5 ms·

keeping my realist comments to myself took me more than two decades to become competent at. it'll take me another two decades to master. the trick is to unders

keeping my realist comments to myself took me more than two decades to become competent at. it'll take me another two decades to master. the trick is to understand that all people live in a marginal headspace where engagement with the nature of the world is heavily filtered and limited so that their psychology can continue to mostly function on a day to day basis. this is true whether you are a "realist" or "pessimist" or "optimist". piercing the veil is uncomfortable and unwanted for most people, and it doesn't necessarily provide them with any value to have their comforting or familiar illusions destroyed. in a sense, it's rude if you pop their bubble. in other words, some people don't see the humor in dark humor because they are unfamiliar with darkness, and it scares them. for me, graveyard humor is the best way to tolerate things. but it's important to know your audience.

rtkaratekid 7y ago
Piercing the veil... what an appropriate turn of phrase. I resonate a lot with your third paragraph. I also think it can be rude and unnecessary to expose people to this paradigm if they're not ready. It's a bad analogy, but it's almost like poison. If you're used to some types of poison, they wont cause injury, but if you're not... it could kill you. Trouble is, in my mind life is filled with these poisons and people often only narrowly avoid them-- if they do at all.
- cryoshon 7y ago
  re: poisons, it isn't a bad analogy because you're referencing the dose-response curve. many of our medicines are "poisons" in the sense that if you take them in a large enough dose, they will kill you. but a small dose can be therapeutic, in the right context. likewise, a dose of reality-groundedness is a necessity to navigate life correctly. some people can tolerate the side effects of higher doses better than others, however.
- jrs235 7y ago
  I recommend the following book under a few caveats the first one being no one without their highschool diploma or G.E.D. (General Education Diploma) should read it. The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great (Funny Self-Help Book, Guide to Lowering Stress and Dealing with Perfectionism) https://amzn.to/2pvYI6b https://amzn.to/2pvYI6b It will surely pierce a lot of people's beliefs.
  - buckminster 7y ago
    On Amazon UK the book has three ratings, a four star, a three star and a one star. Which are labelled 28%, 45% and 27% respectively. Wtf?
    - jrs235 7y ago
      Interesting and WTF for sure. Must have rubbed some people the wrong way... Reading it can be frightening for overachievers and people whose world view and beliefs (the upper class who need servants) requires we have people working for them otherwise their materialist and GDP/economy driven world views might cease to exist...
      - dredmorbius 7y ago
        It's more that the percentages, whilst adding up, don't match.
        jrs235 7y ago
        What if it's an easter egg / joke facilitated by Amazon employees... making their calculator [perhaps only for this book] perform incorrectly... hence underachieving?
        dredmorbius 7y ago
        Maybe it's an easter egg yolk.
    - rovolo 7y ago
      Amazon weights reviews based on the reviewer: https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-stars-ratings-calculated/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-stars-ratings-calculated/
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    > the first one being no one without their highschool diploma or G.E.D. (General Education Diploma) should read it. Could you unpack this for me?
- ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
  Be really careful with the poison analogy. As another depressive person, I have lost most of my social circle because I consider my thoughts dangerous for others, don't lose touch with people around you because you try to hard to insulate them from your thoughts that might damage them. If you work hard to make your gallows humor actually funny, you can turn things around. No one really knows the person who is too quiet, no one really likes the bitter person who always complains about everything, but the depressed dark humor guy can be the life of the party. Robbin Williams, Ricky Gervais, and Jim Carrey, and Allan Watts all operate in the "realist" branch of thought. But the way you share those thoughts really matters.
  - blotter_paper 7y ago
    > As another depressive person, I have lost most of my social circle because I consider my thoughts dangerous for others, don't lose touch with people around you because you try to hard to insulate them from your thoughts that might damage them. So far this conversation has been around dark pessimistic takes on life, death, and work. I'd like to throw out that there are some descriptive things I believe about the world that I have no desire to spread, because I think that people will generally treat each other worse if they accept the ideas. Because of the very nature of such ideas I hesitate to provide any real examples, but as an absurd and (hopefully) harmless illustration we could use Roko's basilisk. If you believed such a thing, and you weren't trying to spread it for selfish reasons, wouldn't you just not talk about it? I've made the mistake of arguing horrible things which I myself didn't want to believe to close friends and actually changing their minds in ways I wish I could take back... but can't. It's ugly, and I try to avoid it these days, but I do also feel somewhat disingenuous because of that -- I think that's just something I have to bottle up and accept. >If you work hard to make your gallows humor actually funny, you can turn things around. No one really knows the person who is too quiet, no one really likes the bitter person who always complains about everything, but the depressed dark humor guy can be the life of the party. I've been this person, and still am in some social circles. I appreciated working in environments that can tolerate dark humor. On a visceral level I really don't understand the other poster who brought up the mental anguish of hearing suicide jokes, despite having dealt with suicidal friends in the past. I don't understand what it's like to get triggered by a suicide joke, but that doesn't mean the experience is invalid, or that the benefits of me being able to make suicide jokes in the workplace outweigh the detriments of other people being sent into dark rumination cycles because of them. It seems presumptuous to assume that somebody else getting upset at a joke is necessarily a result of the joke not being funny enough, they might be in a vastly different headspace that is hard to understand from the perspective of somebody who relishes in dark humor.
itronitron 7y ago
i eventually realized that while some of my co-workers should probably hear things, they don't necessarily have to hear it from me
mepiethree 7y ago
> some people don't see the humor in dark humor because they are unfamiliar with darkness Other people (like me) don't see the humor in dark humor because we live in a form of darkness all the time. My partner is bipolar, and I spend a several weeks a year literally talking her off the ledge. So if some edgy cynic makes a "joke" about suicide at work, I've probably already heard the punchline. And it dredges up a reminder of the biggest ongoing challenge in my life. Not finding that funny doesn't make me naive.
- derangedHorse 7y ago
  I think you still live in the case that he’s describing. I have someone similarly close to me who’s bipolar and both him and I still enjoy black humor. We learn to laugh at our past situations regardless (near-death encounters included). It doesn’t make you more naive but it might be an indicator that you’re not able to cope with all the realities faced in your life all the time.
  - longblack 7y ago
    Both of these are just coping methods to either have the situation not exist or be trivialized for a period of time as to make living with it easier. I don't know of any evidence to say either method is objectively better. By removing the situation from their thoughts/avoiding the topic they may be able to cope for just as long or longer than someone who addresses the situation through comedy.

rtkaratekid 7y ago

Piercing the veil... what an appropriate turn of phrase. I resonate a lot with your third paragraph. I also think it can be rude and unnecessary to expose people to this paradigm if they're not ready. It's a bad analogy, but it's almost like poison. If you're used to some types of poison, they wont cause injury, but if you're not... it could kill you. Trouble is, in my mind life is filled with these poisons and people often only narrowly avoid them-- if they do at all.

cryoshon 7y ago
re: poisons, it isn't a bad analogy because you're referencing the dose-response curve. many of our medicines are "poisons" in the sense that if you take them in a large enough dose, they will kill you. but a small dose can be therapeutic, in the right context. likewise, a dose of reality-groundedness is a necessity to navigate life correctly. some people can tolerate the side effects of higher doses better than others, however.
jrs235 7y ago
I recommend the following book under a few caveats the first one being no one without their highschool diploma or G.E.D. (General Education Diploma) should read it. The Underachiever's Manifesto: The Guide to Accomplishing Little and Feeling Great (Funny Self-Help Book, Guide to Lowering Stress and Dealing with Perfectionism) https://amzn.to/2pvYI6b https://amzn.to/2pvYI6b It will surely pierce a lot of people's beliefs.
- buckminster 7y ago
  On Amazon UK the book has three ratings, a four star, a three star and a one star. Which are labelled 28%, 45% and 27% respectively. Wtf?
  - jrs235 7y ago
    Interesting and WTF for sure. Must have rubbed some people the wrong way... Reading it can be frightening for overachievers and people whose world view and beliefs (the upper class who need servants) requires we have people working for them otherwise their materialist and GDP/economy driven world views might cease to exist...
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      It's more that the percentages, whilst adding up, don't match.
      - jrs235 7y ago
        What if it's an easter egg / joke facilitated by Amazon employees... making their calculator [perhaps only for this book] perform incorrectly... hence underachieving?
        dredmorbius 7y ago
        Maybe it's an easter egg yolk.
  - rovolo 7y ago
    Amazon weights reviews based on the reviewer: https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-stars-ratings-calculated/ https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-stars-ratings-calculated/
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > the first one being no one without their highschool diploma or G.E.D. (General Education Diploma) should read it. Could you unpack this for me?
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
Be really careful with the poison analogy. As another depressive person, I have lost most of my social circle because I consider my thoughts dangerous for others, don't lose touch with people around you because you try to hard to insulate them from your thoughts that might damage them. If you work hard to make your gallows humor actually funny, you can turn things around. No one really knows the person who is too quiet, no one really likes the bitter person who always complains about everything, but the depressed dark humor guy can be the life of the party. Robbin Williams, Ricky Gervais, and Jim Carrey, and Allan Watts all operate in the "realist" branch of thought. But the way you share those thoughts really matters.
- blotter_paper 7y ago
  > As another depressive person, I have lost most of my social circle because I consider my thoughts dangerous for others, don't lose touch with people around you because you try to hard to insulate them from your thoughts that might damage them. So far this conversation has been around dark pessimistic takes on life, death, and work. I'd like to throw out that there are some descriptive things I believe about the world that I have no desire to spread, because I think that people will generally treat each other worse if they accept the ideas. Because of the very nature of such ideas I hesitate to provide any real examples, but as an absurd and (hopefully) harmless illustration we could use Roko's basilisk. If you believed such a thing, and you weren't trying to spread it for selfish reasons, wouldn't you just not talk about it? I've made the mistake of arguing horrible things which I myself didn't want to believe to close friends and actually changing their minds in ways I wish I could take back... but can't. It's ugly, and I try to avoid it these days, but I do also feel somewhat disingenuous because of that -- I think that's just something I have to bottle up and accept. >If you work hard to make your gallows humor actually funny, you can turn things around. No one really knows the person who is too quiet, no one really likes the bitter person who always complains about everything, but the depressed dark humor guy can be the life of the party. I've been this person, and still am in some social circles. I appreciated working in environments that can tolerate dark humor. On a visceral level I really don't understand the other poster who brought up the mental anguish of hearing suicide jokes, despite having dealt with suicidal friends in the past. I don't understand what it's like to get triggered by a suicide joke, but that doesn't mean the experience is invalid, or that the benefits of me being able to make suicide jokes in the workplace outweigh the detriments of other people being sent into dark rumination cycles because of them. It seems presumptuous to assume that somebody else getting upset at a joke is necessarily a result of the joke not being funny enough, they might be in a vastly different headspace that is hard to understand from the perspective of somebody who relishes in dark humor.

itronitron 7y ago

i eventually realized that while some of my co-workers should probably hear things, they don't necessarily have to hear it from me

mepiethree 7y ago

> some people don't see the humor in dark humor because they are unfamiliar with darkness Other people (like me) don't see the humor in dark humor because we live in a form of darkness all the time. My partner is bipolar, and I spend a several weeks a year literally talking her off the ledge. So if some edgy cynic makes a "joke" about suicide at work, I've probably already heard the punchline. And it dredges up a reminder of the biggest ongoing challenge in my life. Not finding that funny doesn't make me naive.

derangedHorse 7y ago
I think you still live in the case that he’s describing. I have someone similarly close to me who’s bipolar and both him and I still enjoy black humor. We learn to laugh at our past situations regardless (near-death encounters included). It doesn’t make you more naive but it might be an indicator that you’re not able to cope with all the realities faced in your life all the time.
- longblack 7y ago
  Both of these are just coping methods to either have the situation not exist or be trivialized for a period of time as to make living with it easier. I don't know of any evidence to say either method is objectively better. By removing the situation from their thoughts/avoiding the topic they may be able to cope for just as long or longer than someone who addresses the situation through comedy.