big one, obviously. I find that online communities will often have a lot of weirder people, the trick here is interacting with them 1 on 1. It's a lot harder to gauge it when people are conversing in a group setting, because there's a lot more going on, and it's just generally a simpler interaction. I've found on discord (i leave my DMs open, yes i know i'm insane.) That people will just show up in my DMs sometimes. It's great.
• In an IRL setting, people tend to group together, so you'll wanna find the weird group, not the small friend groups, the groups of people who just are. People who are alone can be iffy, sometimes they don't want to interact with others, it's best to respect that, other times they don't mind, personally i really don't mind.
• depending on your friends, mutual friends can be pretty interesting, it's worthwhile when it feels like it is.
• most important thing here, don't do it to be polite, do it because you think people are interesting and you're genuinely curious about learning about them, the faster you can get into a casual conversational tone the better. (people can tell, and often times, it's just not that interesting.)
• most relevant, there are a lot of weird people, be prepared for them, it's up to you how you deal with it, i just like to roll with it. It's interesting enough as is. Although keep in mind, ghosting people is often a dick move.

myself being a weird individual i've developed a pretty good "spidey sense" for people like this, i can generally pick them out of the group pretty quickly, and i will generally get along with them pretty well. Most people are already capable of this to a degree, being involved in normal society, the outliers are pretty obvious sometimes. It's the people between obvious and "just barely normal" that are interesting.

Years ago one of the nicest people i've ever met was just kind to be kind, literally no other reason. I will always remember them. They've taught me some of the most valuable information i will ever learn. Just be nice. It's incredible what it can do for other people. Genuinely one of the very few people i deeply respect, and consider to be a better person than i am.

This time i bothered to proof read it, standards are increasing here at KillingTimeItself Inc. :)

preambly bit, idk, i like these

I alluded to this in my last post, i didn't want to include it there mostly because i knew i would be typing a lot here, so here we are. If you don't have the time to read this, skip to the outro bit, i mashed my thoughts into a handful of sentences for you :)

intro

I've spent a lot of time recently, trying to narrow down my principled belief system, in order to really set a good foundation for me to build on. And i've learned some some interesting things that i think could be useful to other people.

I'm not a huge fan of opinions, i've never really liked them, anybody can hold whatever opinion they want, through things like satire they can used as a tool, so from the understanding of a belief structure, I.E. the thing that determines your ideological framework, and it's related friends. They're no good. I like to liken an opinion to a stubbed toe, a transient annoying event that ultimately in the grand scheme of things, is of little importance. The ability to change your own opinion, and even hold incorrect ones at times, is a valuable method of learning about the world around you, as it gives you a different perspective on things, as well as learning about yourself and your belief structures. As it allows you to think through them more completely, which is often what leads to strong principled beliefs.

When it comes to both beliefs and opinions, i think you should hold weaker more surface level opinions, for more casual conversational interaction. I think your beliefs should be much stronger, and personally experienced by you. What i mean by this, is that your opinions are what you present to other people. They are a mechanism of conversation/interaction. Your beliefs should be unique to you in a sense, they should be constructed based on your life experience and principles (i'll get into that later) they should provide the substance that your opinions are created out of.

principles are a broader belief, they are the underlying structure that creates beliefs. You can think of them like the most fundamental layer of an ideological framework, without them, there is no framework, there is no belief, your opinions are simply detached from you. A principle is something that you can almost universally believe, there should be almost no circumstances under which that principle is undermined by something. It's a foundational construction to a set of beliefs. It's what makes them integrate with each other properly.

nap time

now that we're familiar with what im talking about, i'd like to run through some more involved concepts here. (notably what i came to talk about in the first place)

iterating on the previous to provide an example and some actual philosophy of mine.

just to help illustrate this here's an example. My current primary principle in life, and what underlies my framework with which i operate under, is that the more options that people have, the better off they're going to be. Or in essence, "more options, is more beneficial" when you come to a conclusion where you are removing an option of something, from someone, i think it's important to carefully consider the potential impacts of these. In some cases, there is an extreme net positive to getting rid of an option, like murder. In other cases it's less so. This is just one of the ways i conceptualize current issues within the landscape.

Now to get at the core of my point here, i think it's important to hold strong principles, and likewise, i think it's important to hold strong beliefs as well. When you focus on principles and beliefs, it's harder to negatively influence other people, since you spend most of your time trying to understand it via your systemic framework. This often leads to the ability to quarantine certain opinions and statements, which is not only healthy for you, as you spend less time frothing over them. But healthier for others, as it allows you to present a different utility to that same opinion/statement. Which can be highly valuable to other people as well as yourself.

problems, potentially

There is one fairly significant issue you need to keep in mind however. Just having strong beliefs/principles doesn't make you a good person, nor does it make your life better. You need to be able to utilize these concepts much like anything else, in order to better yourself, and abilities. This is the reason i spent so much time covering the definitions of these terms, and it's why i covered the utility of it, as well as some of my personal framework. You need to understand why you believe the things you do, and you need to be able to comprehend them fully, in order to utilize them fully.

Now for a bit of shock here, it doesn't matter what you believe, or what someone else believes, because ultimately, belief is arbitrary, you can believe one thing is good/bad and another person can just not believe you it's rather ironic isn't it? This is why principles are a thing, they allow people to collectively agree about a certain underlying level of belief. The reason i mention this is that i think it's important for an individual to be capable of deconstructing their beliefs, reconstructing them, however it comes about. And then forming a solid framework for you to base your worldview on. While also being fully capable, and aware of the fact, that at any time, you can do this with any belief, principle, or opinion by nature.

why it matters

The reason why this is important is simple. Over time things bloat, change, and shift. You don't want to be left stuck with an inflexible framework, nor do you want to be captive to the whims of an existing structured system. Things will change, some of them you might not like, that's fine, that's what opinions are for. You can still take certain beliefs and principles from a certain group, or multiple even, to use to your advantage.

It's scary out there, and that's why we like predetermined systems. Building your own framework is difficult, tedious, and grueling, but often very liberating experience. I went through a period of disillusionment with politics a few years ago, this lead to me ignoring it broadly, while following the specifics, which then further turned into following what underlies the specifics, and eventually i got to where i am today. An individual with the independent ability to conceptualize the world, with no strings attached to anything. I did go through a period of what is essentially political nihilism, which bled into my surrounding world, which was admittedly, pretty spooky. It's very weird not having thoughts about anything. But that led to me developing the system i have now, which i will probably follow along with for the rest of my life.

outro ramblings, probably, as well as some personal wisdom.

man this is a long post, good thing i didn't get into it in the last one i guess. I just wanted to provide some context to the political systems we all to often find ourselves interacting with, without really having a full understanding of them, as well as philosophies of life, hopefully i provided something interesting to think about.

naturally this probably isn't for everyone, and to those people, i just recommend you keep in mind that most things you interact with, that are posed as ideologies, and frameworks, and methods of conceptualizing parts of the world, are often a lot more complicated, and involved than it seems. As humans we like to abstract and simplify things, it provides a certain utility to those things, but it can also cause the message to be lost in the sands of time. It's not always just about the part you're experiencing, or the part that someone else is experiencing, it's about the collective experience of the world between you and others. People with different ideologies and frameworks will often clash with each other, much like two people speaking different languages. Nothing here is universal.

also i didn't proof read this, it's late, i'm tired, and sweaty (summer months yay) yell at me if you find something thats weird or doesn't make sense.

I wrote this a long time ago. It might be insightful to some of you.

I'm back again, after a few weeks, have had some time to mull over my thoughts and i've been bothered by something recently so figured, i'd dump it here since this place is pretty slick.

I see a lot of people engaging with certain things e.g. politics (this isn't about politics dw) on a very surface level manner, and i have a few problems with it, i'm not getting into the meta problems here since it's not about politics. But i will get into the more social problems i have with it.

The biggest problem that i have with it is that it promotes an unhealthy level of interaction with topics and concepts, it promotes focusing on the optics more so than the underlying mechanics which can lead to you having incredibly shallow beliefs (another topic i'll probably come back to in a later post) which can undermine your belief structure. As well as leading to you feeling or believing that you are accomplishing something, when in reality all you're doing is yelling at someone on the internet. Anger is an incredibly powerful emotion, that's why it's been commoditized so often.

Most of the time, when you end up engaging in this kind of rhetoric, it is intentional, not on your side ironically but on the side of social function of it's purpose. Let's take an example from history, the salem witch trials are a perfect example of this problem. From a social aspect, the purpose is to exert control over society. It's understood differently from a personal view, and that's intentional.

Try to be conscious of how you interact with people, especially those in group settings. Try to speak for a purposeful manner. It's important that the collective meaning of the words you convey primarily go towards improving things. Now i'm not saying that you shouldn't have fun with your friends, goof around, be silly and just generally have a good time, that's different we're humans and we're social creatures, it's important to do that as well. I'm just saying that it's important to be conscious of what you're consuming, how you're contemplating it, how you respond to it, and most importantly how you engage with other people.

Don't think too hard about the things you see online that irk you, ultimately in the grand scheme of things, they mean nothing and they will never amount to nothing. It's more important that you try and genuinely interact with other people, the most powerful force of change is human interaction. Oh and if you find yourself engaging in this, don't be hard on yourself, just be consciously aware of it and it's impacts.

A classic from Cracked. I even blogged about it back in the day

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15004731

Found here, where the image also has the text as an ALT image description. https://chaos.social/@saxnot/112349120606446433

i regret to inform you that you have probably created one of the more interesting communities to me, and i will almost certainly be back. I have a lot of thoughts in regards to living life to a productively healthy state. anyway, for the first post, since it's late and i have things to be doing, I'll be keeping this short.

I believe that in order to mutually benefit other people in a positive manner, I.E. positively impact others lives. That you must be happy and fulfilled yourself, much like maslows hierarchy of needs. You must first be content and happy with your life, before you can extend it to other people.

Tonight's message is that indulging in selfish behaviors can be productive, you just need to know when to apply them.

Too much of society is focused on how you can benefit others, or be collectively productive for society, rather than allowing you to grow as an individual. Which often times benefits society greatly.