SSO: Deep Thoughts

[TedEH]

Doing hard things makes you more resilient and more able to do other hard things.

I don't think this is true. It makes for a nice feel-good proverbial type thing to say, but it's not literally true. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Putting aside physical exercise, there are countless examples of folks out there who, instead of being strengthened by hard things, are just weathered down by them. I came from a family and a community with their fair share of folks who struggled and who continue to struggle. They should be super-heroes, but they are not. Struggle often just begets more struggle.

When I say "we invent our needs", I'm talking about purpose. I'm talking cosmic "need", not survival. As in the world would go on without us. As in, yes, we need to eat to survive, but the vast majority of our motivations are entirely arbitrary and constructed. As in the only reason struggle is required of anyone at this point is that we've made it that way on purpose. As in, it's counter-productive to make struggle a pre-requisite for progress or quality of life. I don't think value is naturally associated with struggle. I don't need to have climbed a mountain in order to think that the view from the top is nice to look at. I don't need to have cooked something myself for it to taste good. I don't need an artist to have starved on the street to create a masterpiece. There is no need to require that folks struggle before being granted some amount of comfort.

It's like the whole diamonds thing - where folks for some reason insist on "real" diamonds instead of lab made ones despite being identical - because people arbitrarily decided that they wanted the associated struggle. That was a choice. Somone out there had to make the internal calculation that "I don't want this shiny rock unless it was mined by child slaves." There's no intrinsic or objective value in that, but there is a clear harm.

 

[CleansingCarnage]

I don't think this is true. It makes for a nice feel-good proverbial type thing to say, but it's not literally true. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Putting aside physical exercise, there are countless examples of folks out there who, instead of being strengthened by hard things, are just weathered down by them. I came from a family and a community with their fair share of folks who struggled and who continue to struggle. They should be super-heroes, but they are not. Struggle often just begets more struggle.

When I say "we invent our needs", I'm talking about purpose. I'm talking cosmic "need", not survival. As in the world would go on without us. As in, yes, we need to eat to survive, but the vast majority of our motivations are entirely arbitrary and constructed. As in the only reason struggle is required of anyone at this point is that we've made it that way on purpose. As in, it's counter-productive to make struggle a pre-requisite for progress or quality of life. I don't think value is naturally associated with struggle. I don't need to have climbed a mountain in order to think that the view from the top is nice to look at. I don't need to have cooked something myself for it to taste good. I don't need an artist to have starved on the street to create a masterpiece. There is no need to require that folks struggle before being granted some amount of comfort.

It's like the whole diamonds thing - where folks for some reason insist on "real" diamonds instead of lab made ones despite being identical - because people arbitrarily decided that they wanted the associated struggle. That was a choice. Somone out there had to make the internal calculation that "I don't want this shiny rock unless it was mined by child slaves." There's no intrinsic or objective value in that, but there is a clear harm.

You're confusing ought with is, and ironically imposing your own constructed moral and ethical sensibilities on nature. You're right that struggle doesn't necessarily make one stronger, but there is no way to become stronger except through struggle. There is in fact no way to achieve any goal except through struggle, because by definition a goal implies a beginning state bereft of the desired result, an end state where the desired result has been achieved, and a process of meeting the requisite needs in order to attain that level of achievement.

In order to achieve a goal of increasing quality of life for any number of people and to the extent that we have so far, people have had to struggle. Sometimes those who struggle are not those who benefit, but struggle they have.

You don't need to climb a mountain to appreciate the view - but the mountain itself is a product of millions of years of tectonic forces relentlessly colliding into each other, and you wouldn't know what it looked like from the top if someone else didn't climb it and take a picture or convey you up through their own toil.

You don't have to cook something yourself in order for it to taste good - but if there's no one else to cook for you, you do. And unless you're able to manifest things through magic, if you've ever eaten a meal that tasted good, someone else struggled to make it for you.

You don't need an artist to have starved on the street in order to create a masterpiece, but unless that artist understands struggle and the human condition, they'll only be able to create banal tripe. Perhaps a genius with the power of imagination to conceive of that level of struggle without personally going through it themselves will be able to create such a masterpiece, but then again, genius in itself conveys its own struggles, and in any case they'll at some point have to undertake the work of rendering their opus out of their chosen medium.

You exist because your mother carried you to term, and delivered you through labor. If you value your existence, you will struggle to maintain it. And if you choose not to, then you yourself have ascribed your life no value and proven the rule. This is not a prescription of a moral or ethical truth, nor does it even posit that such a thing exists. It simply is.

 

[crushingpetal]

Nobody said exactly that, but Logos was most popularly originally used by Hercalitus to approximately mean the way of the world. There are a few of his elaborations which equate it to the infinite wisdom of the gods, but then later Aristotle seems to equate it most as the truth of a man's complete place in the complete world. Colloquially it generally refers to what is true regardless of what is known or understood, or a wisdom of divine proportion without necessarily a divine personality. Logos is the truing block and meter of all reality to measure our formulated logic, basically. The stoics are probably the most popular to use the term in this way, though at least Senica did gladly embellish the hand of God for emphasis in the same breath IIRC.

Nice, thanks!

 

[wheresthefbomb]

The view from the top is all the more sweet for the struggle of having climbed the mountain. That's not a feel-good proverb, that's directly apprehended experiential knowledge obtained by climbing mountains. Ditto for cooking my own food, making art I can be proud of, learning new skills, and generally engaging in the practice of surpassing myself.

 

[Randy]

Endorphins are a thing that exist.

 

[TedEH]

I have many deep thoughts for the deep thought thread this morning, apparently.

There is in fact no way to achieve any goal except through struggle, because by definition a goal implies a beginning state bereft of the desired result, an end state where the desired result has been achieved, and a process of meeting the requisite needs in order to attain that level of achievement.

What? That's not even close to true. If it's my goal to eat a sandwich, I just eat that sandwich. That's not a struggle. It was my goal to reply to this point, and it wasn't a struggle to do so. Not all work is struggle. It was not a struggle to walk across my kitchen to the toaster this morning. It was not a struggle to butter my toast. It was a token amount of effort, but effort is not equivalent to struggle.

You don't need to climb a mountain to appreciate the view - but the mountain itself is a product of millions of years of tectonic forces relentlessly colliding into each other, and you wouldn't know what it looked like from the top if someone else didn't climb it and take a picture or convey you up through their own toil.

Mountains don't feel emotion, so they do not, by definition, struggle. And you could just as easily fly a drone up there and not climb anything at all. A drone that was very likely constructed from simple principles by an automated process, so its creation was not a struggle.

You don't have to cook something yourself in order for it to taste good - but if there's no one else to cook for you, you do

If the person who cooked it did so easily and enjoyed doing so, then there was no struggle involved. If they could afford it without a problem, then that wasn't a struggle either. It's pretty commonplace that people who make more money don't work as hard, so earning the money to buy the food wasn't a struggle.

but unless that artist understands struggle and the human condition, they'll only be able to create banal tripe.

This is nonsense of the highest order. It's about as on-the-nose you can get to my point about how struggle is romanticized. "Your art will be bad if you didn't struggle for it" is nothing but a dumb narrative we tell ourselves. Not a shred of it is true. It's such a weird thing to claim some kind of objective requirement for something like art, which is supposed to be objective in its value almost by definition.

In any of these situations, you have to reach pretty far and invent a reason for any kind of struggle to be absolutely necessary, when it's just as easy to reach in the other direction to show why it wasn't necessary at all.

It simply is.

Nothing simply is. That's such a cop out. You're talking about it like it's some natural force of nature, and it's not. It's 101% a constructed viewpoint that only exists because people insist on it.

The best I can guess is that you seem to think that any amount of effort or work immediately qualifies as "struggle", without qualifying it with a level of difficulty or strain or coercion, restraint, resistance, suffering, etc., that are usually associated with the concept of "struggle".

Joe wanted cake, so he walked to the store: Not a struggle.
Joe wanted cake, but his leg was broken, so it took him a long time, and his leg was very sore, but he managed to walk to the store: this IS struggle.

There is no reason to claim Joe doesn't deserve that cake because he didn't suffer through a broken leg to get it. Joe can have the cake. Don't be a jerk to Joe.

Then replace that rhetoric with something more real-world.

Joe wanted to live in an apartment, so he rented it with the money he inherited. He uses his free time to put out a hit indie album.
Joe wanted to live in an apartment, but he has no money and no work experience, so he goes to school, accumulated crippling debt, still landed at a minimum wage job, and so now he rents a bachelor that smells funny in a sketchy part of town, but hey, it's something. He has no time for music.

Does either situation warrant a claim that they don't deserve a home? Shouldn't, by this definition of struggle that drives everything, the person who struggled more be more valuable and in a better position? Are we going to claim that working the harder job, taking more school, etc., are not a real enough struggle compared to the struggle of living in a family you inherit stuff from, and the struggle of having free time to create art?

The math ain't mathing, as the kids might say.

You could more easily convince me that the struggle=value idea is a conservative tactic to avoid the kinds of change that would make life easier for everyone because it would diminish their own advantages. You can see it play out that way in real time in such closed-thread posts as "it wouldn't be fair to give THEM something when I earned it legitimately". Which is typically backed up with claims that THEY are lazy and haven't actually struggled at all. MY advantage is PROOF that I struggled and therefor deserve it. I did my time. But they didn't succeed yet, so therefor they must not have done the work, that's the only logical reason a person could be in a worse position, right? Work = struggle = success. Therefor if you don't have success, you didn't struggle, because you didn't work. Why aren't you putting in the effort, lazy bum?

"But the world isn't fair, that's just how it is" I can hear someone thinking, through the void. And once again, "it is what is is" is a cop out. Things are the way they are for reasons. People, cumulatively, made choices, knowingly, deliberately, or otherwise, that led to the current state of things in terms of how we value other people. It wasn't an accident, it wasn't some force of nature or an act of god - we constructed it, one way or another, just as we construct anything else.

"But it feels nice to accomplish things."
It also feels nice not to needlessly struggle.

 

[budda]

Man this was your guys friday night, hope you all had guitars in laps at least.

“We thought divine right of kings would never end too” leaving that here.

 

[CleansingCarnage]

Joe wanted to live in an apartment, so he rented it with the money he inherited. He uses his free time to put out a hit indie album.
Joe wanted to live in an apartment, but he has no money and no work experience, so he goes to school, accumulated crippling debt, still landed at a minimum wage job, and so now he rents a bachelor that smells funny in a sketchy part of town, but hey, it's something. He has no time for music.

Does either situation warrant a claim that they don't deserve a home? Shouldn't, by this definition of struggle that drives everything, the person who struggled more be more valuable and in a better position? Are we going to claim that working the harder job, taking more school, etc., are not a real enough struggle compared to the struggle of living in a family you inherit stuff from, and the struggle of having free time to create art?

The math ain't mathing, as the kids might say.

I couldn't have been more clear in my last post that what I was saying wasn't a moral or ethical pronouncement, and that it has nothing to do with what anyone "deserves". Again, just because you struggle doesn't mean you will benefit, and just because you benefit from struggle doesn't mean it was your own. Your entire point of contention is irrelevant and addresses nothing I've said.

Again, you can say that my worldview is constructed, but yours quite literally requires magic and isn't possible without viewing any single event in a vacuum of all cause and effect. Things like drones and automated factories and toasters and inheritances don't just magically exist wherever you need them without anyone having to contend with anything at absolutely any point along the process of their creation, nor does their existence confer an absolution of any kind of struggle or suffering for anyone but you, if you happen to be the lucky one who benefits from their luxury without having to expend any kind of effort on your part.

 

[crushingpetal]

“We thought divine right of kings would never end too” leaving that here.

One of my many hobby horse issues is this: can you even understand the number of childrens books that stil feature kings? Peer into that conceptual landscape for a second.

Historically, kings were absolute tyrants, the worst of humanity. But their propaganda was to convice everyone that they were special. Childrens books still propagate that myth.

(I know I'm a wacko, but even when I see a young child dressed up as a king or queen I can't help but think to myself, "What, are you a despot? Are you going to take my land?" Don't worry, I'm under enough control to not say this out loud.)

 

[budda]

One of my many hobby horse issues is this: can you even understand the number of childrens books that stil feature kings? Peer into that conceptual landscape for a second.

Historically, kings were absolute tyrants, the worst of humanity. But their propaganda was to convice everyone that they were special. Childrens books still propagate that myth.

(I know I'm a wacko, but even when I see a young child dressed up as a king or queen I can't help but think to myself, "What, are you a despot? Are you going to take my land?" Don't worry, I'm under enough control to not say this out loud.)

Mr Rogers had king Friday so that’ll be some unpacking in this house.

The hell do you replace it with though

 

[Seabeast2000]

Hour damocraatee.
.....sorry I was eating crackers.. Ahem, you replace a king with another king or small group thereof. Might have a different name but they are just harder to blame that way.

 

[BlackMastodon]

Mountains don't feel emotion, so they do not, by definition, struggle. And you could just as easily fly a drone up there and not climb anything at all. A drone that was very likely constructed from simple principles by an automated process, so its creation was not a struggle.

My brother in djod, you work in video game dev, you know goddamn well that no product goes to market without any number of struggles along the process, and that's ignoring the century of developments in the field of personal flight to get to the point where we have little remote controlled flying high def cameras that are simple enough for children to us. The straws you are grasping at here are so thin and it all boils down to the semantics of "work" vs "effort" vs "struggle". Philisophy (or whatever fun, dumb, flavour of pseudo-philosphy that we engage in here in this thread) is usually an inch or 2 deeper than the words written on the page.

 

[wheresthefbomb]

Man this was your guys friday night, hope you all had guitars in laps at least.

“We thought divine right of kings would never end too” leaving that here.

I'm always down for some antics.

 

[Randy]

Soroptimist Prime

 

[TedEH]

Y'all nitpicked the most irrelevant parts, and completely dodged engaging with the point. Cool cool. Nevermind.

 

[nightflameauto]

Ya'lls girls need the politics shit back so ya have somewhere to target your need to fight about every little misunderstanding. Deep Thoughts don't strike me as a subject ripe for spats, but well, here we are. Here we are.

 

[Randy]

Ya'lls girls

Drew, is that you?

Healthy reminder to anyone reading btw, *ahem* current event adjacent threads are spread throughout the still open subforums and so far nobody has been banned for posting in them.

 

[mastapimp]

Drew, is that you?

Healthy reminder to anyone reading btw, *ahem* current event adjacent threads are spread throughout the still open subforums and so far nobody has been banned for posting in them.

Haven't seen any posts from that guy since the thread was shut down. Did he get banned? Or better yet, taken out by a rogue wave whilst being the manliest of men?

 

[SalsaWood]

As I understand it the power that be doesn't have an issue with P&CE, he has an issue with folks expecting him to sort it out. That's fair in my opinion, though the definite explanation was severely lacking.

BUT

Here we are.

 

[Randy]

Haven't seen any posts from that guy since the thread was shut down. Did he get banned? Or better yet, taken out by a rogue wave whilst being the manliest of men?

He did get banned, yes. That was the silver lining.