I want to say something to the people that responded to my post, but man I just feel demoralized.
I need to sit down and think some more. I didn't plan on sleeping tonight anyway.
I guess I just want to respond to myself on this one, after a touch of musing:
For those people like myself, existing in my kind of society which is notoriously materialistic, self-serving, quick to judge harshly, completely degenerate in any path to enlightenment, and valuing shallow promiscuity and sexual conquest, I just don't know how to make a start. It's reasonable, it's rational to assume that any person is simply looking out for their own best interest, and what do I have to offer any woman? My half-decent good looks, when any even average looking woman has a cadre of very good looking men trying to get to know her? My naive sense of humor that's hit and miss near to everyone? What do I have that someone else in the vicious, the treacherous, the thorny and forbidding world of romance and dating can't provide to them better? The kind of selfless love you describe, it doesn't come from nowhere, it's something that's so tightly controlled by circumstance that I can't imagine someone in such a sad and pathetic position like myself ever stumbling over it by serendipity, it's just not possible.
I feel as though I am but a foreign animal gasping for air in an environment it wasn't meant to exist in. The selfless love you described, I don't know if I'll ever feel that kind of acceptance, that kind of affection in my lifetime, but maybe if material circumstances line up correctly I can have atleast a shallow, selfish love where we would be merely using eachother to avoid loneliness and the harshness of a solitary life.
I don't know why I had it in me to write something so utterly defeatist, but still at the time it felt really right to do so. I even knew it at the time, there's my usual inner monologue: "This is shit and you know it Josh, but hey, I'm not the one in charge here, and you know that too.", but I went ahead writing those words, telling myself to believe them. but why?
So I took a moment to think about it. I can't remember the exact video, but I remember a monologue from an old Jewish man on youtube explaining his thoughts, and he discussed something called "Thanatos" (death, in latin or something IIRC) and the word was used to describe the self-destructive and suicidal feelings a person has as completely natural constructs of the mind. Because when you think about it, why would nature, why would the evolution of our species allow us to be crippled by doubt, or feel depressed, or to get so sad we commit suicide? These are all purely negative things that hinder your ability to reproduce. So when we have a natural instinctive fear of heights, starvation, and drowning... why do we throw ourselves, or rather, even allowed to throw ourselves into the clutch of such negative feelings that provide the impetus for self-destruction?
I think there's two reasons: For one, it's obvious that when member of the species has identified itself to be in a disadvantageous position, that when it doesn't fit into it's natural environs with it's peers the mind is simply prepared to destroy itself for the betterment of the race as a whole. Now I'm not gonna touch on this one again so don't bring it up. Seriously don't.
For reason number two, it's been a great many pages ago, but earlier in this thread I made a post on 'being addicted to feeling bad' or something along those lines. That I just feel better when I'm sitting on my hands and wallowing in my own pity, rather than doing the obviously obvious action of doing something to get out of my rut. I thought about this some more, and I think it might just be because my mind wants to confirm something to itself. It's true that I want to improve my life some how, and that I'm always keeping myself down somehow with my negative thinking, but there's a problem in that I'm not keeping the negative thinking to myself, I'm always sharing it with you guys. Why feel compelled to share these feelings, when I obviously just spout the defeatist crap like that above? That's where I think my mind just wants to confirm to itself that those feelings are valid, that I don't value my own opinion or trust my own judgment to confirm this thinking, so it needs confirmation that this thinking is valid from others. Why does it need confirmation? Because it wants to believe it made the right decision, that in believing that the world is terrible, that my situation was unwinnable, that I'm simply so deeply flawed that it can't be changed or challenged, it's negative affirmations are declared valid and it can finally rest easier. My mind rests knowing that there really wasn't anything I could do to change my life, so the massive burden of regret that I haul around everyday can finally be dissolved, and I just don't even need to worry anymore. I can live without having to worry about dying with all this regret, and that's a prize my subconscious just can't ignore, so it seeks the path of self-destruction.
And that's about as far as I've gotten with that line of logic.
So, hell, now what.