tired of this

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funny, cause i have the lowest expectations of anyone i know. I must be a more pathetic excuse of a person than i thought

I never said they were low, I said they were out of sync.

so im failing at as low a standards as i can imagine having.

Your standards probably aren't even your own. If you think doing something positive will make you happy and it doesn't, it probably means that someone somewhere convinced you what it takes to be happy, and you took it as truth, but in reality, it doesn't hold true for you, so you need to think of some other acts that will bring a positive experience.

Quit living your life by the standard other people set for you.

im not living by others standards. Im doing things which I think are positive at the time but end up in disaster

Maybe you're not in tune with what you really want.

The real question is, why bother? Ill never be at a point where im happy with how things go, if i even have a point where things are going well.

dont even know why i bump this. cry for attention? who knows. ive lost hope far too long ago.

Yeah, I know the feeling. I think it's a lot like 'learned helplessness' - I read about this experiment where they put a dog in a cage surrounded by an electric fence of some type... Every time he tried to leave the cage, he got shocked, so eventually he stopped trying... EDIT - The point being, eventually they took away the electric shock, and he was free to leave the cage, but he never even tried again.

That kind of sums up my life too unfortunately! I'm scared to get shocked again, so I try to stay in my cage and do things that are relatively safe!

Not really. Every time i try something new to escape my cage things end up worse.

Right... I probably didn't explain it well, but that's what I was getting at. Every time you try something new, you get 'shocked'... So your experience has taught you to expect that trying new things will result in getting shocked.

And on some level it's probably smart to be logical, realistic, safe... But if you're unhappy in your 'safe' cage, then maybe it's worth taking a risk to break out of it again!

No i think you misread me. I know what the dog and cage thing is. Im just tired of all the "shocks" and would much prefer to die than live miserable like this.

Ah, okay - sorry about that, I tend to misread people a lot!

I can't speak for the OP, but everyone I have ever met chooses to be miserable. It depends on your definition of misery of course. Most people choose to support the system we live in that leads to frustration and stress for some, and pain and death for others.

Why do they choose this? Because there are different levels of misery. People choose a moderate level i order to avoid the unbearable horror of the lower levels. If they try to make things better then the benefits will probably only be felt after they are dead, whereas the costs are felt now. There is a small risk that things could get far worse for everyone. Moderate misery appears to be the safe option for most people.



I agree. The laziest and weakest people I know are the intelligent ones who rise to the top. They have the ability to see a better world but choose not to. Even the best of them is like this. Yesterday I listened to a famous philosopher who argues that we should do more to help the poor. Sounds like a good man, right? At one point in the long interview he admitted that he ignores a fatal flaw in his argument (it relied on economic behavior that is extremely unlikely and he admits that he does not understand economics). Luckily for him the interviewer was not an economist either, and was predisposed to agree with his views. Rather than pursue that flaw the philosopher instead chose to ignore it. By an amazing coincidence, his choice to avoid the hard question results in him being rich (he considers 300 dollar shoes to be cheap) and famous (even a minor book sells tens of thousands of copies) and popular (his fans adore him, because he makes them feel moral). It also ensures that the poor will always stay poor, so he is guaranteed a job for life.

The laziest and weakest people I know are those at the top. The ones at the bottom are usually forced to work at things they don't enjoy, and forced to endure things they want to avoid, so they don't have the luxury of being lazy or weak.

You are correct. I am there (see my user name). Every year or so I come up with a new escape plan - marriage, dating, job, creating something amazing, etc. and make myself be happy. It always fails because these things require a connection with other people.

However, I think there might be a better solution.

Death is good because it brings peace. However, it also causes stress to others. (In my case I have children from a failed marriage, and my death would hurt them). My current strategy is to simply shut down, mentally. I allocate the smallest possible part of my brain to do whatever people around me make me do, and that part of my brain is in a walled garden that does not connect to my consciousness. The rest of my brain shuts down and has no activity. It seems to work so far.

I think the Buddhists have it right. Life is pain and the solution is to not care. It is also true that life could be heaven on earth, but nobody else wants that. So I choose to work on making the world better, but I do not expect any results and I do not try to persuade anybody. My work just is. Other people just exist. What happens just happens I do not even observe it, I do not feel, I just work on my work. If I am still alive each day then I continue in my soundless bubble. There is a timelessness about it. It is like being dead but without the down side.

Shutting down isnt an option