He spent the evening researching AI therapy, watching examples of sessions, reading explanations of the technology and reviews. It seemed most companies providing it captured 12-15 points of data in real time, ranging from biometric data like eye movements to breathing patterns or heart rate to data such as tone/volume and speed of voice. They also had real time voice recognition and processing of the words spoken. It sounded insanely complex to Ast but the reviews spoke for themselves, there were countless testimonies of people swearing by it and the few negative reviews were simply a preference for 'real' therapy. What astounded him was that some people willingly handed all their data such as their phone memory to the AI to let it analyse their messages to give a more 'comprehensive' analysis.

He saw a few reviews that caught his eye of people claiming to be long term customers swearing by the service while there were few reviews saying that it helped them in only x period of time. He thought this was probably intentional, that the service wasn't designed to fix people, it was designed to keep them as long term customers. To treat the symptoms not the cause, not to teach people how to deal with their failures not how to avoid making them again in the future. This was not an uncommon thing in medicine in general, the aim to keep people reliant on the cure but he assumed that in real therapy there must be less people in it simply for the money since therapists choose that profession in the first place indicating many would actually want to help 'fix' people. Ast tried to think of a term or phrase to explain this mechanic of not wanting to help your customers, this was another mental past time of Ast's, to try and think of ideas or concepts that are relatively simple and should have terms to describe their phenomena but don't.

It's very similar to the term 'conflict of interest' but distinct enough that it should have its own term, conflict of interest is when two different tasks conflict with each other but this is more like the task conflicts with itself. Their product is to make it so people are no longer so hopeless that they need therapy so if it worked it would undermine their own business model, is that a conflict of interest? I guess it's two separate interests, helping someone and personal financial gain. Maybe it is conflict of interest but also something else that needs a new term, a term to indicate when the two interests aren't just possibly undermining each other but are completely opposite to each other. Maybe the term should specifically business related, to indicate when someone's business model is to fix a problem so it doesn't occur again, this is too vague though, there are so many businesses with that model and they don't have the same issue, they for the most part fix the problems. Like a plumber could fix your leaking plumbing badly so you have to hire them again but it's not the same with plumbing, why? it's because you know the fix should be more or less permanent, it's easy to switch to a new plumber if the first one didn't work. The issue is people get invested in their therapists and don't want to share their whole life story (and pay to do so) to get to the real issues with a whole new therapist. They also probably think it's impossible for them to actually correct their behaviour/mind in the long run, if they thought it was possible then they wouldn't be in therapy. This is all well and good but it doesn't explain what the term should specifically refer to, are there any other industries with this kind of idea other than medicine? maybe anti-virus software? that's a little different, they want to fix your viruses but they just still want their product subscription to be necessary for future viruses, they no doubt create new viruses that only their specific software works for but this is something different? I doubt the AI therapy is fixing issues then creating new issues? maybe it is. They are capitalising on peoples suffering and prolonging it.

Maybe the problem is with the perception of the business, they purport to be selling a cure but they are only providing symptom relief just like a lot of medicine, medicine is usually more honest about this. Maybe it could go a step further, their symptom relief takes away business from people actually selling cures, takes away business from real therapists who are actually trying to 'cure' the person. You could argue they do more good than harm as at least they alleviate symptoms but maybe the symptoms shouldn't be relieved without relieving the root cause. This is like how I was debating whether you should help people deal with the regret of their bad decisions, the regret is necessary for permanent change just like suffering for your bad life rather than simply avoiding the symptoms is necessary for any meaningful change. How did I get back here? why does it all lead back to my poem? Not everyone in therapy is the same, surely, some people aren't suffering because their life/mind is bad, some are just suffering because that's how they're wired, does it matter? the best way to help those people is still to help them improve their life to the point they are functional enough to work on rewiring themselves, you never try to rewire someone, you get them to the point where they can rewire themselves. I really don't know if AI therapy is a good thing for the world, let alone regular therapy. I would never trust it due to this term similar to conflict of interest that I can't find a way to word, something like 'self defeating interests'.

What are those other recent ideas I thought of that need terms? the effects of loyalty programs, how if everyone ends up using coupons or loyalty rewards then the price of the discount/rewards get factored into the product and in the end no one is better off. It's like petrol fuel vouchers, they all give out 20c/litre discounts at supermarkets but because virtually everyone uses these now the 'standard' price just goes up 20c and no one is better off, in fact everyone is worse off because now not only are they paying the same price that they were, now they have to waste time/effort micro managing coupons. I guess initially the early adopters do get a slightly better deal subsidised by those who don't use the coupons but once virtually everyone is using the coupons then really no one is getting rewarded. Maybe there is something to be said about the psychological effects of making people think they are getting a deal though, if there wasn't then why wouldn't some other fuel company start a business where they don't use coupons and their default price is 20c lower than their competitors. Surely they would be more efficient without having to distribute and manage their own coupons? they must not do it because the customers want to micromanage coupons, it keeps their otherwise empty minds busy.

What is the term here that needs defining? is it the idea that people compete with each other and abuse anything good until all the good is bled dry? is it the idea of 'pointless' tasks that are created due to faulty human psychology which create inefficiencies and wasted time/mental effort? Is it the idea that people will put in work simply for the idea of receiving a reward even if it's not based in reality?

Maybe it's that similar idea where people work against their own best interests, they tell other people about the deal which causes it to spread, become popular and then it becomes less useful. I understand telling your loved ones about the deal but people go around telling acquaintances even, maybe there is an element of genuinely feeling good for helping others find the deal but it often sounds like they are trying to impress others with their knowledge. It is like with ad blockers on the internet, people spread their favourite blocking program that already works well and then it gets popular and ads learn how to work around that program. I'm not sure what goes through peoples minds, maybe some is about helping others but probably some is helping their favourite program, maybe they think the program will get better with more users, maybe in a perfect world that would happen but the issue is that as a program gets more mainstream and less niche it brings down the interest/contribution the average user has in the program. Like you have these really good niche programs where half the users are actually developers on the program then they get popular and now the goal of the program is too broad and you have too many casual users who will not fund or contribute to development. It's kind of similar to when people tell others about a bug/cheat in a videogame, except in that scenario people usually understand that spreading knowledge of the bug will make it more likely for that exploit to be fixed, people understand this but they don't seem to understand the same thing with loyalty programs or ad block.

I'm almost too skeptical of rewards, it's like that other idea that needs a term. The idea how things seem to have less value to me if they come with something 'free' that you don't want even if you would have paid the same price for the original thing without the free reward. Maybe this doesn't have a term though simply because it's not a thing other people relate to, the opposite probably has a term in economics something like 'the faulty perception that a deal is better if it comes with something that claims to be free even if it you pay more for it', where as my idea is more like 'the faulty perception that a deal is worse if it comes with something free even if it that free item isn't factored into the price'.

What's another thing that needs a term? It took a few minutes to recall any ideas. I got one, I should really write down these ideas. The idea how politicians don't care so much about the secondary negative effects of their policies because they are hidden or sometimes they actually want these negative effects if the connection between them and their policy is delayed and disconnected enough that they can blame their competitors. Like if a party prints a bunch of money to help the poor knowing that they will likely lose control of the government shortly and the incoming inflation from their policy will be blamed on the next party. That might be close to conflict of interest, they have one interest or declared interest to help the average person but this is at a conflict with an interest to hurt the average person if it can be blamed on the opposing party. Dictatorships avoid this and they always seem to grow at a relatively faster rate than 'democracies' and I don't think it's just because they're generally found in poorer countries, like sure a dictatorship is more useful in a poor chaotic country to bring things in line but I just think in general it is a better long term development strategy to force the whole country onto the one goal. Modern democracies bring everyone into line through proxy though with so much propaganda. We moved away from dictatorships to democracy to proxy dictatorships which pretend to be democracies run by the people who own the media, maybe we never really had democracy and the propaganda was just more subtle back then. It could be that democracy really was around back then as we didn't need to sacrifice the now for the future, these days the world is so competitive and efficient that any country that doesn't unify behind one goal through one form or another cant compete. I think ultimately politics and most of life is just a test of delayed gratification, how much you are willing to sacrifice today for a better tomorrow.

I think a lot of these terms are intentionally not given labels, I know that language usually develops naturally through conventional use, what terms are most frequently needed for discussion but it can certainly be influenced by powerful people and powerful people have been influencing humanity for a long long time. If you cant word the idea then it is less likely to be discussed and its spread will be limited. These people don't want the average person to have a term to concisely articulate when a company benefits more from not solving your issue you paid them to solve as not being able to point it out easily to others helps hide it. That's a bit out there though, it's pretty unlikely that there is enough of an overlap between these powerful people and the people in AI therapy but the point is that any influence helps, any influence in hiding what they are doing through conventional means or language manipulation could theoretically be represented in a monetary amount, but if any one actor attempted to influence language like this they would be benefiting the whole industry at their personal cost, it makes sense that it only really happens when an industry becomes centralised. I'm sure there are little ways they can influence language that aren't costly and are really just a bi product of their own personal advertising, it's sort of like this language influence develops naturally as a push and pull between companies trying to control language and the average person trying to create language to identify their control/lies, really it's all about the balance of power and how centralised the 'industry' is.

I think language control happens on a broader scale too with more general ideas/drives of the population. I understand how this sounds like a huge conspiracy but it can be thought of like a natural equilibrium between the ruling class and the 'slaves', like they want to keep the slaves trapped and suffering. While wealth can be an objective what these people at the top really wanted is rarely wealth, wealth past a certain point is largely pointless and just a means to feed an ego, what they usually want is power and power is relative, they can attain it by increasing their control/agency or by reducing the agency of those at the bottom. I think one word/idea that has been heavily influenced/controlled is 'depressed' or 'sad', in other less popular languages they have multiple words for different types of sadness and while we have a few such as morose or despondent, the definitions of these are so vague that they aren't very useful for articulating how you feel to the average person. I have no doubt this is by design, English is a relatively modern language so by the time it was 'developing naturally' there would have been some very centralised power structures wanting to reduce the likelihood of their slaves revoking. I really don't know how much influence these powerful people have but the point is that it's definitely a non zero amount. But why would they want to control this idea of sadness specifically? how does it help them to make it so their slaves cant express why they are depressed accurately? is it that it makes it more likely for them to continue being depressed? I've heard that, the idea that the best remedy for feeling down is to talk about why with someone, I guess that's why it's such a modern problem as time has gone on and power has become more and more centralised our language has become more and more corrupted and obfuscated in order to maintain this level of control. I'm sure there are other elements to as to why people are so depressed these days, such as intentionally less efficient therapy, people no longer being too busy with mere survival. That's a very real thing, people get less happy when they have more, I guess that's not entirely accurate, they get a different type of unhappy, it's like from 'struggling' to 'depressed', maybe equally negative feelings. I guess that's just the human condition, to always need some sort of negative feeling, or maybe that's another control of the ruling class, to influence people into thinking their suffering is necessary to their existence and to do this they always find a way to counter act any progress someone makes in reducing their suffering with another form of suffering artificially so they come to rightly (or in this theoretical situation where the world is heavily controlled wrongly) believe that they will always suffer so they give up trying to increase their power and those at the top stay relatively more powerful in comparison. It must happen, it has to happen, whether it's centralised or organic through minor small influences of the ruling elites, they are most definitely controlling language and keeping the people depressed. Surely there are some benevolent elites though but rarely does becoming an elite happen in alignment with benevolence, becoming an elite is more dependent on wanting to become an elite or wanting to have relatively more power so of course the elites on average want to keep the average person down and depressed.

It is annoying how I need to understand language and words better for my poem, language is so corrupted and crestfallen, I'm one of the lucky ones who can actually think in ideas, most people in their minds think primarily in words and as such are so heavily and subconsciously influenced by those who control language, they can never think of these ideas that cant be concisely expressed in words because the elites have corrupted language too much. Maybe that is my purpose or rather the purpose of anyone who really cares for humanity, to break this control of these evil people who want to dominate the world by giving words/terms to these things the average person needs to know about. To give the average person a voice to be able to at least identify how they are being controlled to break this control just a little bit. Some of the nicest smartest and most caring people I know have been those who have had literary interests, sure, a lot of them are pseudo intellectuals who just want to feel superior but it really seems that people who do 'get' how important words and language can be are the same people who really 'get' reality. Maybe it's not really a problem, if I look back on history it seems like things just keep getting worse and worse but really on a surface level things are infinitely better, on all those objective measures that no one smart would ever say mean much, measures such as lifespan, access to quality nutrients and technology. While life has improved for most people, their existential suffering has increased proportionately, I think this existential suffering is largely due to these powers of control influencing language but it seems to be an equilibrium regardless, like the more materially good someone's life is, the more existential suffering they can put up with. There is that weird spiral though, where people get more depressed because of feeling a little depressed while their life is materially so good. It's like they feel ashamed they cant be happy despite having so much, they feel ashamed they are depressed over such trivial problems, this shame only makes their depression much worse.

It's like the people who suffer the most existentially are the ones who find these new ideas and express them through art/words to the masses, I guess that's what makes it an equilibrium, the more you push people to suffer through limiting their understanding through language control, the more their suffering drives them to find or invent language and ideas to deal with this suffering. So what would be the point of this language control then? let's say hypothetically you influence a word to keep people struggling/suffering? now what? they suffer and invent a new word to explain things and largely forget the old one, nothing has changed? well you still had that period of suffering, those suffering people wasted their time alleviating their suffering rather than attaining power. But you had to expend some power to influence the language in the first place so of course it's an equilibrium, when the reward for influencing language is worth the cost it will be done. But people can only handle this increased suffering if they are materially more well off. I think I'm kind of looking at it in reverse, it's more like when people become better off in material terms, then you can use this knowing they can handle some existential suffering now and limit their language.

It seems like it might not be important, I mean on a global scale, it's always going to be a thing whether I really understand it or not but then again any reduction in centralisation of power is always a good thing, right? I think it's a good thing in terms of the world but if you are specifically undermining the centralisation of power of a specific group/country which is relatively more moral than others then you have just made the world worse off. Is any centralised power really more moral than another though? surely, the more centralised they are, the less moral. Well the average person can fight back with language control so it depends what language idea they are fighting for as to whether their fight is against immoral power, you don't really fight against a specific central power, you fight against a specific idea by giving it a term to try and drive that idea out of any centralised powers and increase the strength relatively of centralised powers that don't employ this idea.

Is this really the best way to fight an idea? to simply name it for what it is? I guess it depends on what stage it is at, obviously if it already has a fairly well defined idea then defining it more accurately isn't going to be much use in fighting it as everyone who might oppose this idea already understands how to see/recognise it well enough. I think an easy way to determine what idea is most efficient to fight through words is to determine which ideas have the most corrupted language surrounding them as the more corrupted it is currently, the easier it is to destroy some corruption and give power back to the people. But I just said you shouldn't target something just because it's centralised or has control, you should fight specific ideas themselves, it shouldn't be about what you can make the most change in, it should be about what you can make the best change in. I had fallen prey to their type of thinking, the elites that is, trying to do the most rather than the best. Maybe you do though, maybe the best thing is just to give everyone, whether they are an average person or an elite, the best language possible to be able to discern reality and then you let reality be the judge, whatever happens as long as it is truthful is good and it will be more likely to be truthful the more people can word and understand the world around them.

There is some mechanic acting where as things and in particular words have become more well defined as society becomes more complex and efficient, the concepts behind certain words become more abstracted and as such it's easier for people to exploit the vagueness in their definition to push a hidden agenda but really this isn't inherently bad. Like with apples, we now have more labels for different apples due to more specialised varieties, the definition for the individual varieties are so complex but the difference between them is so nuanced that you can have a lot of wordplay in the spaces between varieties to distort reality, obviously this isn't very useful for apples but it was just an example.

It's the eternal question I guess, whether the point of reality is a battle between good and bad, or if reality just is and whatever accepts or embraces the nature of reality is the real 'good'. I don't think there is an answer so it's just something I have to choose, whether I should fight for making reality more 'good' in whichever way I feel is 'good' or if I should just embrace things as they are. Trying to create your personal idea of good instead of just trying to embrace life is akin to telling a lie, you are trying to change reality to what you want it to be. Is that what telling a lie is? does a lie need to have a motive surrounding influencing reality to be a lie and simply not a false statement?

If you lie to yourself you are trying to make yourself believe something about reality in the hopes that you can now live better, if you lie to someone else it could be for many reasons but ultimately you want them to think something about reality that isn't true but their belief in it now becomes true at least for a while. Aiming to manifest the moral good in the world is trying to shape reality from what it is to what you want it to be, it doesn't matter if you think you are right, it doesn't matter if you are actually right about what is morally good.

Is there such a thing as a good lie or at least a lie that isn't bad? an example could be you have an old family member who is a widower with Alzheimer's who cant remember more than 5 minutes, surely it's a good lie if they ask "where is my wife?" to lie and say "she is just out to the shops and will be back soon", there is no point in telling them the truth, it will only hurt them for the next 5 minutes and then they wont even remember the truth. The reward of knowing the truth normally is how it lets you act better in the future, due to a more accurate knowledge of the world you can bend the world in the way you want more effectively or you can at least know how it will react better so you can more effectively act within it. Maybe another good lie would be to tell a dying partner that you will never find another even if it's not true, there is no point in telling them the truth as it will only make their final days worse and make an uncomfortable situation for you. Again, the only good lies come when it is not possible for the lie to ever be revealed and for the misunderstandings caused by believing in the lie to never be challenged by reality. That is the danger of lying or living in delusion, eventually your wrong beliefs will be challenged by the brick wall of reality and not only will you have acted in a misguided way but now you will have to re evaluate what you know and all previous things you may have done wrong based on this lie, you will waste more resources in the long run living a lie.

Surely there are lies though where the belief in them provides more benefit to both the liar and the lied to than the consequences of when it's eventually found out? I think this is true in theory but in practice it plays out badly more often than it plays out well, maybe that doesn't make lying bad absolutely then, it just depends on the judgment of the liar. You cant leave that judgment to everyone though, on average they will be wrong and you will cause more suffering in the world. Maybe it's one of those situations where you want a 'law' forbidding something but you accept and welcome the law being broken in exceptional circumstances. The problem with modern society is that they always try to write these exceptions into the law and it ends up undermining the law and the line defining this exception is abused and exploited. For example with abortion, abortion should be illegal to discourage people having unprotected sex, to force people to learn actions have consequences and to treat life with respect but the exceptional cases such as rape pregnancy should be allowed to be exploited. The problem is when you write these exceptions into law it becomes a slippery slope, not to mention all the effort wasted trying to work out which exact exceptions are valid, some things don't need general rules such as exceptions, life is far too complicated for that. Do not lie should be a general rule but it should be broken when 'needed', trying to write into the law when it should be broken just over complicates the law and undermines it, you want people to treat it like an absolute law but also to break it when they absolutely know it should be broken, basically the law could be written as 'if you don't know for sure what is best to say then say the truth'.

Another example is cheating on your spouse, it should be a 'law' not to cheat but cheating and doing wrong can be for the best in the long run. I guess this is just the famous quote 'rules are made to be broken' but the meaning behind this quote is so bastardised that believing in the quote does the opposite of what it should do, the real quote should be something like 'follow the rules but break them for exceptional circumstances'. The current interpretation of the quote makes people think they should break the rules whenever they feel like it without care but really the sparseness of breaking the rules is what makes it more fun. It's a natural need for humanity to break the rules or do what is wrong either by their own judgment or others in order to feel alive and in control but everyone has a different equilibrium they operate at and should operate at. Usually rules are there for good reason and even if the reason is to protect others, usually breaking them will only cause issue in the long run but this can be balanced out by the reward in terms of novelty or excitement in breaking the rules. For some people this novelty wears off fast though but really it is an equilibrium, the longer you go without doing wrong, the more fun the wrong becomes so eventually everyone reaches the point where it is worth it from a cost benefit analysis to break the rules or do something wrong. The problem with modern society is they over romanticise this breaking of rules and subvert all rules in the first place, they try to make the rules out to be arbitrary and nonsensical, it is impossible to tell if there is a concerted effort behind it or it is just a biproduct of another sickness in our society. That is to say that it is hard to say if the media that romanticises this bad behaviour is pushing it or they are just filling a demand for it. The media is constantly romanticising cheating and trying to portray 'toxic' relationships as being more exciting, maybe that is a biproduct of women being the biggest consumers of media or at least making the household 'purchasing' of media decisions, women are naturally more inclined to like the feeling of breaking the rules, I don't know why this is, if it is the breaking the rules in the first place that excites them more, if they just don't get bored of breaking the rules as quickly as men or if they just cant understand more abstract connections which are needed to value what the real purpose of the rules in the first place are. Maybe it is that they are more narcissistic, especially in modern times, they want to be the centre of the universe so any rules which are established as a mutual agreement between strangers to co operate is less meaningful to them, they always think they are exceptions. Girls crave drama even if it is bad/negative over a regular existence, they want to live in a tv soap opera. Breaking the rules and doing what you know to be wrong is basically performing a lie, you are doing what is not right by reality for your own benefit.

There is a difference between the truth and something that isn't a lie though. There are things which could be thought of as lies in the sense that they are not strictly true but treating them as true makes them less false. For example, the core Christian idea that 'you can become better', ignoring how subjective this is, this isn't strictly true, there is no way to know whether it is true until it happens but believing it as true makes a person more likely to strive to achieve it and thus more likely for it to actualise in reality. This is the power of 'faith', I hate that word, I understand it but others don't and so it should be avoided at all costs, there are no good words to represent this idea to people who don't believe it, I don't know how anyone could not believe it though, it is pretty self evident and simple. Everyone sees it in their day to day life, they see how when they want something and feel they can achieve it then they are more likely to achieve it but these non believers refuse to call it faith, I guess I cant blame them, I believe in faith and even I don't like that word. It really is an issue with the image christianity has, image is really important to ideas but even so focusing on image is problematic and counter productive, you should only focus on image enough to counter act anyone trying to ruin the image of your movement, you should never actively try to mislead your ideas by artificially creating an image, the ideas should stand on their own but you should counter any propaganda that ruins the image of your movement.

I guess Christianity or religion in general is one of those theoretical 'lies' I was talking about where believing it provides more benefit to everyone in the long run than the consequences of when you learn it was a lie. I think the difference between this lie and other benevolent lies is the lack of alternative options if you didn't believe the lie. For example, you learn Christianity was not strictly true and you feel you may have wasted your days with it but what would you have done without it? likely drowned in nihilism. I get it, not everyone is broken by nihilism and in certain niches it allows beautiful things to flourish but in general, a humbling before a theoretical god and an unfounded belief that you can improve should be the default state for humanity and exceptions should be exactly that, exceptional cases only when the person knows they could manage their life better without these beliefs. I know in general the current way it works isn't optimal, I see the average believer and the average atheist and in the vast majority of cases the average believer is better off in every way. The problem is the exceptions tend to speak the loudest, you do have certain people who can be perfectly happy and productive not believing and because they are happy they end up vocalizing this and try to get others to not believe, they don't see the woe and degeneracy of their fellow non believers, they don't see how on average the average believer is far happier than the average non believer. The smart non believers also only see media from other smart non believers while only see the average believer who is generally dumb and living in a fantasy world, they don't see that the average non believer is also generally dumb and living in a fantasy world. I guess that is why non belief has so perniciously infiltrated our society, the smart non believers are the most vocal while the dumb believers are most vocal so the image of either side is distorted slightly and it causes the undecided people to find the side of non belief artificially more attractive. The difference seems to be that smart non believers identify themselves with their non belief where the smart believers don't identify themselves by their belief. To a smart believer their belief is only an accessory to life because the belief itself basically says to focus on those around you and what you can change and that 'big' questions are really just a spiritual tool, whereas a smart non believer thinks the nature of reality is the most important thing in their life, they really are narcissistic to think that what they think about reality truly matters to others.

But the common lie, what people would call a 'white lie' usually has better alternatives that could have been followed if the person did not believe the lie. For example, a man might tell his wife that her new ugly haircut is the best because he thinks that her haircut doesn't actually matter, thinking she might as well feel good about herself but eventually reality will come up against this lie and she will learn that she looks worse with the haircut and has wasted however many months when she could have had a better one. Reality always catches up and punishes two fold for any transgressions against it. This man might not even lie outright, he might say something like "you look beautiful" or "I love it" but this is really a lie by omission, he didn't finish his sentences, they should have been "you look beautiful to me regardless" or "I love it but not as much as other haircuts", but we all know how those last two sentences would go down in most relationships but then again most relationships are built off lies. Some people really want their relationships to be that, entirely lies, a safe space to hide from the world and reality. They want their relationship and partner to be the one to affirm everything about them as they feel they get enough challenge from reality outside of their relationship, but these people don't realise that challenges from reality are not absolute, the amount of challenge or strife you receive from reality is dependent on how much you have your lies affirmed. A good relationship is one with honesty, where the person helps you understand reality, whether they are doing this so you can act within it or you can change it to your will is another matter and entirely personal, I think in general the default belief should be everyone should act within reality and only attempt to change it to what they think is morally good when they absolutely know they should try and change it. By default people should assume they don't know what is right and what is wrong, they should act based on the belief that whatever exists is more right than what they think should exist, thinking about what should be is a huge waste of resources rather than thinking about what is and how to act within what is and only going outside this when you really know that you should.

There is also a concept surrounding lies which is like mutual lying, where people essentially get into unwritten contracts. I can't think of many good examples but one might be when partners tell each other that they are soulmates, that they are everything to each other and will always love them. Sure, you could argue it's not a lie as most of the time they do truly believe this at least to some extent but there is definitely some level of delusion and self deception going on where they are basically saying to each other "I will treat you like this, in the hopes that you will treat me like this too". Another example might be when people go out drinking together or gather together in general, the mutual lie is something like "I will act happy and energetic in the hopes that you will too so we can provide each other with a good time" when most of the time both parties are meeting up and drinking because they are lonely or feeling down. I don't know much about mutual lies, I don't know if they are harmful in the long run, probably not as much as general lies as usually the alternative of not telling a mutual lie is something inherently bad or else people would not be willing to enter into these unwritten contracts.

There is something else about that though, that something not being true doesn't make it a lie, it's something to do with language tricks. Like for example you might say "things will get better", this isn't strictly true or a lie, it all depends on the interpretation of the words like whether 'things' refers to everything or just some things and how you define 'better' and what timeframe you stop at. These ambiguous statements are often worse than lies though as they are hollow words that are trying to play both sides, they are wanting to lie to you in a way that benefits them while also wanting the defense if it doesn't happen that they didn't actually lie, which makes them feel better when saying it. Someone saying this wants to cheer you up both for their sake and possibly yours with the lie side of this phrase (the thing they want you to believe which isn't strictly true in reality) but they also want to benefit from the feeling of telling the truth. This is the most pernicious lie within society, the lie that plays both sides due to its hollow nature, it will rarely if ever have any positive long term impact on anyone but it just wastes time on empty words and makes the liar a shell of a human, everyone is a shell these days but it's not really their individual fault, as in it's not a fault of their morality but really it's more of a consequence of how our language has developed. Words are so subjective these days, everything has become subjective but particularly words, probably some of it comes from just the sheer amount/time of use, over time words change definition but the old definition still lurks deep within that word to some degree, you can now use multiple definitions of that word within one use of the word if it benefits you, you can tell one person you meant the old definition of the word and tell another you meant the new definition. I think a large part is the subjectivity of words became required in some sense due to the increased permanence of what you say, how what you say is now kept track of online, in the early days of the internet people kept getting into trouble for things they said decades ago and they had to invent 'excuses' (really there wasn't a need to be excused in a just world) that context was missing and subjectively they meant something else, often they were right but the biproduct of this was that it normalised such an idea of language and provided a space for nefarious people to exploit this subjectivity with the end result being that words no longer mean as much due to the ease at which they could be backpedaled if needed, everything everyone said was and is now hollow.

This isn't even touching on how irony has destroyed language in a similar sense to this backpedaling with the excuse of subjectivity/context, someone can say something and if it is not received by a certain group how they want then they can hide behind their words being ironic. It's really not a bad thing though, that is words being thought of as more hollow, it's really just a tool in a way, as mentioned it can allow you to say things you couldn't otherwise say using these artificial shields. It's certainly an interesting time, it's like the death of language as we know it, now when people say something they aren't really saying the words they say, what they say truly is dependent on the whole context surrounding their words and to an extent their whole existence. There used to be more of a separation between what someone said and what someone did but now with the decreased objectivity of what they say that hole is being supplanted by looking into what they did. This seems to be happening more and more and so if the general trend follows then eventually words will be more or less meaningless in comparison to context, this is good, right? it means people will be thinking more in terms of ideas and actions rather than words, they will be more like me, they will be able to understand more complex ideas which cant be expressed in words easily.

I should ask Ner how she thinks, whether she thinks in words or ideas, or maybe I should ask Sarah, or both? Ner... I truly forgot about her for the last few days... what the fuck is wrong with me? I feel like I'm 15 again, some new girl shows me the least bit of attention and my entire life is turned upside down, is it normal to still be like this in your 30s? I think it's less about her and more about what she exposes. Sarah is basically a representation of reality hitting me and exposing my faulty belief in the lie that is Ner. Sarah isn't anything amazing, or at least not that I know so far but compared to Ner she shows just how horrible Ner can be, does that matter? I knew she was terrible before I committed myself to her, that was part of the appeal, terrible like me but it is becoming more like as terrible as the past me. Fuck, remember when she said that people in relationships just want someone to make their lives simple and peaceful... that is like the opposite of the truth. Well, that is what a lot of men want, some stability, but women crave an exciting life, they want chaos. I don't think Ner actually wants a simple life which is probably why she doesn't love me, she just believes she wants her life simplified which is why she likes the familiarity of me at this point. That's her main problem, she is torn between her feminine and masculine sides, deep down she has a lot of feminine feelings like she wants the drama and complicated side but she represses these feelings and convinces herself that she doesn't have them so never feels satisfied, she thinks it is what she wants so when she gets it and still doesn't feel happy and fulfilled she thinks that life is inherently terrible, she has everything she wants but still doesn't feel fulfilled. She doesn't realise that it isn't actually what she wants, she wants to be a woman, but showing her this is too difficult.

She is a mess, it would be fine if she was at least my mess but she doesn't even want to be mine, maybe I am contributing by giving up for my own benefit. I should leave her and maybe it will help her in the long run, I do really care for her and want to help her. What am I saying? she has essentially already left me, I have no say in this, maybe I should just exacerbate it, cause her to leave me in a very clearly final way, I really don't know what would be best for her. If I leave her she might feel a little despondent even though she doesn't love me but if she leaves me then she might go on thinking the problem is with others and not herself. I made a mess of this, I should have dumped her before she wanted to leave me, now there will be no solution for her, she will probably spend the next 5 years in her depressive haze. Whatever, I'm not her dad, she is not my responsibility, I should just let whatever happens happen, I should just let reality play out and not lie as I don't truly know what to do. I will text her tomorrow to try and see where her mind is at.

He was now very depressed as he was feeling like he wasted the past 3 years of his life with Ner and got very drunk as seemed to be a tradition for Sunday's.