The problem (for me) is when the "norm" becomes something imposed entirely externally -- in other words, when I have no say in what I'm "supposed" to want, in how I'm "supposed" to live....

There is this idea that there's something "wrong" with you if you're not completely enamored with the marriage/kids/house/good ol'-fashioned American value system....the underlying implication being that there is no acceptable alternative.

And -- for most people -- there really isn't. THAT'S the sad thing. No one wants anything to do with you if you insist on doing your own thinking.

Thank you! And same to you!



(Stalkers always welcome....!)

I've always felt that our concept of "love" is really more of an attempt to somehow ennoble the "blind biological urge" -- to be able to perceive it as something "more" than a reproductive instinct. To somehow pigeonhole the whole thing into a tiny little box (where it doesn't fit at all, without a lot of twisting and cutting and compressing and eye-shutting) so that it becomes a neat little package -- something that can be glorified and idealized in a 90-minute movie.

When something like this becomes institutionalized to the point that it generates a spate of mindless cliches -- such as "There's someone for everybody" or "It'll happen when you stop looking" --
you can pretty much bet that it's firmly enough ensconced into the zeitgeist that there's no way to retrieve it and get people to see it as anything other than the well-scrubbed paradigm they've come to know and "love."

Yeah, but you have kids, you know the rules....!

Jumping into a river full of piranhas is also irrational. I see no point in romanticizing that....and, for me, "love" has never really been any different than jumping into a river full of piranhas. So we're back to "your mileage may vary." Let's just say I have yet to find anyone who was truly interested in the sort of relationship I would like to be in. I don't think such a person exists. I could be wrong about that, but it's likely I will go to my grave without finding any such person. I think it's more rational to accept the inevitable than to fight against reality.

There was a point when I had something in my profile about how I was looking for someone who wanted to be a team with me, a whole greater than the sum of its parts, someone who got the gist of the "you and me against the world" thing -- even though, in the end, the world always wins, because they have better weapons.



I'm saying that's not necessarily a good thing.



It was a reference to your earlier comments re: faith and religion being the roots of "right" and "wrong."



It gives us the right to say "I have no personal evidence to support this idea." Anecdotal evidence aside -- and there's plenty of that, regardless of what the topic is, because people like to be contrarians -- I have nothing I can reference to support it. I'm not (technically) saying "It doesn't exist." I'm saying "I have no way of knowing whether it exists or not, but, based on my own personal history, it's not looking good."

There's the old "what if?" example about how there could be a tiny little cup and saucer orbiting the Earth, but no one has ever seen it. So should I believe it's there?



See, the problem now becomes the fact that different people have different opinions on what is possible. And they reach those conclusions by radically different means, sometimes. Who's to say A is right and B is wrong? But this also needs to be self-determined.



In one person's opinion.

From a statistical standpoint, there is little difference between my odds of becoming a tomato and my being on the moon. It's a bit like saying "This cat will miraculously turn into a yacht" vs. "This yacht will spontaneously collapse into a pile of wood." One is thematically more feasible, but the likelihood is negligible either way.



Humans have a bizarre need to see cause and effect where there really isn't any. I'm not one to encourage that sort of thing.



That is what I perceive to be reality. Being depressed about reality is like being depressed about ordinal numbers.




No, with my way of thinking, I would save my dog.



There can be no across-the-board answer to this. Everyone will have their own take on it. Mine just doesn't happen to coincide with the majority's.



No I'm questioning your premise. It's not criticism. You haven't actually seen me criticize anything in this topic yet.



I had that hope, for a long time. Many years.

What I saw was that it was a false hope.

I hope it turns out not to be a false hope for you.

I hope it turns out not to be a false hope for everyone else here.

But my reality has been that it is, in fact and inevitably, a false hope.

I choose not to live in a state of delusion anymore.

You've described a chain of irrationality.



That's the problem -- you're building a case on the pre-existing concept that the human race is inherently worth something. My point is that I don't know if that's the case or not. Being human, I have a somewhat vested interest in the answer, therefore I tend to lean in the direction that there is something "good" underneath it all. But my more rational side wants to be more objective about it.

"Right" and "wrong" are just terms used to create value judgments for selected people/things/concepts in selected circumstances. Again, if you go in thinking that it's "right" to do whatever is best for the most people in a given situation, you've nullified objectivity and given into the "vested interest" proposition. I'm not saying that's "bad" or "wrong" (this is entirely a matter of one's own perspective), I'm just saying it creates an intrinsic bias.



Then let me rephrase that. Giving up means giving up on something that I have found pointless and useless and, more often than not, painful. Relationships exist, yes. I've been there. I know how it works. It isn't worth it. I'm not saying relationships don't exist -- I'm saying "love" -- in the sense of two people, united together as a team, truly caring and supportive of each other, through good and bad -- THAT doesn't exist.

Maybe it does and I just have never seen it. I've never seen a Yeti or a leprechaun or a Martian. I'm not looking for them, either, and maybe they DO exist -- but, in the end, whether they do or not is irrelevant to me now.



No. If I believe I am on the moon, I will not be on the moon, no matter how much I believe it. J. Richard Gott wrote, in his book "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe": "I might wish right now to instantly become a tomato larger than the entire universe, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot do it."

I know it's become SOP for people to pass on the touchy-feely-warm-and-fuzzy-eco-friendly-new-age-folderol as if it contained some sort of cosmic knowledge, but it doesn't. It's just drivel designed to placate the masses.



Destined by who? Or by what? I have a problem with this -- as I've seen nothing to indicate "destiny" has any more validity than "love." The more you pile this stuff up, the more obvious the impending collapse.

No fate. No destiny. No karma. No steering. No meaning to life, other than that which we assign to it ourselves.



Delusion. (My opinion.)



It's not the same. There's no universally-accepted unit of measurement. We know what a dollar is, we know what a Euro is. Love has no statistics.



I'm not offended at all; it's rare that anyone posts something that allows me to express this sort of thing. For that, I'm greatly appreciative.

But I would submit that you're watering down the "love" concept here -- I'm talking about "romantic love," per se, not "I love my parrot."



OK, it can. But -- to use your examples -- I don't have a dog or a son or grandparents (or any family or friends at all, anymore, to be honest) -- so those sorts of loves are not open to me.

And I can say "I love writing" and be perfectly comfortable with that -- but the feeling it generates is nothing at all like I have ever experienced or imagined "romantic love" to be -- I find it annoying, actually, that I end up using the same word ("love") in both instances, because it simply isn't expressing what I mean in an effective way.....

But that's a semantics issue. What I'm really getting at is that there are those of us who simply have chosen to withdraw from the ostensible "playing field" -- not out of spite, not out of malice, but out of exhaustion and the desire not to be immolated anymore beyond what we've already been through. I don't see why anyone should consider that a bad thing....

So, without religion, there would be no government and no laws? I have no idea where you could be getting that from. I've seen plenty of "Law and Order" type shows, and other than the oath that the witness takes before testifying, there isn't a whole heck of a lot of religious talk going on there.

"Right" and "wrong" are mere expedient designations; i.e., what is "good" for a certain group and what is "bad" for said group. They are flexible terms and have no immutable definitions.



But this, of course, is necessarily an individual experience, with individualistic results -- and consequences. There is no "blanket answer" here. I can only speak for myself and my own life.

And I choose not to see giving up as a "negative" at all -- would it be a negative to give up smoking, drinking, drugs, jumping off the roof onto a bed of nails, etc.? There are things we give up because we can no longer justify the NEGATIVES they bring to our lives. How is giving up on a negative, a negative? Contradiction in terms, at best....



Belief is not reality.

I have felt it. It was not good. I choose to eliminate it from my life. But what was I really burnt by? My belief. That's all. Nothing more. My belief that there was something out there.

Ergo -- no one to blame but myself. And my naivete.



Wealth is measurable, to some extent.



It is a mistake to try to impose your own standards of "what's life for?" on other people.

I am here to create things, because I am driven to do that. I do not require anyone else for that -- I can do it just fine on my own.

If you're telling me that creating things has no value because it is done in the absence of a caring, monogamous framework, I would say your definitions are far far too narrow.

Please allow me the courtesy of deciding for myself what my reasons for being here are, and whether or not those reasons are valid. I certainly will not be trying to impose my standards on you, or anyone else.



I'm not done creating yet.



True enough, there are those things that hold major value in my life.

None of them are human, though.

My choice.

!

Sad, I suppose, but true -- for me, anyway...!

I reached the conclusion that no one can "make" me happy. I have to "make" that determination on my own. And, in the long run, it's a mistake to let anyone else have any say in the process....

I would say it's delusional. If you look for your happiness in other people, you are going to be disappointed. Over and over and over. Happiness -- in my opinion -- must be entirely self-derived, self-generated, and self-rooted. No one should put that kind of responsibility or expectation on another person.

Hardly.

People are frequently and seriously impacted by things that have no tangible, measurable existence.

Otherwise, there would be no such thing as religion....

The underlying issue isn't whether or not it affects us. The underlying issue is whether or not we can cope with the reality that we've allowed ourselves to be twisted and mangled by something that, in the end, can never be demonstrably proven either way.

I simply chose not to play that game anymore. It's lose-lose -- there's no incentive to participate further.

Your mileage may vary.

‎"I never use the word, it's loaded. What love means to me is need."

-- John Cale

I've got nothing....!

I would like to point out that the "I'm cranky" rant, when done properly, is an art form.

But even that one acronyms out to S.A.D. --

We may just thwart that voodoo priest after all!

But let's not tell him....

Everybody's mom thinks I'm cute. That's what I get for mocking that voodoo priest....

As Freud said, "Sometimes a wombat is just a wombat."

I do note, with some trepidation, that "wombat" does contain the word "womb."

No problem! I hope she likes Arby's....!

My parents have been dead for many years, so conversation on that subject is usually very brief.



Agreed, I'd prefer someone who had something with a little substance to say. Compliments are great but I'm more interested in being understood.



The cleavage shots always strike me as desperate and pathetic. Of course, I'm not a boob guy, so a cleavage pic is just slightly less likely to draw me in than a pic of a wombat wearing a kimono.



One of the bizarre things that I've noticed in past relationships is that their mothers almost always end up liking me more than my girlfriends do. This is just wrong, and indicates that the world is a completely messed-up place.



I never ever have any trouble coming up with something to say. But most of my exes had the intellectual/conversational skills of a 17th century umbrella stand, so things ended up being boring and one-sided. And, after three months, all any of them wanted to talk about was how much they needed to have a baby.