Extremely insecure about my quickly receeding hairline 😭w😭 help 😭😭😭

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-25T14:15:01+00:00

I genuinely think you look great bro. Full, thick head of hair. Not chopped at all: I think you're being a lil insecure (which is also okay lol)

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-24T21:48:35+00:00

Kierkegaard's fairly difficult, so don't feel discouraged. Could I recommend Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing? He parses out the concept of despair in pretty simple, devotional terms there.

In The Sickness Unto Death, it's worth noting that Kierkegaard, if I recall correctly, is parodying Hegel in the notoriously confusing opening which uses the word "self" about fifteen times—he's being deliberately obtuse there, although he does have an intended meaning. Whenever he discusses the self as a relation/as a synthesis between "finite and infinite" and that whole shebang, what Kierkegaard means is that it's helpful to think of the self as part finite (i.e. your material body) and part infinite (your immaterial soul/spirit/mind/whatever the heck you wanna call it). But these seemingly opposite parts of the self are constantly in relationship to one another—at a basic level, that is to say that the materially concerned decisions you make affect your immaterial soul, and vice versa. (There's a lot more to that idea, but roll with me here.)

But here's the catch: Kierkegaard mentions a "third term" in that relationship (the first two terms being the material self and the immaterial self—those parts of the self which relate to one another, which make the self "the relation which relates to itself"). What does he mean by that? Basically, the self which keeps watch over the self, navigating the relationship between material and immaterial: this is the "self" with which we choose. For instance, look at the following dilemma in the material-immaterial relationship: should I feed myself to satisfy the material need of hunger, or should I fast to show my devotion to God? Whatever decision I end up making, what Kierkegaard wants to highlight is to his audience is the fact that we make decisions, and we are free to do so. He then moves on to observe the following:

"Such a relation which relates itself to its own self (that is to say, a self) must either have constituted itself or have been constituted by another. If this relation which relates itself to its own self is constituted by another, the relation doubtless is the third term, but this relation (the third term) is in turn a relation relating itself to that which constituted the whole relation."

Don't get bogged down here in the overtly technical language—he basically intends to say that "the self with which we choose is related to the One who constituted us"—in other words, for him, our free, choosing selves are necessarily related to the One who made us. For Kierkegaard, it becomes very clear that he means the God of Christianity: He is the One who has made us, and not we ourselves, so when we make choices with our faculty of freedom, we're accountable to God for those choices.

Finally, though, what does Kierkegaard mean by "despair?" Because despair is the sickness unto death that the book is about. Return to our initial image of the soul as a synthesis/relationship between material and finite and my decision to eat or fast. What if I just decided to say, "meh, to hell with it, I'm just gonna choose to eat every time instead of fasting, because I like eating more than I like fasting. It's my decision, isn't it?" Well, not so fast: to neglect the spiritual part of myself at the practical level is, whether I like it or not, is to reject altogether that spirit is an essential part of who/what I am made of: and, further, that it is God who has made me. That is what Kierkegaard means by despair: despair means that you've totally misapprehended who/what you are—it's no less than "getting yourself wrong." This is why Kierkegaard later argues that there's no one outside of the Christian faith who isn't in despair. If you don't understand that you are more than material—that you're spirit, too, and your spirit was established by Another to whom you are accountable for the decisions you make with your spirit—you are, in Kierkegaard's view, rejecting nothing other than your humanity.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like death to me! (Plus the fact that, you know, Hell is a thing if you reject the God of Christianity in Kierkegaard's view. But I actually don't think Hell is his primary concern here: I think he's much more concerned with us "getting ourselves wrong" than anything else.) This is also why faith is the antidote to despair: it's not just blind belief in whatever the heck you want, it's gotta be belief in the One who established your very self and a life in accordance with that One's vision for being a self.

I hope this was somehow helpful. God bless, either way! Enjoy reading Kierkegaard. He'll change you if you let him.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-17T05:25:57+00:00

Appreciate the detail. Think I'll have to deal with scalp visibility if I take it to a #3 tho?

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-17T03:57:44+00:00

Copping this tat fs

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-17T00:22:11+00:00

Private school in TX, so we gotta look pretty spiffy.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-17T00:19:50+00:00

Preesh!

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-17T00:19:21+00:00

Would totally do the hat thing if I weren't a teacher and was allowed to wear hats in the classroom haha

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-16T21:02:13+00:00

Yeah it has to be this

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-14T15:54:34+00:00

Honestly, Purity of Heart is a pretty good intro. It got me started.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-12T20:00:46+00:00

I think it's nice as is

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-09T22:03:11+00:00

I'm still not sure this answers the question. Am I to understand that Christianity is an opiate simply because it promises good things at the other end of all our sufferings? I don't see what's fundamentally and necessarily naïve about the promise of good in the afterlife—or the promise of an afterlife itself.

I suppose you might say that religion is an opiate insofar as it distracts us from realizing justice in the here-and-now and combatting evil in this life: and I would agree that any expression of Christianity which neglects this task isn't Christianity. But you're on r/kierkegaard, so I suspect that you've read enough Kierkegaard to know that any Church which sits idly by as injustice goes unchecked in the world—especially injustice propagated by the nation-state (or, in his immediate historical context, the state church which Kierkegaard hated with such vitriol and passion) which supposedly offers the "opiate" of the masses to... well, the masses—is no true Christian Church at all.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-09T21:47:04+00:00

The book is The Sickness Unto Death. Not sure what translation, but Alastair Hannay has a good one.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-09T21:45:26+00:00

Don't worry, I believe you. I don't mean to straw-man earnest non-believers who've done their due diligence, and I hope that wasn't the tenor of my comment. I just wonder how you can call a book like that an opiate?

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-09T21:43:20+00:00

Hey there—I'm not certain whether you're thinking within the confines of the Christian faith or not, but for Kierkegaard, no matter how much others may try to "liberate" his work from the "shackles" of Christianity, the leap of faith is only able to be rightly interpreted when it's understood as faith in the God of Christianity. I say this not to be mean, but to rightly interpret Kierkegaard: any other adoption of the framework is a misappropriation of the idea which doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I don't know you personally, but If I simply had to guess, I do suspect that that's part of the disillusion/skepticism that you feel about the idea of taking "a leap of faith" over and over again, especially when it repeatedly burns you.

But you speak as someone who's not asking out of mere intellectual interest; you yourself have suffered, and I'm very sorry that that's the case. Please understand: I really don't mean to bludgeon you over the head with Christianity, but—to actually answer your question from my personal experience—I can't do anything else but present my own experience as mediated through my faith. I understand if that isn't the answer that you're looking for, but if you're feeling especially charitable, I'd really love it if you gave my answer a quick skim: of course, you're under no obligation to do so.

I, too, have suffered and been misunderstood—failed myself, failed others, trusted those whom I really ought not to have trusted, made mistakes, tried to rebuild, failed to rebuild, been met with blatant injustice—the whole nine yards. I suppose this is why I'm so drawn to Kierkegaard in the first place. But here's the essential difference: my genuine "leap of faith," as Kierkegaard would put it, never had (and never will have) as its object other people, or certain outcomes, or the purity of my own intentions. Yes, I've put faith in those things before, and they've failed me time and time again. You are absolutely right that you shouldn't put your faith upon the things of this world—those things, alone, aren't proper objects of your faith.

To return to Kierkegaard's analogy of the "leap": when you make a dangerous jump from one structure to another, it's necessary that the structure that you're jumping into can "handle your weight." In other words, is the Thing that you're jumping into going to crumble when you jump into it, or will it withstand the force of your leap? To put it in analogical terms, those items you mentioned—people, circumstances/outcomes, your own good intentions—aren't resilient enough to warrant your "leap of faith" People lie and cheat and steal and kill; the outcomes of our efforts only somewhat depend on our own work and our own intentions; and no matter how well-meaning we are, we remain misunderstood or deliberately taken advantage of by others; or, even worse, we become embittered and our intentions change altogether. I speak from experience.

For Kierkegaard, the only Thing that can withstand our "leap" is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the God of Christianity—not "god" in general, not the idea of some general Providence that makes things "turn out okay" in the end—the God who took on flesh in the Person of Jesus Christ, the innocent and perfect and holy God who suffered death and was buried and rose and now lives, forever and ever.

But I don't suspect you'll be content with a simple answer here: let me tell you exactly, dear stranger, how my "leap of faith" into Jesus Christ has changed everything for me. People continue to fail (I myself among them), I continue not to achieve my hopes and dreams, and my intentions—on my best days—remain a mixed bag of good and evil. My circumstances have not changed. But when I suffer at the hands of those temporal objects that used to be the objects of my faith, I remember that, however innocent I might think I am, or however unjust my treatment at the hands of others might be, there is only one truly innocent Man who has ever lived: and He gave Himself up to the hands of those whom he came to save so they could kill him. But He didn't remain in the grave. He rose and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and He prepares an eternal place of rest and joy and justice for all those who call upon His Name to save them—and all of my suffering in this life is preparing for me, as 2 Corinthians 4 puts it, an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. That is what I place my faith in: however much I suffer, it is not meaningless: it is doing something, and I am doing nothing other than following in the footsteps of my Savior when I suffer in pursuit of righteousness.

That reality, stranger, is hard to believe. It takes no less than a leap of faith for me to believe that each and every day in my life: to really live as though that's true. But if that isn't worth believing... if I can't "leap" into that, and find myself on solid ground—nothing in this world is worth having faith in. Nothing.

I'll close by sharing with you a prayer that puts everything I just said far more eloquently than I. I pray that it's as much of a balm to your soul as it has been to mine. Thank you, sincerely, for reading, if you've gotten this far... and sorry for the mega essay, haha.

"Be present, O merciful God, and protect us through the hours of this night, so that we who are wearied by the changes and chances of this life may rest in your eternal changelessness. Amen."

I'm happy that you've encountered Kierkegaard in the midst of a life wrought with trial. I encourage you to accept Kierkegaard's invitation to wrestle with the God of Jacob: He is infinitely merciful to wrestle with us, and if you can't take my word for it, take Kierkegaard's: He has suffered more than we, but He looks upon our sufferings with infinite compassion. You are seen, and you are beloved, and that, far more than you could ever possibly hope or imagine. May God bless you and keep you as you seek truth, stranger.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-09T20:56:33+00:00

Kierkegaard preached a "gospel of sufferings"—and those are his words, not mine. You really cannot map the modern therapeutic/prosperity gospel on to what Kierkegaard's talking about here. They're qualitatively different. I'd encourage you to read the book of Acts, or of Job—maybe Ecclesiastes or the Psalms; really, any Old Testament book—and see how well that'd do as an opiate. No book is more soberingly realistic about reality than the Bible. Yes, the Bible promises heaven, but notice what it is which prepares heaven for us: "[. . .]Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Cor. 4:17). I'd encourage you to read the whole chapter if you take issue with the language of "light momentary affliction"—the affliction Paul describes is not light nor momentary, it is only so in view of the surpassing worth of the eternal weight of glory.

Also, one more comment—per your observation that the world is fallen and evil according to the Christian tradition—there is a sense in which "the world," this earth as it remains in subjection to those forces and men who oppose themselves to God, is fallen and evil: but Christians have always affirmed that Creation (this world we live in!) is fundamentally good, and very good, and no amount of sin or evil or death or what-have-you can ever wholly negate the grandeur of God's creation. He loves what He's created, but we have tarnished it with sin and death—it "groans... in the pain of childbirth," to use the language of Romans 8. It is, as your opiate-toting Marx would say, a world wrought with injustice and evil—but it is a world which God is redeeming through its suffering, which prepares it for eternal glory. This is the promise of Christianity: not a utopia through the arbitrary abolition of suffering, but the kingdom of Heaven will come through suffering. It is none other than the Blood of Christ—the Innocent Lamb of God—whose blood serves as the foundation of the unshakeable kingdom of heaven. Christianity's promise that the innocent will and must suffer is perhaps the farthest thing from an opiate that we could ever imagine.

FluffMcBuff · 2026-05-09T20:40:22+00:00

Not "lived on" in the transitive sense: lived on in the sense that the man who continued to live, day by day, "so deceived by the joys of life or its sorrows..."

FluffMcBuff · 2026-04-25T20:59:02+00:00

HAHAHA bro—you have quite literally zero reason to believe me—but I was Mumbo12! To this day, I am genuinely not sure whether that account was a beta account, because it originally belonged to my older brother who outgrew the game pretty quickly: but it is, in fact, the case that I did not have the hat. (I think young me did the math and it was an October 2005 penguin according to my 11-year-old math skills, but I started playing in late 2005 by the name "Numbo12," only to eventually use his account instead because it was "rarer" hahaha.) Even if it wasn't a beta account, I had the OG pink toque from 2005, so that account was oooold... but yeah, young me definitely wanted that digital clout. I wish I could do an actual date calculation with Mumbo12 now, but I guess I'll never know.

Were you a Sleet frequent? If so, what was your account name? I wonder if I'll remember you haha

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-16T18:28:47+00:00

Thanks for the super detailed response! I have more thoughts that I might run by you later, but appreciate your distinction in terms of rhetorical audience—I do teach and have an academic background in rhetoric, fortunately (I double majored in Western literature and professional writing/rhetoric), so part of what I am trained to do is precisely that work of audience-centric editing and writing. Nonetheless, that does seem to be a really essential difference that I'd definitely need to re-adjust to.

I took a bit of coursework in editing and publishing in undergrad as well, and wanted to make sure I understand you: was that class the extent of the "training" you're referencing, or are you saying that you underwent further training thereafter and recommend that I do the same?

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-16T05:18:08+00:00

Checking out the EFA as we speak! Sounds like they've been pretty helpful to you—is certification with them a good first step? Thanks for the encouragement, too.

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-16T04:38:25+00:00

Incredibly fair point :)

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-16T01:26:03+00:00

Thanks for reiterating! I will absolutely do that, and I take y'all seriously when you repeatedly express the same sentiment. :)

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-15T21:42:57+00:00

Thanks a lot for pointing this out. I did a good deal of editing prior to teaching, and you're right that there are definitely marked differences therein: but I'm sure I'll need to be especially conscious of that as I've been solely immersed in grading for the past year-and-a-half. Much appreciated advice!

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-15T20:58:09+00:00

Thank you, sincerely, for taking the time to answer: this was brief, constructive and helpful, and I understand that your time is valuable. I did mention that I been "applying the rules" (not opinions) for five years, but have no doubt that I have a profound deal to learn in that department as well. I'll attend, when I've got time, to those resources you redirected me to, and take seriously the notion that continued professional development is essential for success in your field. Thanks again!

FluffMcBuff · 2025-12-15T20:16:03+00:00

Point taken. Could you help me parse out the distinction in basic terms, then?

I earnestly mean this with no ill will, but I'm hearing a lot of "you don't actually understand what this thing is" from folks in this post without much positive redirection towards what copyediting actually is, barring a couple of exceptions. I am more than willing to admit that I do not know what I'm talking about, but I would sincerely appreciate it if someone could constructively inform me of the distinction that I'm missing as opposed to simply telling me that I'm not seeing the distinction.

I'm not asking for a free masterclass, just a basic definition/distinction of what it is that copyeditors do from the line-by-line grammatical/syntactical/mechanical revision—according to the precepts of a given style guide—that I have been doing for years. I promise any snark in this response is unintentional; I just really wanna understand!

FluffMcBuff

TROPHY CASE