Yes, this is very good. I've decided that X is also a form of procrastination as well, and I need to take an extended break from it as you have done, until I accomplish some urgent things. Often I say well I will just look at this or that but it turns into a few hours of scrolling.

I do seek out contrasting people to the extent that I seek out people at all. My method of late is, if I seek out people, it is for specific goals rather than just the generic "make friends". So for example I know people who like to take road trips and do photography. This is not for money, it's just a kind of idealistic artistic pursuit I guess.

And as for women, I don't approach them at all but sometimes women get sexually aggressive with me and then maybe I will respond. Several of these have been quite good-looking but they are never really looking for anything lasting as you well know.

For example, I recently met that tall chick and she both acted sexually aggressive and wanted to meet up for dance practice. I would be OK with this. But she looks like a mentally ill hoe and so far has been unreliable, so I remain skeptical. This is not just about hoes, either - people flake all the time, everywhere now. It's a feature of American society more and more since before Covid.

Another example of this is a friend of mine who wanted to start a podcast. I was willing, but it never went anywhere. We never got to step one. This is why I think it's a bigger, collective problem as to whether anything much can be accomplished collaboratively in our kind of society. Sure, women flake in particular, but it's part of a wider trend also.

So far, and sad as it is to say, but my experience is "transactional relationships" have worked best in our time. Why? I guess because expectations are in line with what actually happens when money is involved. For example, if I go to the dance studio then I at least (in theory) get what I pay for. That hour of material will be covered, guaranteed. Unless literally no one shows up. That hasn't happened except for a few of the lesser attended classes.

This kind of thing is both a voluntary social organization and a business. Things can actually get done in that context. Getting people to commit to something creative outside of that context is a much riskier proposition nowadays. Social atomization is complete. And I'm not judging - we all put ourselves first.

It's just an interesting situation - without certain incentives nothing really gets done in this country and there's always some excuse (I'm married and have to spend time with the wife, I have work in the morning, I am too busy, etc). If money doesn't change hands, nobody is showing up. In some ways it's remarkable that the engine of commerce still runs with how lackadaisical everyone is about everything.

Truly images of a civilization in decline.

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before addressing your post something i forgot to mention. ( i will address your post in a separate reply )

Alan Watt ( who is now dead ) of cuttingthroughthematrix.com once mentioned on his radio show that elites have studied this and found that a person can deal with at most 3 crises at the same time. any more than this and the person falls apart.

now imagine you're dealing with some crisis ( you can't pay the rent ) and you call your mother to borrow some money ...

this is NOT what happened, actually i fought with my mother because she asked me for an extension cable for her laptop but there was miscommunication about what kind of cable and i just remembered how dumb my mother is and how much i hate her and i lashed out at her and then seconds later i realized that actually she correctly described what she needed and it was me who mis-interpreted it and then i told her not to visit over the weekend and instead just spent the weekend in bed trying to figure out why i lost my shit over nothing and how i can make sure it doesn't happen again ... i will not share the conclusions of my introspective investigation LOL

but let's say you're calling your mother to borrow some money so you can pay rent, and then your mother starts talking about what kind of loser you are for being broke and that reminds you how much you hate your mother because you were neglected as a child etc ...

now suddenly in addition to the crisis of not having money to pay rent you're also dealing with an internal crisis where you hate your mother but are forced to listen to her shit ... now you're up to 2 crises out of 3 max ...

you accumulate enough of these internal unresolved issues and something could push you over the 3 max crises limit where you pick up an AR-15 and go shoot up a school ...

people put off money towards a rainy day and that's smart, but you also have to put off space in your mind for any kind of unexpected crisis.

i really felt the pinch when i was in Florida last year when it was still recovering from one hurricane while simultaneously preparing for the next and everything was out - no rental cars, no hotel rooms, no gas, no plane tickets and a hurricane about to hit the EXACT location where i was at head on, and my hotel informed me that i couldn't extend my stay because they were all booked so i had to leave while also not being able to leave at the same time ( no gas, no plane tickets etc. ) my realtor said i should go to one of the unfinished homes ( that aren't locked ) that we toured and stay there and added "and if you get arrested you will be safe in prison"

at that point i literally felt like this is it - i am in a situation without any exit - i am fucked - but i didn't break down and by some miracle was able to get gas ( i called like 20 different gas stations and one had gas and after standing in line for a while i got a full tank ). also after calling the rental company ( which previously said i can't leave the state ) they said that because of the hurricane they will waive the restriction and i was allowed to leave. so in the end everything worked out but there was a point where it felt like the walls were closing in. like i wasn't getting out of that situation. but again, i didn't break down and everything got fully resolved.

but now imagine a perfect storm of bad luck like this except you were already at the limit of your capacity to deal with shit because of all the unresolved internal conflicts, plus maybe you are with your cheating GF and her black kids - you're just going to beat them all to death then blow your brains out.

so the solution is to stay light. don't carry baggage. resolve internal conflicts by accepting difficult realities and end relationships that are weighing you down. if you aren't weighed down by shit in your daily life you have reserve capacity to deal extra-ordinary BS like a natural disaster or some medical nightmare etc.

i think this "stay light" principle can be applied to many things - from not accumulating literal stuff ( like my 3,000 SQ FT basement full of "stuff" that is like a boat anchor on my neck ), to not accumulating recurring expenses like car lease, mortgage etc. to staying out of toxic relationships, to not carrying around psychological trauma etc.

now as for your point about atomization and transactional relationships i think this is a double edged sword ...

( Part 1 - why Atomization is good akshully )

i actually didn't notice this while living in US but i did notice it when i CAME to US ( that everything is more transactional ) and my Grandma who was born in the 1920s has REALLY noticed it complained about it. so it's definitely happening, has been for a while, and is probably accelerating BUT it's not necessarily a bad thing ...

we all seen those videos of Amish people moving a barn. that is only possible in a tightly knit community but also such a community is only capable of doing things like moving a barn. they can't build an international space station.

network effects tell us that to achieve any particular goal ( like build a nuclear reactor or a space ship ) requires a network of a certain size. you can't have five guys building something like that. or 500 guys.

the Manhattan project ( subject of movie "Oppenheimer" ) which produced the first nuclear bomb according to google has involved 130,000 people at it's peak. you CAN NOT have over 100,000 people collaborating on the basis of being friends with each other or related by blood.

in fact the elites have determined that human brain can only have 150 people in your phone book so to speak. the kind of relationships our brains evolved for ( like the ones Amish still have ) only work in communities of 150 people or less. but as i said achieving the kinds of things humanity has been doing for the past 100 years requires collaboration of a much larger number of people.

so we developed all these systems of law and finance and professional ethics and so on that allow strangers who don't even like each other to collaborate on projects. i guess that's what the movie "Oppenheimer" is really about - the friction between people who are working on a common goal yet come from different backgrounds and and in many cases are jealous of each other or hate each other and are all also looking how to benefit personally even if at the expense of this larger goal or thousands of people dead and so on.

it's ugly but without this you have to be content with being able to build a barn and nothing fancier than that.

( Part 2 - why the real problem is not Atomization but Taxes )

the reason folks on the right fight against Atomization is because it ultimately cedes power to the state making us all slaves ... which is true. Strong communities like the Amish are largely independent from the state and that is why right-wingers are impressed by them. But as i said the Amish can only collaborate on a small scale.

the real problem isn't Atomization - it is taxation.

the power of the state comes from taxes. that is when you pay the government ( involuntarily ) to "help" you. so instead of paying your neighbor to teach your kids some basic math for example the government takes your money ( at gun point ) then hires some Tranny to teach your kids how to use butt plugs. or instead of paying some Shaman for snake oil the government ( at gun point ) takes your money then medicaid or medicare injects you with MRNA.

as wise people have noted the worst kind of tyranny is exercised for the benefit of the victim. you're getting robbed at gun point for your own good goy. it's all for your own protection - like the Mafia protection racket.

an ideal society would be 100% atomized allowing people to associate freely with anybody across the planet and collaborate on any project ( similar to how NOSTR developers collaborate ) but it would not involve any central authority collecting taxes or providing "services"

i rather enjoy the freedom of just being able to hop on a plane to California or Florida and feel equally at home there as i do in NJ because i don't have any friends or meaningful relationships in the real world so i can go anywhere and still be home as long as i have internet connection. to me that's a good thing, not a bad thing. there are pretty girls everywhere not just in your dance class and they are more interested in you when they haven't seen you before so the more free you are to move the more opportunities with girls you get, and if it doesn't work out you never have to see them again.

BUT ! sadly this kind of "freedom" ( currently ) comes at the expense of tyranny. your government is your family in other words - this is why right-wingers defend family - because family and government serve the same functions ( your insurance policy, protection, education etc. )

our real goal should be not to come back to the tyranny of the family ( Karl Marx explained that family is a slave institution in The Communist Manifesto ) but to get rid of government while MAINTAINING the atomization of individuals ...

this has never been achieved of course. Anarchy would be the word to describe it but it has never been made to work. Communism in theory was supposed to be what the Amish have ( and the Israelis have it in the form of "Kibbutz" ) but i do not want that.

i don't want family, community OR government. i want TRUE DECENTRALIZATION.

can it be done ? we can't say that it can't just because it never worked before because today with Internet, Surveillance, DNA testing and AI it is much easier to hold people accountable for their actions.

in the past only fear of G-d or fear of government could make people fall in line. in the future AI may become G-d where you can't do anything without AI knowing what you did.

the cascade of effects would be too far reaching for me to be able to predict what the final result will be.

This is a very interesting thread and I actually agree about the not being tied down part, the only trouble is that I am tied down now for reasons partially known to you and so I am just trying to make the best of it. There will likely be a time at some point when mobility is again possible.

It is interesting that your best shot with women is always early on because familiarity breeds contempt on both sides and women of today prefer to keep it casual. Hence I've found that it's rarely worth it to get to know women, but in the case of projects I'm involved in there's no real choice except dropping out which I don't want to do. Eventually despite your best efforts to stay anonymous, in any group setting you become a known commodity.

To clarify, I don't go to dance for the women - I go for the art. Most of the advanced dancers are in fact older women who are already married with the one exception of the instructor who is also a model (and likely juggling rich simps, judging from what she posts on social media). This is fine because I don't want to have to worry about emotional ties or sexual jealousy in this context.

Finding a girl who is:

-young/pretty

-a good dancer

-available (either just to practice or as FWB)

Is like finding a needle in a haystack. There was one at the beginning of the year but I missed my shot because she ended up working for another studio that's a bit too far away. It's right near where I used to live, but I'm on the other side of the metro now.

As for the other points, I will wait to respond since I'm actually getting a few things done today and I don't want to lose momentum by spending too much time online.

you're in Mid-West, right ?

Yes