Are you living vicariously?

As Jack Donovan says in his book, The Way of Men, we live in a masturbatory society. More and more we keep relegating ourselves to our boxes, our rooms, wherein we partake in all kinds of masturbatory acts: pretending to do/achieve great things and pretending to kill huge beasts of opponents (video games), watching other men who have trained their bodies and developed their physique compete against each other for titles as champions (sports), watching men have sex with the women of our dreams (porn), and even observing people just living out lives which are more interesting, funny, etc, than we could ever imagine our lives being (TV in general).

It's all the same. It's all masturbation.

We need to live real lives, while we still can. If we give in to the systemic, society-wide sedation that will be Virtual Reality (and is already present in various forms of media), we will be much less problematic for those in charge, and much easier to take advantage of. Cue the Matrix.

 

When I watch porn, I imagine myself as the guy. Whether it's going down on the chick or smashing her with my dick, I see myself as the male talent. It's also one the reasons I enjoy funny, reality-based pornos over films with just fucking. I envy guys that can express themselves to girls. Consequently, I listen to the pre-shoot banter more than the actual sex. For me the ultimate goal is to become that guy in the movie. But instead of acting I want it to be genuine.

 

I love this post so much because its resonating with what i'm going through. I've stopped living vicariously while my friends continue to do so. I see the excuses they give themselves and i no longer agree with them. I just dont say anything when they give themself an excuse. I dont validate it it for them.

Its joyous to live a non vicarious life. But I will say it's pretty damn hard to not be vicarious 100%. Id say it's alright watch a bit of tv for using up your time now and then to relax. We've come to learn real > fantasy.

 

That's a good way to be. People make so many excuses and they almost never want your real input, they just want you to validate them, otherwise they'll say you're pretentious. Good on you for taking the right approach and just not saying anything.

 

Yeah initially you have to say something to affirm it for yourself because when you start out your brain plays tricks.

Then when you get used to it hou can avoid silence. Then when you gain their trust you can input your own opinion without offending, just for your own self efficacy. You won't need to prove it you'll be it.

 

Excellent thread.

The comparison with the Matrice is so true.
That's sad, but even watching a serie show you love or a great movie where you identify yourself to the characters belongs to this vicarious effect.

That's why I am watching only a movie a week min, and not watching more than 1 episode of a TV show a day.

This feeling is reduces when reading books.

And social medias are great, when you keep control of your intimity and don't use them to gain some useless "web fame".

 

Masturbatory society?? Odd term. Why not just say 'life as a spectacle', where people just want to be spectators, to live passively, or to live vicariously in the OP's terms.

 

Matrix was good in bringing back to mind the age-old problem of distinguishing reality from illusion. It trundles out the old argument, found in Plato, found in Descartes, found in Bishop Berkeley, dusts it off and tricks it out in a more contemporary and palatable style. But here's the problem with the Matrix. It's just a work of fiction, fascinating but fiction nevertheless. It gives us a vicarious thrill at the movie - where we manage to suspend our disbelief for a couple of hours - but it can not be taken seriously. We can not believe it when we come out blinking in the light of day. Could I really be a brain in a vat, could I really be hooked into a computer. Nope, so we go on with our humdrum lives. OK, so it's a metaphor! So now we have to start looking at it in terms of art [a dim reflection of what came earlier]. And that's were art differs so much from mere fiction; it is not just a distraction from mundane life, but a window through which you peer and feel that something behind or beyond this mundane world really is real. It's the awakening of the will. And this is when we look up, instead of down.... as deterministic science would teach.

Neo is a hero. He wakes up and takes control of his life. But the other lesser character raises a good point; if there is nothing to wake to, why bother. Besides the positive, there are also nihilistic, dark elements to the movie. Consider the machines misanthropic comparison of humanity to bacteria. Here is cold logic/ reason stripped of all feeling and human will.

 

Those phrases are good, but they're not as straightforward in meaning. I think saying that we live in a masturbatory society is more crude but more direct and to the point. It jumps out at you and causes you to realize how many things we do that are basically like masturbation, because we're getting some residual effect from them, but still not really living out the experience as nature intended.

 

And certainly appropriate perhaps for this forum.

As long as we can agree that there is no such thing as 'intellectual masturbation'. That term is a lobotomy!

 

I don't think I even understand what that would be. haha