Nilsi

@Butters I’m quite confident that if you conducted some regression analysis on which of those new billionaires have inherited their wealth or have significant financial backing from their families, it would be even more obvious. Switzerland is a bad example, since it is a tax oasis, and I bet that a significant portion of those people you mentioned are actually foreigners. Also, being a millionaire is laughable. I have many self-made millionaire friends and they barely manage to sustain their upper-middle-class lifestyle.

Meh. Western Europe may be a good environment if you just want to coast through life, but it’s much harder to climb to the top here, because of ridiculous taxation, business laws and the ubiquitous ressentiment towards anyone trying to „make it“ (while no one seems capable to put forward a good analysis and critique of power, which is much more centralized, hereditary and entrenched in the elites than in the U.S.). Theres this trend in fashion called „stealth wealth“ (https://medium.com/@aprajitasingh.lmp/recession-core-old-money-aesthetic-quiet-luxury-and-stealth-wealth-an-explanation-for-all-the-aa6cd12b25da), which is the perfect allegory for the European elite. In the U.S., power is much easier to spot and thus to subvert or join.

While this is only tangential to your argument, I would like to give you a little heads-up about sophistry. I contend that verbal fluency, stellar rhetoric, etc., are not very good indicators of sophistry at all. Take business, for example: it is a common tactic in sales to act a little stupid, stumble over your sentences, pretend to lose your train of thought, etc., to give the receiving party a sense of superiority and security. This way, they won’t suspect your subtle manipulations and trickery and won’t know what hit them until it’s too late. The same goes for politics: isn’t the core premise of populism to dumb down your message and pretend to be “one of the people”? Power is a very sneaky thing and takes on whatever shape is necessary to achieve its ends. I would even claim that typical markers of sophistry are somewhat of an honest signal because it’s much harder to fake elitism than it is to fake commonness.

I would contend that conversing with a highly intelligent human enables much more insight, as that human brings a unique perspective and experience and can push back on your bullshit far better than an AI, which is mostly unbiased and meets you exactly where you are and want to be met.

Shoutout to David Lynch – a lot of excellent films have come out of his long and fruitful career. Mulholland Drive is probably in my top 10 of all time, as far as cinema goes.

Sign me up! I'm prepared to fight anyone here - physically, or (preferably) intellectually.

As I delve deeper into my unconscious in an effort to understand who I am and what to do with my life, I've encountered increasing conflict within myself. As life progresses and time necessitates decisions and commitments, the once seemingly infinite horizon of possibilities begins to narrow each day. To navigate these internal landscapes, I create visions for my ideal life and future, striving to represent these in as many distinct modalities as possible. Given the highly visual nature of humans, I mostly focus on visual representation. Recently, I created two dreamboards¹ within a short period. For the first time in this process, my desires have split into two distinct, mutually exclusive visions of life, diverging from their previous amalgamation into perfectly intrinsically consistent visions. While these dreamboards serve merely as illustrations for my argument and might seem arbitrary, they symbolize the profound conflicts within. We can all agree that any form of representation falls short of capturing the full complexity of reality, but we must work with the tools available. The unconscious mind operates through representations, essentially a conglomerate of unfulfilled wishes. Dreams, perhaps the most vivid example of this phenomenon, occur nightly as the mind processes unconscious desires through the concoction of elaborate and complex visions. Over a long enough timespan, examining one's dreams begins to reveal recurrent elements. Despite their varied forms, these elements represent some core essence. Moreover, a diverse array of recurring dreams dealing with different subjects also emerges. By cataloging these over a significant period, one can create a "library of dreams," or a portfolio of deep desires. Organizing these into clusters by similar subjects and patterns, one discovers distinct groups that address different subjects and core desires, pulling in opposing directions, thus revealing deep-seated irreconcilable conflicts at the heart of the subject. This deep introspection brings one inevitably to the question: how does one manage these conflicts? There are numerous potential responses, depending on one's willingness to simplify. I argue that these strategies can be distilled into two primary outlooks: the dialectic and the tragic. The dialectic approach, largely attributed to Hegel, posits that every desire encounters a diametrically opposed counterforce. Unlike a mere clash of opposing desires, Hegel’s concept involves a dynamic process where contradictions are essential for the evolution of consciousness. This dialectical movement reflects a process of negation and sublation ("Aufhebung"), where conflicting elements are transcended and integrated, leading to a higher state of understanding. Hegel's philosophy, ultimately aimed at achieving absolute knowledge, suggests that such synthesis is not merely a resolution but a progression toward a more comprehensive truth. This provides a theoretical framework for continual growth, although at its core it presents an idealized view of human development, presuming an eventual resolution that may never manifest. In stark contrast, the tragic vision of life, notably revived by Friedrich Nietzsche from the ancient Greeks, perceives the interplay of forces not as a tension to be resolved but as friction that allows one to forge one's destiny. Nietzsche's thought emphasizes the creation of individual values in the face of life’s inherent absurdities and suffering. In this view, opposing forces are not to be integrated but confronted and overcome, celebrating the will to power and the eternal recurrence as fundamental aspects of existence. The tragic individual embraces its uniqueness, deriving joy from affirming its difference rather than seeking universality. This process involves intense mourning as the individual must relinquish parts of itself—unrealized dreams, unfulfilled desires, and unactualized potential. Personally, I contend that this tragic way of life represents a more mature approach to life, as it necessitates profound honesty about life's impermanence and one's own finite existence.

Sounds like we have a business here. I say we bulk order a ton of toothpaste from China, fly to LA, and spend our days attending pickup seminars, selling that shit to those suckers by the thousands.

Kendrick: SAY OV-HOE! The club: OV-HOE!

That one didn't do much for me. "Meet The Grahams" on the other hand had me shaking in my seat. Such a sinister dismantling of the entire Drizzy character. Also, that Alchemist beat is some of the coldest shit I've heard in a while. Best diss track of all time?

Sorry, but this just had too much meme potential.

Are you telling me I can substitute brushing my teeth with a glass of whiskey? Consider me sold.

Don't you hate it when you're suddenly hit by anxiety and all you have at your disposal is a tube of fluoridated toothpaste? These days, I never leave the house without one of these bad boys in my pocket.

Let's use a concrete example to make this more tangible. Imagine you are seeing a girl and you really like her. You are happy, perhaps even in love, and your life is going well in other areas as well. Now one day, she comes to you and tells you she is running off to the other side of the world to pursue spirituality and suggests you should join her, assuring that money and other practical matters will be taken care of. You like her a lot, and the idea is somewhat appealing, but you also have goals and plans that require you to maintain your current living situation. THIS IS CONFLICT. Now, what do you do? Do you double down on your current life trajectory, or on her; or perhaps do you seek some kind of compromise where you can have "the best of both worlds"? This is perhaps a bit of a dramatic example, but such conflicts arise all the time. It was on this basis that I was constructing my argument.

I get it. I'm a salesman and marketing consultant by day, so I understand the power of clear and straightforward communication quite well. However, I don't believe there is any room for such concerns in philosophy. My motivation is not to persuade you of my argument, but to show you something that deeply engages me - and that, I bet you would agree, is seldom ordinary pragmatic stuff.

The premise of my argument is that conflict is intrinsic to the self, and there are various methods for approaching and resolving it; I've detailed two such methods. I don't mean to seem ungrateful, but this forum wouldn't be my first choice if I were earnestly seeking answers about personal issues. The incident I described offered me some insight into a metaphysical aspect of two philosophers with whom I am deeply engaged, and I thought it served well as a means to discuss their ideas. I claim that you do have a say in how you interpret reality, although it's clear that much of this is beyond your control, as I suggested when discussing the unconscious. Or are you suggesting that agency is altogether illusory? The conflict is perpetual; that is precisely the point. An infinite problem-space exists outside your current identity, and the central question is how you navigate this space. Do you adopt a passive approach, accommodating the unknown without committing to any stance, or do you boldly, perhaps recklessly, stand firm in your beliefs and identity ("ride-or-die" - a lovely description) and push these as far as possible? You may think you can resolve this situation by projecting these opposing movements into the future, thereby allowing the two aforementioned metaphysical approaches to dynamically interact over time. This projection, in a paradoxically Hegelian manner, attempts to synthesize the contradictions inherent in viewing Nietzsche through the dialectical process. However, in reality, all you can do is enact one of these philosophical stances in the present moment. This begs the question and forces you to answer: which side do you choose? This conclusion might appear to be just another a priori commitment to a metaphysical argument - specifically Nietzsche's notion of "Eternal Return," which posits that this eternal now is all there ever is, with any choice and identity being created and perpetually reinforced not in some abstract, dialectical future but in the immediate reality. However, my claim is that this is a much more true and robust way of conceptualizing reality and conflict than what Hegel (and by extension, much of the implicit metaphysics in this community) offers.

I couldn’t care less who wrote what; at the end of the day, I judge the finished work of art. I also couldn’t care less about his ego. Drake is obviously not as conscious, saintly, or emancipatory as Kendrick - and why would you want him to be? I listen to Drake when I just want to turn off my rational mind a little and feel like the man. That itch he scratches perfectly when he’s at his best.

One of the greatest and most profound rap tracks of all time. From the Ryuichi Sakamoto sample to the title referencing the classic Trine work in American New Thought, to the Wizard of Oz and Elijah Muhammad preludes - and of course, Jay Electronica’s confessional lyrics on God and his spiritual conviction, with his heartfelt delivery reaching transcendent heights in lines such as: "To the lawyers, to the sheriffs, to the judges, To the debt holders and the law makers, Fuck you, sue me, bill me, That name on that birth certificate, that ain't the real me, The lies can't conceal me, The sunrise and the moon tides and the sky's gon' reveal me, My brain pours water out my tear ducts to heal me." - this is some real shit man. For some reason, though, this track has been removed from all streaming platforms (except Tidal, which I happen to use - insert shameless plug) and only exists as some weird reupload on YouTube.

I don't believe she is naive enough to suggest that one can simply change their gender in any way they desire. Her argument owes a lot to Deleuzian metaphysics, in that for her, the concept of gender is deeply entangled in language, its cultural context, power dynamics, and so on. While there is some degree of individual agency within this complex interrelationship, it isn't merely a matter of individual choice. Rather, any notion of individuation and self-actualization is only possible by recognizing the limitations and affordances of this cultural matrix and consciously navigating it.

Of course, this is a highly privileged and resource-intensive pursuit, likely unsuitable for 99% of people, so take what I've said with a grain of salt.

If you want to approach this academically, consider reading some philosophy of art or aesthetics. Theodor Adorno's oeuvre is perhaps the most ambitious in scope in this area, though highly biased, of course. You will have to explore a variety of theorists to gain a well-rounded understanding of aesthetics.

Books are not the best medium for this. Instead, magazines like Vogue and Architectural Digest are valuable resources, and they also offer an extensive catalog of YouTube content. Museums and exhibitions on modern art are another excellent resource. Consider browsing second-hand online stores that specialize in high-end designer products, such as Vestiaire or 1stdibs. Determine which designers and styles you prefer, then purchase some of their items. Wear or use them to experience their immediate aesthetic appeal. If you don't like something, resell it. If you're savvy, you can even make a small profit doing this. Refine your style over time. This is akin to any developmental process—it's iterative and takes time to become highly refined.