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wellmetmat · 16 days

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There's a post from a couple of years ago which I was reminded of and wanted to add to today, about nobody wanting to take the supplicant role in courtship, but it's unrebloggable due to some constraint the OP put on it, so I'll just quote my bit:

Being attracted to someone is distressing. I think the largest part of it is hunger to know someone (?); but when you can’t get to know them well, it ends up a stunted obsession: all that drive-to-know - enough to build a deep, detailed model of another personality - chewing over scraps of phrases and trivial actions, until you’re snappishly bored with your own mind. Your skin feels hungry and there’s nothing you can do about it: “touch starvation” is a phrase that comes to mind. The person’s absence and their presence both hurt: absence obviously, presence because once you’re there you find that there’s still distance, you still miss them. It’s rather like homesickness. Courting someone is wretched. It’s frightening and humiliating and full of agonising waiting periods and jarring mood switchbacks. It feels something like being dragged along on a fishhook, with the line attached to another person’s little finger. Liking someone more than they like you is a position of low power. The incentives are to be servile. You have nothing to bargain with: whatever they decide, you agree to with a smile. You always try to sound happy, because that’s what’s most appealing. You give up on areas of confusion instead of trying to understand, because asking questions annoys people and any annoying act pushes you closer to the cliff-edge of losing them. Any small disagreement feels like a large risk, so you distort your own opinions a bit. You can’t be spontaneous; your inner voice is always tallying accounts: how many days since the last message, too few, you mustn’t bother them yet / how many days since you came up with something interesting, too many, they may forget; don’t intrude so much, but simultaneously what have you done for them lately, how can you provide value to justify remaining in their life. It seems bad that we’re like this. I don’t imagine humans are especially badly formed or anything, it’s probably just as subjectively rotten for every animal that does courtship displays. But if anyone eventually makes robots with emotion-like motivational systems, they shouldn’t include anything like attraction. It’s so silly.

I feel like resurrecting this today to celebrate being out of it. In the last two weeks, somebody has given me the double gifts of liking me and of having the generosity to say so, and show so. All I want to do is be glad and be grateful, and try never to cause this person to experience anything described above.

But I stand by the description, it is a correct description, and we are so badly made it is infuriating. @nohoperadio's good post on the tragic stupidity of pain incidentally also works as a discourse on eros: if there'd been any intelligence involved in the design process, distress signals would come with an off-switch! (Hence my blog tagline.) But instead, evolution is a pitiless idiot, love is humiliation, nonviable attachments take years to starve to death, and there is no moral of the story. Absurd. A baboon could design a better emotional constitution.

Delightfully, this week ACX introduced David Pearce ("For centuries, philosophers have praised suffering as a necessary part of the human condition. For decades, David Pearce has told those other philosophers that they are bad and wrong"), who is doing his best to make a better emotional constitution available, and I approve of such a project so highly that it's been necessary to stack new levels of approval above my previous maximum to encompass how right he is. It's really exciting that any intelligent and active person considers progress of this sort possible and is working on it.

#blind idiot gods #hedonic uplift #David Pearce #transhumanism #important life goal: never need to go courting again - it's rather early to call this achieved but suddenly I can hope

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cupofmeat · 10 hours

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"Oriental Rose", David Pearce. Acrylic on canvas.

#david pearce #contemporary art #still life

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hitku · 8 months

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by David Pearce

#art #painting #david pearce

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jordi-gali · 1 year

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A post shared by David Pearce (@davidpearce_art)

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David Pearce

#david pearce #Instagram

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anotherdiamonday · 3 months

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David Pearce, Lady in Pink, n.d., Acrylic on board

David Pearce, In the Garden, n.d., Acrylic on board

#david pearce #art

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rockposerdotcom · 1 year

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Review: Heart Line - Rock 'N Roll Queen

Review: Heart Line – Rock ‘N Roll Queen Pride & Joy Music (June 23rd, 2023) Reviewer: David Pearce Heart Line are a French rock band who released their first album 18 months ago to some acclaim. They are back with their follow-up entitled ‘Rock N Roll Queen‘ an album which has been shaped in part by the reactions of audiences to their live gigs. This five piece band consists of guitarist Yvan…