Can you take it?

I see them as the cake that sometimes you refrain from eating. There are five things every man's life is going to revolve around (even if in negative terms):

1) health
2) material conditions
3) relationships
4) work
5) rest and leisure

There is no escaping those.

 

Wait, i'm confused.
so, what's "it" and how did the current conversation get started?
I think I missed something?

 

Conditional. Unless you mean relationships with the people in your head or the animals in the forest in which you live.

 

Look, I don't care how much you chose to isolate yourself (which takes effort), you're still going to have to say "hello" to the grocery store owner where you buy your flour. Primates live in society. We're not reptiles. And for that very reason, not many of us opt to live in desert islands.

Edit: Not to mention the fact that we are the outcome (the most important outcome?) of a very special kind of relationship, in the first place.

 

You talk to the people at the grocery store? How sad.

 

How are you doing, Ang?

 

Urgh. There it is.

I am by no means saying that it is better to not have friends. I am by no means saying that you are better off not having friends. I am not saying that it is easy to live without friends. I am saying that the idea that you should have friends, and that happiness is possible without it, is a stifling inevitability that I don't wish to believe in. I don't like the idea that you or I should know what is better for a man.

 

apparently neither of you can take it, but you can both dish it out pretty well.




loljk?

 

I said relationships. That's different from friends.

 

No, I'm "bottom" in our homosexual relationship.

 

That has nothing to do with us. I did not choose for my father to stick something in my mother. I also don't see why I should have to do the same thing to some other woman. I just want to.

Perhaps this is all about my desire to think I have choices in life, but still I am going to believe it. I personally think that I am happier and healthier when I am rid of the idea that I need anything or anyone.

 

If you kill yourself, you also won't have need for food. Assuming our goal is indeed to become needless.

 

My argument applies equally to relationships.

 

I'm better at one than the other, but I can surely do both.

 

I don't see how everyone is having such an easy time answering this question except me
what is it?

 

You're just not separating the ideas here.

I am not saying that needlessness is the goal, I am saying that certain things, like relationships with other people, during a time of our lives where we might not need them at all, are entirely conditional and are a choice. Of course we need people to raise us and get us there, but at a certain point in our lives, we have no obligation or need for other people. Of course it would be a horrible struggle to live without others, but for some people that could be happiness. That could become a goal for some people that may add value to their lives. Who are you or I to suggest that their values are worse than our own. Note that I am not one of those people, but I think I could be if I wanted to. The idea that I want and choose to have relationships with people brings me joy, but the idea that I shall always need them only brings me down.

I just fucking WANT to need other people. Key word: want.

Food, air and water are different things altogether, but not relationships.

Lets see what petty details you pick out of this one in order to further justify your own point of view.

 

Of course the word need is relative since we are free to die. But the average baby (or even an adult) dropped in a desert island will probably live less and less happily on average than individuals who have the five "needs" I described properly satisfied.

 

The baby will die. That is a given and should not even be part of an argument between two rational people, unless you would rather assume that I am an idiot.

As for the adult. How the fuck do you know?

 

This argument is becoming semantic. Describe a situation in which a human being survives without interacting with another human being under any circumstance. I haven't seen it happen, although I'm sure such people wouldn't be around for me to take a peek into their lives.

Even Himalayan monks have relationships. Madmen trapped in madhouses have relationships. Suicidal depressives have relationships to doctors who try to save them. Reclusive poets to their landladies. Shut-in heroin addicts to their suppliers, etc. etc.

 

I guess the misunderstanding stems from the fact that you think I'm making some moral prescription: you should have relationships.

I'm not. I'm simply saying that human beings have a tendency not to survive very long without relationships, and we aren't free to be what we are not. Lone wolves and other predators in nature seem to do well without packs. We don't. Just like birds can fly; and we can't.