join a cult

i got hit on by a gay mexican outside a catholic (we'll come back to this) church. he commented that i had a tight ass. i was taken aback by how low his standards were. he offered to eat my ass, which i considered for a few seconds then dismissed the thought bc i didn't want to spread aids to him.

i have aids bc i rly needed to shit. i was at the highest (elevation) toilet in san francisco, but there was no toilet seat. so i made a half-assed (no pun intended) attempt at making a toilet seat with toilet paper. the moment i turned around and sat down, the sf winds blew my seat away and i sat on the nasty rim, contracting (potentially) aids.

the toilet was on twin peaks. i was at twin peaks bc i was depressed from a lack of a meaning to life.

previously, i arrived at the conclusion that meaning comes from a ceaseless tension. how come im back to questioning?

tension in a string requires there to be two ends. the ends being where u r now and where u want to be. i had one end, but not the other. obviously, i didn't know where i wanted to be. not even the vaguest shape of it. not even a direction.

so i went for a 5 hour walk to twin peaks. too many pent up thoughts unthought that needed to be thought about.

i am only able to think when there is no "work". (it's not even real work. it's just prompting chatgpt, the illusion of doing work. while waiting for chatgpt to get back, thought sneaks in: what's the point? does any of this matter?)

so i thought a bit.

smth ppl don't agree w me on is "if u don't have something it's bc u didn't want it bad enough". if u wanted smth bad enough. you would've gotten it already. so if u don't have it yet and u want it, the solution is to just keep wanting. as long as u dont stop wanting, and u want it bad enough, u will always end up getting it.

ask me what i want, i'll say a meaning to live for. a why. smth to want. but i don't have it yet. does that necessarily mean that i don't want it bad enough? i think yes.

because a part of me is ok with having nothing to live for. to just surviving and sustain my existence. static. unmoving. what difference is this to death? (eerie reminder of 躺平, a chinese cultural phenomenon characterized by a lack of want and an indulging in hedonism)

i still live when i am forced to live. i am down for being spontaneous, in the sense that i let the wind take me wherever, let other ppls' wishes and lives take over mine.

i previously said "too much thinking and not enough doing" but what if i don't see a point in doing. the difference pre and post action r not significant enough to warrant me doing it.

so i guess the solution is to just keep doing as wide a variety of things until i find a why. then afterward, do things for the why.

🪵💦

i was lacking a meaning bc i didnt know what i wanted. so i thought about what others wanted (mimetic desire), to see if any of them struck a bell.

1. larping. aka money. some ppl want money to show off (larping). porsches. watches. fancy dinners. i dont care ab any of that. idc ab money. i have no desire to spend it nor to earn it. i was extremely lucky to be born with a silver spoon in my mouth. i never had to worry ab money. everything i wanted (which wasnt much) was within reach. food. shelter. goose plushies. some ppl want money so that they dont have to worry ab money ever again. but if i already have the end, why do i need to bother w the means? there is literally nothing to gain. mimetic. u only do it bc others have it and u envy them. so u want it.

2. ppl. human connection. i hate ppl. i am known for hating on every and any person. i hate ppl. i am around ppl only to the extent that it invokes hatred. if i spend time alone, i have no where to direct my hatred, so i surround myself with ppl, long enough to vent my hatred but too long and i start hating them too much and i leave to go sit in my room alone. the reason (cope) i don't have a gf is bc it wouldn't add anything to my life, 0 times anything is still 0. plus if u dont have smth yet, u dont want it bad enuf. so i dont want a gf bad enuf. this is rly high on the mime-o-meter. we r social creatures. so we surround ourselves with people bc we see others do it and we want to do it too.

3. happiness. they say to just be happy. but what rly matters is having a meaning to life. "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'" (victor e frankl). i dont want to be happy. happiness can come as a side effect but it's not the main thing. mimetic. u see others being happy when u r sad. u want to be happy like them.

4. greatness. doing great work. i have no intrinsic motivation to do work, i only do work bc of extrinsic motivation (being surrounded by ppl i hate). but i am not even motivated by impressing them, idc what they think. but fundamentally, greatness is trying to live in other ppls eyes. bc what is great is defined by the aggregate opinion of others. if u say that ur definition of greatness is different than other ppls, sure. but a contrarian viewpoint is still contrarian with respect to a group of other ppls' viewpoint. which is by definition a viewpoint that can only be derived bc of the amount of people that believe in the opposing viewpoint. so u r still not detached from society. mimetic.

5. meaningful work, similarly is defined by other peoples' definition of what is meaningful. it's just a synonym of great. bc, we r inherently unable to detach ourselves from society. unless u just run away into the mountains by yourself and think up thoughts independently.

6. freedom. escape. more commonly, travel. e.g. to go to a high mountain. this, ultimately, is the point of life. well not life, rather rat race. i was visiting a friend's lab, and visited the rat room. it was a rat race in the literal sense of the phrase. 10 rats in a cage x 500 cages stacked in walls and walls of cages. each cage was meant to house not even one for how cramped it was. they were all trying to escape the cage. clawing at the little vent that was the line between captivity and freedom. even a creature as primitive as the rat, or rather the mice (same difference), have an instinctive drive for freedom (or at least for its predecessor, more space). the ultimate escape from the rat race is realizing that there is no escape. we r all in rat races. just in different shape and form. we observe other rats in other rat races and we commentate, seldom do we reflect on the fact that we r in a race too. just one that has a viewing window into the other¹. i want escape. but this is a lack of want. can this even exist? do i just want to travel the world? but i hate doing nothing. and traveling the world consists of doing a whole lot of nothing (sightseeing) mimetic. we see other ppl w freedom and how "happy" they are, and we want it too. in china, a common phrase on social media is "替我自由" (enjoy freedom for me), in response to a video of someone traveling and being free. peak mime behavior. (eerie reminder #2) nietzsche ran away into the mountains to think, as did many philosophers, and ppl make fun of him for just thinking and not doing anything for society. but putting ppl up to the standard of doing something for society is fundamentally mimetic too. why do ppl have to do things? says who? says society? that's stupid. so what's the point in anything. philosophers r the "happiest" ppl bc they have thought all the thoughts that they wanted to think and r free of any mental burdens. i wanted to go to twin peaks for quite a few days, ever since seeing an x post (mimetic desire). i wanted to go with friends but they don't like the prospect of walking, so i didn't go and did what they wanted to do instead (mimetic desire). when all my friends left, i went (nothing left to mime, except for that x post). climbing twin peaks is like celeste. ever since i first played the game, i've romanticized climbing a mountain. this is the closest i can get in sf. again, mimetic, i see celeste climbing the mountain and being free and having all sorts of enlightenments, so i want to climb too. i am miming a video game character, which is in essence miming the video game creator, or whoever designed the storyline. only at the base of a mountain can u appreciate its grandiosity. only at the peak can u appreciate ur littleness. and walking up the mountain instead of driving up gives u a different sheer of ur littleness, which is equivalent to its grandiosity.

   

   suicidal penguin runs away from colony without food and heads for the mountains towards fated death

7. romance not love. romanticizing. to romanticize. i dont do things for the sake of romanticizing. i romanticize things bc i want to want them. but i dont. i only want them bc other ppl who have it look "happy", and i envy that. mimetic. e.g. chasing the sunset when walking to twin peaks. thinking "if we move fast enough, the day will never end. and we would never have to face the solitude of the dark." which is just another version of freedom. freedom of thought.

8. skill. aka competence. i am incompetent. in a startup, the only two things that matter are product + distribution. im good at neither. i feel bad for not moving the needle. the only thing im good for is working hard. but there is no end to this. so i am just wasting time under the pretense of working hard. it's fake work. i work hard to polishing a piece of shit, but it's still a piece of shit. i optimize things only to a local minima, not to a global minima. i am incompetent. that means i dont have skill. that necessarily means i dont want to be skilled bad enough.

9. god. religion is stupid bc it's the most mimetic thing out there. u r literally doing things for the point of being the ultimate mime to jesus or some great virtuous being whom u r preached their values. and christianity, or whatever the prevalent religion in ur locale, is the cheapest, lowest form of mimetic desire. because it has the most people in it, its the ultimate mime. or if u r in a godless secular country, like china, money is the ultimate mime. "everyone wants money so i must want money." god is dead. money is the new god, or occasionally, they coexist in a delicate balance. coming to think of it, money might place higher than religion on the mime-o-meter. an additional reason why religion is stupid, i.e. christianity, is bc they indoctrinate kids from the time they r born, literally baptizing a baby. when kids' minds and mental models of the world are still forming, they r exposed to the ultimate mimetic desire. religion is a cult. cults r stupid.

10. self-improvement being a bot, not thinking for yourself, is the epitome of mimetic desires. we remove ourselves degree by degree as we either become less like the people who we think are bots or more like the ppl who we don't think r bots, or have something that we don't have. again, mimetic desire. but the mimetic desire here works both ways: towards or away. and it's fundamentally equivalent. but when u lack a meaning to life, u r not reaching for either of the two. u r not trying to become less of smth nor more of smth. u r just static.

11. knowledge/erudition/thinking. reading books is mimetic. u read books, u see something that others have that u don't have, i.e. relationships for fiction books, money/power/status for nonfiction. or meta one layer, u see other "smart" ppl reading books. u envy that. u also want to be "smart", so u read books. mimetic. i'm ambivalent to it. i want to be "smarter", but only to the extent that i already am in the process of. i don't do things to the end of being smart. i don't see smartness as particularly attractive. u have to deploy that smartness to some use. but i dont see the point in anything. so there is no point in being smart. perhaps it's writing essays. i want to write better essays. writing essays seem fun. maybe i should join an essay club. but i heavily doubt whether this is genuine. it's again just a mimetic desire, i only do it bc "smart" ppl (pg) do it. this feels like an infatuation. but perhaps to sustain the infatuation, one should surround themselves w ppl who r similarly infatuated (cult, maybe yc is good enuf for this?) but this is the best shot of an answer that i have right now. so we'll go with it. problem solved! (for now)

all of our desires r mimetic.

this is a depressing thought. i wish it wasn't so.

for non physical objective truths, what is objective is just the sum of everyone's subjective. bc at the end of the day, we can't remove ourselves from society, which comprises of ppl who r full of mimetic desires. recursive definition, but it works.

the grass is greener on the other side. this phrase is inherently mimetic too. we want what we don't have, which is smth that other ppl have (envy), and we interpret as them living "happier" lives than we are (envy) so we want that.

so lacking a meaning to life = not wanting anything = not having memetic desires = already having everything u ever wanted. the spark is dead.

everything listed above is a cult. but then, anything worthwhile is also a cult. again, mimetic desire. "worth" while is fundamentally the same as mimetic desire, because "worth" is defined by what society thinks of it.

• e.g. a dollar is a dollar only because of the 300m americans + proliferation of the petro dolllar and euro dollar.
• e.g. yc summer school is no better than a religious ritual. they literally have divine figures like jensen huang in his ritual robe (leather jacket) sitting in the middle of a dark room, illuminated by a spotlight, preaching ai b2b saas. how much more cult-like can it get?

so r all cults stupid? is everything stupid? is wanting stupid? yes*

*yes, from the perspective of not wanting. but this isn't a prevalent viewpoint. so no. society defines yes or no, bc society is one big cult divided into recursive mini cults, to the base case of an individual or equivalent, all exhibiting in/outgroup bias, each proclaiming that their cult is better. every member is trying to spread the cult, bc ppl want to feel significant, that they r better than others, that they matter, so they preach their cult. if u look around, u will see that everyone's a clergyman trying to get u to join some cult.

this is a pointless exercise. the conclusion that life is meaningless is not novel. but it's a clearer understanding that life is inherently mimetic, with opposing pulls that eventually shape us to become less and less mimetic. except for the edge cases. which is where u see the richest/most successful ppl where their wants r so vast that even being in their position doesn't satisfy them, but this escapes the definition of mimetic, it's an advanced form that takes shape in a quasi-self-perpetuating mimicry.

letting mimetic desire have its way necessarily forces u to adopt the viewpoints of others and the wants of others. and from this new position, u look back at what u once were and think "old me was so stupid". and the this cycle repeats, indefinitely. inherently, there is no difference between u at $t_2$ than at $t_1$, just that now u have less time left on this world.

but none of this answers the question. it just further expand on the question. the answer probably is to join a cult. live long enough to join a cult.

"cult" carries a negative connotation. so perhaps a better word is "society".

live long enough to join society.

u only feel meaningless bc u r not part of a society yet. or u r part of the wrong society.

so find ur society.

there's no point in feeling like life is pointless. similarly, there is no point in feeling that life has a point. but ppl who feel that life has a point have life easier. bc "Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'"

elders have said to me, "don't get into philosophy too young. bc u won't end up doing anything meaningful." but meaning doesnt matters (anti-mimetic, which is still mimetic). what u do doesnt matter. it's who u do it with. so u can do philosophy, as long as u join a philosophy cult.

so join a cult.

post action does brings another side effect, u necessarily get wiser (but wanting wisdom/erudition is inherently mimetic as well, but so is everything, so who cares). maybe do things just to get wiser. why not. but do join an erudition cult (academia? or the startup world, where ppl r generally smart...)

join a cult!

1. inspired by cedric chan ↩