Has anyone ever had a legitimate, deep conversation with someone, about the nature of people and life, about philosophy but not in an overly academic or abstract sense? I don't know about you guys, but I have personally never had a legitimately deep conversation like this. The best I've had are relatively pseudy coversations that don't lead that far. Is it possible to have a conversation like this without it being cringy or pseudy as fuck? It seems like there's no way to discuss anything beyond superficial things and academic ideas, and that when deep emotions or thoughts get involved, they can never be discussed with each other face to face.
>inb4 yeah they can, I'VE discussed them That's just you not realizing how cringy and pseudy you sound
Chase Moore
it depends on who you discuss them with. if you want to have this conversation for prestigious reasons and to impress your vis a vis or bystanders, yes, it will always sound cringy and pretentious. but if you have them with someone you are comforable with and it's about finding common ground or discovering new (to the individuals) thoughts, this can be very bonding. i do it regularly with my dad. and none of us would ever do something as awkwards as name dropping. we try to interweave the ideas we both have and maybe learn a thing or two in the process. it's never intentional. it just happens if the time is right. those discussions can stretch over hours. we usually lead them whilst doing other stuff, like cooking dinner or doing the wash-up. pretty comfy honestly
Lincoln Miller
Depends if you're asking about online or offline.
Online: yes but incredibly rarely and doesn't last long Offline: never, people instantly retract
Aaron Fisher
take some shrooms with a friend or two and ramble about what you're interested in or what moves you. if you sound pseud so be it. just be in the moment and stop being so hard on yourself.
Joseph Roberts
that's true. most people find such conversations too exhausting. atleast if they last longer than a few minutes
you can also do that without drugs. but ofc it can help if you both are stuck up otherwise
Anthony Lopez
I feel like there's a fundamental socially-manufactured constraint that keeps us from being able to do so. A negative byproduct of modernity is the absolute fear of genuine self-expression. In a society that mediates entirely through the appearance of images (not just images), we're most comfortable in the kind of ambiguous plasmatic space of small talk, or in relating ourselves as associations of non-personal images (sports teams, music, tv shows, etc.) in which we don't breach into that plasmatic embryonic space of personal expression and emotional vulnerability. Not to say I or anyone else who has a sense of that is somehow above it, because our reality and self-relations are just as strongly entwined with this passive expression as any basal biological instincts.
I have made some conscious efforts of elevating beyond that, by trying to encourage completely unrestrained passionate self-expression on broad but genuine topics like life and love and all that. But even the people who have agreed to try it haven't been able to maintain it for long. It is deeply uncomfortable to become that vulnerable for most people, and I can't really blame anyone who doesn't have the willpower to maintain it. I've had minor success with 2/~20 people I've consensually tried this with, but I suspect there's some kind of general psychoanalytic work that needs to be done prior to trying again.
Jack Perez
>you can also do that without drugs.
definitely. and if any user doesn't like the thought of using drugs then i respect that. but it's less about what you're saying at the time and more about the lowering of your guard and trust issues overall. mushrooms help nicely with that. they also aren't that strong of a substance. really tailor-made for a situation like this.
Julian Jackson
Yes
Usually it's one listening intently and the other guy going off unchecked in a conversation. Sometimes you need to let a few things go to get to the deeper regions of one's thoughts.
Happens all the time when on drugs, and it usually borders on incoherent nonsense to DUDE MYSTICAL SHIT
Asher Sanders
>and it usually borders on incoherent nonsense to DUDE MYSTICAL SHIT
but these are the best types of talks you muppet. certainly the most fun, anyway.
Josiah Mitchell
>general psychoanalytical work
what do you mean? why would that be a precondition? isn't the goal of such conversations to first bring some order into one's jumbled mind? i agree that it takes a lot of trust and willingness for vulnerability to lead such discussions. it also tskes the security of knowing that the person you do it with is well intentioned. if you ever feel like your thoughts or words could be ridiculed, you will never have the boldness to talk honestly and lay yourself barren. most people are quick to shut others ideas down. and that's when they retract. instead, i try to not make this a battle of the wills. there is inherently no right or wrong, so there's also no point intrying to convince anybody of anything. there are different views on a subject, but exactly that is what i find so interesting. i really like to give another perspective a try. my opinions aren't set in stone. if you have good arguments, you can always convince me.
Nathaniel Johnson
A handful of times. I had it a few times when visiting my professors, and also occasionally when talking to friends. Main reason I think it's so rare is that it's difficult to articulate yourself and to be honest with someone, so it takes opening up to someone more or less by accident to get into those deep conversations. I don't think you can force yourself to open up like that, even with your closest friends.
Nicholas Reyes
definitely true. and a good way to get someone more open to talk deeper. but the goal would be (atleast for me) to have those levels of intimacy without inhibition lowering substances.
that's a rant, a monologue, but not a meaningfull discussion
Jackson Nelson
>that's because you don't realize how cringy and pseudy you sound.
We're all humans who carry deep seated feelings. Many feelings are tied to some sort of cognitive bias, so of course some discussion of deep feelings may feel cringy to discuss.
Just know your audience and not give a fuck.
Jaxon Martinez
the only way to get past being a cringey pseud is to be a cringey pseud and you sound like a cringey pseud who's desperate to not come across as a cringey pseud. stop taking yourself so seriously.
Colton Hughes
>know your audience >don't give a fuck
exactly
Ian Wilson
> isn't the goal of such conversations to first bring some order into one's jumbled mind? Sure, assuming it's all accessible. But I don't believe anyone, even the most mentally well of us, are in a state of absolute cerebral accessibility. This preconditioned alienation alienates us not by some old philosophical sense of outward force where my dialectics aren't compatible with your dialectics or whatever -- we are alienated from our own selves and thus from everyone else. You cannot have a genuine conversation with another person if you aren't emotionally cogent with yourself. I cannot engage in genuine discourse if there is no intelligible language with the self. By psychoanalytic work I mean something strictly analytical. Even if we believe we can see the trap we've stepped in, there very well may be an invisible trap preventing us from releasing ourselves from the trap we do see. While there's no direct experience of that invisible trap available to us now, we can still infer it's existence by its effect, which is the visible anxiety in expressing oneself even in the face of anxiety's irrelevancy.
Brandon Walker
basically you envy the rare few readers who possess photographic memory and the superior recall of text that affords and are super miffed that you don't also have that.
dat sux m8. guess you'll have to jog the nog you got as best you can.
Jaxson Smith
of course nobody (and yes, i mean that: nobody) is free of intrinsic alienation. but that's not a problem. in my books, such conversations are inherently personal. the goal is not to reform philosoph or solve humanity. it's not to answer the meaning of life or anything like that. it is about taking two people (or more, whatever), that are willing to dive deep, leave judgment at the door and be honest. everything else will come with time. you might have to fight trough thick slime first, uncovering hidden traps. you might help each other do so by pointing those traps out for your vis a vis. or you might stumble across them yourself because your partner brought you to examinate areas of yourself you have been neglecting. you might get to a point where you start to discuss broader areas, and even touch on subjects i dismissed earlier. but trying to discuss the question of an afterlife for the sake of discussing that might likely fail. you first need to etablish that bond that only vilnerability and genuinity can create.
Christian Robinson
you have zero reading comprehension
Robert Sanchez
do i? or i am cutting past your elaborate dressing to the real issue here.
Adam Sullivan
>beyond academic ideas >when deep emotions or thoughts get involved, I like how you put that "or [deep] thoughts" there. Very clever.
Now we all know deep thought is obviously superior to academic ideas.
Fucking Christ...
Benjamin Wright
i'm not the user you adressed. but you seem pretty full of yourself
Daniel Price
>Not a meaningful discussion
Well there's very little back and forth in my experience. Surely the listener willl have questions and the roles will switch because the guy talking wouldn't want to feel like he's talking to a wall.
Agreed.
Josiah Brown
lol in what way am i being arrogant here? i don't have that level of recall either. never said i did.
Charles Campbell
I'm not going to play the game you're trying to get me to play, but I do appreciate you pointing out exactly what I'm saying about the fear of genuine self-expression. I hope things get better for you though, really.
>and be honest It seems we have different opinions about the possibility of reaching real honesty and humanity through the discourse we have access to now. The way that I see it is that there is a fundamental blockage in the system of discourse, some kind of faulty connection along the circuit that fails to complete itself. I would speak more directly about it if there was a possibility of approaching it directly, but I'm talking about a fundamental flaw that makes the discourse we currently use an impossibility, something akin to Wittgenstein's Language Games that extends far beyond linguistics and into the psyche of every being subjected to the mechanisms of modernity. We fight through the slime all we want, but there will always be a membrane impenetrable by any method of fighting we know about. I do believe in the possibility of penetrating that membrane, but that would require a comprehensive shift in any notions of self-relation we're accustomed to.
Liam Johnson
I think OP was more talking about talks that are deeply emotional and somewhat personal. Sure, academic ideas can be very profound, but I think that OP was talking more about the sort of academic ideas that are abstract and detached, easy to talk about with others. There's no fear in discussing the ideas of Kant, for instance, but a lot of fear in talking about "life and love," or shit like that. Learn to read between the lines, m8
Kayden Martin
not either of those guys but the only way to really truly express yourself today is through a mix of sincere insincerity and insincerity. the people who do it the other way round are the people who you need to stay the fuck away from.
Benjamin Gutierrez
>I'm not going to play the game you're trying to get me to play, but I do appreciate you pointing out exactly what I'm saying about the fear of genuine self-expression. I hope things get better for you though, really.
you are operating on like 50 proxies of insecurity right now it's too much even for me to handle. i wasn't trying to play any "game" with you over this. you used the word cringe and pseud again and again in your OP clearly you have fears over your level of recall and efficacy in conversation. this is writ large behind your posts.
it's definitely an apprehension for me too. i'm not trying to pretend otherwise. but to think someone is playing a "game" with you when they simply point that out is crazy. calm down bro.
Colton Taylor
OP here, this is the first time I've posted on my post. Also, the reason i used pseud and cringe a lot is because I browse Veeky Forums too much, so my vocab is kind of limited to memes at this point
Sebastian Anderson
man could've sworn that other dude was you.
fair enough then.
Ayden Wood
it might very well be that true ((honesty)) is unatainable. but that doesn't make the attempt worthless. even if we only get trough to that membrane, it would still be a major progress compared to not try at all. qhy do you say this is a modern occurency? do you think there was a point humans were able to close that circuit? what would be the benefit of closing it?
Landon Martin
to add, honesty, for me is not the whole truth. it's whatever degree of truth the one trying to be honest is currently able to access. for example, if someone says "i'm not projecting", then he might very well BE projecting and still not lying. simply because he isn't aware he is projecting. so he doesn't say the truth but is still honest.
Nolan Martin
I've heard this argument a lot, and I can agree that it probably gets us further in our current state than trying to blindly revert back to some primitive state of sincerity where we can all just "be ourselves" like all the reactionary movements (e.g: new sincerity) claim. But ultimately I feel like any kind of insincerity is remaining complicit with the system. Not to frame it politically, but it seems to be a similar approach to neo-liberalism, where they would rather have a compatible answer to a system they disagree with than one that revolutionizes the very system they disagree with into something else entirely. I wouldn't try to prescribe any particular answer in place of the whole post-post-x sincerity deal most people are moving toward, but I believe everything up until we reach a state of true sincerity is merely bandaging the wound. You're confusing me with at least 2 different people buddy.
Connor Anderson
>Brings up Wittgenstein >Proceeds to still gets himself entangled in philosophical diatribe
Wew
Zachary Gray
some people don't blindly follow ideologies and only use the ideas they agree with
are you, by any chance, one of those "x was righ about everything" mongrels?
Benjamin Williams
sounds very comfy.
i wish i had that sort of a relationship with someone.
don't take it for granted
Ryan Clark
>You're confusing me with at least 2 different people buddy.
i so confus. help.
Colton Rodriguez
perpetual "true sincerity" doesn't exist because everyone's fucked up in some way. watch DFW interviews for a showcase on how it doesn't. you can only decipher how sincere someone is from how someone displays their insincerity.
Luke Powell
i always took it for granted because i was used to it. the older i get the more i start to realize how valueable it is. i think this is the biggest gift you can give your kids.
Grayson Walker
Best drug for in depth conversations are booze and cigarettes.
Psychedelics are good too but I find you get caught up in a lot of minutiae when on psychedelics that isn't actually that important.
Weed is almost certainly the worst for making you feel like you're having a deep thought when you're just talking shit.
Amphetamines are quite good as well actually. That's purely through the volume and urgency with which you talk you often end up having some good discussion.
All of this is predicated on having someone actually intelligent to talk to though.
Chase Bailey
>taking drugs >intelligent
pick one
Luis Lee
Care to expand on your feelings of superiority there friendo?
Or did mommy just tell you all drugs were for losers?
Asher Walker
Good Old Neon by DFW is a good story relating to this concept of "true sincerity".
highly recommended
Cooper Collins
DFW is a showcase on how new sincerity doesn't work 2bh. i highly recommend never reading any author who has strong moralistic/ethical tendencies and then offs themselves.
Sebastian Price
No, I'm not one of those blind Wittgenstein followers but you clearly use him inappropriately.
Landon Young
i havenmt used him at all.
damn, lit should have id's
Matthew Nguyen
>Is it possible to have a conversation like this without it being cringy or pseudy as fuck? Yes when both sides are comfortable as fuck with each other and trust the other person to not denigrate them for their deepest held beliefs. The answer is therefore simple. You don't know of anybody who is willing to be that intimate with you. People don't trust you and you don't trust people.
Now you might call this an insecurity in others but what else is new? And it's not like this should be changed from a rational standpoint. Imagine siding with a politican who's constantly switching camps or asking out a love interest who is being hot and cold with you. This wouldn't be right.
In conclusion love, trust and loyalty are privileges you earn for very pragmatic reasons. Or, if you wish, "darwinian" reasons.
Brandon Evans
this
Jordan Torres
Yeah, it was possible because we shared a lot of the same thoughts and doubts and both of us were honest and skeptical about our own ability to express our beliefs about these things in full
>pseudy So you're afraid enough of sounding pseudy that you'll deny yourself the opportunity to have a genuinely deep and honest, possibly enlightening conversation with someone? That's much, MUCH more pseudy than the alternative imo
James Wood
Yeah, with my two best friends. One of them is a philosophy major who does drugs and is socially awkward, the other has a blue collar job but crazy interest in philosophy even though he's extremely cynical about the academic estabilishment. We almost always talk for hours on end every time we hang out and the topics of choice are almost always related to metaphysics or politics.
Jace Richardson
I agree with this. There's also the constant need to distance yourself from what you say, to eliminate the personal element in your expression and rely on abstract models and what-if or maybe, to not slip into a position where what you say could be "corny" or "clichéd" or "ridiculous". These things have led people to adopt a genuine distance from parts of their personality
Lincoln Murphy
I've gotten pretty deep but usually never to the point where there is mutual understanding. Although I don't think that ever happens because we are all blocking others out and repressing our own knowledge, no matter how much we believe that we aware or comfortable. I hope that makes and I hope it's not too depressing but that's what I've experienced. On the other hand I have had fulfilling conversations, sometimes with people who are not otherwise "academic". There are people who have insight that you might not expect, which is more valuable than intelligence. We always forget that people are as complicated as ourselves and not just an exterior. You have to dig very deep to learn something true and unique about someone. Trying not to sound so pretentious here, but I have also heard people say things that would lead them to a deeper understanding before failing to follow the thought. You can try to push them in the right direction but they might not want to do that. Of course, we all have our biases and blind spots. One important thing I have noticed is that there are certain people who will open up to these intimate discussions and others who won't. In my experience people who do are better people to talk to and be around. And of course there are some people who talk for the sake of talking. Maybe the other people actually do open up, or are just introverted deeply, but my intuition tells me that some people are more comfortable with intellectual vulnerability and openness. To me these people seem better and more worthwhile. These conversations are obviously very rare and usually happen when people are slightly drunk or high so they're easily forgettable. Some people are lucky and meet friends who they can have these discussions with sober, which is a real privilege. I have two friends who I have this relationship with, but one of them went to Thailand for a year, and we only hang out when it's all three of us. Strange, but we are close and have been friends since early childhood.
David Lee
In my experiance you first have to tell one another the things wich shaped you. This will be unconfortable topics: How you always were a disapointment to your father, your parents violent break-up which left you emotionally scarred, your greatest fears, your shamefull sexual longings (towards your conversation partner too if it's the truth) When those things are away you start to get a grip of what kind of person you actually have in front of you. From there, genuinely "deep" conversations start.
James Cox
photograph these dubs, bitch. checkem
Blake Reyes
...
Hudson Taylor
I have deep conversations with my girlfriend on a daily basis, but how do I tell if they are legitimate?
Evan Phillips
With a girl called Amanda. We talked about our fear of death and I think that's what ended up bringing me back to Christianity, since my atheism/agnosticism was a deep issue about wanting to look cool and edgy for other people. Poisoning your mind just to satisfy your sense of superiority and trying to search conflict with people that are not doing anything to warrant it is just stupid.
I agree with this. I needed to open up a lot and learn that my friend accepted me no matter my issues. Then I could truly open up. Sometimes I wondered if she was a robot because that kind of acceptance is hard to come by. It seems like everyone is just living a competition and they see opening up as "losing".
Liam Lopez
>Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal”. To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.
Ryder Garcia
If there's a bad smell everywhere you go then chances are its you