the messaging of this workshop is super hedonistic ("have better sex forever!") in a way that i know just works well for americans but that i still personally find intensely frustrating. hedonism hides behind pretending we aren't gonna grow old and die
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it's easy along the personal growth path to get stuck in thinking that the point is to feel better. getting past self-denial is important but feeling better is radically not the point and pursuing that becomes narcissistic eventually
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
Confused by this, now as always. I've never been able to truly believe in a notion of "good" that didn't ground out in "feel good, but more so, and in the long term, and in a way that also helps others feel good".
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @QiaochuYuan
Like, being hedonistic in the stereotypical sense (drugs! sex! food!) has bad consequences and is often more about symbolically doing a thing labeled "pleasure", or proving to yourself that you're allowed to, than about actually tasting marvelous experiences.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
when i say "feel better" i mean just feel better by itself, not including "in the long term, and helping others"; does that make more sense?
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
but also let me give an example to show that this is not as obviously self-centered a heuristic as it seems. there is a kind of person who has been coerced into helping others and caring for others all their life, and who would benefit from breaking free of that
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan @s_r_constantin
there's a stage such a person might go through of relearning how to access what they actually want and how to do things that feel good to them rather than needing to give into their impression of what other people need them to do, and this is good and healthy; and there's more
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan @s_r_constantin
once you break free of the coercion enough there's a different stage where you come to realize that it does actually feel good to help other people out of a genuine desire to relieve their suffering, and then your feeling better becomes entangled with others feeling better
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan @s_r_constantin
furthermore you might also realize that your feelings also take the future into account; like, it might start feeling more empty and pointless to chase temporary pleasures, and so your feeling better becomes entangled with feeling better in the future
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sure, this is a thing I'm familiar with
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
okay, so the next stage after this i am much less good at talking about and also less confident that i know what i'm talking about, but it involves "seeing through" feeling - recognizing that feelings are empty in the buddhist sense
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