Wednesday is looking to be a cloudy and rainy day, so maybe it will be more of an indoor catching up day, wonder if I should work on taxes some.. So far it’s a slowish start with some various catching up and home chores.
I’m still trying to combine recent threads of relationships, dating, loneliness epidemic, the collapse of the american dream, finances/human economous, delusional expectations of relationships/friendships, etc…
But this is huge issue in so many directions… and after exploring some kevin samuels and other dating landscape type videos… the situation might have gotten much worse and more spread out… AND this isn’t even really considering the effects of 1 year of pandemic isolation, there’s starting to be some inklings of research of theories of the psychological and societal effects from it, but most people are still quite oblivious to it or downplaying/not thinking about the cultural/societal effects..
A lot of this stuff isn’t new, and I was tracking the loneliness epidemic more closely before the pandemic hit… but now with less in person exposure for me to get a tangible feel for others and society. I have noticed I’m also getting a bit less sharp and clear.
This quote from Peterson’s recent interview with Bret Weinstein seems to explain the dynamic, or maybe the need of humans to have broad in person social interactions with variety of others.
Deef
Other people tap you back into shape and you’re surrounded by a kind of random assortment of other people in the real world, because you didn’t select them. So because it’s random, it provides you with, what is in essence, relatively unbiased feedback information.
I have retreated from other groups because of my own mental drain from virtual platforms, along with maybe a bit of exhaustion from every week schedule for a year now. I’m guessing that I spend more time tracking and trying to tend to my mental state than most people. So my guess is that others are less aware, and just diving their mind into work, and mental escapes to cope and get through this extended period of isolation.
The upside is that people are getting more alone time, forcing them to reflect, and spend more time with close family. Figure out what’s important, etc. But the downside might be some sort of new echo chamber effect, along with time distortion of too much digital exposure.
I revisited the 6/6/20 zoom meeting youtube link here on relationships, belonging, community & loneliness, and wow, I think I was mentally sharper back then, or more aggressive and confident. Or it could be flipped that I’m more nuanced now, and artfully do more invisible ghost warfare?
This meeting was back when I was using slides and maybe more lecture style format, and wow the slides covered a broad range… almost like think tank research type of stuff, but broken down in practically too..
Here’s link to the sides: https://bit.ly/2AHjVzN
and 2 screen caps:

Pulling from Vivek Murthy’s book… 3 dimensions of loneliness,… but with sorta simplistic antidote/fix… just human connection… of which then a bigger purpose that community calls out of each individual.. society is still sorta lacking this… with covid, it’s mask up and follow the rules to contribute to community… or volunteer a little.. but bleh.. that’s all fuzzy…
the larger thing.. is alienation.. of which I’d place blame on capitalism, finances, and economics.. if everyone’s out for themselves to survive economically, and only being seen or valued due to economic input.. that’s a cold and harsh world to be living in..

So if society loses it’s soul to the market (vaknin made this observation a few years ago, capitalism and democracy yields to the market as it’s God, and that’s inherently NOT human). Where older societies with monarch figure head, they would still play the subjective role of humanizing agent for the masses…
Once society allows market forces to be in charge of everything.. then you have these distortions in the market with massive disruptions like economic bubbles and global pandemic, etc.. And maybe with Moloch market as who’s in control of the countries and the world… then people are searching for religion in other places.. Academia… love relationships, ideology, culture change, etc. etc.
This excerpt from John Vervaeke caught my attention, but also surprised me that his marriage got broken up with his pursuit of knowledge/growth, with him admitting that he treated his marriage like a religion…
5m36s
the problem is because of the decadent romanticism of our culture
we basically try to turn our romantic relationships into a religion
we put tremendous pressure on them and they really can’t bear it
we should stop doing that we need other things
i’m guilty of that too, i do it, i’ve done it recently and it’s been problematic
and i have to take a step back and go oh crap i’m doing that
i speak about this and here i am doing it right and
so all of this stuff you’re going to lose relationships
Of which, I just read that Justin Bieber might be doing the same to his wife.. worshipping her as a God, sounds good on the surface, but that golden projection is a lot of pressure and it gets in the way of seeing her as she really is, and as a fellow human.

Or you could skip the religious framing, and say it’s a projection of parent upon your loved partner… which is emotional regression… or a sign of excess immaturity…
…. ok.. enough of that exploration, it’s a messy topic and sorta dives into the collapse of society.. or maybe we’ve already started WW3, but this one will be more economic and psychological.. internal war…
circling back to Thais Gibson suggestion by Eric
EricD several I have watched were pretty good
It could seem that we had some pretty strong and quite critical reactions to her video…. which could easily be taken as a surprise response to someone you found with ‘pretty good’ content….
This is a strength that BPD’s have with communicating with their audience, and pulling at the heart strings.. or modelling that fragile part of emotional sensitivity to the masses…. that’s a good skillset they have, and can be directed for good, along with me still wondering how to copy this super-power of theirs? How to expand my skillset, or use their hack of social intimacy into something more useful, or less parasitic…
But on the flip side I dunno, this might also be part of the territory of woke culture’s dangerous move towards destroying language and definitions…. which is a slippery slope of playing with fire… each little tweak seems like a small ask and framed as being compassionate or comforting.. but it just continues and continues until language now becomes over focused on controlling the emotional state of the other person, and the actual accuracy of the words to help you speak your voice and think out loud, becomes secondary to forgotten…
This might be another trap codependents can easily fall for, with the common conflict aversion… but all this does, is just transfer conflict into the domain of psychological, spiritual and shadow warfare… conflict and aggression is part of human nature, and when people have different values and needs, conflict is part of our innate survival instincts.
Arguing things out by talking with others was the traditional way of avoiding physical conflict or war. Making it harder and harder for people to speak freely, is the path to internalized violence, with spurts of acted out lone shooter mass killings.