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So you wanna de-bog yourself
- morsch 3y agoLife advice, unfortunately. Not an actual explanation of how to escape a bog.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sieste 3y agoI know I'm setting the bar low, but compared to other pieces in that genre I found it well written, entertaining and insightful.
- pksebben 3y agoFor sure, but throw me a rope here, it doesn't help the more immediate concern of this bog I'm stuck in.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoYou could try pulling harder on your hair. (Sorry not sorry.)
- falcor84 3y agoOr even better, try pulling on your bootstraps if you have them.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago(In case you didn't get it, it was a Baron Munchausen reference - involving a bog... and even his horse !)
- jabroni_salad 3y agothis is now a chicago thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- WJW 3y agoThank you random stranger for introducing me to this wonderful story! Pretty incredible they managed to do this in the 1850s already.
- kirso 3y agoThere is no need for a practical answer, because it has been answered 1000 times. The reason why people are stuck in the bog is pretty much fear. The fear of being rejected, accepted, sharing publicly (aka being judged). Telling people to "unfear" themselves is impossible, because its not the same as learning a skill. It takes years of unbundling your behavior, therapy and doing pretty much the opposite of what you are doing now.
- weinzierl 3y agoBog in many slavic languages is God in English and used in many proverbs and idioms. This makes a hilarious headline, I thought this was about exiting god mode.
- riskable 3y agoSome say bog mode is harder to exit than vi.
- SamBam 3y agoHuh! There is a YA novel I really like, The Girl Who Drank The Moon, and this casts that in a very interesting light. There is a bog -- a swamp -- that covers the known world, and this bog is treated in a religious way by the author as the embodiment of nature, of the fertility of the world. The bog also spawns a bog monster, who may have been the first living creature. "In the beginning, there was the Bog. And the Bog covered the world and the Bog was the world and the world was the Bog."
- 5040 3y agoBogged has also come to mean something like 'having had drastic plastic surgery' in some circles, the expression being derived from 'Bogdanoff'.
- AvAn12 3y agoY'all probably also know that bog means "toilet" in British English...
- paradoxyl 3y agoFailure to define your meaning of "bog" in the opening paragraphs leads to unneeded frustration.
- ziddoap 3y agoIt is made fairly clear by sentence #5 what the author means by "bog". And by sentence #7 it is made crystal clear. You barely need to start reading to understand what the author meant.
- digging 3y agoI don't agree. If the article started explaining how and why to de-bog oneself without defining bog, that would be annoying. But this one simply has a short, helpful, interesting introduction and then immediately defines "bog" before moving on. It's well structured IMO
- Etheryte 3y agoFailure to define your meaning of "unneeded frustration" in the opening paragraph of your comment leads to unneeded frustration.
- viburnum 3y agoIt sounds like none of this advice is working for the author.
- bovermyer 3y agoThat's not what I got out of it. It sounded like he instead was making an effort to recognize and categorize some of the problems he's experienced, and thereby create plans to avoid or mitigate them.
- riskable 3y agoThe author scrounged together enough time, energy, and motivation to write the article. This suggests that they got out of the bog; at least for a little while :shrug:
- digging 3y agoWhat makes you think that?
- munificent 3y agoEscaping the bog is a toothbrush problem, not a diploma problem.
- ketzo 3y agoI really, really hate how many of my problems are toothbrushing problems. I know I just need to get over it and start brushing, but... ugh. Anyway, can't recommend Adam's writing enough. Subscribed after his second post and have never regretted it. If you liked this, you should also read "You can't reach the brain through the ears", an excellent piece about failing to communicate. https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-brain-through https://www.experimental-history.com/p/you-cant-reach-the-br...
- riskable 3y ago"Everything needs maintenance." It's not just something a wise old engineer would say; it's life. Life itself is a Toothbrushing Problem. That is to say, if all your problems are Toothbrushing Problems then you're doing pretty good! That means you're living. At that point you can do one or all of these things: * Complain about your Toothbrushing Problems (<- you are here, haha) * Bring NEW problems into your life * Work to make your Toothbrushing Problems a bit less troublesome The HN crowd would probably say that 3rd bullet is where great startups are born ;D
- aidenn0 3y agoIndeed; it seems like being happy is a lot of work; I wonder if the type of people the author mentions in the "Impossible satisfaction" section aren't wrong.
- munificent 3y agoThere is a liberating side to toothbrushing problems: the stakes of any given unit of effort are low. With diploma problems, if you blow it, you really blow it, with often irrevocable long-term consequences. All of your effort is building to a high stakes climax and if you miss your shot, that effort can all end up wasted. It's videogame permadeath mode for life. But with toothbrushing problems, you can have an off day and usually make it up today. Of course, every day's effort does matter. You can't make every day an off day. But I find something very comforting about problems where some random variance in my output does smooth out to the mean over time.
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- hailmac 3y agoFunctionally not that different from a listicle - and at least those aren't so concerned with sounding smart
- PaulHoule 3y agoHe has "history" in the name of his blog and he thinks that knights expected to fight dragons? I mean, it is like that in a manga but not in real life. Quite a few knights in the day were nobles who had large landed estates to manage but were expected to impress their peasants in time of war. They were lucky enough to go to war with heavy armor and mounted on a horse whereas the peasants might get some weapon that is easy to handle without a lot of training like a spear.
- digging 3y ago> He has "history" in the name of his blog and he thinks that knights expected to fight dragons? I mean, it is like that in a manga but not in real life. I mean, "experimental history", so I don't expect real, academic history... that said, yeah, that was an insane analogy to make. Knights weren't, as a rule, wandering monster-slayers - anywhere or ever, as far as I know. Knights' bravery was tested on the battlefield, where they would have a very good expectation of survival until approximately post-Agincourt (where it became more socially acceptable to execute wealthy enemies instead of capturing and ransoming them). But that's also an extremely high-level description which may be so generalized as to be inaccurate.
- Apocryphon 3y ago> Medieval knights used to wander around hoping for honorable adventures to pop up so that they could demonstrate their bravery. That is a loose pop historical way of describing the chivalric tradition, but it did exist in some fashion. The dragon reference also exists in a passage that is being airily allegorical, you're all being overly anal about accuracy.
- jaredhallen 3y agoMaybe I'm being too generous, but I didn't take that to be meant in a literal, historical sense. I mean for the purpose of metaphor, a literary trope is just as good as factually accurate history. The point is that people can relate.
- BlueTemplar 3y agoI've recently watched for the first time Neon Genesis Evangelion (+ The End of...), and powerful (and a bit painful) art like this seems to be a good slap in the face to get out of at least some of the versions of that bog - I'm a bit sad that I didn't watch it years earlier when I was stuck in some bogs... (Another commenter there mentions a quote recommending books - great literature I'm pretty sure in that context, not "self help" books... I guess I should hurry up and read Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being already ?)
- sedivy94 3y agoFellow Neon Genesis fan here. Watching the original series was an incredibly frustrating experience for me. It does not follow the typical hero’s journey. There few wins, if any. Mostly losses. Idiot Shinji was a helpless and pitiful protagonist, so much so that you eventually stop rooting for him. The 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, and 3.0+1.0 rebuilds were much, much better in my opinion. But they also lacked that depressing trajectory that made the original series so unique.
- BlueTemplar 3y ago> But they also lacked that depressing trajectory that made the original series so unique. Agree. Also, in that end, there's hope, even if the characters are still flawed, they have been forced to confront their issues and illusions, and (finally) are set on a realistically human path of growth. > The 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, and 3.0+1.0 rebuilds were much, much better in my opinion. Disagree, because of the above. Sure, plenty of eye candy (of both kinds), but it's gratuitous in Rebuilds. The "biblical" (mid-)themes are even more confusing. The character growth is only kind of earned if you actually watched the originals (with maybe the (tragic) exception of latest Rei and "dad", who finally does get a redemption arc). And even there, at a cost, as all the suffering of old Asuka (and our whiplash of empathizing with her) has basically been erased along with her original, all the while the new pilot, Mari, is never fleshed out, so her being there at the end doesn't feel earned, with her having been all along weirdly untraumatized and also hot for Shinji (gratuitous again). Many main characters literally get wished into a fairy tale ending.
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- kashyapc 3y agoLast night I happened to listen to an episode[1] on EconTalk where the author of the post (Adam Mastroianni, a psychologist) was a guest. Definitely worth a listen. Adam also supports "open science framework" (https://osf.io/ https://osf.io/) and publishes his research and related artifacts there, which I really appreciate! [1] https://www.econtalk.org/a-users-guide-to-our-emotional-thermostat-with-adam-mastroianni/ https://www.econtalk.org/a-users-guide-to-our-emotional-ther...
- digging 3y ago> But most of the people I know who feel this way haven’t survived any atomic bombings at all. They’re usually people with lots of education and high-paying jobs and supportive relationships and a normal amount of tragedies, people who have all the raw materials for a good life but can’t seem to make one for themselves. Their problem is they believe that satisfaction is impossible. Like they’re standing in a kitchen full of eggs, flour, oil, sugar, butter, baking powder, a mixer, and an oven, and they throw their hands up and say, “I can’t make a cake! Cakes don’t even exist!” I found this an unpalatable paragraph in an otherwise insightful article. It seems to be, I don't know, recursive? Like saying "one reason you may be stuck in the bog is that you're stuck in the bog," and ignoring the reasons people believe they don't have an out even with the ingredients for a "good" life. Drilling down into those reasons would, I think, result in exactly this same article...?
- munificent 3y agoYeah, I agree, that metaphor lacked an explanatory conclusion. If I had to fill one in, I'd say that people often blame the external world for not providing the ingredients necessary for happiness, when they actually do have them on hand already. What they are lacking is choosing to compose them into a meaningful whole, which requires effort on their part.
- digging 3y agoThat makes sense. Maybe it's better described as "not having the recipe" or "not knowing what land looks like"...? I'm still not sure it's very useful though... it still feels like the awareness of "I am in a bog, and land exists" is a prerequisite for understanding the article at all.
- barfbagginus 3y agoFirst, debog your blog by removing the enshittware Second, start working to deconstruct capitalism and the state Tada, u no longer feel bogged
- weregiraffe 3y ago>Second, start working to deconstruct capitalism and the state Or just kill yourself, it will achieve the same result, but faster.
- hungariantoast 3y agoDeconstructing capitalism and the state = killing yourself? Deconstructing capitalism but preserving the state = purging millions of people? Preserving capitalism and the state = killing millions of poor people? Preserving capitalism but deconstructing the state = killing millions of poor people, but cyberpunk?
- swatcoder 3y agoIronically, the root of most "bogging" is thinking too much instead of just doing things that need doing or that ripely present themselves. The author has reflected so much that they've created a bespoke system of abstract beliefs with catchy names and various example cases that they can summarize into a 5000 word essay and probably even extend into a book. For a writer, that's a sneaky but effective way to do their thing. (Or alternately: for a compulsive contemplator, writing is a sneaky way to justify the contemplating.) But for most people, reading something like this and reflecting on whether you also "gutterball" and also have "toothbrushing problems" is effectively feeding the beast. Many many of us in this community carry an urge to intellectualize and systematize and engineer things, but if you're interested in "de-bogging" that urge itself might be the thing to look most critically at.
- henjodottech 3y agoIntention is cleansed in the process of forward motion.
- hellectronic 3y agoThat is really good !
- Satam 3y agoBefore reading the article, I was nodding along reading your comment. Having read the article... it's actually pretty good! "Just doing things" might be the right general approach but I feel that sometimes it's easy to get stuck contemplating. I think the post offers some interesting heuristics for getting unstuck. Edit: Reading even further, it's actually one of the best posts of this kind I've read in years. The author is spot in the behavioral patterns he's noticed. Damn. "Often, when I’m stuck, it’s because I've made up a game for myself and decided that I’m losing at it. I haven’t achieved enough. I am not working hard enough and I am also, somehow, not having enough fun. These games have elaborate rules, like “I have to be as successful as my most successful friend, but everything I've done so far doesn't count,” and I’m supposed to feel very bad if I break them. It’s like playing the absolute dumbest version of the floor is lava."
- veltas 3y ago> And while many religions teach that God intervenes in human affairs, none of them, as far as I know, believe that he responds to whining. (Would you worship a god who does miracles if you just annoy him enough?) It's not exactly as you say but it's roughly how I interpreted the parable of the unjust judge. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Unjust_Judge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Unjust_Judge
- fellowniusmonk 3y agoThat parable came to mind immediately. There is in fact a god that labels unanswered nagging as acting unjust. A lifetime ago in seminary I knew a guy who rage quit after spending months contemplating the implications of that passage and observations about how common it is to see others unanswered prayer. Don't know what happened to him but he would just mutter that his beliefs didn't matter since "jesus defacto makes the claim he is unjust and defeats himself", the problem of suffering indeed.
- darepublic 3y agoSome of the small personal details in this blog were touching because I can relate, though I seldomly see them shared in this way from others.
- seventytwo 3y agoGood read. I find myself doing a lot of these too.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- taneq 3y agoFirst step is realizing you're in a statespace of low utility gradient. Colloquially put, everything's meh. Second step is to examine the separable components of said statespace. Is one increasing while another decreases? You're about to make a big life decision! Are they all meh? Well fuck. Uh I mean, decompose them further and repeat. Eventually you'll find a meta level where the components of the meh are divergent vectors that sum to zero, and there's your buried n-lemma. If everything's truly flat and boring for long enough, eventually you'll dig down to causal bedrock where the quantum noise will create signals for you whether you want them or not. Doesn't matter, because at this point, does anything? So just do the thing, you have nothing to lose.
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoMost of my problems lay in the fact that I do not like the way I am right now but do not have the power to get there or the power to make peace with myself. It's cliche but it IS impossible. Yeah it is a bog I made for myself but I did not ask for it. I kinda think this is a genetic thing. My father is like that too -- he is never happy, rarely content with himself, even when he already achieved a lot.
- cgriswald 3y agoRegarding “declining the dragon”: In my case “doing the brave thing” doesn’t feel good. It is the moment of greatest suffering and is usually followed by some useless anxiety that takes some time to dissipate. That’s why I’m avoiding it. It is only by recognizing that the suffering will end only after doing the brave thing that I can challenge the dragon.
- itscodingtime 3y agoIf you accept you do not have free will then, there’s nothing you can do.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoAnd if you just wanna be-dog yourself... https://youtu.be/3gsWt7ey6bo?si=jMIA9GR1di2q7d_Y https://youtu.be/3gsWt7ey6bo?si=jMIA9GR1di2q7d_Y
- newfriend 3y agobased and bogpilled
- kajkojednojajko 3y agoI love the fact that he records voiceovers of his articles! I listen to podcasts on a regular basis, and this substitutes for podcast perfectly: it's shorter, but 10x higher quality.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- mastazi 3y agoWow this passage > Terrible situations, once exited, often become funny stories or proud memories. Mediocre situations, long languished in, simply become Lost Years—boring to both live through and talk about, like you're sitting in a waiting room with no cell reception, no wifi, and no good magazines, waiting for someone to come in and tell you it's time to start living. It really resonates with me. During my life it did happen a couple times that I found myself "stuck in mediocrity" as the OP puts it. "Waiting for someone to come in and tell you it's time to start living" is a great analogy of how it feels when you finally realise it's time for a change
- datascienced 3y agoBest thing I have read, probably for years (outside of books). The insight here is brilliant. It doesn’t necessary help you get out of the bogs really, but for that a therapist might help. The lede is “brushing your teeth”. So much of life working depends on varieties of this.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- greenhearth 3y agoI'm sorry but the article employs the "Star Trek" method of wrapping complex phenomena into simple metaphors ("explosive decompression is like putting too much air into a balloon") But any truthful explanations of well known behavior, like self-sabotage for example, do not manifest. I'd rather see some guesses at an evolutionary cause of such things than attempts at poetry. It also seems like a cold reading with a cutesy innocence that belies feelings of superiority of having figured it all out. I think the writer is very talented though, so maybe something great will develop.