FourthBase's Mea Culpa Thread

[Iamwhomiam]

Learn about what Ombudsmen do for you.

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/what-does-an-ombudsman-do

[FourthBase]

Learn about what Ombudsmen do for you.

https://www.mass.gov/service-details/what-does-an-ombudsman-do

What a gloriously useful gig that would be.
That's what I'll petition to be, wherever I can.

Ombudsman.

Thanks, captain!

[Belligerent Savant]

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You must have missed the fine print on the job spec:

self-aggrandizers need not apply.

[FourthBase]

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You must have missed the fine print on the job spec:

self-aggrandizers need not apply.

We'll see.

Self-aggrandizement is like paranoia.
It's only really bad if it's not true.

How's this for an olive branch:

Quite a recurring motif! (I honestly still wonder now and then, for five minutes, without any sense of the certainty of that November of 2016 when I went bonkers, but still suspicious: Did I date a satanic cannibal? Tabloid sub-header: And lived to tell the tale! Ti-Grace Atkinson talks about metaphysical cannibalism, and I know about that. So do you, probably, everyone is one. Well, partner, I definitely dated one of those, at least. But I doubt Ti-Grace would ever expect the gender valence to be reversed. I could seriously damage her reputation and make her a known commodity among despicable, dangerous people. Do you understand, bro? I don't want to. I would rather us both give up, Magnolia-style. Let it go, let it stop. Maybe even collaborate long distance, say hi once again, as non-enemies. I really did idolize her, like a simpering artfag, and love her, even as a bad boyfriend who mostly hated her (back). But apart from that, I still think she's cool and hilarious. I'm not a scumbag, anymore anyway. I'm becoming exactly who she wanted me to be, who she loved. It's at least worth it to be friendly-ish. To me, anyway. Maybe she just can't, oh well. I just hope it wouldn't be because the high ground of victim roleplay felt too good to give up. There's so much more to gain by giving up the agon. And look, even if she's evil...if I threw a party for myself and invited all my favorite artists and if it turned out Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab were a hardcore theistic satanist, and during the party I walk around the corner and catch her by surprise digging into her purse and eating newborn-baby bits like popcorn, I would wag my finger and go "You rascal!" like a smiling sitcom character. I would make an extremely rare exception to my general no-associating-(knowingly!)-with-baby-eating-ghouls rule, since she's cool enough, if I care enough. She's cool enough. Shit, and even if you hang out with German baby-barbequers, same for you.)

I actually would make a handful of exceptions, just so as not to be an absolutist, and the moral logic would be: People eat babies all the time. Babies that can't speak but only whine and cry. Babies that are deformed, extra-leg-style. Babies that still have awareness, enough that they could probably even survive on their own in nature. People kill them, and cut them up, and cook them, and eat them. They call them cows and pigs. Ever since 2005, in some sense I've considered 90% of human beings to be cannibals. Ghouls. Every commercial for hamburgers, a waking nightmare, as if you lived in a society where there are television ads for baby-legs and baby-burgers. (And, yes, pizza.) And I found a way to cope with that, so...to prove a point, a few exceptions would be worth it.

[FourthBase]

Self-aggrandizement...

I'm curious.

Was Larry Bird a self-aggrandizer? Yes.
That's called trash-talking. It's fun.

Was Socrates a self-aggrandizer? Yep!
"Oh really, the oracle told you all that, eh?"

Is Jay Z a self-aggrandizer? Yes sir.
Self-aggrandizement is an entire genre of music.

Was Shakespeare a self-aggrandizer?
Ever read his sonnets? Sonnet 62, lol?

I'm going to be going toe to toe with the "best minds" of my generation (I've seen them, I'm not that impressed) this year, finally, and I'm probably going to fucking dominate, knock on wood. I've read a lot of contemporary poetry. Nobody's going to be better than me. I shake my sleeve, and...whoosh, poems that people will actually love, from crusty purists to hipster eggheads. I just wrapped up two weeks of giving birth to a screenplay that will win me an Oscar in some fair alternate dimension, and there are more. I'm not the best prose writer, hardly, delinquent in my command of rhetoric and craft, but I'm still very fucking good at that. I'm certainly not erudite. I know erudite people who have a real, serious reading addiction, the healthiest kind. I'm semi-literate compared to them. I don't know nearly as much as I should. But there's also an element of strategic ignorance, because I'm more afraid of reading a bad book than missing out on a good book. More afraid of being trapped by a compelling vision than being hobbled by blind spots. I'm fucking terrible at the fine points of math. I'm still extremely good at thinking. Anyone here think they could win an argument with me in front of a random jury of our peers? Nope. None of you. Well, maybe 1 or 2. But man, what I'm the fucking best at: I can intuit the shit out of things. I am a world-class intuiter. Where the fuck else do you think you'd find one (or more) of the best intuiters in the world, than this board? Where the hell do you think another Nietzsche or Ben Franklin in 2020 would probably be? Academia? The Guardian? Do you think this place wouldn't be worth their time? It may be that I'm less of a megalomaniac than you are a self-loather?

[Iamwhomiam]

Self aggrandizement is the American dream and a self imposed rule of capitalism.

[Belligerent Savant]

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Self aggrandizement is the American dream and a self imposed rule of capitalism.

Quite true. FourthBase is simply capturing the true spirit of America. Perhaps the most qualified candidate @ RI to do so.

[FourthBase]

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Self aggrandizement is the American dream and a self imposed rule of capitalism.

Quite true. FourthBase is simply capturing the true spirit of America. Perhaps the most qualified candidate @ RI to do so.

I'm flattered.

Curious how Shakespeare and Nietzsche and Socrates got to be Americans, though. One could argue that Shakespeare was the culmination (and inventor, yes Harold) of the idea of self that newborn capitalism gave birth to. What about Socrates? How does your anti-capitalist paradigm explain his sickeningly large and hilariously shameless ego? Was he a megalomaniac?

[Belligerent Savant]

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I'm not anti-capitalist. I'm against egregious forms of capitalist ideology that places "I" above all else at the expense of the livelihoods of others.

Does such a system exist, currently? Or do all forms of capitalism, necessarily/eventually, devolve into quasi-fascist systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many?

[Elvis]

Capitalism is a policy variable.

[FourthBase]

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I'm not anti-capitalist. I'm against egregious forms of capitalist ideology that places "I" above all else at the expense of the livelihoods of others.

Does such a system exist, currently? Or do all forms of capitalism, necessarily/eventually, devolve into quasi-fascist systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many?

I couldn't have described my own POV much better.

As for the questions:

#NotAllForms

And yes, in microcosmic form, just like there are ideal iterations of communism when groups of people who on are the same wavelength decide to be communists together in communes, there are isolated self-sufficient mini-systems where capitalism is regulated pretty much perfectly. A circle of friends, for example, one of whom is rich and funds all the artistic/business endeavors of the others, and they all split the profits. As I said, I'm pro-cooperative-ownership. Not as a commie, but as a capitalist. It's the perfect-est (or, LEAST IMPERFECT) system. Purest form of capitalism possible. I'm weird and semi-ignorant, but I don't think I'm wrong. And then there's the irony that all (or 99.999%, barring some psychotic assholes) "free" market ideologues are communists at home. Family decisions are a dictatorship guided by the "To each according to..." maxim. Taleb points this out, though he may not be the first, I don't know. EDIT: Nope, not the first. Somebody named Graham or whatever. But who cares about priority, which asshole said something first, because all that matters is whether he's right.

I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;

at the state level, Republican;

at the local level, Democrat;

and at the family and friends level, a socialist.

[FourthBase]

I know Jack is reading all this.
I know he thinks I'm an asshole.
But I wonder, not if, but how he thinks I'm wrong.

Genuinely interested, eager to know, to learn.

[FourthBase]

Instead of cluttering the main page with bumps, I'll just start compiling my "greatest hits" from 15 glorious years here, here.

Megalomania:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19916&p=209175&hilit=Megalomania#p209175

[FourthBase]

What a self-aggrandizer!



What an American!



https://www.messynessychic.com/2012/06/ ... -the-army/

That Time Jimi Hendrix Got Kicked out of the Army for Masturbating on Duty
BY MESSYNESSY JUNE 25, 2012



In 1961, Hendrix was given a choice between two years in jail or or joining the Army after a run in with the law for riding in stolen cars. He took the option to join the army, and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division in May of 1961.

But just one year later, Hendrix was discharged. In the document below, we can make out the reasons for his discharge.

“Behavior problems, required excessive supervision while on duty, little regard for regulations, apprehended masturbating in platoon area while supposed to be detail."

That reminds me of Shakespeare.

Did I ever get the chance to tell you about which theory I support regarding whom the sonnets are dedicated to?

It may be me projecting my own pathetic narcissism onto him, but I agree with those who think he wrote them largely to himself. He couldn't help it. If you were Shakespeare, you'd have a massive crush on yourself, too, right? At least he tried to hide it...so well that 400 years later people assume he was *merely* wooing another dude.

His would have been the greatest, the most discreet, the healthiest, and the most justified narcissism of all time. (What better reason to be narcissistic than an otherworldly ability to inhabit the perspectives of others?) Were they written to this or that Earl*, and then to a mysterious black woman? Yes. They were often ALSO written to/about himself, I think. Exoteric purpose, simultaneous esoteric subtext. They are mostly addressed to a male, yes. A male by the name of William Shakespeare, I think. Will Himself, as some others suspect. Their only begetter, naturally.

The bulk of the sonnets would be one long self-examining soliloquy. The world's most sublime diary, ever. The love expressed in it would be even more unconventional than convention-disdaining modern academics can conceive. And just as shameful back then as any other love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, if not even more.

Think of the first sonnet, how uninspired the current consensus interpretation is, that Shakespeare is exhorting another man to literally breed -- and then does so again in the next sonnet, and the next, and the next, and...16 times in a row! "Breed! Breed! Breed!" And don't get me wrong, there may well have been a real young man that Shakespeare really did have the hots for, but now think of an interpretation recentered on Shakespeare's self. The subject scolded by the author for being narcissistic, would be the narcissistic author himself. The offspring of which the world would be deprived? The author's plays. The exhortation, then, would not be "Breed!" so much as: "Write!" I would bet, just as a gut instinct, that the first sonnet was written during a stretch when Shakespeare was enjoying his ordinary life and neglecting his art, procrastinating, perhaps suffering from a kind of writer's block, albeit only a kind Shakespeare would understand.

The man knew exactly how awesome he was, as seen in the sonnets where he matter-of-factly refers to their immortalizing properties. Right? He knew he was writing for eternity, for humanity. He knew he was the closest thing to a gift from God as it gets.

I think it really can be proven, too, as much as such a thing can be. As examples...Sonnet 95 totally works as a poem-about-himself, no? So does my favorite, right before it, 94. But there's another one that really, really, really cinches it, as I see it, 62:

Sin of self-love possesseth all mine eye,
And all my soul and all my every part;
And for this sin there is no remedy,
It is so grounded inward in my heart.
Methinks no face so gracious is as mine,
No shape so true, no truth of such account;
And for myself mine own worth do define,
As I all other in all worths surmount.
But when my glass shows me myself indeed,
Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity,
Mine own self-love quite contrary I read;
Self so self-loving were iniquity.
'Tis thee, myself, that for myself I praise,
Painting my age with beauty of thy days.

This was a man, I think, who may have regularly, literally masturbated in front of his own reflection in the mirror. I'm serious, lol!

So, of course, I'm probably ignorant of -- or wishfully overlooking -- many, many reasons why the sonnets probably aren't self-addressed. How would you rate the notion, on a 1-to-10 scale of plausibility?

*I showed you my sonnet from 2018 about this subject, right? Just in case not, I'll paste it:

Thee

We wonder whom you mean with every “thee”;
This or that Earl, most critics are agreed.
If I were you, I’d pen them all to – me!
Self-serenade with songs my mirrors seed.
As for the guy you lovingly call Fair…
Bros from Southie might call you a fairy.
Won’t matter to me! I really don’t care.
But does your wife feel to the contrary?
Who’s the black Lady causing you trouble?
Are you swinging both ways down at the pub?
For all of love’s heartaches: You need double?
Versatility: There’s the second rub!
You love: Some dude; a slut; yourself; the beard.
Will, just admit it: You’re a little weird.

[FourthBase]

I can almost hear the gears grinding in Jack's head.



Don't be shy, let it fly!