isolation diaries 22: blinding lights

[merzb]

21-05

I've been listening to "The Weeknd - Blinding lights" on repeat. It makes me want to go in the sun and smoke, and sometimes it makes me want to cry.

I said, ooh, I'm blinded by the lights
No, I can't sleep until I feel your touchI don't know why this line in particular hits. What's the purpose of life, in the end? My friend and I discussed

Comments

[meistergedanken]

"But sometimes, it does creep in my mind - how long do things have to occur such that they become permanent, such that they become habits, such that they fundamentally change you?"

For those who experience war, or acts of extreme violence or brutality, not very long.

"I think really, external stimuli can cause discontinuous jumps. Like, it's not like something which is a trajectory, you can speed up or speed down, but you can't telepor, but... maybe my analogy was not correct."

A step function of the psyche.

I think of them - these acute external stimuli - as cross-currents, transverse pulses, perpendicular vectors that disrupt the smoothly developing and predictable pattern unfolding and take life in another direction, where the destination does not necessarily constitute progress or improvement, but development of a kind nonethless.

[meistergedanken]

Our personalities are like the micro-crystalline lattice of a metal that has undergone repeated blows or intense thermal gradiants - it may be forged, or annealed, or cold-worked, or merely through fatigue acquire many tiny fissures that could potentially propagate at any moment and widen into catastrophic cracks with the application of a certain stress[or].

Yes, we engineers are a practical-minded lot.

[4kudzu]

There will definitely be some permanent damage coming out of this. Like, there's a lot of anxiety and depression posts, and how to cope and get help. They know people get affected; I'm not sure that all the people know they're getting affected or willing to accept it, but it'll have some repercussions.

[invertickle]

We accumulate damage and isolation. Surely there's a point after which the reaction is largely irreversible. I mean with enough effort maybe we can go back to a normal-ish state but it might require like a boatload of energy.

Neuroscience is really weird though. Like even if you're not 100% back to normal, after recovering from stuff, you might settle on a new normal that you identify with more and actually like, so there's always hope.

Hope you have a good weekend and get some good people based interactions soon!