Everything Sucks - Let Me Explain

In my country people often say: "Curiosity is the first step to hell". The proverb's origin probably has something to do with John Milton's Paradise Lost, but its literary and religious connotations seem to have been forgotten somewhere along the lines since it's now most frequently used in situations having nothing to do with religion. Generally, it's told to people who ask questions about things people don't normally think about or when social and political norms are challenged. I was often told that proverb. "Things are the way they are and that's it" was never enough for me and I sought answers. I received them.

My biggest question has always been why so many people choose to actively avoid and ignore the negative aspects of life. They drive me mad with their smiles, humming upbeat tunes while performing mundane tasks and the overall unexplainable cheerfulness of their character. I'm not talking about people just having a good day. Even I have occasionally experienced that. No, I'm talking about people who are like that all day, every day. Those who tell you to smile when they notice a frown on your face and when you've failed to "adjust" your mood to their liking one time too many, will start avoiding interaction with you as if you're an intruder in their perfect world. I have tolerated such behavior up to this point but now I'm here to burst your bubble.

I shall now explain why everything f-ing sucks and why your ignoring of those things, conscious or not, might eventually fail and why you too will become that bitter elderly person who tells everyone to get off their lawn, should you at some point be unlucky enough for your little bubble to pop.

So let's get on with it. It was actually quite challenging to choose the first thing to talk about since there are so many so I picked something at random: romantic love.

To start off, the "at the first sight" debacle. You might have looked at him or her and instantly felt that warm, fuzzy feeling in your heart. Sorry to disappoint, but that's just your hormones telling you: "here's an attractive person for you to have sex with". The reason for that is simple: a person's attractiveness tells your brain that they are probably healthy and therefore a good mate for you to have children with. Procreating with healthy people bears more likelihood of healthy children who will have a better chance for survival. "But Yasashii, there are plenty of attractive people around me every day, why did I only feel that way about that particular person?" - well, because whether you find it easy to describe your ideal partner or not, your brain definitely does. Heterosexual men have a tendency to be most attracted to women who are shorter than them (which pretty much means short women for the most part) and who coincidentally have small feet. That's a sign of good fertility. Women tend to be attracted to tall, masculine, strong men. They are more likely to provide protection for them against other sexual aggressors and various dangers. That's nature for you.

What about the "I'm attracted to that person not because of their physical appearance, but because of their character" argument? You are kind of lying to yourself, actually. Your subconscious mind happens to have a different view on what your ideal partner should be like physically than your conscious mind. You probably disagree with me on that but remember that you can't control your subconscious mind and you also have very little to no knowledge on what it "thinks". Because of this, so many fall in love with terrible people, who are in no way compatible in any other aspect than the physical one, whether they are willing to admit it, or not (and they are not because their hormones won't allow them to).

What many people fail to come to terms with is that romantic love is just a series of chemical reactions happening without our control. We will just "pick" the man or woman who appears to be healthy and who is most likely to be genetically compatible with us (yes, that's a thing, look it up).

What about people who have a thing for large men or women? Or those who like big feet and other things which are not signs of good fertility or health? Well, there are exceptions for every rule. The brain is a very, very complicated "device" and doesn't always work in foreseeable ways. What about the homosexuals and other? This is probably why gay people used to be seen as people with an illness and in need of hormonal treatment in some cultures. Since our sex drive is there for the sole purpose of making children, it doesn't, in that respect, make sense for two people of the same sex to copulate because bearing offspring isn't possible. Fortunately, we no longer perceive this as unnatural and as an illness. Many, many species other than humans display examples of homosexuality and their numbers have not thinned out noticeably because of this. The actual reasons for the phenomenon are still in dispute. Some claim it's childhood trauma, others say it's a genetic predisposition and there are opinions of culture influencing young minds. None of these seem to fully explain all of the cases of non-hetero sexual orientation so uhh... go figure that out. I say it's just simply caused by the randomness of the universe, or by a factor we are yet to discover. Oh, and before you go on a rant about how some of the things I said in this paragraph may be offensive, please keep in mind that this was not my intention and also, I'm a bisexual as well, so yeah, I'm kind of excused.

Finally, the thing that bugs me the most: "Happily ever after". As I had stated, romantic love is nothing more than a powerful chemical reaction. Since not all of you may have experienced this misery let me describe how it feels (I know many poets have tried and failed but let me attempt it anyway): It hits you like a .50 Cal bullet. At first you don't know what's going on. All you know is that you feel soft and fragile and the feeling is overwhelming. You begin to find it difficult to focus on important tasks (you can still do the mundane stuff just fine, though, contrary to the popular belief). You might find yourself rolling in bed desperately trying to shake it off (it might not feel good at first since not knowing what's happening to your body can be a scary thought). After a while you realize what's going on. At that point you let it happen freely. You begin to realize why it's been ingrained into our culture that emotions come from the heart: you literally feel something powerful trying to burst out of your chest, like in the Alien movies, only you consider it to be good by that time. As cliché as it may sound, all those crummy love songs that bored you before now seem to put you in a state of mind that you don't want to get out of. (Yes, love makes you appreciate the most overused themes in music). Whenever you close your eyes you see the object of your desire. In fact, you now only masturbate to elaborate imagined scenarios of you getting it on with that person. You consider watching porn a form of betrayal. (It might sound gross but it's true). Eventually, you make it your life's purpose to end up in a happy, lasting relationship with that person. If that doesn't happen (and it often doesn't) then... well, that's a topic for another time. Let me just describe it that way: it's the emotional equivalent of perpetually being on fire, to put it lightly. Psychologists won't be able to help you, don't even delude yourself. Antidepressants might help a tiny bit but will likely make your reproductive organ not work as it should, for example.

Back to the point, though, love is just a combination of chemicals which cause an immense reaction of the body and the mind. It won't last forever. It is GOING TO wither very, very slowly over the course of many years. Sure, there are cases in which a couple fell in love (both of them towards each other) and lived out their days in a happy, long-lasting relationship but the initial burst of feelings always goes away and those relationships only last if it turns out that the couple actually like each other even without chemistry involved. Those cases are very, very rare, though. Most of the time, long-lasting relationships and marriages stay what they are because of couples simply having got used to one another. It's a bit like Stockholm syndrome.

By now you may be teeming with the urge to post an angry response stating that you've fallen in love and it was a different experience for you entirely. To that I say: it very well might have been. Like I had said, the brain is very complicated and maybe yours reacted differently but it was still love. Fine. Still, there are many things people confuse with real love so please take that into consideration.

So what exactly is my point here? Is it to say that virtually all love is evil and once you've fallen in it, you might as well commit suicide to end the pain that's to come as quickly as possible? No. It might be a rare occurrence for someone's love to actually be honestly reciprocated, but it does happen and, therefore, it might happen to you. If it doesn't, provided you're a strong person who can live through years of emotional turmoil and pain, you're going to be fine. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Just please, next time you feel like describing love as beautiful, unexplainable, poetic or having nothing to do with science: please do, by all means, shut your face and start living in the real world. Thank you.

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Check out my blog: Yasashii's Retro Game Playground

Cool, you better tell us who ditched you?

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

If you're happy and you know it...

Yes, I was ditched but the details don't really matter as it happened years ago and now serves as an experience I am able to describe to you as part of the general topic of romantic love, which I picked at random.

To be clear: this thread isn't an open field for me to express my disappointment with the world and life in general so that I can somehow feel better about myself through making everyone else miserable. It's here so I can share experiences which were negative and explain why they were negative as a contradiction to the bullcrap some people tell you about life and the world being wonderful. They simply are not.

Sure, there are good moments but the struggle is real and I'm here to explain why people should keep their expectations very low, so that they don't have to face the awful realization that they had been lied to all their life.

This world? Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray.
I choose to see the beauty. To believe there is an order to our days... a purpose.
I know things will work out the way they're meant to.

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The reason why people like you CHOOSE to see the beauty and that primarily is the very reason why this thread exists.

I chose to see this world for what it really is and I don't like what I see. I'm not a pessimist. I'm a realist.

Please do elaborate on why I may regret it.

And no, there is no need to "get it out" now. I didn't start this thread because of some major event. I started it because of all my life experiences having culminated into a singular, well-thought out conclusion.

And why should it just be deleted? Isn't a forum a place for people to share stuff like that and have a discussion about it?

People like me? As if you have even a piece of a clue, yea?

To be clear, what I posted is a quote from the show Westworld, spoken by the character whose picture is directly beneath it.

Here's a disclaimer, in case it wasn't already painfully obvious: Quotes from Westworld in no way represent the views of myself or any of the others members of this here site.

If someone gcould make an animated gif from that with the fly walking over her eyeball, that would be a cool avatar.

Yes, people like you, who clearly seem discontented, or rather offended, by what I have to say about life and the world even though I have made effort to approach the topic objectively and provide accounts of experiences and science-backed facts rather than just simple opinions.

And because I launched the thread because I've met too many people like you, yes, I do, in fact, have a piece of clue.

And I'm sorry if you registered my response as an offense toward you. This was not my intention.

And as for not getting a reference to a show I have not seen... I fail to realize why this invalidates my point but fine, touché I guess...

So... correct me if I'm wrong but your argument is that I shouldn't tell you that you live in a bubble because it would disturb your life in the bubble?

I'm sorry but that's just making me more enthusiastic about this thread.

That's not an aspiration of mine.

Please don't undermine my right to share my experiences on this forum, as that's what forums are for, and please stay on topic.

In the original post, I started talking about romantic love. Can this thread finally become a discussion on that so it actually, you know, stays on topic?

We all are.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

I didn't get offended. I was hoping you would be picking up on the intended humor of my posts at this point, but...no?

You know...cat in the shoe box, and stuff?

For the record, I never get offended, especially by random posts on the internet. Your point was not valid because you mistook a quote from a show I had posted as an articulation of my personal views on the subject at hand, which the quote did not actually reflect. Hence your attempt to ascribe a stance to, and then a rebuttal against said view became invalid. As you stated, you haven't seen the show, so that is an easy mistake to make, clearly through no fault of your own. I will slap some quotations around any future quotes to avoid an confusion.

As for your OP - it's your prerogative if you wish to conflate love and evil, but most probably won't agree.

Carry on!

I love that we're expected to take life advice from a self-described manchild.

Also what dumbass source did you get "our sex drive is there for the sole purpose of making children" from? Sexuality and its related urges are far more complicated than that.

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Alright, maybe my initial reaction to this post was offensive. I'm sorry, if it was, but you claiming you're sharing this with other people in order to make them miserable seems mean and makes you look like a scoundrel.

Let's do try to stay at least somewhat on topic, folks. He's asked rather nicely.

Thanks!

Have You considered that maybe it takes some wisdom and courage to realize and announce to the world what you are rather than proclaim yourself as a super-adult wise man without objectively supporting that claim?

Also, the dumbass source for that claim were biology lessons I attended at school, led by a teacher with an MA degree.

Please read my sentence you quoted again, carefully this time.


Edit: Now that the response rate for this thread has slown down, let me elaborate and clear up why exactly is it that I call myself a manchild.

You probably remember a guy called Socrates and his famous quote: "I know that I know nothing". You probably also know that he didn't say that in the immediately obvious sense.

He said that as an acknowledgement of the fact that even if he aspires to learn as much as he can, he will never become as wise and intelligent as he wishes, and certainly not as much as people believe him to be.

His sentence is about knowledge. Mine is about maturity. It states that while I do aspire to reach a certain level of adulthood, the idea itself seems to be far bigger than my ability to conform to it. I accept the limitation. I accept that I will never be an adult in the full sense. It doesn't really mean that I'm literally, as mature as, say, a 5 year old child. If I was, I wouldn't be writing this. I would be in a mental institution.

Why am I not fully an adult? Because I process my thoughts through a simple mechanism. I don't allow for as many grey ideas in my brain as other people. I prefer for things to be either black or white.

The mind of a child is generally recognized to work in this way and, subsequently, dismissed from serious consideration. So called "adults" categorize the things children say as "adorable" and don't give them much thought.

I am a teacher. I work with children of all ages every day and let me tell you: the mind of a child is a wonderful thing. It's unspoiled by the arbitrary delusions of adults; it's clear and simple. Ask a child about war and they will respond: "well, wouldn't it be better if we all just got along?" Yes, yes it would, but so called "adults" choose to make up reasons, be it religion or political beliefs, to kill each other.

I refuse to acknowledge made-up reasons. That's why I'm a manchild. (also, I may be a fan of Alvin and the Chipmunks but that's not relevant right now)

Well your teacher's an idiot - MA degree or not.

If libido was dictated solely by the need to procreate, then women would only ever become aroused during ovulation and pregnant and post-menopausal women would have no drive at all.