Maybe I’m struggling
Joy. Hope. Friendship. Silliness. The largest miniature model in the world and roadside oddities. Modern feminist punk bands and marketers who use the word “Originals” when there are no copycats, children or otherwise downstream products. Oh yes my friends, the world outside can be grand and I don’t know why they all want to hide it from us. They, those harbingers of mental anguish and doom, working as they do to confuse and terrify us. But we get to refuse and resist. We choose something else. Or rather, sometimes I choose, when my brain is working with me instead of against me.
I’m going to quote Viktor Frankl a couple times in this episode, so fair warning. I’ve been…struggling. Mask slipping, etc. Prepare yourselves for overindulgent whining and moaning because my brain hasn’t been on straight. The other day I started playing Stardew Valley and was crying in the first four minutes when the little 16bit grandfather wrote:
“If you’re reading this, you must be in dire need of a change. The same thing happened to me, long ago. I’d lost sight of what mattered most in life… real connections with other people and nature. So I dropped everything and moved to the place I truly belong.” Grandpa’s letter
CRYING. Anyhoo, isn’t it strange how you remember every book you’ve ever read? Someone asked me recently if I’d read Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, and I immediately knew that I hadn’t. First of all, I knew I hadn’t and wondered exactly how that had happened. But then secondly I thought “O Rly? That’ll solve everything! I should definitely read this entire book right now while I’m struggling with my brain.” Who couldn’t use a little light reading right before summer turns to autumn? Why wouldn’t I try to square the circle of meaning in my shithead of a brain with a quintessential autographical exploration of meaning from a psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz and several other camps? Surely when you feel like you are struggling to keep on keeping on, an intellectual foray into the psychological reality of death camp prisoners is the way to go.
Yeah, let’s all get on our happy hats and try to sort through [waves around with a limp wrist and slightly moist hands] The World™ with a deep dive into human meaning in the worst of circumstances.
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms– to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Hard to argue with a Holocaust survivor, no?
Surely, surely, this is all going to turn around. It’s not that bad, my information landscape is just incorrectly calibrated for someone of my…constitution. Surely, surely, everything is going to be roses and applesauce, just keep going. Just choose a better attitude because ffs everything is fine.
- Famous Cognitive Psychology Experiments that Failed to Replicate > https://aethermug.com/posts/famous-cognitive-psychology-experiments-that-failed-to-replicate
- The Future Will Be Mundane > https://archive.is/20250817070701/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/16/opinion/future-ai-adaptation.html#selection-510.1-510.2
- ‘Blueskyism’, Political Violence, and Open Social Networks Under Authoritarianism > https://connectedplaces.online/blueskyism-political-violence-and-open-social-networks-under-authoritarianism/
- Boundaries Are in the Eye of the Beholder > https://planktonvalhalla.com/20240227-boundaries-are-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/
- the Algorithms are not working for us > https://blog.weareopen.coop/the-algorithms-are-not-working-for-us/
Maybe I’m transitory
The Weight of Grief — Celeste Roberge in USA
Two weekends ago, when this recent news cycle started, I wasn’t reading the Internet or books. Instead, I read the little factoids at the Minatur Wunderland and I read the scoreboard at a German National League roller derby bout. I read faces and I read menus, as I wandered around Hamburg with some friends. We walked 24km in a day and on the way home we talked about The World. Then I went back to reading again.
More and more I think that I should not be reading the news, and I should also not be reading what other people reading the news have to say about the news. It’s not just the news that I read on the internet, and I’m not sure reading random stuff of the internet is doing my brain any favours. Part of me wants to shut down and to stop working, writing, thinking about all the things.
“An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.” Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
My moral innards have long considered hedonism a bit repugnant, but reframing it as a “passive life” that “affords” fulfilment? Yes please.
I will find a reason to be and none of our suffering is not meaningless.
- Miniatur Wunderland > https://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/
- Atlas Obscura > https://www.atlasobscura.com/
- Who aligns the aligners? > https://alignmentalignment.ai/caaac
Maybe I need help
I think I might.