#pretentious rambling

[d3monl0ver]

for me, I find sadism is much less about power than it is curiosity. what kind of sound will she make when I hit her? how will his face look when I fit my hand inside him? what colors will those bruises turn? how far can I push? what can you show me of yourself that no one else has ever seen before?

[aksemmi]

there seems to be something very weird going on, to me, when other people discuss philosophy of mind or such relative to my own intuitions/experience, tho not in a way which seems to bring any kind of obvious conclusion from it - ive recently seen a discussion of "feeling love" as a characteristic feature of consciousness. now, i feel love, but what i mean by this is i experience being in love, which is... well not a feeling, or, its not a qualia, the way pain or red are qualia. rather, its like, some mix of preferences, beliefs, emergent patterns of thoughts, desires, etc. it may also be a "mood", or a meta-mood, where things shift in certain ways in certain contexts. but to me there is no love qualia. i can introspect and get a return "love", but this seems downstream of observation rather than something i can infer innately just by running a check. now, arguably, i can only experience all this because i have, well, subjective experience, which maybe we can equate to consciousness?, but in a sense this seems like not the level love exists on, if consciousness is like experience, then the experience of love is no more rooted in consciousness than say the experience of tumblr is - its intuitive to me that pain is, well, pain, something to avoid, not because of the particular qualia/sensation of pain itself but because of the panicked desire to avoid and get out of it that comes with it. this makes sense considering ie humans with mutations who feel pain but do not avoid it. i just read a post where someone's central motive in identifying consciousness is about the sensation of pain, and how to avoid it, but it didnt seem to stop and consider if the qualia of pain can be separated from the desire to avoid it. it spent the whole time talking about how bad pain feels, in a blog otherwise very careful about disambiguating around philosophy of mind. but while i feel pain and react to it as one might expect, abstractly it seems clear to me that the feeling itself isnt really whats morally relevant as something to avoid causing others, that that is rooted more in the avoidance response? - i was reading a post talking about consciousness as access to self, ie the ability to make queries and get returns, basically mental self awareness or reflection etc., and specifically the ability to check how one came to recent conclusions at any time. but to me this seems a bit like, well not something i cant do, but not the norm, and often something hard. i often dont have much ability to tell why i thought something, without essentially guessing (some of this, loosely, does seem pointed at something like me interpreting consciousness as awareness itself/qualia vs as like, reflective thought, but perhaps ironically thinking about ie the love example also makes more me sympathetic to the idea that actually an entity doesnt need qualia or awareness to be ~someone anyways! tho its not clear such an entity is theoretically possible, as causation could flow the other way)

[mawofthemagnetar]

It’s not that life has a point.

It’s that we want it to have one.

There’s a peculiar function of the human mind- all things of import must have a name, and all things of import must have a purpose.

Mountains are mountains. They don’t have a purpose. They exist. But we ascribe to them purpose. We say “you hold the glaciers and the stone and you hold the headwaters of the rivers! You stop the rain from falling on the plains and create wet marshes on the seaside!”

But it’s a mountain. Because it does these things doesn’t mean that those things are its purpose. It simply…is.

But then, the mountain must be named. It must be, of course. Everyone needs a name; so, everything needs a name. So we name the mountain. Its important, of course. So we name it St Helens or Mawson or Etna.

Those are all volcanoes. But the point is still the same.

So. We name ourselves and see the world around us as full of things that appear to be full of purpose. And we give those things names, as we do, and then turn back on ourselves and expect that there should be a purpose to our lives also.

But perhaps there is no point.

Perhaps the nonsense gives rise to beauty all the same.

The glacier doesn’t need a reason, or a name.

But we gave it both.

How very... us.

[chongoblog]

Our use of the word “wholesome” becoming so common is kinda disillusioning. It sort of tells us that we find more value in something because it’s completely stripped away of any irony and deceit. Not surprising to hear it be a high level of praise considering how rampant irony is, but it’s just something kinda interesting.

[drizzly-bear]

isn’t it funny how sometimes your love for someone will hit you out of nowhere? you’ll be going about your day, just pouring a cup of tea, when suddenly a smile will bloom across your face and your heart will swell in your chest, and you’re - full. 

[laffytaffer]

I don't really know why I share my art online. It's not particularly high quality and it's certainly not appealing by any reasonable metric. Nobody cares or sees it, not that I'm even that interested in having fans of my stuff. My art means something to me, and that's really what matters.

Maybe I'm just screaming out into the void that I'm real and that I'm more than a commodity. Despite everything, I'm here, just as weird and ugly and off-putting as ever. And maybe if I share that then it'll mean something to someone else too.

[sweet-nightmare-prince]

It’s so hard being perfect and eternally strong and stoic and resilient and forever I am like radiation in the steel you’ll have to go to the bottom of the ocean to dig up parts that aren’t contaminated and i will never really fade away im an angel

[sweet-nightmare-prince]

No matter how much grief I cough out I will never stop choking on it for as long as my head is being held under the water