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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Original post with proper markup: http://www.hkmurakami.com/blog/
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I live in a bubble.
But by bubble, I don't mean a speculative bubble [1]. It's the cultural, stratospheric, insular kind of bubble that I'm referring to [2].
I live in the suburbs of the San Francisco peninsula (not SF proper), a vast expanse of upper middle class enclaves. Unlike metropolitan cities where people from all walks of life converge into a chaotic crescendo, these suburbs are numbingly uniform. Unlike metropolitan cities, the citizens of suburbia tend to stay local, sticking to their set of usual locales.
I go to and from work in the insulating medium also known as a car, which separates, no, protects me from other people. I work in a tech company, where I interact exclusively with peers with similar educational backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses to those of my own. I spend my free time alone, with my family, or with friends who again are from similar educational and cultural upbringings. I spend very little time in commercial establishments, since routine conspicuous consumption needs are fulfilled through Amazon. Meals are taken at home, at the office, or at eateries catering to other middle class citizens like myself. I don't go to bars. They're too loud. I don't go to clubs. They're too loud.
Seemingly every minute of my life here is spent in this mind numbing sameness. It is comfortable and pleasant, safe and serene. I should have nothing to complain about. I should have nothing to be concerned about. Yet I know. I know deep down that something is wrong. Something is desperately unnatural and unhealthy. It's a worriless, pristine, whitewashed life. It's artifically pleasant and safe, like a germ-free hospital quarantine ward. Ferm-free environments make us weaker and flawed against the real ecosystems by weakening our immune system. Similarly, culturally pristine and uniform environments must make me vulnerable and flawed against the true societal fabric of this country and this world.
Is there anything fundamentally wrong with a life of separatism and segregation? After all, even the so called "elites" in hyper-urban settings like Manhattan go out of their way to insulate and separate themselves from the totality of the cultural chaos in the streets of their own city. If even the upper stratosphere of our society, goes to great lengths to associate only with their kind, is it not natural that others will follow a similar course due to their own inherent nature? Or do we, the ones who have had the fortune of a stable family, a sound education, and a stable occupation, live a life lead by human nature that is logically optimal yet morally reprehensible? Do we, in naturally and understandably seeking comfortable, pleasant situations for ourselves, settle into a way of life that is inconsistent with our moral compass?
Is it right to black out all that is foul, ugly, unpleasant in our society? Is life in a bubble, a picture perfect life, really something to aspire to?
As well educated, upstanding citizens, how are we to live?
[1] Conincidentally I do live in Silicon Valley, whose startup financing arena is arguably in the midst of such a monetary bubble.
[2] Like many rural college towns.
 
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There's no depth in answers to your question. You simply haven't compared your regular life to another. I suggest you go out camping / hiking, not too short such that you get to enjoy nature and reinforce the idea that living in a bubble is wrong, but not too long such that you're wondering if you'll survive the next day. Just enough such that you'd want to slap your former self for thinking living in a bubble is....inhuman. 1 week or so in Yosemite should do good in the Spring time.
For me, after living out a few years in sub-arctic temperatures, living and working out in the field from a few days to a few weeks, and being separated from normal dense civilization for a few years, I sure as hell couldn't give a damn if I were to live in a bubble or not.
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I grew up in the bubble, and the bubble sucks. The bubble is how you grow inured to the injustice of the world.
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To me at least this sounds much like an existential questions. And due to that fact the answer depends on what philosophical school you lean on. Personally, reigning from Denmark i've had tremendous ammounts of joy reading Søren Kirkegaard who are one of the most known philosophers in history. If you a serious about this, i think you need to look beyond your stated problems and assess them more as symptoms of something rather than the result of your current way of living. Im pretty sure his best work has been translated to english, you can PM me if you would like some titles. I dont believe there's an easy fix like going into nature for X ammount of time, but i could of course be wrong about this.
Good luck!
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I understand the feeling. This is why every 3 to 6 months, I try to grab a plane and travel somewhere I've never been before. This puts you out of the bubble for a while, and generally nets you a bag of experiences big enough to help you stay for the next 3 to 6 months in the bubble.
It's not the perfect solution by any means, but it helps a bit.
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'No man is an island.'
This is false. If we were not islands, we would all be lost, drowned in each others' tragedies.
- American Gods, Neil Gaiman (or at least it went something like that)
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but thats something that (sadly) only a few ever really get the curauge to do that.
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This reminds me of a novel I read by J. G. Ballard called Super-Cannes. It is the story of a society living purely within the bubble of a giant gated community provided by the residents respective employers. They end up killing each other.
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As cliche as this sounds, the bubble is all perspective. "There is no spoon." so to speak. You choose for yourself what merits something as upper or lower class, what environment is suitable or to your liking, what characteristics of people or places are above or below you. Whether these preferences are result of natural or causal effects is not the point, that's a different debate and question entirely. What is true, and what is of no debate, is that you are a person who has more than enough sentience to change you perspective, even if you cannot change your acquired tastes. You have the ability to perceive and filter what is trivial and what has merit, and upon realizing this, you also have the ability to seek these things. You are only in a "bubble" of sorts when the trivial hinders your pursuit of the non trivial.
That is the first premise. The second one would probably relate better to that actual topic you are writing about. I believe it is human nature to want to be socially accepted, as we are social creatures. But we are not completely driven by these instincts alone, though we certainly can let ourselves be. I could certainly ignore my own thoughts and thinking and adopt those of others, regardless of my personal disposition, simply to fit in. You can substitute "thoughts and thinking" with a variety of things to also "fit in". Purposely avoiding these things is no exception either, if it is done regardless of your personal disposition. Of course, we are not so strongly conformists or non conformists - we don't all wear the same colored shirts, and when we choose not to conform, even then we don't walk around shirtless. There is clearly a healthy balance in these things. I think if a person knows themselves well enough, they can see clearly when they are ignoring things of merit as described above, while instead, choosing the type trivial conformance described here.
As far as whether this hinders your growth or quality of life or something as a person? It can certainly have the possibility of limiting your range of perspective. It really comes down to preference, once you have decided what is of merit. If everything of merit can be found in your "bubble", and you have no reservations of leaving said bubble to pursue something, then in reality, there is no bubble. Like I stated in the beginning of this reply, it is just a matter of preference, and critical thinking; making sure you are not too arrogant, conformed, scared, or otherwise, to explore or learn or pursue or enjoy. There is no spoon, if you can see why the spoon isn't important, so to speak :p
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Why is that life morally reprehensible?
That's a bizarre outlook to have. Personally I think its pretty arrogant to think you can solve all the worlds problems, they aren't solvable.
We are simply the consequence of random events which created sentience. Our problems are a result of the nature of what created us, the world is dangerous and we are dangerous, random and not built for a specific purpose, we evolved to reproduce and that is the only thing that has shaped us into what we are today, if it weren't for these traits which lead to the morally reprehensible things you see we would not have grown to create your little bubble.
How can we possibly be expected to live in an ideal world when we are not suited to one? We are just animals, and all we can be expected to do is live our lives, however that may be. We take it upon ourselves to treat others as best we can and we take it upon ourselves to craft our own societies as we would like to see them, but they are not moral obligations, they are not set in stone.
As far as the life you talk about, we are inclined towards uniformity, repetition, life is challenging and we adapted to our surroundings by creating a desire for uniformity and a love of repetition and familiarity. Obviously that's a gross simplification but the jist I'm going for is that you can't fight nature, you can't fight your own nature. Don't try to reason yourself into a new outlook, become comfortable with your current one, and if you desire change, change what you can in sensible fashion.
Or just buy a fast car like everyone else in a mid life crisis.
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The bubble is how you end up with a username like thedeadhaji, or thedeadchristian, or thedeadjew.
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You are always never too far from joining the more colorful denizens of the Bay Area; the Tenderloin in SF, parts of Berkeley, and East San Jose spring to mind.
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Maybe try and bring those nebulous, philosophical questions to a concrete level. Realize that yes, driving a car, using electricity, using clean drinking water to pee and shit in is all quite wasteful. The luxuries we use mean that others have to do without. You can voluntarily cut out things which are wasteful luxuries little by little. The main feeling I get from your post is guilt.
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On February 10 2013 06:44 Mothra wrote:
using clean drinking water to pee and shit in is all quite wasteful.
hell yeah bro, yellow is mellow
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On February 10 2013 00:12 adwodon wrote:
Why is that life morally reprehensible?
That's a bizarre outlook to have. Personally I think its pretty arrogant to think you can solve all the worlds problems, they aren't solvable.
We are simply the consequence of random events which created sentience. Our problems are a result of the nature of what created us, the world is dangerous and we are dangerous, random and not built for a specific purpose, we evolved to reproduce and that is the only thing that has shaped us into what we are today, if it weren't for these traits which lead to the morally reprehensible things you see we would not have grown to create your little bubble.
How can we possibly be expected to live in an ideal world when we are not suited to one? We are just animals, and all we can be expected to do is live our lives, however that may be. We take it upon ourselves to treat others as best we can and we take it upon ourselves to craft our own societies as we would like to see them, but they are not moral obligations, they are not set in stone.
As far as the life you talk about, we are inclined towards uniformity, repetition, life is challenging and we adapted to our surroundings by creating a desire for uniformity and a love of repetition and familiarity. Obviously that's a gross simplification but the jist I'm going for is that you can't fight nature, you can't fight your own nature. Don't try to reason yourself into a new outlook, become comfortable with your current one, and if you desire change, change what you can in sensible fashion.
Or just buy a fast car like everyone else in a mid life crisis.
This hurts my heart.
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On February 10 2013 06:48 sam!zdat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2013 06:44 Mothra wrote:
using clean drinking water to pee and shit in is all quite wasteful. hell yeah bro, yellow is mellow
Joking aside, think about two of our most basic resources needed for life: clean water and fertile soil. The way we handle our sewage not only uses tons of water, but it takes all those nutrients we ingest and doesn't return them to the soil. It doesn't hurt to be aware of such things even if there doesn't seem a reasonable remedy at the moment. I take it haji has a problem solving sort of mind, so it might help to ponder things that have concrete solutions, rather than stuff like "how do I break the class barrier?"
Enjoyed your posts in the Transhumanism thread btw.
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Have you watched American Beauty?
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Your blogs are always so interesting and thought provoking
I believe the whole "ignorance is bliss" thing is flawed.
You can't really and truly and genuinely be happy if you're simply content with life the way it is, or the way you perceive it to be. It's not right to just pretend that something doesn't exist or avoid acknowledging something just because it doesn't impact you. I feel that to be truly happy is to be aware of everything that surrounds us, because happiness is fleeting, and we don't necessarily always want to be happy, but we do always want to understand what's going on.
And I feel that, even in my own life, I'm missing out on many things that I feel would enrich me and make be a better person perhaps, but I am also not comfortable with putting myself out there in many situations, it makes me awkward and uncomfortable, or maybe I think that I'm "above" a particular social activity because I already know what's going to happen and ultimately there's no point to drinking or having one night stands or something like that. But I feel that it is often the experience that counts for something, maybe even something intangible, unquantifiable, but that can potentially add something meaningful to my life. I feel life is often seemingly random, like a stochastic system where everything is non-deterministic, even though I often prefer to conveniently oversimplify things and reach premature conclusions before ever having run an experiment or embarked on any sophisticated thought process.
But I think that overall it's more about the journey not the destination. Sure I can sum life up in a few sentences or a few superficial tenets, but that isn't what life is about. Some of the greatest discoveries and inventions in history have come about purely by accident, or through people's dreams. So in a sense I believe this life is just a crude existence and in dreams is where I can truly find a genuine sense of contentment, where anything is possible and my imagination runs free. Maybe I just don't know anything, maybe I'm just yearning to grasp any meaningful form of identity in this world where chaos and harmony dynamically coexist.
As people try to make their lives "perfect", so they seek out greater "imperfections" in their surroundings and the world around them; as they ultimately want their lives to be in harmony, they irrationally search for chaos. I like to think that people don't really know what they want. This is why girls date the "bad boy" but marry the "rich nice guy". This is why the Hippies in the 70s, who had rich parents and healthy families and relationships, abandoned their comfortable and seemingly idyllic lives to live on the streets of India in ripped up clothing or have giant orgies with drugs and free sex. They wanted something different, something exciting, but in the end they didn't want to live that way forever, they just wanted the freedom to live as they chose. They wanted that freedom, they didn't want to be suffocated by the clutches of suburban modern day life. In the end we often don't know what we're looking for, but we want to continue looking.
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On February 10 2013 07:14 Mothra wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2013 06:48 sam!zdat wrote:On February 10 2013 06:44 Mothra wrote:
using clean drinking water to pee and shit in is all quite wasteful. hell yeah bro, yellow is mellow Joking aside, think about two of our most basic resources needed for life: clean water and fertile soil. The way we handle our sewage not only uses tons of water, but it takes all those nutrients we ingest and doesn't return them to the soil. It doesn't hurt to be aware of such things even if there doesn't seem a reasonable remedy at the moment.
I'm not joking even a little bit  . It's not that there isn't a reasonable remedy, it's that we don't have any reasonable system for implementing obvious remedies to obvious problems. It's too easy to easy to ignore your own complicity with the world's problems in a complex global society, "too complicated," "what does it have to do with me?" "I me me mine"
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EPT
