CaptainForehead
Senior Member
- Reaction score
- 4,302
I know that feel bro
How To Live A Happy Life As An Unattractive Man?
- Thread starter IdealForehead
- Start date
I know that feel bro
- Reaction score
- 3,025
I used to have the same problem with 90% of music/movies/TV where it's always about sex and dating. I think I've desensitized myself which is probably a good thing because I don't really care much about that anymore.
Desensitization is clearly an important part of an effective cope.
- Reaction score
- 5,624
except for narcissistic fantasies like i said. . . . xD. tbh i was always like this to an extent, i remember obsessing over being worthy even as a little kid for some reason, i had a named fictional identity and world i regularly inhabited starting at about 10 lol
- Reaction score
- 6,504
Lol that doesn't mean the concept is an excuse for "I'll do nothing with my life because I have no free will" that's not how it works mang, but that being said I'd have a hard time definitively explaining it.
- Reaction score
- 5,624
You know about that sort of thing in detail?
- Reaction score
- 6,504
I don't know about detail but I suppose so, it's something I've always felt for a long time about morality and decision making, guilt and the punishment. Eventually I discovered it's called causal determinism (though there's different forms of determinism that can contradict or overlap so it gets complicated from there).
To me in the most purest form of determinism (if I understand it correctly, but what I've always considered it as and now apply this name to it) it's common sense that we have no true free will. Just like our genetics, every decision we make is affected by an environment we do not control. Even being aware of the concept of free will/determinism affects us in a way we had no choice over.
I suppose it's easiest to think of when it comes to hindsight or punishment. We scold those who make awful "decisions" when really, regardless of how sickening the crime, we can scold it as people lucky enough to not be born with psychopathic tendencies or an environment that encouraged these. When it comes to punishment, I believe because of determinism (or my "version" of it, if there is a difference) we can either focus on rehabilitation, or simply removal from harming society, but hardly "punishment" for a crime someone did not truly make a choice in committing.
I hope that gives some insight to how I see this but I always struggle to truly explain it. Away from the extremes of the judicial system, it's probably healthiest to know that every mistake and regret you've made a "decision" in doing was not truly your fault, but can learn to take positives from. And in another healthy way, being aware that no decision that you do make is truly yours, but that's not to say your "decision" won't suddenly be surprisingly pro-active from nowhere (in other words determinism is not something to fall back on for doing nothing, awareness of it ultimately makes no difference whatsoever).
The last part is what I find particularly hard to express.
- Reaction score
- 5,624
Oh yea i know that stuff, the philosophical parts, i was more referring to the neuroscience and psychology of ut
I agre though
Toccata
Banned
- Reaction score
- 752
If I can vent away a few things in a different direction:
Is it actually possible?
The ancient greeks thought no man could call himself happy or claim to have lived a happy life until after his death. The reason being how quickly fortune and reputation changed hands. Thus, no man can have a true estimation of his worth from the inside. It will always appear as a series of tasks with happiness being only an absence of pain, or a phantom recollection or future hope. An entire life can be lived in expectation of better things because everything attained produces only a momentary pleasure that turns into either a burden or a bore, which then clears a path for a new desire, and this trading of one desire for another and another makes the long chain of dissatisfaction and is how we come to know life as suffering. The question then is if one can suffer happily or ennoble their suffering.
CBT
I think you’re too smart for Mind Over Mood. That’s not to say it isn’t without value, but the worksheets, depression inventory scores, hot thought record keeping, and mood ratings will feel a little underwhelming to someone already deep in self-analysis. Take being rejected at a bar—rate your mood, identify your automatic thoughts, provide evidence, and offer an alternative or balanced thought. If you can be reasonably sure you were rejected because you didn’t meet her standards what good is telling yourself maybe she just wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. Maybe your depression is actually from seeing your life a little too clearly. Can you really analyze yourself out of sehnsucht?
Beethoven
With music being as subjective as it is, I cannot promise this will make as much an impact on you as it did me. It is worth sharing regardless, if not for consolation, than to show how such a wretched existence found redemption. Beethoven was turned down in marriage for being too ugly. He was short (5’3, 1.62m), had an unusually large head with a high, broad forehead. His complexion was dark and his face was pitted with smallpox scars. Adding to the physical inadequacies was a host of serious illnesses, worst of all—and unfathomably tragic—was his hearing loss beginning in his twenties and progressing into total deafness. A few selections from his letters reveal his state of mind:
His last published work was a set of string quartets. The middle movement from the penultimate quartet was written after he overcame a nearly fatal stomach illness. The piece contrasts two opposing motives—illness and overcoming. In the final sections, the illness motive is no longer complemented with overcoming; it is the final illness. In a life without love, health, happiness, and eventually even music and sound, he endured the full weight of human suffering and still found in it value enough to write a hymn of thanks for being alive (he would die the following year). I can't recall another piece of music that so artfully captures the human condition and the spirit of tragic optimism than this, in particular, the passage that unfolds from 12:02 on.
Movies
If music is too abstract, there are movies: Anomalisa is the clearest illustration of love's disillusionment I know. The Elephant Man is a tragic character study of John Merrick, a horribly, disfigured man. That he penned a little poem with the line, "If I could make myself anew, I would not fail in pleasing you" is profoundly relatable to anyone who’s been rejected for their looks. And The Grey, which I thought was an action movie—a bunch of oil workers survive a plane crash in the wilderness and have to fend off wolves—but there are poignant observations on the struggle towards death. This is one of the most deeply moving death scenes I’ve watched:
First Sentence
I went to my doctor: blood. Specialist: scans. Doctor again, another specialist: more scans. Told I might have cancer. More tests. During all this, I took the opportunity to address myself as a dying man and make an honest appraisal of my life as though it was now complete. I thought about a character from Camus’ The Plague, an aspiring novelist, who believed the first sentence had to be rendered as perfectly as it appeared in his mind’s eye. Such a sentence would create the immediate impression of genius and the rest of his novel would flow more easily. In the end, when he was dying of the plague he summoned the doctor to read back his manuscript: a stack of pages made entirely out of the first sentence with variants, simplifications, and elaborations. “One fine morning in May…” —fine isn’t the right word, is it? No doctor, it’s too late, no time. Burn it. He threw his manuscript into the fireplace, then his doctor injected him with serum and told his friend he wouldn’t last the night. —That’s how best I could sum my life. I had dreamed and deliberated on my potential while squandering the time that was necessary to realizing it. And still, I believe hair will restore my self-worth and put me in a better position to refine my character so that greater opportunities will naturally follow. Still writing my first sentence.
Last edited:
- Reaction score
- 3,815
CaptainForehead
Senior Member
- Reaction score
- 4,302
- Reaction score
- 3,815
In general I'm not a Beethoven fan but the late string quartets and particularly that one are stunning. Anomalisa was beautiful and hugely underrated too.
- Reaction score
- 850
Holy mother of f*****g God man!
That last part..... "First Sentence"..... I read it like 10 times. f***, I have to read that sh*t again....
You just got yourself another follower.
- Reaction score
- 5,624
- Reaction score
- 850
How do you desensitize yourself though? Can you actively do something or do you just slowly have to get used to it?
- Reaction score
- 3,025
Great post. Thanks. The Beethoven stuff is pretty poignant for me. I've been reading more about him. One of the things I find comforting and also slightly dissatisfying is that the same struggles men went through hundreds of years ago are the same ones we face today. Very little changes.
Some Beethoven life quotes:
On His Failed Love Life
In May 1799, Beethoven taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, he fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine [43] who has therefore been identified as one of the more likely candidates for the addressee of his letter to the "Immortal Beloved" (in 1812). Shortly after these lessons, Josephine was married to Count Josef Deym. Beethoven was a regular visitor at their house, continuing to teach Josephine, and playing at parties and concerts. Her marriage was by all accounts happy (despite initial financial problems),[44] and the couple had four children.
His relationship with Josephine Brunsvik deepened after the death in 1804 of her aristocratic first husband, the Count Joseph Deym. He wrote Josephine 15 passionate love letters from late 1804 to around 1809/10. Although his feelings were obviously reciprocated, Josephine was forced by her family to withdraw from him in 1807. She cited her "duty" and the fact that she would have lost the custodianship of her aristocratic children had she married a commoner.[72] After Josephine married Baron von Stackelberg in 1810, Beethoven may have proposed unsuccessfully to Therese Malfatti, the supposed dedicatee of "Für Elise";[73][74] his status as a commoner may again have interfered with those plans.
In late 1801 he met a young countess, Julie ("Giulietta") Guicciardi through the Brunsvik family, at a time when he was giving regular piano lessons to Josephine Brunsvik. He mentions his love for Julie in a November 1801 letter to his boyhood friend, Franz Wegeler, but he could not consider marrying her, due to the class difference. He later dedicated his Sonata No. 14, now commonly known as the Moonlight sonata, to her.[71]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
On Prostitutes and His Illness
''You have to remember that syphilis and gonorrhea were rampant in those days,'' Guevara continued. ''Absolutely rampant. Case in point: We know for a fact that Beethoven hung out with prostitutes. It's documented by a cellist friend of his. Beethoven was a romantic, he wanted to be loved, but he could never find a good partner. When his friends got him drunk and took him out to the red-light district, he did what he had to do. Remember, a syphilis infection manifests itself in many different ways. Deafness is one condition you could develop. You could have had an ear infection that never got treated.''
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/29/magazine/beethoven-s-hair-tells-all.html
Amazing to think this world class composer who is so revered today was just another incel in his lifetime. A life of unrequited love. Getting drunk and f*****g hookers. And dying alone tortured by tinnitus, deafness, and isolation.In May 1799, Beethoven taught piano to the daughters of Hungarian Countess Anna Brunsvik. During this time, he fell in love with the younger daughter Josephine [43] who has therefore been identified as one of the more likely candidates for the addressee of his letter to the "Immortal Beloved" (in 1812). Shortly after these lessons, Josephine was married to Count Josef Deym. Beethoven was a regular visitor at their house, continuing to teach Josephine, and playing at parties and concerts. Her marriage was by all accounts happy (despite initial financial problems),[44] and the couple had four children.
His relationship with Josephine Brunsvik deepened after the death in 1804 of her aristocratic first husband, the Count Joseph Deym. He wrote Josephine 15 passionate love letters from late 1804 to around 1809/10. Although his feelings were obviously reciprocated, Josephine was forced by her family to withdraw from him in 1807. She cited her "duty" and the fact that she would have lost the custodianship of her aristocratic children had she married a commoner.[72] After Josephine married Baron von Stackelberg in 1810, Beethoven may have proposed unsuccessfully to Therese Malfatti, the supposed dedicatee of "Für Elise";[73][74] his status as a commoner may again have interfered with those plans.
In late 1801 he met a young countess, Julie ("Giulietta") Guicciardi through the Brunsvik family, at a time when he was giving regular piano lessons to Josephine Brunsvik. He mentions his love for Julie in a November 1801 letter to his boyhood friend, Franz Wegeler, but he could not consider marrying her, due to the class difference. He later dedicated his Sonata No. 14, now commonly known as the Moonlight sonata, to her.[71]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
On Prostitutes and His Illness
''You have to remember that syphilis and gonorrhea were rampant in those days,'' Guevara continued. ''Absolutely rampant. Case in point: We know for a fact that Beethoven hung out with prostitutes. It's documented by a cellist friend of his. Beethoven was a romantic, he wanted to be loved, but he could never find a good partner. When his friends got him drunk and took him out to the red-light district, he did what he had to do. Remember, a syphilis infection manifests itself in many different ways. Deafness is one condition you could develop. You could have had an ear infection that never got treated.''
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/29/magazine/beethoven-s-hair-tells-all.html
Even being one of the greatest most loved composers of all time, he couldn't escape it. There is something timeless about human suffering. Little changes except new bodies to fill the same old roles.
For my own part, I think you're right and psychology won't really solve anything, but it's still worth a try. On the plus side, I just did a Photoshop simulation of myself with my hairline fixed and it makes me at least 2 points better looking (if comparing with my hair combed back in both). Fixing my jaws adds another 0.5-1 points. Surgery's hard because it's so slow and risky, but I have to keep reminding myself I can still possibly have the face I feel I should have had. Better late than never. Now aiming April for final forehead reduction. Will re-start inflation in the new year.
Last edited:
- Reaction score
- 2,776
Why do you browse such garbage websites.
Nearly all of the quotes are bullshit and have nothing to do with reality.
CaptainForehead
Senior Member
- Reaction score
- 4,302
One person I know has two kids (boys). Both are around 10 years. One is ugly, the other is good looking. I have been terribly curious about the paths their lives will take. Odds are, the ugly one will be incel and unhappy.
Last month, I was at a show where this person was there with his family. The performer at one point invited one of kids upstage. Guess which one got invited even though he is younger, and thus less suited to following directions (both were sitting together).
It begins so early.
Last month, I was at a show where this person was there with his family. The performer at one point invited one of kids upstage. Guess which one got invited even though he is younger, and thus less suited to following directions (both were sitting together).
It begins so early.