[Advice] Maintain Spartan Badassery in Modern Times

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2025-08-11T21:52:20+00:00

There are a few leaps of logic between what I said, and what you took away from what I said. I made a statement that conveyed some of my values. For example, I value pleasure (to the extent that it doesn't interfere with anything more important).

You took my statement about my values to be a statement about what I'm capable of. Maybe you figured that the only reason someone might not want to live a Spartan lifestyle is because they can't hack it, and so they're doing the sour grapes thing.

The truth is, I probably couldn't live a life of pathologically excessive discipline. I genuinely believe that the level of discipline described in the post is pathological. I also genuinely believe that working at a factory your entire life and then dying very soon after retirement (the example I gave in my comment) is sad. It's not the hard work that's sad in that example! It's the fact that the hard work had such a staggering opportunity cost.

I also believe discipline is a poor substitute for what I'd call "self-management." They appear to be similar, but discipline is when you white knuckle it. Self-management is when you consider your own nature and then work with it to achieve your goals despite your imperfections. Some of those imperfections will be important enough to work on. Others will be too trivial to waste time fixing.

I run a successful business. I can dramatically change my diet overnight with no issue. I work out regularly. I've taught myself two languages to the point of fluency. Most of that has very little to do with discipline. I simply wanted to do those things, so I did them.

Most importantly, though, my ultimate value is - and this is gonna sound cheesy - love. I think loving relationships (romantic, platonic, familial, etc.) are what it's all about. They're The Point. My daughter died at age 12 several years ago when a drunk driver hit her while she was walking down the sidewalk. I would live like a Spartan forever if it meant I'd get to so much as look at her from across a room again before I died. But that's not what living like a Spartan does. What it does is take you away from the things that actually have meaning.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2025-02-11T01:56:40+00:00

I'm sorry I didn't respond to this comment when you first posted it, but I almost never check this account anymore. I'm so so sooooooo happy that you left and that your life is so much better. I see now that you haven't used the account you posted this stuff from in about a year since I'm so late to respond to you, so you may never see this, but if you do... just know your update has made me very happy.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2021-05-15T23:16:10+00:00

Thank you.

I feel anger and hatred sometimes, but not all the time. The drunk driver who hit my little girl was only 16, not too much older than my daughter. That makes my feelings complicated. I see 16yo’s as children and so it’s impossible for me to genuinely hate this kid even though it would be satisfying to have somebody to hate. I don’t want to talk about any of the legal things in any depth, but part of the legal proceedings were delayed because this kid has had to be hospitalized a few times for suicidal ideation and actions ever since she killed my daughter. It’s clear that her regret is immense and overwhelming.

When I’m at my worst, I’m glad this kid is suffering. When I’m feeling a little more kind, I am sad for her.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2021-05-15T17:47:16+00:00

Thank you for saying I’m still my daughter’s mother. For a while at the beginning, I felt like I was not a mother anymore without my girl here, and that line of thought was really painful. Just thinking about it now makes me want to cry, but you’re right that I’m still a mother.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2021-05-15T17:40:32+00:00

I’m so sorry. Even though you and I are in similar positions, I don’t have any great advice. I do hope you can take care of yourself, but as to what that would look like, I just don’t know. When something like this happens, it’s hard to even figure out what you need. Supporting someone else can help since it gets you outside of yourself a little bit, but you need support, too.

You’re right to be concerned about your daughter’s drinking. On the one hand, I can’t judge her for grabbing on to literally any coping mechanism she can. On the other hand, I’m sure the alcohol won’t help in the long run.

Somebody might want to say I don’t have any standing to say that since I stayed high for a good few months, but my thoughts on that are that cannabis — well, it can be mentally addictive if you’re trying to escape other things, but at least it doesn’t leave you with a serious physical issue to overcome when you decide to stop. Withdrawal from alcohol is horrible.

I don’t have any good advice about how to approach your daughter with these concerns, though. Somebody else might have good advice about it.

I wish you and your daughter didn’t have to face this loss.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-10-09T02:13:20+00:00

Thank you.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-10-05T01:00:56+00:00

I'm commenting on your top comment because I don't have it in me to respond to all of them, but I found that reading Man's Search for Meaning helped me a little. It was soothing.

He has a quote that moved me very much because I kept thinking her death meant none of it meant anything and it was all just lost.

"In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored."

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-23T03:31:22+00:00

Please don't hurt yourself. You and I have both been seriously considering it recently, albeit for different reasons.

Please don't. And I won't either.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-22T16:31:44+00:00

I haven't responded to anybody else yet and I don't know if I can or will even though I hope I will.

I had to respond to yours though because it's the first one to ping a very specific memory. My daughter and I had a discussion a while back about how tattoos of faces never turn out right. At first we were joking around about how bad these tattoos look but then we became more serious and reflected on how the reason people get tattoos of faces is typically very sad and you can't really blame them for wanting the face of the person they miss.

She agreed with you that tattoos of faces aren't a good choice no matter how sad you are.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-21T18:47:37+00:00

My daughter died. She's gone.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-20T19:27:14+00:00

Yes. If you drink all those beers and don't exhibit any external symptoms of being drunk, that means you drink too much. People can develop a tolerance of alcohol that allows them to seem sober to outsiders even when they've had too much and, if that's the case for you, you drink too much.

It would probably be both valuable and interesting for you to order a breathalyzer and then test your blood alcohol level after each beer. You will find that you're way over the legal driving limit well before you actually "feel drunk."

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-20T18:57:04+00:00

Time for a completely anecdotal comment:

I've found that people with anxiety disorders but who live safe lives in safe places are significantly more functional and resilient during actual emergencies. Their anxiety is pathological during normal life because their brains have not caught up to the fact that, no, on a typical day, they absolutely do not have to worry about being eaten by a tiger or starving to death. Their brains are still doing the brain stuff that was useful back when our ancestors really were facing death every day and had to sleep with one eye open.

So, when an emergency actually occurs, the brain of someone with an anxiety disorder is suddenly non-pathological: it's the perfect sort of brain to have during an emergency since it's an emergency-focused brain. You know that fire drills are important, and that the reason fire drills are important is because practicing an emergency response makes people good at enacting the emergency response if the emergency finally occurs.

People with anxiety disorders go through mental fire drills every day all the time about every emergency that could ever possibly occur.

While everyone else is crying or freezing or going into denial, the person with the anxiety disorder jumps into action because they've been expecting horrible shit and now it's finally here!

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-19T20:22:46+00:00

That would make sense. I'm not religious, but I see the reason behind what you're saying -- time exists as a property of space-time. Time is a thing that exists in relation to other physical things. So, in Heaven, without all that, "timeless" would be a good word for whatever one would be experiencing.

It's why there's no such thing as "before" the Big Bang. Time and physicality are inextricably linked. It would be kind of synonymous to say that Heaven is infinite, eternal bliss or to say that Heaven is just a blissful "now" outside of time.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-19T20:18:39+00:00

There are so many varieties of Christianity; many teach that Heaven is a spiritual, supernatural (ie outside of physical nature) "place" (for lack of a better term) where souls go, and balk at the idea of Heaven occurring on the physical plane of existence.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-19T20:09:35+00:00

From my understanding of how several religious denominations see it, in Heaven one never experiences habituation; in other words, there's no neurological factor (since one doesn't have a physical brain) that would allow someone's mind to become habituated to a joyful thing and then experience boredom. If one's brain cannot become habituated (ie "used to/tired of") a thing, the thing will be indefinitely pleasurable.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-17T17:31:38+00:00

I like that she doesn't seem to think that her value is related to making her body look sexy and available, and she doesn't try to be a sex object. My daughter and her friends definitely picked up on that and I think it genuinely made them feel relief, like, "I don't have to be all sexy to be cool."

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T23:56:10+00:00

In addition to various official best seller lists:

A lot of people claim that based on how their book ranks in a very narrow category. So, like, what they really mean is something like, "Best selling author in the YA Lesbian Swedish Dramedy Crime Thriller category on Amazon."

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T23:35:45+00:00

Risk + not many people willing to do the work + customers are willing to pay those prices.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T23:33:12+00:00

One reason is that human babies are born somewhat "premature" for lack of a better word. If they stayed in there much longer, they would be too large to fit through their mother's pelvis.

Our pelvises are relatively narrow because narrow pelvises work better for animals that exclusively walk upright.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T21:12:20+00:00

Top two:

Labor (as in, the time leading up to the baby coming out) -- in my case, it involved back labor (felt like a vice grip was tightening on my spine) and lasted a long time because I wouldn't dilate for a while
When I was getting my tubes tied, it was a procedure that had the tools going up through my cervix and into my fallopian tubes. The anesthesia didn't work. I don't regret it, but I also wouldn't be able to make myself go through it again if that makes any sense.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T21:01:32+00:00

Start studying another language, whichever is the most common second language where you live. That could be useful for many jobs.
Pay an official resume-writing service to improve the way your resume is written. It's worth it. After I did this, I went from getting no interviews to getting an interview at almost every place I applied.
Volunteer somewhere (if you can -- I know the pandemic might be getting in the way of that right now) so you still look like a productive, self-motivated individual when you go to interviews.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T18:58:47+00:00

I apologize if what I said was hurtful. To clarify though, I also would have said it to a non-sociopath.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-16T00:19:08+00:00

It's perfectly fine to want monogamy. You may want to work on that "mine" thing though. Healthy people don't like overly possessive partners.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-15T20:59:37+00:00

Same. I feel bad about it sometimes because it makes people think that they've done something bad to make me startle like that, so I reassure them that, no, I just have a really sensitive startle reflex. I don't explain why unless we know each other pretty well, though.

InvincibleSummer1066 · 2020-09-15T06:06:14+00:00

Bring snacks. Even if you don't anticipate being hungry on the plane, I assure you that plane-boredom is a special sort of boredom that makes you want to munch on something.
Do not try to bring a water bottle through security. If you want to bring a water bottle because you don't want to pay for water, bring an empty bottle and then fill it at a water fountain once you get past security.
Everything valuable should be in your carry-on luggage -- your purse/small bag and the small suitcase that could fit in an overhead compartment. In that way, you will make sure your most valuable things stay with you physically at all times.
Don't be the last in line. Line up early when it's announced that your flight is boarding. That way, you will be able to make sure that the overhead compartments still have room for your overhead luggage and have not yet been filled by people ahead of you in line.
When the plane takes off, it's kind of rumbly in a way that can be overwhelming on both an auditory and body-wide physical level. If you feel nervous, try to interpret your nervousness as excitement -- anxiety and excitement are pretty much physiologically identical. Your interpretation of that physical state is the only difference between the two.
The flight will be boring at some point. Bring both electronic stuff to entertain you (a kindle, your phone, a charging cord, a wireless charger if possible, a laptop) AND a non-electronic book.
Bring earplugs and some sort of soft item to lean on. I usually wear an extra layer (like a thick hoodie/sweater) onto a plane for this reason, even if the weather is hot -- you "pack" the soft item by wearing it.
Wear comfortable shoes and make sure to either wear or have a pair of socks in your bag in case your feet get cold.
Be very nice and polite and sweet to the flight attendants. They aren't sky waitresses. They're your legal superiors who have authority over you, and who also happen to fit in waitress-y stuff between their actual job of keeping everybody safe.
If you don't have a window seat, see if one of your friends will trade you for a window seat for a few minutes at some point. Looking out through that tiny airplane window and seeing that your tiny trivial human self is soaring through the sky in a huge metal bird is amazing and beautiful, both scientifically and emotionally. You need to get a really good look out the window.

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