There's A Reason For That, You Know. When The Body Is Near Death, The Brain Decides That Ultimately,

Moral duty.

"I do not believe in God, I believe in humans." This is usually what I say when people ask me if I'm religious, and there is meaning behind it. Religion is many things, but it is not neccesarry for humans. Most organised religions make a great deal out of the idea that we need to be good to each other, usually with the promise of a blissful heaving and/or the threat of a miserable hell. I do not believe such a sentiment, but moreover...

I do not believe we need a reason to be good.

Stoicism is sometimes described as 'positive nihilism' and that really shines here. I do not believe there will be consequences for our actions. I do not believe there needs to be. Because our actions will be judged, and are judged, by ourselves. And while there may be a heaven and hell, I do know for sure that I have a life, right now, so trying to make THAT a good experience is definitely worth it.

We have a moral duty to do good. To do our best. This moral duty transends.... absoloutely jack squat. This moral duty is one that we owe to ourselves, the 'promise' being that we can die at peace with our life choices, and the 'threat' being that we die with regrets. Personally, the thought of dying with regrets isn't even that scary, though I do go to great lengths to avoid it. But I know that if tomorrow was my last day, I would not have any real regrets (though my early passing would be regrettable).

Does this mean religion is total bs? No, not really. (i pressed post like the moron i am, editing in the remainder of the post now)

But Kant said "Do good things because they are good" and that is all you need to get started. If you find yourself asking why you are doing this, tell yourself: "because its good" and then do it.

Finally, we are about to go to some confusing places. See, the reason you do good things for good reasons is actually... inherently egotistical. You do it to feel good about yourself! This is a kinda nihilistic thing to think about, but I'll tell you how I rationally came to terms with it: A person is ONE person. So all that truly matters to that person is them being happy, satisfied, loved. Now, when you do what's best for society, you give up happiness but fortify your satisfaction and love, both recieved and given. How does any of it make sense? Well, here it is, straight from Niels Overgaard himself: "You are both the most and the least important person in the universe." What this means is that every action you take should, at the end of the day, go towards making you a happier, more complete person, but that you should recognise that being humble and treating yourself like the least important person in any social situation. This has some complex social implications which I won't go over right now, but just understand that you love yourself because litterally everything you do, you do to be either a happier, or a more complete person, however difficult that may be to believe.

With that, I love you all - Anthony

I doubt he cares but the sentiment is correct. You are bolstering and enforcing real sickness from people around you by promoting ED. Shame on you.

i always think about how ed sheeran must feel about the tag #ednotsheeran

On temptation

Temptation is a word that is loved to death by christians, but is actually used to describe any old impulse the body or mind may have. Temptation is wanting to eat all the time. Temptation is the desire to lay in bed on a monday morning. Temptation, temptation, temptation. The thing is, though, that temptation also has a different meaning, which is the 'actual' definition of it: Being tempted (be it by yourself or others) to do some thing. Horrible explanation, so let me use an example: If you want to stop cracking your knuckles, a christian would say that cracking your knuckles is a form of temptation. But I would say (not from stoicism in particular) that temptation was the feeling you get when you don't crack your knuckles and you then start wanting to. That's temptation. This kind of temptation is directly linked to dicipline, and it can be used to train your dicipline.

Instead of avoiding temptation, you have to expose yourself to it in a controlled amount. If you just supress your desires (which come from a natural place way most of time), you will not achieve anything and it will bounce back some way or another. But if you instead tempt yourself on purpose, imagining and telling yourself how easy it would be, you will build up your own dicipline, especially if/when your brain takes it up as a habit in itself. Train it up, see what happens!

Biblically accurate cat

I had a person track me down because I had edited a single stat on a single item in The Binding of Isaac's fandom wiki. They contacted me on Discord. They said it had been tough because I wasn't on the official Isaac discord server. They added me so that they could inform me that I had made a wrong edit, and that they had reverted it. That was it.

A strange interaction but welcome nonetheless.

You are owed/entitled to nothing.

An important part of minimizing your own unhappyness is letting go of the idea that you are obligated to recieve, or keep, something. Anything. Epicurus said that "He who is not satisfied with little, is satisfied with nothing". But he's dead now, so I won't just quote him without explanation.

In modern society, more is never enough. Yet we believe that if we just had more, we would be happy. Honestly thinking it over, this probably stems from the fact that most people try to 'achieve' happiness and then maintain it indefinitely. Which, of course, isn't possible. If more was enough, any millionaire would waltz around in eternal bliss, and Elon Musk wouldn't need to micromanage his image to feed his ego.

So if achieving more doesn't make us happy, maybe lowering our threshold for what we consider 'enough' will? Well, for me it certainly removed a lot of misery (Though not all of it - I'm still not brave enough to touch and hold a larger spider in my hand) from my life, without needing any money.

You, reading this right now, almost certainly feel like you are owed something. There's a simple way to check. If you were to lose both your legs, would you be angry? What if you lost the love of your life much too early? Oh, and I'm willing to bet that most people would be angry if their phone was stolen, enough so to let it ruin their day. This misery is because you feel that you are owed your limbs, or partner, or whatever you hold dear. But to who? The universe? It's silly to think that you feel the universe owes you your legs, and that cursing it and being bitter would change it's ways.

And indeed, with time, people who lose limbs return to their regular state of mood. So you might aswell minimize the time between you losing something and accepting your circumstances. Which is to say: You might as well start accepting that you are, on a spiritual level, owed fuckall.

You aren't owed people's appreciation or adoration no matter how good of a person you are.

You aren't owed a good girl just because you're a nice guy who would treat her like a queen (If you find yourself identifying with this one, you should maybe just try not thinking you are owed the affection of others from being a merely decent person)

The only thing I would argue you are entitled to is air. More specifically, you are entitled to breathe in air that isn't filled with Co2. This is because you're genetically designed to panic in such a case, no exceptions. So in that one instance, the harmony of nature is on your side, and you can freely panic to your hearts content.

With all this being said, I am definitely owed a heart and a repost by you. Otherwise you're a bad stoic and will go to stoicism hell (Las Vegas).

Learn to get up again.

You will most likely face challenges in life. If not, touché, but for most of us, there will be feats we attempt to undertake, and fail at. Or things that happen which we really didn't want to happen. Or things that don't happen when you really want them to. It is reasonable to assume this is an inevitable fact for all humans.

Because of this, one of the best skills to learn in life is getting back up when life kicks you down.

And it doesn't have to be a major thing. It can be, but major events have the aspect of "wow, this was a major thing, I really need to make a dedicated attempt at moving on" which smaller, more common misfortunes sneakily sidestep. But no matter if a loved one died, or your partner dumped you, or you relapsed, or if you didn't get into your dream academy, you must get back up sooner and later. And most of the time, you will, but training your mind to have a structured framework for getting back up is an incredibly liberating exercise once you get it down.

All of the examples I just mentioned have happened, one way or another, to me throughout my youth, and back then I was not nearly as well-adjusted or happy as I am now. This is not because I grew out of the phase where bad things happened - there's no such thing - but because I learnt to deal with loss, grief and how to get back up after I relapsed. Instead of channeling my emotions into selfhatred, shame, scratches and drunken weekends, I eventually trained myself to get back to where I was after reality kicked me out of flow. (I'll get to the exception in a moment).

I remember the first time it properly happened. I had my first high school exam, and I had done a masterful amount of prepwork... at least by my standards. Seriously, though, I was feeling great about it and actually looking forward to presenting and- I got the lowest passing grade. Now, to put this in context, my whole life I had gotten mid to high grades without putting in any effort, and always been told that if I just put in effort I could make it so much further. I was not even sad when I recieved my grade - not cuz of stoicism, but because I was so genuinely flabberghasted I did not know how to react.

As I went home, my mood gradually decreased, especially as everyone around me kept asking "what went wrong", and I continually had to supress the urge to tell them "Oh I actually put in effort this time, like you said!". But that evening, I had finally gotten to a point where I was mentally capable of comprehending the grade and the entire experience. So I ran it through again, and this time, I asked myself "What went wrong" like everyone around me had done before. And truth is? I don't know what went wrong. Even now, I don't get it. But back then it seemed pretty clear what was gonna happen now. A lifetime spent without effort was rewarded, the first time I really tried I was punished. And yet, the conclusion I came to that evening was "Eh, it was probably a one-time thing", which was an out of character level of maturity for a 15 year old boy with virtually no work discipline to present. And no, to this day I have no idea how or why I came to that conclusion back then, either.

Now, back to the whole "getting back up" thing, you may find after particularly important and/or traumatic events in life that you can't just return to everyday life. Maybe there is a new feeling in your mind that you know you can never get rid of, or maybe a part of "normal" dissapeared completely from your life. In these cases it is more important that ever to have a structure in your mind, so that when one aspect of life comes crashing down, the rest remains intact. You have to be emotionally prepared to adapt, because life doesn't wait for good times to kick you in the nads.

And this, near the end of a very long rant, is probably going to be the only time you will ever see me encourage religious-esque activity. Cuz asking yourself "what does the universe/God/Joe Roagan want me to learn from this" is plain and simply more effective than asking yourself "what can I learn from this" when you're facing something that sucks.

Humans are social creatures. Imagining the personifcation of your inner voice as a friend that wants you to be happy is a tool that shouldn't, but does, work for me. Maybe it will for you, too?

Even though the situation in Europe is far less insane, my grandparents just-

My grandmother never worked fulltime a day in her life. She had no education past high school, she just walked up to a place, asked for a job and got it.

My grandfather finished his college degree when he was like 30, and then worked in a completely different industry where his education barely helped him.

They bought a house for dirt cheap, and have lived in it for over 40 years.

Meanwhile my parents both have high positions within companies, and they make (from what i can guess) between 3 and 4 times as much as my grandparents ever did.

Here's the kicker. My grandparents live 2 streets away from my parents. Their house has like septoupled in value and it is truly a testiment to how different the world was in the 70's than it is today.

As for me? I can't afford to move out before my college degree in aerodynamics is completed.

I just want to be able to quietly work on a computer tap tapping away with my cat sitting with me, is that really such a hard thing to come by? It is. Degree this, experience that. I get it, I do. Of course you'd want people who meet certain criteria, that makes perfect sense. If wishes were fishes and all that.

When you get lost and you end up in the enemys spawn

right wing trolls acting up on tumblr always fascinate me like what are you doing making a fuss about pronouns on the pronouns in bio website you’re in enemy territory like are you lost or something

Finally found where this came from.