"I think the only exception to this rule so far has been suffering. If I do something that causes me a significant amount of cognitive or physical suffering, I apparently don't get bored of it. I don't particularly like most such activities, but I like boredom even less."
You are afraid you are alone in your masochism?
No my friend I am the same.
And I know for a fact a lot of members on here are.
I dunno, can you really call yourself a masochist if you don't like suffering? Like what Alice and Peach were doing, with Peach apparently doing some knife games with Alice, I'd call that masochism. Not my cup of tea.
Id say masochism is pretty common. Chronic boredom seems less common, at least from where I'm standing. Except among edgy teenagers who dramatize everything and probably aren't old enough to introspect.
People deal with modern monotany in extreme ways, maybe in part because it feels like the world is being strangled. At least in the US. It just seems like people are done with the system but we're all imprisoned anyways unless you're a billionaire, but even they are bored. I've been thinking about Chris Mccandless' quote "happiness is only real when shared". Maybe people hopping is the cure. idfk. I hope you enjoyed your trip though.
It sounds like whatever trips you're going through in your meditations are way more exciting than the trip I had. I'd say the trip was expectedly unexpected, and by that I mean that it was a random coincidence of unexpected events and encounters, but nothing out of the ordinary. So more or less what I expected.
Happy to hear that you found your religion. The problem I have with religion is that I feel enslaved by logic and reasoning to a degree that it limits my world view.
The other day, I picked a kettle and dropped it to the ground. I just wanted to see if it would float. It didn't. Not with the 20 something trials I performed. How boring. And no matter how many times I dropped the kettle and no matter how much I wanted to believe I could believe it would float, it didn't and I didn't.
I'm chronically bored.
I've done some self diagnosis lately and I've come to realize that I'm not depressed, lonely, unhappy, or inactive. Yet, I constantly feel like something is missing from my life, and it's driven me to do a lot of things that ended up being frustratingly unfulfilling.
By most standards I should feel fulfilled and the opposite of bored. I have a demanding job, an active friend circle, family, hobbies, and I frequently take vacations and meet new people. Yet, after doing something once, I immediately get bored of the repetition and I want to do something else. There are only a few areas in which I feel like I'm discovering more things the more I refine it.
I think the only exception to this rule so far has been suffering. If I do something that causes me a significant amount of cognitive or physical suffering, I apparently don't get bored of it. I don't particularly like most such activities, but I like boredom even less. This was a rather groundbreaking discovery for me. For the past 3 month, I got so bored that I started fasting to kill the time. So far, my record is 8 days without food, and I intend to beat my all-time (involuntary) record in starvation from back when I was a student. This all has surprisingly helped me feel uplifted and I've also felt I could better focus after starting it. I heard that fasting induces autophagy which helps brain cells regenerate. Very exciting. Great success.
I am afraid thay i'm alone in my boredom, or otherwise the folks around me are excellent at hiding it. Or they have gotten used to the feeling. I think my personal hell would be waking up every day unemployed, slave to dopamine and everyday routines that slowly teach my brain to operate on autopilot. Yet, many people seem rather happy with that kind of a situation. It's hard for me to understand how people can ignore the feeling of growing stale, tolerating the boredom of everyday life. I feel physically ill when that happens. I wonder if it is some kind of a weird addiction. It's not ego, for sure, since I couldn't care less about compliments, even if I am not a fan of being criticized.
So, what do you know, 10 years of self analysis and introspection. Turns out I'm just chronically bored.
I did not read the other posts in this thread. Two things come to mind. First, your main problem is a spiritual one. What is missing in your life seems to be a transcending motive or purpose that feeds all your actions and makes them meaningful. That you need this means that you are intelligent by the way. You should look into religion or phenomenology. If you get a taste of what I am pointing at it really does not matter what you do. Second, I remember you displaying some autistic tendencies in the past and you may even have mentioned that you have Aspergers. Anyways, I am pretty sure that you are depressed and if we would go through it I am convinced we would find the ICD-10 criteria fulfilled. Sadness or a bad mood is not an ultimate defining characteristic of depression and in many cases depressed people do not report it. Your fasting schtick sounds like self induced dissociation to me. It seems to aim at making an uncomfortable inner sensation less and it means you are avoiding your feelings and emotions. Whether you call it boredom, emptiness, an inner hole etc. is not really relevant. It seems quite obvious that you don't want to feel. Personally, I think you need religion and a therapist.
Oh my God, this food tastes like heaven. After 3 days of fasting, having some fatty pork. This is my 3rd repeat of the same dish. Heavenly.
Regarding religion, it's tricky for me. Not really sure how to implement religion in my life without faith.
I'm culturally Christian, whatever that means. I used to be very religious, until I slowly grew out of it and went into buddhism and I wanted to find fulfillment by making people around me happy. That was fulfilling for some time, until I discovered how selfish people can be and how immediately entitled people can become if you help them. So I developed my own philosophy, which was something like, do unto others what other do to you, as opposed to do unto others what you want them to do to you, because most people won't reciprocate and are deeply selfish. I also think there's more to life than "it's all suffering" so I guess I deeply disagreed with the Buddhist doctrine.
Then I got interested in scientism, skepticism, and bayesianism. I don't like these philosophies, but I find that it's incredibly difficult to disagree with them. I mean, what are the chances that the bible stories were made up by a group of people vs that it's actually true? If we reject, say, islam or hinduism, then we at least know that it's possible that any given religion is untrue, and we're lead to believe anyway that any given religion, in lieu of further evidence, must be more likely untrue than true. That's Bayesian logic. I mean, how do you even argue with that, without introducing highly esoteric ideas? I feel powerless, and no matter how much I'd love to believe Christianity and accept religion into my life, it seems like logic compels me not to.
I've also practiced "phenomenology" but that doesn't seem to be fulfilling to me at all. It seems, rather, deeply unfulfilling, but maybe I'm doing it wrong.
AppleGenius said:Id say masochism is pretty common. Chronic boredom seems less commonHow common for each?
10% - 0.1%
Factor 100.
Regarding autism, I'm not autistic.
I'm highly logical, but I am in tune with people's emotions and my work requires a significant amount of people skills. I'm also empathetic in that if I see a friend of mine suffering, I feel very much in tune with my emotions and will volunteer to help them. I've sat on the other side of things enough, in addition, to see multiple viewpoints and I'd like to think I am less influenced by stereotypes and biases than most people, but who can really tell.
I know I tend to behave somewhat autistically, like a robot, here, occasionally, but I'd like to think that I am "aware" of what I am doing. So I don't lack the ability to introspect or observe how Turncoat and others likely see me. I know, for example, how Turncoat's mind works from reading research articles related to cognitive psychology, and hamster experiments. Especially with these resources, I have no trouble understanding how human brains function.
So, no, I'm not autistic, thank you very much.
Regarding autism, I'm not autistic.
I'm highly logical, but I am in tune with people's emotions and my work requires a significant amount of people skills. I'm also empathetic in that if I see a friend of mine suffering, I feel very much in tune with my emotions and will volunteer to help them. I've sat on the other side of things enough, in addition, to see multiple viewpoints and I'd like to think I am less influenced by stereotypes and biases than most people, but who can really tell.
I know I tend to behave somewhat autistically, like a robot, here, occasionally, but I'd like to think that I am "aware" of what I am doing. So I don't lack the ability to introspect or observe how Turncoat and others likely see me. I know, for example, how Turncoat's mind works from reading research articles related to cognitive psychology, and hamster experiments. Especially with these resources, I have no trouble understanding how human brains function.
So, no, I'm not autistic, thank you very much.
What you wrote here sounds highly autistic..
