Wittgenstein's Monster

[CW: modern dating, commodification, capitalism]

Attraction isn’t the point anymore.
Material escape is.

Alienation doesn’t just hollow out labor; it hollows out intimacy. We treat partners the way we treat jobs: “What can this give me?”

Sexual identity gets folded into lifestyle branding […]

[CW: modern dating, commodification, capitalism]

I overheard three women talking about dating on break. One said she’s dating men again, but only if the man can provide the lifestyle she wants: a farm, no job, no stress.

This is what romance looks like under capitalism.

When survival is tied […]

It’s easier to say “my neurodivergence won’t let me” than “I don’t feel like doing that.” It’s easier to blame “trauma” than admit “I struggle with boundaries.”

Not every preference needs a pathology.
Not every awkward moment is abuse.
Sometimes you’re just human and that’s okay.

#MentalHealth […]

I’ve been noticing something lately:

Every minor social inconvenience gets medicalized.

A harmless joke becomes “gaslighting.”
Awkwardness becomes “autism.”
Any childhood discomfort becomes “trauma.”

These are clinical terms meant to describe real diagnoses and real suffering. When everyone […]

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

Camus never said, “Life is meaningless, so give up.”

His answer was: “Life is meaningless, so live anyway. Defiantly.”

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

Life is absurd and that’s the starting point, not the conclusion.

We can still build meaning, even if it’s temporary and personal.

In fact, that may be the only honest way to live.

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

Camus offered a different response: Not despair. Not retreat into comforting fictions (religious or nihilistic).

But rebellion: the choice to live, create, love, and act without needing cosmic permission.

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

To choose “death as the meaning of life” is just a new dogma - a coping mechanism for people who can’t sit with the absurd.

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

This is not nihilism.

Nihilism doesn’t replace meaning with a darker, edgier meaning.

It accepts that there is no final answer, and refuses to lie about it.

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

In this community, the old religious structure was simply inverted: “Life has meaning because of God” → “Life has no meaning, therefore death is the only truth.”

Same structure. Same certainty. Just inverted and bleak.

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

Camus argued that once someone recognizes there is no inherent meaning, no divine purpose, no cosmic script, most don’t embrace the freedom and they panic.

To avoid the discomfort of meaninglessness, they create a new “absolute truth” to cling to […]

[CW: existentialism, suicide (philosophical)]

I was invited into a Reddit community called r/CosmicExtinction.

What I found there is almost exactly what Camus predicted would happen when people confront the void.

And that’s what being human is:
sometimes good people make bad decisions,
and bad people make good ones.

It doesn’t mean free will is an illusion.
It means responsibility still exists — even in a world of pressure and pain.
Freedom isn’t purity. It’s the space to admit:
Yeah. I did that. And I […]

We live in a world where no one wants to say, “I made a bad choice.”
Everything has to be the system’s fault, or biology’s, or trauma’s.

But sometimes the truth is simpler — you just did the thing you chose to do.
Not because the world made you, but because you wanted to.

And the people around us — friends, followers, communities —
often live through us the same way parents live through their kids.
They push us toward the versions they wish they’d had the courage to live.

But regret disguised as advice is still regret.
And just because one path hurts
doesn’t […]

Identity today feels like it’s always in motion.
We reinvent ourselves, often because we can’t bear the version we were before.

But sometimes what looks like “becoming” is really grieving —
grieving the self we never got to be,
or the choices we can’t undo.

🪞
We used to call it a midlife crisis.
Now it happens five times before 30.

People used to live, reflect, and face what they’d done.
Now they delete, rebrand, and pretend the old self never existed.

The internet made it easy to reinvent yourself,
but it also made it harder to sit still and […]

I feel bad for this generation.
They’re trying so hard to live up to the curated selves they’ve built online — perfect mirrors they can never match.

No wonder they feel dissonance.
Because who you are isn’t what you’ve posted.
It’s who you are right now, in the unfiltered moment, away from the […]

Das Man

Das Man is watching me, piercing and true,
He knows what I do, what I did, what makes me you.

I hate those gypsy eyes, surveilling my very soul,
Telling me who I am, what must be my role.

It builds a simulation where I am always lost —
And me? I only ever wanted
the cost I never […]

Because that’s not profitable in the online marketplace of attention.

The crowd doesn’t want truth.
It wants curated perfection — the illusion of virtue.
A world they can believe in, not the one they actually live in.

#philosophy #identity #Barthes #internet

Online, we get to choose how we represent ourselves — and in doing so, we build a shadow self.

A second, curated version of who we wish to be.
But it’s never the full self.

No one logs on to say,

"Yeah, I bullied someone once.”
“I cheated.”
“I lied.”

That’s not oppression. That’s life.

You can’t always change the room. Sometimes you have to change your frequency.

#worklife #psychology #reflection #honesty

Two people at work said,

> “Outside of work, everyone loves me. But here, people think I’m negative. I don’t get it.”

I get it.

Outside of work, you curate your circle — people who mirror your pain, humor, trauma, politics. They feed off the same wavelength.

At work, you don’t get that […]

You’re the same being moving through time — changing in detail, but not in essence. Every thought, every regret, every choice still belongs to you.

Change is possible, but it’s not erasure.
You can’t rewrite the past — you can only decide what you’ll do with what remains.

#philosophy #identity […]

A lot of people from the youngest generation don’t realize they’ve been corrupted by the internet — raised in a world that taught them they could reinvent themselves endlessly.

But the truth is:
The you of right now is also the you of yesterday, and it’ll be the you of tomorrow, should you live […]

The Blessing of Becoming Old

Seconds turn to minutes turn to years
But somehow in the fog of History it becomes clear
Life is but a waiting game,
a Shadow's chance to play
And so many like to shift all their blame
But not me, I'm not Pan, maybe a needle in the hay
I just like to remember the […]

The internet teaches us to live in a perpetual now — but we’re temporal beings. We age, change, and forget.

Every deleted post still happened. Every past self still lives inside us.

We can’t curate our way into innocence. The web never dies; it just forgets slower than we do.

It can’t feel […]

Cropped detail of Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s Lake Keitele: silver-blue ripples reflecting clouds and shoreline. Overlaid text reads ‘🌕 Daily Tao Reflection 41 — “When a superior man hears the Tao, he immediately begins to embody it…”’ with site line ‘wittgensteinsmonster.substack.com’

🌕 Daily Tao Reflection 41 is out now.
Paradox, compassion, and a modern Good Samaritan.
Read: https://wittgensteinsmonster.substack.com

#DailyTaoReflection #TaoTeChing #Kindness #Compassion #Wisdom

Angels play beside Mary and the sleeping Christ child.

Blind Faith with a Gnostic Deist — Psalm 128 • Psalm 42 • Proverbs 17
On joy, despair, and the friends who hold the light.

Out at 5 PM on Substack.

🔗 wittgensteinsmonster.substack.com

#BlindFaithSeries #Psalms #Spirituality #Depression #Hope

A black ink brushstroke forms an open circle — an ensō — on white paper, with small red seals and Japanese calligraphy below. The simple, fluid ring symbolizes return, completeness, and the movement of the Tao.

Daily Tao Reflection 40 — Return is the movement of the Tao.
The ouroboros turns inward, and sometimes even bureaucracy has lessons to teach.
Available at 10AM on Substack.

👉 wittgensteinsmonster.substack.com

#TaoTeChing #Philosophy #Spirituality #DailyReflection #Ouroboros