The world is insane, but you don’t have to be.
That sounds simplistic, but it is actually the crux of the matter. Thousands of years ago, most beliefs and thinking centred around myths, of gods and goddesses and heroes, and their made-up stories that, folk were told, explained the world around them. So people accepted this for a long time; actually, a lot of people still centre their beliefs around this type of thinking even today.
But there was another group of people who said we should reject this and think for ourselves. This was a shock to many people no doubt. I bet they were warned, if you do this, the gods will be angry and your life will become unlucky. Yet these actual heroes went ahead anyway, rejected all pre-existing beliefs and just looked around, at their world and situation, and started to reason out the human situation.
What they came up with was logic and philosophy. A way of thinking based on truth, what can and cannot be true, how you can know if it’s true or not, and how to structure and live a life of happiness based on this, the practical application of logic, in various flavours, stoicism (resilience and endurance), epicureanism (pleasure), cynicism: (simplicity) – and so on.
The whole thing took off, there were philosophy schools for people to live truth, and universities were established, and initially all subjects were philosophy because it was ultimate truth based on… what is true (and observed). The myths, gods, goddesses and heroes didn’t go away, people still worshipped them and told their stories. Some people still chose to orientate their lives and believe in the myths and religions rather than logic and philosophy, and probably many people kind of did both, because they didn’t give it too much thought and it wasn’t so important to them. Perhaps it’s like nowadays where a lot of people celebrate (worship?) Father Christmas (who is actually supposed to be a diety), although is it actually based around consumerism.
Philosophy and logic for Forever Alone
Fast forward to today, and the situation is somewhat similar, in that logic, philosophy and the various forms of truth can still be studied and applied, although the pendulum has, unfortunately, swung rather far the opposite way. Philosophy and logic are not the only subjects in education but as an ‘irrelevant’ non-degree. Technically, logic, constructing and understanding arguments, and critical thinking are a part of essay writing, but if you look at most people who come out of university, they are simply idiots with a lot of debt. They don’t have a philosophy of life and practice focused on that which causes them some kind of joy or contentment based on truth, but are wage-slaves working off their debts, brainwashed with social media brainwashing them with lies, which they do not contest. The fact about education, generally, is that it’s been dumbed down so that everyone can pass, and the main dumbing down was removing logic, philosophy, and actual critical thinking from the curriculum, which was perhaps a good move by the elites. If people really considered modern life insane, they wouldn’t live it, pay tax and uphold the status quo.
The fact is that the world is insane in many ways, because most people choose insanity. It was true in ancient times, when people maintained the old myths and stories as well as the new truths, and it happens now. People don’t want to wake up. So what is modern insanity? Oh, where could we even begin?
An example of the relevance of critical thinking
Money is a good start, as we structure a large part of our lives in the pursuit of it… or do we? ‘Money’ is a store of value that can be used as a medium of exchange, like bonds, precious metals, cryptocurrency, etc. Currency is a representation of money, like notes and coins. In the US, of the 2.3 trillion US dollars that are in circulation, only ten percent of them have been minted into notes and coins. The rest, ultimately, exists as binary code on a computer, numbers on a screen, and represents absolutely nothing. There is no gold standard now, i.e., each unit of currency representing a piece of gold, Nixon removed this in 1971. The numbers represent nothing. Every year, people want to borrow money. The government allows banks to just type a number into a computer so this’money’ is created, then people work to pay it off over the years. When people talk about the national debt, it means how much the government owes for creating all this currency, which we are paying off with our time and effort. So all this debt is, (if it represents anything), actually our time in the future. (US debt is 35 trillion dollars in 2024).
Really, we base so much of our life around this, and it is a house of cards, or even less actually: a complete illusion. Not only that, but these meaningless numbers are controlled by a centralised system that can close bank accounts or stop people from buying what they want. Why do we exchange labour for essentially nothing?
The role of evolution in the Forever Alone isolation of modern society
Well, this is just one example, money, as it is such a driving force in most peoples’ lives. Another huge driving force is sex and relationships, another area surrounded by much lunacy. Now, in the defense of the species, I think a lot of that madness (meaning beliefs and behaviour (and assumptions)) devoid of logic or sanity, is driven by genetics and hormones. Birds come to mind. I’m thinking of the different species where males have evolved these huge feather displays or special calls or dances or collecting behaviours to impress mates, plus fighting to the death over access them.
Of course, this translates to behaviour in our own species, and perhaps it isn’t lunacy sometimes, like human courtship, buying flowers for someone, some teenager showing off on his bike to impress a girl, women painting their faces different colours to look better with pushup bras. We’re hard-wired towards this kind of behaviour becuase women select ‘strong’ traits that lead to human survival… or they did.
But I think it isn’t working so well nowadays. The woes of modern life might actually be linked to the money issue I brought up first. Without a gold standard, governments print as much money as they want, and so there is inflation. Wages don’t keep up, and so everyone has to work a lot more to have a lot less in life. When it comes to dating, nowadays people don’t couple for a long time, finding a life partner at a fairly young age, but tend to f*** around first, which is good. Women are empowered financially, and so don’t need to choose a partner early (or at all), and are also told they can have it all, and wait, freeze their eggs, etc. which can work out, and sometimes not. But the fact is that, outside of structured relationships, women are selective (to a certain age, then it’s too late for them), and men want to be promiscoius, but with high (unrealistic standards), then many men are left behind (in youth) and women (in older ages).
In a way, all this shouldn’t be a massive issue. Women can be promiscious when young, either find someone then, or lower their standards when older. Men who are not adonis can use alternative relationship structures (transactional or voluntary celibacy) in youth, then accept a slightly ‘run-through’ woman in later life. All sounds fun and happy, heh?
But when I look around me in society, it doesn’t seem to be working, for many people. The issue seems to be that people won’t give up the way it is now and reason out a better alternative, and that could be genetics and hormones, but that is a BS excuse in my opinion. We can say the same about violence. We evolved from (or share a common ancestor with I am told) chimpanzees, who are incredibly violent towards each other. We can also be incredibly violent towards each other, and historically, we have been. But we evolved (in some ways) into rational, civilised people. We can use rationale (logical thinking) to change our behaviour and society.
Logic and critical thinking can transform Forever Alone and all forms of insanity
We live lives, and we sometimes (constantly) have these disputes and get a bit angry, but most people aren’t violent on a regular basis, we regulate this genetic/hormonal tendency. It’s sometimes channeled into healthy alternatives, like friendly competition, or sports. The point is, with aggression: there is a genetic impulse to behave a certain way, but reason and common sense tend to prevail on a day-to-day basis.
Yet we still go to war. We are born in a certain place, and people have drawn lines on maps to construct the concept of ‘countries’ and they have logos (flags) and branding (national colours) and we ‘belong’ to them, and there are wars over the lines. When there is an argument (about a concept that doesn’t actually exist), force (or the threat of it) is used to make men (not women) kill other men they don’t know.
Imagine if every person was taught to live ‘the truth’, i.e., to reason out every thought, philosophy, and choice—into formal arguments, check the arguments are sound and logical with no fallacies, and thus TRUE – than base all thinking and decisions on this. The end of war. The end of wage-slavery. The end of simps.
Think for yourself
The first stage of constructing an argument (also known as, knowing what the f*** is going on here) is to define terms and decide what can and cannot be known. So we’d ask basic questions, like, ‘what is a country’ exactly?’, and the whole argument for going far from home and killing strangers begins to unravel at the first hurdle.
There is a second stage to reason, after defining terms, knowing what can be known, constructing a sound argument, and that is knowing what can be changed and what cannot. Changing what you want to change, and accepting everything else. Then choosing your thoughts accordingly, day-to-day, moment-to-moment, forever.
An example from my childhood showing how mental disipline and stoicism is really the crux for all transformation, for Forever Alone, Involuntary Celibate, Adult Virgins or people who are just sick of all this
I grew up with my aunt, who was not a very sentimental person (in a way), which is a shame, as I am. She had a habit of throwing all my things away on a regular basis. Sometimes, things that weren’t a big deal, like clothes that still fitted and I liked, but other times, devastating things. Gifts that people had given me only a moment before, a sweet letter or card someone had written to me. Literally, I would receive this, and if it wasn’t hidden straight away, I’d find it all ripped up into little pieces in the bin, sometimes before I’d even looked at it.
I got used to it (somewhat), but othertimes it would get to me, and she would say, ‘Just don’t think about it’. Which, at the time, was incredibly callous—but looking back, I think it was part of her style. Like when her husband died, within a day or so, every single possession—photo, keepsake, memento—was in the bin, never even a mention of him. It was almost like being gaslit that he had never been there (they were happy together, this was just her grieving style).
This was her main philosophy in life, ‘Just don’t think about it.’ Now in a way, that can be a type of avoidant behaviour (which I think was her problem) or repression, and unhealthy. But we are talking about the discipline of thought. There are two types of discipline: healthy and unhealthy (or perhaps skillful and unskillful). Avoidance and repression are based on refusing to think about something, a side-stepping of reason. Yet it is a different thing entirely, to ponder on a deep problem, construct a logical argument, base a choice on that reasoning, and then NEVER LOOKING BACK.
Philosophy, logic and reason are the answer to all forms of lonliness
This is what the ancient philosophers came up with thousands of years ago, rejecting myth and BS, and replacing it with logic and truth. Reason problems, change what you can, accept what you cannot, and don’t look back (don’t allow thought on what cannot be changed). It sounds simplistic, but really, every profound thing is simple in essence.
When you look at a statue of the serene, transendental Buddha in the lotus position with his eyes closed, what do you think he is doing? Planning the shopping for this evening’s meal? Or disciplining thought, choosing what to think or what not to think. It all comes down to this, ultimately.
Modern people are in these situations, where the whole dating thing—having a partner or the lack of one, partners, situationships and all, is the central focus of life and a source of total misery. Many people just keep trying to win in a situation that isn’t working, rather than stopping, and looking for the truth. “What is going on? What situation am I in? What else could it be? Are there people like me who have changed in a way I would like. What have I tried that didn’t work? Will it work? Can I move the goalposts? What is the essence of what I want? How do I know it will make me happy?” Reasoning out the whole thing, beliefs, and philosophy of life to live from:
This is true;
That is true;
Therefore, this is how I can be happy.
This is all I want. I want to pull you off the hamster wheel, have you reason it all out. Remove all insanity from your thinking. Replace it with what is. Change what you can. Discipline each and every thought to be sane in every single moment. Find contentment.
Easy-peasy.