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Paroxysm and hijack

A heightened sense of consciousness reached through a terrible mixture of suffering, despair, exhaustion and loneliness forms Cioran's Paroxysm. Even with the dark nature of things involved it still is a very divinely feeling.

This, however, is an individual experience. A singular consciousness is pushed to inner extremities; a pain sharpened awareness that is a tragic intensification of being.

When the same awakening or lucidity is found in masses/population it no longer have that deepened consciousness. What particularly is concerning is when ground up experiences like this get expropriated by society in the form of zeitgeist/mood/values. The more such experiences circulate, higher the risk of losing the weight and existential cost they have.

Which would have been fine had the modern world with infinite avenues for this kind of lucidity been in a different state. It is always in a hyper stimulated state with agonizing inertia and half finished implosion. The condition needed for an even better state is there but the transcendence rarely happens.

The point being: Once a feeling becomes social it often lose the profound nature that made it significant in the first place. Collective hysteria never ever equalled existential crisis (as far as I know). A crowd may amplify a signal, but that is not depth objectively. The painfully earned emotional breakthrough is commoditized and stripped of its history. A deliberate example would be the symbols of resistance becoming mere pieces of fashion for the few.

This is one of the reasons I have a hard time reconciling with the societies that seemingly underwent a “renaissance”. Sure there was a change, but the fact remains that it is the diffusion from an individual seed that gets through the cracks and openings of the social world, not the other way around i.e a society in itself has no virtue in this sense and is merely an efficient distributor.

The problem is the party who gets the most heard is the so called “society” especially the “needs of society”; whatever that means. The demands exceed anything that is actually lived by an individual. The same “productive but troubling figures” that gave new thought life, are set back by the society. This virtue less condition is what is being conserved. A convenience based parasitic relationship in simple words. Trying to supremacize a mob is just lazy thinking (just as racism is, no matter how subtle).

Same thing could be said about the caretakers of the society too I guess. Going against the establishment nowadays is nearly impossible today. What used to happen every often, can only be seen romanticized in fictional media or in a weakened state. Taking permission from the same system one seeks to resist is apparently normal.

That is because the power has become more skillful at survival. They no longer need to crush every thought (although censorship is coming back in waves). This state/framework probably figured out how to absorb parts needed for infinite power retention and discard the rest silently. Therefore in the interest of an agency-less individual like you and me, the lucid, the extremes, and the dangerous they all should be hidden & protected. Even if they don't take sides. Their devious appropriation is not something to be celebrated but is something to be critiqued.

Until, the drums of liberation are heard – One Piece

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From Enchiridion by Epictetus-

In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and then undertake it. Otherwise you will begin with spirit; but not having thought of the consequences, when some of them appear you will shamefully desist. “I would conquer at the Olympic games.” But consider what precedes and follows, and then, if it is for your advantage, engage in the affair. You must conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from dainties; exercise your body, whether you choose it or not, at a stated hour, in heat and cold; you must drink no cold water, nor sometimes even wine. In a word, you must give yourself up to your master, as to a physician. Then, in the combat, you may be thrown into a ditch, dislocate your arm, turn your ankle, swallow dust, be whipped, and, after all, lose the victory. When you have evaluated all this, if your inclination still holds, then go to war. Otherwise, take notice, you will behave like children who sometimes play like wrestlers, sometimes gladiators, sometimes blow a trumpet, and sometimes act a tragedy when they have seen and admired these shows. Thus you too will be at one time a wrestler, at another a gladiator, now a philosopher, then an orator; but with your whole soul, nothing at all. Like an ape, you mimic all you see, and one thing after another is sure to please you, but is out of favor as soon as it becomes familiar. For you have never entered upon anything considerately, nor after having viewed the whole matter on all sides, or made any scrutiny into it, but rashly, and with a cold inclination. Thus some, when they have seen a philosopher and heard a man speaking like Euphrates (though, indeed, who can speak like him?), have a mind to be philosophers too. Consider first, man, what the matter is, and what your own nature is able to bear. If you would be a wrestler, consider your shoulders, your back, your thighs; for different persons are made for different things. Do you think that you can act as you do, and be a philosopher? That you can eat and drink, and be angry and discontented as you are now? You must watch, you must labor, you must get the better of certain appetites, must quit your acquaintance, be despised by your servant, be laughed at by those you meet; come off worse than others in everything, in magistracies, in honors, in courts of judicature. When you have considered all these things round, approach, if you please; if, by parting with them, you have a mind to purchase equanimity, freedom, and tranquillity. If not, don't come here; don't, like children, be one while a philosopher, then a publican, then an orator, and then one of Caesar's officers. These things are not consistent. You must be one man, either good or bad. You must cultivate either your own ruling faculty or externals, and apply yourself either to things within or without you; that is, be either a philosopher, or one of the vulgar.

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Quickest self trust death spiral. Commit fully.

graph LR
    A[No retreat] --> B[Devote]
    B --> C[Get proof]
    C --> D[Trust]
    D -->|Compound| A

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People from countries the world decided don't count learn early that success means leaving. Home celebrates you for getting out. Abroad accepts you for blending in. You're caught between two worlds, neither one yours. A third space is carved by you. Complaining could very well mean drowning. Then come to realize that real exile isn't geographic. The turning point is self reconciliation. Chances of reset are probably gone. The success you came for is transactional. The toughness you had is out of grasp, again, renounce feeling anything. Dislocation trickles easily into identity. Endless affirmations and mantras. Depending on where you choose to call and what you make of it, peace takes a different shape. And they tell you to be anti anti-natalist

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Most of the work can be easily automated with LLMs.

The argument that the abstraction just moved a layer higher is fine. You do you.

The impact of this coddling & infantilization through Multimodal AI needs to studied. Especially with regard to fundamental capabilities of an individual. Offloading the heavy work to some intangible entity never ends up functionally well. If you are cognitively lesser to a trained model(even if only for a subset of interactions) there will be a direction problem.

The pragmatic step at this point would be to move away from skill building just for the employment sake. But that seems too idealistic; People develop skills to be ready for the job market, why advocate against it? Fair enough, stay afloat. What about taking some time off for getting a rudimentary control? On the topics you delegated to a model; Come back stronger. Come back to what again? Hmm, smirk inside then.

Personally, navigating a broken system and the abundance afforded to me (simply because of the era I am living through), without intellectual ownership is extremely unappealing.

Some problems that need attention -

Amplification of psychological anomalies

Existential disorientation, Imposter syndrome, Cognitive dissonance, Confirmation bias, FOMO etc... comes to mind. Would be nice to have new ones pop up courtesy to recent developments. Then I could insert a cool table here (truly exciting!)

Lack of learning

If the one guy shipping multiple items in a single day gets incentivized why would anyone sit down with one piece of markdown documentation written in 2020? Maybe I need an overhaul of what it means to learn. Universities and ed institutions have done a terrible job imo. But am I patient enough to sit and learn about learning?

Retention

What about the impact on memory? You are bombarded with a barrage of text as information. It seems like nothing registers and you just want the agent to run and finish the task. End of story. Talk about brain dead. Nootropics are enticing now.

Communication degradation

If every email starts and ends with – “I hope this email finds you well” and “Thank you for your time and consideration”, why even add new words to dictionary every year. What happened to nuance in communications? Maybe with the expected outsourcing we can do just fine I guess. Or maybe this is a wakeup call, why get fixated on what to address someone, strip down and say “Hi” or “Wadup dog”. If people take it the wrong way then consider good riddance and move on!

Increased dishonesty & Lack of trust

Aren't we all ashamed to say we used ai, WE WOULD BE since on the other end people proudly signal virtue that they never used ai for the thing at consideration. Cool beans if so, but how sustainable is this going to be when people are desperate?

Building on the above point, the first thing any one would suspect when encountered with good&exceptional things would be the “AI” nature of the item. Puritan way of dismissing, only by taking a cursory look is not fair to the parties involved. Should I switch to some esoteric language now? I am not even gonna speak about deepfakes produced during war and international conflicts. Who's to trust whom damn! I quite enjoy the sinister side of things, but I only care about the soaring high part, please save me from the crash. Wish I was my parents age and have that restrained reassurance that much of the bullshit will be reset by time.

Group thinking

You use direct/augmented tools for brainstorming, for venting, for deciphering a confusing email, for TLDRing a manual, for summarizing a paper, for chunking all the info into a podcast episode and finally create a memory.md at 4.45 pm to revisit never. Counter argumnet – People use differently ie different permutations OK, but most ppl would be using a frontier model at the end and those are just a handful. Classic sheep and shepherd situation. A large scale of people will use. How to discern abuse? We're not so different after all and might get averaged to the smartness level of the model. Some kind of convergence. What if we pickup artifacts from them too. Catastrophic! People used to talk about human droned. Now that would be the real case in the near future. (But it already is right, looking at the regurgitated right wing-left wing talking points). Lord hear me, save me.

Perfectionism

All the tools to be flawless, but I still end up with alpha stage items. Comparison and deliberately evil judgement –> unrecoverable fall. No need to be perfect. God created every human being to be blessed and cherished, said someone at my school assembly once, while I chuckled. I need that reaffirmation. CAP, I still care, but with some terms.

Safe space

The zeitgeist already chose paternalistic policies and emotional cushioning. Now add in an ever accessible tool reachable from your phone which comes for more comforting. Sometimes you need to hear you're shit and receive sharp critique. Current iteration is indeed very detrimental to self actualization. I held some xenophobic views sometime ago until someone called me out. Yes-men are replaced by chatbots. I have to be careful. Can't have my own beliefs crumbling under its logic, damn too shameful.

Retirement woes

Say I got to retire finally with peace, and I am reminiscing; How content would I be? I am quite critical of things I do and think most of them don't age well. Could I have fared just as well if I were thrown into a timeline better/worse? How good am I really?

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Throughline

Uuh AI bad. Tough times.

Generation is cooked, no doubt. Someone posted the other day that it actually is the best time to follow your dreams given the sad state of things. That said, as in a bad meditation session, bring attention to certain overlooked things.

Doom & despair are the go to these days. Not time to invoke it yet tho!

All are easily fixable; the so called innovation will stay (although think about the subsidized pricing and habit forming);Plus it has upsides too. Hope the small self hostable quantizable models get capable enuf and crush the greed.

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Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. – wikipedia

Background

Being an immigrant student in Germany puts you in weird places; You see and encounter different people. Sometimes weird sometimes super awkward. Overlay current events, cultural info, stereotypes and local happenings and this becomes somewhat fascinating even. The other day when an apartment viewing was organized by my ex-flatmate, I met another immigrant pursuing a bachelors here! Even though I felt odd when he addressed me as elder bro, I couldn't help but see a troubled young guy going through stressful stuff alone. I didn't know what to say when he asked for advice on what to do regarding his housing arrangements. Should have said smtg, damn. Well then time to –> Drink wine and sleep

Now, couple of days earlier, a slightly older stranger approached me asking for money, saying he was famished. I never carry any change –> couldn't help –> felt bad later. Hmph..Drink wine and sleep

How am I to know the extent and depth of other people's experience faithfully with my mind?

Noticing

These two are just zoomed-in normal events I'd say. For those times when I try to tune into stuff that is happening around me, I am beyond saddened –> kids getting slaughtered, war, human rights violations, racism, labour exploitation, corporate greed, AGI, polarization, quest to immortality and so on.

All of this is, information communicated and my mind is processing the representations of what this suffering would be like, I have no way of actually knowing it 100%. I am scared to experience it anyway. That is somehow fanning my retreat inside.

This can, however be fixed easily by refusing to focus on the said things. Is this lethargy or me being just indifferent to things beyond my control or general apathy established already? My frustration originates from a number of things happening in the world for which i have no say in, yet happens, much to my dismay.

This is not an attempt at virtue signaling or being holier than thou thru writing. Amidst all these numbing voices, how can I rest? Should I selectively switch off some things and actively champion the cause for certain others? for those ones which feel easy to win? Pointless, playing it safe? Why not go reckless and battle it out? Like those spirited activists? Would it matter at all? Am I looking for impact or a way to offload inaction-guilt?

Bust and boundaries

I don't wanna cite examples but compassion fatigue is real tbh. Look at these for instance -

i. if you care about abc ... you should also care about xyz
ii. all eyes on xxx
iii. pray for 123
iv. a+b matter

Relatable template? I mean no disrespect here, but seriously the moral demand is at an all time high. How can I keep up with infinity number of things?

Problem here is I am getting autonomous apathy. I am here trying to make it voluntary.

Why not preemptively put some checks in place? –> protect yourself?

But how far to go with boundaries? Some rules employed at will can easily put you in a bubble. I have lived in fraternity houses where I have seen this bubble transforming into consensus seeking chambers. While they might mean well, end of the day when you're being honest, you will see the issue.

What do i mean by apathy?

Apathy would be the overwhelming numbness. To certain things and outcomes if you will. Even if you wanted to assess a situation you just can't, you're unable to. In this way it becomes slightly different from indifference or nonchalance. There you weigh in and opt not to be concerned. The idea here is to invoke apathy as some sort of metaphysical tool to help one proceed in life. The way I have defined makes it a bit involuntary, but come to think of it, if faced with something so often and you understand it well enough, you would know how to use it too. Why not just simply disregard/not-give-a-fuck? Possible, but you fool yourself to think you have a say in the matter. YOU DON'T in most cases. And one should look at ways on how to be fine with that. That is the goal of this write up.

Apathy isn't a last resort

I sense that a lot of smarter and wise people are themselves afraid to speak out, I mean why risk it all in what seems to be an increasingly zero sum game? But, caring about stuff makes life beautiful and extremely meaningful. That is my current outlook. Boy, am I in for a bad beating! I feel like I am. Some would say first stand steadily on your own and then focus on the service aspect. Now personally my own shit is catching up to me. I am rolling with the punches here. If I say apathy is the only thing left then I have accepted defeat completely. Such a nihilistic take should be avoided. No, it would not be my refuge.

I might be wrong here but apathy happens because a single mind is surrounded by infinite demands like those mentioned above. As powerful as your mental being can be, it has got its limit. So apathy almost is structural, not a defensive stand. It also is not sheer laziness, let alone being outright selfish.

Is there strategic apathy even?

This is like an oxymoron. Apathy imply not caring. So how can I combine them? The objective would be to acknowledge outside world completely and also explicitly the limited capacity of human mind. Things could matter, it could not, I genuinely can't know for sure. This might be the peak-cope I have ever devised, but the alternative where you get washed up isn't useful to anyone, least myself. I honestly don't know how to resolve this.

If solipsism says nothing outside my mind can be known for sure, then apathy can also be a crude practice of it. I stop looking for meaning in strangers dilemma and hunger and only trust what I control. My mind. I look for certainty there. There I find my sense of obligation and eternal responsibility.

Apathy if played right doesn't require doubting reality like this. You retain emotional weight on topics you hold dear and bypass your lack of say. Then hibernation and slumber is A-okay.

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Looking inward

Upon doing my yearly review, the most important thing about my life that I wish I could change is the way I talk to myself. I quote from the Modern Wisdom podcast -

If I talked the way I‘d talk to myself with my friends, I‘d have no friends left.

Quite often I found myself slipping into being too judgmental, harsh and austere with myself. This has been the theme for as long as I can remember, only sometimes offset by an internal correction in the form of overly treating myself and indulging in all kinds of pleasures. Now, don‘t get me wrong, I‘m super duper grateful for this inner critique, but I sometimes think it is detrimental to me. And this is not a dialogue about hustling, ...that is decades old at this point. What I mean is, what if, through my way of engaging, I might be missing the bigger picture?

Recognizing the pattern

This brings me to the survival mode. Not everything is do or die. Not everything should be production ready right away. Sometimes deliberately slowing down is the way to go. Progress for the sake of progress (and deriving a sense of satisfaction) is quite as meaningful as doing nothing. This year, I want to give myself the grace to actually sit down with something for so long and not feel this FOMO. What my critique has got to understand is that the world is rapidly moving forward, doesn't mean I need to do the same. I need to lay back and get reacquainted with “boring” times. And there is nothing to be anxious about. I can most definitely trust in myself to pace whenever needed. Times are changing and I need to update the firmware ツ..

Speaking of which, I do need to get a hold of this dialogue, as I see this trickling down to other parts of my life. I remember a moment last year when I had to prove to myself that I could finish this game in one week. I like pushing myself, but to have that same mentality in my recreational stuff, that is unholy. I am not playing the side quests and exploring all the areas this way. I need to containerize or silo this tendency.

When the voice is useful

I often meet people with heavy self-conviction, the likes of people who have it all figured out about everything, who speak with such obvious false confidence (Dunning-Kruger!?). Defence mechanism or fake it till you make it, whatever it is, comes off as tone-deaf most of the time. This voice I believe is also essential to stop being a headache in day to day life.

Secondly, I have a complex way of reconciling with a divine being, and since I am not practicing believer, I trust this self-commentary to guide me into being a better person.

When it turns against me

When my own “talk” go after my identity rather than my behaviour. Sometimes, there are limited things you can do to begin with. Things don’t go the way you want (ad nauseum), yet ocassionally I am affected, although I get back up quite smoothly. More importantly, I stop trying new things due to this. What if I could be stupidly close to something and leave it all behind to wallow in self-pity? Thus, it is decided, Need me a BLUEPRINT (for healthy self talk) moving forward…!

Rewriting the script

Before I strategize, I want to take a moment to finally see this and set aside the time to address it, albeit in this hit-or-miss, verbose manner. I am also thankful for the convos I‘ve had with people over the last couple of months. I am skeptical when it comes to engaging with others, but they seem to influence my thoughts little by little. Been reading a nice book titled “How Minds Change“ by David McRaney, which visits this in depth.

Now, I want to switch to a more Socratic way of critique, like a question on top of a question thing. My critique, if I could paint him, would be a prison warden with an iron rule. Jumping here – Critique as such shouldn‘t hinder the creative process. I am not gonna lie, I have poor aesthetic taste to begin with, you should see my room! I admire people who are blessed with them, tho. I need to find that creative outlet for me, too. This is in tune with my everlasting complaint that I remain a mere consumer, not a net creator in this world. Is this how I wanna fare in life? NO. Therefore Critique+Creativity.

I realize all this talk and writing could essentially mean nothing if I don‘t embrace the status quo. Therefore, in support for my lazy side, I can on some days fall back to prison-warden critique, it'd be easier that way. This year, more than anything, is for contingency planning, and it’s always good to remind myself that change is not instant and discernible.

Goal

A kinder, less dramatic, more resilient voice that’s gonna keep me from being a grumpy old man. Remember -

Young at heart, retired early, and somewhere by the sea.

[────୨ৎ────to be updated────୨ৎ────]

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I found my old blog at tchncs.de. That federated website is seriously awesome, and the admin is a really nice dude! Check out and support them if you can

Here is a review I wrote (verbatim) 3 years ago, when I found out about criterion collection: excuse my cringe xD

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REVIEW: THE 400 BLOWS

Background: Director – François truffaut, Year – 1959

Context: College Dorm, Noon, Under cozy warmth of Mink blanket, Relaxed

Date: 12/12/2022

Time: 0:30 AM

Never thought that this was the first film of a full blown series with an actor progressing through life in front of the camera.

Authentic. The film was surprisingly not anachronistic considering its release in 1959. Jean-Pierre Léaud's perfomance is really meticulous. What sets apart this movie is the simple fact that the director Truffaut is confessing before the screen his memories in a cold world which still resonates with many, making this a timeless peace of art.

~May the force guide us^_^

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Reading this made me feel old and trippy about the trajectory so far. F nostalgia tho, I still have this in me and on a serious note, I'm gonna read and write more this year

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Regaining what's lost in corporate social media

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A primary concern nowadays for me in terms of using social media is the abundance of AI content. It's getting so crazy good that the other day, I was unable to deduce the nature of a video I saw on X until it got community noted. I shouldn't be using the notorious platform to begin with, which is discourse for another day; but how can I as a GenZ fail to differentiate this slop lol.

And not just X, same rhetoric goes on in YouTube, Instagram, Reddit and Twitch. God knows how screwed other platforms are. Giant corpos seems to be happy with the development – the so called enshittification. Dead internet theory all over again.

What alternative should I be aware of and more importantly, how soon can I let me guard down knowing they won't get the same doom? I reckon I won't be forever looking for an ideal place – those hard days are behind me. So a whack a mole solution won't be ideal here. I am all for moving to open source platforms. I remember when ActivityPub was booming some years ago and I sought refuge in such communities. What followed was power trippy mods, censoring, and hastened evolution into an echo chamber.

I believe pockets of small communities where good, healthy, constructive convos happen are the way to go. Like good discord/matrix servers for instance. To get a balanced and “dynamic” feed a bit of curation might be needed, which sounds exciting.

I've seen creator based communities behind paywalls such as patreon and substack, a development towards which my jury's still out. If this is to be the next stage of connecting, I just sincerely wish for decentralised model with a end user respecting standard.

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