luka

Well-known member
i don't want to close down the madness conversation either. i'm not a policeman. i think the only interesting way to approach it, or the only useful way, would be to ask (not just blissblogger, but i'll aim it at him)

what are those traits and tendencies and abilities of yours that you associate with madness?

i think in my case, what draws the schizophrenic to me, and has done for many years, particularly when i was working in the coffee shops and they could visit me every day, is that i know i don't live inside a box. i know it is a shared spatial environment but that it is also, to a large degree, a shared mental and even emotional environment. emotions leak. consciousness is, at some level, shared, a commons.

they can talk to me at the level at which they want to talk, with those truths implicitly acknowledged.
and i can talk like that with them. and for both of us it is very liberating and we feel we can breathe normally. speaking for myself i get physically sick and emotionally despondent if i am starved of conversation on that level. i feel trapped and suffocated.

and yes, also, as you say, the ability to make connections, and to form patterns of information, overarching and interlocking patterns from the data.

but the root of it is porosity and the shared space and this is why paranoia is the the one overriding danger for all schizophrenics. we are the object of hostility and scorn. we are sneered at and looked down upon. we are feared. we are mocked. we are surveilled and spied on. none of this is imaginary and to be exposed to that, really feeling the density and the ubiquity of that can be overwhelming.

i learned this from being a young skunk addict. in my late teens i realised that every conversation has a subtext comprised of insult and mockery and attack. that because language is artfully ambiguous (and this is the whole point of finnegans wake) it can embed multiple meanings in the same phrase.

and if you develop an ear for it you will know that friends and family as well as strangers, are tearing shreds off one another all the time. which is why i like the hashtags here because it's a kind of literalisation of that... the composed superego and ego above the line and the snarling, thrashing (and very funny and truthful) id beneath it.

where you can run into serious problems is when you take that hidden id of any conversation, that hostility and scorn, for the only true reading of the text, or even just as more real, than the love and camaraderie and support which is also present and also very real and true.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
my experience is different and more nuanced, and i'd gently suggest, that yours is too.
i often use the internet badly and sometimes i use it well. if you can make a connection it is very good and very rewarding just as if you make a connection in real life it is very good and very rewarding.

i work outside, watch the river rise and fall with the tides, watch the clouds drifting and the light changing and the sun moving west and i talk to strangers and they tell me about their lives, about what is preoccupying them, whether good or bad, and i write a poem for them and sometimes they laugh and sometimes they are moved to tears and of course all that kind of carry on sounds like it is the complete opposite of online life.

but it's not

it's just the act of making a human connection. and if you make that connection, regardless of whether it is done there or here, it's very powerful and it's very productive. and the more you open yourself up to that, the more rewarding it becomes. the less you give of yourself the less real you are to other people, 2 dimensional, flickering like a weak television signal, in and out of focus.

It depends what we're talking about -if about the combination of communicating through screens and work, then I do think it's often very bad, as you're often communicating with the split off parts of others in a way that breaks down more easily under physical conditions (people relax more). When I've worked in shared workplaces, easily the best part was simply talking to other people face-to-face in the way that you mention, some of whom were relative strangers, some not. Working outside is an ideal, but I agree that it's less important than human connection.

People morph themselves to a screen persona, so I think the quality of interaction is often very different. The lack of verbal and physical clues to who that person is, flattens out the interaction (everyone who I've ever met 'off the internet' has been different in real life in myriad ways, from the character they presented, and of course people have false selves in physical life, but it's much easier to negotiate them and transform them into something satisfying - I'm open to the possibility that this might change somewhat though as humanity exists more and more in the dematerial) - though I of course agree that the more you give of yourself, 'even' this flattened connection becomes richer.

Using the internet without interacting with others is more easily broken down into good and bad - non-addictive or relatively healthy, and addictive. You just know. As soon as you bring other people into the picture, it becomes much more difficult to tell in the moment what one is feeling, I find, and how the interaction will ultimately play on you emotionally.
 

luka

Well-known member
everyone who I've ever met 'off the internet' has been different in real life in myriad ways, from the character they presented, and of course people have false selves in physical life, but it's much easier to negotiate them and transform them into something satisfying - I'm open to the possibility that this might change somewhat though as humanity exists more and more in the dematerial)

that's interesting because my experience has been precisely the opposite to the point that the transition feels seamless. that i am still in the same space with the same minds having the same conversation it's just i can see their bodies now. it's a very uncanny sensation.

i have never worked with a computer in my life and of course in offices you are dealing with split-off parts.

Using the internet without interacting with others is more easily broken down into good and bad - non-addictive or relatively healthy, and addictive. You just know.

this of course is true and is why i prefaced my remarks by saying i often use the internet badly. as glazed eye dead time. and once i've fallen into that trap i cant do anything else. im good for nothing. can't read can't even relax and stare at the wall.
 
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luka

Well-known member
but it does occur to me that you are talking about personality whereas i have a preference and even a hunger, for meeting at a different point. to make the connection at the immaterial not at the quotidian. of course i can do banter and small talk and all this stuff, im good at it. but my preference is to meet at the immaterial, even when we are sharing the same space. this is what i was alluding to when i talked about getting ill if i can't get it. does this make sense to you?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
that's interesting because my experience has been precisely the opposite to the point that the transition feels seamless. that i am still in the same space with the same minds having the same conversation it's just i can see their bodies now. it's a very uncanny sensation.

i have never worked with a computer in my life and of course in offices you are dealing with split-off parts.

this of course is true and is why i prefaced my remarks by saying i often use the internet badly. as glazed eye dead time. and once i've fallen into that trap i cant do anything else. im good for nothing. can't read can't even relax and stare at the wall.

Really? I'd be interested to talk about that more, it merits a fuller discussion (tho I have to start work on a screen, this screen, in two minutes, so will write more later).

Yep, it's the combination of work persona and online/internet communication persona that can be really awful. I've met (work) people in person who I thought I hated based on lengthy online interaction, and come to like them quite rapidly.

I know, I was agreeing with you there! In the 'pure' browsing state addiction is a daily horror, but it is a clearer dichotomy between good and bad here, I think. I rarely feel indifferent after browsing.
 

luka

Well-known member
but it does occur to me that you are talking about personality whereas i have a preference and even a hunger, for meeting at a different point. to make the connection at the immaterial not at the quotidian. of course i can do banter and small talk and all this stuff, im good at it. but my preference is to meet at the immaterial, even when we are sharing the same space. this is what i was alluding to when i talked about getting ill if i can't get it. does this make sense to you?

this is something i think is worth thinking through as well. the point at which you make the connection.
my experience is that the 'higher' the point at which you want to make it is, the fewer people you will find to meet you there but correspondingly and paradoxically, the more universal the experience.

if you think about the people you interact with regularly, both here and offline, just ask yourself where the point of contact is.
 

luka

Well-known member
i should make it clear though that i have no wish to say goodbye to the material world. i like it. i like trees and rivers and hills and forests and mountains and the sea and the seashore and i like cities very much as well. i wrote that long boring poem 'the materials' as a goodbye to the material world because i love the material world. it does, as everyone is attesting too here, sort you right out. https://miracleinvasion.blogspot.com/search?q=the+materials

edit: just read over that again and im doing myself a disservice. it's not boring it's one of the greatest of all London poems, of any era, and although it's unfinished even in this state im very proud of it.
 
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pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
can't remember a forum thread that's had me thinking about it when out irl as much as this one does.

the connection thing with nature & people is what keeps coming up. was reminded of it when i was using my smartphone earlier today. i fucking loathe touch screens. grrr. typing on them becomes automatic, but can any of you remember making the switch over? it felt so strange. where is my physical click for each press? i still miss that. and an audible click being played from the speaker isn't fooling anyone! ('cept maybe my gran)

in combination with autocorrect's failings, typing on a touch screen encapsulates the dematerialized sensation pretty acutely. maybe because i use it so much? i haven't bothered to look up any studies on their use, but my instincts are telling me there's some kind of psychic net negative for us all in the long term. like all kids nowadays my 9yo daughter is a wiz at them, learning her way around apps so quick. i'm pretty much on her level now, but it takes me a fair bit longer. deep down i believe that virtual buttons are playing some weird game with our heads. detatching us from the real. not necessarily on purpose. but it's something subtle. i'd compare it to the switch from classic hand drawn animation to pixar's pseudo 3D style animation. i think the cartoon Reboot was the first time i saw that style, which was shortly followed by Toy Story. since way back then in the mid 90s, i never liked it. it was too uncanny valley for me. not that i knew that term. i just wasn't able to enjoy it. i still can't quite explain exactly why. is it the over saturated colors? is it the weird, trying to be natural movements? is it that it's a bit too perfect? is it because it doesn't leave you any room for your own imagination? i don't know exactly. but it's like if you had two plates of perfectly cooked vegetables in front of you and you know the one on the left looks amazing but is genetically modified and the one on the right is natural, untouched by science, but slightly less easy on the eye. which one are you going to choose? also, it doesn't help that along with the pixar style's domination in the western world, there's also been a surge in syrupy, hard to believe they're capable of genuine emotional expression - voice actors. which i guess isn't exclusive to animation. the american entertainment delivery system. which seeped out into the rest of the world. e.g. asian kids entertainment where it's like they've pushed it through this autotune-esque hyperreal prism and turned it into the uber syrup as seen in the likes of j-pop videos and modern arcade machines. after spending a bit of time in asia this year, seeing the omnipresent malls, the childish entertainments many of which people stay attached to late into their life. everything is sold with a cartoon character, the choice of big inflated, neon fonts etc etc. kind of got an impression of where the west could be headed not too far from now if we continue on this path. those big, isolated asian cities. totally drained of any signs of soul. Kuala Lumpur was definitely a case in point. there was a sense of coldness between people there. it's like dubai in that it's a relatively new city, built with foreign investment. not a lot in the way of history. pretty much everything felt artificial. including all the interactions. american designed interactions. propagandized via hollywood. once you get to a certain generation and younger, they're all under the spell. you can find it in india, s.e. asia etc etc. a necessary falseness in order to get people in the right mood for consumption. ok i'm rambling here. terrible at writing because one thought triggers 100 more. if we ever did this live f2f, i'd make much more sense than this scatty bollocks.

nevertheless, this stuff is relevant. one of the symptoms of dematerialization is this sense of digital nausea, in response to all the virtuality.

interacting with people. levels of awareness. if you're the type like me to be over aware, then falseness can be an obstacle. even though rationally i know it's a harmless survival mechanism for navigating the seas of daily life. makes things flow easier. but i find it a chore to perform and endure (may have asbergers) as things get more and more virtual, the more this falseness proliferates. so i'm less and less inclined to seek out connections. but right now i'm travelling, and meeting people can be hard to avoid. staying in places with communal spaces has to be one of the greatest gifts to the social butterflies of the world. you're all in the same boat. there's instant convo material and that can then lead to going out for a walk or getting pissed together or whatever. on this (6 weeks so far) trip i've had maybe 4 interactions which i will keep with me and hopefully remember for the rest of my life. some of them just a few hours long. some of them stretched over several days. the thing about them that makes them stand out from the rest was the level of openess and honesty we felt able to express with each other. which led to all kinds of discussions, laughter, and on some occasions even good spirited arguments. honesty is becoming a rare commodity and i cherish these moments more than most. the more open i am, the more i expose my vulnerabilities (not dramtically, basically just being honest/human) the quicker any percieved differences between us melt away. with the right set of people things can quickly become familiar and all of a sudden, who we are is less important than what we're creating in that moment. starting to realize this is one of the things to live for. human connection, which i'm going to call soul (suck on that, scientific rationalists!)

where you can run into serious problems is when you take that hidden id of any conversation, that hostility and scorn, for the only true reading of the text, or even just as more real, than the love and camaraderie and support which is also present and also very real and true.

all too familiar. spent half my life figuring this out.
 
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version

Well-known member
I still use my first phone, one of those old Nokia things, there's definitely something about the click of an actual button. The phone itself is a talking point these days, I get people asking if they can play Snake all the time.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
"Madness" is probably exaggerating a bit, but I have certain eccentricities, which i think of as valves for the release of psychic steam

But specifically in terms of the dematerialised lifestyle and the internet, i am locked into neurotic patterns of behaviour - mostly to do with data foraging and data hoarding, but other things too - and these activities are addictive, I am very aware that they are pointless and unhealthy, and when I'm engaged in them I often levitate above myself and think "you are literally killing time here" - and killing time in a sense is killing yourself. Your sense of that becomes very keen when you reach an advanced age like mine!

You also become aware of how physically unhealthy it is, being locked into these screen habits. Breathing becomes shallower, heart rate increases like you've drunk one cup of coffee too many, eyes fixed rigidly at a very short distance, posture slumped and hunched, legs cramped. In fact I've recently developed some kind of arm muscle strain through excessive use of the mouse - particular movements of dragging and clicking related to these repetitious, addictive activities of foraging, hoarding, organising, blogging.

If you can wrench yourself out of the screen / desk / seat set-up and out into the streets, for a walk - everything improves - muscles loosen, blood pumps, breathing deepens - the gaze stretches out to longer distances, or moves between close and far, as it's supposed to... your mood elevates within minutes... the mind clears... you have better thoughts...

At the same time these screen-based habits of gathering and hoarding are related to what I do for a living - pattern recognition etc - so there's a sense in which I've made obsession-compulsive disorder work for me.

it's on a spectrum - there's a way in which you can generate a certain kind of productive mania through rubbing ideas together and making connections, your mind starts racing, it's exhilarating

but it can definitely go too far, it becomes a kind of mental conflagration

K-punk's blog would go up and down on that spectrum
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
this is something i think is worth thinking through as well. the point at which you make the connection.
my experience is that the 'higher' the point at which you want to make it is, the fewer people you will find to meet you there but correspondingly and paradoxically, the more universal the experience.

if you think about the people you interact with regularly, both here and offline, just ask yourself where the point of contact is.

It's a fair point, but I still think that the 'affect' (or choose whatever name you want for it) that manifests when two people meet in person, is a whole different level of communication...things which are avoidable online are no longer so, different stimuli. Even if you've been meeting minds at a high/deep level online. You have a whole world of qualifying information to deepen the experience/contact. In fact, I'd say that most times it makes you appreciate someone more.
 

luka

Well-known member
i always always try and meet the people i enjoy talking to online in real life which implies i must agree with baboon i guess i just dont take such a Manichean view of the online/offline divide that's all.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
At the same time these screen-based habits of gathering and hoarding are related to what I do for a living - pattern recognition etc - so there's a sense in which I've made obsession-compulsive disorder work for me.

I like this observation. Capitalism makes virtues of many conditions that it simultaneously vilifies if a person isn't successful, blurring the boundaries of illness - OCD seems quite an innocent one when that list contains full-on sociopathy.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i always always try and meet the people i enjoy talking to online in real life which implies i must agree with baboon i guess i just dont take such a Manichean view of the online/offline divide that's all.

It's an agreement.

I don't see online communication as bad, just less 3D in every sense. I love online communication when it's happening, but it's the afterglow that recedes more quickly (also there's the addiction issue). I'm sitting here gently smiling as I write this, and later that smile will be gone.
 

luka

Well-known member
where is my physical click for each press?

again this is the absence of resistance i've been talking about. granted there is a modicum of muscular effort involved in the movement but what is missing is the sense of a world which pushes back, which, to look at it one way, actively opposes us..
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
i learned this from being a young skunk addict. in my late teens i realised that every conversation has a subtext comprised of insult and mockery and attack. that because language is artfully ambiguous (and this is the whole point of finnegans wake) it can embed multiple meanings in the same phrase.

and if you develop an ear for it you will know that friends and family as well as strangers, are tearing shreds off one another all the time. which is why i like the hashtags here because it's a kind of literalisation of that... the composed superego and ego above the line and the snarling, thrashing (and very funny and truthful) id beneath it.

where you can run into serious problems is when you take that hidden id of any conversation, that hostility and scorn, for the only true reading of the text, or even just as more real, than the love and camaraderie and support which is also present and also very real and true.

I want to talk about this more (not that I've started), but perhaps another thread is needed as it's a massive topic and absolutely don't want to derail dematerialisation
 

luka

Well-known member
and again this is where the disconnect happens when it comes to our deepest needs. the need for love and sex and companionship. the need to be understood. when we try to meet these needs we find the world does still push back, does still resist us. we are suddenly confronted with the one thing computers and the internet conspire never to give us, which is negative feedback. having to adapt our behaviour and our beliefs in response to failing and criticism.

(although.... i am about to instantly contradict myself and say that one of the things i've found increasingly useful here on dissensus is the negative feedback. i think im getting better at manipulating my peers and leading them into the cult.....no, wait, i mean i think im getting better at listening and interacting and being patient.)
 
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