this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
39 points (95.3% liked)

Casual Conversation

625 readers
350 users here now

Share a story, ask a question, or start a conversation about (almost) anything you desire. Maybe you'll make some friends in the process.

RULES

  1. Be respectful: no harassment, hate speech, bigotry, and/or trolling.
  2. Encourage conversation in your OP. This means including heavily implicative subject matter when you can and also engaging in your thread when possible.
  3. Avoid controversial topics (e.g. politics or societal debates).
  4. Stay calm: Don’t post angry or to vent or complain. We are a place where everyone can forget about their everyday or not so everyday worries for a moment. Venting, complaining, or posting from a place of anger or resentment doesn't fit the atmosphere we try to foster at all. Feel free to post those on !goodoffmychest@lemmy.world
  5. Keep it clean and SFW
  6. No solicitation such as ads, promotional content, spam, surveys etc.

Casual conversation communities:

Related discussion-focused communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
BoozeOrWater@piefed.social
39
What's your unpopular opinion? (piefed.blahaj.zone)
submitted 2 days ago by LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/casualconversation@piefed.social
109 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Could you decide that punching yourself in the face—hard—is enjoyable?

In the past, I have participated in auto mutilation, yes. At a certain point you want to feel anything.

The decision to change is always driven by discomfort with that emotional reaction, another stimulus.

You're right! And it's very scary, facing the thing that's causing the discomfort.

That's why I spend so much time trying to occupy my mind with puzzles, code, games, alcohol. Anything to distract me! Anything to direct that racing mind towards. But in the end I had to face the discomfort, walk inwards, towards it, to find where it came from.

It wasn't my body, it wasn't the calculating part of my mind.

In short, if we all react to the same stimulus in predictable ways, where's the free will?

Luckily we don't all react to the same stimulus in the same way. We can look back and learn from past mistakes.

We can share experiences, learn from eachother.

We can look eachother in the eyes.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 1 points 1 day ago

I'm sorry that you've had such troubles in the past. Learning from past mistakes isn't an example of free will, though.