Alora Fane

I'll be having brain surgery a week from now, and it's been difficult to focus with that weighing on my mind. Here's a bit about that, my plans for what I'll post over these next few days, and a bit about the manosphere stuff to follow the previous post.

It's surprising to me that it's been so long since my last post! I thought it was 'just the other day'. Days have been blurring together for me lately because they're all pretty much the same. Me sitting alone at a computer in this little room all day every day, never seeing anyone or going anywhere. I technically live in my parents' house, but see them for less than five minutes a day, if at all. Obviously this isn't the ideal way to live life. But it's not like there's much I can do about it at the moment, what with devastating brain surgery awaiting me in the shockingly near future.

The operation will be next Tuesday. Scary. It's already been delayed by two weeks for unknown reasons, though, so I won't be surprised if it changes again (though I will be annoyed; I'm so tired of it looming over me).

I wrote a long post as a result of the comments on the previous one, about all the manosphere stuff, but I wasn't satisfied with it and it seems I've not got around to editing it enough to be worth posting. Oh well.

The gist of it was that I worry that expressing anything other than hostility towards these 'toxic' places and their worldviews is akin to saying "that Hitler fella had some pretty okay ideas, didn't he?", as far as social judgement is concerned. They've understandably got a bad reputation, but I've seen some value in them when what I should be doing, according to the cultural consensus of the relatively well-adjusted, is expressing my disgust at their unacceptable misogyny. Anything else is worrying, because it'll only lead me down a darker path than the one I'm already on, right?

I talked about all that in rambling detail in the post I won't be posting, but to summarise:

Men in the manosphere do not think highly of women. I don't like that they hate women, but I think it's important to understand why people hate in the first place. There's a reason that emotion exists. According to evolutionary/social psychology, we feel hate and anger when we're subject to perceived social injustice, as a way of discouraging that injustice (as most people find hatred aversive and as such will feel some drive to change behaviour in response to it).

These men hate women because either they've been hated by women all their life (in the case of incels), or because they feel that society grants women many social privileges that men are denied, such that they're stuck playing a game with the odds stacked against them. Most of their posts are about this perceived unfairness, and it doesn't come from nowhere.

They point out that hatred directed towards men is normalised, or at least not met with the same knee-jerk ostracisation as misogyny. A woman can post about how "men are trash" or make some disparaging remark about men as a whole and get some degree of mainstream support - or at least not complete rejection - whereas a man making a similar statement about women would be seen as a monster, pushed to the fringe. It's similar to how people respond to anti-black statements very differently to how they would anti-white ones. All this is unfair, these men say.

Wouldn't it be better to try and address the social issues that cause these emotions rather than demonising those who already feel terrible due to the hand they've been dealt? It's easy to dismiss their worldview as wrong-minded, delusional, but if you look into what they're saying, it's not like their feelings are baseless.

I just wish people would understand each other rather than judging others. I wish these men would be more compassionate towards women, but that women would be more compassionate towards these men.

Mostly I've taken an interest in this stuff because it's of psychological value to me at this point in my life. I'll be having brain surgery very soon, and during the year it'll take to recover - assuming I'll recover at all - I won't be able to get a partner even if I want one. Would it be better to lie around torturing myself about how I'd be recovering much more easily if only I were lucky enough to have a loving partner, swarmed by inner demons taunting me about my lifelong lack of luck with love, or might it bring me more peace if I see relationships as a pain I'm better off without? Seeing them as a bullet dodged is far from the ideal worldview to have, but it seems the most pragmatic for my wellbeing at the moment.

Our moods are determined largely - perhaps entirely - by our beliefs, after all. Our interpretations of our subjective worlds, the colour of the lenses we see everything through. It's very difficult to just decide to feel a certain way, but if you modify your beliefs, you can alter the kinds of moods that you have. Beliefs aren't easily changed, so we use evidence and others' ideas as 'psychological scaffolding' which allow us to build our own belief systems around them.

(Maybe I said this already, but the two manosphere groups I've been looking at are incels, and Men Going Their Own Way. Incel culture cultivates despair; that's a dark environment for sure. MGTOW claim to be willingly stepping away from a rigged game to find personal peace (the incels mock them for it, thinking they're just in denial). While I've no intention of being indoctrinated into their worldview as a whole, it's the peace-seeking aspects of the latter group that I'm trying to adopt into my own outlook on the world.)

Ultimately, as a shut-in, all this gender stuff doesn't influence my life directly very much, other than being the cause of the emotional devastation that is failing to find romantic relationships. I'd be the first to admit that my perspective is naive. But I'm just trying to decorate my mind is such a way that it won't be too unpleasant to live in for the next year. While the demons are always with me, I've been noticing some improvements lately, and I do feel 'better' than I have in a while. Not good, never good, but noticeably less tormented. So that's something, right??

I've not been very productive though, and it's bothering me. There's a non-zero chance I could die or be neurologically crippled for life next week, yet I'm not using what could be my final days very well at all.

What might you do if you thought you had only a few weeks - or days - left on this Earth? Most people would probably aim to complete some kind of bucket list, or to spend their time with the loved ones they're lucky to have. I'm just making things alone at my computer, because that's the life I know and it's what I'm drawn to.

I've been trying to work on the Taming Dreams talky thing, but it's coming along slower than I'd like. I suppose since the future is so uncertain, it takes the wind out of my sails more than a bit.

I've also been playing a game, Ni No Kuni II. I played the first years ago (doesn't feel like "years ago", though). It's inspiring. I like it. There are reminders about the shallow silliness of JRPG plots though. Maybe I'll write a post about it when I've finished it, to talk about what I learned from it to apply or avoid in my own work. I don't know if I'll have time, though, and I know it'd be something done for me more than for you readers. I've not spent this long on a game in ages though, and it's a nice escape even if it's eating up potentially productive hours.

I feel like I should post over the coming days about some projects I've been working on recently, just in case I die or become disabled in some sense and they never get to see the light of day. So I'll probably do that.

I'd like to have the time to upload every creative thing I've ever made in some kind of huge archive... but I don't think I will. I've yet to get around to the next installment of that My Story series. I wrote it weeks - maybe months now - ago, but I need to edit it and I've not got around to it yet. The days seem so frustratingly short...

Anyway, I'm in a... strange position at the moment, waiting for surgery like this, unable to really progress with my life until it's over, so uncertain of the future. I feel calm though, mostly... but it's more like detachment. I feel distant from the world.

I just want to get all this over with so then I can plan a proper path forward.

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