Something's been bothering me, and I feel like it's a huge elephant in the room that nobody ever talks about...

Something's been bothering me, and I feel like it's a huge elephant in the room that nobody ever talks about, and that's the impact of something I'll call Excessive Experience. Excessive Experience is what happens when a person obtains more knowledge than their environment can support. I use the term experience rather than knowledge because the medium by which this knowledge is gained begins to develop in the mind as something more than just a medium. For example, books alone cannot produce excessive experience though they may produce excessive knowledge, in an excessive reader. However the internet, being rife with actions that translate symbologically to corresponding actions in the system, can produce excessive experience.
The reason I'm making a big deal about this is because 1.) Excessive experience produces a breakage between conceptual knowledge and real life activities and 2.) Because it gets exponentially worse and shows no signs of slowing down.
A concrete example of the effects might be: A person is involved in many online communities and each community has associated with it a vast body of knowledge with which he must be acquainted to belong to the communities. Mentally he is running on all cylinders, he develops deep mental habits around this body of knowledge, he is proficient in that regard, maybe even prodigious. But then he separates from the medium (computer/internet), suddenly everything has turned upside down, suddenly his vast conceptual framework, and the way he thinks and looks at the world, is no longer relevant, and more than being no longer effective, it is an extreme detriment to his well-being. He is now running uphill, Already at maximum capacity he is forced to experience a separate reality, the reality of real life. If he is to be proficient or prodigious at real life he must overwrite his experience (not knowledge, experience), overwrite his conceptual framework and mental posture which was formed according to a different reality than this one. Maybe it's too late, perhaps he doesn't have sufficient remaining neuroplasticity to accomplish such a thing. Or maybe he doesn't -want- to accomplish it, maybe he values one reality over the other; if he values real life more then maybe he'll be successful at it, but he won't be successful in the other reality. If he values the other reality then he won't be successful in real life, which has dire consequences, though in the end the consequences are just as dire in both cases; just because one reality is online doesn't mean he can more easily be rid of it.
Knowing all of this, he does neither, he wants to have his cake and eat it too, the result of which is total mental exhaustion, impaired ability to function in daily life, and eventually extreme emotional distress.
To be continued next post...

tfw too smart

i think in the olden times, in the long long ago, those used just be called dungeon masters

nah, u just a retart

Take this thread for another example. I am not an intellectual, I am not surrounded by intellectuals, I live in the sticks surrounded by normal country folk, my environment already rejects me in this sense. I cannot conceivably stand to gain anything from doing this, in fact, it is a great detriment. I could (and should) be doing something relevant to my environment. Managing my finances, finding ways to do better at work and earn more money etc. But I don't, because something inside of me sees this as ultimately more important. Even though my name receives no esteem from it, even though my words will simply disappear into the void with no hope of creating a lasting impact, I still do it. I don't think that's wrong per se, it's something you just can't help. Especially since, were I in an intellectual setting, I would be jotting these same words into an essay or eventually a book, which might create esteem for myself and might have a lasting impression and maybe even earn me a living better than my current one. But that's not my life, so I'll just have to be content with being another forgotten autist.
Thoughts?

It's time to stop posting.

I remember when posting this was a meme and got you numerous replies about how you're just arrogant pretentious etc. But nowadays it's more generally excepted that "tfw too smart" actually does mean something. I take this as evidence supporting my theory.

>I take this as evidence supporting my theory
this is why you will always fail

I remember thinking about this problem a few years ago. The question that I came up with goes something like "is there a knowledge that can be utilised in all situations in life, universally?" The answer that I came up with was "yes, the most universal knowledge which is knowledge of 'being' itself." Not 'being' a board member, or as some kind of professional, not as any role in life, well that's part of it, but the most universal 'being' is first before the individual roles.

nice try OP

>tfw accidentally heidegger'd

What you're talking about has been one of the main concerns since early Modernism. It's actually what 'The Wasteland' is about, though the 'fragmentation' of the subject also comes from the world wars.

>It's actually what 'The Wasteland' is about
No

Uhhhh, yeah.

The Wasteland is about how the western subject can no longer participate in a vital and whole culture, and instead has to try and survive in the ruins of such a culture, in what has been smashed, drained of significance, scattered, mixed with the wilderness.

Since it's from >1930 there's much less about how we have tons of different social contexts now, about how all the social contexts are confused by self-conciousness about them being social contexts, one among many, but the basic condition of lacking a whole to be a part of is the same, it's just more shit added into the ruins.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

You mean, becoming jaded?
Take the evangelical pill, accept the Oikos.

That's not what I got from the OP.
Decent take on the waste land though.

Seems to me that now there are not only different 'communities' of experience, but also different 'mediums' of experience which each have their own separate 'communities.' Instead of having to just reconcile family and church, for example, one has to reconcile Veeky Forums, Overwatch, Facebook, family, and church. Its harder to integrate all these different 'communities-within-mediums' into one cohesive Self, as in each community, the Self/Community relationship is so different?

>suddenly everything has turned upside down, suddenly his vast conceptual framework, and the way he thinks and looks at the world, is no longer relevant, and more than being no longer effective, it is an extreme detriment to his well-being. He is now running uphill, Already at maximum capacity he is forced to experience a separate reality, the reality of real life. If he is to be proficient or prodigious at real life he must overwrite his experience (not knowledge, experience), overwrite his conceptual framework and mental posture which was formed according to a different reality than this one.

This is what I'm keying into specifically.

Eliot could be speaking about something like this with the opening

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

The "desire and memory" to do something more than "a little life" sustained by something as paltry as "dried tubers" driven by our deep natural impulses is frustrated because of our desolated culture. We're "kept warm" by winter because it keeps us to our one place, rather than to excercising ourselves to the whole of our ability, going everywhere and thinking everything and have that be met by the culture outside us, understood.

Eliot's concern is for the condition of OP, of somebody who is always only speaking with half of their vocabulary, as if their home was a foreign country.

The cultural synthesis allowed by the internet goes far past what the offline is made to handle. So a final solution to the problem goes beyond the individual. But still we have our alienated lives. All you can do is treat it is another mask, one that will hopefully be penetrated by the online.

>Excessive Experience is what happens when a person obtains more knowledge than their environment can support.

>Excessive Experience is what happens when a person obtains more knowledge than their environment can support.

Does knowledge have a specific use to you? Or does it carry a probability of instrumental value? Haven't you heard the skill-set meme teachers have been toting lately? What you call excessive I call an increase in probability to the
outcome of X. Get your pencil and draw a picture and be more Goethe-like, friend.

>1.) Excessive experience produces a breakage between conceptual knowledge and real life activities

An assumed passivity in experience here. And conceptual knowledge applied in the real world doesn't divide the knower from the doer, the action is just more intricate than what conceptual knowledge can usually take into account. You just have to build a better robot is all.

It is not a detriment. This is not separated from my environment. This is letters passing between people instantaneously - and though there are too many to account for in your net of empathy, you can treat them as though people that you might see and have a conversation with. It is monetised, yes, but it gives back its value too. And I make use of it how I may, which is no consequence to you.

>When dasein begins to analyze the structure and phenomenology of dasein itself

Legitimately good post. One of the best I've ever seen on Veeky Forums. since this might perhaps be relevant, I might as well mention it:
We see that with our everyday experience in general (from it's very foundations, upon which even our of self-understanding is based) our activities can only sensibly be understood within the context of the world upon which these activities themselves are projected and from which they emerge. The everyday behavior and activities of oneself (or dasein) can only be sensibly interpreted insofar as they constitute a form of engagement with the world. If we abstract away from the world-context in which a particular activity is situated, it quickly comes to appear so out of place that it might seem almost nonsensical, schizophrenic, or surreal. Picture, for example a worker in a factory monotonously operating a machine to press molded shapes out of a piece of metal. This piece of metal is itself likely only a single component of a larger product being manufactured, and in much the same manner, the workers activity would seem completely inexplicable, purposeless, and insane apart from the larger industrial, economic, social, and ultimately biological context in which it is situated. Furthermore, the more advanced the human race become, and simultaneously, the more the daily activities of the individual become divorced from their basic needs and biological instincts, the more seemingly inexplicable their behaviors and activities become apart from the culturally relative context.

>Instrumental value
Nice try, Amartya Sen/Kenneth Arrow worshiping liberal.

Explaining a process of becoming jaded is not really a 'good post'.

Good stuff user

Wasn't this what Eric Fromme was all about?