Forest

Difinbelk wrote:

What did you do to cause the boom/bust like that? I've had spikes before but never that drastic. I mean your economy suddenly became 20% underground, and then again crushed the 15% remaining underground?

Two of my latest (and largest) black market explosions were caused by… site update. They do tweak census there time by time and it affects me that heavily for some reason. And in the last case, after such boom occurred, I made a couple of wrong decisions in issues and let the BM grow again and again until the right issue with right decision came, at last.

Garbelia wrote:

My black market exploded (more than x10) after a site update. I think it was mainly fixed by a re-update, but I still haven't quite recovered yet. I never get the right issues, instead having seemingly identical 'Option 1: Cut environment, Option 2: Cut Civil Rights, Option 3: Become capitalist, Option 4: Destroy political freedoms'. My stats are suffering.

Option 3 sounds good though. Similar to what has fixed my situation: there was an issue to ease all those draconian restrictions on business in Einswenn which has dropped the black market down with no mercy while other stats didn’t get damaged much. All the affected departments are being slowly repaired with new issues while black market continues to go down. Most of the times.

Garbelia wrote:

Yes, but socialism is such a crucial RP and nationbuilding idea in Garbelia, it would only achieve the destruction of everything I've worked for and created. I'd have to change my beautiful flag!

I can always remake the shield with an otter holding money and a big mac if you need it! I probably have the original file in here somewhere

Frieden-und Freudenland wrote:

Gendered expectations could play a role in depression, but also in men's tendency to not seek help. (Actually, probably more in the latter than in the former, because I think it would be bizarre for men to be overall more depressed about sexist expectations than women are. But I would totally expect them to face more pressure regarding externalizing their feelings compared to women.)

sexist expectations
pressure regarding externalising their feelings

Me: They're the same picture.

I don't mean this to sound patronising, which I can see it might if you have experienced depression - so this point is not directed at you in particular, FuF - but it's quite difficult to explain how it feels to those who haven't experienced it. As with other psychiatric illnesses, depression is very much at home in the "bizarre" and as such the question of "your life is easier than mine, so why are you depressed?" can never really find a rational answer. I think that's why what Uan said about young men going from being apparently cheerful from one day to dead the next has such gravity - because society isn't looking for problems there, and quite honestly society doesn't want to hear those problems anyway. Men's inability to seek help can't be separated from the gendered expectations men face, and so while it might seem like the inability to seek help is the cause of the aforementioned depression and alarming suicide rates (in contrast to societal gender expectations being the cause), this is in itself an aspect of society's sexist gender expectations. I don't think the two are distinguishable.

I'm sure that everyone is different (NoE, for example, attributed their recent bout of depression to an existential crisis) but in my own case this idea of "you should be happy, why can't you just be happy?" has played a major role in past episodes of depression. It felt to me like I was being blamed for not reaching something that wasn't within my power to reach - that people felt there must be a bigger reason for me to feel like that than "I just do". I guess I can explain it as like being sooked by a dementor and you feel like you couldn't be happy even if you won the lottery. Not so much a feeling of sadness for me, just a lack of any positive emotion for no apparent reason. Another good way to describe it is the way Sylvia Plath famously did - it's like someone's lowered a giant bell jar down on top of you, and the colour or the life-ness of the outside world is muffled or just doesn't reach you. I think despite the positive mental health movements we see today that many people didn't want to know that there was something wrong with me beyond "you're just in a bad mood" or to acknowledge that it was out of my control.

On a lighter note, as others have expressed, FuF, I'm very happy to hear you're reclaiming the skirt on your own terms.

Uan aa Boa wrote:

I'm in Scotland, but much of northern Europe has similar statistics. It's actually worst in Scandinavia despite those countries routinely scoring highest on various happiness metrics. It may well be that there's a correlation with the lack of daylight in the winter.

I'm not American, but I know a lot of people here are, so I'll add that it's the second leading cause of death for males aged 10-39 over there. Yes, that's right; suicide is the cause of one in seven deaths among boys aged 10-14. This peaks in the 15-24 age range, where suicide is the cause of one in every five deaths among young men. These figures are strikingly similar to others across the developed world.

--------------------------------------------------

And now for some thematic whiplash as I talk about something completely different.

The Most Serene Republicans wrote:

It's just sort of absurd humor, which is for today's youth what self-deprecating humor was to the previous. [...] Now that I think of it, I really want one of those long video essays examining why and how this "gen-z" brand of absurd humor developed. I can think of several other examples of this same formula, with a "serious" setting overlapping something very silly and out of place.

This blew my mind quite a bit because you got me thinking about something I'd tentatively wager you don't even know exists. It's the first time I've ever compared gen-z humour to the Theatre of The Absurd, a post-WWII literary movement spearheaded by European playwrights in the 1950s and early 60s, but they kind of felt comparable in my head.

Essentially, after experiencing the horrors of the Second World War (death camps, cities razed to the ground, the advent of nuclear warfare etc) these playwrights felt that previous plays, with their well-defined structures and rational plots, did not reflect the meaninglessness and absurdity of the human situation that had been exposed by the war. Their plays are filled with such features as meaningless actions, clichéd wordplay, circular plots - basically a total rejection of the pre-war "proper play" that espoused meaningful actions and interactions. And, critically, these playwrights combined hilarious comedy with tragic and grotesque imagery to produce highly disturbing but darkly comic works.

**SPOILERS ENSUE**

The most famous example is Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, where two gentlemen wait day after day after day in the middle of a wasteland for the mysterious "Godot" to arrive, but he never does. The two joke and talk past each other, but there's a constant undertone of the disturbing - that the men are not in control, that Godot will never come but they will never leave. Towards the end of the play, the men consider killing themselves, but they have no rope. They resolve to leave and come back the next day with rope, but as the curtain falls they both remain exactly where they are.

Another example is Edward Albee's one-act play The Sandbox, where Mommy and Daddy bury Grandma in a sandbox (sandpit) because they don't understand her. The irony lies in the fact that Grandma is actually the only character that speaks any sense. Albee developed this theme of the real meaninglessness of human interaction in his later magnum opus, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, where the worlds of truth and lie meet and we realise that whether a statement is the truth or a lie doesn't really matter.

**END SPOILERS**

I doubt there's any real relationship between gen-z humour and the Theatre of the Absurd, but your post certainly got me thinking. We're in no post-world war age, for sure, but it's not difficult to see how the state of the world today could seem absurd to those who are told "this is the way the world is supposed to be" and have no prior point of reference. As you say, there are plenty more examples that you could associate with gen-z humour and the contrast between the comic and the unsettling or unusual. I also agree that gen-z humour is not the same as millennial humour with it's "the world is f*cked and so are we" - I guess it is more like "the world doesn't make sense so neither do we".

Nation of Ecologists wrote:

Also, on the topic of reincarnation, I mostly believe in it. Im still not entirely sure how, when or what you are reincarnated as is determined, but in my eyes it makes the most sense. Though, up until relatively recently I began to not really believe in it anymore and was left without really knowing what will happen after death, which contributed to my depression (which has thankfully began to dissipate). However, I eventually came to the conclusion that what happens after death does not matter, only what you do when you are alive.

Relating to the above discussion, my personal philosophy (if you made me define it in certain terms) is related to Absurdism - yes, you guessed it, it's the philosophy that inspired and is exhibited by the Theatre of the Absurd. Absurdism concerns itself with the human desire to find meaning and purpose contrasted with the ultimate lack of meaning in the universe. Simply put, humans are always trying to ascribe their own meaning to a meaningless world, and Absurdism tries to deal with the ensuing existential crisis. This can be seen in everyday life when people think their life is part of "god's plan" or that human lives have a definitive "goal", something that all people should aim to reach. For example, many people think that everyone should aim to be successful or have fun or do good deeds - each is an example of a greater goal of life made up by people to give their life "meaning".

Absurdism argues that there is no greater meaning to life, but that we should accept this and live our lives anyway (hence why human existence is "absurd"). It's different to Nihilism in that Absurdism was Albert Camus' reaction (rejection) to Nihilism; whereas Nihilism tells us that life is pointless, Absurdism contends that while there may be no "meaning" to life, there may still be "a point" to living. Absurdism therefore asserts that people can construct their own "meaning", as long they acknowledge that that meaningfulness is artificial, transient and personal. For example, you can decide that living a life full of good deeds would be personally fulfilling because of the material good you do to others (e.g. giving food to the homeless makes their lives a little better, and you can take fulfilment from that) but not because there's a greater design or plan, or that you're tipping the scales of the universe, or that it's meant to be, or that there's a best way to live a human life. The latter thinking is just returning to that very human territory of trying to explain away the fact that the universe lacks meaning.

I like it because I do think that the universe lacks "a deeper meaning" and that people will try to explain that away until the cows come home. Yet, unlike Nihilism, there's still a reason to keep living your life; suicide doesn't tackle the absurdity of the universe and instead seeks to avoid it, just as the "it's god's plan" crowd does. Far better, I think, to live life on your own terms without self-delusion or an erroneous sense of self-importance - and if you want to, to try to use the time you're alive to make other people's lives better, just because you can.

Didn't mean to write a whole essay tonight, but here it is. Sorry.

Nazi Flower Power wrote:

Basically, I don't think you guys disagree that much.

Oh yeah, for sure! I just wanted to add some personal thoughts, though I hope I didn't over-share.