78 replies to this topic

[gashinshotan]

I want to bring up the issue of whether personal relationships hinder personal development. For me they have been with both romantic and non-romantic relationships. People who do not share my high aspirations but are rather content with just living in ignorance and mediocrity have often influenced me to adopt their ways while these relationships often result in wasted time which could be better spent studying, researching, and exercising. I do have friends who do exercise consistently, but they do not have any professional or high social goals or even care beyond themselves. Can relationships come in the way of progress? Are they worth having if they are harmful to your personal goals and even your health (druggies and obese friends)?

Edited by gashinshotan, 28 November 2007 - 07:45 AM.

[REGIMEN]

I want to bring up the issue of whether personal relationships hinder personal development. For me they have been with both romantic and non-romantic relationships. People who do not share my high aspirations but are rather content with just living in ignorance and mediocrity have often influenced me to adopt their ways while these relationships often result in wasted time which could be better spent studying, researching, and exercising. I do have friends who do exercise consistently, but they do not have any professional or high social goals or even care beyond themselves. Can relationships come in the way of progress? Are they worth having if they are harmful to your personal goals and even your health (druggies and obese friends)?

It seems like you know the answer but let me clarify: on your dirigible, cut the sandbags and welcome the birds.

[gashinshotan]

I want to bring up the issue of whether personal relationships hinder personal development. For me they have been with both romantic and non-romantic relationships. People who do not share my high aspirations but are rather content with just living in ignorance and mediocrity have often influenced me to adopt their ways while these relationships often result in wasted time which could be better spent studying, researching, and exercising. I do have friends who do exercise consistently, but they do not have any professional or high social goals or even care beyond themselves. Can relationships come in the way of progress? Are they worth having if they are harmful to your personal goals and even your health (druggies and obese friends)?

It seems like you know the answer but let me clarify: on your dirigible, cut the sandbags and welcome the birds.

What about ANY relationships. This is what I'm getting at. Are ANY personal relationships worth the time and effort? Case in point: how many times have you fallen in love with the "right" girl? They're just a result of biological mechanisms, not logical thinking.

[REGIMEN]

Even Bacon and Goethe got laid. Try to strike that balance between man-ape and paper-tiger.

[gashinshotan]

Even Bacon and Goethe got laid. Try to strike that balance between man-ape and paper-tiger.

It's not hard to get laid, which makes me question the worth of relationships even further. The time, effort, and money spent on partners, friends, and family is HUGE and is one of the biggest drains on a person's life. This is what I'm debating - knowing that relationships are really recreational activities which result from biological and social pressures, do you think they are worth pursuing when your resources could be spent toward more noble and productive goals?

[REGIMEN]

Even Bacon and Goethe got laid. Try to strike that balance between man-ape and paper-tiger.

It's not hard to get laid, which makes me question the worth of relationships even further. The time, effort, and money spent on partners, friends, and family is HUGE and is one of the biggest drains on a person's life. This is what I'm debating - knowing that relationships are really recreational activities which result from biological and social pressures, do you think they are worth pursuing when your resources could be spent toward more noble and productive goals?

When I said paper-tiger I meant "a tiger on paper". Enjoy your flesh and that of others. Make it only so much of your life as you want. If those "relationships" are about getting laid you've missed the point: to cultivate your personality and position in social strata.
Neither food nor life is completely logical but it's so much better when it tastes good and is had in company.
I'm guessing you're young and ambitious. See post one yon noble and productive hermit.
(add this to the end of that phrase: "but even the birds won't follow you into the sun"...deep, yeah?)

Edited by liplex, 28 November 2007 - 08:51 AM.

[REGIMEN]

Moderators: "Lifestyle" is a little too vague and lets in "philosophy/sociology/neurobiology" topics like this into what used to be a "food/supplements" forum.
Consider changing or clarifying the sign face.

[gashinshotan]

Even Bacon and Goethe got laid. Try to strike that balance between man-ape and paper-tiger.

It's not hard to get laid, which makes me question the worth of relationships even further. The time, effort, and money spent on partners, friends, and family is HUGE and is one of the biggest drains on a person's life. This is what I'm debating - knowing that relationships are really recreational activities which result from biological and social pressures, do you think they are worth pursuing when your resources could be spent toward more noble and productive goals?

When I said paper-tiger I meant "a tiger on paper". Enjoy your flesh and that of others. Make it only so much of your life as you want. If those "relationships" are about getting laid you've missed the point: to cultivate your personality and position in social strata.
Neither food nor life is completely logical but it's so much better when it tastes good and is had in company.
I'm guessing you're young and ambitious. See post one yon noble and productive hermit.

I'm not a complete hermit yet - I still have a lot of friends and can get girls; it's just that my friends have always held me back while girls have always been a costly mistake financially, emotionally, and health-wise (going out to eat makes you fat and having a girl makes you lazy). Even my family doesn't set high goals for me nor expect me to achieve anything beyond living. Becoming a hermit is becoming more and more tempting as I realize the superficiality of practically all relationships including familial ones - I can see through the facade people put up as smoke screens for hiding their own selfish desires especially since I've been studying psychoanalysis and the brain in-depth.

[REGIMEN]

Even Bacon and Goethe got laid. Try to strike that balance between man-ape and paper-tiger.

It's not hard to get laid, which makes me question the worth of relationships even further. The time, effort, and money spent on partners, friends, and family is HUGE and is one of the biggest drains on a person's life. This is what I'm debating - knowing that relationships are really recreational activities which result from biological and social pressures, do you think they are worth pursuing when your resources could be spent toward more noble and productive goals?

When I said paper-tiger I meant "a tiger on paper". Enjoy your flesh and that of others. Make it only so much of your life as you want. If those "relationships" are about getting laid you've missed the point: to cultivate your personality and position in social strata.
Neither food nor life is completely logical but it's so much better when it tastes good and is had in company.
I'm guessing you're young and ambitious. See post one yon noble and productive hermit.

I'm not a complete hermit yet - I still have a lot of friends and can get girls; it's just that my friends have always held me back while girls have always been a costly mistake financially, emotionally, and health-wise (going out to eat makes you fat and having a girl makes you lazy). Even my family doesn't set high goals for me nor expect me to achieve anything beyond living. Becoming a hermit is becoming more and more tempting as I realize the superficiality of practically all relationships including familial ones - I can see through the facade people put up as smoke screens for hiding their own selfish desires especially since I've been studying psychoanalysis and the brain in-depth.

1) Did you apply your psychoanalysis and brain science to yourself? What does that look like? He who passes judgment can set himself up as somehow outside those same boundaries and above others much as a scientist looking down quite literally on some lab rats...don't think you're bleached of any human stain because "you think and they don't".
2) You're a pushover. Find a girlfriend for whom you need not make concession to please. Try to accomplish something together greater than just orgasm. Establish your presence as a couple outside of your discreet pairing in ever differing contexts. Start a business. Make a baby. Set fitness or skill goals. Fill in the relational gaps; learn about yourself in the process.
3) I've found issue much as you have with most people: eat/drink/fuck/gossip/"sensate"...seems pointless. I kept asking myself, as I still do, "When are we going to work on something together?" Most people answer that question at their day job and then run home or to the bar or club to get their kicks. That isn't the only way to live. Use your imagination in your life not just your daydreams.
4) Drop the "idiot friends" and don't settle. Don't settle. There, your first tattoo. If you hold onto the standards by which you define yourself and ACT upon your dissatisfactions you may just end up someplace far more befitting. Work at it. Don't let bitching become your pastime; I've seen that and those people are never pretty...usually overweight loudmouths with unforgiving beliefs that self-ostracize. Hmm...perhaps I should retool that: don't settle, but don't kid yourself.

Edited by liplex, 28 November 2007 - 11:19 AM.

[RighteousReason]

"I'm not a complete hermit yet - I still have a lot of friends and can get girls; it's just that my friends have always held me back while girls have always been a costly mistake financially, emotionally, and health-wise (going out to eat makes you fat and having a girl makes you lazy). Even my family doesn't set high goals for me nor expect me to achieve anything beyond living. Becoming a hermit is becoming more and more tempting as I realize the superficiality of practically all relationships including familial ones - I can see through the facade people put up as smoke screens for hiding their own selfish desires especially since I've been studying psychoanalysis and the brain in-depth."

Well if you want to join the club, I guess I'll go ahead and welcome you, since I'm the President

Edited by CSstudent, 28 November 2007 - 02:19 PM.

[FunkOdyssey]

I want to bring up the issue of whether personal relationships hinder personal development.

They can when you are not selective about which relationships you choose to establish / maintain. It seems like you have the cold, critical mind it takes to axe the clingers in your life that are dragging you down, but you may be in danger of taking it too far. People with no social connections are lonely and depressed -- not the ideal mind state for "achieving perfection". Unfortunately for the would-be machines out there obsessed with productivity, humans do not function optimally in isolation. And ironically, were you to achieve perfection or anything else noteworthy, no one would be left to care.

Healthy relationships add more to your life than they take from you (and that is not hippie bullshit).

Edited by FunkOdyssey, 28 November 2007 - 02:57 PM.

[MP11]

Someone who has the same zeal that you do could possibly help you achieve more.

[Shepard]

This outlook and approach lacks any real strategy.

[zoolander]

I still have a lot of friends and can get girls; it's just that my friends have always held me back while girls have always been a costly mistake financially, emotionally, and health-wise (going out to eat makes you fat and having a girl makes you lazy).

Seems like you are yet to take control of your life. You are the one making the mistake financially, emotionally and health-wise. Not your friends or the girls that you have been with. Get some balls man and stop blaming the environment. You have the ultimate control.

Did you apply your psychoanalysis and brain science to yourself?

Cognitive bias makes it very difficult to analyse one's self accurately.

You're a pushover. Find a girlfriend for whom you need not make concession to please.

That pretty much sums it up.

The title of this thread "Personal Relationships An Obstable Toward Personal Perfection?" is tipping the scale towards narcissism if you ask me. Differences are a part of life. One of the most beautiful aspects of my relationship with my girlfriend is that she takes me places that I do not want to go. This would not happen if it were all about me. I'm a much better person because she's pushed me so many times to be that person. Both in the positive and negative.

intravertedness and self-directed libido

Caston what do you mean by this? Are you saying that you have a sexually driven desire for the self i.e you

If so then that's not such a bad thing as long as you include others. I think a lot of women would find that rather sexy as long as it wasn't too egotistical. Or is that Egotesticle?

[zoolander]

Sometimes it seems as though the conquer the blight of involuntary death is an exclusive self-satisfying journey for some people

[Kalepha]

Pushing the outlook a little, as everything else has already been very nicely said, the prospect of "exoselves" (agentive experience/memory gatherers) makes being hermitlike and superstarlike compatible in a personal identity, anyway. In general, isolation is pointless if both coreferential and unireferential entities can each be infinitary and enchanting.

[Edit: I reread the linked post. Its expression would need lots of maintenance, but the intuition on the face of it should be crystal clear ("co-" and "uni-" are straightforward modifiers of the straightforward concept of 'that which is sensed or known about'). Any trickier tangents, if even non-confused, shouldn't matter to simply getting the idea out. Thanks.]

Edited by Kalepha, 28 November 2007 - 09:25 PM.

[Kalepha]

"exoselves" (agentive experience/memory gatherers)

Should've added. . . where they can be re-experienced in first-person-perfect fidelity after they've been re-integrated with your core self. But it could be any variant of that that works better for you, since, for example, you may not always be a linear experiencer.

[Athanasios]

This reminds me of a question I was told by someone well worth listening to:

He said that if you buy fish at a market and walk it home wrapped in paper, the paper will smell terrible once you are home. If you buy flowers and walk it home wrapped in paper, the paper will smell good once you are home. You are like the paper and those around you the object bought, would you rather wrap flowers or fish?

It was told to me in broken english and the moral seems very obvious but it is one of those things that become very meaningful once in practice.

Edited by cnorwood, 29 November 2007 - 12:01 AM.

[jaydfox]

Sometimes it seems as though the blight to concur involuntary death is an exclusive self-satisfying journey for some people

(my emphasis)

What the hell? :huh:

I think you've got that backwards, with a malapropism to boot. :chasses:

[zoolander]

That's a pretty bad spelling mistake. That should read "Conquer" and not "concur". I'm going to blame Nightshift and lack of sleep on that one Jay.

Now edited. Thanks for pointing that out Jay

[jaydfox]

That's a pretty bad spelling mistake. That should read "Conquer" and not "concur". I'm going to blame Nightshift and lack of sleep on that one Jay.

Now edited. Thanks for pointing that out Jay

Okay, spelling's fixed, but what about the backwards part?

Article II. -- Mission & Function

Section 1 -- Main Mission

The mission of ImmInst is to conquer the blight of involuntary death.

[gashinshotan]

Sometimes it seems as though the blight to conquer involuntary death is an exclusive self-satisfying journey for some people

Yes because stepping on the dead bodies of others to progress is human nature isn't it?

[zoolander]

How freakin' embarrassing.

Yes because stepping on the dead bodies of others to progress is human nature isn't it

What about lifting up those that are ill and wish to achieve immortality rather than stepping all over them.

[RighteousReason]

" I kept failing my drivers license "


that's pretty sad, dude... being a bad driver massively increases your existential risk on the road.

[gashinshotan]

Caston what do you mean by this? Are you saying that you have a sexually driven desire for the self i.e you

If so then that's not such a bad thing as long as you include others. I think a lot of women would find that rather sexy as long as it wasn't too egotistical. Or is that Egotesticle?

Unfortunately yes.

When I was 19 and lived with my parents and had no job and no drivers license and just studied IT at TAFE I strongly believed there was a conspiracy to stop me from meeting members of the opposite sex so I tried to meet many women through ICQ. I also believed that somehow the way my life was organised I never got to meet single females I only ever got to meet ones that already had a bf. This frustrated the hell out of me. I kept failing my drivers license and at once point even forged my test sheet but I felt that I had no chance of competing if I didn't have a car, license and money.

I ended up getting charged for this but they didn't charge me until I had actually got my license!

My friends gave me a lot of shit about my pursuits. One of them in particular I think now may have even been a latent.

I try to make out that I am lonely and some kind of "man that love forgot" yet the truth is that deep down inside I don't actually need anyone I just always seem to be on a unconcious life long quest to taunt the hearts of the people that do.

I need to stop doing this. But what else can I do instead? Should I just try to go through life as a boring person that has no interest in sex?

Freud believed that your libido is your central driving force. The implications of this for every single action we make in our lives is profound.

You're in Australia!@ WTF?! Go to bars and clubs, I heard Australian girls are some of the funnest and nicest.

[Shannon Vyff]

Perfect person? No such thing in my opinion, and being in a relationship, raising a family --contributing to society would be up on my list of what a perfect person might be. I'd say they could fall in many different religions, socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities, and job fields...

Having a family to love makes me a better person, I'd be way to selfish and self involved if I didn't have my husband and children to shower love and affection on, and to worry about beyond my own life...

[gashinshotan]

Perfect person? No such thing in my opinion, and being in a relationship, raising a family --contributing to society would be up on my list of what a perfect person might be. I'd say they could fall in many different religions, socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities, and job fields...

Having a family to love makes me a better person, I'd be way to selfish and self involved if I didn't have my husband and children to shower love and affection on, and to worry about beyond my own life...

There's the problem that your children are the ultimate manifestation of your narcissism and are an additional burden to human society. When you're busy loving your kids and husband, you're excluding love for the rest of humanity while the fact that your kids are an extension of yourself could be a considered an expression of selfishness.

[AdamSummerfield]

Like most others here, I do not believe "personal perfection" is something achievable. So I will put across my views as what I see as the alternative to perfection: a seamless, eternal and happy life.

What about ANY relationships. This is what I'm getting at. Are ANY personal relationships worth the time and effort?

I have few personal relationships. Perhaps the fewest here on the forums.
I am PAINFULLY shy. Notice the only two people I consdier true friends are those I have met online.

My relationship with my parents is deteriorating, once I leave for university, I will see little of them, and I will write to them, not call by phone. I simply am not powerful enough to forgive them.
I love my brothers, we are nothing alike intellectually, but I love them. This also goes for my mothers side of the family.

I love the two main people in the world I consider true friends. Adam and Zans. Hopefully I will gain more true transhuman friends in the future.
Here's one point I would like to make clear to you Gashinshotan - You can learn from friends, to assume that not having personal relationships of any kind, is to think you are better than everyone else.
By having personal relationships, you learn from those people, because they are almost certainly more advanced than you in some form or another.

fallen in love with the "right" girl? They're just a result of biological mechanisms, not logical thinking.

Certainly isn't the point with me. When I fell in love it was because of logical abilities and logical pleasures.

- Adam

Edited by Sezarus, 29 November 2007 - 09:09 PM.

[AdamSummerfield]

I try to make out that I am lonely and some kind of "man that love forgot"

But what else can I do instead? Should I just try to go through life as a boring person that has no interest in sex?

I feel the same way Caston, and I'm almost 17. I think of university, and I realise... I probably won't meet any transhumanist girls there. There are barely any. This is compounded by my shyness. I never go out, I stay in and study.

The upside is, I'll have a brilliant career. Isaac Newton fell in love at 17. They broke up. He never loved again.

- Adam

[RighteousReason]

I try to make out that I am lonely and some kind of "man that love forgot"

But what else can I do instead? Should I just try to go through life as a boring person that has no interest in sex?

I feel the same way Caston, and I'm almost 17. I think of university, and I realise... I probably won't meet any transhumanist girls there. There are barely any. This is compounded by my shyness. I never go out, I stay in and study.

The upside is, I'll have a brilliant career. Isaac Newton fell in love at 17. They broke up. He never loved again.

- Adam