To all you chronically lonely guys yearning for love

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It probably ain't gonna happen - ever. The odds are so overwhelmingly high, especially for those of us who have to battle multiple issues (AS & any of the following: abuse, addiction, depression, physical or mental disability, poverty, unemployment, rotten families, etc.). You'd be better off trying to win a million bucks in a sweepstake, if you ask me.

Yes, I'll probably be criticized for being too pessimistic. Yes, person X did succeed, despite having to deal with [substitute any interesting collection of personal failures and disasters]. So what does that prove? That astronomically improbable instances of luck do now and then take place? But remember this: for every success story there are tens of thousands of losers who didn't make it - the army of average chumps who paid a fortune in lottery tickets but who didn't win sh*t.

And so it is with love, gentlemen. For some of us, for those who are beyond redemption, there's only one certainty in life: you're going to die - alone. You're sixty or seventy or thereabouts, alcoholic, bitter, and lonesome, and beginning to show signs of first-stage dementia. Then the fatal stroke fells you. Nobody there to help you. Only months later do the neighbors notice the odd smell. And you know what: ultimately, nobody gives a damn. We live in this cold, uncaring universe, under the strict law of deterministic and quasi-random processes, with no one to trust but ourselves.

The only thing to do is this: face one's fate, the steep wall of our prison of loneliness, with stoic dignity and seek release as often as possible in art and its sublime trappings, as Schopenhauer recommended.

Cheerful, isn't it?

damn! you are sure a downer and a bummer. why do you even open your eyes in the morning?

Whose this guy? Does he prescribe to said above beliefs or just happens to be a favorite artist or...?

Use your little fingers to type his name in Wikipedia.

you're way better off alone

...Arrgh....
Man, that was demoralizing.
Picking apart and refuting every square inch of that post is the kinda work that deserves a wage.

Because I genuinely enjoy life, despite the millions of utterly pointless yet painful trivialities I find myself immersed in. And if you read carefully, you'd know that I'm suggesting that art (or beauty in general) provides a way out of one's misery. I often find that a beautiful painting or a sweeping symphony transforms my life, if only momentarily, to the point where the love issue becomes completely unimportant.

That's (part of) the point. Some people are better off alone and not worrying about it.

Then congrats on your enjoyment of solitude, but your advocation and assertion that what works for you is what others should do is just asinine. We find our own ways.


M.

Oh wow, a new parson comes to town, starts preaching a different sermon than the ordinary "get GF be happy" routine, and suddenly a moderator turns up ominously, though not to exactly suppress the critter, just to say it's "asinine" (bravo, I had to look that one up in the OED).

But, being the rule-abiding and authority-worshipping twerp that I am, I get the message and shall not post here anymore. I guess I'll just have to restrict myself to annoying people in the Philosophy forum with highly technical pontifications on Kantian ethics.

strictly-speaking, dddhgg's and my posts pertain to L&D only in the lack [of love and dating] thereof. this said, one could say you're surely preaching to the choir, but many of its members are preoccupied with other things. as for art, i 1] define it liberally - e.g., seeking excellence in video game performance sounds fairly arty to me, even though i totally lack the video game gene - and 2] i have this little obscure thing called Stendahl's Syndrome, which makes me extraordinarily sensitive to the sublime aspects of my liberally-defined arts - for me, certain pieces of music totally slay me, and make me forget about my existential concerns for a long-enough time that i'd say it was an effective tonic for what [the problems dddhgg listed] ails me, Schopenhauer-recommended or not. terrific music, WP [my socialization surrogate], good porn, regular physical exercise and my fleshlight are sufficient to keep me going sans any complementary sentient fleshware to bounce thoughts [and other things] back-and-forth from/with.

one of the universal laws is that we will get more of that which we dwell-upon, i.e., if one thinks about sad/mad things, more of those things will accumulate until one is fairly marinating in negativity. but this law seems to work practically only in the negative direction- it is a hundred times weaker in the positive direction, i.e., with one's own feebly positive wish-fulfilment-thinking functioning at best as a meditative mantra to temporarily distract one from negative thoughts- this is where good art comes in. good art is pre-fabricated good thought, much more powerful than any homebrewed positive-thinking, and this good thought is ready-made to put a smile on one's brain and face when one has exhausted the meager stores of one's own few happy thoughts. expose oneself to enough good art [however one defines art] and one has basically got their demons licked or at least kept securely at bay.

don't leave so quickly, there is at least one person who will read your <PPR-level posts. but i am no genius, so your "highly technical pontifications on Kantian ethics" will surely leave me and my ilk behind, bewildered in clouds of big words and swirling thoughts.

I'm sorry that you find a dissenting opinion so threatening. I've never suggested that a relationship is right for everyone, but you seem to find your lack of personal success indicative of what other's expectations should be... and that isn't realistic. If you're happy alone, then enjoy your pursuits and encourage others to do the same. And for some of them, that interest is in finding a partner.


M.

Things go badly-- sometimes horribly badly-- for people IN relationships too. Even people with children have no guarantee those children will look after them in old age. I have heard a statistic that the only thing that gives anyone greater than 50% of not dying in a nursing home is having at least THREE daughters. Who has three daughters these days, with most families have 2 children at most.

What is sad for people like us is that often we can't even maintain friendships! So even if we are without spouses or children, we don't even have friends to chat with or comfort us. I see old ladies chatting happily with each other and I know I will never be like that-- I can't chit chat now and I'm only getting worse as I get older.

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. I never told anyone that they shouldn't pursue romance, if they really wanted to do that, or that their expectations should be nil. It's neither my intention nor my wish to be anyone's guide or mentor or whatever. Rather, what I'm suggesting is this: for some guys, especially those dealing with multiple large issues, and whose lives are made quite miserable by a lack of success in romance, it may be a refreshing thought that their pursuit of it is indeed with high probability (though not exactly 100%) pointless and that they'd better focus on some other activity (art for instance). Of course, people are absolutely free to predicate their happiness on how well they do in love, but this is by no means a moral or metaphysical absolute. I'm merely pointing out that, despite society's messages indicating the contrary, staying alone is an acceptable option,

However, I do admit that the part about dying alone was rather over-the-top and meant for provocation only. What's worse, it sort of damages the point I'm trying to make, viz., that bachelorhood is a viable option in life. But sometimes my caustic side just gets the better of me, and then I can't help but sound like a mission priest preaching to savages.

As for your own message, I really thought you were trying to censure me, and that it was you who thought my viewpoint threatening. Censure, moreover, is something I don't react friendly to, especially since I've tried hard not to offend anyone or to break any rules.

So, I hope this clears things up a bit.

Last edited by dddhgg on 02 May 2010, 10:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

To put it plainly, as "He's just not that into you" says:

There is always someone with success who is the exception. You're not the exception, you're the rule.

But that is no reason to give up.