10 december 2023
I submitted a bug to the gnu-recutils mailing list and once again I have this feeling of anxiety and dread. I put a lot of effort into trying to fix the problem myself and looking for any bit of documentation that may help, but alas, no luck. It's pretty messed up that I have such an aversion to asking for help and this esspecially true for free software. I feel like I'm bothering someone and I'm asking a stupid question. It's like there is an imaginary audience of hecklers that is waiting to blow up my inbox telling me to RTFM and tell me I'm an idiot for even having such a problem. The thing is, I've never been on the recieving end of that kind of hate train, so the only explanation I have for I always feel this way about seeking software help is that I've worked with many angry developers who exemplified the stereotype of the elitist tech guy who tells people off for not filing bug reports exactly right.
It's just another pebble on the "I'm kind of a socially broken person" mountain. Sounds kind of a dumb, but submitting a bug report is probably going help with my growth and healing. Plus it'll save me the hassle of writing an alternative to readrec.
warning: stuff about religion that is probably upsetting to a lot of people.
I often wish I could hold spiritual beliefs. There would be so many benefits. I could could contextualize my suffering in the material world as a test. I could look forward to some sort of reward for sticking to my values even when there is no benefit in the here and now. All the "good" things I've done when nobody sees would count for something. In moments of distress I could lean on spirituality for strength.
The problem is I was raised in a cult (one of the more isolating and punishing forms of American Protestantism) so my default view of these "clubs" is the cynical one: It's a bunch of made up shit used to control people. I feel like MLMs, psychics, churches, and those companies where everyone has to wear a fake smile at all times occupy the same space in my mind. I feel like I'm missing something that others have. They can suspend their disbelief long enough to start believing genuinely.
MEMORY: Sometime in the early 2010s. I got really stoned for like the second or third time in my life. I realize that I don't hear the voice of God in my head. I never have. This whole time it's literally been myself puppeteering a deep-voiced deity saying exactly what I wanted to hear. I had been doing it since I was a little kid threatened with hell. It's like I was psychotic but nobody ever called me out on it because hearing a god that conveniently reaffirms American conservative values (ex: I asked who to vote for, "god" responded John McCain...so I guess god's will regarding the 2008 election was overridden by Satan?). In an instant I go from regularly having dialogues with God to not hearing it all.
Fast forward a few years, I'm hanging out with a new friend group of witches, pagans, other sorts of new-agey stuff. One person in the group really hated me. They used astrology to justify why X person shouldn't date me. Since this person was very popular/"the leader", I was eventually effectively excommunicated from the group. Now I'm sure if this person had different spiritual beliefs they would have used something else to get rid of me. Hell, I'm sure if they were a hard-core atheist they would have conjured up sciencey-sounding reasons. I suppose this is why I'm in the rare camp of agnostics who wish they could believe rather than putting energy into fighting the spirituality of others. I'm well aware that people make decisions or emotional and opaque reasons then use their favorite System to justify it later.
The closest thing I have to religion is the belief in the Great Attractor At the End of Time theory posited by Terrence McKenna. The main tenant is that History as we know it will end (literally, not in the Fukuyamian sense) and it will be signaled by an exponential growth of novelty in the universe. It's the only alternate form of cosmology that makes sense and appeals to me. An end to all things. Such a soothing concept