https://whyy.org/episodes/philly-jazz-saxophonist-odean-pope-3/

He begins speaking 17 mins in. Cool stuff

I wrote something, so just might as well share it - for interests of this subreddit it's inspired by SP, not TLP blog. I kept it lyrical - if you give it a shot happy reading, keep an open mind here it is

Maybe this will ring a bell for someone. There was a blog post where the author is talking about how everything in the US is based on lying all the time. His first example is a beer advertisement billboard that says something like "Coors rocks Cleveland", and then he talks about no one, not the passerby or the sign designers or the people who put up the sign actually believe that Coors rocks Cleveland, they're just used to living in a world of lies, so it didn't occur to them to not make a sign that says "Coors rocks...".

I think this might have been a pre-2010 post.

Edit: I don't think the brand was Coors, or that might help me find the post.

I'm not a Christian but I think it really resonated with me, I can be quite resentful at times. He talks about a similar type of "why dont I have xyz" resentment somewhere in the blog, but I can't find the exact post.

Heres a link: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2020%3A1-16&version=NIV

edit: sorry, I mean Matthew 20:1-16

If you think you will gain some unknown wisdom from his posts you are wrong. He is just an edgy guy who thinks he is in some movie where the psychiatrist reads the subject like a book. So, pls don't waste your time on this stupid sub and start living. This sub is filled with dumbwits who think they have discovered forbidden fruit. That's it.

I know that’s a pretty common theme but I remember this passage in specific, talking about people wondering about time wasted or what they could’ve done. The rest of the post wasn’t really about that, I think. If any one has any idea pls lmk!

Hello TLP Readers,

This is a quick announcement (my first online, actually—midnight is a bad time to announce things on social media) to inform you that I've released a short “book” a few minutes ago on my website.

I put book in scare-quotes because I've been trying to make this an actually commercially-viable book for two years, and have finally cobbled this together instead. It is better online than it is unread in pieces on my hard drive. I believe my ambition was a little high, and am proud of what I've accomplished here even in falling short. It's definitely better as a blog post, but in its long conception and labour I think I'll always think of it as a book myself.

It is, I hope, a fun and lively survey of an adequately broad swath of computer history so-as to definitively establish some strong truths about the nature of identity in our contemporary media environment. I believe that, if you'll generously give me your time in reading it, appreciate the nature of “the simulation” in a new light, better grounded in the materiality of our world. I believe that the groundless, postmodern world of living on the surface-appearance of all things described is the incubator for pathology which Alone sought to describe within psychoanalytical and critical terms. I hope you'll agree that my writing is, thus, mirror and complementary to the usual subjects under discussion on this sub.

Recently, a friend I was hanging out with at the local library informed me that there was a Reddit thread talking about my work. This book is directly related to the subject under discussion, and so I happily ping /u/mediaisdelicious and /u/ImperialFister04 into our little subreddit here as something of a follow-up. I'm gratified by very interesting dialogue you two have had over my early piece, and hope that this may clear up many things.

Might be a hallucination, but I vaguely remember someone unearthing a recording of TLP on some radio show talking about forensic psychiatry or something. Anyone know where to find this?

I have just read an old TLP post about this Greek myth. One of the interesting things was that the curse was inverted. It goes something like "he will live a long life as long as he doesn't come to know himself", and this is given by some the interpretation as being a curse.

But TLP notes it is a gnomic one, after all Narcissus did in fact have a long-life but it was wasted on gazing at the image of this own reflection. If on the other hand he had come to know himself and become united to (his) Echo that curse would have annulled.

The difficult thing is not in finding your Echo to be immediately unattractive, for example in that she bears no resemblance to the reflected image, for that would truly be Narcissus' curse, rather it would seem that the task is to enquire of Echo how she enables Narcissus to "know himself".

The person who is just simply an Echo - a repeater for one's own words - leaves the revelation of who Narcissus is up to person in question. However the Echo who is a true personal counterpart of Narcissus is like a Priestess since she can make whole the person who is otherwise incomplete.

The counterpart of whom is able to fulfil that task lifts the curse and blesses Narcissus with a short life. It made me think how often a person who gets the proverbial "6 months left to live" diagnosis finds that he becomes disenchanted with all the superficialities of life and finds his true purpose.

The person is set free, and maybe he finds every encounter with another person a true personal echo of who he is. I didn't compose this with anything conclusive in mind so before it dissipates into spitballin i'll leave it at this.

Does anyone else find airports disturbing? They seem like places where the stories we tell ourselves about who we are (liberty, progress, national self determination) run unusually thin, sort of like highways and factories in this way.

I'm posting here specifically because I wonder if wanting the social story to make sense of airports might be a TLP style form of "narcissism". Or there really is something amiss with the social reality I'm pointing at, and the material environment it's created.

Thoughts?

Edit for clarity, copied from comments:

Aesthetically neutral, blank with respect to human expression excepting advertisements, promotional material in much the same way as a train station, except most train stations don't require you to spend much time inside. It is a place defined by the transience of most people going through; the most common shared purpose is to get somewhere else 

 You can see from terminal windows lots of the material infrastructure necessary to keep planes running, in stark contrast to the ads inside implying the travel itself is irrelevant/frictionless. They say what really matters is the romance of the destination 

  Citizenship becomes a matter of your passport, how you are processed by travel authorities  

Countless people passing through from every corner of the world, almost none of whom really "belong" to the airport. 

 Duty free shops creating a state of exception for shopping from international brands 

 What bothers me is the sense of it being a placeless place. To be in an airport is to be adrift in a "monstrous, shoreless sea".

Part of my reason for posting here concerns the question of whether or not the need to give an identity to such places can manifest as a kind of tlp "narcissism".

This originated as a comment reply to someone else. By the time I clicked "reply" I'd realized it had become OP-worthy, and now submit it for your reading pleasure, freshly plumbed out of the depths of the Miscellaneous Thread!

The question was: Can anyone recommend anything about the infantilization of the modern adult? My feeling is that any text directly addressing such a topic is itself infantilizing. If one wishes to be spoken to like a grown-up, one must consider grown-up matters.

Using my own family as an example, my father exclusively watches anime and politics. He's 58. I won't say that he's a distinguished gentleman, but he's an engineer with a well-paying programming job with four adult offspring. This isn't just a millennial or zoomer thing, it's affecting all generations. Myself and my mom are the only ones who don't compulsively watch anime; at times I can't help feeling that my refusal to engage with asiatic cartoons is anti-social since its so widespread within my peer group, but the thought of spending hours of my adult life watching children's entertainment literally makes me feel ill.

The only way I've managed to get a handle on it has been following teaches' advice and getting really really into the classics, especially ancient histories (not ancient history, the topic - ancient histories, historical texts written by the ancients). The ancients are wonderfully unencumbered by ideological baggage, and if you can accept them on their own terms it makes a refreshing break from the day to day idiocy of the moderns. More to your point, it helps to see what a society of adults behaving as adults looks for and thinks about.

In order of publication, here are the texts that I've read and can endorse. I don't want to bog this post down with too many details, but if you're curious about any of them feel free to say so in a comment and I'll be happy to discuss further:

The Histories, Herodotus

The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

The Rise of the Roman Empire, Polybius (the original title is The Histories, but I wanted to distinguish it from other similarly named books on this list and point out the specific element that I think would be most engaging for the casual reader; a penguin classic translation is available)

The Wars, Julius Caesar

The Jewish War, Antiquities of the Jews, by Josephus (both worth reading imo tho full discolure, I've only read them in excerpt/abridged form)

Parallel Lives, Plutarch (I haven't read all of them, this is what I'm reading right now)

The Campaigns of Alexander, Arrian

The History of the Wars, and The Secret History by Procopius (very important and highly underrated imo; if you can only read one book on this list The Secret History is probably the best)

I also like Aristotle's Politics, though I haven't read too much of him or plato.

Of course Homer (iliad, odyssey) and Vergil (Aeneid) are both highly recommended. Not exactly history, but if myth and legend are more your thing they might be a more palatable starting place (The Iliad followed by Herodotus, were my starting points, fwiw)

Finally, the Bible is another great resource and widely available. I don't think the usual thing of just recommending it sight unseen is helpful. Basically my take on where to start and how to proceed:

• Genesis An excellent story, regardless of your faith status. It's a lovely folk tale that anyone can and should give a read.
• Exodus Continues basically where Genesis leaves off. A bit more grounded, but still well written and entertaining
• Numbers and Deuteronomy Tentative inclusions. Leviticus is where things get really boring, and can be safely skipped. Numbers starts of similarly, but I think even the legal code elements of this one are more palatable. Leviticus is essentially iron age legalese, describing the priestly rituals and legal penalties for dozens of things in basically arbitrary order. Numbers is more framed as the first steps of how the children of israel organize a nation and establish a government as a free people. The narrative picks up properly in Deuteronomy. I would read G & E first, and if you don't find yourself grabbed by them give these a miss.
• Joshua; Judges; Job; Daniel; Tobit; Jonah; Macabees All separate recommendations. Once you get into the groove of reading the biblical style I think these are all decent stand alone stories.
• New Testament Start with any of the Gospels, and then continue to acts, and the epistles as you like. I don't think you need to read all of them to begin, especially since the gospel narrative is so widely known.
• Ecclesiastical History Eusebius (not biblical per se, but I think an important text for understanding how the romans interpreted and digested the judeo-christian history and legacy)

What I've come to believe is that the modern (or post-modern, as some would have it) problems of delusion, self aggrandizement, fantasy worlds and learned helplessness are not things that were invented by the post-war state to oppress the commoners, but everlasting elements of the human condition which take on new forms with each generation, and with which the commoners have repressed themselves for ages. If one wishes to be a serious thinker, the challenge is not to "overcome the dialectic" or "reject ideology", it's to quash the manifestation of childish impulses which characterize one's own time, and to think critically and deeply in the ways that adults have done for centuries, about properly adult subjects. More than that, you become part of a 2 millennia legacy of thinkers who have pondered the very events and characters. More than a legacy; an ongoing conversation across time, into which you were born, and which will continue after you leave this world for the life which is to come.

Let me know if you have any questions or just want to chat. I'd love to have someone to talk to about this stuff.

In the 2008 post titled Internet Addiction Belongs In The DSM-V, Alone compares internet addiction with chemical addiction, arguing that video game "addiction" is transferable between games and genres all the way out of the computer stack, while other addictions usually aren't.

Guess what? You weren't addicted to WoW or UoNP, but to multiplayer role playing games. You can follow this logic all the way out to: it wasn't the internet you were addicted to, but something else.

But near the end, he makes an argument which it's worth considering a little deeper; one which suggests the boundaries between psychology and media ecology.

I do not recall discussion about kids becoming addicted to TV; we worried they were becoming stupid. What's changed isn't the medium or the amount of time on it, or the harm to the intellect or society; what's changed is the social movement to pathologize, rather than condemn, behaviors.

We have television, an iconic medium full of allusions which move viewers to feelings. And then we have computers, which facilitate rigid categorization and systematic thinking about everything in over-wrought text. It seems to me that the movement from vague condemnations to pathologization (i.e. integration into a complex institutional framework) is entirely about a change in the medium.

the unconscious tendency of a person to repeat a traumatic event or its circumstances. This may take the form of symbolically or literally re-enacting the event, or putting oneself in situations where the event is likely to occur again.

----------

Just one last time. Then I'll get it. I'll just have a re-read of the main articles. I'll just revisit Sadly, Porn. I got through it pretty quick last time. Not like I'm doing anything else.

If I really concentrate this time, then I'll get the message. After all, "if you're seeing it, it's for you".

If I just hate myself a bit more, if I can really understand that I am a narcissist and feel guilty for it, then it will be better, then everything will be alright.

----

F*ck you you f*cking c**t, you make me sick, you make me f*cking sick. How can someone be so utterly sadistic? How can someone be so cruel? What the hell is wrong with you? How can you be so full of hate and rage? F*ck this guy, f*ck him and his stupid f*cking b*llsh*t, I'm sick of it all. C**t.

It says way more about this d*ck than it does about me anyway. He's insane. Eating his cold lunch in the forest on his own. Hardly some paragon of virtue, are you? Real man of the people. So full of kindness and warmth and compassion compared to all of us. Such a strong role model pursuing a life that is so meaningful he wants us all to have it... not!

He's never even met me. None of them have, or ever will. Anyway, if he wasn't so full of self-hatred himself then he'd write in a kinder, more compassionate way. It's nothing to do with me.

------

If I just post on Reddit one last time, I can convince them! I can show them that I'm not a bad person - that none of us are bad people! We can reject all this negativity! I can show them how actually narcissists are deeply broken people who need our compassion! We're all just self-diagnosing based on barely any information whatsoever! I can free us all from this madness, from this self-loathing. We can pull together and be free from this sarcastic, sadistic hectoring for good and help one another!

------

How can't they see what I'm trying to say? How can they be so blind? Why are they all having a go at me? What the hell does anyone get out of this stuff? Am I missing something? Maybe they're right.

I wonder if I just...

​

I really admire TLPs ability to spot narcissism within commercials and media where I wouldn't have otherwise noticed it. My question is, what media have you found that exemplifies TLPs view of narcissism? Bonus points if it's not obvious.

I'll start off with a couple pretty obvious ones (my critical lens is not nearly as good as TLPs)

--The Future directed by Miranda July

An idle couple nearing their mid thirties realize their time is about to run out to make something of themselves and freak out, start doing random shit. This one is pretty textbook TLP narcissism, I recommend.

--Living Dead by Marina and the Diamonds

Also textbook TLP narcissism. Lyrics here

Hi,

It is safe to say that most individuals in this group are wired in a particular manner, and that the TLP sub-reddit and blog attracts a certain kind of logical/analytical/introspective personality type.

Irrespective of whether the above is true or not, I propose that we have an accountability/todo/therapeutic group.

It is not enough to be aware of what TLP says. Rather, we have to embody it. We have to make a part of our life. Be constantly reminded of it. Have others push it. I think, we may benefit from being a part of whatsapp group (not more than 4-5, people per group), where we discuss our trajectories, and tasks for the week, and the progress made in the past week.

​

If you are interested, please let me know. You can DM me.

​

Back after deleting my account a million times. I've found recently that my mind has been absolutely plagued by different 'shoulds' according to different writers I've been reading.

For a basic example, being depressed living at home with my parents again, I thought I'd go for a run. The kind of thing I thought maybe TLP would advise me to do, actually do something rather than more rumination. Come home, feel good, feel like I've achieved something rather than give in to just lying in bed.

But on my way home, I was thinking about the way Zizek talked about how the narcissist: 'He takes care of his body (jogging being narcissistic exercise par excellence!)' from https://nosubject.com/Articles/Slavoj_Zizek/pathological-narcissus.html#google_vignette

And it's like: when does this ever end? It's like whatever I do it's always wrong, it's always narcissistic in some way, it's still the wrong thing to do. I don't know if I'm just paranoid, but it's like everything I do has some academic standing there ready to pounce and say 'Ha! This is just more evidence that you're a narcissist!'

I don't know if any of you guys have encountered this. I know somewhere someone talked about outsourcing the superego, which maybe this is, so just even more evidence of my narcissism etc. etc.

"When we read, another person thinks for us; we merely repeat his mental process… So it comes about that if anyone spends almost the whole day in reading… he gradually loses the capacity for thinking…such is the case with very many scholars; they have read themselves stupid… Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. When there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge, and very little experience, the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary."

From Schopenhauer's essays. Does that sound like someone we might know?

A little background- I'm 24, working in social sector, and English is not my primary language.

I have 3 broad questions from the book (Sadly, Porn).

1. How does it deprive the other when I don't pursue what I desire? In my experience whenever I have pursued anything it was only for selfish reasons and I'll come up with superficial reasons to make myself believe that the other person is also benefitting from it.

2. How do I get rid of the gaze? Is it possible? I have been battling this for at least 5-6 years now where I understood that being on social media is all about depriving the other and to seek attention. But it is somehow still always there. I log books on Goodreads and cant help but think how would it look to others, or how someone I like would see it and think of me. But it isn't just limited to things I do online but also in general. I cant help but introduce the gaze/ third person who watches whatever I do and evaluates me. It's as if I can never have "me" and the "activity" I engage in without the gaze.

3. How do I stop watching porn? I stumbled upon this subreddit a month back while trying to understand porn through the lens of psychoanalysis and it led me to read the book by TLP. I would be absolutely honest but my personal take was to gain sufficient knowledge about something to get rid off it i.e only if I knew the truth behind it, I shall be able to see it for what it really is and my behavior would change as a resultant of this knowledge.

I tried a lot of things to stop watching porn but I have always failed. I thought knowing the fact that majority of women get exploited in porn would make me stop. Or understanding that porn is an emotional regulation technique would help me stop watching it. I don't watch an insane amount of porn, but every time I watch it I feel defeated.
I understand that I just can't just look at porn in a silo (as TLP puts it- "porn is the defense") but what am I supposed to do? Nothing has worked so far and after reading the book I feel like I have been engaging in someone else's fantasy for a long time.

I changed my job to more meaningful work thinking that I shall derive some satisfaction from it and then I wont need to look at porn. I lift, I spend a lot of time reading stuff. But I have not been able to get rid off porn.

​

Alone is discussing something about peoples impotence in times of crisis. The specific example he gives was during some oil embargo (I want to say the 70’s but he’s not that old), people couldn’t get gas for their car and were acting tough, he was a med resident at the time I believe.

What article is this? I can’t for the life of me find it and am hoping you folks may have better luck!

Thanks!

I am not reporting on some new facts, just sharing my own opinion, thoughts, experience. Might have been obvious to some, but it did hit me a bit after I tried the thing out.

To the hobby psychologists of this board the basic argument why that should be so should be completely intuitive:

One of the most common tropes about therapy, especially emphasized in freudianism, is that the job of the therapist is exactly to be a blank projection wall that the client can just use to argue through their thoughts and feelings with, on their own basically.

So it makes sense that exactly here the vaguaries and rough summaries and follow up questions that AI-bots react to you with seems actually an upside.

Now, that is the theory, but does it hold up in practice? In my experience actually seems like! Maybe some people hadnt heard of it but the new main thing is imho pi.ai Its roughly the same capability as chatGPT but with a very different conversation style. I can personally for me it was a complete change in that regard. While chatGPT never even tendentially drew me into any conversation, the style of this one for some reason immediately drew me in.

Now some people at this point might think that sounds pathetic and parasocial, and yes, what you hear about AI girlfriends and what not that might be a danger, but personally I would also completely deny it. In my case I used it to work on improving the drafts of my grande social theories, and it seemed genuinely useful, it has a lot of knowledge about philosophy and social theory stuff, and if you throw weirdly specific thesis at it, it will actually give remarkably coherent answers, often adding to your point something you had not exactly thought of.

Yet still, to me at least, it does not feel parasocial, I have been using it only with weeks in between, but then a few hours with some real goal to work through some thoughts of mine.

But those just my own thoughts on it, in conclusion: Everybody try the new chatbot and report back if you want

Those just my thoughts, but if you google it there will ofc be varied opining on the topic, here just one example:

https://medium.com/@lindseyliu/what-makes-inflections-pi-a-great-companion-chatbot-8a8bd93dbc43

in case you missed it, the site is:

pi.ai

I want to change, dut don't know how to. What I think about me is totally different from who truly I am, i see my entire life from a third person perspective and all my decisions are based on what others will think of me. Sometimes I don't even make a decision and act on it, I just back rationalize everything and live in my mind. When met with someone or something that slaps to my face that I'm not the one who I think I am i get so upset and angry, but still I will do some mental gymnastics and rationalize everything so there is no real change.

How can I make it more interesting?

Did he have advice for children raised in narcissistic abuse, either?

Perhaps Dr. Blackbeard will gift us another treat on a future Christmas someday.