From: duke@portal.paperboy.osf.org (Duke Robillard)
Subject: Why I'm such a shit
Organization: /u1/duke/.organization
	<3PTyVB4w165w@noncomf.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca>
Date: 18 Dec 92 18:29:26


Rachel Writes:
>   duke@portal.paperboy.osf.org (Duke Robillard) writes:
>   >  > It serves no purpose for you to post a negative response.
>   >...
>   >Negativity is the point, Jeanne Leidy.
>
>no, angst is the point. criticisms go elsewhere. 

Hmm...perhaps that's true.  Is there an alt.cynic?

>if sine's posts are causing you angst, then talk about that. 

Good advice.

Here's my problems with sine:

I'm pretty sure existence is meaningless.  Once you give up
superstition (or religion or whatever), there seems to be a
straightforward logical progression to the conclusion that you're just
a chemical machine.  A machine that spends its time reacting in ways
that, evolutionarily speaking, tend to cause the generation of more,
similar chemical machines.  The Universe doesn't care.  God is an
invention to help change the behaviour of said machines in ways that
will increase the population.

This is all very logical, and doesn't require any leap of faith, or
any belief in something that we don't understand currently.  This
makes it incredibly attractive, intellectually.  Unfortunately, it's
also incredible depressing.

This is the source of angst, in the sense meant by the people who
created the term--the existentialists and nihilists of the last half
of the 19th and first half of the 20th century.  This is the feeling
that all of Godot's characters have.  This is what causes the Sickness
Unto Death.

So, a couple of years ago, I find alt.angst.  At the time, it was
filled with people sharing the same kind of opinions, reaching the
same kind of conclusions, whistling in the Dark of Despair, and making
snide remarks about the hopelessness of existence.

This created a sense of comraderie.  Apparently, one of the
evolutionarily postive behaviours of the human race is the need to
have mates, so I "enjoyed" this.  I even tried to call Xibo one night
when I got drunk.

But for the last year or so, alt.angst has been gradually filling up
with people who are not concerned with these issues.  They are
concerned with failing relationships, unhappy childhoods, and the lack
of sex.  This bummed me out.  In some sense, sine is the epitome of
this anti-angst alt.angst.  Hence I lash out, attacking her when she
hasn't really done anything to me.  Then I feel bad about it.  Pass
the Strychnine

>ObAngst: all the weirdos who seem to have overtaken a.a. for their own
>private, obscene flamewar. 

How remarkably personal.

Here's another posting response that I'll tack in here, just so I
can break the netiquette rules.

thespian@noncomf.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (Stephanie M. Clarkson) writes:

   duke@portal.paperboy.osf.org (Duke Robillard) writes:

   > Why do I feel compelled to flame at people on alt.angst?

   because somedays, with the posts around here, the options seem to be 
   killing yourself ... killing the poster ... or flaming the hell out 
   of someone just because.  Angst is self replicating...

The angst-meme.  This I can believe.  One of the characteristics of
the angst-ridden is a tendency to explain to the non-angst-ridden how
the universe is cruel and uncaring.
--
Duke Robillard, DoD #0130, duke@osf.org
angst.motorcycles: "We may be doomed, but at least the adrenal keeps up awake"
Newsgroups: alt.angst