This would seem to be something akin to a Human axiom.
And depending upon the present definition of “doomed to fail” things divide into two camps.
1) There are those who were courageous, heroic, entrepreneurial who heard all kinds of critics tell them their venture was “doomed to fail”, but they somehow accomplished their “impossible” task and great reward came from it. Practically every successful inventor, innovator, game-changer has been exposed to this kind of “doomed to fail” tirade.
2) But then there is the aspect of Human nature that patently refuses to learn from even horrendously tragic historical events, like totalitarianism. Our society right now is particularly beset with a postmodern neo-Marxism playing out as victimhood identity group (for various reasons that I could break down for you if you wish) that utterly fails to recognize something that has proven devastatingly toxic no matter where it has been tried or what variant of it has been played.
There’s something to be said for perseverance when heroically questing for something there are no shortage of nay-sayers preaching against.
But there’s also something to be said for the wisdom of recognizing that there is no safe way to bait a hungry lion, unarmed on the open plain; or to engage in an addiction process, asserting that everyone else who got addicted was just “doing it wrong”.
It shouldn’t be as hard as some people try make it . . . to discern between wise perseverance and blithering insanity.
@griz there are those who know their limits. They take a line of coke, smoke a joint (weed), or down a shot of whisky or a few beers and are fine, never venturing into addiction. Why?
@Jear77
It takes little intelligence to adopt such a low resolution definition of addiction one can avoid taking personal responsibility for the psychological traps they are firmly stuck in: owned by: mere functions of.
They will expand all of their energy and all of their life trying to justify remaining stuck.
This is the essence of psychological addiction.
It is inevitable for all who don’t pay attention and take personal responsibility for themselves.
@griz so one qho does such things once a year, once maybe every 2-3 years,or even once a decade is still as addicted as the one who uses daily or multiple times a day? That’s a messed up definition.
@griz ok… let’s go with me. I tried smoking at ace 12. I took one puff, coughed for 10 minutes, threw up. I said never again. To this day I haven’t. Yet, according to your logic, i’m just as addicted as the one who chain smokes. Don’t you see a discrepancy there?
@griz you say “eventually handled by it” – i seen what drug addiction is… i lived with addicts – remember i was a part of the housing program for a decade. I also know what it is not. Who’s the expert here? Me, through life experiences. People looking at situations from the outside have no way of gauging such things, as they don’t have a yardstick by which to measure.
@Jear77
Most people know that most of the iceberg exists invisibly under the water.
But most are still surprised at just how extensive the Unseen can be.
Our best yardstick still only measures what is seen.
And only someone who has never become intimate with the deep dark under laying chaos, can pretend they know the exact nature of it; or are the masters of knowing exactly when it emerges.
One can watch a bird display on their front lawn for hours every day, and still have no real notion of what that bird is about.
Am I correct that you’ve only seen a lot of physical chemical addiction?
@griz We dealt with many different clientele. Veterans. Those trying to escape abusive relationships. The homeless. Drug addicts. Alcoholics. Those suffering from HIV/ AIDS. The elderly who needed some structure. So if there wasn’t people who had other addictions not divulged to us, I’d be VERY surprised. Maybe that homeless person had a gambling addiction, Maybe that veteran had a psychological addiction to weed (as it’s impossible to be physically addicted to it). Perhaps people who are in an abusive relationship can be said to be addicted to their abusers (though the use of that word in this situation would be highly controversial in the medical community). Who knows? We only knew what they’re willing to tell us.
Firsthand experience will *always* trump “well I know about such and so…” but haven’t lived it firsthand. Those who haven’t lived in the exact same situation are simply talking out of their ass.
@Jear77
Actually I studied the basis of addiction just the other day.
It is a physical neuro-chemical process regardless of whether the addiction is physical or psychological. Actually the most demonstrative “physical addiction” process can be expunged in a clinical setting in 7-10 days.
But what is lasting are the processes in the brain whereby the mental pathways/processes that were in play just before the chemical substance is used, are augmented and reinforced. Most classes of preferred social drugs affect the serotonin, dopamine and epinepherin ratio in the brain. These “pleasure hormone” don’t just produce the pleasure-reaction, they active “reward” the pathways leading up their modified secretion.
Most sane people have some degree of trepidation in experimenting with such powerful drugs, but a key brain process in leading up to early experimentation and continued use, is the “To hell with it” process. This is augmented and reinforced with every future exposure, until in very short order is it reinforced over more sensible processes.
(In a side-note, wanting to legalize these drugs is just an attempt to mitigate the natural trepidation of using such substances)
Even if drug use ceases, the “to hell with it” process (and others as well) remain robust enough that they actually re-write part of the personality. This is what causes relapse — though it remains a beefy-enough process that it can help sway one into all manner of questionable activities. Those that don’t lead to pleasurable outcome don’t enforce the process — but also don’t “de-enforce” it. It’s still there, just waiting for some degree of “pleasure” to feed it’s growth once again.
That means that even low-level use of any of these classes of pleasure-drugs can produce long-lasted and perhaps even permanent change to the brain structure, and therefore the personality.
@griz that’s where our setting was to come in. We were a *legally recognized level of care* (and I’m ALWAYS careful to use those EXACT words, because to say otherwise could cause me trouble). We were program based, with counselors and other such professionals on site to get people transitioning from what they were… to a stable place where they could be functioning members of society again
@Jear77
And a permanently “altered” (or damaged) person CAN find a level of societal functionability.
But they are never the same as before the “alteration” (damage) occurred.
Something worth considering is that going back to archaic times (tribal cultures) the most powerful medications were dictated by the elders, and administered/monitored by the equivalent of a shaman.
They were for specific purposes, with “recreational” practically unheard of. Many of the substances and ceremonies were considered “sacred”, meaning they were set aside for a specific purpose and you didn’t mess with them lest “the spirit of them” rise up and “punish” you with either addiction, or reduced effectiveness should you really need it.
Most American Native traditions considered tobacco “sacred” to some degree: not to be abused. Look at the health consequences when one does use it “recreationally”.
(Although it’s a particularly nasty one, with even casual use causing irreparable damage to the lungs of participants and by-standers. )
@griz religious intervention unnecessary with our business concept. There are programs similar in nature to the classic 12step ones that were allowed if they didn’t want to go that route.
@Jear77
The 12-step system was based on models of religion, spirituality, and Human behavioral psychology.
I would suggest that programs that were “similar in nature”, had the same nature, personality or “spirit” to them.
I know you don’t like religion. I’m not a fan of it either. But “religiously avoiding religion” can become as a religion unto itself — requiring similar devotion and sacrifice.
I’ve found great benefit in getting past the hurt and giving credit where credit is due. There are benefits to be found in the religious model, as well as detriment.
There remains no more effective and Lasting cure for chemical addiction, than a religious experience.
@griz maybe i should have been a bit more specific. I researched recovery programs (reasonably recently) finding programs that had no spiritual aspects to them. In fact i found at least one recovery program that claimed to be a program that helps individuals recover from the concept of god/ religion / religious abuse/ control.
@griz *really?!* so you can medicate the spirit? Do our blood alcohol levels make our spirit drunk? What about “uppers” making it excited? Does a headache (physical symptom) exist in rhe spirit?
@Jear77
Most certainly.
But with the understanding that what is physical is just physical and what is spiritual is spiritual. Various classic physical medications affect not just the body, but the spirit — the very “personality” of a person.
There are also medications for the spirit that are almost entirely spiritual — like meditation and ascetism.
Do you find this surprising?
(Again, recognizing that your “religious venture” seems to have had absolutely no spiritual aspect to it, and perhaps these concepts DO actually surprise you. But I think you are intelligent enough to have recognized processes in your life that while physical meaning could be attached, it in no way honored the full phenomena of the process.)
@griz maybe i should have been a bit more specific. I researched recovery programs (reasonably recently) finding programs that had no spiritual aspects to them. In fact i found at least one recovery program that claimed to be a program that helps individuals recover from the concept of god/ religion / religious abuse/ control. In fact i was seriously thinking about said group
@Jear77
We are very abstract beings; and “abstraction” maps more into our spirit than our physicality. In a way, it is a mini-transcendence of the purely physically empirically objective arena of the physical.
Even if a psychological (spiritual) healing process is carefully sanitized of all classic/commonly accepted religious and spiritual terminology, the underlying principles they are trying to abstract their way to remain mostly in the real of the spiritual, where classic science has little if any traction.
If it did, one could just write a “recipe” for addiction recovery and every time the recipe was followed it would result in the same kind of cake.
But people just don’t work that way. Because we are both physical AND spiritual beings. We are the embodiment of where these two realms meet.
@griz actually there is. But it’s for each person to find. The need for whatever they’re addicted to is to be outweighed by something greater. God, or the concept thereof, at day’s end is naught but another addiction. Other people find art, a relationship with the opposite sex, work, etc.
@Jear77
The psychological literature is quite clear that addictive personality does not just go away.
One just finds a “healthier” addiction to supplant an unhealthy one.
And the healthiest addiction that has been found to date is Transcendent Meaning.
And in society, ours particularly, this has become abstracted into the God concept. And regrettably into just the low-resolution religious concept of God.
And as one looks across the human behavioral landscape, the impression is that everyone is trying to work out this addiction equation whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
They are looking for “a new drug” as Huey Lewis and the News sing about.
@griz went on, “things divide into two camps”,
….repeated his greatest hits,
….didn’t answer the question.
Binary Hyperbolous Repetition
(I have to remind myself it’s a mantra to keep himself from doing whatever stupid shit he used to do, & what works for some is like styrofoam, fingernails, & chalkboards to sensitive types like myself.)
I refuse to fall into the trap of the neo-ism-ist. I don’t play well with others for a reason, perhaps because I have seen where that path generally leads…oblivion. I reserve the right to dwell on the edge and live in the fringe where I can throw rocks at the extremes on both sides of the social spectrum. I have reeled against the rise of the police-state mind set and the anarchist mind set steeped in it’s identity politic. The far left and far right both have their inherent faults. One could say that I ride the pendulum as it swings one way or the other. I just happen to be slightly right of center most of the time though, where I am somewhat comfortable, stirring the pot from time to time and pissing off the occupants of the left. (I am tempted here to say “the cellar dwellers on the left”, poking fun at them for being creatures that live in their mom’s basement and play World of Warcraft video games and perpetually unemployed or simply too lazy to get a real job and move out of their parents house)… but I digress. @griz recently reminded me of a fact that some of us fail to recognize, a bird has two wings; one left and one right, both of which are necessary for the bird to fly. Remove one of those wings and the bird falters, and plummets to the ground, then withers and dies. And so it is with society, like a bird, it needs both wings to fly. There needs to be a balance between left and right if society is to survive and flourish.
@immortal_pirate
I’m comfortable with the reality that most of our existence Is anarchy, our most oppressive governing power is usually someone we agree to be oppressed by for Dollah, most high, most transferable, & there’s building material, medicine, fuel, food, fibre, & fun in a seed that pretty much all governments on Earth tried to go after & failed.
As soon as I hexplain to the youth that Yooooou people all have lead poisoning, & they all have PTSD from repetitive needle pokin’ infant inoculations, we can all get back to ignoring foreigners & adopting the linguistics of rappers nobody remembers.
We all do things we know won’t work. Sometimes it’s to be there for someone. Sometimes it’s to be there for someone & laugh at them or with them when everything goes to shit.
Sometimes it’s lust or lovey squishy feelings where that “better to have loved & lost” thing’ll echo in your head for far too long.
All kinds of choose your own adventures.
The right or the wrong of it comes from what you learn from every episode of “oh what-the-hell-am-doing-this-for, or what you don’t learn.
41 responses to “would you ever do something you saw was doomed to fail?”
This would seem to be something akin to a Human axiom.
And depending upon the present definition of “doomed to fail” things divide into two camps.
1) There are those who were courageous, heroic, entrepreneurial who heard all kinds of critics tell them their venture was “doomed to fail”, but they somehow accomplished their “impossible” task and great reward came from it. Practically every successful inventor, innovator, game-changer has been exposed to this kind of “doomed to fail” tirade.
2) But then there is the aspect of Human nature that patently refuses to learn from even horrendously tragic historical events, like totalitarianism. Our society right now is particularly beset with a postmodern neo-Marxism playing out as victimhood identity group (for various reasons that I could break down for you if you wish) that utterly fails to recognize something that has proven devastatingly toxic no matter where it has been tried or what variant of it has been played.
There’s something to be said for perseverance when heroically questing for something there are no shortage of nay-sayers preaching against.
But there’s also something to be said for the wisdom of recognizing that there is no safe way to bait a hungry lion, unarmed on the open plain; or to engage in an addiction process, asserting that everyone else who got addicted was just “doing it wrong”.
It shouldn’t be as hard as some people try make it . . . to discern between wise perseverance and blithering insanity.
@griz there are those who know their limits. They take a line of coke, smoke a joint (weed), or down a shot of whisky or a few beers and are fine, never venturing into addiction. Why?
@Jear77
If there’s one thing we as humans do not know, it’s our limits! Both at the upper and lower ends of the spectrum.
I doubt there ever has been nor ever will be a human that exists, who recognizes the Event Horizon of addiction as they cross it.
That’s why a addiction is so Insidious. The gains of recreational drug use so very rarely justify the risks.
I really hope this isn’t your story Jear.
@griz not at all… but i know plenty who do… witbout any harm
@Jear77
Define “without any harm”.
@griz no addiction
@Jear77
It takes little intelligence to adopt such a low resolution definition of addiction one can avoid taking personal responsibility for the psychological traps they are firmly stuck in: owned by: mere functions of.
They will expand all of their energy and all of their life trying to justify remaining stuck.
This is the essence of psychological addiction.
It is inevitable for all who don’t pay attention and take personal responsibility for themselves.
@griz so one qho does such things once a year, once maybe every 2-3 years,or even once a decade is still as addicted as the one who uses daily or multiple times a day? That’s a messed up definition.
@Jear77
Who is measuring their frequency of use for you?
It’s like trying to build a statistical consensus on how often people lie speed or cheat on their taxes according to their own testimony.
There are exceedingly rare cases where people are not affected by such things. George Burns and smoking for example.
But trying to use him as justification for smoking, even “just a few times”, is asking to be burned.
@griz ok… let’s go with me. I tried smoking at ace 12. I took one puff, coughed for 10 minutes, threw up. I said never again. To this day I haven’t. Yet, according to your logic, i’m just as addicted as the one who chain smokes. Don’t you see a discrepancy there?
@Jear77
Your logic is trying to do some exceedingly bizarre things with my logic!
Try asking yourself why there is such desperation in you to have this point be something other than what it is.
@griz you say “eventually handled by it” – i seen what drug addiction is… i lived with addicts – remember i was a part of the housing program for a decade. I also know what it is not. Who’s the expert here? Me, through life experiences. People looking at situations from the outside have no way of gauging such things, as they don’t have a yardstick by which to measure.
@Jear77
Most people know that most of the iceberg exists invisibly under the water.
But most are still surprised at just how extensive the Unseen can be.
Our best yardstick still only measures what is seen.
And only someone who has never become intimate with the deep dark under laying chaos, can pretend they know the exact nature of it; or are the masters of knowing exactly when it emerges.
One can watch a bird display on their front lawn for hours every day, and still have no real notion of what that bird is about.
Am I correct that you’ve only seen a lot of physical chemical addiction?
@griz We dealt with many different clientele. Veterans. Those trying to escape abusive relationships. The homeless. Drug addicts. Alcoholics. Those suffering from HIV/ AIDS. The elderly who needed some structure. So if there wasn’t people who had other addictions not divulged to us, I’d be VERY surprised. Maybe that homeless person had a gambling addiction, Maybe that veteran had a psychological addiction to weed (as it’s impossible to be physically addicted to it). Perhaps people who are in an abusive relationship can be said to be addicted to their abusers (though the use of that word in this situation would be highly controversial in the medical community). Who knows? We only knew what they’re willing to tell us.
Firsthand experience will *always* trump “well I know about such and so…” but haven’t lived it firsthand. Those who haven’t lived in the exact same situation are simply talking out of their ass.
@Jear77
Actually I studied the basis of addiction just the other day.
It is a physical neuro-chemical process regardless of whether the addiction is physical or psychological. Actually the most demonstrative “physical addiction” process can be expunged in a clinical setting in 7-10 days.
But what is lasting are the processes in the brain whereby the mental pathways/processes that were in play just before the chemical substance is used, are augmented and reinforced. Most classes of preferred social drugs affect the serotonin, dopamine and epinepherin ratio in the brain. These “pleasure hormone” don’t just produce the pleasure-reaction, they active “reward” the pathways leading up their modified secretion.
Most sane people have some degree of trepidation in experimenting with such powerful drugs, but a key brain process in leading up to early experimentation and continued use, is the “To hell with it” process. This is augmented and reinforced with every future exposure, until in very short order is it reinforced over more sensible processes.
(In a side-note, wanting to legalize these drugs is just an attempt to mitigate the natural trepidation of using such substances)
Even if drug use ceases, the “to hell with it” process (and others as well) remain robust enough that they actually re-write part of the personality. This is what causes relapse — though it remains a beefy-enough process that it can help sway one into all manner of questionable activities. Those that don’t lead to pleasurable outcome don’t enforce the process — but also don’t “de-enforce” it. It’s still there, just waiting for some degree of “pleasure” to feed it’s growth once again.
That means that even low-level use of any of these classes of pleasure-drugs can produce long-lasted and perhaps even permanent change to the brain structure, and therefore the personality.
@griz that’s where our setting was to come in. We were a *legally recognized level of care* (and I’m ALWAYS careful to use those EXACT words, because to say otherwise could cause me trouble). We were program based, with counselors and other such professionals on site to get people transitioning from what they were… to a stable place where they could be functioning members of society again
@Jear77
And a permanently “altered” (or damaged) person CAN find a level of societal functionability.
But they are never the same as before the “alteration” (damage) occurred.
Something worth considering is that going back to archaic times (tribal cultures) the most powerful medications were dictated by the elders, and administered/monitored by the equivalent of a shaman.
They were for specific purposes, with “recreational” practically unheard of. Many of the substances and ceremonies were considered “sacred”, meaning they were set aside for a specific purpose and you didn’t mess with them lest “the spirit of them” rise up and “punish” you with either addiction, or reduced effectiveness should you really need it.
Most American Native traditions considered tobacco “sacred” to some degree: not to be abused. Look at the health consequences when one does use it “recreationally”.
(Although it’s a particularly nasty one, with even casual use causing irreparable damage to the lungs of participants and by-standers. )
@griz religious intervention unnecessary with our business concept. There are programs similar in nature to the classic 12step ones that were allowed if they didn’t want to go that route.
@Jear77
The 12-step system was based on models of religion, spirituality, and Human behavioral psychology.
I would suggest that programs that were “similar in nature”, had the same nature, personality or “spirit” to them.
I know you don’t like religion. I’m not a fan of it either. But “religiously avoiding religion” can become as a religion unto itself — requiring similar devotion and sacrifice.
I’ve found great benefit in getting past the hurt and giving credit where credit is due. There are benefits to be found in the religious model, as well as detriment.
There remains no more effective and Lasting cure for chemical addiction, than a religious experience.
@griz maybe i should have been a bit more specific. I researched recovery programs (reasonably recently) finding programs that had no spiritual aspects to them. In fact i found at least one recovery program that claimed to be a program that helps individuals recover from the concept of god/ religion / religious abuse/ control.
@Jear77
A lot of processes change the recognizable spiritual names, but still use the same concepts renamed.
That is because healing of the mind is of the spirit. Healing of the body is of the flesh.
@griz *really?!* so you can medicate the spirit? Do our blood alcohol levels make our spirit drunk? What about “uppers” making it excited? Does a headache (physical symptom) exist in rhe spirit?
@Jear77
Most certainly.
But with the understanding that what is physical is just physical and what is spiritual is spiritual. Various classic physical medications affect not just the body, but the spirit — the very “personality” of a person.
There are also medications for the spirit that are almost entirely spiritual — like meditation and ascetism.
Do you find this surprising?
(Again, recognizing that your “religious venture” seems to have had absolutely no spiritual aspect to it, and perhaps these concepts DO actually surprise you. But I think you are intelligent enough to have recognized processes in your life that while physical meaning could be attached, it in no way honored the full phenomena of the process.)
@griz maybe i should have been a bit more specific. I researched recovery programs (reasonably recently) finding programs that had no spiritual aspects to them. In fact i found at least one recovery program that claimed to be a program that helps individuals recover from the concept of god/ religion / religious abuse/ control. In fact i was seriously thinking about said group
@Jear77
We are very abstract beings; and “abstraction” maps more into our spirit than our physicality. In a way, it is a mini-transcendence of the purely physically empirically objective arena of the physical.
Even if a psychological (spiritual) healing process is carefully sanitized of all classic/commonly accepted religious and spiritual terminology, the underlying principles they are trying to abstract their way to remain mostly in the real of the spiritual, where classic science has little if any traction.
If it did, one could just write a “recipe” for addiction recovery and every time the recipe was followed it would result in the same kind of cake.
But people just don’t work that way. Because we are both physical AND spiritual beings. We are the embodiment of where these two realms meet.
@griz actually there is. But it’s for each person to find. The need for whatever they’re addicted to is to be outweighed by something greater. God, or the concept thereof, at day’s end is naught but another addiction. Other people find art, a relationship with the opposite sex, work, etc.
@Jear77
The psychological literature is quite clear that addictive personality does not just go away.
One just finds a “healthier” addiction to supplant an unhealthy one.
And the healthiest addiction that has been found to date is Transcendent Meaning.
And in society, ours particularly, this has become abstracted into the God concept. And regrettably into just the low-resolution religious concept of God.
And as one looks across the human behavioral landscape, the impression is that everyone is trying to work out this addiction equation whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
They are looking for “a new drug” as Huey Lewis and the News sing about.
@Jear77
YEAH! Coke & Booze is the slip ‘n’ slide to hell on Earth. I fucking hate alcoholics.
Coke? I’m gone.
That shit’s dark.
@luftballooneyegouge i know… but some can handle it. I won’t touch the stuff.
@Jear77
Oh yeah mang,… how much cang they handle?
@Jear77
All are eventually handled by it.
Those who think they can handle it are simply more practiced deceivers than most.
@griz read previous answer
@Jear77
Yo mang, I’m talkin’ weight.
@griz has the transport
@Weenis has the guns
@immortal_pirate has his prison contact/suppliers
You’ve got the buyers.
I’ve seen Scarface AND the entire 1st season of Narcos.
@luftballooneyegouge didn’t catch the reference, didn’t watch video.
@griz went on, “things divide into two camps”,
….repeated his greatest hits,
….didn’t answer the question.
Binary Hyperbolous Repetition
(I have to remind myself it’s a mantra to keep himself from doing whatever stupid shit he used to do, & what works for some is like styrofoam, fingernails, & chalkboards to sensitive types like myself.)
@luftballooneyegouge
Hey I’m the one who’s been looking at your generic dislikes, left vague and with no expansion whatsoever!
At least if I disagree with something you’ve said I don’t just say “Boo!” and walk away!
Sure,…. like responding to Canadian posts?
@luftballooneyegouge
I’m glad you still try
Hindsight is an exact science…
I refuse to fall into the trap of the neo-ism-ist. I don’t play well with others for a reason, perhaps because I have seen where that path generally leads…oblivion. I reserve the right to dwell on the edge and live in the fringe where I can throw rocks at the extremes on both sides of the social spectrum. I have reeled against the rise of the police-state mind set and the anarchist mind set steeped in it’s identity politic. The far left and far right both have their inherent faults. One could say that I ride the pendulum as it swings one way or the other. I just happen to be slightly right of center most of the time though, where I am somewhat comfortable, stirring the pot from time to time and pissing off the occupants of the left. (I am tempted here to say “the cellar dwellers on the left”, poking fun at them for being creatures that live in their mom’s basement and play World of Warcraft video games and perpetually unemployed or simply too lazy to get a real job and move out of their parents house)… but I digress.
@griz recently reminded me of a fact that some of us fail to recognize, a bird has two wings; one left and one right, both of which are necessary for the bird to fly. Remove one of those wings and the bird falters, and plummets to the ground, then withers and dies. And so it is with society, like a bird, it needs both wings to fly. There needs to be a balance between left and right if society is to survive and flourish.
@immortal_pirate
I’m comfortable with the reality that most of our existence Is anarchy, our most oppressive governing power is usually someone we agree to be oppressed by for Dollah, most high, most transferable, & there’s building material, medicine, fuel, food, fibre, & fun in a seed that pretty much all governments on Earth tried to go after & failed.
As soon as I hexplain to the youth that Yooooou people all have lead poisoning, & they all have PTSD from repetitive needle pokin’ infant inoculations, we can all get back to ignoring foreigners & adopting the linguistics of rappers nobody remembers.
We all do things we know won’t work. Sometimes it’s to be there for someone. Sometimes it’s to be there for someone & laugh at them or with them when everything goes to shit.
Sometimes it’s lust or lovey squishy feelings where that “better to have loved & lost” thing’ll echo in your head for far too long.
All kinds of choose your own adventures.
The right or the wrong of it comes from what you learn from every episode of “oh what-the-hell-am-doing-this-for, or what you don’t learn.