Philosophical Research:Molecular Democracy/5.1r/1999 life-manual
A manual for living life [scrap][edit]
2-25
like, take any statement in any of those manuals and it may be as much as 90% of the time that the statement will be flatly false on its face if you want to put in that manual statements which can be said with any real certainty instead of just tossed out as 10% likely to be true it almost invariably ends up giving horrible advice that leads humanity to a terrible future
let's just. let's just include a chapter which is a semi-satirical life manual none of the statements in it are individually meant to be jokes, every statement in it is meant to be a true statement in fact many statements in this "life manual" will simply be the same general ideas as in "Apocalypse Manual", these entirely reasonable and practical statements for surviving and enduring unreasonable situations but it's the moment at which you imagine any other person but yourself following the life manual instead of you or at the same time you are that you become rather terrified
I guess this is a companion to "Anarchy Is the Most Authoritarian Thing There Is"/"rain". it's like, the concept of the chapter really _applied_ and _put into action_ such that Existentialism/some-Anarchisms have been postified into entropicism and been reversed. like a B-side to the chapter. if the chapter has some number like "chapter 7", then this would be "chapter 7B". I've come up with the concept of a B-side at least two or three times. "gato" had the B-side of "Steven Universe is Definitely About Trotskyism". "ours-groups" is the B-side to _something_ though I'm not totally sure what. "The Saiyan Revolution" may be a bit of a B-side considering the intentionally strange topic, or "Theological Morality" may actually be the B-side to "Saiyan Revolution" considering how much sillier it is to imagine Trotsky in every possible afterlife than to create a material theory of _Dragon Ball_ nations transitioning to new systems when they _are_ defined as being made of material parts so I mean why not. there are probably B-side chapters in this book.
> companion to "Anarchy Is the Most Authoritarian Thing There Is"/"rain" or maybe this is the B-side to the chapter explaining entropicism versus "existentialism, nihilism, and absurdism"? that might make just as much sense
2-25
this "life manual" is like the culmination of those useless despair fragments
3-02
you received your individual birth certificate. and it said something on it. it probably contained a birth sex. and it probably contained a year.
3-02
if your string theory paper has been rejected by a board of quantum field theorists, it may be a good idea to go back and study quantum field theories so that even if string theory is falsified you can return to being a researcher or professor.
if you are a peasant living in a pre-industrial society, there may be times when it is a good idea to join a Communist revolution.
you might find that if you have bad models of reality the central party-nation will have kicked you out of the party. if this happens, it is not a good idea to get angry; that will only make things far, far worse. it is advisable you read up on why exactly the central party-nation has the models it does before you seriously challenge them. [Trotsky.] remember, every individual is a bit different. not every individual on this earth can be a top theorist in a central Marxist party-nation.
3-02
don't let anybody who doesn't know you or your individual personality try to tell you what your identity is. however, be careful if you decide to read any philosophy because most attempts by philosophers to define gender in the current day read like a bunch of complete nonsense. your gender is real. if you do not perceive and interact with the world the exact same way a cis person does, you are a woman. don't feel trapped into thinking the philosophical discourse about gender has anything to do with your life.
3-02
feel free to take your time. delay your work by as many years as you need to. as they say, a rushed work is bad forever but a delayed work is _good_ indefinitely. you are never required to produce art. some people will say it is a good idea to put out many pieces of medium-effort content, but it is also important to remember that all art embodies the purpose it performs when it is finished. the world at large will never necessarily be satisfied with your work if they are not prepared to evaluate it objectively on its actual stated goals and aesthetics, so if you want to be sure that _you_ are satisfied with your work, take just enough time to make sure it is done the way you think is the most correct. it is okay to be efficient if you find that suits everything else about the final result you intend to produce, but make sure you do not put an efficient process over quality. when you are done, all that will be there is the art, as if you never existed. so, try to keep that day in mind and leave behind the best art you can.
2-25
out of all the things around you, your mind is the only thing you can personally control so if you want to be in control of your own destiny, you have to get the most use possible out of that one controllable thing
2-25
human beings have lived without democracy for thousands of years for thousands of years, humans got by on nothing but individual morality. at least, that's very much the thing you'd believe if you read enough medieval fantasy books or watched enough speculative-fiction TV shows. well, it doesn't matter if it has or hasn't historically been the case that all kingdoms, empires, and feudal manors have been run on individual morality. _you_ live right now, not back then. so what matters to you right now is that you can certainly survive without democracy. how do we survive without democracy? we cultivate human connections.
2-25
you don't need it there is almost nothing you could gain from watching the news. if there _was_ anything you could gain from the news, you would already have learned it from the other local people around you. alternatively, maybe you would have showed up and told the other local people about it yourself after learning about some particular phenomenon in detail from a specialized social circle formed around some particular subject such as the arts, the sciences, or some field of technology. if there is any news actually worth breaking to anybody, you _are_ the news.
3-02
as the individual, you are in control of your life and how it goes. _be_ the disease prevention measures! if you are the news, you can be the national disease prevention measures as well. in December 2021 when the United States could not decide on whether it would be more acceptable to instate or lift disease prevention measures as a country, a network of grassroots individuals came together and formed the People's CDC to put out quality information and allow every individual to make their choices more effectively. people can often have highly negative attitudes in the midst of a situation like a crumbling society in the throes of a runaway global pandemic, but as Steven Pinker says, people have only been getting kinder and more helpful, and everything across the centuries has only been getting better.
if everyone around you is dying of starvation in the wake of a catastrophic world war, then things are certainly more likely to get better if you work hard than if you do nothing. don't give in to the pull of foreign capitalists. they may offer money but life is about far more than how much money you have at a given moment. you won't be happy if the capitalists suddenly pick up all their money to find a more useful city and leave your city in utter ruin again, as happens to any number of cities every century. remember, civilizations are ultimately made of groups of socially-connected individuals, so it is a good rule of thumb to envision that anyone you call on the phone to help you with the process of existing might one day get to vote. it is very important that you contribute to the process of your country actually building physical towns or cities and local economic structures that cannot be taken away. even building capitalist businesses in your own country is better than nothing. it is true that all the capitalists could spontaneously move to another country and leave no one with a job, but if that happens you will surely find solutions to your problems if you merely stop and think. you are in control of your life, no matter what anyone says — if you have to solve how to rebuild an entire local civilization after a significant portion of civilization has outright deserted you, it can probably be done.
if capitalists have left your city decades ago and people are treating you with horrendous racism, don't panic. there are at least some people in the world who decidedly do not want you shot to death. it may not be as reassuring as would be the finding that there is actually justice in this world, but at least it is something.
3-02
you don't need them you can /always/ keep going if you simply don't give up if none of the people around you want to make public spaces safe enough for you to be able to get a job and go to work, remember that nothing gets better if you have an existential meltdown. you can never directly control anything outside of you, so it's best to focus on _you_.
you may find that despite your best efforts psychotherapy has not been effective at easing your complete and utter terror at whether you have any chance to survive. this is perfectly normal. remember to eat properly, drink enough water, and get sufficient sleep. try taking walks or doing some similar form of exercise, as it will aid you in feeling less depressed. if you do not have friends to talk to, try reading more books or analyzing a TV show. all things in this world are temporary, so your state of utter terror at potentially being shot by another citizen of your country is probably also something that will pass. if there is not an active state of ethnic warfare, avoid making any noticeable disturbances and stay calm. uncertainty will generally make your life worse, so unless you have a lot of energy and know exactly how you will react to a bunch of freely-moving aggressive agents, it is often best to take as much time as you can to study the situation and stay where you are. read perspectives from other demographics, regions, or philosophies, as seeing things from different angles will help you better conceptualize the bigger picture. if after diagramming ten completely different ideologies you still do not understand what is going on, take a break from the keyboard or writing desk and try to focus on something completely different. if you so much as give your mind a moment to rest, you will often begin solving difficult problems unconsciously as you do other things and come back to a difficult problem with a new perspective.
3-02
important life lesson if you cannot stay calm when you are completely alone for years at a time you are not yet ready to be an adult
3-02
1: there is no freedom without survival whatever philosophy or ideology you believe, you can never realize it or support it if you do not first figure out how to individually survive. this is to say, you are always necessarily closer to living in the world of your dreams if you run away from a situation than if you physically die. as long as you can find some place on the earth where you can survive a bit longer, you make a greater chance that you will be able to emerge from conditions you don't find tolerable in order to find or create conditions in which you do. Trotsky complaining about the Soviet Union and trying to take it down is dead if he stays inside the Soviet Union, but if he gets out then he lives, and he has more time to try to realize Trotskyism. somebody undergoing abuse inside a particular fundamentalist religious sect will have a bad time as long as they remain in that area, but if they get out and go somewhere else, they no longer have to live in those conditions any more. [... omitted] somebody stuck in an abusive household is always more likely to end up in a healthy household if they first get out of it and go where they can survive. when things were getting bad right before the emergence of Nazi Germany, Albert Einstein made things better for himself by getting out of Germany. Lenin and Marx themselves got more time to write and figure out how to realize Bolshevism when they hid themselves in other countries. [... omitted]
in some senses, money equals freedom. if you have infinite money to move anywhere in the world at any moment, then you have the power to believe and study any philosophy you want. nobody is ever truly required to believe Bolshevism provided they have enough money to get away to a nice quiet place where they can think and think and think and think of something better. as long as you have somewhere else to escape to, then nobody can stop you. if you so much as find an out-of-the-way location where nobody will run into you then you are also free.