oh hmm. there’s a pervasive confusion in american culture between “doing whatever you want” and hedonism
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the default hidden assumption, which i guess is some kind of relic from christianity and hobbes and god knows what else, is that hedonism is the only thing people “really” want and jobs are what they put up with to access hedonism
this is obviously demonstrably false
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i’m arrogant enough to believe that i’ve seen enough vulnerability from enough people to conclude that in a real sense we all want the same things and those things are good - love, family, health, community, meaningful work, truth, beauty, a future for our children
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that fundamental core of goodness gets buried under an overwhelming pile of conditioning and suffering but there are ways to peek under your pile and other people’s piles and the thing underneath there is warm and glorious
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hence: people engaging in hedonism exclusively for a long time are *not* doing whatever they want. they’re locked into a specific pattern of relating to the world and suppressing the parts of them that wonder if there’s something better. probably they are self-medicating
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hedonism is another form of "playing the most fun game you know how to play" and as it turns out there are much more fun games to play
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half-baked: people play at all times the most fun game they know how to play. if you see someone doing something that looks ridiculously unfun to you assume it is because they literally don’t know how to play a more fun game than what they’re playing
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old thread on self-medication, although i'd say things a little differently now:
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The key feature of escape addiction is that it's an attempt to escape something, which means where it's escaping *to* is less relevant for understanding it than what it's escaping *from*.
If you take away the games or the porn or w/e you'll just find a new escape.
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There are some orthodox jews who seem to think that as well, don't know if we got it from the Christians or gave it to them