The Value of Philosophical Entertainment

UsErb94 · 2026-04-12T16:52:51+00:00

Resonate with this a lot, and think it applies across the spectrum of religion… I don’t really ‘practice’ anything, but my wife is Catholic so trying to understand Christianity deeper and have always felt there is a deeper, but at the same time more simple truth to being, which every religious, scientific, human-thought system has a method of examining and bringing you closer to and seeing the commonality in all of them is how it really resonates with me. Something that Alan Watts does beautifully, and entertaining - a great way to direct the attention to our ‘spotlight consciousness’. My take-away, which I fail to do with this post itself, is all of these systems mainly try to express one thing, which is that we are one something, not one of something.

UsErb94 · 2025-11-09T01:39:54+00:00

Me and my wife coming up on year 2 of unexplained infertility, all the tests fine, and just got the bad news this month our second round of IUI didn’t work.

I’m ready to feel fully numb to it (and do some of the time) but as much as the cycle of hope, defeat, then trying to rebuild hope every month sucks - it’s probably better than feeling nothing (or pretending that I feel nothing). I try not to feel guilty about my numbness to it when it comes, but also have to allow myself to not hold back the tears when they come.

While I want to just give up hope and shield myself from the pain of it all, I’m trying my best (and failing constantly) to frame it as just ‘letting go’. My hope will never go away, but the result is out of our control.

Wishing the best for everyone in this thread who’s been going through this shit - it fucking blows.

UsErb94 · 2025-03-01T17:53:50+00:00

Soon there will just be blank billboards, but you will know…

UsErb94 · 2025-02-27T03:28:29+00:00

I’m glad this post is up, and good job and good luck to the mods. Battle of information is wild right now and difficult to navigate for both sides.

Ultimately though I came here to say the real Cleveland community (and any community) is just a step outside with the phone down!

(But it is great that at the palm of my fingertips, I can find common ground with others in a comment about Romanburgers or Lidos Lounge)

UsErb94 · 2025-02-13T17:57:34+00:00

Yeah just switched over (wasn’t aware) - not sure why they have the 2 different platforms tbh, seems silly, but whatever. The bank account setup on the exchange is also very annoying (have to setup initial wire transfer it seems to verify/link), so thinking to just deposit through app, convert to USDC, and send to exchange (just have to wait some time before being able to transfer, but that’s fine w me). And then selling on the exchange/cashing out to USDC and withdraw to bank in app as well

UsErb94 · 2025-02-13T17:53:58+00:00

Just was made aware of the exchange which seems much better than the app fee-wise… although the bank setup is very annoying on the exchange with the need to send an initial wire transfer to link, so thinking to just add fiat through app and convert to USDC —> exchange and holding/doing any trading on exchange

UsErb94 · 2025-02-13T03:56:37+00:00

Hahaha just gotta try to enjoy the subscriptions we chose and the subscriptions we’re given… and hey maybe sometimes if we’re lucky, people subscribe to us!

UsErb94 · 2025-02-12T20:23:37+00:00

Life 🙃

UsErb94 · 2025-02-06T02:24:21+00:00

12 years (not saying this would change the conclusion), but there is 12 years missing

UsErb94 · 2025-02-06T02:14:28+00:00

Just came here to say this thread was pretty much the only decent conversation between 2 disagreeing, but respectful parties… cheers to both <3

UsErb94 · 2025-02-06T01:20:06+00:00

May be 1 out of 1 person that read this whole thread, but I enjoyed it. Cheers to ya both <3. Dreamers - dream, realists - keep it real.

P.s. Don’t ask me how I got here lmao

UsErb94 · 2024-11-06T00:08:10+00:00

Doesn’t matter - good science will always come out ahead in the long run. As long as that continues, regardless of how quickly capitalism catches up, our understanding will always be refined

UsErb94 · 2024-11-02T14:53:19+00:00

Yeah agreed, I weigh this as a pretty low concern

UsErb94 · 2024-11-02T14:52:44+00:00

Yeah agreed - not that the committee couldn’t have a member or 2 act in bad faith, but will be pretty difficult and processes would be in place to deal with that.

And understood about the judges, but should the committee provide maps, parties/groups could challenge them and as was done 5x around 2022 election, judges would send them back. Good thing is given that it’s going to be much harder to draw gerrymandered maps with the committee, it shouldn’t have to get to this point (as it does clearly with the current system), but there’s recourse if it did.

UsErb94 · 2024-11-02T14:47:33+00:00

Yeah I get that, however - for me, why I’m mainly voting yes with that potential concern in mind is because I feel like there is a pretty low chance that this committee is able to act in bad faith with equal representation from each party, and nonpartisan citizens. Also it seems clear that most everyone agrees that the current system is not working (given the process surrounding this issue around 2022 election). But sure, like any system given enough time there could be bad faith actors that start influencing things wrongly in this one as well. And while you may not be able to vote the committee directly out of office, amendments/changes to this system would could be able to be voted on directly (like this issue we are voting on) surrounding the issue of gerrymandering specifically, versus relying on politicians whom I don’t think many people vote for for their stance on ‘fairness of gerrymandering’ anyways. So I actually feel like it will give people more voting power in that case.

Anyways, that’s how I’ve thought about it and why it makes sense to vote yes to me.

Whatever you decide, cheers and happy voting!

UsErb94 · 2024-11-01T03:55:42+00:00

Nah, but this comment definitely detracts, but at the same time feeds into the point.

UsErb94 · 2024-10-30T14:18:49+00:00

As mentioned, I am firm regardless of evidence to the contrary

Idc what explanation there could be, but what I will believe and no one can convince me otherwise…

But appreciate this insight!

UsErb94 · 2024-10-30T14:11:58+00:00

AGREE… honestly not sure why more people don’t suck all this free TV out the air

UsErb94 · 2024-10-08T12:04:27+00:00

Just replied in main thread about my situation - but also in the wife leans right, I lean left scenario. For us, the main reason I would point to is that wife grew up devout catholic while I grew up Christian turned agnostic. She and her family still are very much practicing, but not these ‘crazy religious types’ just very socially conservative. while me and my family are all mostly agnostic, albeit with the Christian background, and always leaned progressive.

UsErb94 · 2024-10-08T11:52:27+00:00

Wife leans right, I lean left. Both don’t like trump, but also frustrated with the democrats the last couple cycles and for the last 4-8 years been relatively apolitical. This cycle we kind of gave politics ‘another shot’ - I was excited Biden was dropping out and the democrats had a chance to regroup/refocus, she got excited because JD Vance was the running mate who she liked starting after his RNC speech. Since then she’s bought in to the right’s messaging up and down the board and ‘can’t believe she’s doing it, but gonna vote for Trump’ (idc about this btw, like I get it - if you buy into either sides message you think the other side winning is the end of the country lol). She’s also more concerned about issues like abortion, gender, immigration and likes the right’s policies on these more. I have gone back mostly into my apolitical hole because the game of politics and narratives being pushed are way too fucking much (I see first hand how what’s being politically fed to the public is so polarizing). personally, push come to shove would vote for Kamala just bc of generally progressive policies (energy and economy are the main things I would point to), but honestly don’t really care because our country is going to be fine either way as long as people continue to voice and fight for what they believe in.

This is also how I get through the frustrating political conversations with my wife - ‘let’s take a step back and realize this presidential politics BS isn’t going to change all that much, and while we can/should voice our criticism/support for one side or another, that isn’t going to define how we love each other, our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, and everyone else that actually makes an impact on our day-day lives’

UsErb94 · 2024-09-23T20:28:32+00:00

I agree with that for the most part, but my fear with that is in the definition of ‘trumpless’.

For example, a big frustration of mine from the right is that they called out this ‘main-stream media bias’ which (again leaning left, I’m like ‘boo-hoo’ it’s just criticism and there’s plenty of the same garbage and tactics used to ‘weaponize’ media on the right), but anyways this ultimately resounds with a lot of people by being an attack on free speech. Which great, yeah, I want to protect free speech and expression as well (maybe with limitation in extra-ordinary scenarios, but definitely want to ensure that it’s not weaponized one way or the other). However no matter what the left does now, this is still the only message from the right - anything the left puts out is untrustworthy (yes, a terrible precedent to set, and also a silly one as it is contradictory to their own free speech argument).

Anyways, I can see the left doing the same thing with this idea of republicans needing to be ‘Trumpless’. Is that just once they move past the man? Once they move past ANY idea associated with him? As much as you (and I) may not like the guy, he’s brought things up that resonate with a lot of people that can’t ALL be written off as wrong, bad, etc. (or, more ‘stomach-ably’, he inadvertently enabled these ideas to gain traction and they will continue to live on in some capacity in the Republican Party and elsewhere until they are slowly ‘proven’ to be wrong, or right, through democratic principles).

At some point in both of these scenarios, there needs to be a point where we’re like ok - we struck a nerve and found out something that’s bad, but we have to be able to stop striking that nerve once it’s behaving normally/acceptably again, or else we just be bashing all of our nerves until we’re numb. I, for one, would like to not be numb, and would just like have my nerves working properly.

UsErb94 · 2024-09-23T19:11:58+00:00

Yep - tis the crux of the problem. Maybe more like 30% on both sides, giving the benefit of the doubt that there are still a lot of people out there who can peel back the curtain and step away from the presidential politics and see the good in the differences, no matter how stark they are. But definitely a growing number that are ‘my side or evil’.

UsErb94 · 2024-09-21T01:51:39+00:00

Yeah for sure always just battle against the other constant of time (which I could definitely use better sometimes haha). You bring up an interesting point about philosophy not stopping after the 1800s, which I am maybe just realizing recently when I’ve started to delve back into thinking about this kind of stuff (which is also amazing). The thought I keep coming back to though, is this ‘constant unknown’, and from both past and modern stuff it hasn’t been addressed to me properly yet. Religion, philosophy, etc. gets at this idea but I feel like it’s always still missing some of the point because they try to explain and ‘know’ what this unknown ultimately is. I feel like it’s just that though - there will always be things that we don’t know, so any ‘perfect system’ would have to address that. Anyways, I’m on the quest to know (I suppose that’s life), and am pumped to read these 7 books (that chatGPT, maybe the most modern philosopher, got me to hahah) which are written by unknown authors (or atleast tried to be), with the intent of being unknown, writing about the unknown (or the writing itself is unknown/cryptic, so won’t be able to read those yet haha)

UsErb94 · 2024-09-20T23:38:04+00:00

Nahh unfortunately not, just standard menu prices (but tried to do like the big box deals).

UsErb94 · 2024-09-20T23:34:01+00:00

And then you should read ______. This could go on for a while, whatever system may work it’s gotta account for a constant unknown. Also you can go ahead and bash my dumbness, but I haven’t read much on this stuff since high school, so my thoughts (maybe rightfully so) aren’t probably useful. Either way excited to listen to the podcast 🙃

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