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Who are your best friends?
If you're like most people, your best friends were people who
shared experiences with you, and not just any experiences.
Your best friends often come from sharing the deepest
suffering you ever had.
So, in "Friend Camp", you enlist a candidate (or we pick one),
and then we send you on a week long adventure of extreme
(but non-lethal) hardship.
After that, you now have a lifelong, trusted friend.
So easy.
And,without all that usual messiness that other "Friend
Camps" give you. Most of the traditional "Friend Camps"
saddle you with religious baggage, or other indoctrination
into an institution, destroying individualism to create a new
personality subservient to the institution. So, let's drop the
brainwashing and institutional objective & just give kids a
shared masochism camp to just create better real friends.
This is needed more than ever, as kids today are often uber-
sheltered from real people, real stress, and just do shallow
electronic social engagement, with 500+ facebook "friends" &
no real friends.
OutwardBound
http://www.outwardbound.org/
[JesusHChrist, Jun 18 2014]
Random activity club
[xaviergisz, Jun 22 2014]
Popular Online Friend Camp
http://www.nation.c...t-messed-with-minds
[rcarty, Jul 05 2014]
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You could always aim for Stockholm syndrome. |
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Would that be the one where you spend two nights in a hotel furnished
entirely by Ikea, where beer is seven quid for a half pint for some sort
of obviously non-alcoholic flavoured soft drink, and the whole
city is like a distorted Westworld full of tall, slim blonde men and
women who look remarkably similar, like they were all moulded in the
same fabrication plant, who all uncannily speak flawless idiomatic
English with a slight
Scandinavian accent, and are disconcertingly friendly and patient, and
there's no litter, and everything is amazingly
clean, and the public transport is incredibly well run and efficient, and
then you start to suspect that it's all being run by the Disney
Corporation, and
by half way through the second day you wonder if you should be
wearing a black blazer with white piping and start to worry that when
you try to leave you'll be chased by a huge white bouncing balloon ... ? |
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Protip: join the Marines. |
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I would be a better man if I had. |
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Snictown: That's why I say this is without the
baggage that traditional indoctrination leaves. Yes,
the Marines may have made a few men better, but
they sure destroyed many other lives (on both sides
of the rifle). "Friend Camp" won't leave you with
PTSD, missing limbs, or being a murderer. It'll just
expose you to other, non-lethal hardships (hunger,
fatigue, etc.) |
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I like this idea. But I have no friends to enlist, and I sure don't want some hopeless loser freak foisted on me by the Friends camp people. He'll go all non-lethal on the first afternoon and then give me the hairy eyeball for refusing to apply sunblock to him. Or something like that. |
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What about the strawberry blonde from 8th's anno? She's so friendly and patient, and I bet she doesn't eat much. We could be friends. I am fine that she is taller than me. |
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It works best if they match you with people at the
camp. If they match you with a loser, well, that
might say something about you. |
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The camp must be local enough so that you can
continue the friendship. |
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Marines who return from war suffer depression in
part because their buddies are spread back across
the country to their hometowns. For "Friend Camp"
to work, on return, you should still be able to meet
up with these new friends. |
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Fuck friends. It's a type of emergent fascism,
based on increased impetus for social exchange in
the emergent socio-technical reality. The strength
through unity that come from being friends
oppresses others who for whatever reason have
not assimilated into this collective power. If you
want to fight fascism one of the things you can do
is be a solitary person and not have friends. The
fascists will give you a hard time and bully you for
being alone and different from them. By being
alone you will accelerate the fascist society
through dialects, as collectivists will build
sentiment against you. Mass
shootings might have something to do
with this, I'm not sure. |
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I propose a new sitcom like the show Friends,
called 'Fascists'. It's basically the exact same show. |
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rcarty: Sounds like the unabomber to me. I have
some really independently minded, critical thinking
friends. We argue & respect each other on many
issues. Not all friends are fellow indoctrinated
types. That kind of indoctrination into becoming
subservient to an institution is exactly what I'm
trying to STOP here. I'm taking out any institutional
goals (like religion or military or corporate) &
keeping the core service pure (friends through
shared tough experiences, with no following any
institution beyond that.) |
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//Fuck friends. It's a type of emergent fascism// |
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What the actual fuck. What kind of horrible interpersonal relationships have you been through to form this opinion? |
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If I ever found myself in a situation where I honestly couldn't count a single other living person as a friend, well, I don't know what I'd do but I can't imagine living like that. |
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And you blame mass shootings on the social convention of people having friends, and not befriending people they don't like? |
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It's this kind of attitude that gives me the shits. If person X makes no effort to make friends, and is genrally a dickhead such that no one is interested in befriending him, and is so fucked up that he can't realise that the problem is him, why do we see this as being other people's fault? |
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Sure, highschool is a fucked up place for at least 25% of the population, but life is hard, and it's not society's duty to make sure everyone has a good time. No one wants to be friends with someone they don't like (although more should be done around the whole bullying thing). |
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If you truly have no friends, maybe it's more a quality in you that is the cause, not a quality in others. Tyler Durden considered self improvement to be masturbation, but still, some people could obviously do with a little improvement. |
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I don't see not having friends as other people's
fault. I just don't see why someone should have
to have them. What I said is it's an emergent
fascism that people shouldn't participate in, so
that the collectivists start persecuting those who
they have 'othered'. And in fact contemporary
'friends' are an institution a " structure or
mechanism of social order governing the behaviour
of a set of individuals within a given community".
'Friends' replace primary social relations of the old
social world where kinship ties ruled. Modern
friends are relationships of convenience and
exchange, in a context of historical
meaninglessness
(ex. not allies against foes). |
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Some people are inevitably going to be persecuted
in a 'friends' mandatory system. I would tell any
young person who feels bullied or alone, that his
or her peers have fascist tendencies and that
being an individual is OK, and he or she has a
historical duty not to be assimilated into the Borg. |
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The examples you give of microsociology, how
your social group is, how some dickhead acts, are
meaningless. This is about macrosociological
commentary on the large scale. Having friends is
OK, you can't reach the conclusion friends =
fascist. But once someone is convinced that
someone must have friends, and someone who
does not friends is inferior then that's fascism. |
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//And you blame mass shootings on the social
convention of people having friends, and not
befriending people they don't like? // |
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No. I never said people should befriend people
they don't like. It's the rejection of the individual,
and the individual's rejection of the mass. The
individual (the minority) should be able to reject
the mass
without the mass persecuting the individual. And
the individual should be able to reject the mass
without persecuting it. But if the individual feels
persecuted by the mass, and the mass has likely
been persecuting individuals in its powerful way,
then the individual will persecute the mass in its
own individually powerful way. Most shooters
have mental health issues, but most mental health
issues cause introversion and social rejection so
you does the math. |
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// he or she has a historical duty not to be assimilated into the Borg // |
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<deletes [rcarty] from Christmas card list> |
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You've merely saved me the effort of having to throw
it away. |
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Help! I find myself agreeing with [rcarty]! This cannot be good. ;-) |
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Pertinax & any other HB'ers who care: I'm self-
publishing a book about modern propaganda tricks.
If you want a preview of the rough draft, email me.
(click my profile to solve a stupid puzzle to get my
email addr.) |
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Being a bit of a loner myself, I kind of (but not totally) agree with some of what rcarty says. 'Friend Camp' or 'The Cub Scouts' as we used to call it is just a parents way of trying to force their kids into liking people or activities that they don't like.
However, I also agree with sophocles that people should get out into the real world a bit more. Mind you, I'm not sure why I agree seeing as how I am sitting here in front of a computer, typing out messages to a load of imaginary internet friends.
//a week long adventure of extreme (but non-lethal) hardship//
Surely that depends on who gets hungriest first?
//What kind of horrible interpersonal relationships have you been through to form this opinion?//
CustardGuts, at this point I invoke Godwin's Law. There was a German guy in one of the early episodes of the UK TV series "The World At War" who was talking about being at a Nazi political rally and all the hysteria that surrounded it and how he felt totally isolated and alone because he really wanted to belong but he couldn't because he thought it was all rubbish and he just couldn't bring himself to participate. Whilst I am not for a moment suggesting that this idea bears any relation to some sort of group think rally (because sophocles specifically says it isn't), I do think that this guy's feeling of being on the outside looking in is what rcarty is referring to. You have to realise that some people live a 'self-contained' life and really don't want to have 'friends'. |
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I am ok with being a loner as in "a loner, Dottie; a rebel."
The James Dean type. Clint Eastwood. Because the chicks
dig it. The difference between that kind and the shooter
kind is that the good kind is devastatingly handsome, which
fortunately works for me. |
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Although that misogynist stabbing guy recently was not too
tough on the eye. That gives me pause. Camp might have
been good for him. |
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I think there's a sociological solution to the mass
shooting crisis, and it doesn't necessary involve
gun control. There's a definite tendency towards
social prescription regarding what's healthy, and
having friends and socializing is one of them . The
society today is primarily composed of children
from single child homes, or homes with low
numbers of children. Just from that statistic alone
it would be probable that most school shooters
would be the only child in their family. That's the
social trend that really separates the old social
world of kinship ties from the new one. This
creates a greater impetus to socialize outside the
immediate family in the broader peer group. In
addition to that there's the prescription of what is
considered healthy, and that is invariably to have
friends rather than to be alone. Furthermore the
rampant growth of social media quantifies and
objectifies this new cultural norm. School
shootings, mass shootings, are likely related to
dysphoria in the new socially formed psyche.
Beyond that, democratic power of social groups to
produce a flawed culture through ad populum
decision making will invariably lead to dissident,
dissonant loners convinced of their own logic, or if
ill from enough dysphoria, derangement. |
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//The difference between that kind and the shooter kind//
Blimey bungston, what Clint Eastwood films have you been watching? Is there some secret collection of Clint Rom-Coms that I've never heard of? |
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//if you should be wearing a black blazer with white piping |
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HB ver would be the piping is a wearable personal particle accelerator. |
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Probably have to boost the magnets on the sleeves, bit of sharp turn there on the cuffs. |
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Who knows you could discover the next Higgs Bosun (that's the nautical particle) on your way to work.. |
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//The individual (the minority) should be able to reject the mass without the mass persecuting the individual. And the individual should be able to reject the mass without persecuting it. But if the individual feels persecuted by the mass, and the mass has likely been persecuting individuals in its powerful way, then the individual will persecute the mass in its own individually powerful way. Most shooters have mental health issues, but most mental health issues cause introversion and social rejection so you does the math.// |
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Agreed, still doesn't make the "institution" of friendship a bad thing, and certainly not "a type of emergent fascism". |
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In any case I think the trend should be reversed.
People should be encouraged to not have friends,
and the view point of health changed to make those
with friends seem to suffer from some type of
codependency. That's basically the idea I presented
in 'Mass Breakdown' found in my user page. Breaking
down the mass from groups of friends participating in
a popular culture, to autonomous individuals would
significantly reduce oppression in society. |
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//People should be encouraged to not have friends, and the view point of health changed to make those with friends seem to suffer from some type of codependency. // |
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And I'm completely opposed to your point of view here. |
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I think anyone who wants to do social engineering, by definition, is the wrong person to be doing it. |
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Well let's simply agree to disagree about your
arguments. |
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I think you're conflating the idea of friendship with the concepts of bullying and oppression. Whether that's based on your own experiences or a warped sense of what we Australians call mateship, I don't know, but it just comes off as absurd. |
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"Some people behave poorly in groups and put others down so they can feel better or included, therefore no one should be allowed to have friends" is how your argument comes across. I would argue the people doing the bullying and putting down are as mal-adjusted as the loners who have no friends and eschew companionship. Neither seems to be a particularly healthy state, but you're absolutely right that the former should not get away with it. |
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I just think that that the right of the loners to not be bullied or ostracised does not trump any of the rights of the rest of the population, including their right to have friends and associate freely. Issues like this always come back to people wanting to change the rights of the majority to correct an inequality experienced by a minority group. |
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Social engineering initiatives generally come across as subversive, manipulative, self-serving and vaguely evil. For good reason, because they normally are. |
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[soph] - I'll admit I'm a bit indifferent to your idea, mostly because it's been in my nature to go and seek out activities that tend to lead to this kind of experience, although I generally choose to do so with new or old friends. You're right in that nothing I know of forms a stronger bond that going through a hardship together as a team, and many many kids these days would not excperience this at all unless it was organised for them. [rcarty] is right, in that the "loner" types tend to cope badly in these situations, and although they often are the engineers of their own experience, they tend (in my experience) to interpret such as the fault of the group, not themselves. Perhaps, as you suggest, careful partnering of such individuals would go a long way to correcting this. Understanding where someone lies on the introvert-extrovert scale (as imperfect a concept as it is) would help greatly with this. |
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As an example, I've seen a couple of instances where "hard" introverts somehow, through some mechanism, have formed strong bonds with people who are much more extroverted, and via that relationship, have managed to develop their social skills to a point where they are more comfortable in their daily life, and certainly are more happy. This isn't to say they are changed, but normally these people are much happier for the "in" they get by leveraging off the strong bond with their extrovert mate. The role of the mate in this setup tends to be one of largely benign nature. |
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The problem is I don't think anyone can choose your friends for you, and some poeple cope with group and even paired activities so badly that they might well see this as an almost unendurable nightmare. I know I would have as a young kid. Confidence is a key issue here and maybe you could make sure the less "secure" kids got a leg up of some sort by being pre-trained or something as a confidence booster? |
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The introvert extrovert scale quantifies nothing but
examining behavior that only exists relative to an
observer. The observer objectifies the subject and
produces a system of evaluation that sets up a
market of exchange between the subject and the
observer. The model also produces self-awareness in
informed subjects towards the devaluated set of
behaviors converse the observatory regime. |
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While I think that was a bunch of drivel, I do agree (as I stated above) that introvert-extrovert is an imperfect system. But it is still usefeul, no? |
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You seem to be saying that being introverted and eschewing all forms of friendship is somehow the ideal state, and that people who have friends and associate in groups are fascists. I'm saying you're wrong, but more than that, I'm saying that any plot or intent to modify how people think (I refer to social engineering) is fundamentally wrong. |
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//any plot or intent to modify how people think (I
refer to social engineering) is fundamentally wrong// |
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Are you making some sort implosive moral argument? |
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//some sort implosive moral argument?// |
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I'm pretty sure those words don't mean much when used together that way. Making moral judgements on someone elses moral judgements is a little like a circular argument, I'll admit. |
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Substitute in my comment, for "fundamentally wrong" the words "toweringly arrogant" or similar. |
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Thinking you're so goddamn superior to other people that you you would want to change their views behaviours or way of thinking is just so arrogant and despicable. |
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How can you be so sure that a persons motivation for wanting to change the views, behaviours, or way of thinking in others, involves thinking of themselves as so goddamn superior to other people? |
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I'm only asking for a friend... nothing whatsoever to do with me you see, but my friend, well he's quite curious... and a bit bothersome. If you could help me get him off my back I'd be ever so greatfull. |
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What other motivation might there be? They either see themselves as superior, or at the very least, think that their vision of how people should think feel or behave is superior (which in my mind is the same thing). |
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Thinking you know better than someone is one way of showing you think you are better than them. |
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hmmm...
I don't see it that way or such a blanket statement would apply to every teacher who has ever lived. |
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//What other motivation might there be?// |
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I'm thinking that something along the lines of; "Eppur si muove." might sum it up. |
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...or was that dude just all full of himself too? |
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//Thinking you know better than someone is one
way of showing you think you are better than
them// |
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Them is an insertion of the observatory regime into
your subjective perception of self that manifests
itself grammatically. |
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//or was that dude just all full of himself too// |
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Well, in his place I certainly would have felt I was "better" than the inquisition. Good evidence for that would have been the fact that they were the ones weilding the torture implements. |
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//Them is an insertion of the observatory regime into your subjective perception of self that manifests itself grammatically// |
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Righto. Lots of people would argue with that. |
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//in his place I certainly would have felt I was "better" than the inquisition.// |
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So, how is; //wanting to change their views behaviours or way of thinking just so arrogant and despicable//? |
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Good question, although I never said I wanted to change anyone. |
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He did though didn't he, that arrogant friggin bastage. |
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I didn't think we were talking about you or me though?
I thought we were talking generalities about those men who wish to either change or stagnate society. |
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Y'know...
for my friend... |
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Interesting dichotomy there. |
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Let me review my arguments in this one. The
opposition to 'friends' is not against friendly social
relations with others, but against the broader
cultivation of friends as an orientation adverse
individuality. The contention of fascism should
not be surprising given that the idea itself also
indicts friendship "indoctrination into an
institution, destroying individualism to create a
new personality subservient to the institution."
My argument ends accusing [custardguts] of
participating in this form of indoctrination, and in
fact ultimately making an ad populum argument
referring to a generalized other "them, rather than
"him" which would be more correct. Whether this
is in fact an insertion of the observatory regime, a
term I use to describe the entire cultivation of an
anti-individualist society including the fraudulent
objectification of social behavior in psychological
profiling, or merely a grammatical error in a case
where one can harmlessly mean many is not
important. My broader arguments regarding mass
shooting are out of concern for increased
collectivization and persecution of lone
individualists, and somewhat jokingly propose
demassification to stop school shootings rather
than becoming even more of a mass repelled by
the deviant example of the lone individualist. |
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I don't think pressuring a deep relationship is a
good idea, most good things take time to make
sure it is a good thing for the people involved and
the wider society. |
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Friends give those healthy greater emotional
experiences. True experiences will be more
beneficial than stage ones.
Friends also are the ones that know you deeply
and can tell you straight so you listen. If you are
good listener, with an open mind (rare,most
people have blind spots), loose acquaintances
probably could do that check. |
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[rcarty] - I don't get your whole "them/him" argument. In my usage, "them" was gender unspecific, (and the term is also individual/group unspecific, although I used it as singular). You then jump in and insist that I use a gender-specific term. You seem to be reading a great deal into the use of that term. |
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Obfuscating your point with run-on sentences packed with as much jargon as you can come up with does not a good argument, make. |
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Run on sentences are easily fixed, but are
preserved here in their original state, unlike your
statement which you have edited, to capture the
streaming nature of thought at the time of
writing. Grammar is also held structurally stable by
an observatory regime and institutionalized
persons. It's fun to imagine regimes and the ways
they seek compliance and the ways people
participate in them. I'll put what you call your
gender neutral 'them' as participation in the
feminist observatory regime rather than the
patriarchal one, but not fully in the one that
keeps references to the singular followed by the
singular pronoun. One that has been destabilized
somewhat by the gender regime conflict. I
sometimes will start a statement in the singular
very naturally and end with a plural because I have
to some extent been persuaded to by the feminist
regime. In a manner of speaking these various
regimes fight their ongoing collectivist battles
inside our minds and 'dialectics' lead to
disharmonious, even perhaps ironic statements
such as the one you made. To be fair you may not
necessarily be influenced greatly by the feminist
regime, but about equality and fraternity (friends I
guess but not really), but not so much about
liberty, of the French regime which has been
influential beyond measure. At the time I argued
your usage of 'them' was in line with my argument
that you were siding with fascist collectivism, but
will instead settle for your admission to have self-
regulated on behalf of one of these regimes. |
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My argument is not against micro-sociological
relations. It's not against your friends, or those
friends; it's about friends in a general sense. As I
say in another annotation it's "against the broader
cultivation of friends as an orientation adverse
individuality". It's against social capitalism and
the accumulation of these friends, and social
exchange. |
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The argument about introvert extrovert was
something I said to capture the conflict between
the individual and 'the market' for behavior, and
the systems of evaluation that people use to
appraise the value of a person. My radical
criticism was that because the model is extrovert
biased requiring an outwardly focused observer
(extrovert) the subject introvert is in a
relationship of oppression. The observatory
regime which I later said is the cultivation of all
anti-individualist society is embodied in this, as
the 'natural' observer the extrovert objectifies the
'inward looking' of the introvert and identifies
socially dysfunctional pathologies. This
observatory regime also extends to the television
show Friends, as part of the broader cultivation,
as extroverted behavior of situation comedy, and
the extroversion fascination with this outer world
increases the disparity between the orientations. |
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I've also said "implosive moral argument" which you
ironically said are meaningless words in that
combination. Ironic because that's exactly what
implosive moral argument means. That section of
text in the thread was quite implosive. You said
something like "any intent to change the way
people think is wrong". But you are doing the
thing you say you can't do! You can't make moral
arguments because that is social engineering.
Your argument implodes because it collapses from
within. |
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Finally the school shooting thing. You took some
offence to the implication that a group rejecting
an individual was responsible. I'm saying
something else more in the lines of Durkheim or
Comte that
society exerts powerful forces on individuals.
Take for instance how [sophocles] compared my
position to the Unabomber this is an example of
the claim I made in "Mass Breakdown" that
massification occurs by the increasing inertia of
inclusion by the coefficient of the repulsion of
examples of its exclusion." That means basically
the more repulsive the excluded loners become
the more energy people will put into being
included." However, the 'inertia' of the mass
shooter is destructive, he brings a gun instead of
candies for everybody, reduces the numbers of
parts of the mass, but increasing the attractive
inertia towards the mass by increasing "coefficient
of repulsion by examples of its exclusion". This is
counter-intuitive because a mass with more parts
should be more attractive. That's still in the
sociological sense, not natural physics. And not in
a tourism sense either but in terms of democratic
power. It's really
just a
halfbaked idea I had. |
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Friends don't let friends drive drunk. Outward bound has no booze and no cars after the trail head, so that's a good place for friends to fulfill that obligation. |
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[rcarty] if you're still around can I have that in a readable format? |
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Technically I think it is readable, though it may not be comprehensible. |
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It is comprehensible; it means that [rcarty] was somewhat paranoid, and spoke mostly to themselves. You could probably achieve similar output by feeding prompts about Critical Theory to ChatGPT. |
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// You could probably achieve similar output by feeding prompts about Critical Theory to ChatGPT.// |
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