> For instance, it turned out that one of his basic operating premises was the claim that there were really only two basic, fundamental orientations a person could have toward the world, (1) love and (2) fear, and that they couldn’t coexist (or, in logical terms, that their domains were exhaustive and mutually exclusive,or that their two sets had no intersection but their union comprised all possible elements, or that: ‘(∀x) ((Fx → ~ (Lx)) & (Lx → ~ (Fx))) & ~ ((∃x) (~ (Fx) & ~ (Lx))’), meaning in other words that each day of your life was spent in service to one of these masters or the other, and ‘One cannot serve two masters’ —the Bible again— and that one of the worst things about the conception of competitive, achievement-oriented masculinity that America supposedly hardwired into its males was that it caused a more or less constant state of fear that made genuine love next to impossible. That is, that what passed for love in American men was usually just the need to be regarded in a certain way, meaning that today’s males were so constantly afraid of ‘not measuring up’ (Dr. G.’s phrase,with evidently no pun intended) that they had to spend all their time convincing others of their masculine ‘validity’ (which happens to also be a term from formal logic) in order to ease their own insecurity, making genuine love next to impossible.
my favourite short story desu familia.
> Toward the end she had compared me to some piece of ultra-expensive new medical or diagnostic equipment that can discern more about you in one quick scan than you could ever know about yourself — but the equipment doesn’t care about you, you’re just a sequence of processes and codes. What the machine understands about you doesn’t actually mean anything to it. Even though it’s really good at what it does.
>>7886566
>completely unnecessary mathematical notation
>people don't think David is talking about himself in this story about a fraud who needs to impress people
>people are still impressed with David's writing
>>7887011
>>completely unnecessary mathematical notation
I mean, I suppose, but I still find it kindof nice.
>>7887011
i think that's the most brilliant part. he tried to write a short story about a guy who only thought about the way other people saw him-- meanwhile, DFW himself is that guy, still trying to impress us even while outing himself as that guy
it's like the story actually wrote him. he had no control over that metanarrative
>>7887167
He also uses irregardless, mentions the Kundalini, and this:
> The German logician Kant was right in this respect, human beings are all pretty much identical in terms of our hardwiring. Although we are seldom conscious of it, we are all basically just instruments or expressions of our evolutionary drives, which are themselves the expressions of forces that are infinitely larger and more important than we are.
He's a great writer, but I can't relate. I don't get the intensity of his self consciousness. I'm too dumb and I don't think fast enough. Like, something isn't bad just because you realize that it's happening. It's not bad because you've heard it before. Idk
>>7886982
wow, nice tits
>>7888184
Are you 12?
>>7887821
That hyper-consciousness doesn't come from being smart, it comes from being anxious. What comes from being fairly smart is that his anxious thoughts are academic, but that is neither here nor there. DFW wasn't a genius, just fairly intelligent, but he was very anxious about being received as intelligent. I think DFW had a dislike for academic pretentiousness but at the same time he was academically pretentious himself, in that he wanted to be known as extremely learned and insightful; this is why he is stained with self-loathing. His sentimental attachment to simple and honest people but at the same time his desire for achievement, especially academic achievement. Kind of relates to a contradiction in America at large, in that America is a nation that idolises both the common man and individual achievement.
>>7888915
You must be one of those faggots
I find it hard to imagine anyone not understanding the feeling DFW describes. It is an accurate representation of how i had thought people experienced the world and their own selves.
But I was reading these CBT, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy tasks and the overarching ideas seemed to be that acknowledging that people perceiving you also have similar mental processes should be a relief, in terms of anxiety. At the moment i really don't feel like that's a sound idea. There are certain times I feel confident about an action so it stands to reason that others would experience no anxiety at times when their actions affect me negatively. And how would that even help me when my mind is full of all the perceptions, anxieties and speed of Good Old Neon?
> The truth is you’ve already heard this. That this is what it’s like. That it’s what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul. And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you’re a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, and of course you try to manage what part they see if you know it’s only a part. Who wouldn’t? It’s called free will, Sherlock.
>>7888941
Actually a good post
>‘(∀x) ((Fx → ~ (Lx)) & (Lx → ~ (Fx))) & ~ ((∃x) (~ (Fx) & ~ (Lx))’
The contrapositive and the existential quantifier are completely unnecessary, he's using equivalence just to make it look more complicated. It can be simplified to
>(∀x) ((Fx → ~ (Lx))
Still my favorite short story.
>>7891060
re uh re
>>7888941
thanks for the legit contribution bruv. you're a real hero
>>7891060
I get what you mean about the contrapositive, but isn't the second part ~ ((∃x) (~ (Fx) & ~ (Lx)) necessary since it says that all x's either fear or love the world? I don't see how that would be covered in (∀x) ((Fx → ~ (Lx))
>>7891676
Yes, though it is expressed unnecessarily verbosely. The whole thing is equivalent to:
(∀x) ((Fx v Lx) & (Fx → ~ Lx))
Good Old Neon is just The Fall done by DEE EF DUB
>>7888941
Fuck, this is me. Or is this just every pretentious 20 something who has done nothing of note?
>>7888941
This is great, rang true and gave me peace wrt not relating to him.
>>7886566
Does anyone else prefer The Soul is Not a Smithy to GON?
>>7891953
I like both, but I think GON carried me way faster: something i found way more impacting. Smithy does a great job on the whole boredom shit, also that interview is a good one.
