an accidental life

[luka]

i've had a largely accidental life. i haven't made many decisions. I've let myself be led. I decided to be a poet as a teenager and that's largely it. I remember being struck by Danny L telling me he decided he wanted children and methodically went through women until he found one that would go along with it. I thought, that's very different to the way I go about things. I've let fate decide. What about you?

 

[craner]

Same.

 

[version]

Yes.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Ancestors crying

 

[sus]

I don't believe in fate I have paid scrupulous care to my desires and figured out how to follow them as closely as possible with as few concessions as possible. I think you have to be very careful with what you decide you want, it ends up being what you half consciously optimize for, and so I have deliberately rejected the pursuit of all sorts of degrading forms of worldly success.

 

[sus]

I don't optimize for ends like Have A Family or Have A Respectable Job Title because I think there is a clear tradition of wisdom that says Follow the right path/way and the destination takes care of itself. So I'm not optimizing in that sense. I don't otten make plans like, I need to finish X today in order to Y. But I am very deliberate about how I spend my days. Removing obstructions. Making deliberate choices between temptations. Learning to code was a very intentional choice so I could be financially and geographically free.

 

[version]

I don't believe in fate I have paid scrupulous care to my desires and figured out how to follow them as closely as possible with as few concessions as possible. I think you have to be very careful with what you decide you want, it ends up being what you half consciously optimize for, and so I have deliberately rejected the pursuit of all sorts of degrading forms of worldly success.

... and success in general.

 

[sus]

No I have succeeded famously, I have produced more words than anyone I know and become one of the greatest prose stylists in the world for the under-30 cohort

 

[sus]

I don't need external recognition I have eyes I have ears I can read words and hear how they sound I can compare them to other peoples words

 

[sus]

I dont believe Luke I think he has done exactly what he wanted every day with his life

 

[version]

I've never had any ambition or direction, even the stuff I've liked or been good at I've been somewhat ambivalent about.

 

[sus]

Following your nose is different than drawing up a flowchart and a five year plan but it's still deciding. In part it's deciding not to be one's own tyrant. To let the animal in you lead the soft body the pleasure seeking principle

 

[sus]

I've never had any ambition or direction, even the stuff I've liked or been good at I've been somewhat ambivalent about.

Yes you seen either particularly neurotic or particularly well adjusted in this regard and I can never decide

 

[Clinamenic]

I can weigh in on the matter of whether version is particularly well adjusted or neurotic, even though I'm mildly intoxicated. I think version is both neurotic and particularly well adjusted.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

High agency individuals slice through life like hot knives. Better, they self sharpen like depleted uranium projectiles upon resistance. Anyone know someone like that? If my brother didn't smoke weed all the time, he'd have a country named after him by now, but the skunk moderates his neutrons too efficiently.

 

[luka]

Napoleon, he was like that.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

And the Austrian painter. Alexander. Cecil Rhodes. Cortez. Caravaggio. The original lads.

 

[luka]

i like those people who aren't what you'd call high agency but have comically eventful lives, like the protagonists of picareque novels. cervantes for example.

 

[luka]

you've got people like goldie who always seem to be in the right place at the right time, with the right people, in the heart of the action.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Boris is a good example of that. Not an original idea in his head apart from vague self aggrandisement and an eye on history.