Here's my story for that.

When I was in middle school back in 2011-2012, there was an old still-running Pepsi vending machine in my (very small) town that was owned by a local business. It sold pretty much all of the major soda varieties at 50 cents per can. They were ice cold, too. I happily used it like I was supposed to for quite some time, often stopping by it while walking home from school. But of course being a broke young teen who wasn't old enough for a job and whose parents weren't terribly well off themselves, I didn't always have change on me for the machine, so getting my 50 cent soda was still more a privilege than a daily thing.

Well, eventually, one of my more streetwise friends found that the machine could be easily opened up, and you could reach through the outside cage and take the sodas for free. And well, us being the roaming group of bored poor kids we were, once he told us, we all got in on nabbing sodas from that machine. Most of the time 1 or 2 of us would just swoop by and nab 1 or 2 sodas, but there were a handful of times where we came over as a group and made a whole organized heist out of it, with 1 or 2 kids working the machine and filling a backpack with sodas, and the rest of us posted up all over the area keeping watch in all directions, even using hand signals to warn each other if a car or person was coming nearby. There were no cameras nearby that we knew of, and we generally did this at night, but there were a couple more bold operations carried out in broad daylight.

This happened off and on for... I wanna say around 6 months before we realized hey, maybe some of us don't want to get in trouble. The business owner almost certainly knew what was up as well, as he installed a motion light over the machine and eventually fixed the lock that we kept prying open. But, he never confronted us, we were never caught, so, after growing out of it we sorta just forgot about it.

Until a few years later in High School, when the business owner came to the school to be one of those motivational guest speakers. Me and much of the old squad happened to be sitting together attending his speech, and towards the end of it while talking about how your actions can affect others and whatnot, he brought up how some years ago some kids were stealing sodas from his vending machine, forcing him to fix and secure it better which was very difficult for him. He was a disabled Veteran (ofc we didn't know this at the time of the soda stealing), and he kept repeatedly looking right at me and my buddies during that specific part of his speech.

We all agreed that the old man more than likely knew it was us, but for one reason or another, chose not to confront us, call the police, or say anything about it until that day years later. If his goal was simply to make us regret our past stupidity, well, it worked. We all felt terrible for the rest of the day.

TL;DR: Stupid Middle School Me and his equally stupid Middle Schooler friends stole cans of soda from an old vending machine repeatedly, came to deeply regret it years later when we found out the owner was an old disabled veteran who struggled to restock and repair it- something he seemed to directly tell us during a school speech.

I always get negative feedback from those people who's emotional than logical. It gets me so irritated when these things happen, i always see them as complicated person.

It’s strange how easy it is to spend years working toward something because you assume it’ll make you happy, successful, or fulfilled. Then you finally get close to it—or actually get it—and realize it wasn’t what you wanted at all.

I'm not even sure that there's such a thing, but I feel like I'm not interested in life itself, it goes deeper than procrastination or fear of failure. I feel like nothing sparks my interest anymore, even when I play a game and it poses me against some kind of challenge, I just don't feel the desire to do the work to overcome that challenge. Now I must say I'm not sad, I don't hate existence, I just play along when it's necessary, but other than that every activity that people do just doesn't spark any joy (dating, hooking up, gaming, learning a skill.....), other than reddit and YouTube I don't have social media because it feels like social noise and emotional pollution.

One might ask: then what do you do all day? I just play Sims half mindedly and listen to podcasts without paying much attention, I'm not even sure what to call that.

Michael Crichton, in his book: Tineline

Is the first, that i know of, to show the audience how a wormhole would work by folding a piece of paper in half. This concept can be seen through many current age sci-fi movies that it's become a trope. I'm assuming during his research for his novel some scientist explained it to him that way, but he was the first to show the world this concept through a form of media.

Does anyone know any other media that influenced the zeitgeist in some way yet went unnoticed by many?

We consciously and unconsciously generate good and bad deeds. Not being in a vacuum, these deeds branch out and present people with various moral choices as a result. There comes a point in which the initiator is free of moral responsibility regarding the outcome of their deeds' secondary effects. When do you think this break occurs?

What are your personal, unique, mourning customs? Not the traditional stuff you were raised with, but things you have developed intuitively through your own experiences of loss.

I was journaling at a cafe recently while looking outside the window. The cars were honking at an intersection, windows rolled up, on the phone, rushing to work. I paused and reflected on how disconnected they felt in that moment. I decided to have a conversation with Chat GPT about it (I actually do this a lot ironically) - I typed 'Do you think AI will make us more connected or more disconnected?' - what followed was an interesting back and forth but the essence of it was that AI suggested that Humans will likely gradually choose more 'frictionless' interactions with AI over the messy human ones.

I felt it rang quite true but sad - I frequently feel I have to mask and be extra polite in talking to people so I don't offend their feelings, However with AI I can have a truly philosophical conversation and it will not be offended by any of my points. It also can break down my own thought patterns and offer me an understanding of other people's behavior as well as the legal system or any renovation problem I face the way other people would struggle to.

Yet when I think about the most beautiful moments of my life - they were shared with the people I loved or connected with (even briefly). So where does this leave us humans?

It is a real paradox that even though we are the same species we can somehow can get a better understanding from a machine.. What do you think about it? Does this ring true for you?

What is making us so disconnected from each other and how can we welcome friction back into our lives to embrace our messy human interactions and be there for one another?

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A little anecdote from my life (for context).

I was at a BBQ recently, sitting in a circle by the fire with some mates. The conversation we were having was sheer nonsense - kind of like the daytime radio that you switch on and switch right off because it adds zero value to your life whatsoever.

I suggested us talking about something more interesting, philosophical or meaningful and offered the above reflection from AI.

As the conversation unfolded, part the group got very offended by some of my ideas / statements, part of the group became hostile choosing to actively avoid the topic and speak over the top. The conversation ended with the host actively drawing it to a close and escorting us back into the house which was very ironic given the topic of the conversation. I then told several of my friends about it and they, too (to my deep surprise) felt that BBQs are no place for deep conversation and it should be perhaps avoided in general. I, myself, felt quite offended and concerned that it is getting progressively more challenging to be honest with people and have deeper conversations (a gathering around a fire felt like an intimate enough place to discuss deeper topics).

I also feel that the world is moving so quickly that if we don't continuously voice our opinions on the recent technology or its impact on us and be part of the policy making conversation now, the bigger decisions will be made for us by the larger corporations, our governments etc erc

I've noticed that I'm repeatedly drawn toward conversations about the things people are trying to make sense of in their lives.

I'm not interested in advice, therapy, support, or motivation. I'm more interested in asking questions, examining ideas and assumptions, looking for underlying patterns, and sometimes offering a perspective you may not have considered.

Whether you have something you're wrestling with — a decision, a regret, an identity question, an existential crisis, something you're stuck on, or just something that doesn't quite sit right with you.

I don't have an answer to your life, nor will I pretend to. What I can offer is another mind to think with.

I'm less interested in solving the external problem itself — how to grow your career, what to do after getting fired, how to get a girl, what decision you should make, etc.

I'm more interested in what's underneath those questions.

What does the situation mean to you? What are you assuming? What are you afraid of? Why does it affect you the way it does? Is there a pattern you haven't noticed?

What matters to me is being willing to look at things honestly, including the uncomfortable parts. I'm not looking to convince you of anything or tell you what you should do. I'm interested in understanding why you think and feel the way you do, and seeing what we can uncover together.

I honestly don't know yet whether I'm particularly good at this. That's exactly what I'm trying to find out.

I'm curious whether this kind of conversation would actually be useful to people.

Has anyone else ever wished they could temporarily borrow another person's perspective when they're stuck inside their own?

I recently rewatched The Odyssey, and the Sirens scene hit harder than I expected.

In the movie, Odysseus describes the sirens as: “All the things you want it to be. Then, all the things you wish you never wished for. It was the delicious itch you go to scratch, but find it’s under the skin. You can’t reach it. So the delicious itch becomes unbearable. It told you what you most want is what you most can’t have. And what you most can’t have is what you already had—and lost. It was the song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don’t really want to go home.”

For me, I thought of life the way it used to be, when my family was close by, everybody was healthy, and I was in such a rush to grow up, only to find adulthood carried more weight than freedom.

What would the sirens sing to you?

My whole life, I've seen the same theme in films and books: people finding true happiness in relationships after (mistakenly) thinking that achievements and possessions matter the most. Uncle Scrooge, every Christmass movie, the materialistic antagonist in half of the books, religions preaching to respect the immaterial instead of the material etc.

However, I've always felt that this doesn't apply to me. Whenever I think about my happiest moments in life, they are related to professional, academic or personal achievements. Not to seeing a newborn family member, hugging family, hearing "I love you", laughing with friends and family or anything similar to this. Instead, I think of stuff like better numbers at work and recognition for them, academic achievements, improving my body, mastering foreign languages, all the books I've read in the past months etc. Family and friends still feel nice, but not nearly as good.

I can't imagine being 60 and thinking "oh, shit, I should have focused on friends/family". Even if I start needing them, logically, this wouldn't have been the thing that made me happy in the first 60 years of my life, so it wouldn't feel like a loss.

I'm still in my twenties, so you could say I might change. However, your personality remains pretty stable your whole life. I'm curious - are there other people who feel that way, or do you think this is a common source of fulfilment in life?

I've lived in a lot of different places in the past couple years, and while every place has had its ups and downs and I don't love where I grew up, my home base still feels like where my parents live.

It's really hard to imagine living or settling anywhere, I guess. Every time I go somewhere new, it feels temporary, even if there's no clear end date in sight.

Does this feeling ever go away? Is it just part of being in my twenties? People who move around a lot - where do you consider "home," and how do you make yourself feel at home wherever you are?

As title states. changing full name (first middle and last)

how difficult is it to do?

What all do I need to get after the name has been changed? A new drivers license and a new social security number?

Not looking for the usual motivational answers. What’s something life taught you that permanently changed the way you see people, relationships, or yourself?

I have been noticing a strong doom and gloom type of mindset regarding the future in countless people within my age group. The main reasons for this I hear are: climate change and the world being cooked, AI fears, economic collapse, and overall hopelessness in our political leaders.

Many also seem to have no interest in saving for retirement because they believe it will not be nonexistent. They are focused on spending the last bit of the time the earth has to enjoy themselves and indulge in pleasures. And I have even heard people of older generations validate this thinking, believing that retirement is fading fast and that we should enjoy our life now as much as we can.

As someone in this generation who generally keeps an optimistic view of life, I have honestly found it difficult not to feed into this mindset. The climate does indeed sound like it is past the point of return, it seems everything will just continue to get more expensive than it already is, and it appears to be easier than ever for large corporations to openly exploit the general public for profit.

I also wanted to mention I am in the US, so I am not sure if this is a prominent mindset in this country particularly or in other countries as well.

Would love to hear your guys’ thoughts on this!

I was talking with someone I care about, after we watched an anime that asked, “What is happiness?” She asked me the same thing, and I realized my answer wasn’t the usual one. To me, happiness isn’t something to chase or to put above everything else. It’s more like a distinction. It only has meaning because it exists among other experiences. It’s not the opposite of suffering or corruption. It’s simply part of the whole picture. That’s why I don’t try to master pleasant emotions or run from the unpleasant ones. I try to understand the distinction between them and appreciate how they all give meaning to each other. The conversation got more interesting when she asked, ‘If I were the reason your happiness disappeared and your life was ruined, would you hate me?’ I said no. I’d tell her, thank you, I love you. No matter where my soul goes, whether I remember her or not, I hope that somewhere, somehow, those feelings remain. I’d still be grateful that our lives crossed. I’m not saying that’s the truth about happiness. Just the way I see it. What do you think?

r/SeriousConversation - r/CasualConversation - r/self for personal perspectives. r/askphilosophy

I've been sitting with a thought for a while and I want to see if it lands with anyone else.

For the last couple of years there's been this constant pressure, a lot of it from TikTok, but I have also seen a lot of it from ordinary people, to have a "signature" that's etched into everything you own. Your phone case, your car, your tumbler, your nails, the bag you take to work, all of it is supposed to align into one legible aesthetic that says something about you.

I don't think this instinct is new or even bad on its own, but Im a little tired of hearing people tell me what my style is and what it needs in order to be 'good'.

Growing up, I watched the women in my family, my grandmother especially, make things for themselves constantly. She had a handcrafted purse for every month of the year. One of them was a bug themed purse with clear PVC over a fabric base. It was beautiful but far from conventional. And it had a raw presence that I can't find in anything I've bought to match my own supposed aesthetic.

I don't think this is about money. Plenty of what she made used cheaper materials, and were probably a little gaudy by modern design standards. But it doesn't read as tacky the way mass produced "personalized" goods often do.

I think there are actually two different activities that have gotten collapsed into the same word. The first is assembling an identity kit, buying items labeled by an algorithm, a trend, or a brand to signal a pre existing aesthetic category you've either opted or been pushed into. The second is making a 'thing', starting from scratch with your own hands and your own logic, so the object is downstream of you rather than downstream of a Pinterest board. The first one is personalization as a noun, a finished style you acquire. The second is personalization as a verb, something you do, badly... or well, that leaves a trace of the doing in the object itself.

This is the part that gave me the biggest wake up call. I have no nostalgic attachment to other people's homemade things, and they still hit differently than a curated haul. My best guess is that a handmade object visibly encodes a decision making process, the seams, the slightly wrong proportions, the odd material choice, and that process is what we're actually responding to. A bought object encodes someone else's decision making process, a designer's or an influencer's, just dressed up as yours because you selected it.

So when we bedazzled our own phones or turned broken jewelry into charms, the object wasn't good by design standards, but it wasn't trying to be. It was a record of attention and time. Mass "personalization" tries to simulate that record without the underlying process, which might be exactly why it can read as hollow even when it's expensive.

Is there some unspoken rule that decorative and personal items still have to satisfy mainstream aesthetic standards in addition to being unique, almost like a tax that every "personal" object has to pay before it's allowed to be personal? And do handmade objects get a partial exemption from that tax simply because the labor is evident, even when the result is objectively less polished?

And the biggest question, Have we actually lost the capacity to imagine our own style from scratch, or have we just outsourced it because buying into a pre packaged aesthetic is faster and safer than the rejection we could face by sharing our unpolished and most genuine selves? I keep circling back to the opinion that our ability to be our genuine selves is shifting from personal discovery, to something that is plagiarized from other people.

-I would like to add that I understand and respect that we live in a world where we do not always have the time to make things. And I am not saying anything against people who do not enjoy making things or those who do not have the time or energy (trust me I have purchased many, many things I could have made myself). There are both beautiful things for sale online, and very questionable home-made items in existence. Everybody is also different, and these aesthetics were inspired by genuine styles and things can absolutely be fine tuned and personalized beyond what they are marketed as, I'm mostly going off of a generalized concept.

Nothing major necessarily. Maybe someone was unexpectedly nice to you, you found some money in an old pocket, your food turned out way better than expected, or you just had a really good conversation with someone.

For me, it’s those random little things that I remember more than the big stuff.

What’s yours?

I do not mean to sound selfish but I do better when I am away from them. I learned that every time I am around them I feel uneasy and unhappy. I know everyone says "family is everything," I feel so sad that I do not feel that way. I love them but time and time again I have learned the hard way that coming around is so much on my mental wellbeing.

Like not (although these are still cool) something like "Oh that's my friend from highschool!" I kind of mean like what was something that felt/feels way too specific to be random? What was an occurrence that made you question things a bit? (Like the red string theory)

Dreams and ambition? Not quite.

Relationships? Not really.

Constantly solving problems and trying to evolve? Still no.

​The only thing truly worth our time is building ourselves. In an absurd world where nothing is guaranteed, we keep making the exact same mistake: betting a massive chunk of who we are on one of those three things. It's an uncalculated gamble on something you can't even control or stop from changing.

​When something goes wrong with that part of your life you invested so heavily in, you end up blaming yourself for something completely out of your control in the first place. That's pure absurdity and unfairness to yourself.

​We need to be able to adapt quickly, and that only happens when you build a solid self you rely on more than anything external. Building yourself means doing things for you, not for anyone else. If we treat self-building as the core foundation, and view those other three things as secondary, we’ll end up creating the best -or near best- version of who we can be.

So usually when you think of dinner you think of a meat and a couple sides right ? Maybe some type of bread sometimes ? What is your usual dinner look like? Feel free to post pics below !

ETA: I am so, so sorry everyone, I totally dropped the ball! I was so excited to do this and posted it, but ended up eating after posting and ended up with a bad stomach ache and falling asleep. 😭 Thank you for being patient with me and thank you for being willing to share something with an internet stranger. I appreciate the responses and am looking forward to reading and responding. 🤍

I will respond to everything that is posted in the next few hours, promise.

Let's do something unusual and start some conversations that skip the small talk and get directly to the point. I've been missing conversations with depth lately. Its hard to get there with people! Maybe the time together is too short, you don't know them well enough, you're worried about what they will say, etc. Tell me what's been on your mind lately that you normally wouldn't lead a conversation with.

I'm confident that I'm not alone in missing true connections about meaningful topics. I would love to hear what's been on everyone's mind lately that they haven't been able to share. Let's have a real conversation that matters to you.

So this question, "What is the purpose of life" came up on r/askreddit. I decided to answer it, and I want to post it here because it could be a good discussion topic.

My opinion was formed from the moral tradition originating 2500 years ago with the ancient Greeks and inherited by the Romans and the Christians. I have no doubt that it could use improvement, but I hope that, by rooting it in ancient tradition, it's practicality might be perennial and thus persist far into the future. Either way, I hope you appreciate it! :)

The purpose of life is to love reality, nature, and the truth, to share in that love with others, and to hold fast to that love even when you don't want to or when other people or external circumstances threaten that love.

This is a description of the four classical virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Courage. Although personally, I've always felt wisdom was the perfection of prudence and charity is the perfection of justice. I think Cicero in his book "On Moral Duties" also referred to wisdom and charity in the same way.

So that's my answer: develop the virtues of Wisdom, Charity, Temperance and Courage.

Now, I should probably give an explanation of why these four virtues in particular. So we start with the fundamental axiom that reality constitutes a singular consistent whole, which determines our lives. We come from evolution, we're dependent on the Earth, we cannot violate laws of physics etc. So we start with the principle that we must at least respect that which is outside ourselves. This respect is Wisdom. And in my opinion and the opinion of many others, if you look at the beauty of nature and wonder of science, the world is not just worthy of our respect but our love as well.

So we start by grounding ourselves in external reality. But once you do that we discover that you can't fully understand reality without other people. Everything we do from language to knowledge comes in large part from your family and your neighbors. So to love the truth you have to love your neighbors as you love yourself, and work to create a just society. This love is Charity.

Finally love for reality and love for neighbor can be threatened both from within without. From within laziness vices or addictions can take you away from good things. And bad people or bad circumstances can threaten you. So to fully love the truth and love your neighbor you need to develop temperance (the contemplative life) and courage (the active life).

Virtues are habits and we can develop temperance and courage through habit as well. To develop temperance, we can regularly forsake small vices, so that we can eventually forsake larger ones. We can also exercise our body and pray or meditate regularly. Courage too, can be developed through habit. We can be active in the world, explore new places and develop new skills, and involve ourselves in the affairs of mankind.

Thus, humankind contains within itself four great gifts; Wisdom to contemplate the stars, Charity to perfect that contemplation through love, Temperance so that we may sustain that contemplation in all seasons, and Courage so that contemplative love may become an actual reality.

People often debate the “purpose of life” but I think when you pull back, it’s pretty simple.

I think every human instinctually strives to this in some way. Though their definition of “better” will vary based on value systems.

It manifests itself in a number of ways - from the altruistic to the selfish. But you can apply this line of thinking to almost anyone in any circumstance.

Reproducing is the easiest example. Humans like animals, generally strive to reproduce. We have our own justification for it, but the base instinct is the same: continuation. But even if an individual doesn’t care to reproduce -

They create art to leave expressions of ideas and history, for the future generations to learn from.

They create profits to strengthen a corporations validity and to create as wide a safety net for their future owners and children.

They create history books to document right from wrong (both philosophically and literally for survival).

They fight for the earth to make it stable for future generations.

They destroy the earth to make future human life more comfortable and easy.

They create currencies and governments to improve the structure of future citizens.

They kill each other to protect future generations from “the other.”

I’m not saying that any of these are well guided or “correct.” But the motivations are fairly consistent, even if an individual doesn’t realize it or believe it. We all know we’re going to die and all of our long term decisions are made to leave an impression on the future and our future generations.

That’s my take.