Addenda – First year

I’ve been doing this blog thing for almost a year now, and I’ve written some things that I think require further explanation. I’ve also changed my opinions on some of what I’ve written about, and just outright said things I wish I hadn’t. So I’m going to try and go over as much of that as I can. I don’t know if this’ll be comprehensive, there might be things I forget to cover just like how there are things I forgot to include in other posts (which btw I will also try to put in this one if I remember), but I’ll try my best. I’m not going to go in chronological order, or any other order either, I’ll just be talking about things as I’m reminded of them. If I’m still writing in a year, I’ll probably have a whole load more things like this bugging me so there may some day be a part 2 to this as well.

Ok so first I want to talk about this particular post which I wrote in February, it was kind of about this book Travels In Nihilon, but I got pretty distracted so it’s about a whole lot more than the actual content of the book itself. In particular there are two things about it that bug me, and I want to talk about here. Firstly I just said a lot about things that I know very little about, and that’s fine but I feel like maybe the way I wrote that post was in an authoritative tone which is undeserved. Not the stuff about nihilism, I think I made it clear that I know I’m uneducated on the subject and I was giving an outsider’s perspective on it. I’m more talking about what I said about Plato and his ideas. I’m not a philosophy student, I’ve read a couple of philosophical works including a translated copy of one of Plato’s dialogues but that’s it. I just feel like I didn’t make it clear enough that I understand that I don’t really know what I’m talking about when it comes to this stuff.

Which is important, I am fully aware that to anyone who actually knows about this stuff I look like a moron. I know this maybe seems like a small thing to worry about, but I worry about small things what can I say. I’m also planning on starting to read more philosophy in the near future, and I expect I’ll maybe realise how much I’ve misunderstood some major philosophical concepts. Which kind of leads me into the second thing, something that I’ve talked about in loads of posts but I know that I definitely did in this one. Which is the distinction I’ve noticed between more official definitions of words and the way they’re actually used by “normal people”. In fact it came up in the last post I wrote, only a week or so ago.

I don’t actually think I’ve changed my mind about any of what I’ve already said on this subject, though I do have some more to say, the only problem is that I naïvely implied that this was some unique insight or perspective of mine. To give myself some credit, in that very post I did say that I think this idea is probably not something only I notice, but even that is stupidly short sighted. Of course people must have noticed this, it’s not in any way a profound or undocumented thing. I think it’s just a cope, and any long term readers of this blog will be aware of my crusade against “copes”. I think that it’s so easy to become convinced that any kind of slightly interesting thing we think of is “new”, but realistically there’s thousands of years of scientific/ philosophical/ anthropological and linguistic literature.

I don’t believe that we’ve reached a point where there’s no new ideas, of course not, but we’ve reached a point where the random epiphanies of the man of the street have all been documented, chronicled and expanded upon enough. The new knowledge will come from response and research, it will build upon the work of others or on complex observations, there will be no more philosophers in one sense of how that term is used. This archetypal image we have of a figure who is completely out of the loop and yet has these world changing ideas, is a thing of the long gone past. There isn’t going to be another Heraclitus or Thales of Miletus, you or I are not going to be someone like that.

Just look at the increasingly complicated language of philosophical writings over the centuries, a lot of people use the term obscurantism to describe it and say that philosophy today is all just word salad jacking off with no real purpose. I was even convinced of this for a while, but now I just realise that there’s so much that has been said that needs to be reconciled and I kind of understand. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to grasp any of it, or if I’m too much of a low IQ brainlet, but I’ll give it a go. This isn’t some kind of defence of ivory tower academia either, I never went to university. In fact I didn’t even really have a formal education after the age of 15, I stayed in education after that for a couple years but I wasn’t really there. I dropped out before I actually dropped out. I’m just saying how it seems to me that the pursuit of knowledge has evolved.

Now speaking of this language problem, I think in talking and thinking about it in the past I didn’t realise quite the extent of the situation. See in my mind there was simply this distinction between the official or “true” definition of a word and then it’s devolved or degenerated usage as I viewed this change at the time. Thinking about it more though, it goes so much further than that. In a way almost everyone has a slightly different definition for most words, for a number of reasons. I mean take the context in which we learn a new word, we learn it in relation to other words. Words come in sentences after all, not as standalone items. This, you could say, colours how we view this particular word and it’s meaning. You’ll always have this personal baggage attached to certain words that no one else will.

I said in that same post that it seems to me there are two kinds of word, those that describe purely material things, like table, tree, foot, etc. and those that describe less tangible things like fear, essence, even a word like home. Now I know that it’s like a pseud calling card to dichotomise things like that (in my view there’s two kinds of X) but there is a distinction here. When two people meet, like when the European settlers first went to sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas, they point to these objective things as the starting point for trying to understand one another. In fact there’s even an African country (I think Senegal) today which means “boat” in the native tongue, because that was the first word learned by the visitors. You have to learn a new language with these sorts of words, and then when you can communicate that way and you have a foundation you can learn more abstract or conceptual terms from there using these words as the context.

Again I’m not a linguist, nor have I even been able to even learn another language, but I don’t see how it could be any other way. You have to have a basis, how can a word like “fear”, for example, be explained without some reference to those things which make one feel fearful. Yes those things also might be abstract, the distinction isn’t perfect it’s more like the colours on a rainbow, and I’ve used this metaphor before talking about something else and probably will again as it’s very applicable. There is clearly a distinction between any two colours on the spectrum that lie next to one another, but at the meeting point you don’t find a hard line you find a blurry inbetween stage.

One of the words I chose for my example, “table”, is a good example of this. It’s a man-made object, it’s not something that just exists to be described with a sound. Even though it does seem there is a universal understanding of table-ness, tied up in the word is this mental image of the building of a table and the idea of the purpose of this thing that we made. An apple doesn’t require a defence, it doesn’t need to have a purpose it simply is. We built a table though, and that must be justified. Still I would consider it in the first category because you could simply look at a table, make a sound and we could all agree that that sound means “table”. It doesn’t need anything else, so the closest I can get to a hard distinction is to say there are words that require other words and there are those that do not.

Anyway I mention this distinction (which I admit is imperfect) because words that are solidly inside the “simple object” box are impossible to have this change in definition happen to them that I’ve talked about before, and translation is something I’ve been thinking about lately. An apple will always be an apple, and not only that but that makes it far easier to translate as well. There is a perfect substitute word for apple in every language except for one spoken by people who have never seen an apple before. It’s this second category that is vulnerable to this misuse, but there lies the problem in my thinking up until this point. See why assume that the older definition is the right one? Let’s say that a word’s original academic usage is completely forgotten, and the newer colloquial usage becomes universal rather than just widespread. Dictionaries describe it in this new way, and so on. Is everyone using the word wrong? What about if one person finds an old dictionary which does have this older definition, now that there does exist one example still of the older meaning of the word, now is everyone wrong? I don’t know.

Most words we have today are derived from other words, or have older definitions that are lost. Many words derive from other words in entirely different and older languages. So it seems that as long as an older definition exists somewhere, there will be people who hold it in higher regard. I’ve been doing this, but why? It clearly doesn’t stand the test of time, the public at large is modifying it for a reason surely. These same people like me will say that the language is being dumbed down, but maybe that’s just a cope. Maybe the word is made more effective, more useful, through this evolution. I imagine that this process has probably sped up considerably in tandem with the increase in literacy/ education among the general population that has happened over the last 150 years or so.

I suppose it doesn’t matter though, because like I said to a much lesser degree the meaning held by any two people using this word is also going to be different. Words carry certain connotations for some people that they don’t for others, because of the context in which we learn them and hear them used later. Sure you’ll get these people to agree on a standard definition, or at least the definition they hold in their minds is incredibly similar, but it’s not a perfect match. It never can be, we will always be talking past one another to some degree. The more abstract a conversation is, the more this will be the case. It seems like all words are in a state of flux, there are these larger definitional changes that take place on a societal level but this happens because of the constant but very minor changes that happen every time someone new learns a word. Perhaps this broader change is in fact just the result of this smaller process, after enough time has passed.

There’s a lot of other stuff to get to though, so let’s move on now. I think the next thing I want to quickly go back to is a post from the very early days. From the very first month of writing actually, a period which when compared to the later stuff just bugs me. See that first month has more posts than any other, but I didn’t even start the blog until half way through the month almost. I was writing constantly, I was trying to distract myself by writing about what I was trying to distract myself from. Which seems counter-intuitive when I say it like that, but it made a sort of sense at the time. I kind of regret that entire period, but at the same time it’s was very honest and it’s what kicked this entire blog off so I’m also glad for it.

The post I linked is the second to last post from that month, and the entire idea behind that post was that I would “ride a train of thought” as the title says and so I didn’t really talk about anything in particular detail but rather breezed through various things I was thinking about at the time. I started it though by talking about one of the things I had been talking about all month, which was this possibly accidental message from someone I hardly knew and expected never to hear from ever again. There has actually been some update to that situation, which was that it was made clear that it was definitely still her using the same number, but I didn’t mention it in another post because frankly I’m very embarrassed that I ever cared so much about this. I really am kind of mortified every time I have to go back and read one of the posts from this month that were about this (other than the first, which on it’s own I’m quite happy with), I don’t like that it’s recorded and potentially someone I know could find it and see how pathetic I was being.

That’s why I haven’t talked about anything to do with any of that stuff since, other than to express a kind of regret. Again though only a kind, because I understand that if I hadn’t have written those posts I wouldn’t have then gone on to do what I’ve done since with this blog. Which is nothing special, but I’m happy with it. I’ve been thinking a lot about what the point is to any of this, what is the value to me writing any of what I’ve written rather than keeping it to myself, and I think right now my position is that it is a good insight into the life and mind of someone like me. After all there are quite a lot of people out there like me, and sure I’m an individual and I talk about my individual experiences and thoughts but I definitely fit a type.

Since I’ve started spending more time on /lit/ and less time on /r9k/ I’ve come across the posts of this minor board celebrity generally known on there as London Frog. The name is given because every thread he makes uses a picture of le sad facebook frog (like the one in my profile for this blog) and because he lives in London and often talks about his aimless walks through the city. He’s supposedly been posting since 2015 or possibly earlier than that even, and every post follows a very similar format. Some speculate that he is performing an elaborate multi year long troll job, but I think he’s actually presenting an accurate depiction of his day to day life. He has a sense of humour sure, the long running gag that every binge he engages is in will be his last being the best example of this. I was actually thinking about writing a whole post about him, and I may still at some point, but recently someone decided to start compiling all his posts.

Here’s the link to the first two volumes, the guy doing this says he has enough to make two more and maybe he’ll go back through the archive for the older posts as well, so I will either come back to this post and edit in the links to those when they’re available or I’ll include the links to everything when I write my full post about the least famous frog in London. Here’s volume 1, and volume 2, they’re definitely worth a read even if reading them all together like this isn’t quite the same experience as encountering his newest post as it comes out. I’m not sure if he is happy about this collection, I’ve not seen a single new post from him since the first volume was posted a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully he’s still around, and will post more, he’s an interesting character.

Anyway my point is that whatever the value there is in reading London Frog’s collected posts, or My Twisted World for that matter, that exists here as well. I expect that my writings will only ever be seen by a small group of people, but hopefully some of them will gain an insight into what life was like for a certain subset of people in the early 21st century. I think in particular from my posts, the one common theme that you get that you don’t get in the other mentioned projects or writings is the constant confusion or uncertainty. At least it’s not as prominent a theme, there are other more prominent themes in those other works in turn that aren’t so well presented here.

I’d say that feelings of anger and resentment are what you get from MTW, not just because of his actions but you get that feeling throughout the work itself. The killings are part of the work though, as I’ve talked about before. MTW is one single document, and in part it exists to justify this act of rage. LondonFrog makes short posts n an anonymous imageboard, and he deliberately seems to not just repeat himself in action but he literally reuses stock phrases over and over and has done for years. It’s a perfect way of expressing the feeling we all have that life is going nowhere. See I talk about my feeling of resentment sometimes, and I talk about my fears about how I’m wasting my life frequently, but those things are much better presented by these other works.

When I try to read my posts as they would appear to someone else, I think what stands out most is doubt. There’s the self doubt of course, and there’s the constant second guessing and suspicion about what other people are doing or “what they really meant” and so on, I often talk about how I’m not sure my own feelings are reliable. In reading back through my own writing I’ve noticed this is present throughout, whatever the subject I talk about I find it impossible to say anything with conviction. I had to make this very post because in one case my qualifying statements about my lack of trust in my own point of view were still not enough for me to feel comfortable.

So that post, “Riding a train of thought”, is notable because it’s the last time I spoke about that situation. However, I said in that post that I didn’t regret sending the second message I sent. The one where I asked why she messaged me in the first place. I feel quite differently about that now, I do regret it. I never should have sent that, it actually led to a pretty awkward situation and even if it hadn’t it was just such a stupid thing to do. I should have moved on and stopped thinking about it as soon as my first reply got no response. I just don’t understand why I cared so much, of course it’s easy to look back in hindsight and be more detached, but I’m just disappointed in myself for being so weak.

Ok, now I want to talk about this post from a few months ago. In this case I actually do have some new information/ experience that has changed my perspective, but even before that I had regrets about my wording. I’m talking specifically about calling my co-worker a thot, I just feel mean about it and also I was wrong. Now that word is used quite differently by different people, as are all of them I know I was just talking about this, but the personal definitions seem to diverge particularly for this and other “internet-era” slang terms. So I gave a description of what I mean when I use it in that post, if you need to know.

Now recently there’s been some changes at work, and now a few days a week because it’s getting busier two of us have to work the same shift. Which means that instead of spending a few minutes with my co-workers at a time I now sometimes have to spend several hours with them. I mean I’ve only been given this shift twice, and once was not planned, but I will probably have to do it again. Is it because I make everyone else uncomfortable that I’m put there less than everyone else, and they don’t want to work with me? I don’t know, but I’ve certainly considered that. Anyway one of the two shifts I had was with this girl, and naturally we were chatting to pass the time, and I just remember thinking that I was probably unfairly harsh in my judgement of her.

I don’t remember the specific moment, or even what we were talking about, but I just remember that at some point I was reminded of that post and I felt kind of bad about it. See there was something I was going to say in that post but I forgot to include it. Which was that I probably would come across very similarly to how she came across to me, if I could see my interactions with my co-workers from a third person perspective. Of course the smalltalk I have with them is boring, it’s fucking smalltalk. I can’t realistically expect to get a good impression of how interesting or thoughtful someone is from the kind of very brief interactions I was having with all of them until this change. So I’m saying that now, I should have said it then. Unfortunately this happens a lot because of the way I write these posts. I don’t really draft or plan them out it’s more of a thought dump, in fact it was an anon who first described them that way. I have bullet points in my head that I want to cover, but often as in this case I forget some of them.

Ok moving on again I will now be talking about a very recent post, Blackpill nights. Before I say anything about it I’ll just say that I did edit this the other day. I didn’t change or remove anything already there, I wouldn’t ever do that, I just added an image halfway through and an explanatory line about it. Now the problem I have with this post is that it kind of comes across like I’m trying to brag or boast. I’m not, but I am looking for affirmation as I even said in the post itself. See the point of that post was, well what I was just talking about, an expression of this doubt that is everywhere in my life. Because if on the one hand I have all these examples of women/ girls who were definitely interested in me, but yet I reached the age of 21 (soon to be 22) without ever even having kissed a girl, then clearly something doesn’t add up.

So I have all these anecdotes, these memories, but I start to second guess myself. Maybe I’m remembering completely wrongly, maybe these memories I think I have are false. My thinking was that by writing them down, and alongside a more current memory that I know for certain isn’t misremembered, I can stop this growing doubt. Because I’m willing to admit it, I do get an esteem boost from reminding myself of these things that happened. Because they did happen and I don’t want to lose them to this false doubt, and I know it’s a false doubt because I had this more recent memory. By having it recorded, and knowing that other people will see it, it feels more real and less like it’s all in my head. The funny thing is I actually decided not to include quite a few more anecdotes because I was starting to feel like I was being excessive or I was bragging. I’m aware that most people in my situation don’t have similar experiences, I even had someone tell me that they lost interest in reading my posts after that one. Which I understand, as unfortunate as that is.

In fact last sunday at work I was possibly “hit on”, or whatever you want to call it, again. This woman, who seemed quite a bit older than me got off the bus and came into the shop. She was wearing all this gym gear (she was a “personal trainer” I found out later) and she was asking me loads of questions and kept smirking and muttering things to herself. Now customers ask questions and try to chat often so I didn’t think anything of it, but then she asked when I close the shop. I answered normally, and she followed up with “so then you can go home?” and I said that after that I have to clean and stock up so not quite, at which point her demeanour changed slightly and she seemed colder. Now I can’t say for sure whether she was implying she wanted to “hang out” after I finished, but she did seem to have a similar demeanour and body language that I’ve noticed in cases where women were more overt about their interest.

The original title I had in mind for that post was “Blackpill’s a lie” (like the Ariel Pink song, Revolution’s a lie) and I think I should have stuck with it because that much better reflects what should be the real main take away from that entry. Yes I wanted a reason to share those memories as I said, but I wanted the stuff I ended the post on where I talked about my doubts about “blackpill ideology” to be the real point. After all that’s why I ended it on that, so it would be the last thing on your mind. Maybe you disagree, but I think that a slight change in the title while keeping the rest of the post exactly the same would have made quite the difference. I might not have even felt the need to bring it up again in this post.

I don’t think there’s anything else for me to say, I can’t think of anything right now anyway and this post is nearly 5000 words long already. I’m sure that as soon as I upload it I’ll realise there was something else I wanted to cover, that’d be just my luck, but it can’t be that important. Everything that has been really bugging me is dealt with now, I think. Oh, that’s right. I was messing around with the settings the other day and I found out that I could remove the e-mail address requirement for posting a comment. So now people can just comment anonymously without having to put their e-mail address in, not sure why that requirement was set in the first place but it’s gone now. Hopefully I might start to get some comments now, or not. Thanks for reading to the end anyway.