Future Regrets?

[Noor]

Noor I am getting more used to going to food events and not partaking. I happily glugged water at a party this week ignoring the food at a party and the wine that flowed freely. I came home with no flushing, without having giggled like an idiot and I still danced, not on a table but a bench. I think it's a bit like going out with out a plus one, if we can do that we can stick to water and no food

Oh, I can do that, and I do.
I have been doing private parties like that for decades, but things here have been shifting to more restaurants and coffeehouses which seem to add aromas too.
Plus dinner parties which previously I would either skip food or supplement my own, now have people who present me with "allergy free" with out this or that but then they inadvertently add something seemingly simple like almond milk not realizing that unless they make it themselves there are every changing additives, my current nemesis is gellum gum which is in almost all alternative milks that are not soy and cashews in almond products.

This makes things uncomfortable since it puts me in the position of having to trust them with my life, and over the years I have discovered that it is not worth it. Also people feel unappreciated.

 

[hsnh]

...so carry on. Why go meta? Just join in.

I don't think it's very pleasant. My grandfather just thought he still worked in the hardware store he had kept for forty years and yelled about how he was being held prisoner.
In essence it's more akin to the Nietzsche, "if you had to live this life over again infinitely would you still make the same choices," question.
Note though that I still haven't answered it. Talent!

In a way we are our memories.

Maybe it's not so much about avoiding regret as being the best possible collection of memories.
Same basic concept. Slightly different skew.

The Myth of Sisyphus is already one of those platitudes that people keep bringing up in order to sound interesting.
In saying that, the beauty of it is that you can look at it in so many ways.


Maybe our western concept of linear time and past as irremediably lost, keeps us stuck in Sisyphus's loop.

But if we start imagining time as an ascending spiral (the Eastern way) that allows us to add some new meaning to our past and to rework our memories…
That could break the cycle.


Damn, if I had an ounce of literary talent, I'd write an allegorical novella about it.

 

[Disgustipated]

The Myth of Sisyphus is already one of those platitudes that people keep bringing up in order to sound interesting.
In saying that, the beauty of it is that you can look at it in so many ways.


Maybe our western concept of linear time and past as irremediably lost, keeps us stuck in Sisyphus's loop.

But if we start imagining time as an ascending spiral (the Eastern way) that allows us to add some new meaning to our past and to rework our memories…
That could break the cycle.


Damn, if I had an ounce of literary talent, I'd write an allegorical novella about it.

#SuddenlyNoESL

 

[hsnh]

#SuddenlyNoESL

Are you referring to the lack of grammar mistakes?

I had too many people -rightfully- complain about my sloppy grammar.
So I started to use an app. called "Advanced Spell Check".

 

[Lunation]

The Myth of Sisyphus is already one of those platitudes that people keep bringing up in order to sound interesting.
In saying that, the beauty of it is that you can look at it in so many ways.


Maybe our western concept of linear time and past as irremediably lost, keeps us stuck in Sisyphus's loop.

But if we start imagining time as an ascending spiral (the Eastern way) that allows us to add some new meaning to our past and to rework our memories…
That could break the cycle.


Damn, if I had an ounce of literary talent, I'd write an allegorical novella about it.

Would it involve chaining people in a cave?

I hear all the best allegories involve chaining people in a cave.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Myth of Sisyphus is already one of those platitudes that people keep bringing up in order to sound interesting.
In saying that, the beauty of it is that you can look at it in so many ways.


Maybe our western concept of linear time and past as irremediably lost, keeps us stuck in Sisyphus's loop.

But if we start imagining time as an ascending spiral (the Eastern way) that allows us to add some new meaning to our past and to rework our memories…
That could break the cycle.


Damn, if I had an ounce of literary talent, I'd write an allegorical novella about it.

Like all parables, it has a point.

Remember what life was like for the common man at the time. It was not the idyllic Eden-like time before the Industrial Revolution, but it was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Every single day was a Sisyphean struggle to survive and the fatalistic message delivered was that it was the will of the Gods.

The only possible future regret that you could have is that you were about to die too early because you took a few of those days off.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Perg...




Take my advice. Don't have future regrets. Read yourself some Hoffer, reset your underlying premise. Maybe you are being played for the fool. I wouldn't like that. I get the sense that you are a pretty good guy who just maybe got to involved on a personal level in the wrong Crusade.

 

[Peregrinator]

It does seem you're juggling quite a few topics in this thread.

Did you somehow get started on climate change above as well? Seems everything in the GB takes a political bent given enough time. Not that climate change *should* be political but, here we are.

Yeah, AJ is incapable of having a conversation with me without bringing it up. He's been doing it for at least a decade. Vetteman used to start threads with the most gloriously, obviously false, debunked, or cherry picked horseshit about it and say "Pereg, call your office," as if I were in charge of the public perception of science or something. With AJ, we're like a couple guys who get together to play chess, except we both play exactly the same moves over and and over again. It's one of the reasons I left for a few years. There's no point in having a conversatiin with someone who refuses to assimilate new information, and almost every political poster here fits that description. The few who don't stand out as special, as though acting like a grownup were something ...not done by the vast majority of grownups every day.

Anyway. I've decided to ignore his global warming stuff in this thread. The rest of it is far more entertaining and interesting.

 

[Peregrinator]

Oh, hello there.

That's a lovely compliment about my conversing abilities, so, thanks! Though the only problem with compliments about conversation is that they are poor generators of further conversation.

So, I guess I'll elaborate on the point I was making when our traveling host got me confused with someone discussing pharmacology: rather than aiming to lead a life your future self will not regret, it may be beneficial, or at least interesting, to try to live a life that will create a future self capable of accepting the past as it is. Or was. Being the past and all, past tense seems fitting.

Minor distinction.

I like this idea. I think there's room for both; I have some background in a therapeutic system based on Zen, and a huge part of that is accepting reality for what it is. This is my go-to tactic when confonted with a memory of something I wish were different. So, in a way, my past self did exactly what you describe, taking to heart that lesson and practicing it for decades.

The other piece is doing the things I think I should do, want to do, am obligated to do. That makes the future acceptance that much easier.

 

[Peregrinator]

After seeing old friends over the past two weeks I suppose I regret not being in a place where I can see more of them.
It has been very hard for me to meet my friends for coffee or a meal these last few years or other events that involve food or drink and unfortunately that is what people mainly do. I do go to non food events with others but they are not all that conductive to conversations.
I did have a successful house concert a few months back andi think I need to think of ways of have people over without food or drink or at least only safe for Me stuff.
Maybe a plein air painting party...

This one is ongoing for me as well. My friends have always been widely spread, and I lose touch with them for long periods. I'm not good at doing anything about that, even when I feel isolated.

 

[Peregrinator]

I gave you the same answer that I got from you about fracking.

corporate <> academia

Not only that, but it wasn't a comprehensive search, just an example of what academia is, human beings guided by human nature, being engaged in science does not abrogate who and what we are, it does not make us 'superior' beings. More of that in a second...

You are engaging in post hoc ergo propter hoc with your focus on regulations. Most regulations chase technology like they chase accidents. The remaining regulations address problems that do not exist, but serve political cause.

Remember my story about sensei and six good fighters? That is what the Science community is and it has become bloated because of government money. The mediocrity begins early with the notion that a child's ego is more precious that its intellect, so children who don't learn are just passed on. This goes on all the way to High School and the diploma just becomes a participation award. In fact, it's gotten so bad that we see schools beginning to eliminate the Valedictorian and Salutatorian in order to ensure that everyone feels like the participated equally.

Then, having inculcated the student body into believing that education is not just the next step, but a right and flush with government money, the ill-prepared head off for college and remedial courses. The college, in competition for governmental educational money then lowers standards to ensure a larger market share and expands, creates new disciplines and does everything it can to retain their students. Soon the Bachelor's degree becomes another participation award.

And so it goes until we have more PhDs that ever competing for government grants willing to fudge the numbers and publish that which government rewards, for political gain. Soon science is dominated by those of lesser intellect but desiring everything the ego of you hated businessman desires, but placing more emphasis on fame and prestige than profits or market share.

And what happens to the real intellectual who bucks the trend and says, wait, what these other scientists are saying is wrong? Well ask Peter Duesburg who stood up to political science. Every effort possible was made to destroy his reputation and career, but he kept working on and produced other breakthroughs in his field to the point that SciAm had to write an editorial to tell its readers that they must pay attention to the paper he just wrote because of his brilliance. The few get drowned out the consensus of the many...

That's what a McDojo is. A place where people go and send their children to so that they can have the resume padder, black belt. That's what education has become, McEducation.

Yes we do know it is.

But when you look at the real numbers, it's not very significant and it is good for plants.

You broad brush business, so I demand the same latitude.

Also you have no clear understanding as to what Chaos Theory is.


I just saw this elsewhere:

https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/accumulatedmap-1_shadow.png

The climatologists use the red glaciers to scream, Greenland is melting! (Forgetting that not too long ago historically, it had a smaller ice shelf and was colonized.) It's the polar bears all over again. But we can clearly see that outside of that tiny subset of Greenland, the majority of ice sheets are growing. I mean, isn't that what a reasonable person does? Look at all the facts?

That's not me dismissing by ad hominem , but not falling prey to the admonishment, "Who are you going to believe? Me? or your lying eyes?" It is my duty as a reasonable person to question, to reason, to think. Your hysteria just screams of religion. I am wary of all religions.

Your religion will not seem to answer a couple of simple questions, "What is the optimal temperature for the earth?" and "Why is colder better than warmer?" I find the rate of warming to be historically insignificant, I look at the ppm as see the CO2 increase as insignificant and I note that as technology advances so does or CO2 emissions go down. We're declining faster than Germany which did what I advise against, ordered its citizens to pay higher energy rates so that it could pursue "green" energy. Government favors political science over real Science.

Please keep in mind that vast "bod[ies] of research and human effort" in the past have often reached wrong conclusions that were erroneous. I also know by the antics of the True Believers had them floating such absurd theories that the ocean is hiding the heat...

lol

Why do they need these ancillary theories? Well, the warming/warning did not occur in the manner which they told us it would, immediate and dramatic. They used models to prove this. The models were wrong, but they were rewarded handsomely.

I too have a cause that I really believe in, The FairTax.org. But I'm not so vested in it that I run around proclaiming that the whole economic order will crash and burn if we don't adopt it and it doesn't drive me to impugn people who scoff at the viability of the idea.

I do recommend that anyone whom believes in something passionately read The True Believer and The Ordeal of Change by Eric Hoffer, blue-collar philosopher. The former explores what constitutes mass movements without judgement, the church gets the same treatment as the Nazis. The latter explores the relationship between man and the intellectual class (among things, it is a collection of essays).





https://realclimatescience.com/2017/07/latest-from-the-greenland-meltdown/

The fruits of success are often bitter...


Tim Jones

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/07/the_era_of_our_discontent_.html#ixzz4m3MKKOzq



We need to make sure our children are wearing two helmets when they get on their bike and ride, unless you want children to DIE!!!

https://spectator.org/hard-pressed-rural-californians-try-civil-rights-approach/

https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/ef-gast-data-research-report-062717.pdf


I would say that page two and page 30 are the money pages.

We have PhDs, we have peer review and we have a conclusion of, if not outright fraud, then at the vey least fraudulent methodology with a bias...

Sorry. I come to Lit to have entertaining interactions and this...isn't it. At least not in this thread. If you want to start a thread about...whatever you're trying to bludgeon me with in this wall of text, I'll be happy to engage you in it. But this, in a thread about future regrets, especially since I've been through all of it with you before...eg, I read The True Believer on your recommendation a few years ago...is just getting to be a drag and a time suck, not to mention making people ignore the thread.

 

[Peregrinator]

I regret almost everything since 2002. What does one do with that?! Therapy?!

I do not believe this. However, if true, I'd suggest that it has to do with where you attention is as much as circumstances. This is why people do gratitude lists, for example. There must be some happy memories in there somewhere.

 

[Peregrinator]

Holderness?

The conferees were quartered at the Holderness School, I think. It's justa few miles from Plymouth. I was at the college.

 

[Peregrinator]

Would it involve chaining people in a cave?

I hear all the best allegories involve chaining people in a cave.

...and fire!

 

[Peregrinator]

Perg...




Take my advice. Don't have future regrets. Read yourself some Hoffer, reset your underlying premise. Maybe you are being played for the fool. I wouldn't like that. I get the sense that you are a pretty good guy who just maybe got to involved on a personal level in the wrong Crusade.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm on guard against being played, and very skeptical of new stuff coming out, of snap reactions to single studies. Flavor of the month stuff, like when you pointed out the eggs thing. My favorite was a study that purported to demonstrate that sugar had no effect on children's behavior. And I'm not actually involved in any crusades at all, beyond conversations. I read that one Hoffer. That's enough; I get it. He makes some good points, takes some stuff way too far, gets some stuff wrong. I'm trying to remember what you agreed to read in return; we had a deal. I wanted to ask if you had read it, but I can't for the life of me remember what I suggested.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Yeah, AJ is incapable of having a conversation with me without bringing it up. He's been doing it for at least a decade. Vetteman used to start threads with the most gloriously, obviously false, debunked, or cherry picked horseshit about it and say "Pereg, call your office," as if I were in charge of the public perception of science or something. With AJ, we're like a couple guys who get together to play chess, except we both play exactly the same moves over and and over again. It's one of the reasons I left for a few years. There's no point in having a conversatiin with someone who refuses to assimilate new information, and almost every political poster here fits that description. The few who don't stand out as special, as though acting like a grownup were something ...not done by the vast majority of grownups every day.

Anyway. I've decided to ignore his global warming stuff in this thread. The rest of it is far more entertaining and interesting.

You kept bringing it up and I responded. I know it's your religion and I'm done talking with you about it. If you don't read the .pdf, I will consider you a closed-minded coward though.

 

[raindancer]

I do not believe this. However, if true, I'd suggest that it has to do with where you attention is as much as circumstances. This is why people do gratitude lists, for example. There must be some happy memories in there somewhere.

Absolutely, there are happy memories. But, there were two roads diverged and I took the wrong fucking one. I know that my life would be completely different had I chosen the other. I honestly, regret very little because I learn from choice and consequence. Lately, I have been feeling a deep mourning for the person I could have been.

 

[hsnh]

But they probably helped you become the person you've become too. More empathetic, with a more nuanced understanding of life.

Suffering and regrets can be good in that way.
Those were the best comforting words someone made, when shit hit the fan in my case.

But they don't help with guilt.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Absolutely, there are happy memories. But, there were two roads diverged and I took the wrong fucking one. I know that my life would be completely different had I chosen the other. I honestly, regret very little because I learn from choice and consequence. Lately, I have been feeling a deep mourning for the person I could have been.

A couple of months ago I received an invitation to my 10 year high school reunion, and it made me think of the girl I was then, full of dreams and hopes and ambitions, and of how very differently life so far has been from her expectations. It was an emotional punch in the gut, but it helped me keep my focus on the things I need to do to maintain forward motion in my life.

I am learning the lesson you have learned, thank you for sharing your thoughts.

 

[raindancer]

You have so much life to live. It's lovely to find wisdom in your 20's. I was an old soul, as well. But, let yourself live and fuck up, sometimes. I wish I'd be gentler with myself and given myself permission to really live without worry.

 

[Lunation]

Yeah, AJ is incapable of having a conversation with me without bringing it up. He's been doing it for at least a decade. Vetteman used to start threads with the most gloriously, obviously false, debunked, or cherry picked horseshit about it and say "Pereg, call your office," as if I were in charge of the public perception of science or something. With AJ, we're like a couple guys who get together to play chess, except we both play exactly the same moves over and and over again. It's one of the reasons I left for a few years. There's no point in having a conversatiin with someone who refuses to assimilate new information, and almost every political poster here fits that description. The few who don't stand out as special, as though acting like a grownup were something ...not done by the vast majority of grownups every day.

Anyway. I've decided to ignore his global warming stuff in this thread. The rest of it is far more entertaining and interesting.

AJ? So you're on a first name basis? Or he has another old account? Vetteman?

This place is interesting in that it has a deep history. It's a bit like starting Game of Thrones on season 4. The red wedding already went down so everyone is depressed but you have no idea why.

Or maybe it's more like an arsenic lake. A lake with no outlet, and through evaporation and errosion ends up poisoned by heavy metals as rainflow washes poison into the lake, while evaporation concentrates it. There was a time it was thriving and vibrant. The signs are there. But over time the healthier people move on, and you're left with a bunch of political junkies more interested in winning an argument through willpower than dialogue. And through sheer process of elimination they're all that remain. Like rain evaporating out of the lake and leaving the arsenic behind.

My question is, why come back? Leaving makes sense. You're the rainwater. But what brought you back? Hmm, you work with the elderly. Enjoy a good lost cause?

 

[Lunation]

I like this idea. I think there's room for both; I have some background in a therapeutic system based on Zen, and a huge part of that is accepting reality for what it is. This is my go-to tactic when confonted with a memory of something I wish were different. So, in a way, my past self did exactly what you describe, taking to heart that lesson and practicing it for decades.

The other piece is doing the things I think I should do, want to do, am obligated to do. That makes the future acceptance that much easier.

How does zen therapy work? I mean, other than what you just described.

What does that look like?

Sounds cool.

 

[Saint Peter]

How can you define the right road if you never take the wrong road?

Regrets, future and past, provide footing and perspective.

 

[MelissaBaby]

You have so much life to live. It's lovely to find wisdom in your 20's. I was an old soul, as well. But, let yourself live and fuck up, sometimes. I wish I'd be gentler with myself and given myself permission to really live without worry.

That's very kind, thank you.

 

[MelissaBaby]

How can you define the right road if you never take the wrong road?

Regrets, future and past, provide footing and perspective.

That is reassuring advice, coming from a guy named Saint Peter.