Even by itself, the first statement might not be the case. I don’t remember the book that well, but I remember thinking it was a good introduction to this topic. Philosophy of Science: A Very Brief Introduction by Samir Okasha.

Yet, it’s not as simple as “scientists are under capitalists’ interests”, but “the ideologies within capitalism permeate the way we do science”. A common example is how we measure functionality (and therefore pathology itself) in medicine.

I do not agree. I doubt the popularity of nihilism and similar ideas are causing a rise in antisocial personality disorder.

I imagine some people may feel like, if nothing matters, ethics do not matter. But (in my opinion) to feel that, the person was already non-altruistic and they only discovered that it was okay/justified to show it and to live by it.

In my case, I align to dark views about existence, but I also believe in the importance of taking care of others. If anything, believing that the world is unfair, senseless, painful, etc., has only made empathy/compassion and love more important (and urgent) to me.

What I’m trying to say is that I do not think our personalities and psychological oddities are so dependent on our views or ideologies. They can certainly affect us; for example, far-right ideologies can change a trusting person into a very suspicious one. But I’d say, in many cases, we are a certain way and we adapt our beliefs to that.

I would suspect a rise in narcissistic personality disorder, though. Narcissism is misunderstood. It’s not about thinking one is superior but about deep negative feelings about oneself that become a pattern of differentiating one from the rest (not necessarily in a grandiose way). Some studies use the term ‘vulnerable narcissism’ and that’s the presentation that I think we are ignoring as a society, so we don’t detect it, so we don’t address the possibility that we are exacerbating it. And vulnerable narcissists can be grandiose at times, and unethical, but most of the time they look like melodramatic self-fulfilled prophecies whom we brush aside as unwise or immature (think of many incels or edgy people or influencers caught in lies/dramas). And, even if a full disorder is not present, some traits can be. Perfectionism and unrealistic expectations, entitled rage, redirection or denial of responsibility, intolerance to shame, fixation on how one is being perceived (which can make the performance of an acceptable life more important than actually having a fulfilling life). It sounds like people I know and even myself in the past.

So… I don’t know about antisocial personalities. I do agree that they are more common than they seem, but I doubt we are ‘forming’ more by mere exposition to nihilism. Actually, facing nihilism seems inevitable, and our lack of a satisfactory response might be affecting our actions and societal values (we are all over the place ideologically, letting fascism get stronger and violence be normalized) which might cause the traumatizing and neglecting of children in a way that they are at risk of developing ASPD. But the culprit wouldn’t be nihilism. That’s only the question that we are failing to answer.

Our century is asking: “What if all existence is futile, what if our values are just our creation and all is senseless, indeed? Should we crave even more the material well-being and steal it from others, steal even their lives, in order to get it for ourselves? If not, what reason can be enough to justify stopping those who follow this? Is there something that may convince them to stop by themselves? What is the path we are choosing now?”. But we are not asking ourselves the questions, we are actually removing philosophy from high schools and universities and telling young people that only money is important…

And, don’t get me wrong, I think this is only a factor among others (climate change is pushing people into desperation, so it’s not only ideological but also a matter of material needs). Yet, I think we should be facing nihilism, questioning it, and not dancing around/inside it.

Sorry if this is huge…

So… This is stalkerish, but I was curious about your dark/gothic interests and I read some of your comments and you seem like an interesting person. I’d be grateful if you could share your poetry (a link to your accounts or whatever medium). 😳 Sorry; thank you.

I honestly haven’t used it enough to know how well it works, but their advertisement has the cooldown thing mentioned. I hope it works for you.

It seems they are sacks of fear, which leads them to be defensive and hateful and “hard” just so that everything’s in order and safe because they fear everything and everyone. I wish their amygdala wasn’t overactive…

Buzzkill Notification Manager can do that.

I can think of two scenarios. The first one is you do that and everyone, including you, feels it and perceives it in a good way. Which I guess could end up in weird situations. Geeky example, but do you know Magic the Gathering? There’s a faction there called “The Rakdos Cult” with a demon and a lot of deranged characters that simply enjoy the bad things. The Rakdos cards often portray a little gorey scenes with people enjoying it, so I guess we could become kind of that but without victims, only enjoyers.

But the other scenario is that we wouldn’t have a need to prove or try such things because we often do it out of negative feelings such as emptiness, pride, competitiveness, etc. We wouldn’t feel those things so we wouldn’t behave as erratically as we do now.

That if we exist at all, though… Maybe existence as we know it is incompatible with my first comment.

No suffering, no dis-pleasurable state, no undesirable reality exists. Everything that is, is deemed good by all beings that can judge it (if any). This has, as a consequence, no moral dilemmas, no conflict of wills and interests, no tragedies, etc.

Let’s move on.

I enjoy MOBAs a lot, but their communities tend to be so toxic… I’m playing other multiplayer games because I am tired of the toxicity (among other things).

I think that’s the ambiguity. An AFAB only space is different to a women’ (and maybe other feminine identities I’m not aware of) space. The first, AFAB, is about the sex you were born into. The second is about your gender (and here we can even create different groups, but that’s beyond the point). The ambiguity comes because each of us uses “female” differently, sometimes to mean this or that. That’s the importance of specifying what we mean, especially when creating a club or something similar.

I personally do not care that much about the survival of entire species (including ours); I care more about the lives of the individuals. To illustrate this, it saddens me when we cause extinctions, but a little more because of the animals that suffered in the process and a little less about the whole “loss” of a form of life. Yet, it all is sad.

How do I deal with this climate change sadness? I guess I don’t see it separately from other sad things from humanity (and existence, but let’s focus on humanity). I have accepted the fact that most human beings are morally questionable in my book, this causes the world to be worse for everyone in it, and no amount of reasoning with most of them (about the benefit for them and others of being more conscious about their lives) will change it for now.

At some point, some have felt that a better society is just a step ahead of us because it’s relatively easy in material terms, but now I feel it much farther as the social factors are not as easy. I guess I have surrendered to a certain idea of psychological determinism. If we imagine a person has an object we want at their reach, while it’s out of our reach, and we could get it if they only cooperate, we can feel frustrated when they don’t. “Why do they make it so difficult? It’s as simple as reaching for the object and grabbing it for us. Just do it! Why are they waiting for? Ugh!”. But if we start from the idea that there’s a chance they won’t help us because they simply can’t be bothered (different reasons as to why), and that’s probably not fixable, we won’t feel that level of frustration for their inaction and we will strategize differently how to get that object.

By the way, I don’t think selfishness or self-centeredness or whatever is individualism, nor that altruism is communitarianism. I’m inclined to individualism, but that’s what makes me think that just as my life and freedom are valuable, so are others’. I do not like societies that are communitarian because they drown the individual (in false responsibilities, in fear of ostracism, etc.), and I hate that. We have one life and only one and we should be as free as possible, even if that means being unattached, different, whatever. The only rule for that freedom and for everything is ethics. And that’s the difference for me, that’s how I see it. Not individualistic people versus communitarian people, but people that live without an interest in being ethical (whatever that ends up meaning) and people who do.

So… I think I see a lot of these people and I don’t get as frustrated as before. I sigh and continue my day. Reading this last part, it reads a little stoic (learning that I cannot change these parts of society and focusing on the ones we can change). Stoicism is like the ibuprofen of life; paracetamol is pyrrhic skepticism. I’m bad at analogies, lol, but you get the point (I hope).

Prioritizing my health (including my mental health) has helped a lot. Good levels of everything in my body do wonders for my energy, but also my resilience, my mood, etc. Emotional regulation skills, combating stress… I know these are just common recommendations, but I don’t have more.

I’m sorry that you’re feeling down. It’s been a hard time…

Isn’t FlyingSquid a she?

I suggest arrows to navigate main comments (I think they also call them “parent comments” or something). As an example, Sync for Lemmy and Now for Reddit have them.

I mean, it’s our fault as leftists that it is an echo chamber. We have forgotten how to talk about polemic issues among ourselves. I bet we lemmings have big differences (in the details) but we are afraid of bans or talking to walls, so…

I mean, the people still exist and the need for honest opinions is still there. We just need to find a new place where money isn’t such a big problem (although it will always be a problem to some degree). I really think a more stable and easy to use Lemmy could attract a large crowd.

Funny, but sadly, I’ve seen my best friend sharing these memes (neither from the U.K nor the U.S.).

Since the first time I saw them, I thought they were kind of rude and probably inaccurate as no national cuisine is dull. I googled and read… What seems to have happened is that we’ve normalized British cuisine because it is part of many countries now. We think British dishes are regular dishes. Anyway, I don’t like these memes.

Nayib Bukele, current president of El Salvador, describes himself as a philosopher king on his Twitter/X account.

Creatine instead of collagen, if you ask me. Creatine helps build muscle. Muscles keep everything in place (which is especially important in case of hypermobility) and they relieve work from other parts.

No, they’re not fully developed, but they distinguish actions morally speaking (even older children do) and they can choose to do better.