This post makes a striking contrast to this one by yourself two days ago.
The vision of heaven is written in the first person, while the vision of hell is written in the second. Are you saying that your life is like the first, while everyone else's is like the second?
Or... what? Is either of these an account of reality, of what someone would see if they followed you around all day?
A few more remarks about the contrast.
The vision of heaven is individual, spoken by "I". The vision of hell is all couched in terms of a general "you". The sufferer is unable to contemplate the idea that this is their own, individual state, but insists that this must be the condition of all.
The vision of heaven looks outward at the world, a place to find and create joy in. The vision of hell is turned in on itself. The character is curled up in a ball with eyes tightly shut, screaming forever at a world they refuse to see.
The vision of heaven is hopeful. The vision of hell is hopeless, at the end denying that any other state is possible for anyone.
The vision of heaven stands at 37 karma, that of hell, 133. (But the former is two days younger. It will be interesting to see where it stands in the days to come.)
The vision of heaven stands at 37 karma, that of hell, 133. (But the former is two days younger. It will be interesting to see where it stands in the days to come.)
Two days later, the vision of heaven has actually gone down to 33, while hell is now at 165.
Apparently, people prefer five to one to be told they are powerless trash than that anything else is possible. I am reminded of Eric Raymond's essay on good porn vs. bad porn, and why the latter sort is the overwhelming majority.
I am sad about this but not surprised. People in the rationalsphere lap up tales that they have no choice about anything, that they are scum floating on the surface of unconscious forces they are powerless to affect, that they do nothing, only observe what their body has done, that nothing is true, all is a lie, X is never about X, status has you, and you don't exist.
I didn't invent any of these memes, only turned up to 11 what runs in the bloodstream of the rationalsphere.
I suspect you're way off the mark here. I downvoted this post because it felt like magical thinking. "Just break your phone addiction and your life will be exactly what you want" is not true. But that seems to be the entire message of this post... except possibly to smugly boast? (Not sure if this is the author's real life.)
The tone is moralizing but not actionable or insightful. What is there to like about this heaven-posting?
What is there to like about this heaven-posting?
Inspiration. “Live this way, not the other way.” What is there to like about a beautiful picture? Is it the artist’s job to do more than create it?
What was your response to the hell posting? It too has nothing actionable, except the implicit “don’t live that way”.
Those are good points. I was expecting something different from this post but only based on my intuitions, not explicit framing.
Not to be rude, but I'm confused why this is labeled "Practical" and landed on the Frontpage. This reads like a personal blog to me, which I don't mind, but isn't what I expected based on the labels.
Like yes I can read into this post as being something more than just a slice of life story about the author, but this is roughly true of literally any slice of life post.
I like to wake up early to watch the sunrise. The sun hits the distant city first, the little sliver of it I can see through the trees. The buildings light up copper against the pale pink sky, and that little sliver is the only bit of saturation in an otherwise grey visual field. Then the sun starts to rise over the hill behind me. My house casts a blue shadow across the street, and a few trees start to get washed in pale gold. The fog burns away.
I sit at my window for an hour, and I don’t check my phone once. It’s in another room. It doesn’t matter.
I have thoughts, looking down at the people below me. Most of them are fleeting, the kind of thing I think about texting to my boyfriend, but instead I let them pass. If something is worth remembering or exploring, I’ll write it down in a notebook, or on my digital typewriter. Sometimes it’ll become a 1500-word essay, sometimes a poem or a song. Often, the thought just stays there, to be returned to, turned over in my mind until I’ve figured out the larger shape of it.
I make my breakfast, singing to myself. I bike to work with my phone in one of my panniers, out of reach, out of hearing range.
The two-year-old twins I nanny light up when I walk in, and they shout my name in their garbled toddler voices and run over to hug my legs. I crouch down to their level and talk to them, listen to them. The girl twin asks for “buh-ee”, and thanks to months of careful study of her consonant-poor language, I go and get her a blanket. The boy twin points at a picture of the moon and says “mon mon mon mon mon” more and more insistently until I say “That’s right, moon!”, at which point he is satisfied and gets on with his life. He just wants acknowledgement. Don’t we all.
At the park, I talk with other nannies, trading my broken Mandarin and Spanish for their broken English as we laugh and cluck over our many toddlers. I used to be far too afraid to talk to strangers, let alone in a language I wasn’t good at. Now it would feel weird not to.
While the kids nap, I read. I get through many books every month, not because of external pressure to read more, but because I like learning things, and because reading is something you can do even if you’re tired. I always liked reading when I was a kid, but for a few years I forgot to do it. (Sometimes the book is boring and I fall asleep, and that’s okay too.)
On my way home, I stop at the grocery store. While I wait in line to check out, I watch the people around me and think about nothing in particular. My mind is calm; the interstitial time doesn’t feel like suffering, like it once did. I don’t feel the need to be distracted.
At home, I open my laptop to respond to a time-sensitive email, and then half an hour later I realize I’m just on Wikipedia. Oops. I close my laptop and leave it behind.
When my boyfriend comes home, he picks up a guitar and noodles on it while we talk about our days. We laugh a lot. He’s gotten a lot better at the guitar in the past two years, deliberate practice on the pentatonic scales so he can pick out melodies. Sometimes we’ll play a song together, or I’ll inexpertly play piano while he reads. Most nights, we watch one episode of the one show we’re watching. The last three shows have been in Chinese, since he decided to learn it, and we pause a lot to puzzle through the sentences together.
We turn off our screens at 9 PM, even if the episode isn’t over. We brush our teeth and write in our journals and read books next to each other in bed, and we go to sleep so we can do it all again the next day. This is the life we’ve chosen, and we like it.