[Duskweaver]

Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.

I was going to reflexively poo-poo the idea that there's this massive and unprecedented social pressure towards what you term "aggressive hedonism", until I remembered what university was like when I was there: if you wanted a social life, it was pretty much mandatory to drink as if you had the liver of Dionysus. That was a decade ago and, from everything I've heard, it's only gotten worse since.

I'm still not convinced this is a really new phenomenon, though, or that it's genuinely the huge problem you seem to think it is. Classical Greek and Roman texts contain references to worries that young people are drinking too much or are generally too blindly hedonistic. It seems to be a constant narrative (at least in sufficiently complex societies) that we old farts (and those of us who are old farts at heart) see the next generation as descending into nihilistic hedonism.

And yet... we have not yet sunk into mindless decadence. Looked at from the present, the overall trend of history is towards people's lives improving. Yesterday's hedonistic (even sometimes downright selfish) pushing of moral boundaries opens the way for today being (IMO) objectively better for most people. I sure as fuck don't want to go back to the Victorian era (children working as virtual slaves in mines; men allowed to rape and beat their wives with no legal repercussions; levels of violent crime that make today look like a pacifist utopia; public hangings for what today we consider minor crimes...), nor even to the 1950s (homosexuality illegal; women and non-Whites second class citizens; censorship and possible legal punishments for criticising or lampooning Christianity...).

The fact that my country's current (Conservative!) prime minister wants my transsexual aunt to be able to legally marry her partner (whom she has loved and lived with for decades) is awesome, as far as I'm concerned. That his political heroine, Margaret Thatcher, would have been appalled at the idea just makes it more awesome. Of course, Queen Victoria would have been appalled at the idea of Margaret Thatcher (a female prime minister), and the Romans would have been appalled at the idea of a queen (another Boudicca!) reigning over Britain...

Being appalled at the antics of the next generation seems quite natural and normal. It doesn't necessarily herald the downfall of civilization, though.

[locke]

Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.

I was going to reflexively poo-poo the idea that there's this massive and unprecedented social pressure towards what you term "aggressive hedonism", until I remembered what university was like when I was there: if you wanted a social life, it was pretty much mandatory to drink as if you had the liver of Dionysus. That was a decade ago and, from everything I've heard, it's only gotten worse since.

Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it?  My experience in college was that so long as you had a vessel which could hold liquid in your hand, you were functionally a full participant, regardless of the volume you actually drank.  Now granted, participating would behaviorally probably induce greater consumption just by subconscious signally and cues but I drank very little in college, only in my senior year, and that was because I socialized with roommates that year who did drink and party.  My prior three years I had enjoyed a high and mighty above-it-all perspective of 'disgust' at my fellow collegiates who were obviously engaging in aggressive hedonism and I was just too mature for it.   And I don't think I even realized for years afterward that it was me that was the problem, that I was the guilty party, that my externalizing all blame onto others absolved me neatly of any complicity within my own situation.  Looking back more dispassionately, many people drank and drank excessively in college and their was a definite culture of drinking, but I was also hyper noticing every outlier because those outliers were the only evidence I wanted to acknowledge. 

So even though the vast majority of people I ever interacted with at most college parties over four years were only drunk or mildly drunk, my internal narrative of that experience was that everyone was insanely over-the-top excessively hedonistic and horridly inebriated.  For years I held on to the belief that it was alcohol insanity, and yet I only ever encountered fewer than five true examples of what I believed was going on.  Interestingly, I encountered more than four times as many people who weren't drinking at all during the same time frame, but all this evidence was completely dismissed, even if they outnumbered the other extreme by more than 4:1 and were far more significant a representative example than the opposite.   It also meant I did not note just how many girls were attending parties but not drinking or drinking very very minimally, because I was too caught up in a self-flattering blue-balled and extraordinary narrative about drunken sluts as a means to explain my lack of success in the sex.  It's amazing to me just how easily I fell into misogynistic traps because I believed myself to be such a champion of women and women's rights, but somehow it was them that was the problem when it came to romance, not me, I never questioned myself in those days.

this seems apt, somehow, may just be a wierd one am free association though, the punchline is at 1:10ish, the visual response to 'not really, I could only get non-alcoholic beer'  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-sDIDlka80&list=PL7347F458A669656A&index=2

[Madness]

First off: Clone High is awesome. What a lost treasure.

I was going to reflexively poo-poo the idea that there's this massive and unprecedented social pressure towards what you term "aggressive hedonism", until I remembered what university was like when I was there: if you wanted a social life, it was pretty much mandatory to drink as if you had the liver of Dionysus. That was a decade ago and, from everything I've heard, it's only gotten worse since.

I'm not sure it's as prevalent as you think - though I'm also not sure it's as much social imitation as lockesnow seems to suggest below. But where there are people actually fulfilling the improbable Dionysian extremes, they're really doing so. And alcohol isn't the worst drug being abused, in my opinion.

I'm still not convinced this is a really new phenomenon, though, or that it's genuinely the huge problem you seem to think it is ... censorship and possible legal punishments for criticising or lampooning Christianity...).

+1.

But we're not settling into mindless decadence at all. The top tier is simply being culled for access. Prevalently, across the world, the bar of minimum education is dropping while the competitive merits necessary for grad school programs are becoming increasingly ridiculous (and realisticly, we'd probably have to acknowledge that compared to the growing numbers of enrollment overall, students who actually want to push the envelope like you suggest are rarer still). Even grad school diplomas are simply becoming the next generation's high school diploma in terms of social mobility.

Or we could talk the trickle-down effects of institution privatization.

But as you and I both mentioned: the bottom line is that where you have the YOLOs living one life, they're living it harder and more irresponsibly than the last generation, furthering their own doomed evolution and tugging at the rest of us with their ignorance.

Being appalled at the antics of the next generation seems quite natural and normal. It doesn't necessarily herald the downfall of civilization, though.

Truth. And I'm not necessarily diving in here to wipe my brow with my handkerchief.

Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it?  My experience in college was that so long as you had a vessel which could hold liquid in your hand, you were functionally a full participant, regardless of the volume you actually drank.

I think it's a bit of both as I wrote. In a third aspect, I actually think that people are more accepting now of people who don't indulge than kids are in my high school experience and now hearing from friend's who've become teachers. There are all kinds of people attending university. And I think the serious people, do take the experience seriously. There are all kinds of observable divides concerning the crowd most likely to abuse drugs, including alcohol. Hell, even certain programs can be distinguished from others as socially necessitating more drinking over less; and there as well there are outliers.

My prior three years I had enjoyed a high and mighty above-it-all perspective of 'disgust' at my fellow collegiates who were obviously engaging in aggressive hedonism and I was just too mature for it ... It's amazing to me just how easily I fell into misogynistic traps because I believed myself to be such a champion of women and women's rights, but somehow it was them that was the problem when it came to romance, not me, I never questioned myself in those days.

Cool thoughts, lockesnow. It's interesting as I read your post, all I could think about were more of my own biases.

For instance, I entered university as basically the youngest you can be as a mature student (at least in Ontario) after I'd dropped out of high school. So all that I notice now in attending university is how little life these children, really, in body but mind especially, have lived. The vast majority of these students are shouldering life-long debt, or worse, thoughtlessly wasting their parental benefactor's time, and just being handed the ample opportunity to both succeed and fail (though, most of them can't grasp the concept of holding your educators responsible for your consumer-academics, so..) at one of the most important experiences of their lives.

It actually blows my mind - I was an adult nearly everywhere in the world when I started, and I still fucked up large in past years.

But then if you think, University and College students were once required to learn a few languages, read a bunch of original texts, perhaps an instrument or something martial (of body movement)...

Do we all agree that james has a standing argument, I don't think we can really contest the results of promoting that sort of lifestyle, regardless of actual levels of embodiment?

I'm certainly not innocent of having partaken in extremes in my life.

I'd just like to a see a discourse in culture that offers people a way out. Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.

If I can take a mild stance on what you might have been saying before we got caught up in the institutional experience: You're suggesting, I think, that our sociocultural conceptual structures don't facilitate very many conversations like this - that can get real, so to speak - and instead offers all types of chemical experiences (be that "purchasing" to satisfy the constant barrage of propaganda on our devices, the prevalent availability of "feel-good" drugs, which in some cases is motivated by demand - but let's focus on prescriptions and socially mandated; alcohol, nicotine, and to a lesser extent, coffee and refined sugars, the fictive ideals fed to us to shape our expectations, etc) to mediate any consideration of that fact that we're living creatures and we've got issues.

Also, people often seem to forget that the prevalence of the hermit is a strange and novel phenomenon. Not the hermit, necessarily. But the sheer level of human disconnect individuals in the Western Empire are capable of boggles me.

If the devil deceives, its greatest triumph was not convincing the world it doesn't exist, but convincing us to trade our living, breathing agency for words on a screen (as much as this can be a very potent tool).

[Callan S.]

I'm being somewhat sarcastic and acting like a shocked prude. We can probably all agree that porn is not one of humanities greatest achievements, whatever the particulars of the cultural psychology it exhibits.

While we're on the subject I wonder if anyone else thinks the same as me - it seems like to a certain extent we've gone from a state of
ignorant puritanism to a kind of mass hedonism, so today instead of being ridiculously over the top of the evils of sex and masturbation, we are ridiculously intolerant of anything that ISN'T hedonistic?

I was reading Freud recently and noticed a short passage where he says that a patient might very simply quell their recurring neurosis if they would stop masturbating. No professional would be allowed to give such advice these days without being censured. In fact if you look at people asking for advice on google, they're always encouraged to do it and told its perfectly healthy, like they need warned off the idea that pleasure isn't the highest goal in life. You're allowed not to do it but only as part of the narrative of personal choice, only if that's what makes you feel better.

I definitely see myself as a kind of reactionary against this tendency. I don't want to go the other way and become a total puritan, but I think today our societies are hedonistic almost to the point of totalitarianism. It really is an unconscionable sin to make a stand against it. The present is a lot more Brave New World rather than 1984.

The stand seems as much an extremism. I mean, by what metric do we measure how exactly far you want to go against this? Might be ten feet, might be ten miles (so to speak), who knows?

Indeed often such stands seem to be a push for a blank cheque 'How much are you saying this should stop' 'Well, that depends on how I feel at any given moment'. How much is asked for? Nobody knows.

I'm not trying to enforce anything. I'd just like to a see a discourse in culture that offers people a way out. Loneliness + increased pressure to float into sickness and ruin through aggressive hedonism seems - at least to my dumb analysis - to be one of the biggest traps facing people today.

Seems like words vague enough to encompass as much or as little as one wants to in discussion.

A length of string. It's too long!

The usual gig here is that yes, the words are vague, but the speaker really does know them - but since the listener doesn't, he'll just have to trust the speaker when the speaker says not to do this, or that, or the other. Always just trusting, in that manner.

With more precise descriptions, the listener could judge for himself.

[Duskweaver]

Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it?

Well, this is embarrassing. Just goes to show how one can completely change the implications of a post by cocking up a single crucial word. I had meant to say that that was how it subjectively appeared to my naive 18-year-old self. The important bit should have read "...until I remembered what university seemed like when I was there...", but I was typing with my 18-year-old self at the forefront of my mind and consequently what I actually typed was his reality rather than the view I now have looking back with eyes that are over a decade older.

(Does this mean "seemed" is a decade wiser than "was"? Or just a decade more jaded? )

Did the fact that the rest of my post seemed to be taking almost the opposite tack not clue you in, though? That first paragraph was setting out my reasons for not reflexively dismissing jamesA01's argument (because he might be where I was then), not for actually agreeing with him (and the rest of the post surely makes it clear I don't agree with him, no?)

But that might sound like I'm putting the blame on you for misunderstanding. I'm not. You didn't misunderstand the words I wrote. I just wrote the wrong words.

FWIW, I recognise a lot of my younger self (except for the sex bit) in your description.

[Madness]

Was it really? Or was that just your biased perception/judgment of it?

Well, this is embarrassing. Just goes to show how one can completely change the implications of a post by cocking up a single crucial word. I had meant to say that that was how it subjectively appeared to my naive 18-year-old self. The important bit should have read "...until I remembered what university seemed like when I was there...", but I was typing with my 18-year-old self at the forefront of my mind and consequently what I actually typed was his reality rather than the view I now have looking back with eyes that are over a decade older.

(Does this mean "seemed" is a decade wiser than "was"? Or just a decade more jaded? )

One hypothesis of childhood amnesia falls under the category of context-theory. In a sense, cues, in our internal and external environment act, as a specific schema (a key) which allows us to remember, recreate, reembody (this is another, momentarily irrelevant point of contention) a 'memory.' In the case of childhood amnesia, it's thought that we can rarely, if ever, achieve a 'copy-cue' of the exact childhood context that went into the encoding of our childhood memories (or even close too - much of this seems may reflect changes in bodily perspective).

Lol - within this frame (which is to provide dramatic example), I'm simply suggesting that our being cued to remember 'past-selves,' schema that have structural access to only that 'semantic knowledge' that they had structural access to at the time, can momentarily dictate our perceptions and behavior.

[Phallus Pendulus]

Strange that those who most wish to control others often feel that they themselves are so oppressed

And what's wrong with wanting to control your surroundings?

Harm/care morality ("don't you dare judge anyone!!!1") is the most childish moral standard imaginable.

[Duskweaver]

In the case of childhood amnesia, it's thought that we can rarely, if ever, achieve a 'copy-cue' of the exact childhood context that went into the encoding of our childhood memories (or even close too - much of this seems may reflect changes in bodily perspective).

If I'm understanding this correctly, the implication is that we can't remember what happened to us very early in life, at least in part, because we're effectively not the same person as we were then?

Lol - within this frame (which is to provide dramatic example), I'm simply suggesting that our being cued to remember 'past-selves,' schema that have structural access to only that 'semantic knowledge' that they had structural access to at the time, can momentarily dictate our perceptions and behavior.

The corollary being that, when we try too hard to remember, we run the risk of momentary possession by our own former self?

And what's wrong with wanting to control your surroundings?

I never claimed there was anything inherently wrong with that. I was merely making note of the implied hypocrisy.

[Madness]

If I'm understanding this correctly, the implication is that we can't remember what happened to us very early in life, at least in part, because we're effectively not the same person as we were then?

In a very literally sense; the schema reflecting our childhoods was "formed" or 'encoded' from a different height, with linguistic musculature and skills reflecting a much reduced language capacity from the vocabulary we exercise today, the hormonal content of our bodies, certain parts of the brain itself continue growing well into mid-20s and certainly among the teenage years.

The corollary being that, when we try too hard to remember, we run the risk of momentary possession by our own former self?

Not even when we try too hard, just when we hit upon the concert of 'cues' relatively close to a 'copy-cue' for a memory. Depending on the richness of encoding, 'cues' can trigger intense experiences like what you described, feeling literally "taken back" to certain moments, or self-identifications, which can consequently prompt old behaviors or habitual thoughts.