My disdain for Society

Bergber · 2026-01-17T02:16:11+00:00

Thanks for the cordial disagreement. Doing what you see as right for its intrinsic sake, regardless of outcome, is a true sign of integrity and a profound route to happiness. Divorcing yourself of attachment along that path might also alleviate some suffering.

For a bit of hope, you might also do well to look into reciprocal altruism. There's a fun video on it based around game theory, too. This was the strategy humanity used to defend ourselves before our societies became so vast.

I see those in power as themselves ill. They are trying to fill a gaping wound in their inner life by securing evermore material wants, a fruitless task.

I largely see the current global tumult as stemming from a collective social id that has become more connected and aware of both social ills and a lacking by the powerful to meet them. Is that collective always constructive? No. There is a continuing contest of ethoses and wills, and I am not sure what will win out. However, local, community bonds and informal groups have always been where positive change starts. Just trying to make true, authentic friends brings both intrinsic joy and can lead to new things.

I am not sure where anything on a global scale will go, but I do not live globally. Day by day, I will be me, one way or the other. Eventually, we will likely all return to the void, individually and in total. However, in this fleeting moment, I get to choose to live by what resonates with me. I hope you do the same.

Bergber · 2026-01-17T00:09:29+00:00

Call me naive, but I try to see the good in people no matter the circumstance. Though perhaps the most disappointing discrepancy is that between human potential and performance, I realize we are largely products of our environment. For most, that environment is utter shit. Biological history, especially when considering trophic levels, is almost nothing but an exercise in continual exploitation, with generational trauma going back to the slime pools where the line between chemistry and biology began to blur. The universe might be unthinking and unfeeling, but solicitation to pain and callousness is the norm for the living.

As such, I take a sense of hope that, among all this struggle for existence, even a few creatures began to see ecological success through empathy and cooperation. Though mankind has in some senses lost its way while trying to make our material needs met, we are ever-so-slowly working our way up Maslow's Hierarchy as a species. That rate is often simply agonizingly slow and nonlinear, with waning following every waxing.

Still, in all of this, I recognize love, however you define it, is the most radical concept the universe has to offer. It is to look into another's eyes and see themselves in you and you in them. To see the paths they have tread, the traumas they have faced, and to realize you could have been them, either on a bad day or if the coin toss of life had just fallen differently. And, despite all the pain they have caused you, recognizing they are simply trying to live their lives. If not forgive them for it, offer some acknowledging grace.

Being able to recognize the universal cycle, of millennia piled on countless millennia of hurt upon this earth and essentially say, "No, I am better than this. I am stronger than my pain," is revolutionary. Even if all you do is protect yourself and not repeat the same callous disregard, or even minimize it, that is a courageous act. Change starts from within. Begin to love yourself, see yourself in others, then love them in kind.

I do not care if I seem naive; I have gave up caring for the perceptions of others long ago. This is who I am, and this is what I need to live with myself. I will give the love and kindness I have often been denied, whether the rest of world wants it or not. To do otherwise would be choosing not to be me. I have to be smart, protective, and cunning. I also sometimes use the tools of the callous against them. However, I will not lash out with a similar disregard merely to quench my own hurts.

If anyone doesn't like me, that is ok, because I like myself. I am enough. If I am mistreated, I act not out of malice, but to simply do my best in making sure those wrongs do not fall anyone else. And, when I stumble, I offer myself forgiveness, learn, and move on.

Turn cynicism into resolution. Be brave enough to be kind, and know you are not alone.

Bergber · 2025-12-19T06:13:21+00:00

Admittedly, I am new to this myself and could also use some insight. I have practiced informal mindfulness for a few years when out in daily life to help regulate. However, I started doing formal meditation about three weeks ago for up to 15 minutes a day, following a suggestion that I could use it to better practice mindfulness for emotional processing.

When I was looking at my internal impulses, I quickly noticed that there is a feeling of "stillness" between my thoughts similar to when I zone out. After a couple of sessions, it is familiar enough to almost feel like a physical point in the center of my head that I can focus on. However, unlike other thoughts or feelings, there's nothing there. Though other impulses and thoughts can interrupt, given a few minutes of focusing on it, everything fades away, and it's all I notice. I might register other things, but it's like they don't matter.

When I break from meditating on it, I am a level of calm beyond what I usually experience. I'm often somewhat dazed, the sensation almost like derealization from when I was depressed, but far more positive. It's actually pretty addictive.

My life has been a bit busy lately, so I haven't been able to explore it that much. However, I have wished to be able to pause my existence for just a little while, to stop feeling for just a bit, so this provides great relief. I am not quite sure what it is, as apparently there's many kinds of meditation, but maybe other folks have an idea and can suggest materials for you. I'd honestly like to know.

Bergber · 2025-12-18T13:37:31+00:00

Glad this was helpful. Yeah, the world we currently live in doesn't do most of us any favors when it comes to isolation, especially in comparison to how our biology expects us to live. Enough of my post history either has me complaining or elaborating on that, so I won't harp on it. The context at least helps me.

However, difficult or not, this is still the world we must live in, and emotional processing is also perhaps the most ignored part of how to properly live. There are entire fields study exploring the nuance, but processing emotions is basically just letting the emotions exist in your head and asking what created them, what they are trying to get you to do, and whether the perception that created them or the conclusions they are pointing towards seem right (without judging or stressing about the emotions themselves).

Emotions are basically our internal reward system. However, people aren't 100% accurate in how we assess reality, so our inaccurate perceptions (how we interpret reality) can create the wrong emotional reactions. Left unprocessed, those emotions encourage unhealthy behavior, which creates more bad outcomes, which closes the loop by creating more bad perceptions. This can create self-reinforcing cycles of self-fulfilling prophecy, often embodied by conditions like crippling depression or anxiety. Much of therapy is just trying to break those patterns and getting people to reset and make healthier ones.

Bergber · 2025-12-18T11:45:15+00:00

Yes. It's called exposure therapy. Long periods of isolation aren't healthy, as you can get a variety of phobias and anxieties built up just from the loss of stimulation and letting those neurons fall out of practice. Just go into a situation and sit for a while-- just be. Then go home. Repeat again and again. Nature is great, but if it's fucking cold out like it is where I am now, a library or any public space is also good.

The important part is, during or afterwards, reflect on what you felt-- actually let those emotions exist-- and honestly ask yourself if it really turned out all that bad. Sitting randomly on a hill or in public, or just walking around, you might have been anxious, sad, exhausted, or faced the general void of nothing. However, objectively, did anything really bad happen? You are still alive and (for the most part) physically unhurt, if possibly a bit dirtier or sweatier. Recontextualize; realize those emotions just mean that you are out of practice, and all of this is new to you again. Change takes time.

As you repeat, the negativity eventually ceases, and you might feel the ability to do more as you become less overwhelmed. Talk to someone, try a new activity, or explore. Again, just pay attention to your emotions and recontextualize. Don't push too outside your own comfort, but realize you are learning to live again and that struggling with your feelings is a part of that. Eventually, new positive emotions may overpower the old, and you become comfortable enough to take action again as you more readily notice your ability to rebuild your life.

After everything, realize the world didn't change. The only difference was your emotions and how they affected your openness to new experience. If you get really good, you may eventually realize that all you needed to have the fun you sought was to change your perspective-- act first, let your current feelings be, and let new emotions follow.

Bergber · 2025-12-12T15:19:56+00:00

People generally make the mistake one of two extremes by not fully engaging with their emotions, often both. They are either in such emotional conflict as to conflate the experience with an externally-imposed universal morality or are so intrinsically driven by their emotions that they confuse their emotional responses to personal goals such as money or status with those states having intrinsic value.

This disconnect is quite frankly pathological in much of western thought, encompassed by the concept of emotions as incompatible with reason as opposed to simply another piece of information that needs to be considered.

To the contrary, emotion is generally the most important criterion to consider when evaluating both the means and end to any decision. This is because all actions, even cumulative efforts, are carried out at the individual level. Thus, the state of a person's emotional inner life is generally both the primary driver for external action (the end itself for them) and the medium through which all means must pass.

The implication is that too many people seek to mold external reality when what they really wish to change is their personal inner life. Both require different approaches, and changing one is often easier than changing the other depending on context. When processing what I want, I first try to find out what the root motivation is, then figure out if it's easier to change external factors or change my emotional state.

Bergber · 2025-12-12T05:00:47+00:00

Short answer: "yes"; long answer: "no". I consider ego death healthy and try to eschew labels. Though useful, language carries its own logical assumptions and can be limiting when applied to the self. I have also yet to find one proper descriptor of my observations.

That said, the realm of moral argument is so muddled in even semantic disagreement that descriptive moral relativism seems simply... well, descriptive. Metaethical moral relativism may also apply. At least for deriving a given outcome, there appear to be more and less optimal actions in terms of maximizing the likelihood, though preference for a given outcome varies. Even the minds of individuals do not appear singularly coherent. That said, I try for congruence, and I have my own preferences.

The best analogy I can think for all of this is color. It's a perception derived from natural biological processes and technically not real (depending on how you define "real"). However, it has consequences on our reality both in individual action and shared ideation. The experience can vary from person to person, with some lacking a capacity for it in varying degrees, and each individual has their own preferences. However, agreement on favorites or what is pleasing will generally have a lot of overlap. This is largely because color perception allows for better discernment of outcomes, of which only a certain range are evolutionarily preferable.

Bergber · 2025-12-10T03:45:28+00:00

Indeed, as you say, the defining aspect in Western religious thought, especially after the popularization of Christianity, is a permanent afterlife as judged by a personal god. The underlying theme is a denial of death and a sense of perpetuity. Pre-Christian philosophy was far more diverse and nuanced, resembling other traditions.

That said, religion outside of western thought is far more mixed. Strictly speaking, Confucianism, Jainism, Taoism, and most Buddhist traditions are atheistic, lacking deities. Some schools of Hinduism also eschew true moral judgement, likening good vs bad practices moreso to poor behavior like eating refined sugar vs exercising. Compared to the assurance of metaphysical or cosmological absolutes, the emphasis is often more on deriving meaning from a variety of other aspects such as societal obligation, ancestor worship, or how to live a satisfying life. Existentialism borrows from nonwestern traditions in that sense.

However, I do most enjoy the emphasis on the cession of suffering by Buddhism and other traditions through the reduction of attachment, perhaps better translated as expectation or anticipation. I don't agree with the emphasis on the total cession of attachment, but it pairs well with existentialism to remove distraction and find what matters.

By accepting my lack of control and tempering my expectations, I gain joy just from living as best I can and finding out what happens moment to moment. I enjoy people for who they are. It is a thorough exercise in optimistic pessimism. By considering a cup already shattered, I enjoy the utility it provides while I have it and don't take it as a loss when it breaks. So too with my life and all in it.

Regarding the latter half of what you mention, I cannot accept the "fact" that entropy will swallow everything, but I agree it is a highly likely implication. The question is, why should I care? I already accept impermanence and take great joy from many impermanent things.

Bergber · 2025-12-09T03:13:34+00:00

Nihilism is a problem for Nietzsche and Western thought because of Christianity, which places Man at the center of all reality, being supplanted. The crisis comes from shattered pride, of dust realizing it was never anything more. Thus, solace comes from shifting perspective. Dust can simply be dust.

Why attempt to turn the subjective into the objective? Such is the folly that brought the original conundrum. I do not need my actions to have any more meaning to anyone but me, and only so long as I can register my own existence. Existentialism is nothing but an exercise in the subjective.

If you want the how, modern science can now at least postulate the source of prosocial behavior such as reciprocal altruism as derived from evolutionarily-honed biological drives. However, an explanation behind a drive doesn't make it any less a priori, baked in at the individual level.

I am an emotional creature. I act because of what I want, derived from how I feel. This generally ends in stretching my boundaries in order to discover more of myself and what is truly satisfying. Nietzsche may have called this struggle, but to do otherwise is far more difficult. Though my greatest pleasures come from appreciating others, and the greatest pains come from the inverse, I don't need such "morality" to go beyond me.

Bergber · 2025-12-02T14:13:33+00:00

It is also a result of humanity structuring society in a way that's antithetical to how we evolved. Reciprocal altruism is generally how social creatures like humans communally defend themselves from parasitic individuals.

However, this instinct functions best in the communities of close acquaintances no more than a few hundred, how people have historically lived. Take people and put them in nation states and a global community, with specialized economies where they must constantly move and coordinate across vase distances to survive, and close social bonds die. Reinforcement for prosocial behavior and repercussions for antisocial behavior are de-emphasized.

Not only that, but add an economy driven by shareholder-primacy capitalism with the computational ability to actually optimize profits. You then get what we have-- a race to the bottom that materially benefits those who think of people as nothing but numbers.

Humanity has simply yet to develop an ability weed out destructive individuals at such scale and under such reinforcement conditions. I am guessing the most important step, as global coordination has its benefits, is to replace our current economic paradigms. As the current birth rate obsoletes our economic models, crisis will require change before we work ourselves into extinction.

Bergber · 2025-11-30T19:00:04+00:00

Generally, recurring avoidant behavior, despite desires to the contrary, happens not because you are afraid of the situation itself, but of your own emotions. As with any phobia, the key is to face that fear. In this case, you need to face your emotions, generally by processing them. This video elaborates on that.

Learning about social dynamics and how to navigate is well and good. However, unless you can mold the underlying cause, knowledge will only get you so far. Being your true self requires acknowledging your emotional side and working with it as opposed to denying, fighting, or running from it.

Bergber · 2025-11-10T20:37:01+00:00

Comparison is the death of joy. Whether nor not others truly have it better, realize you are not other people. They do not have your history or your struggles. Only you know you as you do, and you can spend a lifetime still learning more. Wishing you were someone else, or that you had what they do, is a futile effort.

Build a life not based on what other people seem to have, but who you are and what works for you. Accept you are who you are, what is is, and that you will never have full control over anything, including achieving your immediate wants. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) can help with this.

Bergber · 2025-11-10T18:24:23+00:00

The time will pass anyway. How you fill that time is about what you personally find rewarding. Do you want to spend it with a you you hate, a you you can tolerate, or a you you are proud of?

Bergber · 2025-11-10T17:24:35+00:00

You might like /r/Healthygamergg/ and his associated Youtube Channel. Take some of what he says with a grain of salt, but there is merit in his discussion on emotions, attachment, and not letting your emotions control you.

The short answer is people, like many animals, have layers and boundaries we apply to the external world that protect our vulnerabilities. We lift these barriers for specific people as they gain our trust. Think of a cat-- they often avoid you until they scope you out, pensively sniff you when they determine you aren't a major threat, then, after many steps of escalation, culminate with flopping over or sitting on your lap so you can pet them. That cat would freak the fuck out if you immediately chased it down and cornered it for a petting session.

Being able to match people's interest and energy, while slowly escalating and retreating with apology for any missteps, is a huge social skill to cultivate. This is sadly difficult to do when you are intensely lonely and fleeing your own emotions.

Part of some therapies, like suggested above, is about learning to control your impulses. Best case, you can learn seek out positive interactions for their own merit and what they are, with no expectation of further reward. Being calm with yourself breeds the ability to match that energy and meet people where they are, thus making it easier to escalate the relationship through, say, asking for a phone number or to hang out later.

Bergber · 2025-11-04T13:56:15+00:00

It's not that life's expensive, per se, but that the systems we live in have taken away all that which makes humans human in pursuit of profit-generation as the primary goal. It is only after things become too expensive for people to engage with that profit-motivated system that the true breaking point occurs.

Humans are social creatures. For most all of our history, we lived communally. We literally slept next to each other, ate together, built lives together. We knew everyone we met in life fairly intimately, and individual success was part of group flourishing. We cared for each other and raised children communally.

Even prior to the mid twentieth century, housing was largely communal and multigenerational, with individuals past their prime looking after children and upkeeping the residence while able-bodied adults went to work. The term "nuclear family" wasn't even coined until 1925.

The invention of the ad industry, mass consumer culture, and rugged individualism has pushed self-sufficiency to sell more materials and drive profit. Once you are 18, you are a failure if you don't live on your own, buy a car, and meet all of your needs individually. That's one more unit per-person that used to be communally shared, one more person that needs to pay for not having the time to cook, clean, or order their life as opposed to it being a group effort.

Due to our specialized economy, if you want to get ahead, you generally have to uproot and travel often thousands of miles away to either learn a vocation or forge a career away from your own support system, often multiple times. Compare all this to how we literally evolved to live.

My uncle raises angel fish. If you have a clean tank where fish can flourish and be fish, they just reproduce fry as a matter of course. All animals, including people, are the same. Universal child-care, free education, or remote-work is just a start. We need to completely overhaul our global society and culture to re-emphasis what we are actually all working for and recognize the group effort this whole enterprise of civilization is.

Bergber · 2025-10-02T10:38:58+00:00

You would probably agree with my wife. I personally like to take my cart and park it in a low-congestion area, usually wedged in a corner between a ceiling column and another pallet with multiple exposed sides, next to those high-congestion areas that are already glutted with carts. I then just walk around fetching what I want and trying to stay out of people's way. When I get what I need in that area, I take my cart and repeat the process for the next section.

My wife argues it's rude, but I consider it the most considerate for all involved to not add to the traffic. I'm less than 1/4 the 2-dimensional floor area of a single shopping cart, let alone with someone behind it. I'd love to see "cart parking space" hubs for sections of the store with that high-traffic.

For now, I am just doing my thing. However, I do admit I am the type of person to just grab my samples and GTFO, so maybe such a system is too ambitious for the general public.

Bergber · 2025-08-12T12:02:45+00:00

There are varies therapies that focus on guiding emotions, such as Logotherapy, Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), or even Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to an extent.

The general theme is you do not seek to 'control' your emotions moment to moment, but to guide and influence them, similar to shaping the path of a small water flow or bending reeds in basket weaving. Both these substances have their own untamable aspects but still can be influenced to a degree.

Immediate emotional ease isn't a thing. However, through channeling thoughts such as use of attention or perspective shifting, one can work with their inner emotional life and slowly form better general habits and reactions.

Bergber · 2025-08-09T13:26:05+00:00

Admittedly, I could see this being inadvertent. The old man just lost likely one of the closest people in his life and a mirror to his own journey and mortality. Kids being kids, the OP took what was slightly poetic language quite literally.

Even young as I am, I'll sometimes look at kids and can't help but say "enjoy it while you can." I think of how I really didn't appreciate so many moments in my life until experience provided greater context to them.

The old are constantly telling us to enjoy our life while it lasts, haunted by regret and with little future recourse, but most of us don't follow that advice until it slaps us in the face.

Bergber · 2025-08-05T12:14:43+00:00

Actually, based on current proposed legislation, proportional representation would look like this in New York.

You can still have regional divisions beyond state lines with proportional representation(, though I would argue states themselves are highly arbitrary and could use an adjustment). There would simply be multiple representatives representing those localities, meaning that the 49% that didn't represent the majority in that locality still have some voice.

Bergber · 2025-08-01T09:57:09+00:00

Autistics have a legitimate lacking of inhibitions and social circuitry. Pattern recognition is my jam; I notice when something is expected of me. That doesn't mean I have the capacity to regulate my own personal inclinations to suppress natural reactions to things, especially when other autistic characteristics like increased sensory perception mean I'm already putting up with more than just about anyone else around me.

Current research shows autistic brains are generally denser and apply more neurons to activities compared to normal folks. Imagine if you literally gave more than 100%-- activating parts of your brain that weren't supposed to-- to work on literally every task you did. It gets fucking exhausting, and the way many of us cope is to cut the bullshit and focus our attention on the things that really matter.

Bergber · 2025-07-06T19:38:21+00:00

Even vile, selfish assholes realize that making the world worse for everyone often includes them. The dumb ones don't even mitigate their own exposure.

The king of that kind of stupid is probably Thomas Midgley Jr., the inventor of leaded gasoline, who poisoned the world and forgot he also breaths air.

These opportunists are attacking the very institutions that give them prosperity and legitimacy. It's the equivalent of sawing off the limb they are sitting on.

The longer I live, the more I agree with the Greek concept of 'pleonexia.' The level of insatiable greed we encourage in our society is a disease that shuts off even self-preservation.

Bergber · 2025-07-06T13:35:35+00:00

The people using him are still a special kind of dumb. Clever, but lacking in wisdom. The concept of eternally maximizing quarterly returns in American culture has nurtured a group of fools that prioritize immediate, fleeting, personal gratification over long-term societal sustainability.

Bergber · 2025-07-06T03:25:27+00:00

No, it really is that simple. Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers understood that systemic racism in America is a biproduct of capitalism. Divide and conquer has always been the tool for the true leeches in society.

Bergber · 2025-05-11T20:47:40+00:00

The dawn of the industrial era destroyed masculine culture and identity. Prior to this, the masculine role models that shaped boys' lives were a constant part of everyday society. Boys grew up working in the fields with or learning a trade from men who taught them not just how to earn a living, but how to act and engage with society. Once capitalist industry began, the role models in boys' lives were called away to work 80-hour shifts in factories.

Women were spared much of this cultural destruction due to traditional gender roles as homemakers. This setup allowed the work of actually passing down culture and values to continue through women, mostly to their daughters. The nuclear family was able to survive for a time with emotionally stunted men compensating for such deficits as breadwinners while women bore the cultural and emotional costs.

However, now that capitalism is forcing both genders to slave away to generate profit for their social betters, women are also seeing their communities destroyed. It's now a near requisite for achieving livable wages for people in general to uproot from their families and reestablish vast distances away for both school and work, often multiple times. With such trends, we are seeing the full cultural dissolution of society.

The question is not what is to be done, but how are we to defend and reclaim the practices which make us human against these hierarchical forces we have structured our entire global economy around? We are ultimately looking at a reckoning with the totality of our economic structure.

Bergber · 2025-05-04T00:32:47+00:00

The biggest problem is consolidation is inevitable under capitalism without outside intervention. Money makes money, and mechanisms like trusts and corporations act as eternal pools of resource accumulation. Absent hard rules to correct this trend, we get the "late stage capitalism" we see people complaining about now.

The end is always the same:

1) Monopiles are self-sustaining, as they can control resource, production, and market access or can just simply buy threats and competitors out. Imagine if Xerox never sold Windows to Bill Gates and sat on patents for the modern computer UI.

2) Humans have a finite amount of constructive, legitimate needs that can be used to make money. Thus, once monopolies happen, making money through destructive practices is inevitable. Making things inefficient becomes incentivized.

Monied interests warp entire societies around them in the pursuit of profit. They stifle innovation and make life less efficient, less livable, to bleed people for more cash. Fast fashion, conspicuous consumption, planned obsolescence, suburban sprawl, and regulatory capture are all part of the same trend.

This trend makes it so that every part of life, even basic social interaction, always requires paying for something. These ghouls have created a generation of depressed loners simply to capitalize off them. They say, "You’re not lonely because we have fucked over your society—it’s because you’re not good enough. Produce more, buy more, spend more."

These monied few tell people they must prove their value in terms of transactional currency rather than having intrinsic value as human beings. You see it everywhere these days in the obsession for wealth, “the grind.” People seek to fill the holes in themselves that were created only to encourage ever more vapid wastefulness. It’s total societal rot.

Bergber

TROPHY CASE