A waste of lifetime

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by PeterK

I don't have any depressions

From what you have written here, that's debatable. I understand your point of view but maybe you should try to change some things.
Without any offense intended, I'll just say you are part of a generation (of several) which systemically underplays and underestimates the value of good mental health.

I think this also has a lot to play on the topic at hand, we're all from times when things like what this teacher did (basically bully her students) was common and unquestioned. I think it's better for our minds to not think that way because as many have echoed throughout the thread, nothing is really a waste of time if it makes you feel good.

[copse]

Maybe nihilism is not depression per se.

[zipper]

1972 I got a stamp album and wondered if I ever can get it filled. Well, now it's totally filled with some extras so now that task is fulfilled. Did cost about one Mercedes Benz but what next - was this my lifetime destination? Got an A4000 towered with all bells and whistles + towered A500 likewise - they did cost another Mercedes Benz...

[PeterK]

Originally Posted by Amiga1992

From what you have written here, that's debatable. I understand your point of view but maybe you should try to change some things.
Without any offense intended, I'll just say you are part of a generation (of several) which systemically underplays and underestimates the value of good mental health.

No, I'm not suffering from a lack of mental health, I was just physically ill already since 1998 (I'm still sick now), and I have gone through hell in the last 25 years, close to death for for several years (never left my appartment for ~10 years) when I couldn't breath enough oxygene into my lungs at night (that feeling is just terrible), but finally the devil has thrown me out of his hell, because I didn't gave up and he had to resign. No, I'm still not healthy again, but I have no fears to die one day. There is nothing to worry about it.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by BigD

Share your passion with your kids and play multiplayer split-screen games and it all seems more worthwhile IMHO.

Mine all like to play Minecraft over the local network. It's great. My eldest has just started serious experimentation with redstone logic. We built a full 4 bit binary adder, which ended up looking like a mini office block. Which was a great segue into the history of computers and how early valve machines filled entire buildings.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by zipper

1972 I got a stamp album and wondered if I ever can get it filled. Well, now it's totally filled with some extras so now that task is fulfilled. Did cost about one Mercedes Benz but what next - was this my lifetime destination? Got an A4000 towered with all bells and whistles + towered A500 likewise - they did cost another Mercedes Benz...

OMG !!! The STAMPS!!! Forgot about them completely !

I used to love collecting stamps !

If you got only 50% of the joy I got when browsing my stamps albums (and travelling to other places), then it was absolutely worth it more than some stupid Mercedes (as expensive as they get in Finland after all the taxes!) that depreciated the second you put the keys into it at the dealership...

I need to do some searching for stamps on eBay now....

[freehand]

After taking the red pill and jumping into DCS world in VR climbing to 20+ thousand feet above the clouds in the f18 cruising along chilling looking down at the world go by is that wasting my time ? personally I don't give a **** I like it as I did when I first bought my speccy.

[Zak]

@PeterK The way I see it, life wants you to accept circumstances and when you don't accept them it forces you harder and harder. Once you accept bad circumstances, things improve step by step. With the military in my youth, we used to say, let's have fun as a slave on the galley. There is a famous Monty Python scene with the protagonist nailed to the cross singing "always look on the bright side of life". That's the way to go. There is always still fun, a good meal, a ladybug on the window sill, little things every day. See the beauty in life and accept the bad things. It's the way it is, don't pout, it's useless.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by PeterK

No, I'm not suffering from a lack of mental health, I was just physically ill already since 1998 (I'm still sick now), and I have gone through hell in the last 25 years, close to death for for several years (never left my appartment for ~10 years) when I couldn't breath enough oxygene into my lungs at night (that feeling is just terrible), but finally the devil has thrown me out of his hell, because I didn't gave up and he had to resign. No, I'm still not healthy again, but I have no fears to die one day. There is nothing to worry about it.

I'm sorry to hear all this. I do appreciate now even more all the work you have gave us while you were in suffering, it is a lot more valuable than it already was, if that was even possible!

We appreciate you PeterK and my words, which still stand, came out of this appreciation.

[PeterK]

Originally Posted by Zak

... There is a famous Monty Python scene with the protagonist nailed to the cross singing "always look on the bright side of life". That's the way to go.

Yes, I know that "Life of Brian", have seen that more than once with my friends in the cinema, one of the very few movies that I liked to see, another one was "The sense of life", and that brings us back to the topic.

There is always still fun, a good meal, a ladybug on the window sill, little things every day. See the beauty in life and accept the bad things. It's the way it is, don't pout, it's useless.

I don't like to have emotions and if somebody brings me a nice bunch of beautiful flowers, my mind just regrets that I will have to see them fading away soon. I always try to imagine how things or events may end before they ever begun. I'm looking for "something more" than just having fun in life, but I will probably never find it, and no, I don't want to believe anything, I want to know why I should do something or I may never start doing it. Some people say, you have to try it out or you will never know ... but I don't like that approach. When I was younger I did things out of curiosity too, but after some decades of my life I got the felling that there is not much left to discover which is really so much different to what I've seen or done before (maybe just a waste of time).

[PeterK]

Originally Posted by Amiga1992

I'm sorry to hear all this. I do appreciate now even more all the work you have gave us while you were in suffering, it is a lot more valuable than it already was, if that was even possible! ...

Thanks Amiga1992, but my coding was never something like "work" for me, it was the best way to kill some time in all these years, because I didn't want to waste my time by watching stupid TV programs.

[paul1981]

Someone earlier said how quick time passes....I swear I just had an hour stolen from me!

[Zak]

Originally Posted by PeterK

I don't like to have emotions

I was exactly like you, please read post #58 again thorougly.

Originally Posted by PeterK

I'm looking for "something more" than just having fun in life

There is nothing more about it than just having fun and it's enough once you have fun, you just didn't ever. The key to fun in life is to appreciate and acknowledge the little things around you. Fun is a kid playing with the cardboard box rather than with the delivered items just like they said in the TV commercials. Fun is simple. You just have to allow it to happen. There is always fun no matter how bad life is, have fun on the slave galley.

[Snoopy1234]

Meaningful thread. Some great stories and good thoughts.
Since 2016 getting back into Amiga and other gear it was a new Open World scenario for me. I've also had thoughts that this "free-zone" of retro goodness is a constricted, narrow world view and I begin to wonder what others are achieving with their time.
That said, worrying that I'm stuck in the house away from living is outweighed by the daily joys of basic living with my retro "hobby" a backstop of something I've actually done for myself - and in turn - others.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by PeterK

I don't like to have emotions

I'm very sorry to hear that

[PeterK]

Originally Posted by Zak

I was exactly like you, please read post #58 again thorougly.

Yes, I've read that and indeed I'm a bit like Mr. Spock when I say that I don't like to have emotions. I can understand and accept your oppinion, but it won't change the point of view in my mind.

There is nothing more about it than just having fun and it's enough once you have fun, you just didn't ever. The key to fun in life is to appreciate and acknowledge the little things around you. Fun is a kid playing with the cardboard box rather than with the delivered items just like they said in the TV commercials. Fun is simple. You just have to allow it to happen. There is always fun no matter how bad life is, have fun on the slave galley.

I don't have anything against fun and humor, and I never feel sad or down just because I don't have fun every day.

Most emotions are probably based on low level biochemical reactions in your body and your brain or in parts of it or are coming from signals of your nerves. Your body sends out some signals through nerves or indirectly with hormons or other molecules, more or less globally, to inform you quickly about the change of some vital conditions for your body. When you taste some honey it's sweet because during evolution your senses learned that eating sugar gives you some power for the body. When you cut yourself with a knife you feel pain because you should get informed about a critical injury which you soon have to care about. When something tastes bitter don't eat too much of it, it could be poison. When emotions are getting into your brain they may suspend the processes of your mind for a while because reacting quickly on vital signals could be more important than thinking about other information. And that's what my mind never liked and why it tried to suppress emotions as far as possible since my early childhood. Biochemical reactions can even change the normal data processing of the cells in your brain, like drugs or happiness hormones, and can cause confusion or illusions in your mind. Your brain cells are not working correctly anymore and a calculation of 1+1 may give a result of 0 or 3, so that you may get the feeling that you have lost or won something, your brain gets cheated by emotions, but being sober again you will never win or lose anything.

If the sense of life is just pure self-deceit I prefer to live without it.

[Zak]

You can't ever be 100% objective and without illusions. Every of your senses creates an illusion by nature. There is no sound, there is just waves of air pressure that your brain interprets as sound, there are no colors, they're just frequencies of light that your brain interprets and so on. Everything you perceive is just an illusion. What you think is your sober state is just a differently distorted perception. You can't ever be truly sober.

People back then thought that wanking is evil and told their children that you get ill from it and that had the worst health consequences for generations of people. Science today knows it's best to not live a lifestyle that defies your nature. Living with suppressed emotions has physical consequences for you in the end.

What you should be sober about is that you don't judge your emotions, let them be. Just don't be triggered by them. It's a total normal reaction that when you have a lot of negative emotions that at some point you don't want to feel emotions anymore. But it's not the emotion that is a problem, it's that you're overwhelmed and can't handle them. It's like quitting smoking and getting used to the withdrawal symptoms. Once you know that you won't die from them and that life goes on, it's o.k..

[PeterK]

Yes, you're right, the information that you have is always based on perceptions and will never give you a completely objective image of the world outside, but you can try to verify the correctness of that image by viewing things from different sides and other aspects to get a little closer to the truth. I don't have the intention, nor the knowledge, to understand everything in this world, not even in my habitat. No scientist will ever use emotions to create a theory of something in this world.

[chip]

@Zak and PeterK


Thank you guys for this interesting discussion

[Zak]

Originally Posted by PeterK

Yes, you're right, the information that you have is always based on perceptions and will never give you a completely objective image of the world outside, but you can try to verify the correctness of that image by viewing things from different sides and other aspects to get a little closer to the truth. I don't have the intention, nor the knowledge, to understand everything in this world, not even in my habitat. No scientist will ever use emotions to create a theory of something in this world.

O.K. but emotions are not your worst enemy when it comes to to be closer to the truth, your worst enemies are biases. I only found a good video in German language about it, the English videos I found didn't convince me so much. You can turn on subtitles and translate them automatically, but maybe it's not a pleasure for non-Germans to watch:

[ Show youtube player ]