Posts by feralranger

Paul Richardson12 said:"Quote:"

I honestly can’t bring myself to feel anything resembling "love" for some sadistic killer or a straight-up torturer... I mean, seriously, what even is that? For people like that, there just aren't any standard emotions left in the toolkit—you have to dig into some much darker, different territory to process what they are.

Look, I get it—I know some of my posts probably come off sounding like a bunch of canned clichés or rehearsed lines... But honestly? I'm just an average Joe trying to make sense of things here. I’m definitely not the smartest guy in the room—far from it—but what I'm doing is simply trying to wrap my head around all this madness...

And which ones might those be? Hatred?
Where exactly does one draw the line between those we hold dear (with that same capacity for love you mentioned earlier) and those we find utterly irredeemable?

What if that murderer spent their entire childhood being abused and tormented themselves?

Paul Richardson12 said:Why do people have this obsessive need to quantify love? Like, why can't we just... love? Real love isn't something you put on a scale—it’s an action, something you live out. People always ask, "Who do you love more?" It’s such a weird question. On the surface, sure, it looks like you love your kid way more than some random stranger you gave a polite smile to on the subway, but honestly? It’s the exact same thing. It’s all rooted in that same core feeling of respect and genuine understanding. If you actually carry love in your heart, you’re sharing that same essence with everyone on this planet. The only reason we don't see it that way is because we're trapped in these tiny, cramped little spaces—our own bodies and minds—so we try to force everything into neat little boxes just to make sense of it.

Do you actually claim to love your own child—assuming you have one, or perhaps some other dear soul close to you—in the exact same way you would love some sadistic torturer or a cold-blooded killer? Is it truly the same thing?

Are you being entirely sincere here, or are you simply tossing out these lofty phrases because they sound appropriately altruistic and poetic?

lonegardener said:I’ve always been skeptical of this supposed "generosity," which seems to be nothing more than a calculated mix of logic and self-interest.

If your rational mind tells you that the only way to reach your own selfish goals is by acting "generous," is that actually generosity? Or is it just good old-fashioned selfishness disguised for effect? 🤣

... in other words, it's just premeditated calculation—or what I like to call intelligent selfishness.

Richard Wells said:I’ve been working on this non-stop. I try to make that distinction because, honestly, there’s a massive difference. Just read a little more carefully 😁

If that were actually the case, one would assume you’d provide a link to your specific post where you supposedly did what I’m asking about.

(Frankly, this particular post of yours is entirely devoid of substance.)

casualtiger2 said:Is someone who constantly overindulges, acts selfishly, and is obsessed with themselves actually practicing "self-love"?

There is simply far too little data here to draw any meaningful conclusions. One might consider the possibility of an underlying eating disorder, though truly, it all depends on the specific circumstances and the broader life context—such as whether there is actually enough food available for everyone else in their immediate circle...

An individual who is obsessively preoccupied with maintaining an "ideal" weight can be profoundly selfish, whereas someone struggling with overeating may not be acting out of any sense of ego at all.

ambersailor85, while I can't say I particularly care for your blatant selfishness, I will at least grant you this: you are honest about it.

It seems to me that most people are far too prone to living in a sort of bubble of delusion, constantly peddling this idea of "self-love" as if it were somehow distinct from pure narcissism...

This is precisely why we are bombarded by endless commercials that wrap up with those vacuous slogans like "Because you're worth it," or some other such nonsense. We are encouraged to suppress any awareness of our own egoism, a little psychological trick that serves the consumerist machine perfectly well...

Richard Wells said:Man, I read way too much stuff on here sometimes 😁
Like this whole idea of equating self-love with being selfish 😳 Or even the notion that selfishness is what drives us while altruism just holds us back 🙄 It’s such a blatant flip of common sense in today’s world, but let me try to address it without sounding like I'm lecturing everyone... What if someone's "self-love" is actually over the top and constantly stepping on other people's toes? That's just straight-up selfishness. Real self-love stays within your own lane and doesn't mess with anyone else's space. And what if a person genuinely loves themselves and finds pure joy in giving to others without expecting a thing in return? Are they stupid? Naive? Fine... people will take advantage of them, but whose fault is that really? Who's actually losing out here? I guess the solution is to either stop giving or start calculating every single move just to stay "protected." We've just reached a point where we can't feel a single emotion without using a calculator 🙄

I implore you, please, attempt to draw a clear line between practicing self-love and acting out of pure selfishness. Try to provide a definition that is actually universal and objectively grounded...

Susan Lewis2 said:I suspect that even Bill Gates and his associates wouldn't be in any position to engage in this kind of large-scale philanthropy if they hadn't first amassed such staggering fortunes.
I suppose one must possess significant resources before they can even consider extending a hand to others.
In my view, the entire discussion feels somewhat misguided from the outset; rather than questioning how one should manage immense wealth—whether it is ethically sound to hoard it all or if there is an obligation to assist those in need—the conversation tends to focus solely on that specific segment of society that accumulates vast sums only to indulge themselves endlessly.
I imagine there will always be such individuals, regardless of which country you look at in the US or elsewhere.
The crux of the matter, I think, is that we cannot simply assume every wealthy individual is inherently malevolent or corrupt just because they spend their money on luxury cars and estates while others struggle; being poor doesn't automatically make someone virtuous.

It seems to me that those who are wealthy and also morally bankrupt were perhaps once quite impoverished themselves... whereas, on the other hand, there are many who have acquired wealth through honest work, inheritance, or marriage, yet remain entirely decent people who neither steal nor lie for profit.
Just as there are honest people living in poverty, there are certainly dishonest people in poverty who would likely seize any opportunity to grab wealth instantly, becoming just as predatory as those who currently hold it and continue to exploit the system.
One really cannot afford to generalize in matters such as these.

True enough, though one really ought to remember that Bill Gates arrived at his profit margins through what was essentially an abuse of near-monopolistic power, peddling half-baked products as finished goods for years on end. If some massive class-action law firm decided to sue on behalf of every single programmer and end-user across the United States and the rest of the globe—seeking damages for all the wasted hours lost to the endless bugs inherent in his operating systems—he wouldn't have a single cent left to his name; in fact, he’d likely be drowning in debt. His wealth is simply the inevitable outcome of being a massive player within a capitalist machine, where the victims are always the "little guys," and there are millions of them scattered everywhere.

You need to have something before you can help anyone else.

It is quite common for high-level drug kingpins to rub elbows with politicians and donate massive sums to charity just to scrub their reputations clean and gain a modicum of social standing.

It is a rare occurrence indeed to see wealth acquired through purely honest means, free from exploitation, deception, or the relentless sleight-of-hand characteristic of modern marketing...

Rebecca Scott3 said:Having an opportunity doesn't turn someone into a thief. I mean, let's be real—we all have the chance to cheat or cut corners, but most people just don't. They choose not to.
...What is it, though? What actually drives people to spend their entire lives chasing a paycheck while stepping over everyone else to get it?
...It isn't even really about the cash itself; it’s this weird obsession with the race. It’s like those people who collect cheap napkins or old postage stamps, just for the sake of having them.
...They collect just to possess everything. Then they want to have more than the next guy. And then comes the paranoia—that nagging fear that someone might overtake you, leaving you no longer the one sitting on the biggest pile of stuff.
...Eventually, you stop being *you*. You just become a reflection of what you own and how much you've accumulated. The goal becomes having the absolute most. The most in your neighborhood, the most in your city, the most in the whole country, or even the whole world.
...You end up defining yourself as "the person who has" rather than "the person who doesn't." You basically strip away your soul and reduce your entire existence to a simple binary: have or have-not. Nothing else matters. That's all you are.
...Everything else in my life just ends up being a byproduct of that endless cycle of having and not having.

Well, I find that premise rather questionable. The average American citizen isn't exactly presented with a golden opportunity to embezzle anything worth mentioning without facing immediate, crushing legal consequences. That hardly qualifies as an "opportunity." Real opportunity is what the corporate executives and career politicians enjoy—the chance to walk away with millions while facing little to no accountability whatsoever.

Andrew Barrett4 said:opportunity makes the thief

The wealthy steal simply because they have the means. And honestly, it's pure greed, just like our colleague above pointed out. (I suppose it would be a bit of a stretch to generalize and say the poor are more honest than the rich or vice versa, so I'll leave that alone—just lying somewhere else, I guess.)

I think the real point is that being poor often means being deprived of more than just cash; it's social and systemic too. Poverty is essentially a lack of opportunity.

Maybe if they actually had the same opportunities, they’d steal just as much as the wealthy figures you mentioned.
But the reality is that it's quite difficult to even get into a position where you could steal on that kind of scale.
(Perhaps they might swipe something small within their own social circles, maybe.

What seems much more tragic to me, though, is that poor people and their children are deprived of much better kinds of "opportunities" than the ones involving theft: there's just too little access to quality education, culture, sports, healthcare, or any real chance for personal growth and development...

In my estimation, vast material wealth is most often amassed through pathological greed, which makes finding an honest person among the elite an exceedingly rare occurrence. As for those living in poverty, well, you certainly find every conceivable variety of character there...

Andrew Sullivan8 said:I’m posting this here in the spirituality section, too, since I’m not really sure where it fits best... 😉

"Every single day, you open the papers and see more scandals involving millions of dollars in fraud. It seems people will go to any lengths to get rich—stealing, killing, cheating, just committing any kind of crime imaginable...

What's interesting is that almost all these dishonest schemes are pulled off by people who don't actually need the money to survive. We aren't talking about someone on the brink of starvation or someone who can't afford basic clothes and is struggling to stay alive. It's usually the middle class or the wealthy elite—people who have plenty, but simply never have enough. So much for that idea that greed is driven by necessity...

Sometimes these folks have so much wealth that three generations of their descendants couldn't spend it all, yet they still pull dirty stunts just to stack up even more.

There's something deeply tragic about money, isn't there? How it manages to ruin so many lives..."

Human stupidity coupled with pathological greed. It is essentially a psychological disorder, yet our capitalist society chooses to celebrate it as if it were a virtue...

silvercobra68 said:Great, now they’ve dragged politics into the shop window too.

The only person actually capable of following my train of thought is some tiny, all-powerful mastermind.

Everyone else should probably look for something a bit more low-brow. You've got parenting, self-help, and expat forums down there—or just stick to the sports section up top.

Or maybe this is just what 2010 looks like: people with limited intellect who can't grasp reality because they've been fed a script. Now they’re just regurgitating lines about "accepting whatever the boss decides."

And what exactly is this "boss" doing? Tell me! Who is this ultimate villain responsible for wrecking the world we live in?

Come on, geniuses. Let's see it. Give me a first and last name for this monster!!!

Oh, how incredibly shallow it is to assume we are dealing with a single individual possessing a specific name and title.

When you start your very first post by writing, "... about Quincy who hasn't a clue. A loser."
And then you go ahead and title the entire thread 1984...

... and subsequently find yourself bewildered by the responses you receive, it becomes quite apparent that you have essentially just delivered a message to your own reflection...

silvercobra68 said:Great, now they’ve dragged politics into the shop window too.

The only person actually capable of following my train of thought is some tiny, all-powerful mastermind.

Everyone else should probably look for something a bit more low-brow. You've got parenting, self-help, and expat forums down there—or just stick to the sports section up top.

Or maybe this is just what 2010 looks like: people with limited intellect who can't grasp reality because they've been fed a script. Now they’re just regurgitating lines about "accepting whatever the boss decides."

And what exactly is this "boss" doing? Tell me! Who is this ultimate villain responsible for wrecking the world we live in?

Come on, geniuses. Let's see it. Give me a first and last name for this monster!!!

silvercobra68 said:If I had any brain cells left to spare, I'd lend you some, but since I'm tapped out, I'll just give you an explanation.

So, Orwell depicts 1984 as an anti-human year—a nightmare defined by technical horrors like Big Brother. It’s a year where individual life is stripped of all humanity. Yet, looking back from our current perspective, 1984 almost seems human-friendly. Don't you think? And yet, fundamentally, nothing has actually changed. Except, of course, for us, now being twenty-six years older.

I would argue that quite a lot has changed.
People today simply live shorter lives; on a daily basis, they are living less while laboring significantly more.

The level of control exerted over the population is steadily increasing. We are spiraling deeper into a literal *1984* from which there may be no escape. However, people tend to behave like sheep, more than willing to accept whatever the masters dictate under the guise of acting "for their own good."

Sandra Parker3 said:I've had to endure every single word of that.😂 🙄

Also, the way you categorize people... "cheaters," "non-cheaters," and everyone in between... sounds like you've spent a little too much time dealing with terrible people, hasn't it?
looser.

I have certainly encountered a wide spectrum of characters.
Humanity is, if nothing else, incredibly varied.

When business is on the line, there are those who will happily sell you down the river the moment it serves their interests, and then there are those who won't.

(Some hopelessly naive souls even put their faith in politicians and allow them to steer the entire country... forgiving every single one of their endless betrayals.)

ironraven13 said:Yeah, sure... he gets to go out and hang with his buddies whenever he wants, but not me. Because I’m a girl. And because everyone’s staring at me.
And yeah, I'll probably just get raped.

The reality is that there are certain people who are just "easy" (to put it bluntly, promiscuous). If you happen to fall for someone like that—which, believe me, happens more often than you'd think—it is perfectly logical to be riddled with distrust. Then, on the flip side, there are individuals who aren't wired that way at all, making it easy to let them socialize without a single nagging thought of suspicion or jealousy creeping in.

To trust the first group blindly is nothing short of foolish, yet to remain perpetually suspicious of the second group is to descend into irrational paranoia.

Of course, life isn't strictly black and white; there is a vast gray area in between where people fall, and those types can usually be trusted, at least to some degree.

wiredridge152 said:If someone lacks any real passion for what they do, they simply can't achieve anything groundbreaking...
At best, they’ll just be mediocre—though, if we're being honest, they'll most likely end up performing well below average...😉

I find that assertion to be fundamentally flawed. Substantial results—assuming such things even matter in the grand scheme of things—are frequently the product of sheer, dogged persistence paired with a decent baseline of ability. (And quite often, these individuals possess neither exceptional talent nor any burning passion whatsoever...)

Furthermore, consider this: an average physician can still save countless lives. Does that inherent "averageness" render their entire existence a wasted endeavor?

goldeneagle8 said:Look, I am telling you right now, with absolute certainty, that nobody spends their whole life stuck in a lab just because they enjoy the grind itself. There is zero chance anyone would spend decades hammering away at something they don't care about—especially in fields where you aren't the one making life-or-death decisions for others—there are endless examples of that. That’s my first point. And even if the end result is "good," what does it matter if you don't feel any actual satisfaction from it? It’s like if your parents forced you into professional tennis and you ended up becoming some world-class champ like Andre Agassi, but deep down you hated every second of it... what was the point? You were basically living someone else's life instead of your own, and that is exactly where people go wrong. Someone else will eventually step up and get those results... but if you personally aren't fulfilled by what you've achieved, then you've fundamentally missed the mark...👍

That is simply incorrect. A vast number of people perform jobs they genuinely despise. Many find themselves stuck in titles and roles they never desired because they failed to achieve their original goals, succumbed to societal pressure, or perhaps realized that their true passions simply wouldn't pay the bills in this economy...

For instance, someone might dream of designing high-performance Formula 1 race cars, only to spend their career designing brake systems for standard Ford sedans or commuter buses, which is undeniably tedious...

However, if that individual performs that dull task with excellence, additional human lives may very well be saved...

goldeneagle8 said:If you ask me, spending your entire life grinding away at some job you absolutely hate... that’s just a wasted existence. Honestly, that’s the only truth that actually matters...

Consider this scenario:
Suppose you spend your entire existence working in a laboratory, despite having an utter disdain for lab work... yet, through that grueling, soul-crushing labor, you happen to discover a cure for a devastating disease...

Would you still stubbornly cling to your original premise?

(And honestly, one could construct endless variations of such dilemmas if they had the patience for it.)

slymaker9 said:I'll use this song by the Rolling Stones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8G1n_-uxKY
to pose a question: does any single individual have the right—or even the capacity—to declare someone else's life, including their own, as wasted or a failure?

What actually defines a wasted life?
Is it the man who lived as a coward but successfully raised three children? Is it the person struggling with laziness or addiction, unable to overcome their own weaknesses?
Or perhaps the one who spent their years living under a veil of delusions?
Does such a judgment belong to no one?
If it belongs to someone, what specific metrics or criteria should be used to judge?🤷

And who exactly is telling you that the ranks of world-class scientists—or even great artists, for that matter—aren't populated by people you would label as cowards?

They say laziness is actually one of the primary drivers of technological progress; after all, life becomes significantly easier once you invent a clever gadget, a mechanism, or a machine to do the heavy lifting for you...

As for those "addicts" (as you so colorfully put it), there have been countless legendary artists in that category... honestly, a list of them would stretch far beyond the limits of this page...

I find myself wondering, what exactly constitutes the antithesis of a "failed life" in your estimation? 🤷

To be "struck" rather than "failed"—it sounds rather clumsy when I try to phrase it...
Perhaps you mean "fulfilled"? 🤷

If that is indeed the case, then what precisely must one achieve to be considered "fulfilled" instead of being (empty?) and "failed"?