I’m a big fan of his, but I’m also not sure he’s the right person to judge what a mentally healthy, well-adjusted individual should act like.

Is that a refutation? I admit, when I consider how my distant ancestors and the majority of humans throughout history lived, I wonder why they chose to go on, and to create new generations who also lived lives like theirs, and the only answer I have is that they lacked perspective. Maybe a philosophy that teaches one to refuse a life without dignity is, in that context, correct philosophy.

The New Hampshire style lowercase-L libertarians I met weren’t like the online uppercase-L libertarians that that book is about. (They generally wouldn’t call themselves libertarians, for one thing.) My impression (as, ultimately, an outsider) was that they were practical people accustomed to rural life who thought it was important that everyone should mind his own business.

My favorite so far has been New Hampshire - lots of space, beautiful forests, cool summers, low taxes, and the general libertarian attitude. I don’t really have a least favorite. Even the ones that I felt weren’t right for me had their appeal. California was the one I had the strongest negative reaction to. The extent of homelessness in the Bay Area was shocking, but on the other hand the climate was absolutely heavenly. (The two facts are not unrelated.)

I suggest trying antidepressants. Obviously I can’t diagnose you from one post, but my impression is that your problem is primarily in your ability (or lack thereof) to enjoy your circumstances, not in your circumstances themselves. For what it’s worth, I’m an adult with a good job, few responsibilities, and enough money to buy anything I might reasonably want and I still need my bupropion - it’s just something about how my brain works, not anything in the external world.

Being told that my girlfriend was probably too old to have children naturally - technically about her age rather than mine, but we were close in age.

A few years earlier, seeing people born when I graduated from high school graduating from high school themselves.

Or before even that, living longer than my mom had - she died young but I hadn’t really felt how young.

I meant that I would be paying extra for it as opposed to a hypothetical car manufactured without the requirement. So it would be like having my taxes raised to pay for providing me something I didn’t want.

Maybe this makes me sound like a jerk, but my thinking in that regard was “I don’t have children and rarely drive near other people’s loose children. Why should I pay for hardware I don’t need?”

I deliberately sought out a car without that stuff when I had to buy a new(er) car recently. It’s usually quite annoying - the worst was a rental car that had an alarm buzz whenever I activated my turn signal while there was another car anywhere near my blind spot.

IMO the only technological improvement from the last decade and a half that’s worth having is a backup camera, and that’s only because I must shamefully confess to being terrible at parallel parking without one despite having years of practice. (I was tempted to buy a Miata since they still have real dials, but ultimately I did settle for a car with a digital display instead of an instrument panel.)

Demigods love it when you disturb their tombs.

One time when I was in my early teens, I was teasing my sister and her friend and that friend suddenly lunged at me and bit me on the arm, hard. I had tooth marks and a funny feeling for the next few hours - a girl had touched me, with her mouth!