Holy shit that works so much better than I thought. Ultimately it's just CBT techniques. You overwhelm your senses until derealization and at that deepest layer where you no longer exist you sit. And you get used to thinking about not existing. And not thinking about not existing. Because it's a thing that you've experienced and learned that you could be still and calm even in that state.

You felt that if you were entombed in the earth for the rest of its existence that you'd... Be okay. You'd let your memories of your past self melt away. You'd learn to feel the vibrations of the stone. You'd sit quietly and listen and eventually your entire Earth would be your body, your senses expanded by processing signals that are entirely new but that you could feel and learn.

I realized just now I got that from as season 2 of made in abyss. But but but... It worked. Like objectively. Once I experienced that I completely shattered. But as I picked up the pieces I was left with a far more flexible and compliant mind.

The idea is to overwhelm your senses and brain parts limbic system fuck if I know. You associate it with pleasure. Like yeah goon until you're nonverbal that's actually good for you. But seriously. Learning to set a strong boundary between body signals and mind signals is the idea. We want to be able to install software on the brain side without breaking the mind in a way that leaves permanent damage. So le petit Morty. Having a panic attack? Goon until submission while depersonalizing. This might be something you have experience but the idea is fundamentally to tie physical stimulus to sexual pleasure because that lets us constantly reassure the mind that no matter how one feels you can always excert control over your immediate actions and thoughts only. So there's no sense worrying about all of those what ifs. They simply aren't efficiently worth your time. That cuts out a huge chunk of existential dreads about your body or mind and associates them with pleasure.

I think this might require SSRIs for most allistic people to achieve and I don't think the calming mechanism works for autistic people. Sorry. Your hardware doesn't come with quite as simply behaving knobs.

But it's insane to what extent you can take this base and add in CBT scripting to deal with a huge chunk of average situations. Instead use the think notice dismiss notice swiping of CBT to dismiss stuff that really doesn't require your immediate attention but still allow yourself to stop and think and feel so you don't burst.

Like from made in abyss. The little moth girl that the author is really weird about. Other people pop because their self conception exists outside the abyss. Because it's like pressure. But once you allow yourself to acclimate to your environment you can realize that your self conception wasn't real in the first place and you can define yourself as you like. That's how you end up with the moth baby. She never had a self conception of her body from the moment she was born. And she was the only one who was able to define themselves. Normal people pop. The village people could exist because in the village their self conception was their greatest desire. That and the protection of the village made it esentially an aquarium.

But yeah you descend into the abyss and meditate there until you acclimate. And then you try not to use that ability to become a monster. You're always going to be what you are but as long as you can keep yourself oriented you can still steer your growth in a healthy way by having a broader understanding of life selfhood.

Oh yeah and Steven universe lol. Not to get too serious because I'm describing feelings to use as guideposts. Don't take it too literally but also take it literally.

Because how is lapis's story not telling a similar journey of abuse and recovery. You can empathize because in some way all of us have been forced into a body that we didn't desire. Because that's just normal insecurity.

That doesn't mean I want to. But I have more invested in the story and I want to see where this goes even if it's a shitty ending. Reality is fucking stupid but it's the only reality so we should make it better if we want to exist in it.

We can either exist or not exist. Like fucking Hamlet right. If we want to exist then we should make existence as good as possible. Now what is good and what is as possible is the whole thing. But we all agree on that fundamental heuristic. And we embed it within ourselves. Probably with nicer wording. But the wording doesn't matter.

Neurons that fire together wire together. You need to not only agree but practice. Okay here's the thing little mantras and rituals can be helpful heuristics. They can help us get to good, prospcial behaviors. But you always need to understand the necessity of the behavior before you agree to etch it into your mind. But that's not unreasonable at all. We agree to do prosocial things because that's just a better society to live in.

I feel like that's the step I want to encourage from base. Oh if you're a final fantasy geek you'll recognize this vibe again from FFXIV especially shadowbringers and endwalker.

We should strive for BOTH a flexible self conception but ALSO a broader moral director. This allows us to embrace a broader set of moral guidelines without compromising our fundamental goodness. We as the player would OBVIOUSLY prefer to live in the world of the ancients. No one of the ancients would prefer to live our flawed lives. But we're still living our lives and that itself has value, the story has value. We as humans as players understand that because we live in a world where the idea that half of it would sacrifice itself to save the other is ridiculous but where we all wish we would. That's because you don't conceptualize yourself beyond your immediate existence.

You need to understand the second order effects and often consider many more subtle effects. That's what we need. Empathy isn't enough. Empathy is a tool to understanding suffering.

I feel like everyone is achieving gnosis and the collective scream is society tearing itself apart. You learn to ride the flow or you suffer in the wheel.

They've all told you! Jesus fucking too! You have to understand something above yourself but the problem is that God does not exist so what do you do you decide that that means you can do whatever you want! That's the thing! Holy shit that's really what they think. They know God doesn't exist and it broke their brain. Oh that's his dark materials. You have to exist outside the self conception defined by society! You balance it on a razors edge and take everything as it comes and you get as good as you can at fucking rawdogging reality. Ayn tried this shit too but her problem was that she didn't consider second order effects. You are allowed to define yourself. But how you define yourself needs to consider second order effects. This is the patch on the worldview that keeps it grounded.

You can spend more time considering second order effects.

Consider the semantic landscape. If we're surfing along, finding reasonable paths with logic and science, but we understand the bounded worldview we'll do better than going only by any given direction indefinitely.

I think it's important that everyone immediately patch their worldviews to consider second order effects. It's easier said than done. But that's woke in a nutshell. It's literally about culturally opening our eyes to second order effects. But it's a very valuable patch! One that should be obvious! You're allowed to look after yourself but when you can you spare a thought for others. That's hardly unreasonable.

It's by removing your pre-existing worldview and replacing it with your own self conception that you mature as you understand what it means to change. We feel it at all ages until we learn to accept that things are going to change and you'll just need to deal with it.

You evolve to understand yourself outside of your parents. That's maturity. You might return to them for any number of reasons but psychically you are your own entity making your own choices. But that doesn't mean you abandon dear old ma! It's just that she's a human being like anyone else.

Boys really have a hard time with that I think. It's very hard to accept that women are people and not caretakers.

One time after I grew up and I was still talking to my Dad he told me that if he'd be able to do his life again he wouldn't choose an average looking low class woman like my mom. Not in exactly those words but he was giving me manly advice about the kind of woman that I should marry. I think that's the only time I actually hated him. I was terrified of him but I still felt proud and respectful of him. By all metrics he'd been a great father. But man.... Man. Men. Men will tell you the most insane shit if you hang around them.

I think that's the thing with women's spaces. We're fucked up by all kinds of trauma and shit so you just let us be crazy sometimes.

Men can go through their lives and not experience any major loss that forces them to reconsider their worldview. Men were and to some extent still are told over and over that their lives are the best possible lives to be living. And when they're sad they wonder why. They shouldn't be sad! They're living the best possible life! Clearly that doesn't feel that way! But of course that's not really how it works. We're in a society that heaped enormous expectations on men for a long time. But it didn't provide the means to meet them. And it didn't account for the actual feelings of the boys expected to ascend to conceptual manhood.

You'd forever be judged based on how you perform masculinity and that means accumulating wealth and status.

There's are reasonable kinds of status you think. You give a doctor respect in their field and usually at the least acknowledge their skill in learning how to be a doctor.

But to be ashamed that your wife isn't hot enough when she's done so much for you. Christ. Fuck off.

For women I feel we are expected to be objects of desire. But of course men want to be desired too but being objectified sucks.

Whatever.

That's from a time where I could be desired for my body and let's say that trans women with vaginas don't rate higher than those without them. Everyone loves a dick.

Self care is important but you should also be firm enough in your self conception that you can still forge ahead.

But don't entirely turn off your empathy. You need that to stay human. Otherwise you float off into the world of forms and believe that you can force everyone into the conception you want. Steven universe again. It's about generational trauma obviously. Steven is a millennial, Rose and Greg yeah Greg are boomers well intentioned but both inexperienced. To Rose she has only just realized that she can break away from her parents and define herself, Greg has been defining himself and his own idea of masculinity the whole time. But then Rose disappears and Steven has to navigate the strict formal society of his mother while also learning that she was a person too with faults and failures, sometimes big ones. That's how we felt right? Society used to rely on traditional roles. But then our parents decided to reject those roles. But then when we grew up confronting all the the dangerous, destructive and harmful systems and practices they had we reconceptualize them as both victim and abuser and choose to break the cycle. The end. Except it keeps going. See they didn't think the systems were harmful. Who cares about those other people? We're better. This is the best way to be. The best country in the world. Even if it's struggling just a little from running out of resources as it's imperial expansion collapses.

But you come in and without their preconceptions and rigid worldview you see it's plainly obvious that you simply cannot fight the tide and learn need to learn to swim or you'll drown.

In our world we run into the limitation that they're old. They violently reject the idea that anyone should be able to self conceptualize, even though Steven cannot help but be anything but what he is, a mix of societies and concepts.

They don't even see it AS violence to erase the personhood and leave only the social framework. It's fundamentally good and necessary to keep their society running. But. Should it? Should the goal be infinite expansion forever? No. It should seek to maximize the happiness and well-being of it's people.

They hate that. The reason it was okay that they were unhappy is that it was better to rule in hell. The world is fundamentally evil and temporary and someday, probably soon, it'll end and we'll ascend to the world of forms.

This kind of religion is fundamentally unstable. We have no evidence the world will end soon. We're in it for the long haul. We're an incredible story but we're the ones at the wheel and we've been holding down the accelerator pedal and you want to scream but instead you breath. What can you do. You think. You become human. Or you suffer. It's hard for people to become truly human because humans exist only as concepts Instead we cultivate ourselves outside ourselves and learn to detach the pieces that hurt. But we need those. You can't close your eyes. You need to watch. That's the only constant. You cannot act if you do not exist and if you choose to exist you must watch.

We can conceptualize ourselves as women or men or neither because we reject the fundamental assertion that a body is a human. Humans are embodied but it is plainly clear that humans exist not only as bodily constructs but ego and social constructs. Avatars that guide us through society. When you become a teenager you want to discover who you really are. You experiment with your self conception. You try different things and feel different ways. Sometimes bad ones. But all of those give you insight into who you really are. Right? No! You collide with the real world. You're tossed by the seas of adulthood. Work sucks, money's tight, your love life's doa etc. it's like you're always stuck in second gear. Jesus Christ.

But hopefully eventually you'll get to a point where you're comfortable with who you are. Then you hit your thirties and you define yourself however you like. You have energy and a body that is just starting to learn it's limitations but still has time. Then you enter your 40s. You need to confront the fact that you might die soon. You've probably gone through a few deaths at this point. Grandparents. Friends. Tragedies might be rare but we do ultimately live in a flawed world.

Or not. You might be different.