Great comment Jake. I can see that it just rolled off of your fingers, even though each sentence is deeply soaked in meaning – like Tolkiens writings. It’s not quick plot twists that you can speed read and skim; you could chew on each sentence for as long as you care.
That comes from a contemplated life.
The inevitability of moral decisions, for all decisions have a moral component. Perhaps that is what moral relativists are running from?
As an example, my relationship with V.
The eternal connundrum. A pretty young sincere virginal woman who wants nothing else but to marry you, and will use every possible means of seduction to get that aim, including at first forgiving other lovers – or even perhaps allowing them.
But in the end it comes down to a conflict of interest. How can we not be empathological and give in to monogamy? Or are we being psychopathic by refusing?
It’s a conflict of interest; there is no moral solution to a conflict of interest.
It’s naive, and I’d say a naivete born from inexperience, that could posit that free will absolves the moral dimension. “just tell her the truth and let her decide”
Doesn’t work. Try it. She will STILL want monogamous marriage, and STILL feel huge pain that will STILL deeply damage her mind and her future.
Exactly as you say; there is no ultimate frame of reference. That’s the inevitable phiolosopy of science. Science itself is embedded in our biology. Our personal frame of reference is inescapable, and there is no ultimate morality – no amount of empathy gets us to an omnicient point of view that is best for everyone.
There is no best for everyone.
And yet to attract women, we need empathy.
And so to love others, while at the same time being honest to our own true nature, we must cause horrible and possibly life damaging hurt.
Moral relativists might want to run from something, but we’re all dragged eventually into the inevitability of moral relativism. It’s the exact place that humans by our nature can not abide. The very place of uncertainty; agnostacism at it’s easiest and lazy-sloppiest, multi-perspectivism once in sharper big picture focus.. Either way, morals lose a single perspective the longer you look at them. This does nothing to dull the pain of causing suffering, or of compromising to suffer oneself.
JakeS said:
I’m currently unable to formulate an adequate comment, so I’ll just leave this here:
https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/readers-submissions/2018/09/an-essay-cancer-in-bangkok-cancer-in-boston/
The guy is dying, maybe just weeks to live. He just wants to watch pretty girls. Somehow it struck me as relevant, and poignant.
xsplat said:
Dana is dying? I used to read his writing and even correspond with him by email back when I also submitted some submissions to stickmanbangkok.
I always respected his writing – and while I’m not into trannies like he is, kind of liked that he was so far out and open in his persuit of kink.
I just got back into reading the readers submissions last week, and found a few other good writers that weren’t active back when I was – about 2004 and 5. I used two different names, but I can’t remember the 2nd one. Here is one post https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/readers-submissions/2005/12/face-guile-and-the-commerce-of-living/
It’s so common for me to hear that people I respect are now dead. Sometimes I get sad about it – I had a moody day a few months ago, where loss was the theme – after deciding to stop seeing N. It was one of those days where movies would make water come out of my eyes, seemingly for not much reason. Losing people that I love or have been influenced by is a real bummer – and it just seems to keep happening all the time. People just keep dying – all the time! Dropping like flies.
I made sure to see my Father recently. I told him that he’s kind of the love of my life, that it sucks that I might not see him before he dies, so that finally got him off his ass and onto a plane. It was an incredible visit – wow, I really love that guy – I could imagine being best friends with him if I just met him and he wasn’t my Dad. I’m so blessed to have him as my Dad, even if we actually didn’t spend all that much quality time together throughout my life. That was so important to me to see him – if he dies, at least I have that. But he seems to be quite vigorous, at 82. So lucky to have my Dad be my hero, even after all the years.
I don’t think I’m usually moody or negative or dwell on loss, but I do get waves of it or cycles. Strangely I’ll still get waves of missing V. She’ll show up, crystal clear and vivid in every detail, in dreams. Saw her just last night in one. It was a sad and heartbreaking dream, and the sadness spilled over into the day.
I can’t remember anyone actually ever breaking up with me and staying broken up with me before. Seems so totally foreign to me – and I don’t really ever get over anyone. I still pretty much love all my exe’s and don’t even consider them ex. Most of them would still fuck me if I met them – that’s my normal. For me love simply doesn’t die – ever. But I can’t remember heartbreak lasting longer than two years though, and missing V is much more bearable than it was originally. Must be boring to hear about it, but it helps me to share it, somehow. I was just thinking today that that girl gave me her heart and body and soul and did absolutely everyhing in her power to make me love her – she was incredibly kind – for 3 years. And it worked. We both tried really hard to make each other love each other. And it worked, both ways. I just couldn’t put myself into the box she needed me to be in – kills me still.
I’m very happy with my current girl, but that’s never really put any sort of stop to thinking about (or even seeing) other girls before. It’s not like a new love replaces an old – not for me. The old loves simply never die for me. Maybe that’s unusual, I have no real idea – I guess people prefer not to talk about that kind of thing.
JakeS said:
Dana was the most prolific contributor to the Stickman letters section – he’ll be missed.
Your ‘guile’ post influenced me a lot when I was considering where to live in Asia. (I had already discovered your blog and additionally went looking on Stickman for your posts.) I pretty much decided that I could never live in Thailand based on that.
It’s good that you still have your dad. I lost mine years ago, but we didn’t have the quality of relationship that you two evidently have.
I agree that a new love never fully replaces the old. It may overwrite aspects of the old, in a different hand, but can never fully obscure the positive qualities of that former obsession. There’s always some yearning for a return, even if just in dreams.
xsplat said:
This is embarrassing for me to admit, but maybe it will be some use to myself and others to do so – perhaps for that very reason.
My long history sturggling with alcohol addiction has been discussed by me on this blog many times. I’ve learned that for some people with a very long history of heavy drinking, such as myself, that drinking in moderation is so difficult to accomplish that any attempt to do so is nearly futile, and thus ultimately foolish. Knowing this I’ve quit, many times.
Over the last few months I’ve had moderate success in again drinking occasionally moderately. It got just a little bit out of control over these last few days, and I drank steadily for three days, after which I felt strong withdrawls and cravings.
The withdrawls coincided with missing V.
And the last time I had bouts of feeling grief for loss, I was also chemically imballanced in the same way, and undergoing some alcohol dependency withdrawls.
I’ve found that slight ketamine use helps to cut the cycle of withdrawls, and ease up the grip of future cravings. It’s some sort of reset button. In fact it was because of ketamine that I thought that moderate drinking might again be possible for me. It’s worked for other peole that way in the past. It certainly does seem to have SOMEWHAT eased the extremely strong grip on me that the bottle can sometimes have.
It’s such a familiar cycle. When I’m feeling fine – even quite good – after maybe a month of daily meditation – a few drinks will make me feel great. Especially if combined with a little ritalin. On top of the world. King – really great.
And who doesn’t want to repeat that feeling – at least occasionally. But some of us have brains and bodies that adapt extremeliy fast to the alcohol – that great feeling requires more booze, and then you just need some booze to get you back to a baseline normal that is quite a bit below your original baseline normal.
Intellectually I know this, but somehow addiction highjacks all this knowledge – somehow it makes you forget this. I don’t know how – it sounds unbelievable – how could anyone forget – over and over and over? But addicts know – the booze itself has it’s own voice, it’s own personality – it’s own volition. The booze drinks the booze. The booze is a person.
I don’t really regret these last three days – they were great fun, and no real harm done. I’m weaned off it again, and because of small modest doses of ketamine during one evening I won’t have to have weeks of being cranky and feeling cravings.
But I’ll just leave this comment here. Again. Embarrasing as it is. It’s my truth, and I’m sure it’s the truth of countless thousands, if not millions of others.
Robinhood said:
I have been reading your blog for a long time and your thought patterns are interesting to me. The best part is you value correct thinking patterns and being reality based no matter how painful it is. Keep destroying Rollos preaching and stupid pua myths. I read your guile post few hours ago today and just wrote this.
WOW. JUST WOW. How long ago was that guile post? I’m amazed how accurate it is. I’m from Pakistan and moved to London few months ago. Pak is exactly like you described Thailand/Philippines. Guile is the primary value there too. As one of my friends said “Everyone tries to rip you off here. You are doing the right thing by moving away.” Is this guile thing the same as what you call face culture or maybe both are interrelated?
And in your words, I’m infected too. I thought maybe it was just a personality type but that’s just how most people from Pak are. Always looking for the better job, more money, bigger house, newer phone, expensive car. Just trying to get ahead no matter what it takes. Leg pulling is so common. No friends, just allies.. There are no friends as if ur friend has more than you, people become jealous and leads to falling out. Everything is about showing other how better you are. Parents using their children to show other parents how my child’s grades are better than yours. No soul in interactions and relationships. People keep destroying the relationships just for marginal benefits and always playing the zero sum game.
When i arrived in London, initially i was amazed at people being nice and always smiling at you, even those who don’t like you and complain about you behind your back. After the initial amazement, it started making me feel uncomfortable. As i have a joke – if a Paki says hello or smiles at you, RUNN, they want something from you. They’re just using their niceness to get something from you. As being nice for the sake of it isn’t a thing as it is seen as wasting the niceness. Here i will rip into the British niceness a bit too.. a case can be made that Pakis are not nice sluts like Brits. Just straightforward and honest about their inner workings. At least with a Paki you know where you stand. When i started working here, a couple of people bitched behind my back to bosses. But they were still nice and smiley to me which is fake and conflicting information for my brain. Also after the initial amazement wore off, those smiles and niceness started making me uncomfortable as I’m not used to it and niceness indicates to me “fuckk this person wants something from me” so i alienated some of my co-workers, smiles stopped and everything was “normal” again.
The better part is here people have a soul and isn’t as Guile driven as social trust is high. People value “life” and experiences more than the status and moving up. Maybe i will become disinfected or maybe i will continue to have a myopic view of relationships and stay power and status hungry and keep destroying relationships for the sake of getting what i want.
People’s attitudes and behaviours are affected a lot by the Government – its laws and policies, no matter how independent you think you are, you are still in the same cage Or interacting with the people in that same cage.
xsplat said:
Great comment, Robinhood. I appreciate it.
Yes, face is the core of the social corruption. I wrote another stickman submission about that subject; https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/readers-submissions/2006/04/face-makes-people-boring/
The theme of the submission you read https://www.stickmanbangkok.com/readers-submissions/2005/12/face-guile-and-the-commerce-of-living/ had roots in Buddhist teachings about passion, aggression, and indifference/ignorance.
It’s an oft repeated teaching that these are root causes of suffering, and that awakened heart is the antidote.
That post was written during a bit of a personal spiritual crisis, and I consider it to be one of my best works. Over the years I’ve sometimes wondered if my abilities are declining, as I sometimes compare my newer writing styles with the style of that post.
But it was my writing at my finest, and so I try to be easier on myself. I’m not quite senile yet.