Don't kill yourself. Fight on, fight harder against the world.
FrankincenseMyrrhThe Japanese term you’re probably looking for is ひきこもり (hikikomori).Literally, it comes from 引きこもる (hikikomoru), “to withdraw inward,” “to shut oneself away,” or “to stay inside.” Hikikomori has become an internationally recognizable term for a person who withdraws from school, work, and much of social life for an extended period. But there’s an important distinction: in Japanese discourse it generally describes severe/prolonged social withdrawal, not merely someone who likes solitude or lives as a recluse.There are also older, less clinical terms:• 隠遁 (inton) — withdrawal from worldly life; reclusion, often with a literary/religious/philosophical flavor.• 隠者 (inja) — hermit/recluse.• 世捨て人 (yoste-bito) — literally something like “a person who has abandoned the world”; a more dramatic/literary notion of renunciation.• 引きこもり (hikikomori) — modern social withdrawal, generally carrying a much more pathological/social-problem connotation.In fact, the hostility we can experience toward our withdrawal from this diseased society is, in fact, a pertinent feature of competitive societies themselves. The need to punish as a function of the totem pole social hierarchy. Why does being alone seem to offend people?
Because a highly competitive society doesn't merely need you to produce. It needs you to participate in the competition. Win or lose. And it needs the "losers" to remain in the limelight as whipping boys, as bad examples that suffer continually and this give legitimacy to the competitive system. "This is what happens to those who don't play the game!" To make "winners" feel that their own sacrificed life has been well invested. "At least that's not me!"Someone who says:>I don't want to compete. I want a small room, enough food, some books, music, and nobody bothering me.has done something ideologically inconvenient.
They haven't necessarily defeated the system. They haven't even necessarily rebelled against it.They've declined its invitation.And that can be more irritating than opposition.A dissident can be incorporated into the system as an opponent: political activist, entrepreneur, artist, intellectual, revolutionary, etc. Those are all recognizable social roles. But the person who says “No, I would actually prefer to be alone” is difficult to turn into a productive participant (or marketable commodity).& There's an even deeper problem: solitude exposes how much of “social necessity” is actually social pressure.If everyone is working 50 hours a week, competing for status, optimizing their appearance, networking, maintaining an online presence, buying things, dating, advertising themselves, and anxiously monitoring everyone else, then the person sitting alone reading Victor Hugo can look almost subversive—not because he's attacking anyone, but because he's demonstrating that another allocation of human attention is possible.Another lifestyle is possible. And if enough people do it...Another world.And competition produces a peculiar contradiction:The society says:“Be weird.”But simultaneously:"Only within this narrow bandwidth."It sez:"Be yourself."But also:“Make yourself competitive.”So you are permitted individuality so long as your individuality can be converted into something socially legible:unique interesting marketable employable desirable successful.Solitude doesn't necessarily produce any of those things.The focus is always outward.Perform for the common good. Buy what if you think the common good editor be fit each and every individual to teach their highest calling? Human potential movement, Maslow, Logotherapy, Existentialism, etc. But solitude doesn't increase GDP.& Neither does otium—doing something because you have time to do it rather than because it generates an externally measurable return.
>>541833599Checked/thread
That's why the old distinction between otium and negotium is so useful here. Otium isn't simply “doing nothing.” It historically encompasses contemplation, reading, conversation, study, artistic activity, wandering, thinking—activities undertaken outside the demands of commerce and public obligation.A society organized around negotium can start treating otium as suspicious.Japan makes this particularly visibleJapan didn't invent social withdrawal. European literature is absolutely full of hermits, monks, misanthropes, aristocratic recluses, solitary intellectuals, aesthetes, and people who simply disappear from ordinary society.But modern Japan gave the phenomenon a particularly striking name because the collision between extreme social expectations and withdrawal became impossible to ignore.And there is an interesting irony in the word hikikomori: the person has “drawn inward.”Not necessarily outwardly attacked society.Not necessarily conquered it.Simply ceased supplying himself to it.That's why I think the broader phenomenon is bigger than hikikomori. A person can be socially functional while psychologically becoming something like a voluntary recluse: reducing or eliminating obligations, possessions, networking, social media, career ambition, public visibility, etc., and constructing a private territory in which his attention belongs to him.And that has a very long history.The monk in his cell, the aristocrat disappearing into his country estate, the Romantic wanderer, the flâneur, the hermit, the decadent aesthete, the eccentric scholar, the cabin-dweller, the punk squatting in an abandoned building—all of them represent different versions of the same basic proposition:“My life does not have to be available to the world.”
That's a surprisingly radical proposition in a society whose greatest scarce resource is increasingly your attention...See also:Commodify Your Dissent, Thomas Frank article. Dated but 4pol is smart enough to find it's application to today's dystopian world.GL, anons.Getting off this shitsite (for days or weeks at a time, and then only dropping back in to paste large swaths of gpt text and bounce) is Step 1.Download old books.Burn to disc.Take a nap.This may take a while....Thomas Frank's “Commodify Your Dissent” is almost a perfect companion to what we were just talking about.The joke/argument of the essay is that capitalism is extraordinarily good at absorbing opposition by turning opposition itself into a commodity. Rebellion becomes a style, alienation becomes a marketing demographic, anti-establishment attitudes become things you can buy.And that creates an interesting distinction with the recluse:• Dissenter: “Your society is fucked.”• Countercultural consumer: “Your society is fucked—and I'll buy the T-shirt.”• Entrepreneurial dissenter: “Your society is fucked. Here's my $299 course on escaping it.”• Hikikomori/recluse: “Whatever. I'm staying in my room.”That last one is strangely difficult to commodify if it is genuinely accompanied by withdrawal from consumption and status competition.
>>541833599
Of course, capitalism has gotten pretty good at commodifying even withdrawal: gaming setups, streaming subscriptions, “cozy” rooms, minimalist aesthetics, wellness retreats, van life, cottagecore, anti-work books, etc. The system can eventually say:You don't need to leave society! You can purchase an aesthetically pleasing version of rejecting society.Which is very Frank.And there's an even nastier version of it: “Be authentic.”Because once authenticity becomes a social requirement, you have to perform your authenticity. Your rebellion needs an audience. Your nonconformity needs an Instagram. Your refusal of consumerism needs the right $180 jacket.That's why genuine withdrawal can seem almost more threatening than conventional political rebellion. The rebel still cares about the social arena enough to fight in it.The recluse says: I don't want the arena.I don't owe you anything. At all. But you owe me something. So repay me, now.And that connects beautifully with our earlier interest in otium vs. negotium. Otium represents a space where one's attention isn't immediately being converted into economic or social value. In that sense, protecting a little territory of uselessness may be a more radical act than buying an enormous amount of countercultural stuff.Frank's essay is basically asking: What happens when capitalism learns to sell you your rebellion?The recluse asks the more annoying question:What if I don't buy the rebellion—or participate in the market for rebellion—at all?/end
Just watch this video https://youtu.be/1NFrKMODrz8?si=JyHQd5las6yGzHCG
>>541833699Lol why is that guy so slouched down in his chair that his chin is next to the keyboard?
>>541833710That's why genuine withdrawal can seem almost more threatening than conventional political rebellion.The rebel still cares about the social arena enough to fight in it.The recluse says: I don't like arenas &I don't owe you anything. At all.
>>541833599whats wrong with ten thousand hours of factorio?
>>541833863Up to a point, if enough people just withdraw their attention, it's enough to destabilize I think but we're past that now.it happenedit's overplebs waited too longassholes pushed to hard(I wasn't sure which to/too to use because I'm not a grammer fag and I didn't feel like looking it up rn, apologies. I did use one of each though.)
>>541833863One of the biggest problems though with mass withdrawal is a mass lose of tribal knowledge. Carpenters, cooks, iron workers, electricians, etc. all these trades you can learn on your own, sure, but there is a certain flare and finesse to these disciplines at a professional level, that can only be learned on the job by a 30-40 year veteran, who, himself learned from a 30-40 year veteran and so on. Mass withdrawal of participation in practicing these trades breaks this cycle and it's hard to regain them in a sensible amount of time. Just saying, not really disagreeing with your broader points
right
>>541833504Jews can't get you in death, hence it's why they would want you to stay alive to slave away for them and pay debt.
>>541833504You know what they used to call me out in Skid Row?
>>541833504Thanks, I was having a mental breakdown hitting myself in the head because of OCD, I hate my retarded genetics.
>>541833504Trvke
>>541833504every retard is a hostile dickhead here.go fucking MAID yourself.being an annoying cunt and expecting someone to kill you is literally woman coded.
