Quality of Lives
May 17, 2026
There is a certain idea that the aesthete, artitist, humanist, etc who connects with their senses, reality, in a stronger (not more True) than anyone else must be uniquely tortured, too. That theres some sort of intellectual benefit to being miserable is a sort of extention, which can be more safely rejected at its face. But the former cannot be - I think it may very well be true. This would have some un intuitive consuquences for someone trying to maximize those qualities.
Every once in a while, almost always late an night and alone, often after watching a certain type (type as in: quality or feel, not theme or genre), I get in a romatintic, humanist but also antisocial high - planning to upheave my habits in favor of a chaotic, unstable life to foster this type of personality. The secure, habitual life that I'm talking about here is one I've branded internally as a "Life is Good" lifestyle - a dad in a happy family with a laid back attitude and a great life that works around it - a life someone has to earn, to be sure, but at this point, one of coasting. I've followed this sort of lifestyle, and its done me much good. Procuring habits is a powerful thing and easier than anything else I've tried, and generally I've done so in order to become more pro-social and to score higher on an average social interaction.
This other idea, that this is not a life best lived, and that in fact some uncontrolled and drastic movements are conductive to a life better lived is plausible to me. A life of consistency and predictablility is just not attractive to me, though it's where I'm headed. Maybe this is the type of thing that feels depressive when comtemplating, but is just normal life when experiencing? And in retrospect just as depressive, hence the prototypical businessman deathbead woes?
I've made some drastic lifestyle changes in the last year, and at this point, now that things are ~ stable, it's not like my days are euphoric comparitavely or anything, so how much of these preceeved major differences in lifestyle are just acclimated to by the host? Without knowing exactly what it means or why I think it, I'd say that the bigger influence is your ego - the concept of yourself which you hold internally, and subconsiously. On some level, I do hope that this is the case, just because it's so interesting: humanity has discovered the narrative, and has used it to further our understanding of ourselves, but somehow these tools have seeped in to our own control system, and so our concepts and myths of exploration and understanding have gained control. Mematically very powerful ideas.
A different but important and related consdideration would be the social impact: you attract the people you cater to - but I think that regardless, the socialite conversationalist is more interesting and interested in most interactions (?) in which case, regardless of signalling you allegance to a tribe, its worth considering how your choice effects your ego: of these characters which you can play, which does the things you want to do?
!!! I think that a really big thing is that a lot of people get stuck playing some character, and a quality of that character is that they don't change characters (that's the default, after all!). But, to play a character who can do anything freely is more liberating - the problem, then, is creating this bridge which ones ego can traverse, going from point A to point B, without any logical jumps or incongruencies, as defined by the person's subconsious evaluator.
This is something which I should work on.