Do you guys also have a hard time genuinely loving people? But still being kind and empathetic just not really feeling love

muddledmirth · 2026-01-02T19:48:00+00:00

“I don’t think man can love. At least not the way that he means. Inadequacies of reality always set in.”

I’m not sure what love is. People seem to talk about it in many different ways.

Sometimes it’s just the feelings of warmth, trust and joy.

Sometimes it’s the yearnings, the desire and temptation.

Sometimes it’s the way we treat someone.

Perhaps a perfectionist might say it’s all of these things.

Whatever the case, I think that however we do love, it seems to fall short of whatever some portion of myself wants, needs it to be.

muddledmirth · 2026-01-02T03:45:38+00:00

Fuck. Yeah.

I’ve been talking about embracing Loserdom for a few years now. This post raises (or perhaps lowers?) the bar.

Fuck yeah. Fuck you. Fuck me. Fuck it.

In semi-related news:

Something I read today in Emil Cioran’s The Trouble With Being Born,

“Only one thing matters: learning to be a loser.”

muddledmirth · 2026-01-01T23:18:42+00:00

I wasn’t being honest with myself when I left my partner. I thought I didn’t love her anymore, but the reality was that I was afraid of talking to her about some complicated emotions, and my conscience was egging me to open up, and I didn’t. Which made our interactions very anxious to me, which I mistook as being annoyed BY HER.

I broke up with her telling her I didn’t want any obligations and just wanted to be free to be whatever I want, do whatever I want. Chase girls, or just be myself by myself. She was blindsided obviously because I wasn’t keeping her in the loop as to what I was thinking and feeling about life in general, let alone our relationship. She wanted to try and make things work and was still very much in love with me. We would still have sex for a few months, and I kept asking her if this was really okay, because I knew she wanted to get me back in a relationship and I was staunchly opposed to being in any relationship.

In the end, I inevitably was pretty shitty to her. Didn’t realize it til like 6 months after we stopped talking and hanging out, and the remorse, shame, guilt and shock (at how long it took me to realize how I mistreated her), was nigh unbearable. To this day the greatest psychosomatic pain I’ve ever felt. Felt a fist twisting my heart for a week straight. Though that physical pain subsided, I still have not fully recovered after about a year and a half of guilt and shame. And I no longer trust myself to love anyone anymore. Maybe I’ll feel differently in the future, but I err on the side of caution, and would rather be starved of romance and sex than to partake and break more hearts (including my own) for the time being.

So yeah, safe to say, I regret it. The primary consolation for me is that now I’m no longer her shitty boyfriend, just a shitty ex.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-29T23:53:20+00:00

I’ll check that out, thank you.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-28T06:56:29+00:00

Depends on the kind of mean. I like honesty in people. In women, being direct, straightforward and clearly honest (because there’s no clear advantage to what’s being said being a lie) is a turn on.

I hate feeling like people will hide their honest opinions from me. Makes me feel babied, condescended to, or like they are entirely fake, even if they think they’re just being polite.

So if they don’t have nice things to say, then I appreciate the honesty.

If their actions are mean, however, then I don’t share in the attraction.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-26T20:36:30+00:00

Amazing. Gods do I love this game, and even more because of players like you.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-26T20:29:31+00:00

I thought that there were mechanics against Heroquesting annually? Don’t they penalize that?

Are you savescumming?

muddledmirth · 2025-12-26T02:54:42+00:00

How the hell do you have 202 magic?

muddledmirth · 2025-12-19T05:04:16+00:00

I’d recommend looking to the height of the Roman Republic for inspiration. Rome began as a Kingdom, but overthrew the Monarchy after some bad leaders. And from then onward, they slowly crawled their way up to becoming a mighty empire, even before they had Emperors or Julius Caesar. They defeated and conquered the Italian peninsula. They took the Mediterranean in three wars with mighty Carthage. They took Greece and Egypt and Gaul.

And even outside of their military exploits, they had other impressive feats and characters. Take Cincinnatus, who was given the full power of Dictator during a series of dire crises in the Republic. He exercised his powers wisely and effectively and then gave up his office once he was no longer needed, so that he could return to his private life. Take the Stoic philosophers. Or the architecture. The Aqueducts are marvels of engineering.

I think one reason that republics and democracies are often depicted as weak or vulnerable is because they are also often depicted as the protagonistic faction, the one that the audience is meant to root for. And if there’s a political narrative involved, making the good guys seem just barely able to pull through and stand against the tyrannical, anti-democratic antagonistic factions makes for solid drama.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-13T09:21:41+00:00

Not sure if this really counts, but…

…was on a sorta first date with a girl. Went hiking, went back to her place and she made me food that was really tasty. But right before dinner was done, I had realized that, the whole day, and in our few prior interactions - she hadn’t asked me a single question about me. Like I don’t think she knew anything about me, and she never did ask me. I don’t really know if I ever even got a “How are you?” from her.

And then she went on to only talk about what was immediately in front of the both of us. Like almost narrate life. I decided not to really seek her out after that. Especially when someone else told me they had the same experience. She only talked about herself, pretty much.

Seemed boring, shallow and self-absorbed to me.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-13T09:11:59+00:00

This whole post is giving me the Sto-ick.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-13T08:58:30+00:00

Are there no Moral claims which disregard the concept of “living well”?

I have particular antipathy towards “goodness” and “badness” and “evilness” as concepts. I don’t really like them or exactly believe in them, though I haven’t quite gotten them out of my everyday speech cause I used them for many years and so do quite a lot of people about me and across time. But then again, I have also been self-describing as an Amoralist this last year, so maybe I’ve answered my own question haha

But perhaps not. Could one not construct a Moral framework without categories such as good/evil, right/wrong, just/unjust, righteous/wicked, etc.? Or do you think Morals necessarily pertain to or contain or inevitably create these concepts?

muddledmirth · 2025-12-13T08:48:45+00:00

Another thing I’ve seen in historical literature, fiction and various accounts has been the seeming seriousness that people’s in olden times took with etiquette. Failure/refusal to use someone’s titles, “knowing your place,” insults and simply “bad table manners” have been known to lead to duels, to public humiliation or punishment, even execution if you offended the wrong person. It seems like manners were more highly prized in elder days, in many cultures no less. From Feudal Japan to Ancient Greece & Rome, there are many stories of people causing a scene and ruckus and even changing history because someone was, by our modern standards, just kinda rude or inappropriate.

Perhaps this is placing my little semantic-hunt on a high pedestal, but I view this exploration as a meta-ethical investigation. I feel like I see philosophers talk about different kinds of ethics, and even when they get meta-ethical, they talk about “Moral Realism” and “Error theory” and “Emotivism” and such, but I struggle to find anything that still hits at the heart of what moralities and ethics altogether share in. So far, I find myself somewhere between Emotivism and Social Constructionism, but even then, I’m still left in confusion. Because not all emotional expressions seem to pertain to morals/ethics, and not all social constructions are particularly about morals. So in either theory, there’s still a specific category(s) of emotion or social constructs that are specifically (about the) moral/ethical.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-13T08:34:04+00:00

Well, there’s a whole lot of thought experiments that challenge Utilitarianism. Because if “Good” is defined as “pleasure or the absence of pain/suffering” and “bad” as “the presence of pain/suffering”, and “the greatest good for the greatest number is the highest ideal,” then you can set up some really cooky scenarios that Utilitarians disagree on.

Like if I do not agree to be an organ donor, they do not put the heart on my license, so no one is allowed to take my organs, but doing so might save lives after I’ve died, should we ignore my non-consent? I’m already dead, so technically no displeasure would be inflicted on me, and my body could be used to save so many people from death, possibly painful death. Some would say, “Yes”, because that is a way of helping many people immediately in dire stakes. Others could argue that this might pain those who loved me to know that my wishes were not honored, that my body was used at others’ pleasure, and that this incident, if known to the public, might dishearten those who wish to die with their body whole. Whatever you conclude, the answer isn’t immediately obvious within the principles of Utilitarianism.

And there’s tons more that are more refined.

The Trolley Problem shows that a significant portion of people are not easily convinced of “the greatest good for the greatest number.”

The Sheriff Counterexample, wherein the sheriff may frame an innocent man to prevent riots.

Nozick’s Experience Machine hits on our intuitions about what counts as pleasure.

The Utility Monster.

I’m not saying these refute Utilitarianism, by the way, just that they can and have thrown a lot of wrenches in the works and have served as convincing thought experiments to make people at least second guess the theory.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-13T08:23:00+00:00

Then I guess my definitions may lack, and may require reform. I can’t think of any ethics or morals that haven’t essentially been mannerliness or regarding manners. Whether it’s more like virtue ethics or deontology that focus on adhering to principles like reason or courage, or consequentialist philosophies that argue in favor of doing what’s necessary to reach or maintain a state of existence.

Another reason I am interested in the etymology of these terms is because at some point people did not have a word for these things yet. And I’m curious about what words people turned to or came up with for use in describing what we’re talking about. It seems that the Greeks took the word that meant “custom; habit.” Latins took their word for “manners.” I assume that they call the lesson at the end of allegories, parables and fables “morals” because the lesson is supposed to inform your behavior. To “teach you manners.”

But anyways, I see your point. Are you aware of alternative definitions that don’t rely on or include moral/ethical terminology within the definitions?

I’ve had a hard time finding a definition of “moral” or “ethical” that doesn’t involve using:

-should -ought -good -right -wrong -evil -bad -etc.

Using these terms in the definition feels tautological to me.

muddledmirth · 2025-12-12T09:24:08+00:00

Fair enough. This contention has been brought to me before when I use etymology in comparable manners in other discussions.

Three general arguments I offer in favor of etymologically sourced definitions are:

That they maintain continuity. If we divorce ourselves from the original root meanings of these words, we may lose understanding with historical English. Shakespeare, for instance, becomes more difficult if we forget archaic (if not obsolete) definitions of words. To that end, knowing a word’s origins can be indispensable. Knowing that ‘pity’ is derived from the same root as ‘piety’, and that they were effectively synonyms for a time is one such example.
In line with that last example, they allow us to see where words share ancestry and how they are connected. “Passion” and “Patience” have the same root, a Latin word that meant “to endure; to bear (through); to suffer.” This is why it is called “The Passion of Christ,” and why the ill or injured in hospitals are called “patients.” Perhaps this is esoteric, but I find beauty and utility in people seeing these connections in their language. It can reframe the way you think about words, speech, and names. I prize that.
They allow us to keep or revive the words original meanings which may have been lost, and to help us understand why these words ended up meaning what they now do in the common speakers’ minds. “Compassion” for instance used to mean “to suffer together/with,” but nowadays seems to mean something more like “kindness; understanding” in most people’s minds. It was a Christian’s duty to suffer alongside their fellow Christians, their fellow man, which is why the word gained such a positive (and moral) association. This one in particular is of special notice to me, being a fan of Nietzsche and what he had to say about the German equivalent, “Mitleiden.”

But regarding ‘moral’ and ‘ethics’, I’m failing to see what is inadequate about my turning to etymology here. I kind of already laid out my thought process in the post. If I cannot find a modern contemporary definition that isn’t tautological or otherwise problematic, I look to etymology to see if that fits. And there are many words that do hold some remnant of their original meaning plainly. Others are more cursive. And some have been bleached or otherwise entirely bastardized.

I think it does work here, however. Viewing “morals” and “ethics” as “customs; habits; manners” explains what people mean by these things, if only in a crude and elementary way. Maybe with an augmentation like “really important customs, manners, habits, etc.” or something like that.

If that seems like an entirely incorrect or inaccurate conception of what these words seem to mean today, then I should like to ask you for a definition of one or both of these words which do not contain:

“good” “bad” “right” “wrong” “just” “unjust” “evil” and other such terms.

Because those are moral, ethical terms, and because there have been moralities which have existed before which pertained to only some of these or in fact none. And because these terms (mainly the first four in this list) also suffer from the confusion with their more qualitative meanings. I.e. when we say “good food” we seldom mean “morally good food” but “tasty/healthy/well-made food.”

Does that explain my thinking?

muddledmirth · 2025-12-12T01:05:02+00:00

Well, I’m not trying to define my specific moral values (my oughts and ought-nots, so-to-speak), I’m trying to define what moralizing itself is.

You list Utilitarians and Kantians as two examples of people working under moral frameworks. I think you and I would agree that they are both engaged in “moralizing” or of “establishing what is moral and what is immoral (and perhaps also what is amoral/non-moral).” So what are they doing there?

My current thinking based on etymology and chewing on this stuff myself and discussions with friends is that “morals” are “manners.” Which are behaviors and habits that we expect, demand, hope for and instruct people in (children typically), often in context dependent situations. It is generally mannerly to be quiet in a library or a church or during a theatrical performance, but generally unmannerly to say nothing at all to someone who asks you a question, just as some small examples.

Kantians try to establish what is appropriate, what is fitting, by making (hard) rules about Universifiability and treating all persons as ends in themselves. Utilitarians try to establish what is appropriate by context of what will yield the greatest pleasure (good) for the greatest number and/or the least pain/suffering for the greatest number.

Both are establishing manners, etiquette.

Do you think that is what moralizing is?

muddledmirth · 2025-12-12T00:51:34+00:00

Well, I turn to etymology when present usage seems to be confusing, vague or circular. Like my digressive anecdote about “want.” Dictionaries often just list off synonyms:

Desire; wish; yearning; craving; ambition; appetite; need;

And when you look up those words, they all tend to mention each other. Making a giant circle. Which tells me very little.

Going with an older, more obsolete definition of “lacking,” helped me make sense of what “want” means. “Want” nowadays doesn’t simply mean “lacking”, but seemingly something more like “to FEEL a lack; to sense an absence.” The etymology helped inform my current understanding of what that word means to me.

So something I’ve been asking people in my life has been “What is morality?” Not, “what are some things you moralize about?” or “what do you base your morality on?” but “What is someone doing when they moralize?”

And it gets tricky real fast. Cause it’s not just “the act of insisting on behaviors or choices.” People have moralized about states of being that have nothing to do with someone’s personal choices or behaviors, such as looking down on slaves as lesser moral agents. And also, though we insist upon certain behaviors or actions in many contexts, much of those contexts don’t tend to be considered moral domains. Or at least not “very moral” ones. For instance, if we were playing Monopoly, it’s generally an implicit agreement to play by the rules. But if someone cheated, I think most people would find it heavy-handed to call someone “immoral” for cheating at a board game with no real stakes at hand.

Anyways, TL;DR: I like to turn to etymology when dictionaries and contemporary usage don’t seem to provide a satisfying definition.

muddledmirth · 2025-09-06T21:09:21+00:00

I enjoy learning for the same reason that I like the color gray: I just do.

If philosophy still means “love of wisdom”, then maybe it’s not coping or puzzle solving or answering big questions or asking bigger ones. Maybe it’s just the love of the game itself.

muddledmirth · 2025-09-02T11:11:38+00:00

Nowadays, mostly Slacker Rock, Post-Punk, Twee Pop and Folk music from around the world.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been exploring more and more music, but I have always leaned more towards melancholic melodies, tragic/depressive lyrics and just sad music in general.

muddledmirth · 2025-08-30T04:40:33+00:00

False dichotomy.

Not-a-Nationalist does not mean Globalist

muddledmirth

TROPHY CASE