Casual Conversation

I am sorry. I wish I had good solutions, but alas. I hope for the best, for all of us.

I think, speaking from personal experience outside of the U.S., working for a small company gives you greater opportunity for influencing things. In a large corporation you're lost in a sea of faces and people, and you'll more or less always be readily replaceable. In a smaller company there's a different atmosphere and culture, and your word has a higher chance of carrying weight.

Granted, I say this from a very biased (and privileged) perspective as a Swedish worker. We have fairly strong labour laws, thanks to our unions. I realise that this is obviously not the same everywhere, even within EU. I've a decent idea of what working culture is like in say, Germany, and I'd rather not work there unless I absolutely had to, much to the bafflement of some of my American friends who view German work culture very positively because of the abuse they're used to taking.

Yeah I'm not saying the drones are at all responsible, but I personally just don't have the stomach for accepting that I would facilitate it even slightly, I barely manage to shrug off the weight of guilt for not somehow stopping all this, absurd as it may sound. I can't help but feel it is my fault, not only mine of course, but that I share in the blame, I couldn't forgive myself if I did everything opposite of what I believed in even if my survival depended on it.

When you let things you can't control make your life a living hell.

I don't really understand this. You repeat this again later "your life" this "your life" that.

My life is fine. It's pretty fucking good actually, I don't know anyone who has it as good as I do. The world - external to my life, is not. It is in fact - depressing to see others not thrive as I have, not through any fault of their own but mere luck being on my side and not on theirs. This empathy extends to my girlfriend, my friends, acquaintances, colleagues and even strangers.

There's nothing about my life that relates to this in the slightest, I could sit stop the highest most grand castle there is, and it wouldn't change the facts of the world around said castle.

Not everything is about self-help.

that's how you want to be, that's fine. If you're so upset with your life, you can do 2 things. You can change it, or you can change how you view it. But doing nothing and staying upset, in my opinion, in not mentally healthy.

Yes and I don't agree. I think twisting the facts to suit a more palatable narrative is intellectually dishonest. I don't think it's entirely avoidable either, but it's not a solution. Doing something on the other hand - yes of course. But that's assuming you have the means, which I don't.

We as humans are always helpless in one way or another. That's ok. That's what I'm saying. You have to learn to live with some things sometimes.

Yes, that's true of course. But we're not talking about a bad stroke of luck in the genetic lottery here or a freak accident, we're talking about man-made purposeful oppression. These are not the same things.

Not dismissing it. Changing how you react to it.

That's the same thing. You're snubbing your normal reaction to something for no actual logical reason.

If there's nothing you can do, why get upset?

Why ever get upset at anything? Why feel anything at all?

You feel the emotions you feel. Unless there's a logical reason to actively fight them (being manipulated, paranoid e.g. afraid of something that is probably not a threat), then there isn't a cause to alter those emotions just because they're unpleasant.

would say, the Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, was a a bit beyond a pseudo-philosophizer.

But the people who take those ideas and twist them into a self-help guru narrative are shameless, on the other hand.

Suffering is everywhere. Life is full of pain, sadness, and frustration.

Yes. But this can be changed, it is the very essence of why progress happens at all on anything ever. Accepting these things as a fact of life is nothing more than defeat.

Desire causes suffering. Wanting things to be different or clinging to what we have makes us unhappy.

No, actually. Not in this case, not in a lot of cases, dare I even say - most, and deep down you know it too.

Consider this analogy:

If someone comes along and breaks your legs, and it hurts, that person is what causes you suffering, it is them who has made you unhappy, not you and your supposedly misguided desire for unbroken legs.

Even if you can't stop this person, knowing who the enemy is, and refusing to break mentally and cave to them, to accept that their actions are some inherent fact of life and not just the awful actions of another human, standing fast against the test of time alone - is the real response, to maintain your self, your dignity and your beliefs, to refuse the transgressor the satisfaction of breaking your spirit, that's the one thing that any person can do even in the most helpless situation.

Oppressed peoples from all corners of land and walks of life know this throughout all time - it is ancient knowledge, you can kill a man, but you cannot kill an idea.

Rolling over and adapting to them is what I see some do and it's perhaps the most depressing thing there is, this "hypernormalization".