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Monk Mode - Good or Bad? Your Thoughts Please

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by Fenix Rising, Oct 9, 2019.

  1. TheForsakeen

    TheForsakeen Fapstronaut

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    op you should read Jonathan Safran Foer - Eating Animals or go vegan.
     
  2. Fenix Rising

    Fenix Rising Fapstronaut

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    I have a problem with Dr. Jordan Petersons' hypothesis about what the meaning of life is: "Meaning is proportionate to the adaption of responsibility." He's basically saying that the meaning of ones life is being cog inside the social system, helping to maintain "the rat race inside the system". That's it? That's just very simplified Jean Jacques Rousseau's social contract theory. If I would accept his hypothesis, I'd probably end my life right now. I lived through three years of bloody civil war as a young boy and witnessed brutal consequences that collapse of social contract brings so I can fully accept and appreciate the fact that such constructs are necessary to better the chances of our own survival and help us move from chaos theory to forming complex systems, but in essence they are still just collectively accepted mind constructs that make our lives more predictable and thus safer, more comfortable or better said less painful, but nothing more. If there is nothing beyond the horizon of self constructed delusions, pain and finally our physical demise then life is truly meaningless. Someone could argue that individual and collective narratives are helping us survive as a species, but do they? From what I've studied the most successful surviving mechanism for species is to develop social structure somewhere between chaos and complex system. More complex the system, more prone it is to collapse and collapse is more devastating as all of it's parts move in the same direction so error can be fatal for all. It is not beyond possibility that our ability of forming and accepting collective stories will be our downfall. Runaway climate change, collapse of major ecosystems and possibility of nuclear winter are just three scenarios that would empirically confirm this vulnerability theory and I'm afraid we are moving towards the confirmation. Homo sapiens is not as successful as we tend to believe. Our timeline is between 3-8 hundred thousand years old, nothing special as species typically exist for 5–10 hundred thousand years before going extinct. We are still well inside average extinction rate statistics and the prospects for our species' future are not very bright right now. Lots of pretty "stupid" species like white sharks outlive us 50 times or more.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2019
  3. TheForsakeen

    TheForsakeen Fapstronaut

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    i would argue that homo sapien evolution is special among species on earth and probably the universe.I havent read as much as id like on the subject but i dont think any specie has consciously shaped the earth and its inhabitant as extensively as human.
     
  4. Fenix Rising

    Fenix Rising Fapstronaut

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    I do not believe homo sapiens has a special role as a species. If anything we have done more damage than any other species on earth to date just because we intellectually outperform them. That makes us smart, but far from wise. "Wise man" would try to preserve the branch he is sitting on. Why? We have the knowledge, but knowledge is not wisdom and wisdom is not foresight. We are part of nature, co-dependent part in the web of life, just like any other species on the planet. If ecosystems supporting us collapse, we'll go extinct in a heartbeat, just like billions of other life forms on earth did before us. Anthropogenic view of the world is poisoning our minds and might become our doom. I was born and raised in Christian faith but Genesis 1:26 ("Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.") makes me sick.
     
  5. TheForsakeen

    TheForsakeen Fapstronaut

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    unlike animals we are aware that we cannot simply reproduce to death or devoure our source of food till we go extinct as animal do given the chance.There is now a trend to be pro environmentalist that will only grow,in developped countries with the women improvement of women right birth rates is decreasing in some countries its becoming a problem and they have to resort to immigrant to keep the economy afloat you have now meat that can be printed all that show to me that we should soon master our ecosystem to an even greater extent but maybe im wrong you seem to have a dark outlook on the world how about you recommend me some of the book you've read.
     
  6. Fenix Rising

    Fenix Rising Fapstronaut

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    You don't need to read books to get cold facts. I would really like to be optimistic about our prospects, but 2nd law of thermodynamics is merciless and all figures point out that we're going off cliff soon. I used to work on a sustainability assessment project focused mainly on the risks associated with a global food supply shortages for one of the post insurance companies. We couldn't find a stable model without assumption of immediate radical reduction in global energy demand in combination with world population stagnation. We were especially worried about the gap between food production and rising demand. A combination of climate change, food and water shortages, energy loss causing mass migrations leading to further political instability across the globe was the most plausible scenario under the trajectory we're on now. Shit will probably hit the fan around 2040 and get worse and worse. There is no magical bullet to save us, negative emission technologies (NETs) are pie in the sky IPCC modelers put into the report so it looks doable. No way can we scale up non existing to semi existing technologies fast enough. We'd need WWII mobilization effort on steroids to pull it off and even then we don't know how the biggest carbon sink, oceans, would react to the extraction of 20-30 gigatons of CO2 per annum out of the atmosphere.
    https://www.lloyds.com/news-and-ris...ibrary/society-and-security/food-system-shock

    Here is some data where we're really headed:
    We're losing species at unprecedented rate. If pollinators collapse, we go hungry, no way around it
    https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/
    https://phys.org/news/2014-01-robust-network-insect-pollinators-collapse.html

    CO2 levels are now rising 3 ppm each year (accelerating). We're at 415 ppm already. The last time CO2 levels were this high was during the Pliocene Epoch, 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago when temperatures where +3C higher then in 1850 (meaning we have +1.8 C already locked into the system even if we stop emitting all greenhouse gasses immediately). +4C likely means the end of civilization because of major crops' yields failures (means mass starvation basically) and positive feedback loops kicking in causing hothouse earth effect down the road (means massive die-off if not extinction of all complex life on earth)
    https://e360.yale.edu/digest/co2-concentrations-hit-highest-levels-in-3-million-years
    https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/pre...rds-irreversible-201chothouse-earth201d-state
    https://www.livescience.com/63267-hothouse-earth-dangerously-close.html

    With all these grim facts well known to world leaders and multinational companies we're still heading towards 11 billion population by 2100 (it's not gonna happen but anyway)
    https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...early-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/

    and our appetite for fossil fuels is on the rise, no matter what politicians are saying. CH4 ("natural" gas) demand is exploding, oil demand is on the rise and most worryingly demand for coal is up again.
    CH4, oil and coal still account for nearly 75 % of our global energy consumption. Politicians want to sell you the story of natural gas as a clean transition fuel but forget to account for real life mining and pipeline gas leaks which are enormous.
    https://www.iea.org/geco/coal/
    https://www.iea.org/weo/
    http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk...-not-compatible-with-our-climate-commitments/

    A very good honest Oxford Martin School's overview of former British government's chief science advisor discussing where civilization is likely headed titled
    "The Perfect Storm":


    As you can see there are real reasons to be pessimistic when you know these facts. I don't see a way out this mess. That's why I try to learn how to live in a present moment and adopt stoic mentality. Luckily I don't have children so no need to worry about their future. There is no point in losing sleep over the things we can't control. All we can possibly control are our own thoughts and actions. I've joined Extinction rebellion protests and vote for the party that has the most radical climate change program. Partly because I think that's the right thing to do, but to be honest, mostly to calm my conscience. I also lost my job over aggressive stance on why insuring gas exploration projects is not a sound decision anymore. As if I needed another proof that you can't piss against the wind :) Lets enjoy life in hope that climate sensitivity to green house gasses is on the lower side.
     
    Last edited: Oct 21, 2019
    TheForsakeen likes this.
  7. ZenAF

    ZenAF Fapstronaut

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    Is a financially successful man with family, his passion as his job, friends etc. just another cog in the system? Then I want to be one too! All the alternatives I've seen so far either entail being a hermit or being a highbrowed socialist vegan dirt-bag who curses "at the system" all day, meanwhile still being 100% dependent on the charity of others.

    I don't think you've watched the lecture series. I know it's like 60 hours long, but man you can't boil Petersons' theory down into this over-simplified bottom line and call it done. Have you even understood what he means by meaning? If you did, why would you kill yourself then if you actually lived by his theory? Because suicide and having a meaningful life are two states of mind that couldn't be further apart.
    Also no, our stories are not just "collectively accepted mindconstructs". They've been tested since the beginning of time, since we had the means to communicate and before that they were present in our unconscious in raw form. These stories are just as real as numbers are. Are numbers real or just constructs? Well they're not something on the elemental chart, but if you know them well you can control matter, makes them real enough. And real means they are linked to the true nature of reality, they have power. Their power comes from the tens maybe even hundred of thousands of years of figuring out what's really important. Just because they're not made out of cellular biology they still are part of evolution. If you're going to call that delusional is like looking at the collective work of our ancestors and go "mah, we can do better." There's something arrogant and ungrateful about that attitude imo.

    Anyway man, I can only urge you to actually get into the theories the doctor lays out in depth.
     
  8. Hey Denice rising. I’ve read your posts and I bet your a really interesting fella to talk to. Maybe you need to find some like minded friends you can have these discussions with in real life, if your current circle of friends don’t appreciate your input that’s their loss not yours. I would start to take a more scientific approach to life. I find it amazing that we are birthed from the centre of giant stars billions of years ago, that’s fascinating isn’t it, there’s so much to learn from that without trying to tack meaning on to it. Although I find scientific study fascinating I also find a sunset beautiful and it hits me at a deep level. Being an atheist I know that this is to do with chemicals in the brain but I still enjoy it physically the same way as someone who has a more spiritual understanding of the feeling. What I’m really getting at is, I am the same as you, I cannot find pleasure in such mundane things as computer games and films, but I do find pleasure in the quest for knowledge and that knowledge of the sunset doesn’t dampen my appreciation of it. You seem to be very well read so this probably won’t be much help to you anyway but good luck with finding inner peace mate. Just remember what Descartes said “Cogito, ergo sum”.
     
    Fenix Rising likes this.
  9. I think Monk mode is the best curing from PMO and the fastest way to recover beside a healthy lifestyle. After recovering the body there is nothing better than living a healthy life in a good relationship and a moderate sex life. From you words, I think you have got a higher level of maturity by Nofap, Meditation and vigilance. I don't think everything you mentioned is related to Monk-Mode, there might be something you are missing to clear your ideology about understanding this world.
     
    Coffee Candy and Fenix Rising like this.
  10. Fenix Rising

    Fenix Rising Fapstronaut

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    I agree with everything written. If one innerly accepts nihilism, he would end his life the moment he does that as there is no point in living anymore. Even Nietzsche didn't truly adopt a mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence when one accepts the notion that life has no intrinsic meaning and value. Once he "kills god" he constructs value-creating Übermensch instead, trying to finding a meaning in self-created illusion which rises above the notion of good and evil and above the "crowd". That's not truly adopting nihilism, that's a man in a lifelong search of a meaning/god as an old friend and theology/philosophy professor at the Oxford University once told me when discussing the topic. "You can't meet true nihilist, because they are all six feet under", he pointed out. I came to the same conclusion after reading Frankl's Man's search for meaning. At the moment you experience the true inner void, you're looking at the abys of your own destruction. I did look in the void when holding my dead father in my hands. It was not the death that brought on the verge of abys but witnessing slow demise of a strong man's mind "brick by brick" until there was nothing left of him but a body. At that point in time I cursed the day I was born, called god sadistic prick if he exist and tell him I didn't ask him for a so called gift of life and that he should annihilate my body/mind and soul no nothingness. But still that was no true nihilisms because I was still open to possibility of god figure even if I cursed it and ask for my own demise. True nihilist would just kill himself on spot.
     
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  11. alexg1709

    alexg1709 Fapstronaut

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    Fenix get yourself a good partner someone to enjoy these simple things in life with. Once you in love your whole perception of life changes.

    Life is short and time flies very fast.
     

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