convivial creativity

In the words of George Orwell: “The main motive for 'nonattachment' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual is hard work.” Indeed, even by the present juxtaposition thereby recontextualizing the words of Sophocles: “Without labor nothing prospers.” As misattributed to Thomas Alva Edison: “Recognizing opportunity is so difficult for most people because it goes around disguised in overalls, looking like hard work!” In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him.” And in the words of Henry Ford: “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.” Although, to quote Elon Musk: “No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder.” Or just perhaps thinking and even loving that much harder! Is then even reading this webpage and responding actually so terribly difficult thinking? And in comparison to what available alternatives and to what end? What experience or result? As the Yiddish saying goes: “If hard work was so wonderful, the rich would keep it all for themselves.” Indeed, to quote Anthony Marra: “Work isn’t meaningful just because you spend your life doing it.” After all, in the words of J.M. Barrie: “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” Or to quote: Maxim Gorky: “When work is pleasure, life is joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.” And that may certainly apply no less to any natural preference towards thinking about anything else less dystressing. And so, is the infliction of whatever such purportedly burdensome reading and thinking difficulty at hand upon the reader, simply well avoidable by the author? Is it all my fault? Or might it be the agenda at hand, in and of itself, life itself being at all so difficult? Or is the agenda at hand so boring? Therefore, can we please just get serious: What else should be of so much greater concern, why and how so?

One enduring question that surely remains of pressing concern to all humanity from time immemorial: What is freedom and for whom? That is a question with so many disappointing inadequate pointless concrete practical answers from any life coach or online guru, and so many no less disappointingly inadequate nebulously abstract answers from all too many ivory tower experts and latter-day Mystics. Of necessity, any salient relevant and necessarily interdisciplinary solution finding must bridge the abstract and the concrete. There must be both point and thrust. Therefore, to better rephrase the question: How might freedom be experienced? And how is whatever that experience of freedom so routinely thwarted and denied us all? Make no mistake: No heteronymous social cognition, no socialization that none dare call out for what it truly is: utter brainwash, no malignant and oppressive "providing of structure," no behaviorally conditioning via extrinsic punishment and reward, can ever truly substitute or compensate for capability undermined rather than nurtured by social support, nor for precious autonomy thereby quashed, neither in the conscious psyche nor in society or any aspect of social life. Especially perhaps for the gifted, the agenda at hand in order to address meeting the most underserved most important intrinsic human needs, capability, motives and values of Eudemonia and authentic wellbeing fathomed by the greatest sages of antiquity as rediscovered by the cutting edge of modern science.
Alas that devious oppression, alienation and resultant unhappiness, all ubiquitously prevail. What to do?

It is so often lamented that life is suffering. Hope herself enduring, is often reviled and vilified as the most perfidious escapee out from the darkest bottom depths of Pandora's Box: Ever tantalizing Hope, the accursed alluring snare along the primrose path to all the blessings and sweet release of crushed spirit and resignation into sublime apathy. Ah yes sublime apathy, defeat and cowardice in the face of life, so fervently glorified under those holiest of names: behavioral extinction AKA Zen cessation. Make no mistake, the challenges of life remain complicated, frustrating and debilitating. For grappling with Existential Absurdity remains disheartening, even harrowing. The appeal then even of complexity arising to discovery, should come as no shock, but in vast improvement over helpless despair and oppression. Existential Absurdity sticks in ones craw, impossible neither to expel nor to stomach. Whereas often even the most complex solution finding presents true hope at all in probortunity. The very term 'probortunity,' of course, has been coined as a portmanteau of the two words: 'problem' and 'opportunity,' in order to press home the point that problems present opportunities. Complex problems and phenomena might even turn out to be interesting and worthy of being taken seriously.

Otherwise, allow me to apologize for wasting your time, gentle reader. Everyone is different, after all. I do not apologize, however, for being myself and wanting my own way. Nor should anyone else. And that will be the entire point: What strategic exploration in the pursuit of happiness, can ever be possible barring Axiology and philosophical abstraction on the one hand or practical implementation on the other hand? Therefore let us remain cautious of short attention and simple answers to complex problems, so often blithely accepted without question. I am informed that readers browsing this page may be confused or even averse, actually taking issue because of the present philosophical approach, whatever exactly is meant by any of that, to the sociological and psychological solution finding and implementation as to any practical endeavor at hand. Although I well know how so many actually reject all consideration of practical implementation. And thank you, gentle reader. Because, in the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” And to quote Karan Gaur: “Effort is the best indicator of interest.”

As my own boss, I have fired myself for utter failure and incompetence in the sore travail of life! Observing how my own bored and lonely isolation and frustration remains so prevalent among my fellow human beings, and how the most exploitative bullying and cronyism remain pervasive and pandemic in social life, I have reached the conclusion that much as conventional paths in life remain so often arduous and demeaning. Moreover the sore travail of struggle for popularity and social success, actually remains futile, counterproductive and user hostile, no matter what one does.

And so, why should the present long winded mass of verbiage from an unemployable maladroit nebbish with a cable modem the likes of yours truly, ever be of any interest to anyone? Well may you ask, gentle reader! Answer: Because, at least at first, in careful correct language, important new ideas actually tend to be somewhat wordy. Hence aversion and incapacity dense writing becomes a serious intellectual impediment. Moreover, notwithstanding my own ill fortune and manifest ineptitude as a serial failure, nevertheless I may have something to contribute for anyone actually interested. Not only are most people so unhappy, but to make matters worse, we've had the wool pulled over our eyes, ever striving to follow the simplest worst universally unquestioned very bad social advice.

To begin with, if as we are told, indeed keeping things light is indeed so crucial to popularity and social success, then popularity and social success must come at the lonely, cagy and isolated sacrifice of all individual personal integrity and happiness. Because, as shall be seen, popularity, heteronymous sycophantic social skills and social success on the one hand, and friendship on the other, remain starkly antithetical. This is because friendship is genuine, substantive and intimate in psychological visibility, while popularity or social success depend upon boring facile superficiality and ever maintaining lonely distance. Therefore the inherent contradiction remains insurmountable, irresolvable in very principle, and nothing but a setup for frustration, futility, failure and craven exhortation to lowered expectations and making do. Can we do any better? Yes, there is even one key feature of any social environment, that is easiest to modify and upgrade at will, by any two or more people such as I and thou: Dialectic in order to already begin feeling more hopeful and fully engaged: Change the conversation, reset the agenda, and change the world! Because trustworthy happy people talk more seriously. But for that, will be required anyone else likewise suitably open to talk with. Alas, to quote Mark R. J. Lavoie: “Life dies inside a person when there are no others willing to befriend him.”

For the unaccustomed, at least at first, effort may be required in order even to talk more seriously. Is effort in and of itself, painful, or indeed can intellectual effort actually ever become worthwhile and gratifying? Or is it only conceited even to imagine? Gentle reader, kindly ponder these very questions for yourself, before in any further meaningful depth into these densely written and difficult hypertexts. This is no idle banter, but an attempt at serious conversation as indeed discovered to be so characteristic of trustworthy happier more effective people whom we might all do so well together to emulate. Any of the proposed endeavors will likely entail matters far more abstruse. In all likelihood, it must be reasonably expected that all endeavor will only grind to a halt if participants are so frustratingly prone to just flaking out at the first trace of anything difficult or unfamiliar.

Gentle reader: Are you so desperately unhappy that you will only continue struggling to meet the expectations of others, or are you desperately unhappy enough even to consider anything new?

I do understand what I would so much rather be doing: making a fresh start beginning from scratch, skeptical towards the futility all prevailing common sense and heteronymously sycophantic social skills. Alas, the cost of fitting in, even if practical and feasible, is often simply just too conditional and toxic. There is no unilateral solution to social needs. Rather, its a matter of better interaction. But what does that consist of? Perhaps, conversation. But what kind of conversation, and upon what topic? What conversational mode and agenda for conversation are together both most fulfilling in their own right, and most conducive to desirable outcomes of relationship and activity over time? Considering the prevalence of unhappiness, perhaps the blithely accepted answers to these questions require reevaluation. And perhaps many people simply balk at better answers, deliberation whereupon remaining taboo even simply because effort may be required in grappling anything unfamiliar. As Eve Tushnet expounds in Eros and Education, Eros, so enticing and so threatening, is nothing more or less than deep reciprocal engagement traversing into alien difference. Gentle reader, please consider yourself warned!
But why must the present hypertext remain so densely written? (And what is so wrong with densely written prose, only well phrased composed?) Perhaps because the present work remains substantive in grappling with complicated reality. And to quote William Deresiewicz: “It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise” And hypertext facilitates detailed presentation that creative web of association upon whatever topic at hand. For to quote Henry Louis Mencken “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.” -Oversimplification, not merely erroneous and incorrect, flat out wrong, but all too often even fractally wrong: Manifestly Absurd, dead wrong as revealed in focus, examination and scrutiny at every possible scale of resolution or Point of View, from macro to nano and everywhere in between! And so, perhaps dense writing sincerely ensues entirely pursuant towards value maximization for the intended reader, much as the present proposal being agenda at hand, strives towards Eudemonia and intrinsic value maximization. Indeed, some rare serious and fully engaged site visitors, motivated by their own interests in grappling with whatever their own tribulations, have even been known to appreciate the densely substantive and richly informative nature of these hypertexts in research pertinent to whatever their own most urgent concerns, even finding the writing style poignantly evocative and relatable to their own emotion and experience. --all. indeed most gratifying for the the author, yet remaining somewhat frustrating of the more specific intent and objectives of the present outreach even to begin strategizing together in earnest. Alas, the reader who merely seeks a brief short attention distraction will become angry because treatment of complex probortunity at hand remains so involved.

And so, to reiterate, why should anything the likes of the present long winded mass of verbiage from an unemployable maladroit nebbish with a cable modem the likes of yours truly, ever be of any interest to anyone? Well may you ask, gentle reader! Answer: Because, at least at first, in careful correct language, important new ideas actually tend to be somewhat wordy. Hence aversion and incapacity dense writing becomes a serious intellectual impediment. It may be surmised, correctly or incorrectly, that confusion and antipathy may even inevitably ensue from some seemingly anti-intellectual abhorrence of analytic discourse such as upon abstract principle. But can the latter truly be so objectionable? It is Orwellian how everything has been dumbed down for the masses until that becomes a norm, an expectation unquestioned. Then again, perhaps abstraction on my part is merely generality from my own lack of interdisciplinary specifics beyond the full understanding of any one solitary layperson. Indeed, that is precisely the reason for the present outreach for discussion and eventually planning and team formation. Moreover, the abstract bears concrete practical importance, and concrete practicality indispensably informs even the most abstract. Just for example, practical policy in combating pandemic, must be informed by scientific abstraction, just as science must be informed Empirically by practical reality. Neither ivory tower political ideology (especially not such lunacy as of corruption blinded by greed -not to digress), nor practically minded ignorance (as in those anti-intellectual cretin clinicians who wants concrete treatment results whilst spurning abstract pure science for understanding their own findings), will ever save us. Clearly, concrete practically without guiding principle (moral and otherwise), and lunatic abstraction with no connection to objective reality, much less concrete practicality (such as, for example, Mystically antirational doctrines the likes of Pro-Life, so-called) are both alike futile, even dangerous. To quote Aristotle: “All things in life are philosophical.” For as Socrates so famously declares: "The unexamined life is not worth the living for a human being." Hence the rejection of Philosophy is in and of itself, an untenable philosophical position, stinking thinking and way of life. Philosophy then, may be viewed as crucial, a fundamental capability to be regained.

Alas that in such reciprocal contempt, thinking and doing remain all too often segregated, unimaginatively compartmentalized in prevailing and so often arbitrary and controlling institutional mentality. For such remains an oppressively conservative meme of heteronomy. And the tragic result is a great deal of thought gone to no practical avail, and a great deal of ill considered action so blithely undertaken. Alternatively, in the wise words of Henri-Louis Bergson: “Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” Bridging the abstract and the concrete, .FoolQuest.com pursues a relevant agenda of innovative collaboration among equals, toward authentic wellbeing in fulfillment of literally the most important intrinsic human needs and stimulus appetites according to the greatest sages of antiquity rediscovered by the cutting edge of modern science. What then could possibly more interesting and important? And yet, no author posses any means to compel or persuade the reader beyond whatever personal comfort zone, who simply does not find themselves persuaded or intrigued at all, or simply fails to relate or identify. And yet, it remains that you, gentle reader, retain the power and opportunity to respond and engage with the agenda at hand. For the first follower shall be the true leader, showing others how to relate, blazing the trail! So: Let's talk! What would it hurt? What can there be so to fear save but Philosophy and the cultivation of habits of clear thought? And what else can there be to fear but concrete and specific planning together ever to take action? And what is there so to fear in the necessity of bridging the gap and the inevitable complexity of relating multiple different concepts? Accept no substitutes! Alas that all of the preceding may ever remain so very hard to sell to the short attention span masses ever demeaning simple solutions to complex problems. Fortunately, not everyone buys into prevailing anti-intellectual propaganda or else academic pedantry and helplessness.
Therefore, indeed of necessity bridging the abstract and the concrete, FoolQuest.com pursues a relevant agenda of innovative collaboration among equals, toward authentic wellbeing in fulfillment of literally the most important intrinsic unmet human needs and stimulus appetites according to the greatest sages of antiquity rediscovered by the cutting edge of modern science, indispensably bridging that abtract and the concrete, the general and the specific, and the conceptual and the practical. For clearly such is the nature of the probortunity at hand.

Perhaps any part in hopes of more substantial food for thought, engagement, discourse and endeavor, many people reach out to find or to become mentors. Mentorship is a relationship in which the mentor, a more experienced or more knowledgeable person in some or other specific area of expertise, helps to guide the mentee, a less experienced and knowledgeable person often younger but not always. Indeed, for example, a younger mentor may actually be recommended for the most current expertise especially in the latest trends. But not to digress. Questions: Must mentorship necessarily remain only one to one, or can there conceivably be more people together involved in any way at the same time? And is mentorship necessarily unidirectional, or can mentorship conceivably ever be reciprocal? Moreover, by comparison, would the growth experience be in any way diminished in value, by collaboration among equals, or indeed vastly enhanced in authentic wellbeing?

I myself have much to learn, and yet perhaps at all anything to contribute. The very term 'probortunity,' of course, has been coined as a portmanteau of the two words: 'problem' and 'opportunity,' in order to press home the point that problems present opportunities. And to the probortunity at hand, of meeting such underserved need: Business planning towards entrepreneurial new venture creation is of necessity interdisciplinary, as reflected also in successful management team formation covering diverse knowledge and capability. This even applies for the bonding exercise, as proposed, of collaborative fiction writing. For as the saying goes: write what you know (var.: or just like). And different people possess different perspective or POV, knowledge and capability in order to pool together creatively. Indeed, a notable key observation of TRIZ, the much renowned Russian theory of invention, is how aside from entirely new scientific discoveries, the rarest most important and powerful innovations arise in the transfer and reapplication of knowledge and methods across disciplines, breaking isolation. And so, perhaps the most intensive and beneficial reciprocal mentorship experience and more, may instead accrue via experience of collaboration among equals.
Showcased here on FoolQuest.com are a range of various first concepts for new venture creation, that as of yet have gained no traction. Perhaps this is because these strange ideas are clearly without merit, mad and foolish or even evil somehow, taboo, subversive and dangerous even in very thought! This must remain a matter for individual assessment. What may be said, after soundly rejecting and condemning all conventionality as insufferable, is that nevertheless, these subversive proposals are beyond the scope of any individual acting alone, or for obedient followers of any know-it-all fearless leader. But then, such remains generally the case. Lonely DIY self-help is futile, and so is whatever heteronomy to promises of collective certainty or infallible leadership. Before you gentle reader, is nothing less than a challenge to collaboration among equals.

Creativity Should be Social:A proposal in pursuit of fulfillment via intentional creative culture focused upon planned endeavor consisting of a protocol towards the practice of critical thinking in the practice of Dialectic controversy and collaboration in brainstorming, Science Fiction original and high quality fiction writing and also new venture creation, from most embryonic first concept through business planning, research, feasibility study, management team formation, capitalization and finally, most difficult and chancy of all, implementation of any and all such as the following among innovative proposals showcased here on FoolQuest.com, towards the dream of entrepreneurship and success together. What follows is an outreach for value maximization of such endeavor together. But why the above specific types of collaborative endeavors, fiction writing and new venture creation? Why undertake these two types of projects in particular? Answer: For the sake of greatest synergy and fulfillment. Ancillary proposals showcased here on FoolQuest.com all share that singular ambition. Let us then collaborate and innovate, in a new and different way, to to write fiction and to create new business ventures. Know more...

Bring you own ideas! Although new concepts even from scratch are encouraged, Creativity Should be Social includes not only a selection of unfinished fiction for creative collaboration, but also the following selection of innovative embryonic first concept proposals for new venture creation.

Warning: Perhaps the directly following listing of embryonic first concepts for new venture creation will rapidly become just too terribly serious, indeed as shall presently be seen, even somewhat morbid and difficult. But honestly, must it ever be so? Perhaps, after all, there truly can be anything better in just lightening up than ubiquitous stifling interminable small talk and stubborn blatant denial. Perhaps, after all, stimulus struggle is best optimized, fun to be had and true happiness discovered, all more playfully, indeed as might be facilitated via the innovative social engineering design of a subversively proposed stimulus rich play environment for all ages to be named: Planet Frolic TM Curious? Know more...

Project Kriosgrad: Indeed actually at the risk of indeed becoming ever so morbid, does even the most exalted and rapturously fun play remain in the final analysis, utterly futile, no more than a life's shabby subterfuge, nothing merely than ever more desperate distraction from crushing angst in Existential Absurdity and utter futility in the face of ever pending mortality? Terror Management Theory posits that the deepest unconscious human individual and cultural motivation is actually nothing other than sheer mortal terror from innate survival drives ultimately thwarted, time-bound consciousness, crushing despair and looming dread of ever impending and inevitable death. And the most obvious reason for mortal terror, which brings out both the worst and the best in humanity, is nothing more or less than mortality and death in the first place. Can there be any less ambivalent and inner conflicted more relevant and productive terror management strategy than crazed reciprocally threatened hostility expressed in bigoted ideology, ubiquitously prevailing granfalloon collective membership and identity, delusional religion, Mystical rationalizations and trenchant denial, one way or another lying to oneself?

In the alternative, realistically, can death ever be cheated? Can anything be done beyond merely somehow tolerating the intolerably inevitable? Actually, just perhaps, technologically, medically, the answer is: yes. The desired outcome of Cryonics remains subversively tantalizing engineering feasibility, because while death is not yet reversible, in the meantime it may already be practical and practicable to stabilize the condition pending medical and technological progress until delayed resuscitation out from Cryonic Suspension becomes feasible, along with cures for whatever killed the patient to begin with, including simply old age. For such is the great hoped for outcome of Cryonics. Alas however, the social reality is less encouraging. In actual practice, Cryonics, the most alien of alternative terror management strategies. remains taboo and often beset by nightmare logistics of obstruction, passive aggression and non cooperation. And under such deplorable conditions, what can go wrong, logistically, all too likely will.

Who wants to live forever? What, don't we all? If we can yearn for clean conscience and delicious meat without animal slaughter, then why not also be kinder to ourselves and our fellow human beings? Aren't we also made of meat? Alas that prevailing and ubiquitous terror management strategies commonly deploy a certain propaganda subtext and Behavior Modification, brainwash of shame and guilt in order to oppress and repress the suffering that is mortal terror, but at the dire cost of thereby undermining fundamental operant rationality, self-preservation and compassion. Worse, membership in any one terror management strategy, is threatened by the very existence of members in any other competing terror management memplex. And Emortalism, particularly as enacted via scientific rationalist materialistic Cryonics, is the most subversive, alien and threatening and therefore persecuted of all thanatological nonconformism.

But as in accordance with Terror Management Theory, terror management as elicited by conscious or subliminal reminders of mortality, is known ever to manifest also a bright side of compassion and outreach, and not just insular group identity and judgmental bigotry. And remarkably in accordance with Terror Management Theory, in repeatable Empirical observation, squeamish taboo entirely transforms instantly into enthusiastic approval and empathetic compassion, at the innovative prospect of cryonic neuropreservation as a well deserved incentive for organ donation. People actually respond well and feel good about that idea, and indeed just perhaps even deserving after all of indefinite survival, because organ donation is altruistic and highly regarded and therefore indeed well deserving. But can so bold an embryonic first concept named: Integrated Recovery under mitzvah squared, actually ever be brought to implementation?

Project Kriosgrad is a synergistic and comprehensive proposal of subversive veritable terror management judo, instantly flipping the switch from unifying terror management consisting of insular collective hostility and suspicion, into unifying terror management consisting of outgoing compassion and cooperation, and in favor of Integrated Recovery under Mitzvah Squared, the rehabilitation thereby of Cryonics into the mainstream of medicine, with cryonic neuropreservation coverage well accessible and assured to all, simply by signing up as donors, thereby helping combat horrific global organ pillage! Know more...

Advanced automated link working network Sociometry: Even remaining so dull and deaf to the clarion call of Emortalism, there remains the opposing Axiological priority and contention that quality of life, productivity and fulfillment, all remain not only the higher and greater priority, but all things considered, after all actually more realistic and practical. Indeed, Deathist sour grapes of terror management notwithstanding, so long as we shall live, to increase our odds of success, longer survival and to improve meaning and quality of life, the technology to address loneliness and boredom remains communications technology of one kind or another. And perhaps most promising possibility on the frontiers of social technology remains advanced automated link working network Sociometry: Artificially Intelligent sophisticated compatibility profiling for all manner of recommendations, secure and private, constantly gathering and analyzing new information from end user activity and interaction online and at home, ever asking more and different questions, all for purposes of matching of individuals to others individuals and to groups or social circles, fostering improved social embedment, as well as offering all manner of other precision accurate recommendations of activities, purchases and more, a universal information filter ever learning and tailoring itself to individual needs, for every conceivable purpose, personal or professional, forging connection in order to foster improved social embedment, and optimally compatible friendship towards human flourishing and authentic wellbeing. In the future, everyone will be influential! Know more...

CliqueBusters TM: Until the advent of advanced automated link working network Sociometry into widest availability as the universally preferred mode and conduit of social life, what can remain feasible in the here and now CliqueBusters TM remains the most radical and subversive known proposal of low guile in combating threatening dangerous pandemic serial bullying and cronyism that so dangerously undermines social connection in our times. The appalling destructiveness of serial bullying always arises eventually to thwart every conceivable constructive endeavor, and urgently must be addressed. Know more ...

The Green Pro-Space Agenda: Asteroids: Menace from above or tantalizing recourse? What is Astro-Environmentalist Activism? Know more...
Also: solar hydrogen power from outer space and even the most cursory feasibility study of the prospect of retrograde time travel...

Zinc Alpha 2 Glycoprotein: Not a hoax, not a dream, not an imaginary story! Pandemic obesity and complications is needless, and can be eradicated now! The thin pill has been discovered, completely effective and safer than diet and exercise, indeed actually a potentially life saving breakthrough in medical safety, and yet for fifty years or so languishing in obscurity, is still withheld from the public by the clearly indispensable yet ever dysfunctional Food and Drug Administration, with no human trials in sight. Know more...

Creativity Should be Social: To reiterate, a subversive proposal in pursuit of fulfillment via intentional creative culture focused upon planned endeavor consisting of collaboration in brainstorming, Science Fiction writing and new venture creation of such as the above among innovative proposals showcased here on FoolQuest.com, towards the dream of entrepreneurship, and success together. And what follows is an outreach for value maximization of such endeavor together.

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To address such vastly underserved human social needs, is proposed a subversive two pronged regimen of engagement and experience consisting firstly of an ongoing bonding exercise of art for art's sake in the pure creativity of collaborative fiction writing, and secondly of applied creativity, creative solution finding, in the innovation of new venture creation together, that can include not only productive profit seeking, but Activism and Social Entrepreneurship. Business planning after all, is but another mode of narrative, another kind of story telling, a method beyond mere plausibility as in fiction, of realistic feasibility study towards implementation. FoolQuest.com promotes a vision of heady synergy between the above two different yet related applications of the uplifting power of narrative creativity. And both collaborative endeavors remaining ever predicated upon the practice of controversy which is the the ever welcome, invited and valued exchange of criticism. Relationship, as it turns out, remains hard work so taboo from those dreary prevailing norms of heteronomy and interminably keeping it light in order to become accepted and popular.

It might often appear that only some special people ever seem to thrive and achieve innovation, success and fulfillment. But what would make such rare individuals so very different? Indeed, are any of us truly all so different from one another after all? One possible account for outstanding success, remains simply luck and opportunity, and then of course just not to just fuck it all up! Another obvious answer is whatever rare and unusual great talent and capability. Indeed, to quote Eudora Welty: “If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?” And then there remains the most cynical answer quite simply amounting to ubiquitous cronyism: whatever indispensable subordinate toadying sycophantic exclusive social climbing until at last connection to the money and privilege of our betters, the great and the good, elite domineering bullies exploiting the rest of us with such utter impunity. In short, that our rightful happiness is perfidiously stolen! Be all the above as it may, one consistent Empirical observation endures, to wit, of how social support remains a significant predicator of success. For to quote John Donne, “no man is an island,” and the truly self made success, in the biting witticism of William Allen Butler, self-trained, self-willed, self-satisfied, all thereby so devoutly worshiping their Creator, may well be exactly as might seem, indeed the most exceptional of all. One way or another, the masses will ever covet any whatever secret knowledge and key to life. Therefore the yearning for all trappings of success is routinely exploited in standard marketing practices traditionally entailing often fraudulent claims of foolproof infallible expertise, certainty and the authoritative glowing success of lifestyle gurus. Thus, such conventions of time tested dubious marketing are such old hat, effectively ruling out honest innovation, because risk can never be eliminated, only managed, and the most embryonic first-concept innovations are aspirational new ideas as yet pending implementation. For the risk of innovation is embraced by aspiring entrepreneurs, serial failures persevering in the face of uncertainty in risk taking and trying anything new breaking the rules. Because what is never so, may require what is never done. In the interim, the glowing success case to come in some hoped for outcome as yet unrealized.

And as yet existing only in optimistic futuring scenario planning and wishful imagination, a fictional pitchman might proclaim: "I used to be just another lonely nebbish and failure until I discovered and experienced the powerful opportunity that I will share with you! Because now we are together fulfilled in a unique and gratifying regimen of collaboration in creative interdisciplinary solution finding. For we are a visionary core group welcoming you to join right in. And in due course ongoing experience of fulfillment comes to fruition in success. But even before achieving success, all of the fame and publicity from all the productive fun that we were having began attracting an expandingly vast range of different skill sets and resources, all manner of talented, capable and imaginative new people to participate, new friends, networking and influence, effortlessly and on our own terms.

“All the lonely people, where do they all belong?” — John from Liverpool

The colossally Absurd Existential bait-and-switch sometimes referred to as: Totalitarian Interactivity consists of any manipulative situation of irrelevance obfuscated under an illusion of choice, in a reality of control and constraint, for an audience sucked in and lead about by the nose! For quintessential example par exultance, isolating and deceptive webforms, short and simple or long and complicated, are all too often designed to elicit any hope that any detail of free association permitted and invited via individual response, thereby by implication expresses any promise of flexibility in tailored response and thereby actually makes any difference. But in truth, the bureaucratic or automated response scarcely varies and after all the wind up, one size fits all. In essence, the mark has been conned into pouring their heart out to a bot!

Gentle reader, can you relate? Do you weary of forever striving and waiting as the grueling frustration, agitation, insecurity and dystress only mounts inside? Of continually reaching out to unresponsive and noncommittal others? Of yet again finding yourself the only one that even much gives a damn? Not only the most flagrantly messed up, but just the most ordinary people and even our best and brightest easily find ourselves disaffected with society, marginalized and friendless. People do so love to rebel against any norm, at least superficially. For no one is alone in being lonely, invalidated and misunderstood. Legions of the unloved and forgotten, ever strive to meet the ever more daunting challenges of social life in order at long last to break isolation and find one anther.

According to 'Social Failures and Social Solutions: Evidence from OkCupid' "Social failures involve social interactions, such as affect, social support and advice giving; [...] Social failures are social interactions that do not occur, but would make two or more people better off if they did. [...] Social failures capture the difference between interactions that do happen and those that should happen." Information access and management is also a crucial factor, because inaccessibility of information is also a kind of social failure. Some instances of social failure are more important than others, depending upon what might be at stake in making connections and forging relationships. And there remain many possible causes and factors in social failure, even short of pandemic serial bullying outright, including all manner of obstacles and social restrictions on interaction and relationship.

In particular, going out alone entails a great deal of awkward killing time, only magnifying the futility of that which called: recreation, meaning recovery on one's own time and expense, in every sore travail of employment and formal education. Major obstacles and stumbling block needing to be addressed by whatever means, include prudery, sexism, and prevailing intimidation and resultant inhibition and reticence to break the ice and make first contact, especially on the part of women towards men. All in all, social life seems less of a conduit than a filter to be navigated or or barrier to be overcome in order to avoid being winnowed out, excluded and rejected. One might simply wish for anything more engaging between strangers, to make outreach to one another more fun instead of such a discouraging ordeal of distance, inhibition and suspicion.

What is loneliness? Why can the wrong people leave one feeling only even all the more lonely than solitude, even amid the bustling crowds? (Remember those?) Indeed, to quote Gian Vincenzo Gravina: "A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company." Gentle reader, outpourings of angst and sympathy online notwithstanding, do these questions truly interest and concern anyone? On an online forum for lonely people, with no trace of irony I discovered a blithe consensus upon two salient points: 1) Loneliness is the most awful no good bad thing! 2) In order to fit in, ya gotta keep it light! Such is anti-intellectualism. And thus do people keep secret their inner selves, starving for authentic psychological visibility. Can pandemic loneliness then ever accrue as any great surprise? People often put in such tremendous time, effort and concentration into such sore travail as formal education, employment and career building, yet remaining so cavalier and haphazard about finding any joy in personal social life in which, truth to tell, most of us have only been set up for failure. No wonder lonely misery has always been so devastatingly pandemic! This innovative website, FoolQuest.com, represents the sum of my own research and imagination as to we might together interact in order to become better fulfilled and no longer so miserable and lonely, by subversively partaking in the shared creativity of collaborative solution finding. For such, as shall be seen, is the key to life. And what is there more important?

“If I continually get a door wrong, is it my fault? No. In fact, if you continually get it wrong or if other people continually get it wrong, it’s a good sign that it’s a really bad door.”

— Don Norman as cited in: Frustration is a design opportunity

And yet, optimism ever rises anew, even in the face of mockery and derision at large, for all of the same folly. But futility of unflaggingly misguided optimism metaphorically barking up that proverbial wrong tree, may even be deemed malignant, in all manner of bad relationships not only with other individuals, but also that enigma of collective membership which is the relationship of the individual to society. Many therefore despair, retreat and embrace Nihilism. For as in the famous words of Henry David Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” But when the going gets tough, nerds analyze the problem! When conventional wisdom fails, It may come time to metaphorically color outside the proverbial lines, in condemnation even of the most well meaning of prevailing inoperant snake-oil and the entire panic stricken and irrelevant cult of socialization.

Popularity or social success on the one hand, and friendship on the other, remain ever starkly antithetical. This is because friendship is genuine, substantive and intimate, while popularity or social success depend upon facile superficiality and keeping distance. Therefore the inherent contradiction remains insurmountable, irresolvable in very principle, and nothing but a setup for frustration, failure and craven exhortation to lowered expectations and making do. Social success and social frustration only isolate the individual in different ways. This may be why finding connection can be such an uncertain rat race, unreliable and requires such open ended investment of time, effort, amoral unprotesting perceptive subtlety and dedication, with iron will, persistence and discipline all glossed over in prevailing simplistic discourse and blithe optimism. Endurance of precisely such monotony and dystress serves to weed out boredom prone unconventional creative thinkers in order to preserve status quo. Hence the need of fundamentally subversive innovation in the reinvention of social life, a subversive fresh perspective entirely redefining the problem of socialization towards more innovative solution finding. A bold social engineering design challenge will then inform an innovative design exercise open to all. And I look forward to new solutions from interested site visitors. Creative people need a "tribe," because people and society perversely tend to discourage creativity, fostering heteronomy to conformism and undermining autonomy at every turn. And groups for particular creative fields, might not suffice, because optimum creativity, networking and social support are all interdisciplinary. Already, one possible solution meeting the parameters of said design exercise, is a proposal named: Creativity Should be Social then presented together with explanation of precisely how said proposal meets with the requirements of the aforementioned social engineering design exercise, all towards novel and innovative modus vivendi and more congenial individual situation than we have known.

We are all such proverbial square pegs: The customer is always wrong! The program never fails, you fail the program. In the immortal words of George Carlin: "Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.” Carlin thus describes a condition of mass oppression and pandemic listless passive aggression, by no means limited to employment and formal education. Little wonder then that the unfulfilled typically find such little heart to apply themselves in unflagging dedication and diligence, no matter extrinsic rewards. Can there be any better way?

What demarcates opportunity from wishful thinking? Indeed, is this very text just another scam? Well may we ask: Am I being taken in yet again? Dare I ever trust? -you may well wonder and dread... Betrayal is toxic and devastating. We may all become naturally wary and suspicious, and alas with good reason. But there is still truth to be had in the greatest mendacity: The study of marketing scams and con artistry reveals human nature and yearnings. The experience of being taken in by any scam elicits anger and shame. But that's another con all in its own right. Let's never be ashamed of ordinary human needs or appetites for joy. But let's also be honest with ourselves: Marketing scams often begin by selling whatever feeling or mystique. That is the hook or grabber of their story. And only then, riding upon that desire, elation and wishful thinking, comes whatever promise or guarantee of whatever tangible results and success. Often such mendacity, fraud and manipulation may be characterized by hand waving and pipedreaming. In the alternative, trustworthy happy people talk more seriously and with lees small talk, realistically and in detail, even when no less ambitiously. Moreover, in order effectively to compete with every ubiquitous sweet lie of heteronomy, and honestly assuage Existential despair in the Absurdity of the human condition, any serious undertaking that even might conceivably succeed, must in the interim sustain ongoing interaction promoting some or other yearned for emotional response and attachments.

To wit: Ongoing pleasure + engagement + meaning = ever self renewing fulfillment. And all of this must be accomplished without utterly compromising objectivity, thereby going beyond mere glittering generalities, and thus just perhaps in any viable strategy for success and desired results. And such is the strategic agenda of FoolQuest.com, remaining ever hard nosed and skeptical even amid the most vigorous evaluation, feasibility study and strategy in pursuit of the most utterly fantastical ambitions. Hence, what manner of empowering close social interaction or relationship involves investment of tangible reciprocal support in high activity such as pleasurably engages novel excitement, meaningfully? For such remains an agenda question and theme of deliberation for conversation even at all in and of itself uplifting and engaging, and even just perhaps ultimately fulfilling and productive, all about the experience of healthy relationships that thrive, succeed and prosper. Trustworthy happy people talk more seriously.

“You’re frustrated because you keep waiting for the blooming of flowers of which you have yet to sow the seeds.”

― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

Modus vivendi exceeds mere superficial individual material and financial lifestyle. Modus vivendi brings individual principle into action, because Modus vivendi denotes method or manner of living that reflects individual values and according to personal talents. And modus vivendi is attained in solution finding by any feasible interim working arrangement or practical compromise bypassing whatever difficulties, inclusively allowing different people, individually and collectively, even who disagree, freely to abide and interact productively. Is the modus vivendi you ordered, currently out of stock, try as you may, searching high and low, but all to no avail? Perhaps your desired modus vivendi simply does not come off the rack, like, oh I don't know, some pretensions brand name of ridiculous high end underpants for muscle men. Yes, if you are reading this, it may be that the modus vivendi you seek must be such as that of an individual life tailor made. Am I feeling your pain yet? Modus vivendi is social and situational. Thus there can be no solitary lonely DIY self-help or self-improvement with any power of implementation to bring individually tolerable modus vivendi into effect, fostering deep, meaningful engagement. No matter how collectively unhappy, the social environment continues to imposes it's own order, forever frustrating to any desire for life on one's own terms. For such is prevailing heteronomy that inspires such inarticulate and therefore unaccountable contempt and derision for new ideas and truth to power .

"General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions," says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles."

― Intelligent people have 'unnatural' preferences and values that are novel in human evolution

Executive summary

The FoolQuest.com agenda towards beneficial modus vivendi of lifestyle entrepreneurship:

Creativity Should be Social and Creativity can be Popular


How to start a movement:

The first follower shall be the true leader

among co-founders teaching by example, showing others how to follow, demonstrating how to relate

Does your ambition and creativity ever make you lonely? Does oppressively banal small talk often exasperate and bore you? Instead, do you enjoy brainstorming creative writing, drama and Science Fiction? Do you dream of brainstorming innovative new venture creation? Trustworthy happy people talk more seriously: Are you serious and persistent about feasibility study and solution finding? Can you be a trustworthy collaboration partner?

Do you ever find yourself frustrated, stymied, blocked, in a rut? FooolQuest.com just might have your answer!

Popularity and Social success ever remain antithetical to actual friendship. This is because friendship is genuine, substantive and intimate, being predicated upon unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility, while popularity and social success depend upon purpose defeatingly facile superficiality and ever keeping distance. Therefore the inherent contradiction remains irresolvable in very principle, and nothing but a setup for frustration, failure and craven exhortation to lowered expectations and making do. Social success and social frustration a failure only isolate the individual in different ways. This may be why finding connection is so uncertain, unreliable and requires such open ended investment of time, patient effort and dedication, with iron will, persistence and discipline all glossed over in prevailing simplistic discourse and blithe optimism. Endurance of precisely such monotony and dystress serves to weed out boredom prone unconventional creative thinkers in order to preserve status quo. Hence the need of fundamentally subversive innovation in the reinvention of social life. Because happy people talk more seriously with less small talk, and we might all do well to follow their example.

By very premise, Cultural Anthropology studies human relationships consistent with rôles of relative social standing, degrees of kinship and rank. all predicated upon competencies and aptitudes of hierarchically predictive Social Cognition by which to anticipate the responses of others, merely via the recognition of members of one's own social group in order to form direct relationships consistent with rôles of relative social standing, degrees of kinship and rank, recognition of third-party social relationships and prediction of future behavior and in order to know what one is expected to do and how to behave. By default, social order tends toward hierarchy which to be Existentially honest, consistently engenders heteronomy, the very opposite of autonomy, friendship, freedom and capability so crucial to authentic wellbeing. The emotional distance and objectification situationally inherent in compulsive heteronomy to hierarchy are antithetical to any sympathetic glimpse into one another's inner life that is called: psychological visibility. Therefore dystressful Existentially Absurd alienation, futility and lonely boredom consistently ensue. But a promising remedy may be found in the great afterthought of Cultural Anthropology, even notwithstanding the paradigmatic study of heteronomy to hierarchical kinship and rank so fundamental to Cultural Anthropology, in consistent Empirical observation that there are also those rare, exceptional and special moments of collaboration in creative solution finding which is characteristically egalitarian in nature as well as uplifting in freedom, progress and elation.

Ongoing pleasure + engagement + meaning = ever self renewing fulfillment. In those most famous words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “What is happiness? The feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.” Consider then how much happier we all could be if only rather than living under the monotony and oppression of hierarchical dominance, with only such very occasional and even once in a lifetime respite, instead creative solution finding in collaboration among equals became the default experience, with recourse to authority of whatever kind remaining strictly as a contingency in recourse only when actually ever needed for whatever reason! Alas, radical transformation of society at large remains impractical in any short term or medium range of time and besides, impossible for any lone individual. That leaves the possibility of smaller group formation as an at all viable strategy towards implementation od any intentional social environment better conducive to the pursuit of happiness and success. And for optimal reciprocal engagement in collaboration among equals, in collaborative solution finding together, the following regimen is proposed: A synergy of two different powerful applications of narrative, 1) on the one hand, pure creativity for its own joy, in the form of collaboration in creative fiction writing and brainstorming of interesting and original high quality drama and Science Fiction speculation, 2) and on the other hand, of applied creativity, of innovative entrepreneurial new venture creation, from management team formation, business planning, feasibility study, all the way through to capitalization and implementation, all as proposed herein as the strategic agenda of FoolQuest.com, implementation whereof being the first challenge to collaborative solution finding. Creative and informative resources, tools and guides on FoolQuest.com therefore include a selection of unfinished stories to modify, improve and complete together and innovative proposal for collaboration in new venture creation.

It has been opined that so called online community as of message posting boards, is no community, but more analogous to strangers in a bar. In the past, un groups have achieved noted value is sharing information and consultation, within those bounds. One way or another, online communication even on UseNet has even at its most substantive, lacked depth and scope no less than casual communication and interaction IRL. But social media by design has eviscerated communication and interaction, while opening the floodgates upon an annoying deluge of endless empty gossip. Gleaning desired information is frustrating. A coherent discussion thread is impossible! Even establishing contact is challenging. Social media participation is pointless, silly, arduous and self-contained. How is any of this so seductive and addictive? It's repugnant! Every time I land on Facebook, I throw up my hands in consternation! As Sam Vaknim points out, social media is typically configured to be competitive and zero sum, an endless jockeying of short attention span distracted, shifted and wrested away from all others But it's still not the technology. Gentle reader, we are all routinely called upon to to sacrifice authenticity simply in order to fit it in. For such is conditionality replete with the omnipresent threat of shaming and rejection, nothing new, toxicity long predating the advent of social media. After all, what was the great innovation of Facebook but the IT for the most empty loutish anti-intellectual reaction pandering indoctrination, spectacle and gratuitously narcissistic desperately fixated veniality of one dimensionally vapid collegiate life? At the risk of anthropomorphism, not just social media, but social reality at large to begin with, tends to be so obtuse, paranoid, cagy, reluctant to communicate or interact, unfriendly, often hostile and dangerous, in aggregation, naturally, of all the disoriented, suffering and desperately terrified facile individuals adapted to such a toxic social environment. Devious and debilitating Behavior Modification, brainwash, coercion and manipulative invalidation is everywhere and nothing new. Thus has it ever been.

Indeed, historically things where much worse, and in the most backwards regions even today, yet remain so. For such is the debilitating and blithely fraudulent promise of heteronomy, futile and Existentially Absurd bait-and-switch, a pervasive racket of rejection masquerading as warm acceptance. There is much lip service nowadays to authenticity, egosyntonic individual conduct in harmony with personal values and preferred self-image. Everybody needs acceptance for who they truly are, both from themselves and from others. Indeed, those of us ever intrigued by novel ideas and substantive disclosure may therefore contend with mounting exasperation when confronted by all of the shallow pretense of banal small talk. To quote Carl Jung: “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” In the words of José de San Martin: “You will be what you must be, or else you will be nothing.” Individuals may find themselves less often actually valued intrinsically for ability and the content of character and potential as prospective friends and partners or allies in life, assets in rational self-interest or simply joy to be with, than instead extrinsically valued for popularity, standing and influence ever exploited in perpetual struggle jockeying for approval and dominance. Hence the recommendation to lie and pretend to have friends until one actually has any. In the words of Adlai Ewing Stevenson: “A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.” But with all that remains at stake fitting in, who can ever remain truly safe and secure, much less free and open? Social cognition makes hapless sycophants of us all!

Like unto the ripples from a pebble cast into cast into a pond, social impact is typically greatest where most proximate. In the future of Advanced automated link working network Sociometry , everyone will be influential. But in the meantime, in the here and now, the will to power demands ongoing struggle, beginning with the quest for Eudemonia and optimally positive influence upon one another. Alas, under heteronomy, people generally learn to become so cynical, insecure, inhibited, wary and cagey, most strongly motivated by life long behavioral conditioning to peer pressure and the many ongoing punishment and rewards and Social Cognition of perceived vested interests, relentless struggle ever jockeying in in the advancement and preservation of social position, esteem and standing. That is why kinship and rank are viewed as so central to the human condition in society, by Cultural Anthropology, with the fully engaged open and uplifting egalitarian low hierarchical distance of collaborative solution finding relegated almost to mere afterthought as an exception, a weird and wonderful special case, by whatever individual happenstance, an however infrequent and all to scarce transient positive experience then leaving such a dull and aching void in unrelentingly bored and lonely life the rest of the time. But as shall be seen, conflict between the individual autonomy and pervasive cultural drives of heteronomy is rooted in the evolutionary neurology of social stimulus struggle. Memories of those rare peak experience of such creative interaction as ever arising, are dearly treasured in helplessness to sustain or proactively to duplicate such desirable conditions regularly or systematically and at will.

Creative people may often feel the need of any "tribe" of our own because people and society at large so perversely tend to discourage creativity and subversion, fostering heteronomy to conformism and undermining autonomy at every turn. And to make matters worse, conventional groups for whatever common interests including particular creative fields, do not suffice, because heights of discovery and creativity, not to mention networking and social support, are often one way or another actually interdisciplinary and not segregated by specialty. Indeed, a notable key observation of TRIZ, the much renowned Russian theory of invention, is how aside from entirely new scientific discoveries, the rarest most important and powerful innovations arise in the transfer and reapplication of knowledge and methods across disciplines.
The very premise and agenda of FooolQuest.com is utterly unique, subversive and taboo, though it should be blatantly obvious.

The customer is always wrong! The program never fails, you fail the program! Bah, humbug!

Ever so blithely to list unrealistic expectations among the causes of loneliness, is not unlike declaring, similarly, that unrealistic expectations lead to malnutrition, as if such were merely subjective and therefore entirely arbitrary! While of course practical needs remain ever crucial to physical survival at all, intrinsic needs and values are the very reason to go on living in the first place, and no mere arbitrary chimera or nuance of individual whimsy. Indeed, in the biting prose of Kathleen Norris: "When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told that you should be contented with your lot?" And exactly such foul rhetoric of sly invalidation, is merely another convolution of blaming the end users, each of us abandoned to our own devices, indeed for the promulgation of unrealistic expectation in society, to the effect that the means at the disposal of the individual in society can possibly ever deliver as promised or hoped for, and actually ever meet individual needs and heart felt desires at all adequately. Such blind faith despite all manifest evidence to the contrary! In truth, the proverbial elephant in the room, there remains such a user hostile outcomes gap, meaning: no results no matter one one does. It's a real shit show, and the only game in town! But how to stop playing into that racket? How indeed ever to find, nay to create, the very wherewithal and thrive?

To reiterate, creative people may feel the need of a "tribe" of our own because people and society at large so perversely tend to discourage subversion and creativity, fostering heteronomy to conformism and undermining autonomy at every turn. And to make matters worse, conventional groups for whatever common interests including particular creative fields, do not suffice, because heights of discovery and creativity, not to mention networking and social support, are often one way or another actually interdisciplinary and not segregated by specialty. Indeed, a notable key observation of TRIZ, the much renowned Russian theory of invention, is how aside from entirely new scientific discoveries, the rarest most important and powerful innovations arise in the transfer and reapplication of knowledge and methods across disciplines.
The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective wellbeing, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances or situation, objectively. Happiness comes in Eudemonia, meeting ones needs by the Menschlichkeit of capable interaction with responsible others. So, can these aforesaid criteria possibly ever be satisfied via intentional activity and interaction? And precisely how?

A better way?

Solution finding must begin in responsible needs assessment in comparison with results from situation analysis. And the results are grim: As shall be seen, in every walk of life, conventional society and expected life paths are often extremely counterproductive and actually harmful. Therefore, the path to happiness, the remedy to sore travail of loneliness, boredom and desperate frustration, may consist of exercising reason and then nothing less then as much as possible reducing dependence upon whatever routine inoperant, ineffective or quite simply unfulfilling conventional modes of social life, and finding or creating anything far happier together. Creative solution finding, as shall be seen, an uplifting social interaction of thriving and authentic wellbeing, transcending the inefficiency and frustration of rejecting and domineering destructiveness of conventional social life and hierarchy as defined by Cultural Anthropology. Specifically, the case shall be presented that the key to happiness and escape from the unhappiness of more routine social expectation, with all of its senseless stumbling blocks, pointless conditionality, heartless rejection and stifling emotional distance, may be found in the inherent egalitarianism of creative solution finding and the empowering synergy between two different ongoing modes of intentional activity and interaction, of creative collaboration among equals and free exchange, specifically the pure creativity of collaborative fiction writing and brainstorming, and in the innovative applied creativity of entrepreneurial new venture creation from first concept through to businesnning, feasity studymanagement team formation, capitalization and implementation.

Anyone aspiring and yearning to experience creative fulfillment in entrepreneurial success, , in new venture creation,, has surely become well cognizant of the most embryonic first-concept "Kitchen Table" stage or phase of new venture creation, but there is virtually no community, support for or even literature about it. This may be because there is just no money to be made in catering to the actual needs of those who are not making any money yet. Instead, the market caters to successful entrepreneurs who can pay. Meanwhile, desperate wannabes are scammed with no end of dazzling but dubious offers and opportunities. Not everyone even has the support of the likeminded, even to muddle haphazardly in efforts at new venture creation. Any conceivable better intentional situation must proceed from some more patient longer vision than unscrupulous marketing manipulation for quickly parting suckers from their limited cash. In a nutshell, the vision of Eudemonia presented here on FoolQuest.com is of a sort of deluxe "kitchen table" as it were, open to all free of charge, facilitating "lifestyle entrepreneurship" of subversive value in fulfilling interaction even as to nurture newly dawning friendship and to inspire participant persistence, an ongoing collaborative fiction writing as a bonding and management team building exercise, towards collaborative solution finding in business planning and feasibility study towards innovative new venture creation from first-concept all the way through to capitalization and implementation. That is the agenda of FoolQuest.com, an outreach, with no pressure or promises, to initiate even the most preliminary discussion with anyone at all interested.

• We Can be Heroes: Trustworthy collaboration among equals


Telling stories and working out plans

Both subversive endeavors open for anyone to join in, are related application of different powerful modes of narrative speculation. Collaboration in fiction writing will be wonderful for ever crucial team building of management teams in entrepreneurial new venture creation which begins in the crafting of sound business plans that tell their story, our story together. The difference is that while fiction writing seeks only for merest plausibility in the elicitation of the willing suspension of disbelief, business planning of new venture creation, strives to discover feasibility to the satisfaction of incredulous skepticism. Towards these criteria among others, the practice of controversy, being the invited and valued exchange of criticism, is crucial to both endeavors. Polished quality writing with engaging freshness and originality, is brightened and sharpened by the process of ongoing critique, and solid credible business plans are detailed scenarios subject to rigorous feasibility study consisting of relentless faultfinding, correction and risk management. Due diligence remains ever crucial. Pipedreaming is always a roadblock to success

Disagreement is good

According to the mindset which is heteronomy, disagreement only engenders strife, and therefore all dissidence is something to be overcome, a threat to self esteem that be summarily quashed by any means necessary. But the truth is that people of good will who disagree cooperate productively all the time. Indeed, for prime example, if disagreement where actually so paralytic, science would never advance. So speak your mind, be argumentative! Let's pick apart anything remaining unclear. Enjoy it, fully engage.-As heady as love bombing, but without the cognitive dissonance hangover! “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” - Proverbs 27:17 (KJV) Even though intellectuality and criticality can be so nerdy, socially awkward, taboo and unpopular Plainly, this proposal will not be suitable for anyone lacking the fundamental autonomy in order to question and criticize, to welcome like in kind in return. No flaming! Ideas can be utterly and candidly rejected with no iota of personal rejection, criticism and fully engaged controversy, that out to give no offense because any serious response demonstrates genuine respect. Intellectual criticality and autonomy are free for the having for anyone willing to invest the attention. For in the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Let us begin then, with the generosity to ourselves, of Dialectic focus upon what is important. For in the words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” Nothing can be more truly exclusive than self selection. And that, however paradoxically, is how to become more individual by joining a group:

Ongoing Pleasure + engagement + meaning = ever self renewing fulfillment. That may explain the Empirical observation that Happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk, deliberating Dialectically, bridging the abstract to the practical and concrete, strategically, intentionally, purposefully and substantively, in feasibility study and controversy which is the welcome and valued exchange of criticism, with civility as autonomous equals in optimal reciprocal engagement. People pleasers are useless and slowly debilitating. Criticism is inherently friendly, and that is how it should be perceived experienced among people who care enough to pay attention. Indeed, as the saying goes, no question is too stupid to ask, and no answer too wise to be given. Happy people thrive and are more productive, likely to choose creative activities together. Gentle reader, do we want the same things? And is all of this truly on the level?
• The Top 10 Things People Want In Life But Can’t Seem To Get - - “I can't get no...”

Three essential conundrums of drama remain ever salient in real life:

Who am I, what do I feel? and what do I want?

When all else fails, what has actually been desired all along?

People interact, engage one another, bond, become emotionally attached to one another, even entering into and forging communities, all in order to feel safe and validated. Alas that so many often tend to evaluate safety and validation superficially, erroneously and even destructively, without talking it over and thinking things through, and therefore then often so blithely falling prey to heteronomy, codependency and exploitation. Beware then the chimera of membership and granfaloon! No wonder such dangerous, irrelevant, foolish and malignantly bullying cults and cliques abound, while genuine abiding respect and autonomy support remain exceptional. And there's the rub, the overarching problem in modus vivendi, the meaning of life and experience of fulfillment. And it remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

Unmet friend: Why are you even reading this page? Does it interest you? Might the proposed interactions ever even hope to afford you any joy? Might the proposed interactions even actually promote growth and advancement of any of your own skill sets? Might the proposed interactions ever be a fun way to connect and even bond with others? Might the proposed interaction help advance your own objectives and personal success? Then either we have found one another and I am about to hear from you, or else for some reason, gentle reader, you hesitate even to read, explore and talk it over. Alas all such trepidation and hesitation, gentle, because whatever your misgivings surely must be important enough to discuss in any depth, indeed especially even the most tentative and preliminary feasibility study. Uncertainty should never taboo any subject of conversation. The mere conduct of Dialectic is always feasible! And because without compelling relevant intrinsic motivation, everything is just a chore and a bore! Therefore, if you've got a better offer, then take it.

Here's something new and subversive to brainstorm together that has yet to be tried: It doesn't even matter, gentle reader, if neither fiction writing nor new venture creation in and of themselves appeal to you, notwithstanding their tremendous fascination. The point is their synergistic power of narrative in the Dialectic agenda setting of value proposition, project planning, feasibility study, innovation for collaboration and social support, strategy and design thinking all crucial and applicable no matter ones heart's desires or life purpose to share.

The difference between these two specific applications of narrative, is that whereas 1) the unfounded conjecture and even Science Fiction speculation of capable fiction writing, plotting, drama and sympathetic characterization all strive at very least for plausibility in the abstract, by contrast 2) whatever futuring scenario advanced in sound business planning must then go further by skeptically and systematically investigating and revealing actual feasibility in Empirical reality. And there can be tremendous synergy between these two highly productive Dialectical and collaborative applications of narrative. Such iks the proposed an intentional endeavor in which to pleasurably and meaningfully engage one another, thereby assuaging loneliness and boredom in ongoing immediate immediate gratification, while forging attachments and building relationship over time. Shall we then remain forever enslaved under the shopworn, craven, misanthropic and dishonest narrative, ready made, off the rack, in heteronomy to the cult of socialization? Or instead dare we liberate ourselves by the power of any at all more subversive narrative?

But why these two fields of collaborative endeavor in particular? Towards what advantage or joy? Answer: Think of the collaborative fiction writing as an ongoing bonding and team building exercise for management team building, collaborative solution finding, business planning and innovative new venture creation. Because the pure creativity, art for art's sake, of fiction writing is versatile and accessible, plausible and relatable, while innovation, being applied creativity, is effectively advanced in business planning of new venture creation and exploration in solution finding and feasibility study striving towards disruptive life changing actionable strategy and implementation. Because of the interdisciplinary intellectual stimulation and elicitation of curiosity so unique to the taboo synergy bridging the abstract and the concrete, as between the two modes of narrative. Because both are different applications of imagination, story crafting and telling, the pure creativity of fiction writing and the innovation of new venture creation, each so richly feeding into the other. Pipedreaming, the flagrant dishonesty of retreat from reality into fantasy, is plainly dangerous. Hypothetico-deductive method might be seen as pipedreaming in reverse, beginning from unfounded conjecture, even utter fantasy, progressively retreating from sheer fantasy into ever better plausibility and feasibility. Thus may art express life as drama innovates, and life imitate art as innovation draws upon fiction.

Does that power sound fun, convivial and productive to you, gentle reader? As the saying goes: “A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you create them.” And in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” But perhaps most importantly, to quote John Cleese: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.” To reiterate, it remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. So many of us dream of together sharing freedom, discovery, independence and creativity. How then, in very principle, might human interaction and social life better fill its disastrously abrogated function? And by what conceivable practical implementation? And where to start? Breaking isolation must begin Dialectically, only by together setting agenda for the desperately missing and needed happily serious strategic conversation and feasibility study in quest of fulfillment. Much as with Transactional Analysis, if whatever prevailing mode of social interaction remains inadequate to fulfillment, whatever experience of any better more fulfilling mode of social interaction must must be devised, put into practice and rendered accessible. And likewise to that end, if as so often the case, wide scale reform will not be immediately feasible, then some smaller group of participants may yet assemble and collaborate.

Therefore Creativity Should be Social, available and transparent. Because happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk, deliberating Dialectically, strategically, intentionally, purposefully and substantively, in controversy and feasibility study, with civility as autonomous equals in optimal reciprocal engagement. Happy people thrive and are more productive, likely to choose creative activities and cooperation, deriving experience of fulfillment in meaningful and pleasurable engagement with less small talk. Happiness comes in in the Menschlichkeit of meeting ones needs for capable interaction with responsible others, that comes in true spirit of friendship and honesty, making progress every day as a real mensch. But which is cause and which is effect? That remains unclear merely from the discovered correlation. It is, however, readily observed that the people who find it the easiest to make friends and forge new connections, commonly live better rounded and richer lives to begin with. All easier said than done. And where does hat leave us? Narrative brings us together, but on what terms? For narrative us a wonderful servant but a terrible master. So what must be done?

And although, to reiterate, correlation need not by itself imply causation, in the light of stimulus struggle, and especially social stimulus struggle, an answer emerges to that question: Which is cause and which is effect? Does serious conversation result in happiness, or is serious conversation the result of happiness? Yes, serious conversation absolutely makes crucial contribution to happiness. And conversely, happiness likely engenders serious conversation rather than floundering in empty small talk. Hence, both being at all true, a virtuous cycle is indicated, perpetually improving only once implemented, entailing no more that whatever even tacit ratification amongst those who interact, even entirely without the approval or even the knowledge of the Great Faceless They. Relationship such as love and friendship, is predicated upon attachment, and attachment can only begin, first of all, from engagement. And that is why relationship and especially friendship arise only as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication, not impulsively or compulsively, but deliberately and intentionally, and above all, not to be deferred as as any hoped for objective or reward, but undertaken immediately in unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility as the only viable beginning. And yet, the obvious recommendation of deliberately talking together, not more cheerfully, but more seriously, somehow fails to arise: FoolQuest.com appears to be first! And so, we have our work cut out for us, but nothing so onerous. For again, in the words of John Cleese: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.”

Hence the first glimmer of happiness, simply from sustained engagement in the present serious strategic conversation, meeting as it does, the above salient criterion. So let's all get our pointy ears on, and derive satisfaction! For to quote Friedrich Nietzsche: “Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.”

Whereof the question then to the agenda remains: What is very principle is the very nature of serious conversation ever so crucial to happiness? And what would be a program of sustaining such ongoing happily serious conversation, so that we can together finally get with he program, and at long last the right program this time? Not to mention barest implementation strategy of any such a program. Herein is proposed to test the very hypothesis that even to conduct this very discussion will already produce positive affect to motivate and sustain ongoing strategic Dialectic towards feasibility study and productive action.

I might not have what you want, but can we seek for it together? It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. Gentle reader, am I then your unmet friend? What opportunity in making my acquaintance? Networking, what is my value proposition? And how important can you be to me in return? And what difference does any of that make? Of course no one should expect universal love or approval or even need it. That's not the point. No matter who might ever come to enjoy my company or even recognize and perhaps even admire my best qualities, all too many nevertheless will continue to keep their distance, unlikely to include me or befriend me. It seems that I just don't fit in. But what does that even mean? Alas, how we often disappoint one another and ourselves by expecting too little. The paranoid herd mentality is of watching one another to keep everyone in line. The blithe unquestioning cocksure intimidation of putting one another each in our place, demands so much less of the individual, than the empathy of actually listening to one another to learn where the other stands. Indeed, in the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” After all, curiosity is the agent of compassion. But in a milieu of suspicion and reciprocal indifference, social support will be hard won by fitting in at whatever cost of socialization, ever ganging up on one another and finally joining the enemy, the oppressors, against ourselves. Mediocrity becomes the greatest prize. One way or another, most people are just overwhelmed, too busy with all that will be expected of us, or else failing in life, no matter putting on a brave face, haunted, lonely, demoralized and bizarre, a living warning to all others. Broken before The Great Faceless They, the castoffs of society are everywhere for each and all to chillingly understand: but for the grace of Leviathan, go I!

Under heteronomy, people generally learn to become so so cynical, insecure, inhibited, wary and cagey, most strongly motivated by life long behavioral conditioning to peer pressure and the many ongoing punishment and rewards and Social cognition of perceived vested interests in the advancement and preservation of social position and standing. That is why kinship and rank are viewed as so central to the human condition in society, by Cultural Anthropology, with the fully engaged egalitarian low hierarchical distance of collaborative solution finding relegated almost to mere afterthought as an exception, a special case. Therefore individuals may find themselves less often actually valued intrinsically for ability and the content of character and potential as prospective friends and partners or allies in life, assets in rational self-interest or simply joy to be with, than instead extrinsically valued for popularity, standing and influence ever exploited in perpetual struggle jockeying for approval and dominance. Hence the recommendation to lie and pretend to have friends until one actually has any. The unpopular are shunned. It's all a matter of such suffocating priorities: Social cognition makes sycophants of us all!

But what then if priorities could be utterly subverted and turned upon their head? What if collaborative creative solution finding were to become the default, and whatever kind of responsible authority the special case, resorted to only as and when the need whereof ever actually arising? Where and when, how and by what design would follow whatever intentional implementation of any such a brave new social contract?

The challenges are perhaps no less daunting than those in pursuit of conventional social integration and success, so c rucial because among the benefits of any functional and advantageous and fnctional social embedment are networking and access to resources out in the wider world. But it all depends first of all upon acceptance into and participation within more proximate social circles.

In those famous words of George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” And to quote Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” FoolQuest.com is an outreach toward the formation of just such a core group of unreasonable people applying ourselves even to the most daunting problems besetting us. In the words of Sir Isaac Newton “You have to make the rules, not follow them.”

Not everything is possible, not everything is impossible, and not everything possible necessarily amounts only to giving up and making do. For in rigorous feasibility study, there ever remains that challenging germ of hope, that bold premise of meager conspiratorial leverage for toppling the sheer mass of mediocrity, all in the simplest collusion in the smallest of rebellion: We are not absolutely slaves to that drab destiny of heteronymous mediocrity, because on any given occasion, no two people can actually be compelled to interact so shabbily. And that is the only reason anything ever works out at all. But against the weight of systematic status quo, the dearth of clear opportunity, and the sheer random inefficiency, ever remain so daunting. And hence the need in most proximate relationship and interaction to turn prevailing social interaction on its head, by putting egalitarian low hierarchical distance of fully engaged collaborative solution finding first, and falling back upon hierarchical authority only rarely and sparingly as ever the need might actually arise, instead of relying thereupon for guidance routinely. And that is the objective of Creativity Should be Social. Because, as the saying goes: “A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you create them.” And in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” But perhaps most importantly, to quote John Cleese: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.”

Back to the proverbial drawing board:

The correct indefinite pronoun denoting society is never 'it' but 'We'
Therefore: "why isn't it... ?" may generally be the wrong question.
The interesting and responsible question remains: "Why don't/can't We... ?"







User Hostile: The ugly truth about how things don't work

Many experience an outcomes gap, meaning: no results no matter one one does.

A classic chicken and egg dilemma ensues: For good or ill, does society at large forge and temper each individual, or do individuals in interaction all with one another generate and manifest the immediately surrounding constructed social reality in which we individually participate? Do relationships exist in social context, or quite the reverse, does the web of relationships constitute the society and define one's experience therein?

Well, obviously, it is both, each all at once. And yet, most discourse and remediation attempting to address life's challenges so blithely continues to focus entirely upon heteronymous social skills, the individual, eager, zealous, groveling subordinate, desperately competitive cog in the machine, rising heroically to meet the needs of performance in relentless, unresponsive and ever more broad, nebulous, impersonal and fadelessly abstract society, The Great Faceless They. Thus do the all too normal toxic headgames of heteronomy cultivate not blossoming togetherness, but festering alienation. Relationship is even presented exclusively as the fruit conditional to such social aptitude and conformity and actually even subordinate thereto. Tautologically, heteronomy assumes that submission to one's place in society, only once secured, and submission in knowing thy place, the truth to set thee free, is one's prime functional alliance in life and guarantor of stability; but only given collective approval, and from which relationship in turn proceed and are subsumed. But from the standpoint of what the conformist Victorians who so cherished civic-virtue therefore first decried as Individualism and condemned as subversive: For making one's niche in life might be understood as product of forging personal alliances for oneself, even true friendship and the cultivation of nurturing relationships, all not in any sense of civic-virtue under wider collective membership.

So are your own values those of heteronomy or of autonomy? Who might you prefer to connect with? An aspiring pillar of the community, staunch toady to social expectation: an utter tool, or a good friend to humanity, a real mensch? And to what ought one aspire? The desperation for approval, or the will to power? Yet the outdated cult of socialization, manipulative behavioral conditioning in one rancid guise or variation or another, prevails. The powerlessness of the individual without influence in society, is simply accepted and taken for granted, then played upon so manipulatively. But the malignant racket of all such often senseless imperative of interminable submissive finesse, can offer no trustworthy solution. This is because all of that festering impotent vexation and mediocrity is at the root of bored and lonely suffering and frustration in the first place. This is true even when most successful on its own misguided cretin terms exactly as advertised. Though as a set up for failure, compromise and lowered expectations, the let down is that much less subtle.

Social success and friendship are antithetical. This is because friendship is genuine, substantive and intimate, while social success depends upon facile superficiality and keeping distance. Therefore the inherent contradiction remains insurmountable, irresolvable in very principle, and nothing but a setup for frustration, failure and craven exhortation to lowered expectations and making do. Social success and social failure only isolate the individual in different ways. This may be why finding connection is so uncertain, unreliable and requires such open ended investment of time, effort and dedication, with iron will, persistence and discipline all glossed over in prevailing simplistic discourse and blithe optimism. Endurance of precisely such monotony and dystress serves to weed out boredom prone unconventional creative thinkers in order to preserve status quo. In 'Fame is Desired By Those Lost in Life ,' Sofo Archom expounds upon how the alienated and unloved strive, successfully or unsuccessfully, to become famous, hoping in vein thereby to fill the void . But a greater and far more vast legion of exactly the same lost souls, so ardently pursue just the opposite, mediocrity, in desperation for social success in order to fit in, likewise hoping in vein to fill the self same void. Were one to erase each and every instance of the word 'fame' and substitute instead the word: ';conformity,' the article would still parse no less coherently or sadly true! All hence the dire need of fundamentally subversive innovation in the reinvention of social life.

There remains one simple and most general criteria of true social success and connection for every purpose. And that is when someone else that one might care to interact with, reciprocates, even into the long term. This then, is nothing under individual control or initiative. No individual can take collective action unilaterally. Cooperation is required. Hence, prima fascia, the Absurd futility of all social outreach. It truly is that simple and Empirical. In marketing, a 1% response is considered excellent. - not sales, but response at all. Assets of character are more often a liability if not actually despised. All things being equal, with no advantageous connections, considerable attraction or draw, popularity or glowing reputation, the circumstances are scarcely any different in marketing oneself in life: The statistics are no less appalling. How joyless! What a chore and a bore! Indeed, likewise, even at all favorable response, tends to fall short of closing the deal. It doesn't work because it cannot work. Most commonly recommended social success strategies of propinquity amount, in marketing terms, to repeated exposure and focus upon whatever target demographic, with whatever marketing appeal, blatant or innocuous, fair or foul, honest or dishonest. But the odds remain appalling, like unto the proverbial deep and dry well. The hopelessness of the situation is mocked by very exhortation to positive thinking and even prayer. Often, people are so solitary, insular and just don't seem to want to mingle, much less to connect. Why do they even go out in public? Often people only pretend at social outreach, actually only rendezvousing with others with whom they are already well acquainted. Outsiders remain outsiders.

Initiative has been quashed and rendered moot. Simply reaching out, engaging and forming attachments, whether in making plans together and following through or in rising to sheer hedonistic spontaneity, can all be so difficult because by and large, few people are truly value maximizers. To begin with, so many people are not even robust in pleasure seeking, much less rational agents of self-interest let alone of altruistic yearning of being needed. Positive disintegration, being individual reformulation and reprioritization of one's own core values, hence the dawning of Menschlichkeit, which is the art of being a mensch, a person of creditable humaneness and integrity, sympathetic, trustworthy and moral in perception and action, all as characteristic of autonomy, alas remains exceptional. Thus the question is begged: In every Ecclesiastical sore travail, for whom then do we bereave ourselves of good?

“If I continually get a door wrong, is it my fault? No. In fact, if you continually get it wrong or if other people continually get it wrong, it’s a good sign that it’s a really bad door.”

— Don Norman as cited in: Frustration is a design opportunity

Beloved cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, self declared "super genius," is the obsessive and unteachable embodiment of lunatic perseverance. And we can all relate! Misattributed variously to Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain, and nevertheless well familiar to Wile E. Coyote's creator, renowned Existentialist influenced animator Chuck Jones, the earliest known appearance of the saying is to be found in the mystery novel 'Sudden Death' by Rita Mae Brown: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." Repeated failure more reasonably ought to inspire renewed feasibility study and the quest for more viable strategy. The most common approach is in seeking to correct incorrect procedure and meet prevailing expectations, often with insane persistence and perseverance in the face of failure and disappointment. In the words of Coco Chanel “Don’t spend time beating on a wall hoping it will transform into a door.” Any specific advice effectively accepts as premise whatever raft of often unstated and unchallenged implicit general assumptions as to cause and effect tendencies. But lunatic faith in whatever entrenched rightthink notwithstanding, so long as the general premise remains Empirically false, even fractally wrong, then whatever conclusion cannot actually follow, and the soundness of whatever perhaps therfore dubious advice may then comes into question. Or if there are more causal factors, then that might tend to reduce the reliability and efficacy of said over simplistic advice. Much unchallenged common sense is generally false or causally inadequate, and the accepted advice quite useless and futile Existentially Absurd bait-and-switch! The ready and conventional options set before us are all painful and pointless!

“People don’t like to think, if one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” — Helen Keller

In personality psychology, locus of control denotes degree to which one tends to believe that one possess control over the outcome of events in life, as opposed to external forces beyond individual control. Indeed, it has been found that lonely isolation and depression may engender prediction that outreach will only fail. And it has also been observed that pessimism, negative thinking, even depression, is often more realistic without normal face saving delusion in defense of self-esteem. Indeed, pessimists may be on to something: Experimentally, it has been discovered that people who are depressed, more accurately gauge reality including their own control, or lack thereof, over circumstances, than others do, This phenomena has been dubbed: depressive realism, sadder and wiser, less susceptible to manipulation and deluded wishful thinking. For the big lie of willful positivity rosily distorts perception, and no good will cone therefrom. In the struggles of social life, so frustratingly bored and lonely, all too many experience an outcomes gap, meaning: no results no matter one one does. But why so? Because, tautologically, there can be no unilateral well formed plan defined as a plan wherein an individual all alone has fairly complete control over every well defined step in execution thereof, and thereby assured of success.

In the famous words of Henry David Thoreau: “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Patience and persistence go unrewarded. People who find themselves excluded, feel superfluous and struggle to feel needed. Alas however, opportunity remains scarce, seldom resulting or arising, and even more seldom coming to any fruition. But how are so many entrapped into such heartbreaking sore travail and futility? Answer: Obviously, by the persistence of myth. - some or other prevailing and enduring expectation howsoever to the contrary of Empirical reality. And because, under the spell of the great collective autopilot, no real planning and investigative research of feasibility study is ever encouraged. But how so and why? Answer: Predictions of whatever howsoever more rosy outcomes may ensue from poorly understood correlations, even weak correlations, so that fairly mindless mimicry of superficial habits of howsoever popular or successful people, might not necessarily thereby actually reproduce whatever their popularity or success for anyone else. Whatever accepted guarantees relied upon by recently preceding generations are so quickly evaporating one way or another. And we all know it! This is nothing new. In truth, social success often depends so greatly upon luck and favoritism. The result is often increasing despair, defeat and alienation from conventional options in life. Life is neither a sprint nor marathon, but wandering lost from one another in a convoluted maze full of dead ends, not just erroneous and incorrect, merely wrong, but fractally wrong: Manifestly Absurd, dead wrong in examination and scrutiny from every conceivable perspective or Point of View and at every possible scale of resolution from macro to nano and everywhere in between! Indeed, to quote Henry Louis Mencken: “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”

Indeed, according to the World Health Organization, depression became the leading cause of disability in the world during 2010. Many who in their hearts question status quo, surely yearn for some path towards innovative solution finding from critical reexamination of prevailing expectations and procedures. But this remains unheard of taboo in context of the individual striving for what is called, most generally, social success. For such is the ubiquity of the cult of socialization. Perhaps in truth its all just a racket after all, serving the vested interests of a privileged few and their toadies, and not the interests of the masses, indeed of each individual, as it so blithely pretends. A racket, after all, is any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality a scam or fraud, a deceptive practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for the benefit of a few cronies at the expense of the many. And one old racket is artificial scarcity: The masses will always comply in ever greater effort and diligence jumping through hoops and fighting amongst ourselves for scraps, believing and rationalizing just about anything, eagerly taking the bait of whatever artificial scarcity and bait-and-switch, no matter how plainly contrived and controlled.

To quote Martin Luther King, Jr.: "A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan." For in the words of Wolfgang Goethe “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least” Indeed, as Socrates so famously declares: "The unexamined life is not worth the living for a human being." Such is the quest for meaning without which no pleasurable engagement is sustained, and only mounting alienation remains. Indeed, it is the oppressor, in all of his guises, who in whatever lies and subterfuge, exhorts the masses to cast aside all values and principles and quite simply not to think or to criticize. Just as with PR for gambling, there will always be the handful of big winners to be held up as shining example of somehow beating the odds. In every walk of life, in broken travesty of genuine and vital competitive spirit. there will always be that handful of eager approval seekers that thrive on whatever abuse and excel. So, why can't we all be just like them? How are those all important good work habits acquired? Our rôle models in every conventional option in life, the star student, ideal employee, perfect disciple or model prisoner alike, are all characterized, beyond mere responsive obedience and passivity otherwise, not only by every obsessive-compulsive eager beaver sore travail, but boundlessly committed initiative in anticipation of their superior's desires, "paying one's dues" life long, excelling without complaint or resistance, never seeking attention by requesting explanation or assistance. Exactly such adaptation of enthusiastic approval seeking, still held up as exemplary in order to vindicate systemic failure and disappointment in most every walk of life, remains, by hierarchical design, indeed the benchmark that for better or worse, most of us will come short and fall by the wayside, make do, for each to learn their place.

As must be expected under any ever so feverish societal paradigm of figuratively cutting the allegorical foot to metaphorically fit the proverbial shoe, in making ones way in life, the standard alternatives on offer are all so very dystressful, alienating and ego dystonic sublimation, Existential bait-and-switch. Individual self-esteem suffers under the injustice of any social system that presses the individual to feel responsible for circumstances that most of us simply cannot possibly even begin to control. Most oppressive remains pandemic bullying and victim blaming. Consensus manipulation in particular, is a bitter betrayal. One way or another, social influences takes control out of the hands of the individual nevertheless treated as fully responsible for what becomes of them in society. Open to all, FoolQuest.com strives for any more feasible course of interaction with a great deal less anguish, something at all fun and interesting, a modest beginning merely from the modest responsibility of holding up one's own end of a conversation, Dialectically.

Not surprisingly, when indeed social failure is analyzed by experts in terms of problems one way or another inherent or systemic within the very framework of society at large, the needs for change is typically addressed in that very context, in society as broadly as feasible, by whatever social programs of fairly sweeping change or at least by fairly extensive programs of intervention howsoever deemed relevant. But wholesale intervention, let alone massive programs of sweeping and definitive social change, remain far beyond the power and reach of most individuals alone. Only the extremely well connected have any such clout. There remains no transparent and readily available guidance and resources of effective organization, for the rest of us. And so, in the meantime, the individual will still be prevailed upon to adapt and make do, one way or another. But this is an all or nothing dichotomy, a false dilemma. Change beyond individual power alone, may begin within any more narrow social context. And just as the smallest social alignment, is any relationship between individuals, the smallest unit of social process is of any particular one to one interaction or conversation.

In the alternatives to such irresponsible aimless over reliance upon propinquity and social skills of collective membership most broadly, by which the individual is so beset with such unjustly impossible social responsibility, there are certain obvious, competent and responsible practices seemingly better at all accepted in professional life than in personal life. We need to reclaim and regain certain rudimentary lost and atrophied executive function and become at all better organized at making contacts, following up intentionally, purposefully and systematically, convivially maintaining interaction. Of course, all such efforts remain futile, unilaterally. There is no viable beginning, in solitary self-help/improvement. Nor can the lone individual implement wholesale intervention or massive programs of sweeping social change in order to reshape the world at large to their own comfort.

But in that acquaintances come to form at all more closely knit social circles or individuals look for all manner of social groups to join, thus there can be any possible middle ground between lonely and powerless self-reliance on the one hand, and broadest social integration let alone the inception of massive programs of sweeping social change on the other: Smaller social circles or relationships of two or more individuals, often tend to forge their own social contracts amongst themselves. Though again, there are polar extremes and alarming dysfunction: On the one hand, group dynamics may be unimaginatively bound to prior socialization, or else on the other hand abandoning all propriety, they may co validate and normalize any conceivable deviance no matter how senseless and destructive. Both extremes remain depressingly common. Indeed, elements of both may often coexist and manifest in the group dynamics of the self same social circle. Indeed, there may often be found no more staunch conformists than the most flagrant deviants, and no deeper conviction than such blithely Absurd hypocrisy in desperate mimesis of all that one can never truly be. Can it be that we are all missing the true social engineering design opportunity in microcosm? Because there remains a rare third option in ever actually crafting an an agenda of modest beginnings in disruptive innovation and positive disintegration via creative solution finding in order better even to begin coming to grips with the challenge before us of improving our lives by actually deciding how we wish to interact. Now, there's a social skill we don't often hear about! -an extreme competence of autonomy rather than of heteronomy...

The cutting edge of Psychological research lately finds itself ever more in closest concurrence with wisdom of the sages of old rediscovered, regarding the very nature of authentic wellbeing or: Eudemonia, that is innately the target of most relevant intrinsic motivation. Because this pertains to needs of human nature universally, therefore in theory, the present agenda should be of intense interest and priority to everyone and anyone, indeed, to all humanity. In practice however, it all only matters to a precious few. Go figure.

Am I your unmet friend? Let's talk! I might no have what you want, but can we seek for it together? When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? Without the all-consuming social rat race, what shall we do with ourselves together? What will keep us occupied just long enough simply for metaphorically breaking the proverbial ice? To answer a question with another question: What is important to you? What makes life worth living? In short, whither arête? What are the conditions of implementation? And what are even the minimal requisite social resources of smaller group dynamics? It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

Spoiler alert! What follows is one answer to these above questions in the abstract, and thence practical solution finding to these above problems. Gentle readers, unmet friends: You may prefer not to read any further right now, but instead wish to put it off and see what answers you can each and/or together come up with by yourselves, anything entirely different and uninfluenced.

Universal nerd-love:
• Optimal reciprocal engagement: Intellectual Stimulation & the Essence of a Woman Is socially awkward nerd-love truly the best love?
When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along?

Reversing the boredom prone loneliness of intelligence and creativity

Happy people talk more seriously together, freely, and with less small talk, deliberating , strategically, intentionally, purposefully and substantively, in controversy and feasibility study, with civility as autonomous equals in optimal reciprocal engagement. Happy people thrive and are more productive, likely to choose creative activities and cooperation, deriving fulfillment in meaningful and pleasurable engagement. But which is cause and which is effect? That remains unclear merely from the discovered correlation. It is, however, readily observed that the people who find it the easiest to make friends and forge new connections, commonly live better rounded and richer lives to begin with. Happiness comes in in the Menschlichkeit of unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility and meeting ones needs for capable interaction and agenda setting with responsible others, in true spirit of friendship and honesty, making progress every day as a real mensch. The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective wellbeing, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances, objectively. Happiness comes in Eudemonia, in the Menschlichkeit of meeting ones needs by capable interaction with responsible others. It remains so disheartening many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

Alfred North Whitehead once remarked that all of Philosophy is a merely series of footnotes to Plato who liberally transcribed the famous dialogues of his beloved mentor Socrates. Indeed, the cutting edge scientific discovery that happy people talk more seriously, would hardly have come as any surprise to the most venerated of all the sages of antiquity, Socrates who so famously declared: “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.” And the intelligent and sensitive are indeed at greater risk of painful loneliness. And yet, we remain in the minority, even amongst the lonely. The lonely, by and large tending towards inept and uncaring misanthropic superficiality, eager marks for all of that popularity snake oil, seemingly reach consensus upon two fundamentals: Firstly, that loneliness is awful, just the worst thing. Second, that at all times, we must keep all conversation light! And the irony entirely escapes them all. The very notion even to question such cretin norms of heteronomy that have served them all so extremely poorly, simply never occurs.

Pleasure + engagement + meaning = fulfillment

The appeal to sheer herd behavior: When the masses submit to emotional distance and lonely boredom even in a crowd, and nothing seems to matter, herd mentality is what most people will respond to by default with no second thought and even actually cooperate, after a fashion, by interacting at all. And when all glittering generality, bait and preamble is stripped away, what will be dredged up remains the common popularity advice of heteronomy to the effect that in order ever to make true close friends, alone and starting from scratch, first one must long and arduously cultivate and establish many distant casual acquaintances, even for up to a year or more, full time. And this is a challenge to coherent planning and purposeful persistence, going far beyond contrivance of whatever casual appearances. But nothing genuine or substantive can ever be shared or revealed that might risk unpopularity. Furthermore, unless they are already acquainted with one another, these contacts in turn must be invited to socialize together in order in turn be introduced to one another in order to begin forming a social circle. Indeed, there can be safety in numbers, and therefore unwillingness to network may be one among several very real warning signs of untrustworthy scheming of social isolation, bullying and exploitation. But any recommended programs of facile and dull social outreach is costly in every way, highly skilled and therefore so much easier said than done, otherwise vastly unreliable, often phony and actually destructive in many ways, profoundly dishonest, lonely and boring recognizance under enemy surveillance, bereft of any glimpse into another's inner life, the unguarded and reciprocal understanding called: psychological visibility, an innate human social need. Alas however, only once this awful, long and tedious pretense is fully executed, will true friends ever be able to find one another. Since antiquity, the endurance of protracted boredom remains the test of compliance and conformity. Because the program never fails, you fail the program! And if you don't like it, you must be defective to be culled into social oblivion! Are there then truly no other alternatives to living such a dystressing lie?

Relationship, especially friendship, let alone anything more, arises only as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication, not impulsively or compulsively, but deliberately and intentionally, and above all, not to be deferred as as any hoped for objective or reward, but undertaken immediately as the only viable beginning. This is because relationship such as love and friendship, is predicated upon attachment, and attachment can only begin, first of all, from engagement. Needlessly opaque and convoluted purpose defeating heteronymous snake oil of social skills brainwash and granfalloon membership pipedreams have got the cart before the horse! Friendship first arises, rather than somehow culminating later on in whatever hoped for eventual pay off or extrinsic reward, but only as a byproduct of engagement, unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility in substantive, free and coherent communication, exploration, and/or form purposeful interaction and endeavor, even play enfolding its own intrinsic purpose, all replete with the dignity of social risk, with trust, security, ultimately openness in yielding to temptation, all the aforesaid that are the competencies of autonomy, along with executive function of organization and congenial social grace to manage and sustain contacts, reciprocally. Rather, genuine relationship, free and deepening exchange, tacitly agenda driven and transparent, in collaboration among equal. That may be why, as has been discovered, happy people talk more seriously. This would come as no surprise to Socrates, who so famously declared that: “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

To quote Neil Gabler: “American society is a society in which individuals have learned to prize soci that you do not yet understandal skills that permit them, like actors, to assume whatever rôle- the occasion demands and to "perform" their lives rather than just live them.” Competent or incompetent, whether in true hardnosed practicality or in sheer aimless and empty acting out of mimesis, many all the same remain no less consumed with the burning question of how to perform as expected and to fit in: How best to placate The Great Faceless They, thereby to obtain the key to life. Much as they may deny it even to themselves, they are fully buying in, figuratively gulping down the proverbial Kool-Aid! And even bringing into question such secret deep-seated dedication may be as alarming to them as revelation that there is no Santa Claus and no fellowship with God. Social success and friendship are antithetical. This is because friendship is genuine, substantive and intimate, while social success depends upon facile superficiality and keeping distance. Therefore the inherent contradiction remains insurmountable, irresolvable in very principle, and nothing but a setup for frustration, failure and craven exhortation to lowered expectations and making do. Social success and social failure only isolate the individual in different ways. This may be why finding connection is so uncertain, unreliable and requires such open ended investment of time, effort and dedication, with persistence and discipline all glossed over in prevailing simplistic discourse and blithe optimism. Endurance of precisely such monotony and dystress serves to weed out boredom prone unconventional creative thinkers in order to preserve status quo. Hence the need of fundamentally subversive innovation in the reinvention of social life.

The true key to friendship and happiness flies directly in the face of all callow and cynical social success formulae of anti-intellectual positive attitude and keeping things light with interminable idle small talk. So ego alien, flying in the face of all gregarious human impulse, the trial, the test, the sore travail of socially acceptable conduct is entirely predicated upon heteronymous conformist toleration, cultivation and maintenance of distance. lonely boredom and frustration . All hence, people are either unhappy because of the isolation and loneliness of not fitting in, or else they are unhappy precisely because of the purpose defeating superficial disconnected loneliness even amid the crowd, so bereft of all psychological visibility and distant of all emotional connection, of indeed even consummate social dexterity and fitting in. And any such can only offer meaningless unfulfilling distraction at very best, and mounting bitter anguish of futility at worst. Damned if you do, damned if you don't!

Therefore, either way, distance, frustration and perseverance upon an ocean of such ongoing backhanded rejection, will never redeem itself or deliver the goods! Clearly, this remains an Absurd and futile no-win scenario. Conventional social interaction has entered the normative death throws in the devolution of complex systems, bereft of all external relevance. Therefore, not just exclusion, but paradoxically even inclusion as well, actually isolates. Hence we contend then with textbook alienation inherent to heteronomy: We confront a process seemingly designed to press the individual to do everything the opposite of what we all really need to do and to be. It must then come as little surprise how any such arduous social success frequently comes, if ever at all, so often only at the cost of all happiness, so anathema and typically obstructed by such drone-like heteronymously arbitrary social acumen, skilled incompetence and cronyism, that everywhere buttresses the tacit institutionalization and twisted value of all the most flagrant insensitivity and ineptitude imaginable, the bad driving out the good, and worse, actingout the destructive evil that is rampant bullying. Indeed, as we have seen, gregariousness and engaging personality may even be reviled as subversive and impertinent to a malagenda of sheer heteronymous group validation in sheer denial of all such profound endemic and pandemic Orwellian alienation from the innate and intrinsic drives of human expression, connection and attachment.The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective wellbeing, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances, objectively. Happiness comes in Eudemonia,i n the Menschlichkeit of meeting ones needs by capable interaction with responsible others.

• Why Nerds Are Unpopular

All manner of people, circumstance and dishonesty can be harmful in so many different ways, but there is particular vulnerability to self-esteem and sense of power, not merely from abuse of power or humiliation in and of itself, but in shrinking in restraint, self-control, frustrated secret desire, submission, compliance, conforming to expectation, backing down to others, especially to those most beneath contempt; all thus belittled, duller and mincing ones words in cognitive dissonance; all as bullies continue laughing up their sleeves. And such is life. But under such circumstances, one can only question oneself: Whatever threat averted or opportunity accrued, is it all really worth one's dignity? One cannot but nurse the festering grudge, feeling only the more petty and helpless. The will to power is frustrated. And that's what moral restraint gets you! So, exactly what kind of morality is that after all, that perpetually enables demeaning evil? Such is what Nietzsche curses as: slave mentality. One cannot but despair: Just what is the point?

George Orwell illuminatingly fathomed how the stifling reciprocal and prevailing dishonesty of heteronomy to the chimera of collective membership remains ever antithetical to the vital honesty of autonomy and friendship. And in glorified resignation to heteronomy ever endures such dishonest industry in the extol of blissful sublime apathy. But in the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” And to make action possible, personal freedom in practice beyond mere abstraction, accrues from individual power requiring both capability for feasible action, and autonomy which is individual temperament from which to take initiative. For the masses of humanity, in the mastery of consummate dexterity or in the ill fitting awkward wont, either way, all of the devious and toxic headgames of heteronomy to conventional social skills make us all miserable.

“We cleave tightly to reassuring notions of what normal people are like, which means we exclude a lot – often the richest bit – of what we truly feel, want and think. We edit out our more generous, wilder, more impatient, more terrifying sides; leaving only the socially admissible husk that we artfully pretend is who we are. And simultaneously, we ensure that we are never far from something that can take us powerfully away from ourselves, and so miss out on the troubling wonders that streak across the mental horizon at every instant.”

— Are Intelligent People More Lonely?

As is explained therein, by intelligent people, what is meant is not merely more intelligent or capable, but especially those better self-aware in Emotional Intelligence. Whereas people in society are repressed, superficial and therefore lonely together, by contrast art is profound. For people of greater depth, in our solitude, the cultural record, the arts and sciences, can be turned to for helping to fill that stifling void in social life, thereby making do in our loneliness. But this argument once advanced, the self proclaimed School of Life hucksters disappointingly seems to be missing their own point. Are they even actually searching for any new problem statement towards any more innovative solutions, or only working up a more intriguing lead in just pitching nothing new at all? - merely putting a fresh coat of paint, so to speak, on everything so conventional and shopworn? Because the vaunted School of Life only falls back upon just marketing all of the same old same old. Alas, there can never be any merely intrapsychic solution to such a dire deficiency so entrenched in the very milieu, not any self-help/improvement or the most productive psychotherapy. All precisely because exactly as has been so passionately argued, the desired prize is simply not on offer. Much as even somewhat to the frustration of Sigmund Freud himself, any modality of Psychotherapy can only treat the individual patient, not the society, the environment, that deprives and traumatizes us all in the first place.

How then can any submissive regimen of sensitivity training help overcome the repressive superficiality of social life, given indeed that it is sensitivity which is frustrated and punished in society in the first place? How then, in very principle, might human interaction and social life better fill its disastrously abrogated function? And by what conceivable practical implementation? And where to start? To reiterate, breaking isolation must begin Dialectically, only by together setting agenda for the desperately missing and needed happily serious strategic conversation and feasibility study in quest of fulfillment. Well, at least its not more Behavior Modification! Again, much as with Transactional Analysis, if whatever prevailing mode of social interaction remains inadequate to fulfillment, then some better more fulfilling mode of social interaction must must be devised and put into practice. And to that end, if as so often the case, wide scale reform will not be immediately feasible, then some smaller relatable group of participants must organize and assemble.

Predictions may ensue from poorly understood correlations, even weak or simplistic correlations, so that superficial imitation of habits even as Empirically observed of the popular and successful might not reliably reproduce success at will or even at all. Standard common sense social advice, unserious, so bereft of genuine unguarded reciprocal psychological visibility, hence purpose defeating and unhappy, makes unquestioned and perhaps willfully naive and often simplistic common sense general assumptions about how social connections come about. But what if, even fundamentally, precisely such assumptions simply are not true? If so, then predictions, strategy and advice premised thereupon, may not be at all reliable. Not surprisingly then, many experience an outcomes gap, meaning: no results no matter one one does. Social success often depends so greatly upon luck and favoritism. Perhaps in truth its all just a racket after all, serving the vested interests of a privileged few and their toadies, and not the interests of the masses, indeed of each individual, as it so blithely pretends. What is need is to connect and make our own luck. And we need to know what we are doing

Epistemologically, Methodologically, truth remains an Empirical question of predicted outcomes refutable by observable results contrary to whatever said predictions. Truth is correspondence to concrete external reality in assertions. But validity is only internal self consistency within statements of abstract logic. Therefore logical validity alone is not transitive to truth. In any application of logic to external reality, a valid conclusion is actually true only given that both the major and minor premi in a syllogism are both each true in the first place. Advice typically predicts specific desired results from particular recommended actions. Thus advice typically ensues from some particular more narrow and specific minor premise, being whatever specific circumstances, and given some prior major premise, being some broader general principle or assumption. Any plan rests upon whatever assumption. Advice predicts specific results under specific circumstances, following whatever general principle or broader assumptions. Any specific advice therefore rests upon whatever implicit general assumptions as to consistent cause and effect under whatever prevailing circumstances or situation. The plan, the advice, will be no more than specific application thereof. But if whatever said generality is false, then the advice or recommendations in whatever specific application thereof, no matter the specific situation or objective, cannot logically follow. Or if there are more causal factors, then such insufficient causality might tend to reduce any reliable efficacy of predictions, strategy and the most common sense advice premised thereupon.

For example: Practice of sympathetic magic is traditionally contingent upon the long refuted principles of similarity and contiguity. Indeed in the ritualistic practice and magical thinking of authoritarian socialization, education and dysfunctional child rearing, it may often be assumed that since fear may be taken to resemble respect, then the inculcation of fear will eventually mature into genuine, sincere and abiding respect, and that the discipline of obedience will slowly but surely bleed though, transfer and blossom into individual self-discipline, responsibility and autonomy, debilitating guilt into into motivating empathy, and so on.

Of course, this very doctrinal con game of Existential bait-and-switch long stands refuted, debunked and exposed, psychologically. It should come as little surprise to anyone, then, that Orwellian willful positivety, no less than blind faith, so undermines happiness, and that docile behavioral compliance is so isolating and lonely, even in all of it's most heady togetherness. But the conviction that blind faith resembles and therefore cultivates confidence, and that doubt resembles and therefore invites despair, renders the most obvious thoughts, even the proverbial elephant in the room, so blithely taboo, subversive and threatening to peace and order. Indeed the entire toxic panic to the effect that freedom is anarchy and anarchy is strife, demands heteronomy to authority for the sake of very survival and in order to forestall debilitating anxiety, mass panic, utter chaos and complete disaster. The very notion of collaboration among equals as advocated here on FoolQuest.com, thereby becomes quite incomprehensible and inconceivable

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along?

The very notion of collaboration among equals

I might no have what you want, but can we seek for it together?

Indeed, the average person, inexperienced of anything more vibrant and meaningful, has become blithely jaded and accustomed to a profound social, emotional and intellectual deprivation in which so many of us find ourselves imprisoned. Effort and struggle may be all quickly dismissed and condemned as mere hardship, intolerable frustration and Existential futility. But there can also be the true life human drama of progress and satisfaction, growth, self-definition and discovery, perhaps even success. For in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: “Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.” Besides, exactly what are the alternatives? There has always been the extol of unearned trust and powerless surrender as the way to happiness, the choice only between acceptance and despair, merely flavors of the same intimidation.

In the famous words of George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” And to quote Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” FoolQuest.com is an outreach toward the formation of just such a core group of unreasonable people applying ourselves even to the most daunting problems besetting us. It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

Power, for good or evil, constructively or destructively, begins from the process of influence upon one another that actually reshapes the surrounding social environment, even changing the world. Alas, dronelike compliant social participation seldom actually solicits or grants input or influence into collective decision making, no matter what sort of group or activity one joins into. And this renders the exercise meaningless. Unilateral action is largely powerless, drastically limited in scope and impact upon individual life much less society at large. And slavish submission to alienating social institutions tends to be senseless, debilitating and Absurd in every way. Transactional Analysis begins to recognize that only improvement in the manner in which anyone relates to one another has any bearing. FoolQuest.com explores broader agenda for collaboration among equals in autonomy, deemed inconceivable under prevailing heteronomy that so dreads only chaos and discord, save by even slavish acquiescence to firm guidance and confident leadership in order to prevent error and assure success.

Of course there can be no guarantee of success, but there can often be guarantee of futility in the production and consumption of mendacious irresponsible guarantees. Heteronomy in society frequently presses the individual to choose between compliance in order to fit in, or the pursuit of rugged Individualism in order to get by, going it alone, unless they are not merely howsoever gifted, but specifically and considerably talented. Because only above average accomplishment commands any better terms. And beyond merely whatever above average accomplishment, for the consummately well qualified person of destiny who's extreme success earns them recognition and authority conferring the power of decision making, thence must accrue the loneliness of command.

But in the alternative, entirely another paradigm is that of collaboration among equals. Autonomy and collaboration among equals will tend to make higher demands upon and responsibility than does heteronomy, but in return may offer any true acceptance without oppressive conditionality, escaping thereby both the debilitating idiocy of fitting in and the daunting limitations of rugged isolation. But this too, all the more, will be easier said than done.

In those words of Henri-Louis Bergson: “Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." Alas that in such reciprocal contempt, thinking and doing remain all too often segregated in our institutional mentality. The result is a great deal of thought gone to no practical avail, and a great deal of ill considered action so blithely undertaken. To quote Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower: “Plans are nothing, planning is everything.” And let no one imagine that planning, action or happiness are ever improved by preasure to choose between conformity or social isolation. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” It remains, however, that self-help/improvement and social skills remediation are all nothing but delusion and denial of Existential Absurdity. You are not in control of your life, any more than I am in control of mine. We all find ourselves completely at the whim of uncooperative others in every facet of our lives. And everyone within reach to seek help from, is simply too insecure even to fight for their very lives, much less to stand up for one another. Put more simply then, and in complete good faith, powerlessness, the impotent helplessness of the human condition is terminally demeaning. And even beyond direct action, our influence upon others may often be even the more misguided and deluded. Gentle reader, unmet friend: Where is there to be found, any beginning of collaboration among equals? Thinking in terms of action, in order to act more thoughtfully, there remains only one precious beginning, immediately, over which we, I and thou, may indeed together take responsibility and share any control at all: And that is interaction between ourselves, specifically just discussion at all to begin with, and setting an agenda thereto. Because. in the words of Janine Garner, “Failing to engage Is engaging with failure.” And indeed, all heteronomy is but craven and futile pseudo-engagement.

Speaking of heteronymous pseudo-engagement, what has even been called: Totalitarian Interactivity, notwithstanding whatever illusion of choice, metaphorically leads the site visitor about by the proverbial nose, channeling attention step by step, into whatever the target audience is intended to consider most important. And unless there seems to be any reason for suspicion or ambivalence, simply knowing what to do relieves dystress. But FoolQuest.com garners attention so rarely if at all, only in so far as content is seen, saliently and evocatively, to address whatever particular interests and concerns of the individual site visitor motivated in whatever their own personal dystress and thereby guided to chart their own course through these hypertexts, autonomously and independently. And so, whatever good accrues, as yet little collaboration actually results or endures. Such indeed is the ineffectual anarchy as per all dire predictions from heteronomy, all for wont of uncritical unity under leadership authority. Can we do better?

It may be despite rare favorable response to content, to the discovery of information deemed useful or the ebullience of sentiments shared, all plans of action proposed here on FoolQuest.com may nevertheless often still meet with rejection out of hand as taboo. After all, drawing attention by open criticism of status quo, let alone actually fighting back against abuse, is always risky and intimidating. But then, generally speaking, most of what is seldom or never tried and remains obscure no matter how actually quite promising and effective, only remains so neglected because of taboo, one way or another. For taboo raises conditioned dystress. And taboo need not be all that dramatic, nameless pathos calling attention to itself. Taboo is an expression of ambivalence. Small wonder then, ambivalence regarding taboo, and taboo upon ambivalence. Taboo can be a knee-jerk or a blind spot of crimestop FNORD . And if difficult personal objectives are not to be achieved only by long and arduous and onerous conformity, compliance and self-sacrifice, then any path to success can only be ferreted out by creativity, the eustress of curiosity, investigation, feasibility study and risk assessment, along any path less taken, into those very realms of taboo thought, in quest of that proverbial better mousetrap.

Helpful to one another with all whereof oneself struggles even without answers, expertise or authority, autonomy and collaboration among equals fosters relationship and not objectification so characteristic of heteronomy to hierarchical dominance. And where does any of that begin, if not between any two or more individuals? As shall be demonstrated, sustained engagement in the present strategic Dialectic and feasibility study, can be key to the first glimmer of happiness. If you've got a better offer, then take it. Here we are, I and thou. Why hesitate: Let's talk it over. This is important. I look forward to hearing from you.




Inevitably salient trust issues pursuant to collaboration among equals
Too good to be true?

Socialization is that which none dare call: Indoctrination or brainwash. The doctrine of the cult of socialization turns upon what is called: osmosis, of "soaking up" memes even throughout childhood, a concept of intuition shaped by behavioral conditioning. Thence faith is placed in the Zen no-mind autopilot to provide for correct and normal living in heteronomy to uncritical second nature in an unexamined life. All manner of taboo questions thereby banished from very thought, deserve our fullest attention in order ever to achieve collaboration among equals. For as Socrates famously declares: "The unexamined life is not worth the living for a human being." And in the skepticism of rational science and systematic doubt, by default any hypothesis cannot be credible without compelling evidence in support. And thus, for example, supernatural claims will not taken seriously until ever actually corroborated. But for believers in the paranormal, there is simply no knowing which scoundrel, in a world of charlatanry, might nevertheless somehow be blessed to work miracles. Thus in the antirational surreal malignant optimism of faith so famously embraced as the evidence of things unseen, does hope ever spring eternal, from the very reasoning by which the very search rightly ought to be abandoned as untenable, being premised as it is, upon entirely unreliable Epistemological Methodologically depending entirely upon miracle of its own in order ever to yield discovery; only consistent, after all, with most religion, wherein religious knowledge itself is proclaimed as only resultant from ancient miracle and prayer for miracle anew. Indeed, it turns out that the most far-fetched scams repelling to all but the most gullible, craftily induce only the most promising marks to self-select.

“The real confidence game feeds on the desire for magic, exploiting our endless taste for an existence that is more extraordinary and somehow more meaningful. [...] As long as the desire for, for a reality that is somehow greater than our everyday existence, remains, the confidence game will thrive” declares Maria Konnikova, author of 'The Confidence Game.' Because in the word of Friedrich Nietzsche: “If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.” Konnikova's advice is never to be greedy for anything better and more easy, but always to pay full price in any of life's transactions. As if no one ever got the shaft that way! A racket is any dishonest scheme or ongoing transaction, all not as it contrives to present itself and as is tacitly accepted or endured by the majority of those involved, but in actuality a scam or fraud, a deceptive practice of coercion and manipulation conducted for the benefit of a few cronies at the expense of the many. Are not various rackets are even highly respectable confidence games of finesse, attrition and Existential bait-and-switch, all predicated upon the most conventional and pedestrian lowered expectations, and all just to avoid disappointment? Or are radically lowered expectations indeed our only salvation to realism? Indeed is all appeal to an existence that is more extraordinary and somehow more meaningful, all exploration into the very nature of uniquely individual peak experience, indeed the very discussion, by definition exactly such deception and exploitation, merely one sort of confidence game or another? Indeed, is Philosophy itself, as so often alleged, nothing more than the most ancient bait down ever the same primrose path, just hoping it will all make more sense later on?

Otherwise, what are the salient characteristics of the genuine article? One answer is that since the con game mimics the appearance of the genuine opportunity, therefore the true golden opportunity will be, at least at first blush, indeed indistinguishable from the facile con game. And therefore, with any airtight scam, even the most skeptical and rigorous due diligence will only engage the mark all the more and suck them in ever deeper. Hence indeed it has been observed that the best defense is never to to take the bait if it seems too good to be true, and always simply to walk away, regardless of temptation and opportunity presented. Indeed vulnerability is costly, but so is chronic mistrust.

And yet, another answer is that the genuine quest for an existence that is more extraordinary and somehow more meaningful, may nevertheless quite simply lack the time honored allure of the con game, and may even therefore be taken by many as a very inept con game indeed. Uncertainty and fallibility are notions that will never escape the lips of any seasoned confidence trickster, even however respectable, imagining themselves beyond every familiar deception of their own nefarious art. But those Fake it Till You Make it confidence tricksters themselves may often turn out to be the most vulnerable of all marks, yearning as they do, more than anyone else, for an existence that is greater and more extraordinary and somehow more meaningful.

As the saying goes: “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the lyrics.” Alas, however, the worst most malignant untrustworthy yet profoundly understanding false friend may learn that very tune, even the more clear as bell. For there remain five enduring core human motivations for continually trusting the wrong people: To hook the mark, the untrustworthy individual appears as first to offer the understanding one so desperately craves, charismatic validation all one so one craves to believe about oneself, that at long last somebody finally recognizes and appreciates ones talents. Confidence is gained plumbing the depth of the nature of the gaps in one's confidence and self-esteem and all that one so longs to believe about oneself and one's life, all of that precise flattery, exactly one yearns to hear, so one follows them and omits due diligence. Alas, the outcome of trusting the wrong people, when it all goes so terribly wrong, can be most traumatic. Perhaps that at all helps explain how so many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

Now, the core pitch of FooolQuest.com may seem particularly laughable and indeed foolish, being so entirely insubstantial because of exactly the the frank honesty of any proposition of starting from scratch. Worse, its about starting from scratch together, responsibly, in Socratic Wisdom without pretense, embracing all due diligence of skepticism and systematic doubt without false reassurance. It's not much of a hook, unless that validation of fundamental competence that one one so dearly yearns for accrues only by way of friendship in autonomy. And the risk begins in even getting ones hopes up. Moreover, if even seems to be going well, there is no telling what greater escalating personal investment will be called for, including in all good conscience, every endeavor to draw in others as well. The initial investment is in the autonomy of Socratic Dialectic, the concerted effort of simply in holding up ones end of discussion over time.

As my father Professor Joseph Agassi is wont to observe, the world is divided into the knowers and the seekers, the know-it-alls and the skeptics. The knowers, all manner of know-it-all gurus, their acolytes and sycophants, are everywhere. But to quote from the Tao Teh Ching by Lau Tzu: “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” And indeed, some are more serious and reserved than others in their desperate undertaking of conformity, keeping their own counsel of whatever secrets they think that they have, and others more simplistic and delusional or cult like and hence more eager, mendacious and compulsively proselytizing. It's okay to be want to be persuasive. Only strive to be as rational, honest and open minded as you would have others be towards you. In fair play, the truth will out.

A coach or online guru, leading the site visitor about by the nose, first needs to draw in the mark by making whatever often simplistic point, into further involvement and eventually whatever billable guidance. Whereas here on FoolQuest.com full access for all comes free of charge to all; and I respond personally to all inquiries. What then am I selling? It's more about what I am buying into. I am not trying to fob off anything on others, then standing apart and keeping my distance. I am offering my full participation for like in kind. This is all on the level without pretense, just another wannabe reaching out to fellow aspirants. I might no have what you want, but can we seek for it together? Alas, the rare site visitors who are passionately interested, tend to be self-directed and find their own way through whatever content even actually to pour over, that one way or another, information or sentiment, that they will most strongly respond and relate to. And that's pretty damn good for just reading! But in the words of Benjamin Disraeli: “Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.” Alas that steadfast and trustworthy partners in collaboration remain even more scarce. I am sometimes recruited into the ill-fated projects proposed by others. This has taught me about the oft neglected fundamentals of functional and fulfilling collaboration towards success, what to expect, and all that prospective collaboration partners would be wise to discuss beforehand.

Any tremendously successful would be guru riding in on high horse, charismatically reaching out to uplift the hoi polio, is all too often in actuality naught but another scheming and exploitative charlatan. And yet for some reason, though precisely by contrast, my own manifest and life long candidly abject failure may nevertheless fail to reassure! It remains, however, that the influential might seem somewhat incompetent were they ever to endorse or invest in those unfortunates not only remaining ineffective at helping themselves, but who will not even show the world any effort towards constructive cooperation even just amongst ourselves, in seeking to investigate and address unmet needs. Gentle reader, unmet friend, let's just be adults: What you see is what you get. There are no tangible assets or celebrity endorsements. I have no credentials to show. You may be any kind of expert or not, but I myself claim no authority. I make no confident short term predictions. I present no impressive charts and graphs. I can't even do math. Content must therefore stand or fall upon whatever its own relevant merits. And I want to find out what you think, and not just how you react. I make no unrealistic promises. I'm still just another wannabe with a cable modem! So maybe I'm just kidding myself like everybody else. But what should I take seriously that you will not? I don't want your money or your devotion. There is no deadline or other pressure. I am not here to psyche you up and then leave you in the lurch. Therefore do me similar kindness. At this juncture, I ask of you no more demanding investment than at all attentive reading and discussion: Dialectics including as ever required, whatever careful meta-discussion and clarification, upon ratification of the salient agenda at hand. And I do as much for others. But thank you, nevertheless. For in the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” We live in an attention economy. And in an attention economy, in the sheer exchange of attention, optimal reciprocal engagement, the prime agenda of this website, FoolQuest.com, remains in very principle perhaps the greatest bargain even conceivable. And to begin with, interaction with yours truly is a personal investment that tends to yield good returns. Indeed, without false modesty, this is one of the reasons that I make such a good friend. Gentle reader, I await your response ever with keen anticipation. And yet, for all to see, there is no hurry or pressure.

In any genuine opportunity, due diligence is crucial. Alas, to reiterate, ones own due diligence may function as the convincer drawing the mark into a well crafted and airtight scam or any trap of desire and wishful thinking. The safest thing may be just to walk away without another thought. Alas however, chronic mistrust may conceivably become costly in social failure, lost opportunity, isolation and vulnerability to exploitation. In the detection of danger, false positives may be costly. It often seems that we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. As life is so often said to be the journey and not just the destination, the challenge ever remains to travel well, so to speak. And that will be easier said than done. Alas, whatever one desires, if even actually feasible, there will often be a cost, a sacrifice for oneself or others, a price likely too high, even purpose defeating and therefore pointless, Absurd, one way or another; and some or other howsoever daunting risk as well. Indeed, Konnikova contends that only insistence upon paying whatever realistic full price at whatever expected sacrifice, affords protection from cons that purport to offer something for nothing. Further more, risk cannot be eliminated, only managed. Which brings us to any need for working agreement: There is only one thing, immediately, over which we, I and thou, may indeed together take responsibility and share any control at all: And that is the present taboo strategic discussion upon an agenda of how better to foster and cultivate ingenuity, innovation and liberating individual power over social life, putting our heads together in more effective collaboration, testing my own prediction that by talking more seriously with one another, we can indeed be at all happier even in the immediate short term, indeed that the very deliberation together, reciprocal engagement already breaking helplessness and lonely isolation, can therefore be found interesting and uplifting all on its own. And this seems like a small personal investment for something of any intrinsic value come what may. But there remains the risk of talking to strangers.

Therefore let us all only hope that we won't simply con ourselves! Let us then undertake any modicum of honest soul searching and feasibility study. Reciprocity at all will be undermined by sheer chronic mistrust and the toxic terror of somehow being taken in. For such inspires the boneheaded dysfunctionality of individual sabotage squandering group effort, veritably snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If there is any commitment, it is simply to one another at all. For many are those who will yet prefer the secure certainty in all of nothing all to themselves, to the uncertainty in part of something, of hope t all, with anyone else.

There remains a middle ground between lonely and powerless self-reliance on the one hand, and massive programs of sweeping social change beyond individual reach, on the other: Smaller social circles or relationships of two or more individuals, often tend to forge their own social contracts amongst themselves. Though again, there are polar extremes: On the one hand, group dynamics may be unimaginatively bound to prior socialization, or else on the other hand abandoning all propriety, they may co-validate and normalize any conceivable deviance no matter how senseless and destructive. Both extremes remain depressingly common and even cult like and exploitative. Moreover, elements of both may coexist and manifest in the group dynamics of the self same social circle. Indeed, there may often be found no more staunch conformists than the most flagrant deviants, and no deeper conviction than in such blithely Absurd hypocrisy in true to life Comedy of Manners, desperate mimesis of all that one can never be.

But far more rarely, from the practice of Menschlichkeit derives the sensation of power, respect and friendship experienced via any serious input and consultation from individual participants, there can even be a third option in an agenda of modest beginnings true rebellion and positive disintegration via creative solution finding in order better to meet individual needs. Now, there's a social skill we don't often hear about! -an extreme competence of autonomy rather than of heteronomy, unique to collaboration among equals...

A parable: Imagine a seminar on how to form a bowling team. The attendees share all manner of sensitive personal disclosure, reciprocally sworn to silence once the seminar adjourns. What happens and all that is said here, stays here. So do they all solemnly vow. From the bowling team organizing guru they learn the purported fool proof secrets towards each their similar objectives. Afterwards, eyes never meeting again, they all quietly disperse, never to interact again, having girded their loins for the arduous outreach at hand. Nobody seems to have even noticed that there were enough people in the room right then and there, for the formation of a regulation bowling team! Easier said than done of course, but then, what isn't? The option of organizing, of intentional group formation, is either ignored or treated in over simplification so that the effort only drifts apart, entirely forgotten. Any serious innovation of intentional interaction by design, of tailor made social contract, remains unheard of.

And yet it seems only fair enough to wonder, perhaps the author only so deplores and finds so baffling and distasteful some or other perfectly ordinary modes of human interaction that said author simply isn't very good at and with which said author has become extremely frustrated and embittered. And what an arrogant luzer! In my defense from any such even the most temptingly invited Ad Hominem, it should hardly come as any surprise to discover that anyone might ever prefer instead to play to whatever their own self perceived strengths, and would much prefer any imaginable setting, milieu or situation in any way at all more conducive thereto. And my intention is to pose that question, not only for myself, but also as to what that might mean for each of us, and how best to bring it about. For though the world often seems so rife and overrun with all those know-nothing know-it-alls, we seekers in life yet endure. And to reiterate, here on this website FoolQuest.com, find my own proverbial Message in a Bottle. It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.




Intersubjectivity and Dialectical miscommunication repair
Writing is rewriting and never a waste of time.

The effort can be so frustrating, seeking to engage with others who won't play ball. But perhaps I am expecting too much. To begin with, complaint of incomprehension is simply not the same thing as actually requesting clarification, much less, as per Simone Weil, the rarest and purest generosity in helpfully paying attention, the level of feedback and critique that writers may actually deem beneficial. Indeed, nor does even the most strident demand for writing to be more clear, imply good will and cooperation to help, facilitate or to explain whatever the problem or ambiguity needing correction might be. Because that may entail Active Reading and Listening, whereas short attention span, only skimming the simple and familiar, may promote assumptions that writing is similarly easy, with the expectations of the stream of consciousness to run sparkling clear, direct and shallow in all things and for all people. But even in honest and trustworthy good faith, in real life no less than fiction, there may remain challenging dramatic obstacles of miscommunication, misunderstanding, and incomprehension outright. And this is no anomaly, but merely fallibility in the human condition. After all, we only learn from openly detecting and correcting our mistakes, much as from rough draft to polished prose. In the words of Neil Gaiman “The process of doing your second draft is the process of making it look like you knew what you were doing all along.”

Gentle reader, is there anything in the present text that you do not yet understand, that so far remains unclear to you? Frankly, are you even interested? And is there anything you struggle to work out and express in response? Alas, anxiety and even sheer Anti-Socratic ideological hostility may masquerade as incomprehension. Otherwise disagreement and even disapproval may be expressed in candor and lucidity. Gentle reader, whatever your incomprehension may be your greatest gift to me, if only you will share! Alas, nothing so helpful ensues from paralytic anxiety or simmering hostility as all too often engenders merely 'Dismissive Incomprehension, a derisive protest of purported incomprehension in order to dismiss, demean, denigrate and undermine another's position. Instead, the discovery of ignorance should confer every precious blessing of Socratic Wisdom. Indeed, a feature of such anti-intellectual denial, that inculcated defense mechanism that Orwell named: crimestop, the deeply conditioned reflex of curtailing thoughtcrime, is that important questions are taboo and even actually regarded as boring by the fanatical hosts of the aforesaid crimestop memplex.

Court stenographers each develop their own unique shorthand, unintelligible to anyone else. After all, most anciently, writing began simply as a means of private personal note taking. Indeed to this day, there are still those who tie knots as personal reminders, as knots tied on string were a means of writing and record keeping. Problems began when writing, so idiosyncratic a discipline, came into practice as a means of communication. And there's the rub: When I strive to get my ideas across but another fails to grasp my deathless prose and take my meaning, I often find myself at something of a loss, frustrated because every part of my composition seems so perfectly lucid, because I already know and understand all that I intend and so struggle to express to others!

Please believe me that if I already could glean precisely what was unclear, how so any why, I would have already have revised the text accordingly. I am not an obscurantist! Indeed, of necessity, revision is ongoing. All writing confronts the challenge of understanding the audience. It can be difficult to predict what will constitute essential background and context, or else what detail merely belabors the point. And such is all the more the case in any outreach to any as yet undiscovered audience. In truth, communication often requires deep engagement, unwavering diligence and concerted effort on all sides, all so often undermined by passive hostility and recalcitrance. General complaints and demands may be too lazy and often just don't help. Perhaps such are somehow intended as somewhat unfriendly rejection and passive withdrawal in order to place the recipient in a position where their only recourse towards any progress, will be to work hard, fathom and fully embrace at all more orthodox thinking. And that's just not very nice! Or else there are some who may be the frustrated desire for simplicity and succinct brevity. But reality is often complicated. Or at any rate, such might be my own understanding of questions and problems that the author, yours truly, struggles with and investigates. I might at least as yet, just possibly fail to glean easy and graceful simplicity from the often frustrating futile and needlessly complicated Existentially Absurd clusterfuck that is life. Not without oversimplification, distortion and even worse confusion. The cult of amateurism and the fashionable contempt for expertise and meaningful depth of complexity in broadest knowledge notwithstanding, life and reality are often complicated. And this should come as no surprise. “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” - Proverbs 27:17 (KJV) In truth, that much less vexation of intellectual overload accrues from motivated interest in topic and content that matters. Take this too, gentle reader, in good faith as intended, and therefore please do be specific in analysis/deconstruction. Let's buckle down and pick apart my text together, and resolve whatever specific ambiguities arising, even for just a paragraph or two, just see see how that works out. Can that actually be so much to ask? Is it just too much trouble? As compared to what else, and to what end or desired result?

Worse, many people have been taught to regard all who disagree with them, not as dialectical partners in adversarial process into the crucible of truth, but as the dreaded ideological enemy to be bullied relentlessly. Crimestop then naturally comes into play, forestalling any delving into opposing reasoning, much less actually unraveling ambiguities or communication errors. Thus are embraced with such hateful fervor, the ever malignant Teachings of the Anti-Socratic and such travesty of discourse accordingly, in all devious and dishonest poor sportsmanship. Moreover, such fanatical Anti-Socratics may even so disapprove when they disagree, that they actually refuse to provide cogent criticism or rebuttal precisely because they do indeed well understand the analytical value of criticism and controversy, indeed for fear thereby of helping anyone they disagree with to sharpen and better convey their thoughts, indeed for fear, in short, of actually advancing Dialectic.

In the famous words of Aristotle: “All things in life are philosophical.” Indeed, many decisions in life benefit from habits of clear thinking and often beg question of Axiology, of values and priorities, and of Epistemology and how anything can be known. Philosophy after all, is founded upon the cultivation of habits of clear thinking beginning with the analysis and articulations of ambiguity and error, all so crucial to clear thinking together, to Dialectical miscommunication repair. To reiterate: Writing is rewriting and never a waste of time. To quote famously from 'Dune' by Frank Herbert: “Fear is the mind killer.” But what can we be so afraid of? To quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” For as the saying goes, no question is too stupid to ask, and no answer too wise to be given. I cannot abide people who instead of speaking up, pointing out ambiguities and posing questions, only dummy up and remain silent whenever they do not understand! Alas, FoolQuest.com is not for people who operate that way. To all such individuals are proffered most sincere apologies for wasting their precious time. Philosophy and habits of clear thinking are impossible for the timid and unquestioning. To anyone so muddled and affected, please feel free to return whenever they feel more ready .

Alas that many people will often make do in just getting the gist, while other will even pretend to understand when actually they have no clue. Worst are bullies nurturing whatever festering hostility. For if you make them feel secretly foolish, then they will be determined to return the favor! But honest incomprehension, so fundamental to Socratic Wisdom, is a tremendous gift to Dialectic clear thinking together. Because in order ever to delve into anything entirely new and different, it will be necessary to be able freely to question and to discuss that which one does not yet fully or even at all comprehend. All too commonly, traumatic behavioral conditioning as experienced particularly in formal education, immersive socialization into cultures wherein mistakes and especially honest ignorance (not knowing) are scorned and punished, anything new becomes vaguely threatening awkward and taboo, provoking only anxiety and blank silence.

Granted that there is still no means by which directly to observe or experience another's mental state or consciousness, but only behavior, in Cognitive Behaviorism, enduring so influential and ubiquitous, and unlike Behaviorism hither to, compelled to accept inference of comprehension in behaviors unexplainable by sheer conditioned reflex. And yet in even the most Cognitive Behaviorism, communication is nevertheless one way, operant only towards inducing in the subject behavioral compliance. Clearly this intellectually impoverished and emotionally stunted paradigm of heteronomy to authoritarian coercion so defining of Cognitive Behaviorism, so disturbingly popular and respectable, remains as deplorably inadequate to humanity as it is to science. And yet the salient challenge of Wittgensteinean paralysis remains: Can any message as ever received and understood by any recipient, ever be brought into correspondence with the message as intended by any sender? In short, is improved intersubjectivity even howsoever at all imperfectly achievable? Most often, not without the effort. Otherwise, what will ever accrue, far from at all happily serious conversation, save merely for bypassing, blithe reciprocally unaware talking at cross-purpose, is exchange which is not genuine communication because it lacks sufficient Intersubjectivity and does not carry at all the same meanings or even purpose, intention or point at all between the participants. Is there any antidote to Wittgensteinean paralysis? Only by embracing doubt and narrowing relevant focus. Only by rejecting impossible perfectionism inherent to demands for pure and complete understanding of meaning in the mid of another. - ultimately requiring nothing less nonsensically surreal and impossible than Zen apprehension of totality of being before anything else may even be considered.

Improved intersubjectivity is achieved when the comprehension of any specific and particular message by the recipient, is brought into closer correspondence with the intended message content of the sender; a desired result which even by itself, often requires purposeful, interested, engaged and adequately attentive and sustained effort in Dialectical collaboration, indeed fully engaged Dialectical Miscommunication Competence and Conversational Adequacy in Dialectical collaborative miscommunication repair. If all of that will be too much to ask, even so as to afford merely whatever most preliminary discussion any chance at all, then strategic discourse and feasibility study can only choke, sputter, collapse and dissipate. To reiterate: I simply cannot abide helpless ninnies, so utterly bereft of all Miscommunication Competence, who dummy up when they don't understand, or flagrant and deliberate obscurantist who so willfully refuse to help and offer any clarification, whenever they are simply not understood! As the saying goes, no question is too stupid to ask, and no answer too wise to be given. Never try to fake it. Don't make do just getting the gist of things if even that. Whenever you don't understand, please just speak up! Because, rest assured, I will do as much for you. Always point out and/or correct ambiguities, linguistic or otherwise, as ever arising. Because I certainly will.

In order substantively and coherently to engage in controversy which is the free exchange of criticism and even to offer relevant suggestions, in short, to help clarify and improve anyone else's message and ideas beyond just grammar and syntax, is necessary first to glean understanding of the content and intent thereof. Hence the struggle for intersubjectivity, as need be. Writing is rewriting and never a waste of time. But impressions without comprehension are unhelpful and frustrating bypassing, often neurotic and ambivalent.

Similarly, such urgent advice how better to appeal to any broader audience, is senseless without any idea of the target audience. And I do not know who is my intended audience. I do not know for whom I have omitted crucial background and context, and for whom I merely belabor the obvious. I desire, first of all, to find out who might be interested. Only then will it make any sense to discuss how better to engage them. The random casual chance site visitor is unlikely to fit. And if they are generally quite content with whatever they already prefer on the Internet, then they won't need anything new and difficult. Indeed, any content at all will only be of interest or appealing if at all, only pursuant to whatever their own agenda and not that of FoolQuest.com Likely then, such will not be my target audience.

It's not that I refuse any other entirely unrelated topic of discussion. But that is another matter entirely. As to the discourse at hand, no one need feel rejected from anything they don't actually want in the first place! This is not snobbery, but focus, and a confession of my limitation. You, gentle reader, are my target audience, if you can at all relate, if you find this website engaging, and care to risk returning the favor. The greatest exclusivity is by self-selection in the greatest openness. In the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Impatient short attention span engenders resultant susceptibility to intellectual starvation, emotional isolation and half-baked pipedream, to unrealistic even if traditional and well accepted common sense simple solutions to daunting and complex problems. Indeed, will not the masses ever flock under the banner of promised help to achieve all of our dreams, allay all our fears, confirm our suspicions, and crush all our enemies? Why, even the very admission that of course it's all much more complicated, is only bait to draw us in with hope that, however confusing and irrelevant, it will all begin making better sense later on. But will it really ever? Or are you just going to get hurt? Indeed, be honest: Even reading this, you must be thinking: Is the wool only being pulled over my eyes yet again, right now? When will we ever learn!

• What sort of Sitesurfer are you?

Know thyself! Don't become a short attention span webstatistic!

Abandoned each to our own devices

See what becomes from rejecting human fallibility, ourselves and one another

People online, so desperate for any illusion of certainty in such an uncertain world, are so often gathered in such nigh religious fervor of eager cult-like internalization and pep rally co-validation of prevalently unquestioned assumptions, earnest preparation and mighty struggle towards social success, as though they were all cramming for an exam. Knee-jerk conformists are often indeed exactly so callow and emotionally retarded. Truly, they are all very much alone even together, and figuratively barking up the proverbial wrong tree! For such indeed is heteronomy to the cult of socialization. Prevailing wisdom ever extols the crucial importance of making friends, networking and establishing for oneself a social circle. But loneliness and despair often motivate entry into bad relationships and worse social circles. Social reality, however consequential, remains consensus chimera, while individual people are real. Building any sort of more functional and congenial social circle, might best begin not with any grand social vision, but first with discourse upon any notion of a more functional protocol, interpersonally, better fitting than will be found available off-the-rack, so to speak. One that nurtures autonomy and authenticity instead of cultivating heteronomy and dependency. In theory, we each and all benefit from the purest freedom of association. But in practical implementation, one may often find oneself at the mercy of others, all one's efforts neither appreciated or reciprocated. There is no effective script to follow, no secret of wisdom to share. What then can one do? Can anyone ever sidestep the Great Faceless They, and simply reach out to one another in order to stop playing anyone else's game? Here we are, I and thou.

We must all expect to confront interpersonal or relationship challenges, but not until first overcoming whatever barriers to entry, social hurdles and stumbling blocks in one's path, of making connections to begin with which often first entails integration and embedment into society, very much easier said than done, prevailing opacity demanding all manner of convoluted special aptitudes, full time. Clearly, there are many people, one way or another, who fail in society or anything else because of their own shortcomings and personal difficulties of one kind or another. But that doesn't explain everything, because the most ordinary people and indeed highly capable and personable individuals, our best and brightest, frequently also fail in society and in life. Is then any deficiency in society conceivable, in social opportunities and demands placed upon individuals? We all know that society frequently fails to meet our various different individual needs. Why then do even the most ruthless and Machiavellian nevertheless often seem to assume that social integration is somehow foolproof? Frequently, it simply is not. Indeed, failure is inbuilt and pervasive, perhaps because, purposefully, social life is less of a conduit than a filter. Security takes precedence over accessibility, and frequently, neither accrue. And it remains hardly unusual to find oneself set up for failure. It is not even clear that any service to the end user is even a priority in society at large. It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. Perhaps society is not user friendly but actually user hostile even by design and Absurd. Indeed, the very concept of socialization both suggests and then obfuscates that very conclusion, cynicism which comes as no shock to anyone with any modicum of street-smarts. It's a jungle out there! Nothing works. Far from serving the individual, the function of society is simply to push us each out of the way. Take the hint or become bullied outright. Indeed life in society, often being so cutthroat competitive, may often take on such paranoid subtext, like unto recognizance under enemy surveillance! No wonder anyone feels insecure. Obviously it is necessary for the individual to adapt to any society. And so, guidance to that end becomes crucial. But with social adaptation and guidance thereto, as with anything else, if of necessity some is good, it hardly follows that more is better, or that its all the same anyhow.

And truth to tell, many folks are downright unfriendly, distant and even hostile, indeed, one way or another, crazy jealous, exploitative, conspiratorial, and willfully obstructive between others. And often this is cultural. But even putting aside real palpable ill will and bullying outright, there remains, as shall be seen, all manner of frustrating inefficiency in making connections and cementing attachment, interpersonally. And we may often look to peer groups to smooth the way, even simply to sustain propinquity long enough, even however awkwardly and artificially of the most dharmic social skill. And there's the rub! Because, if it's hard enough to find even just one friend, how then will be any easier to identify, locate and befriend whatever sort of suitable social collective entity? According to legend, Diogenes struggled to find even one lone and singular honest soul, let alone an honest crowd. Hence, joining groups or entering social circles in order to meet new people, only devolves one difficulty into an even more daunting challenge. Indeed, it may often be recommended, just the opposite, to assemble social groups from proximate and extended existing connections. So, which comes first? How many are lucky enough to have true friends networking for them? More often, the group has its own covert agenda and the individual, exploited, one way or another, must simply make do. Society then offers no conduit or primrose path, but inflicts a social minefield full of needless and insane stumbling blocks and barriers to entry, all leading to traps of collective exploitation as the only refuge. Any better is fortunate, highly functional and exceptional. Society cannot love you. Society is not be your friend. Society is the baleful oppressor ever watching everything that one does. And accordingly, those who may see fit to come forward volunteering to correct anyone who opens their eyes, would never dare so to overstep all bounds by such flagrant presumption of their own superiority and anyone else subordination, except by so blithely believing themselves somehow to be channeling something so vastly great and good, transcendent beyond themselves. For such is the pervasive delusion of all heteronomy, that frighted false fire with no genuine warmth.

Social support is deemed among the key determinants of success. To have social support denotes that one is cared for, has assistance available from other people, and that one is part of a supportive social network. Indeed, while ones fewer closer friends may be valued as more important emotionally, broader acquaintance and connections are key to all manner of assistance, resource and opportunity. What won't people do for such a prize? And what will people sink to without it?

In the words of Hans Selye: “‘Realistic people’ who pursue ‘practical aims’ are rarely as realistic or practical, in the long run of life, as the dreamers who pursue their dreams.” Indeed, if there is anyone more callow than even the most toadying sycophantic utter tool, it's a wannabe utter tool! Even the most emotionally immature desperately phony and sycophantic people pleasing toady, is better operant and more happily adapted than one consumed not even in the aspiration, but merely in lonely mimesis and dilettante fantasy, solitary or at all co-validated, a broken tool who can only yearn for such approval, conditional strokes and rewards ever garnered by a real pro, a proficiently sycophantic utter tool. For there is no end of madness merely in struggling to be completely normal, or even more so in the bizarre pretense. Unless normalcy is truly the life dream of unflagging dedication and struggle, beyond short term practicality, can the prize of average mediocrity ever be attained. Otherwise, expectations must be even further lowered. All the same, either such life script, narrative or unconscious life plan, callow and arrested variants upon the same dreary theme as they are, may all be blithely rationalized merely as means to whatever ends, indeed in accord with a somewhat superficial and misanthropic worldview. In truth, however, they only feign such rational detachment and howsoever conduct within dharma. The actual deeper motivation is another matter: Ostensible pragmatism and even the most benumbed cynicism often rationalizes instead that entrenched attachment and profoundly misplaced reverent sublimation of passionate libido, the Existential bait-ands-switch that is heteronomy. For they have forgotten how lonely they are for anyone simply to accept them, and instead fixate for approval upon desperate subsumation into that dehumanized tyrannical abstraction of collective membership and mass consensus, The Great Faceless They. And there will never be too much of that proverbial Kool-Aid to figuratively drink! There is always more.

To quote Neil Gabler: “American society is a society in which individuals have learned to prize social skills that permit them, like actors, to assume whatever rôle- the occasion demands and to "perform" their lives rather than just live them.” Competent or incompetent, whether in true hardnosed practicality or in sheer aimless and empty acting

out of mimesis, many all the same remain no less consumed with the burning question of how to perform as expected and to fit in: How best to placate The Great Faceless They, thereby to obtain the key to life. Much as they may deny it even to themselves, they are fully buying in, figuratively gulping down the proverbial Kool-Aid! And even bringing into question such secret deep-seated dedication may be as alarming to them as revelation that there is no Santa Claus and no fellowship with God!

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? I might not have what you want, but can we seek for it together? It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. The ugly truth yet remains that we have lost sight of all that is of such intrinsic value. As shall be expounded in rigorous examination, the prevailing common sense and sheer sublimation have got the proverbial cart so far before the metaphorical horse as figuratively to fade beyond the vanishing point of our very horizons! Stick with the program! The program never fails, you fail the program! Always such bullshit! It's high time to challenge all such pointless exercise in futility, to confront the proverbial elephant in the room. to challenge all pipe dreams of convention and to open our eyes to blatant and pervasive systemic stumbling blocks and failure, as only befitting seekers, by first of all by demanding:

But what does the ever burning question of how to fit in socially, even actually mean in the first place? After all, clearly working out the right question must precede finding any accurate or useful answer, and therefore problem statement remains ever crucial to solution finding.

Indeed, some might better rephrase the question at hand, even as most anciently, towards the striving for correctly skilled conduct within dharma: How to transcend all anxiety and learn such peerless and consummate skill to then initiate more capable and operant interaction with one another? But capable and operant in what way or sense, and all to what end or purpose? Well, obviously, towards performance as expected in order to fit in, thereby to placate The Great Faceless They from whom all good things flow, thereby at long last to obtain the key to life! For such is toadying social cognition and sycophancy by which to predict the responses of others, prediction of future behavior entirely on the basis, not of care or empathy and Emotional Intelligence, but of rôles of relative social standing, degrees of kinship and rank, and in recognition of third-party social relationships, all distinctly and uncomfortably non-egalitarian. It is after all, a truism and hard to deny, that of course compromise is necessary for getting along in society. Not merely compromise, but toadying sycophantic open ended and unrequited dedication life long, is the traditional expectation. Dharma is a bitch!

Heteronomy, conformism and the endless dance of popularity frequently become Orwellian, all consuming, draining and tremendously costly, undermining not only autonomy, independent thinking and ambition, but even the human capacity to genuinely relate to one another, to form relationship and friendship. Indeed, that's Why Nerds Are Unpopular: Because nerds so often have authentically meaningful time consuming genuine interests and values of their own to share, with neither the time nor passion for the endlessly complicated dance of being "cool". Whereas, by interaction and accommodation only with one another as equals or near equals, individuals are even known even quite deliberately to afford one another whatever respite from onerous expectations of always "being on" and demands of society at large. With good friends one can be genuine and at ease and forge alliance in abiding trust. Indeed,. precisely such egalitarianism of collaboration among equals is characteristic of cooperation in creative problem solving, problem-driven rather than status-driven, and thus the great exception to toadying social cognition, as recognized even in seeming afterthought by Social Anthropology. And more on this presently.

After all, which comes first? Is all human interaction subordinate within the framework of society and its intractable norms, or rather, is the very fabric of society woven from relationship between individuals into an extended network? Obviously, that is only a matter pf perspective: Both assertions are always true. But which perspective will be more fruitful in discovering any true key to life at all? It may bear mention, that the very term: 'Individualism,' was only coined as a pejorative in disparagement towards a perceived trend of retreat from civic-virtue, favoring instead whatever responsibility merely to ones own more proximate relationship networks. But what reason for such a trend? Perhaps what is more capable and operant, less superficial and more mature and genuinely happy, is actually to be found in Emotional Intelligence, the vulnerable empathy of relating to one another first, I and thou, one to one, before even worrying about finer points and challenges of group dynamics, let alone whatever Social Intelligence and social skills or aptitudes in such desperate and toadying sycophantic quest of broader approval and social integration with every coveted reward and access to vital resources in society.

Therefore, not to put the proverbial cart before the horse: As it turns out, autonomy in strong and compatible relationships may be revealed as the true bedrock strengthening position of social embedment most proximately, only then in turn networking outward for inclusion and accommodation within society at large affording access not only to vital connections and resources, but best opportunity altruistically as well. Otherwise getting along in society may easily degenerate into an unpleasant and arbitrarily heteronymous pipedream and snake oil. It's all a matter of give and take, of reciprocity and welcome: Why would anyone want to put in so much more effort so unappreciated, than they tend to perceive as ever expended in return? The ever platitudinous social success gurus urge us to step out from our comfort zones. Bah, humbug!

Rather, does not the entire focus of exactly such risk taking and challenge, the very exploration towards understand, mapping and carving out some comfortable niche at all? After all, who do you prefer to meet? An aspiring pillar of the community, staunch toady to social expectation: an utter tool, or a good friend to humanity, a real mensch? And to what do you yourself aspire? The desperation for approval, or the will to power? Yet the outdated cult of socialization, manipulative behavioral conditioning in one rancid guise or variation or another, prevails. The powerlessness of the individual without influence in society, is simply accepted and taken for granted, then played upon so manipulatively. But the malignant racket of all such often senseless imperative of interminable submissive finesse, can offer no trustworthy solution. This is because all of that festering impotent vexation and mediocrity is at the root of bored and lonely suffering and frustration in the first place. This is true even when most successful on its own misguided cretin terms exactly as advertised. Though as a set up for failure, compromise and lowered expectations, the let down is that much less subtle.

Indeed, what if community is considered as no more than the aggregate of constituent relationships? What if indeed, seeming social aptitude and circumstance, are one way or another conditional upon and subordinate to relationships? What if getting along in society is not actually the key to life? What if rather, the recognized bedrock of functional individual friendship, remains the true foundation of any extended social circle? What if its not the junction of Individuals, somehow to reach out into society, but of relationships to network? What if all things being relative to frame of reference, the social world really does revolve around you? We have clearly seen that happiness depends upon how we engage and relate to one another, each of us, I and thou, gentle reader, just for starters. Needlessly opaque and convoluted heteronymous snake oil of social skills brainwash and granfalloon membership pipedreams have got the cart before the horse!

After all, ostracism, exclusion and social isolation operate not by some abstract divorce of the target Individuals from society as an entity, but by whatever practical means off Relational Bullying, social network terrorism by whatever means of sabotage and skullduggery undermining connectivity between Individuals. Under heteronomy and the veneration of authority, society has always remained suspicious, hostile, threatening, in short: the enemy, and whatever social skills, aptitudes or cognition however rationalized or romanticized, can be like handling venomous snakes, full time: Better together with trusted friends than all alone with shifty cronies. Whereas the benefits and protections afforded the individual in society, all flower under democracy, autonomy and skeptical suspicion towards authority, especially that of society in the abstract.

In defining objectives, it must ever remain crucial always to distinguish between means and ends. Some objectives are ends in and of themselves, while others are but means to greater ends in turn. And what is the ultimate objective in even being alive at all, if not simply to survive and flourish, simply to meet ones needs both intrinsic and extrinsic? And by what means most generally, if not by cooperation to help or at least gratify one another, reciprocally? Thus perhaps the agenda question needing ratification ought to be, not merely such ardent desperation for the attainment or achievement of better social standing and approval at any cost, but quite simply, how most beneficially to interact?

One promising answer endures, flying in the face of every superficial and timid non threatening anti-intellectual cultural norm of keeping it light and remaining ever agreeable:

Again: Why must it all be so difficult? Herein are submitted some very adult radically obvious suggestions, that seem better at all accepted in professional life than in personal life, in the alternatives to social skills, collective membership most broadly, and aimless over reliance upon propinquity: First of all, let's all work to regain that lost and atrophied executive function: Let's all become at all better organized at making contacts, following up intentionally, purposefully and systematically, and convivially maintaining interaction. But then what? Without the all-consuming social rat race, what shall we do with ourselves together? What will keep us occupied just long enough simply for metaphorically breaking the proverbial ice? To answer a question with another question: What is important to you? What makes life worth living? In short, whither arête?

When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along?

Trustworthy happy people talk more seriously together freely, and with less small talk, deliberating Dialectically, strategically in feasibility study, intentionally, purposefully and substantively, in controversy awhich is the exchange of welcome criticism, with civility as autonomous equals in optimal reciprocal engagement. Happiness comes in the Menschlichkeit of unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility and meeting ones needs for capable interaction and agenda setting with responsible others, in true spirit of friendship and honesty, making progress every day as a real mensch. The class of people who find it the easiest to make friends and forge new connections, overlaps greatly with the class of people who live better rounded and richer lives. Happy people thrive and are more productive, likely to choose creative activities and cooperation, deriving fulfillment in meaningful and pleasurable engagement. But correlation need not imply causation, therefore the question yet remains: Which is cause and which is effect? Does serious conversation result in happiness, or is serious conversation the result of happiness? Does richer and fuller life facilitate social success, or does social success effectively enrich fuller lives? In either case, if just perhaps the process is reciprocal, functioning in either direction, then a virtuous cycle is indicated, perpetually improving only once implemented, entailing no more that whatever even tacit ratification amongst those who interact, even entirely without the approval or even the knowledge of the Great Faceless They. And that is why relationship and especially friendship arise only as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication, intentionally. And so, we have our work cut out for us, but nothing so onerous. For in the words of John Cleese: “Creativity is not a talent: it's a way of operating.” The TRUE MEANING of LIFE is that HAPPINESS is subjective wellbeing, an INDIVIDUALLY REACTIVE STATE VARIABLE to howsoever favorable circumstances, objectively. Happiness comes in Eudemonia, in the Menschlichkeit of meeting ones needs by capable interaction with responsible others.

By contrast, however, heteronymous social skills, exactly to the opposite, are predicated upon even somewhat dishonest bland agreeability, and boring, secretly lonely and interminably unhappy small talk, so bereft of unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility. The average person, inexperienced of anything more vibrant and meaningful, has become blithely jaded and accustomed to a profound social, emotional and intellectual deprivation in which so many of us find ourselves imprisoned. And clearly, this is an ever worsening vicious cycle. It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means.

Problem thereby redefined: Thus the demands of social success in ever cheerfully sycophantic toadying social cognition ever remain diametrically opposed to those of reaching out for happiness in kindness, friendship, autonomy, and Eudemonia! This is because relationship and especially friendship arise only as a byproduct of purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication, intentionally, that are both so often subject to anti-intellectual taboo, becoming increasingly awkward and even sometimes actually deemed impolite.

Why do we serve one another so poorly, if we don't like it? Why in such Absurd Existential futility must we cast about for connection in the great wide world, when here we are, I and thou? To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” Purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication are intentional and can't be faked by going through the motions or by any counterfeit of conditional strokes, because purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication is intrinsically motivated by meaningfully engaged attention. We live in an attention economy. In the words of Simone Weil: “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Approval seeking is therefore so Absurd and futile because purposeful interaction and/or substantive communication are not any objective, payoff or extrinsic reward howsoever to ever be permitted, obtained or achieved; rather intentionally purposeful interaction and/or intentionally substantive communication are, much the same as with adequate and respectful social support, not as any hoped for objective or reward, but the only viable beginning as vital as oxygen to fire, a precondition to human thriving, intrinsic and integral to personal disclosure, unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility and interpersonal relationship. Otherwise, all important social integration becomes empty and Existentially irrelevant.

And that is why we so often find two kinds of people: Those who are unhappy because they just don't fit in, and those who are unhappy because of the empty lives that they must so arduously lead simply in order to fit in. The readily available avenues of social life are often more of a frustration and an obstacle course than a conduit, another joyless, senseless and alienating chore, conditional and endless and Sisyphusian. Taught to wear masks before even finding our own faces, so many of us are steadily prevailed upon increasingly to sacrifice all authenticity and, in essence, to pretend to be someone else, someone at all more acceptable to others. Otherwise, cast aside in life, one must pay the consequences. The soul crushing emotionally void and tedious anti-intellectual rat race of social success is typically the most aimless and demeaning drudgery and disappointment, serving as the filter of mediocrity so dystressfully testing individual conformity and tolerance for lonely boredom bereft of unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility, leaving only futility in the outcomes gap.

• The Top 10 Things People Want In Life But Can’t Seem To Get - “I can't get no...”

So, is there any better even perhaps at all subversive third alternative to such miserable choices?

Sorry, the modus vivendi that you ordered, is currently out of stock!

The ugly truth is that such conservative measures as adaptive self-help/improvement and better individual social skills are unreliable at best, burdensome, oppressive and unfulfilling even when however rarely at all delivering as promised, whatever cretin success upon their own craven terms. Clearly the conventional solutions of ubiquitously callow common sense advice, are no solutions at all, but the very problem in the first place. Mysteriously, gifted students observed amongst their own gifted peers, no longer require the great and glorious boon of socialization: that which none dare call indoctrination, behavioral conditioning or brainwash. So instead of the sheer ersatz mediocrity of dumbing down our best and brightest just to meet the norm, what can be learned in Cultural Anthropology by observation of gifted interaction, for application to nourish the giftedness in us all and in every sphere of life? Cultural Anthropology studies social cognition by which to predict the responses of others, entirely on the basis of hierarchical position and distance. Such is the entrenched conviction of heteronomy that the collective can never be wrong and that cooperation is impossible among equals, impossible without obedience to leadership without which we will all be quite helpless. Only in seeming afterthought, does Cultural Anthropology also observe and recognize an exception to that dreary paradigm: Indeed cooperation among equals, cooperation in creative problem-solving (better still, sollution finding) , a mentality that is entirely different, offering escape from all of that dull primate politics, because cooperation in creative problem-solving is passionately problem-driven rather than status-driven, challenging the entirely different aptitudes of autonomy and trustworthy democratic values in action, as amongst gifted peers and dissidents, with optimal reciprocal engagement in happily serious conversation producing intrinsic gratification from intentionally substantive communication, intentionally purposeful interaction, unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility, disclosure, joy in work and in play alike.

And there's the rub!

To reiterate, it is readily observed that the people who find it the easiest to make friends and forge new connections, commonly live better rounded and richer lives to begin with. But that may be easier said than done, indeed anything of a double bind, a catch-22, given precisely the inextricability of social needs and whatever the needs of richer and more rounded lives. Because, rather than any how-to in quest for that elusive happiness via more serious meaningful conversational engagement, with less small talk, usually the recommended path to getting a life so that an improved social life might follow, is thought to entail either a) solitary interests of ones own to prevent isolation from dulling ones wits, and incoherent gloom from overwhelming ones entire conversational repertoire, or else b) getting out of the house via the cultivation of shared interests that are, in truth, the very least of actual compatibility and popularity criteria.

Thus, even the best and most neglected of the prevailing bad social advice, the only values based proposition amid the entire dull, superficial and meaningless repertoire, even still somehow only leads inexorably back to the rest of all the same ubiquitous common sense bad social advice. -in the final analysis, all no better than employment, formal education or recreation, just hanging out interminably, all so often dreary and futile, lonely and boring, even for the most gregarious. Can we imagine better? Easily:

I might not have what you want, but can we seek for it together? When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? The average person, inexperienced of anything more vibrant and meaningful, has become blithely jaded and accustomed to a profound social, emotional and intellectual deprivation in which so many of us find ourselves imprisoned. Effort and struggle may be all quickly dismissed and condemned as mere hardship, intolerable frustration and Existential futility. But there can also be the true life human drama of progress and satisfaction, growth, self-definition and discovery, perhaps even success. Besides, exactly what are the alternatives? Many extol a choice only between acceptance and despair, merely flavors of the same intimidation. Indeed, in the famous words of George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.” And to quote Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” It remains so disheartening how many people experience the same frustrated yearnings, and yet so utterly fail to find one another and connect, for wont of the wherewithal, the channels and the means. FoolQuest.com is an outreach toward the formation of just such a core group of unreasonable people applying ourselves even to the most daunting problems besetting us.

What then can be known and understood about happily serious conversation and what that consists of? And how, if at all, can any observed phenomena of happily serious conversation be duplicated at will or initiated deliberately?

Proposed strategies follow for fully engaged feasibility study.

The agenda by design is an agenda of design.

The objective will be nothing less than individual imagination of social paradise: exploration of the prospect of actually tailoring social environment to the intrinsic needs of each individual. Precisely this exploration, even being so abstract, will help cultivate that deeper reciprocal perception and understanding which is called: psychological visibility, a core value of friendship.

From analysis and feasibility study, planning will move from broadest first concept to execution in detail, thereby engaging creative problem solving, a capacity and intrinsic need entirely unique to the sizably evolved human brain, remaining uniquely egalitarian among all other social aptitudes as investigated by Cultural Anthropology.

As according to Aristotle, happiness is contingent upon the exercise but also the communication of the meaningful values of imagination, free will, personal choice, independence, competence and achievement, together with connection, self awareness and conscience informed by rationality. Moreover, happiness is not merely and actively experienced, but interactive expression and response, affiliation and shared enthusiasm. That is why even the journey of ongoing strategic discourse in earnest seeking happiness, can already be so involving and uplifting.

As per the agenda design challenge, deliberation together upon the agenda by design/agenda of design herein proposed, is advanced experimentally towards cultivation of such all important happily serious conversation, substantive communication and purposeful interaction, optimally conducive to happiness and forging relationship. It is proposed that precisely such an agenda will, first of all, help to elicit and sustain productive and crucial happily serious conversation. The question on the agenda by design, being an agenda of design, is:

How even to frame the challenge of actually tailor designing social environment to the intrinsic needs of each individual? One answer follows.

Spoiler alert! Gentle readers, unmet friends: You may prefer not to read any further right now, but instead wish to put it off and see what you can each and/or together come up with by yourselves, anything entirely different and uninfluenced.

Overcoming the boredom prone loneliness of intelligence and creativity

The social engineering of optimal social stimulus struggle, is one way to frame the challenge of actually tailoring social environment to the intrinsic needs of each individual. Discourse pursuant to the social engineering of optimal social stimulus struggle in answer to the agenda by design/agenda of design challenge, is preliminary to the FoolQuest.com design exercise, a specific procedure towards identification of individually unique pleasurable triggers and indicators of value, those rare and fleeting experiences of fulfillment in fully engaged pleasurably heightened sensation of meaning, sensation of meaning, and how maximally to incorporate exactly such very particular stimuli featuring into a social environment.

There are two possible contexts wherein to frame the very concept of all important attachments such as love and friendship. Most obviously, friendship is a relationship over time, but love and friendship are also understood an immediate experience. Perhaps the latter peak experience may be found conducive to more optimal cultivation of the former over time, indeed more so than mere propinquity alone.

Defining our terms:

What are stimuli?

In order better to understand and appreciate the key concept of stimulus struggle, it might first be at all helpful to clearly understand what are stimuli and it what sense the very word is even used. Of course, stimuli, unless subliminal, are consciously perceived. And yet, a stimulus as most narrowly defined, is quite different from the content of sensation most broadly. A stimulus most narrowly, is not merely any perception or information, even however Empirical. For example, good food tempts all the senses. Marketing and advertising employ no end of stimuli associated with food. But the experience of peeling potatoes might somewhat fail to arouse, one way or the other, very much more than boredom. Moreover, an explanation is not a stimulus. Hence, the directions to the cafeteria, even as provided on a floor plan posted for all to see, and useful information as that might be, might not in and of themselves be all that stimulating at all. However the colors used on the signage might be either soothing pastels or vibrant fluorescent hues. And what applies to stimulation in general, applies no less to social and intellectual stimulation, in that likewise, not every Empirical input or information is necessarily all that that stimulating.

A stimulus arouses visceral response, especially appetites and aversions, and most especially appetites for further stimulation. We are all intrinsically motivated by appetites for social stimuli and interaction, and suffer in any deprivation thereof. We are all driven by such intrinsic social appetites, often frustrated and underserved. Stimulus struggle is the perpetual striving to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the environment. And this includes every crucial social stimulus provided by anyone triggering and eliciting response from anyone else within the same social environment or situation, a process so desperately undermined and subverted by heteronomy in the perpetual rat race out in the endless emotional wastelands of the social minefield.

A stimulus is an incident suddenly altering experience of the surrounding environment, a momentary event in any way arousing attention and interest, even thence triggering response. A stimulus so instantly draws attention to itself by such stark contrast with just prior conditions. Stimuli may be anything perceived and experienced, however reference to stimuli is generally meant in the sense more of visceral arousal rather than merely cognitive input and information. Indeed the sensation, literal or figurative, is immediately different.

Arguably, stimuli are the most fundamental meaning of life! To begin with, by definition, tautologically, in the mere literal sense of meaning and linguistic denotation, any definition of life, biologically, as a complex system, must one way or another consider the function of stimulation triggers and arousal. Moreover, in any deeper sense of meaning and value, in any relevant figurative or poetical sense of ever being truly alive, arousal by stimuli likewise figures prominently. Otherwise one may complain of feeling dead inside. Though many crave exactly such release into sublime apathy, however qualified and ambivalent, from life and suffering but without the greater extreme of actual suicide. All such Mystical self-abnegation remains so inherently misanthropic, even decried as cowardly, because by nature we are all sensation seekers. And as Sir Isaac Newton said, the way to to master nature is to serve her. - meeting needs, not thwarting them...

A dog in the park, perhaps coming up and wagging his tail, is a stimulus featuring in the surrounding environment, but a dog appearing and begging only when you yourself begin eating your sandwich, constitutes a response from the surrounding environment. And the present exercise concerns elicitation of innate positive response from the individual, not conditional strokes of inductive behavioral reinforcement of any desired new conditioned behavior. Ongoing stimulus struggle entails that we spend our lives struggling to elicit desired response. It's nice when instead, all too rarely, whatever little gratification comes unconditionally. Also, it's far simpler to program or design stimuli featuring within the environment, than to orchestrate responses laying in wait to be triggered by the subject. Not to get ahead of ourselves.

And because we are social beings, all of this applies no less for social stimuli in specific, than for stimuli in general. There are many complex aspects of social interaction, but at the most fundamental and obvious level, social interaction remains the exchange of social stimuli and response. The most rudimentary stimulus appetite is event hunger, the craving for interesting events. Hence the most rudimentary social stimulus appetite would be social event hunger, a craving for stimulating occurrences of social interaction.

Because of the relentless infiltration amoral and Moralistic misanthropic stealth Behaviorism ever so respectably insinuating itself into every field of scientific inquiry, formal education and walk of life, indeed because of the pernicious fallacious view of Social Psychology as merely an application of Behaviorism, social stimuli may be blithely treated as identical with social prompts. Not so! A social stimulus featuring or situated within a social environment, is a manifest concrete entity (as opposed to an abstraction) producing social stimulation eliciting universal innate social response that are the subject of intrinsic social stimulus appetites. - as opposed to varying behaviorally conditioned social cues prompting in turn, extrinsic elicitation of conditional strokes...

Social prompts are only intelligible at all as shaped by and subtext of social expectations to be met by approved behaviors in elicitation of conditional strokes within extrinsic reward and punishment systems. Hence response varies between cultural milieu, individual personality, experience and behavioral conditioning. Whereas response to implementable effective stimuli, yes, very much including social stimuli, is innate and thus possibly gratifying in its own right. Behavioral conditioning only aims at the inculcation of compulsive compliance and inhibition, but liberating impulsive responses triggered by (social) stimuli correlate with (social) stimulus appetites, the most rudimentary of intrinsic needs, values and motivation.

In animal studies, social stimuli no differently than stimuli in general, may be introduced experimentally under controlled conditions, into the environment of the test subject. But in the context of human interaction, for some reason the term 'social stimuli' is all too often blithely employed interchangably in denotation of social cues that are learned, or more precisely, behaviorally conditioned. What sly and devious propaganda of Nihilistic value destruction and heteronomy! Intellectual stimulation from the social environment remains ever paramount to all endeavor of FoolQuest.com And because we are conscious, what applies to stimulation in general, applies no less to social and intellectual stimulation, in that likewise, not every Empirical input or information is necessarily all that stimulating. The engaging and invigorating trigger of intellectual stimulation is an intrinsic need, even neurologically. Intellectual stimulation opens the way for the enthusiastic autonomy of egalitarian close collaborative creative solution finding and thereby liberation from hierarchical heteronomy. Intellectual stimulation Is an intrinsic human need. Intellectual stimulation differs psychologically with individual character, and will therefore defy precise definition. Intellectual stimulation engages thought and imagination to challenge ambitious capability to insightfully identify and find creative solutions to problems. And yet intellectual stimulus deprivation remains pandemic. Clearly, either the system is broken, or else individual failure and confusion can actually be intentional, even deliberately brutal boring Absurd and irrelevant Zen surreal by design, brainwash to break the will, indeed as it has been since antiquity.

A hallmark of the compliant and complacent conservative character or personality is the the boundless capacity to endure boredom. And in the annals of formal education as readily observed in so many other social institutions such as religion, politics and employment among others, the tradition is recorded even most anciently in Plato's Academy, of deliberately and calculatingly quashing the very intellectual freedom and Dialectical intellectual stimulation so cherished by and fatal to Plato's beloved but impractical mentor Socrates, via the deliberate infliction of boredom in order so diligently to weed out innovators by contrast so often characterized by boredom proneness, and of novelty that ever threatens change. For many are the sages of old in fervent embrace of the value of social stability at any cost, the maintenance of sheer conservative inertia even in the most arbitrary status quo. -And therefore concerning themselves in all gravity with the contrivance of reliable production process and systematic filters of endlessly bland mediocrity enduring to this day, bureaucratically screening out deficiency and excellence alike and entirely without distinction. Indeed such remains the function of peer review in academic publication, and worse, of the FDA in the approval of medicines. No snake oil and no breakthroughs either. For in every context and walk of life, such is heteronomy and the dread of all temptation into nonconformity replete with any possibility ever of Socratic Wisdom in acknowledgement of ignorance and uncertainty, with ongoing error detection and correction in the name of progress day by day.

What is the social engineering of social stimulus struggle?

Social engineering is an application of social science in effort to influence particular attitudes and social behaviors as desired in whatever target population great or small, from vast nation states to far smaller working groups and social circles. Social engineering may conceivably focus upon any different aspects of the human condition in society, with any range of objectives, including the optimization of social stimulus struggle. In accordance with the Arousal Theory of motivation, all living beings are perpetually engaged in stimulus struggle, which is the name coined by anthropologist Desmond Morris in 'the human zoo' October 1 1969, for the perpetual striving of all living things, to regulate, to obtain and maintain, the optimum kind and degree of stimulation and arousal from the surrounding environment. Everything that we do is in order to modify subjective experience thereby altering consciousness. All hence, as shall be seen, the social engineering of stimulus struggle would contrive the deliberate introduction of specific social stimuli and social interaction, into the social environment, in order better to optimize social stimulus struggle.

Boredom after all, is an acute lack of excitement and often accrues from the dire mismatch of intrinsic motivation and relevantly pleasurable activity to unique individual value, given any dearth of adequately engaging alternatives often for want of authentic autonomy supportive respect and often in response to pressure. Stimulus struggle then is the struggle against boredom, and social stimulus struggle is the struggle against loneliness. loneliness consisting of any deficiency or discrepancy between ones own desired versus actually achieved or at all available, quality of social interaction, stimulation, arousal and communication.

The social engineering of more optimal social stimulus struggle, is one way to frame the challenge of actually tailoring social environment to the intrinsic needs of each individual. Discourse pursuant to the social engineering of optimal social stimulus struggle in answer to the agenda by design/agenda of design challenge, is preliminary to the FoolQuest.com design exercise, a specific procedure towards identification of individually unique pleasurable triggers and indicators of value, those rare and fleeting experiences of fulfillment in fully engaged pleasurably heightened sensation of meaning, and how maximally to incorporate exactly such very particular stimuli featuring into a social environment.

in the words of Simone Weil: "The malheureux need nothing else in this world but men capable of paying attention to them. The capability to pay attention to the malheureux is something very rare, very difficult; it's almost a miracle. Almost all those who think they have this capacity, don't. Warmth, the heart's reaching out, pity, all these are not sufficient. [...] Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." Whereas inattention, indifference and distance, are already invalidating, let alone more overt invalidation, denigration and abuse particularly as of pandemic serial bullying. Whereas, validation may come in the form of sympathy and understanding, indeed as expressed in agreement, approval or indeed amplification upon anything another says. However, as the saying goes: “Actions speak louder than words” because in the words of Karan Gaur: “Effort is the best indicator of interest.” The very term 'probortunity,' of course, has been coined as a portmanteau of the two words: 'problem' and 'opportunity,' in order to press home the point that problems present opportunities. And the probortunity at hand here on FoolQuest.com consists in the challenge of best filling the gap, meeting underserved need, via creative solution finding in design thinking social engineering of more optimal social stimulus struggle, most especially and particularly collaboration among equals, the most generously validating exchange of effort and interest indeed speaking louder than so often facile verbal positive strokes, let alone the malignant conditionality of dysfunctional codependent co-validation.

Heaven is an imagined condition of plenty of whatever has been most scarce in any given life experience. And Heaven on Earth would be any thriving association wherein individual needs are routinely fulfilled rather than frustrated. In 'The Conquest Of Happiness' 'Chapter 1: What makes people unhappy?' Bertrand Russell writes: "The typical unhappy man is one who, having been deprived in youth of some normal satisfaction, has come to value this one kind of satisfaction more than any other" Perhaps Russell is too quick to dismiss as mere fixation, whatever one's favored, most valued and cherished kind of unmet satisfaction. Instead, there might be here an important self-knowledge of what one craves most dearly. Can such various satisfactions be investigated and categorized?

I might not what you want, but can we seek for it together? When all else has failed, what has actually been desired all along? As G. E. Moore contends, pleasure is not an end in and of itself. And it bears mention how this applies no less for optimism, peace of mind or any other sought for mental state or emotional condition. Rather, as G. E. Moore contends, pleasure, not to mention optimism, peace of mind or any other sought for mental state or emotional condition, is only a second order indicator of value. The problem with narcotics, recreational or by prescription, is that they are irrelevant, bypassing as they do, evaluation, directly activating the pleasure centers of the brain, disengaging from external reality. Similarly, the anti-rational magical thinking of power of positive thinking, endeavors to behaviorally condition a more cheerful mood, dishonestly bypassing better judgment and Empirical reality testing. It doesn't work. But if it did, would that actually be at all prudent or even desirable? Friendship and acceptance are predicated upon empathy, unguarded and reciprocal psychological visibility and genuine acceptance, whereas, just the opposite, expectations of willful positivity are the very height of conditionality, effective oppressive coercion to suppress all criticism, controversy, complaint or alarm, enforced by all manner of punishment and reward. In animal experiments, the social stimuli typically under consideration are innate, but for human subjects, typically the social stimuli under consideration are of approval and disapproval in the process of socialization, that which none dare call: indoctrination or brainwash. Why so? Is not peer pressure manifest in herd mentality that is our legacy from all other mammals? And have human beings somehow evolved to transcend innate social and emotional motive and need? Hardly!

Indeed, as per social engineering herein proposed, intentional pleasurable and engaging social stimuli featuring within the social environment, should be of innate stimulus appetite, sans triggers of all behaviorally conditioning as by conditional strokes. More than this, the aforesaid intentional pleasurable and engaging social stimuli featuring within the social environment, must be relevant, triggering motivation of motivation and value. But how? Answer: by the identification and correlation of individually unique life satisfactions as defined by Russell, with their corresponding immediate triggers or social stimuli. Because it is hypothesized herein, that for any life satisfaction over time as defined by Russell, there may be corresponding immediate stimuli, pleasurable second order indicators of value as posited by G. E, Moore.

According to anthropologist Desmond Morris in 'the human zoo' October 1 1969, in order to meet the all consuming challenges of survival in the wild, constantly foraging for resources and opportunity in order to survive, all opportunistic species including Homo Sapiens, have evolved to become intensely exploratory, with "a biologically built-in demand for a high stimulus input from his environment. In a zoo (or a city) it is clearly these opportunist species that will suffer most from the artificiality of the situation. Even if they are provided with perfected balanced diets and are immaculately sheltered and protected, they will become bored and listless and eventually neurotic. But opportunist animals do not give up easily. They react to the unpleasant situation with remarkable ingenuity." But what if instead of merely reacting individually, intelligent human beings might overcome slavish drone like domestication and become proactive in collaboration?

Towards social engineering an intentional social environment for the optimization of social stimulus struggle, first imagine cheating by just scripting actors in order to produce the intended experience, superficially. Then go deeper and commit to the World-Building in earnest, so that actors will not be required. Indeed, any behavior or interaction that may ever conceivably be scripted may be elicited by whatever situation, more organically. And tailoring whatever situation is of essence in designing social environments to satisfy hither to deprived and personally valued satisfactions in life. A possible step-by-step design procedure is elaborated in further detail in he design exercise.

Indeed, such is the human condition, that the key to wellbeing is to be found in stimulus struggle, which is what we are all already doing all of the time. And for social beings such as humans, this pertains especially every crucial social stimulus provided by anyone triggering and eliciting arousal and response from anyone else within the same social environment. - Hence: social stimulus struggle... The simple premise then, is that much unhappiness accrues from sheer under-stimulation: boredom and loneliness one way or another, let alone whatever excessive dystress.

To reiterate, a dog in the park, perhaps coming up and wagging his tail, is a stimulus featuring in the surrounding environment, an unconditional stroke, whereas a dog appearing and begging only when you yourself begin eating your sandwich, constitutes a response to the correct trigger, from the surrounding environment. a conditional stroke. However, the present exercise concerns elicitation of innate positive response from the individual, not conditional strokes of inductive behavioral reinforcement of any desired new conditioned behavior. The proverbial shoe is figuratively crafted to fit the metaphorical foot. The foot need not be cut to fit the shoe. Ongoing stimulus struggle entails that we spend our lives struggling to elicit desired response. It's nice when instead, all too rarely, even whatever small gratification ever comes unconditionally, featuring within the surrounding environment, readily available, standing in plain sight. Also, it's far simpler to program or design stimuli plainly featuring within the environment, than to orchestrate conditional strokes, obscure responses hiding in wait to be triggered by the subject.

Stimuli featuring or situated within a (social) environment, may be said to take the first move, rather than coming in response as does a conditional stroke. Social stimuli featuring or situated within a social environment, initiate simply by being blatant and unavoidable within said social environment. A stimulus is a trigger for whatever response. As a feature within an environment, a stimulus, unlike a conditional stroke, does not itself need to be activated or triggered: It only needs to be anything at all concrete and glaringly obvious enough to be experienced, so as to as to gratify some or other stimulus appetite, triggering innate response with no prior behavioral conditioning. Even moving shadows in vaguely human form may be features within a social environment, that are also social stimuli triggering some response. Real events in which the any of latter may be involved, are the outside source of stimulation experienced. Social stimuli here refer specifically to the objects of immediate term events experienced, however one might categorize them. piquing any manner of intrinsic appetite which is an impulse, as distinct from compulsive or behaviorally conditioned social cues or prompts of extrinsic reward and punishment triggering or eliciting skilled correct operant versus howsoever incorrect or inept inoperant response. Any appetite systematically and continually gratified may conceivably yield its corresponding life satisfaction. But approval seeking only accrues emptiness, irrelevance and alienation from just being controlled. Behaviorally conditioned social cues or prompts are extortion and conditionality, whereas social stimuli triggering innate response, are unconditional stroke, engaging temptation free and clear, even a pure gift, gratification with no other objective except for intrinsically motivating good and wellbeing.

Added dimensions of social stimulus struggle unique to humanity,

are rooted in massively inbred hideous mutation and the evolutionary neurology of sapient consciousness:

“That which doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche:

“That which doesn't kill me, makes me stranger.” ― Æon Flux