I’m going to run with the premise that most people are “good.” In order for me to do so I will state a few conditions that must be true in order for someone to be considered “good.” A good person does not kill unjustly nor steal things of consequence. A good person is disposed to helping others or at least a feeling to want to help others even when they don’t. Honestly, at this point I already can’t think of anything else that could make someone qualify as anything more than merely “good” or maybe even better stated “not necessarily bad.”
I figure there is a sliding scale of what it means to be good, but nonetheless most people would consider themselves at the very least good if not so much as moral and decent. I suppose I want to explore these ideas in the context of our current life situation and how things will or won’t change. I recently had a discussion with Jake George about what can compel change and both of us, unfortunately, can’t see much of a point beyond mass extinction or extermination, so I would like to see if that relative conclusion is justified.
Often, when we describe something as good we see little reason to make it better. Good can plant pleasant feelings of accomplishment and worth. Good is encouraging. Of those who find themselves trying to make things better, many times they can find themselves trapped in a world of “never getting good enough.” I’m positive there is some cliché about not over cleaning or eating that I’m missing that speaks to the point that something will never be perfect and you should leave well enough alone. There is something that the people who may tend to over analyze have that those who strive for “good” don’t. They have motivation.
Motivation precedes change. A good person or a good system will rarely and slowly change, and not necessarily in any specified or positive direction. Our criminal justice system is “good” at catching and convicting, but it lacks any motivation to guard against wrongful or pointless convictions. A motivated system concerned with money and/or human well-being would collectively fight to stop racking up drug convictions for example. A good system/person will follow the rules just enough to get whomever is next in rank off their back.
Both Jake and I think there is another motivator besides mass death though, and that is self-actualization. It is finding something that intrigues you, challenges you, makes you endlessly passionate, and enabling you to do as you will with it. Currently, we have a system that attempts to “mass actualize.” We prod children through school like cattle, and proclaim we are getting better educated because we have a tried and true educational system. The glaring inadequacies and decades old complaints about school are too well known to be gone into here, but how little they tend to actually motivate is why I think they will always fail at actually teaching something.
This means I do believe people will convince themselves the classes they are taking are relevant or interesting. When enough time, money, and mental effort is spent on something, you will find some if not many ways to justify taking 4 months to learn something 2 days on Wikipedia and Google would have taught you.
Not to stray too far from an initial point I guess I was making, what are the implications of a bunch of good people inhabiting the earth? It means nothing. If you are a simply a good person you are almost certainly willing to watch as life happens, refrain from delving too far outside your moral scheme, and can die contented with the rules you’ve set up within the rules of a good system. When injustice happens you do not believe it falls on your shoulders because you do not take the responsibility of motivated action. The reason starving African children commercials don’t bother you is because you’ve never wished them ill will and can convince yourself any effort you put forth would get polluted by some corrupted motivation that’s asking for your money. Neither thought necessarily incorrect or unconvincing.
The problem comes in demonizing motivation. There’s an inherent problem in truly realizing and being responsible for a free and powerful will. The easy story I constantly hear is from my fellow dreamer and starter friends. They explain to someone a big idea and it’s met with hostility, doubt, and often fear or ridicule. There seems to be a deep-seeded distrust, anger, and fear towards the doers or arbiters of change. I think these feelings arise in people who have never been taught, nor found the will, to understand how, why, and when things need to change. Because to live in our society means it is good to get angry at those who would threaten your “moral foundation” and distrust people with “different agendas.”
When you realize the implications and power of enacting your will, you automatically take on how far you want to push it. Who you’re willing to work with, what you’re willing to sacrifice, and how you’ll defend what is essentially the expression of your being. This is not a light responsibility and it is not hard to see why most don’t bother to venture such roads. I would argue that in order to have a lasting species, you simply have to get over it. An ignorance of oneself is going to debase and confuse more than any amount of ignorance of another subject.
Motivation doesn’t die, and part of the good news is that it is contagious. I think this is the only reason we’ve managed to get as “far” as a species as we have. On the backs of a few who are motivated towards good, civilizations can thrive. The problem comes from how and why people are motivated. It seems to be a harsh reality that you have to go through some amount of bullshit that compels you to want to react and behave differently. The ones best at regulating their emotions had to deal with years of parental fighting perhaps. Hopefully, after said life experience it generates that “I don’t want to be like them” response and pains are taken to be better. Of course, there are going to be those who take that example and run with it. “If it ‘works’ to illicit this response, I can do it too.” It would be hard to imagine someone that can’t empathize with that thought or see how things play out. And thus we have the inherent distrust of people's motivations.
People are easily manipulated if only because they’re motivations can be known. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing for someone to know how you tick when getting the best out of you means getting the best for themselves. A sure way to avoid being or fostering a leech is to have your own goals and general means of obtaining them. To me, this is impeded when the majority of people just want to live “the good life.” I suppose what I would like to see instead is people living a passionate life. I would love to hear people stand up for virtues and literally fight to preserve the dignity of what they respect and admire. Another problem seems to just be a numbers game. Surely thousands of letters and emails were mailed to our government or BP or Goldman Sachs executives. Protests and rallies sprang up, endless articles written etc. But nothing really changed. Those CEOs and companies still making millions, our leaders still holding seats.
I don’t want you to be good. I want you to be excited. I don’t want you to hate, but motivated to fix or responsible and capable enough to avoid and/or punish justly. The worst kinds of people are those who deliberately and frequently distort the truth to breed anger and fear. These people are motivated no doubt, but are not even remotely hard to identify (I’m looking at you FOX). Therefore, the best kinds of people are the ones who fight to preserve and teach the information we have. The people who read the famous quotes, business guide books, and trends of their era and know, explicitly know, there is an endless array of potential and influence they can exert and are willing to be responsible for.
Teaching and enabling are more than handing something about and saying “here it is.” You have to put it to work. You have to weave whatever you’re teaching into your life and show and explain how you wouldn’t be you without it. You have to express the passion that your knowledge and your life brings you and make people want it so badly they can’t help but feel the same way. It’s not being someone people want to be, it’s being someone that they have to be. Because they know if they aren’t, they aren’t really living. They know that by not holding themselves to that standard they won’t be able to do anything but get by and remain good enough. It’s the absolute hardest form of manipulation, but I have to believe the only honorable form there is.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
[214.5] Something Or Another About Hate, Desperation, And Pathetic Hypocracy
I’m going to try and avoid “rant
blog” style and try to illustrate the deeper points and
implications I’ve come to after a revealing discussion with my
dad.
Why can’t it be that people are “just” fill-in-the-blank problem? It’s not enough for John to “just” be a little childish and immature; he has to send inflammatory texts, draw lines in the sand about friendships, and equate his value with the items placed around the house. It’s not enough for Javon to be “just” a bit of a hypocrite about money; she has to throw efforts to save her some in your face, spend it flagrantly on people she’s complained don’t pay her back, and whisper to new roommates about Sam’s finances like she has a clue or inch to speak. She would “by chance” choose to say “corn you didn’t pay for” only a few days after I shared a snow crab and shrimp meal she, uh oh, didn’t pay for. It’s not enough to hear through various grapevines how many “friends” I have who “had such a crazy awesome, etc cliché” on a party night, and have endless amounts of shit to spew about said parties a few weeks later.
In my own “family” I have people with money who refuse to invest it and spend it instead on random shit they don’t need or use. They make unnecessary renovations to my grandma’s old house under the guise that they want to move her back in there. You know renovations like a hard wood slippery floor instead of carpet for my grandma who can’t walk. Things like flat screen tvs in the bathroom for my grandma who can’t do much but stare comatose into the abyss. I have uncles take my aunt and her husband out to eat on father’s day while my dad who works as an iron worker comes home to take care of my grandma. I have an aunt has borrowed and lost insane amounts of money and refuses to see my grandma for more than an hour or so a week. She also refuses to come by if one of my uncles is there. My aunt is 52.
Less I confuse my point with these digressions; people don’t change. Odds are if you’re a hypocritical childish asshole now, you’ll be one when you’re my aunt and uncles’ ages. If there is any confusion why I am so quick to cut assholes out of my life, it is because I understand that they will forever bring me down. I choose not to invite them nor indulge them in their pathetic want of a life.
I perceive much of life in cycles. We live in a country where an oil company gets paid to bypass regulatory and safety measures. They get paid to kill, and hasten our imminent demise. Surely, they are not the first “big corporation” archetype to fuck things up with no consequence. I must agree with my dad on the idea that things will reach a point where the earth is so fucked, people are so poor and disenfranchised, it will boil over into a revolution. This is not a proper fix or long term strategy. This is just what happens when the lazy and stupid reach the end of their complacency. Yes, this means they are still lazy and stupid.
I find myself constantly asking how these people can live with themselves. I never parade myself as a saint, but I don’t think anything I’ve ever done, particularly when I started taking an overactive sense of responsibility for my actions, even remotely touches the kind of assholes I’m surrounded by. I don’t make it a habit of bumming cigarettes, alcohol, rides, entertainment, or food from anybody. I don’t lie outright to people’s faces. I don’t have anything I would only say in private that I wouldn’t say to your face. I don’t have this…need?....to denigrate and shit on things I claim make me happy.
I am very proud of the fact that I can identify those people and circumstances in which I am happy. I still, literally, everyday remind myself how good I have it to be in this kick-ass house with a kick-ass projector, new computer, car (albeit a poorly made one), legit friends amongst the torrent of assholes, and a thousand other little things that make my life ridiculously awesome. With that in mind, I am adopting a harsher policy about the assholes I keep. I’ve been giving inches, and now I won’t. I don’t expect you to excuse my behavior, and I won’t yours.
I’ve never felt the urge to give my real friends anything even resembling an ultimatum. That’s why if you somehow feel like you’re in an “us vs them” scenario, you put yourself there. I act on my behalf and I react to your bullshit. I am willing to take an infinite number of chances on making new friendships before I’ll allow one person to drag me down to their level. But AHHHHH this is all sounding so gloomy and angry…
I’m in the group celebrating on our species downward spiral into extinction. I have a vast array of dreams for the future, and how I want to prosper and help others to prosper as well. I simply can’t be the best kind of person I want to be by allowing my time to be focused for too long on people who can’t understand, or don’t care to, acknowledge that dignity and respect must be honored if I’m going to be persuaded they’re real people. I need friends who understand consequence and accountability.
There’s just too much to say. Scattered and random blog paused….broken record effect initiated…
“Is it worth it can you even hear me?…::scratch::…is it worth it can you even hear me?…::scratch::.. is it worth it can you even hear me?”
3…..2…..1……System reboot
2nd chance at finding clarity: engaged
I want people to stop making themselves so easy to hate. I don’t want to genuinely feel like nothing will change. I want standards. Maybe I’m fucking crazy, but I don’t readily invite people who abuse women to share drugs and alcohol with. Even if I can understand where they came from, something like that should change the nature of that relationship. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that I would walk into a friend’s house, drink their alcohol, burn their carpet, fog up their house, leave dishes and trash, and never once feel an obligation to help pick up. Even being relatively broke I feel obligated to pay back Schroeder who will think nothing of saying it’s on him in order for us to go out. I put debts onto myself. I feel burdened by the idea of not being equal or capable of providing for extraneous indulgences. Why is it that for everyone one person I know who isn’t like this, I know 20 who are?
I want to feel honored that you choose to be my friend. I want there to be a level of respect and understanding that other people envy. I want great talks, movie nights, summer outings, shared experiences. I want us to be able to teach each other new things. I want honesty even if it means leaving out details. I want memories of the fun times and dreams of the goals we help enable each other to work towards. If you’re my friend you’re not a passing acquaintance I happened by because I was roomed in Ashton. You’re not just a pretty face to try and fuck around with at parties. Whether you feel “special” or not means nothing because you simply matter to me.
With so much of our lives seemingly out of our control I will always seek grounding in myself and the company I keep. I’m going to try and be the nicest, most honest, and most generous fucking asshole you’ve ever met, and depending on how you read that statement will tell you everything you need to know about our friendship.
Gosh Nick P., so dramatic…
Why can’t it be that people are “just” fill-in-the-blank problem? It’s not enough for John to “just” be a little childish and immature; he has to send inflammatory texts, draw lines in the sand about friendships, and equate his value with the items placed around the house. It’s not enough for Javon to be “just” a bit of a hypocrite about money; she has to throw efforts to save her some in your face, spend it flagrantly on people she’s complained don’t pay her back, and whisper to new roommates about Sam’s finances like she has a clue or inch to speak. She would “by chance” choose to say “corn you didn’t pay for” only a few days after I shared a snow crab and shrimp meal she, uh oh, didn’t pay for. It’s not enough to hear through various grapevines how many “friends” I have who “had such a crazy awesome, etc cliché” on a party night, and have endless amounts of shit to spew about said parties a few weeks later.
In my own “family” I have people with money who refuse to invest it and spend it instead on random shit they don’t need or use. They make unnecessary renovations to my grandma’s old house under the guise that they want to move her back in there. You know renovations like a hard wood slippery floor instead of carpet for my grandma who can’t walk. Things like flat screen tvs in the bathroom for my grandma who can’t do much but stare comatose into the abyss. I have uncles take my aunt and her husband out to eat on father’s day while my dad who works as an iron worker comes home to take care of my grandma. I have an aunt has borrowed and lost insane amounts of money and refuses to see my grandma for more than an hour or so a week. She also refuses to come by if one of my uncles is there. My aunt is 52.
Less I confuse my point with these digressions; people don’t change. Odds are if you’re a hypocritical childish asshole now, you’ll be one when you’re my aunt and uncles’ ages. If there is any confusion why I am so quick to cut assholes out of my life, it is because I understand that they will forever bring me down. I choose not to invite them nor indulge them in their pathetic want of a life.
I perceive much of life in cycles. We live in a country where an oil company gets paid to bypass regulatory and safety measures. They get paid to kill, and hasten our imminent demise. Surely, they are not the first “big corporation” archetype to fuck things up with no consequence. I must agree with my dad on the idea that things will reach a point where the earth is so fucked, people are so poor and disenfranchised, it will boil over into a revolution. This is not a proper fix or long term strategy. This is just what happens when the lazy and stupid reach the end of their complacency. Yes, this means they are still lazy and stupid.
I find myself constantly asking how these people can live with themselves. I never parade myself as a saint, but I don’t think anything I’ve ever done, particularly when I started taking an overactive sense of responsibility for my actions, even remotely touches the kind of assholes I’m surrounded by. I don’t make it a habit of bumming cigarettes, alcohol, rides, entertainment, or food from anybody. I don’t lie outright to people’s faces. I don’t have anything I would only say in private that I wouldn’t say to your face. I don’t have this…need?....to denigrate and shit on things I claim make me happy.
I am very proud of the fact that I can identify those people and circumstances in which I am happy. I still, literally, everyday remind myself how good I have it to be in this kick-ass house with a kick-ass projector, new computer, car (albeit a poorly made one), legit friends amongst the torrent of assholes, and a thousand other little things that make my life ridiculously awesome. With that in mind, I am adopting a harsher policy about the assholes I keep. I’ve been giving inches, and now I won’t. I don’t expect you to excuse my behavior, and I won’t yours.
I’ve never felt the urge to give my real friends anything even resembling an ultimatum. That’s why if you somehow feel like you’re in an “us vs them” scenario, you put yourself there. I act on my behalf and I react to your bullshit. I am willing to take an infinite number of chances on making new friendships before I’ll allow one person to drag me down to their level. But AHHHHH this is all sounding so gloomy and angry…
I’m in the group celebrating on our species downward spiral into extinction. I have a vast array of dreams for the future, and how I want to prosper and help others to prosper as well. I simply can’t be the best kind of person I want to be by allowing my time to be focused for too long on people who can’t understand, or don’t care to, acknowledge that dignity and respect must be honored if I’m going to be persuaded they’re real people. I need friends who understand consequence and accountability.
There’s just too much to say. Scattered and random blog paused….broken record effect initiated…
“Is it worth it can you even hear me?…::scratch::…is it worth it can you even hear me?…::scratch::.. is it worth it can you even hear me?”
3…..2…..1……System reboot
2nd chance at finding clarity: engaged
I want people to stop making themselves so easy to hate. I don’t want to genuinely feel like nothing will change. I want standards. Maybe I’m fucking crazy, but I don’t readily invite people who abuse women to share drugs and alcohol with. Even if I can understand where they came from, something like that should change the nature of that relationship. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that I would walk into a friend’s house, drink their alcohol, burn their carpet, fog up their house, leave dishes and trash, and never once feel an obligation to help pick up. Even being relatively broke I feel obligated to pay back Schroeder who will think nothing of saying it’s on him in order for us to go out. I put debts onto myself. I feel burdened by the idea of not being equal or capable of providing for extraneous indulgences. Why is it that for everyone one person I know who isn’t like this, I know 20 who are?
I want to feel honored that you choose to be my friend. I want there to be a level of respect and understanding that other people envy. I want great talks, movie nights, summer outings, shared experiences. I want us to be able to teach each other new things. I want honesty even if it means leaving out details. I want memories of the fun times and dreams of the goals we help enable each other to work towards. If you’re my friend you’re not a passing acquaintance I happened by because I was roomed in Ashton. You’re not just a pretty face to try and fuck around with at parties. Whether you feel “special” or not means nothing because you simply matter to me.
With so much of our lives seemingly out of our control I will always seek grounding in myself and the company I keep. I’m going to try and be the nicest, most honest, and most generous fucking asshole you’ve ever met, and depending on how you read that statement will tell you everything you need to know about our friendship.
Gosh Nick P., so dramatic…
Saturday, March 20, 2010
[214.4] Nuance
As with any blog with religion as even
a remote subject these things will happen. I will find myself feeling
redundant and uninteresting (actually, I managed to come to different
insights I’m proud to say), the random “friends” who’ve never
read or heard me say anything on the topic will be open to all sorts
of judgments and interpretations of where I’m coming from, and some
will wonder why I so actively seek to damage relationships. With that
in mind, there is now a reason only a select number of people can
read my shit on here anymore.
I’m amazed, if you will, at the level of detail involved in any given situation and how any single aspect of that situation can send a wave of influence in any direction. To me, it speaks to the idea of how, unstable, perhaps everything is. It’s not even in just the details of someone’s life that urges them towards a specific faith. It goes farther into how and why they choose to interpret those details. It calls into question what they are even able of perceiving or comprehending before presented with a new idea or situation.
It’s this instability that influences my view in my previous blog to be “resolved” to the idea that nothing will change. Now, on its face this seems contradictory. How can I think nothing will change when it all rests on an unstable foundation. The question though speaks again to the nuances. The fact of the matter is, whether everyone believed in magic sky daddies or not, it does not remove the deeper unchanged foundation of fear and uncertainty. Whether every environmental and human rights foundation were the richest companies or not, it wouldn’t stop people from feeling greed. If every great idea had a platform and served to make the lives of millions a monochrome better, it would not escape one person who had the desire, resolve, or influence to pollute if not destroy it.
The problem, to me, is at the individual level. The answer to why has many answers; uninformed, not caring, unable, scared, deluded. The sad fact that to some level we all suffer to some extent of all of these conditions. While marred within these hindrances, or plagues, we establish our institutions from which to draw insight and inspiration; churches, governments, social hierarchies in general. Our ideas about truth and justice are embedded within these frameworks. So maybe I can denote the problem in a clearer way, the absolution of the individual. This seems too incomplete and not speaking to the deeper issues.
We create the establishments for reasons, albeit many bad ones along with the good, but reasons nonetheless. Where did we draw the reasons before the institutions existed? My initial thought is that pool of uniformed and scared instinct. At the heart of existence, at least that we can reasonably surmise so far, we are driven to reproduce. This does not take hundreds of years of moral debate and theological philosophy, but if those things exist in any capacity that facilitates more reproduction, then they are considered beneficial. This, another reason to not be overly dismayed at the idea that things won’t change.
But not to lose focus. We absolve ourselves, behave in relatively sensible ways from a genetic point of view, and are beleaguered by the haunting facts of our nature and existence. Now this brings up an interesting conundrum. If, at our core, we want to reproduce and create this fantastic future for our offspring, why are so many pitted against science and the ideas that will help them better understand how to live? I have a hard time believing that many people genuinely don’t want be alive and this is just some dramatic cultural “secret” suicide pact. I also don’t really believe people genuinely want their offspring to suffer.
Here we come back to the individual. I don’t think people even remotely appreciate their impact on the world. And yes, I am guilty of it too. We are resolved to the idea that you can never really see how you are perceived in someone else’s head, and therefore behave as if we aren’t really being perceived. But what of insecurity and social stigma? Well, maybe these are not really about other peoples’ thoughts, but your fear and misunderstanding of those thoughts. As much as we absolve ourselves in institutions, it doesn’t erase the plagues. What plagues you is part of what you take your individual self to be, and maybe it’s even the greater extent of most people. How necessary an escape becomes then.
In that regard, science can come off cold and uncaring, which pragmatically it is. Fundamental constants and objective observational accounts have little regard for your happiness. Science is the pursuit of understanding the natural world. This father figure who has been killing you for at least 200,000 years over every mistake you make and with every phenomenon you don’t understand. Perhaps we have a hard grained inclination to fear treading on the knowledge base of this powerful realm we’ve been punished by for so long. An individual at this point needs to be able to feel like they have a decision. I can’t even make the statement that they have to make a decision, or that they should pick one over the other. When presented with a dilemma of fear, one needs to feel empowered, and they need to know how to keep those feelings in check. This could circumvent some of the natural tendency to stay afraid, avoid, and become defensive.
I think the pursuit of knowledge and truth, moreover, science, does this. You will find smart people who speak 5 ancient languages, spent their careers studying the bible, and still think Jesus came back from the dead, literally. To me, through their self-empowering exploration and opinion, they’ve only managed to develop a proclivity to defend any number of unchecked and unresolved ideas they have about life. If each of us is a king, and our arguments are castle walls, no matter the design or number of people whom we put upon them in our defense, it won’t cure our brain cancer. The main differences between people are how and why they accept information.
When an objective person is presented with an idea, it doesn’t matter what it is, they do not accept it absolutely. This is hyper, and in my opinion, necessary rationality. If you are a fan of saying “we can’t know everything” then we can keep a healthy skepticism about everything. When a subjective person is presented with an idea, they only care about how it fits into their mental and social contexts. As I tried to show earlier, if your mental and social context arose from a “bad” place like early church ideas, some edified political philosophy, or even just your really cool but really misinformed friends and family, in the long run you do no favors to yourself or your offspring by holding those idea absolute. And yes I understand this is where people argue for the cohesiveness of their family life etc, but hey even Jesus said to break those ties and follow him. Not like people do that anyway but…..
Of course, it’s here we get into more speculation than anything, but I think reasonable inferences can be made through examples. Who’s to say a belief in a god won’t be the most esteem promoting idea 50 years from now that leads to some massive overhaul in how we treat each other and view happiness? That isn’t the kind of question that really matters though. The questions that matter, that we can draw inferences from, come in the details. Can we infer that it is unhealthy and unproductive to cut off a little girls clitoris? I would hope if you’ve managed to make it to the internet there would be a resounding yes in the heads of my readers. Can we infer that an institution that harbors and defends the rape of young boys, even deaf young boys, does not have the best interests of its followers or alleged beliefs in mind? Again, please don’t hesitate to say yes.
What happens when we get to the more detailed questions is an ability to start saying yes or no. And for the record, this is explicitly the area there should be “debates” and arguments because the answers are not always clear. Is it a good idea to believe you exist after you die? What does that idea to do an individual? For example, I do not believe I will exist in any form of a heaven let alone hell, and it helps motivate me to appreciate the friends I have, take control, mostly, of my disposition, and glorify the work and influence I put into the world. It is one of the most empowering thoughts that I have a chance, however small, to be whatever the hell I want. For others, it could be the exact opposite. While I don’t actually believe those who say they would just go off and rape and murder people if there was no heaven or god, I think they are speaking at least to the very human problems of accountability and recognition. From there you can explore better ways of recognizing, and maybe even revamp what it means to be accountable.
Further nuanced questions. What impact does someone’s faith have on society? The plain truth of the matter is that faith alone, very obviously, is used as the excuse for extremely good and extremely bad things. Is faith in and of itself bad all together? When, why, and should we believe anything without evidence? Do we just need a better vocabulary for how we talk about the whole issue? Maybe you don’t really have faith, unquestioning, undeniable, and unshakable. Maybe you have a chain of life occurrences and a list of good and bad reasons that would dispose you to landing in a quasi-religious vein. No, it’s not as concise as, I have faith, or I believe in god, but is it reasonable to think this way is perhaps more accurate? When you break down someone’s life into moments and points of decision can you not better analyze and discuss where those decisions came from and how those moments happened? But, is this a process someone who absolves themselves of individuality, even if only superficially, likely to take?
In come again the individuals. Someone who is not as prone to joining up and fitting in still needs a context, a framework, and an ability resolve their own realities. If you have good reason to distrust the group/s, (see rape protection) because they suffer from parallel tendencies and internal discrepancies, you have to turn inward. You have to make it your priority to assess yourself in the context of this world so as not to subject yourself to the same things you view as problems. You are compelled to accept a problem for what it is. You are compelled to change. This cannot happen when you focus on adding another brick in your wall instead of realizing it’s 2010, Obama’s drone is still likely to annihilate you. See what I did there? Obama’s drone is like the science that will obliterate bad ideas and arguments….ha, and in the explosion it will illuminate the world that much more…and I lost that analogy before it began.
Back to seriousness though. This is a gigantic PR problem that my heroes of the atheist world and yes, I, have suffered from. It’s too easy to call someone deluded and say they should get over it. It doesn’t account for the nuances of thought or the holes that doing as such would create. I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of being extremely harsh in this way, and I think this blog is basically reflecting on why. I like to make it personal. When I question someone on their faith or alleged beliefs, I can’t help but ask direct questions and fish for specific answers. To me, the idea is we aren’t just basically stupid, we just aren’t engaged in a manner that prompts and expects intelligent answers. I imagine this is why it’s so easy for me to get headaches out of people. My skin still kind of crawls when I hear someone say they don’t believe in evolution or some comment to the effect that it is ridiculous or unproven. Almost in the same breath, ten seconds later, they’ll tell me they haven’t investigated or studied it even remotely. So how can I get angry or distressed by the statement that doesn’t really make sense? Even if I vehemently distrusted Einstein, I can’t say relativity is stupid and crazy if I can’t even begin to understand what it took to arrive at that theory. Nor does this mean you can’t learn why you can trust in his theory.
What bothers me more is how ready people are to make the claim in the first place. And actually, the worst feeling is when I want or can provide them with an opportunity to learn more and they absolutely want nothing to do with it. That’s when I feel I’m at the forefront of our demise. If someone genuinely offers me a website, book, or article on the bible or their beliefs, I read it. I then proceed to quote it, source check it, compare it to other sources of information, and break it down to what seems to be reasonable and what isn’t. To me, that’s respect and personal responsibility. If I quote the bible and get something wrong or source a textual critic you can prove to be fraudulent, I accept the clarification and cease using that person as source. Why do I not get the same level of respect? If we’re friends, or intellectuals, or just reasonable people, why am I not allowed to expect certain things about your behavior when it comes to dealing with information?
For me, I’m not really valuable to you or myself if I don’t have good reasons for my actions. If I can’t construct a context or line of reasoning to justify the things I put the most thought towards, what the hell was I doing with my brain power? Why should you rely on me for anything if I can’t even place where my own decisions are coming from? Would I really have anyone take the time to read four pages of my inferences and gleaned ideas if the message was about a new book I dug up that says we’ll all be living on Mars in ten years because god got angry at how we treated the earth? There is a standard I hold myself to, and it is one I wish I could “convert” everyone to. It keeps mine and others’ interests at heart because it identifies and understands, mostly explicitly, how and why those interests exist.
Your decisions affect everything. Your fear makes others afraid. Your lack of knowledge leaves others uninformed. People will suffer your existence, and I don’t think this is what most people seek to do to each other. In order to change anything though, you have to accept that you’re never just hurting yourself. Your best intentions don’t speak to the consequences. You don’t just lead your life.
I’m amazed, if you will, at the level of detail involved in any given situation and how any single aspect of that situation can send a wave of influence in any direction. To me, it speaks to the idea of how, unstable, perhaps everything is. It’s not even in just the details of someone’s life that urges them towards a specific faith. It goes farther into how and why they choose to interpret those details. It calls into question what they are even able of perceiving or comprehending before presented with a new idea or situation.
It’s this instability that influences my view in my previous blog to be “resolved” to the idea that nothing will change. Now, on its face this seems contradictory. How can I think nothing will change when it all rests on an unstable foundation. The question though speaks again to the nuances. The fact of the matter is, whether everyone believed in magic sky daddies or not, it does not remove the deeper unchanged foundation of fear and uncertainty. Whether every environmental and human rights foundation were the richest companies or not, it wouldn’t stop people from feeling greed. If every great idea had a platform and served to make the lives of millions a monochrome better, it would not escape one person who had the desire, resolve, or influence to pollute if not destroy it.
The problem, to me, is at the individual level. The answer to why has many answers; uninformed, not caring, unable, scared, deluded. The sad fact that to some level we all suffer to some extent of all of these conditions. While marred within these hindrances, or plagues, we establish our institutions from which to draw insight and inspiration; churches, governments, social hierarchies in general. Our ideas about truth and justice are embedded within these frameworks. So maybe I can denote the problem in a clearer way, the absolution of the individual. This seems too incomplete and not speaking to the deeper issues.
We create the establishments for reasons, albeit many bad ones along with the good, but reasons nonetheless. Where did we draw the reasons before the institutions existed? My initial thought is that pool of uniformed and scared instinct. At the heart of existence, at least that we can reasonably surmise so far, we are driven to reproduce. This does not take hundreds of years of moral debate and theological philosophy, but if those things exist in any capacity that facilitates more reproduction, then they are considered beneficial. This, another reason to not be overly dismayed at the idea that things won’t change.
But not to lose focus. We absolve ourselves, behave in relatively sensible ways from a genetic point of view, and are beleaguered by the haunting facts of our nature and existence. Now this brings up an interesting conundrum. If, at our core, we want to reproduce and create this fantastic future for our offspring, why are so many pitted against science and the ideas that will help them better understand how to live? I have a hard time believing that many people genuinely don’t want be alive and this is just some dramatic cultural “secret” suicide pact. I also don’t really believe people genuinely want their offspring to suffer.
Here we come back to the individual. I don’t think people even remotely appreciate their impact on the world. And yes, I am guilty of it too. We are resolved to the idea that you can never really see how you are perceived in someone else’s head, and therefore behave as if we aren’t really being perceived. But what of insecurity and social stigma? Well, maybe these are not really about other peoples’ thoughts, but your fear and misunderstanding of those thoughts. As much as we absolve ourselves in institutions, it doesn’t erase the plagues. What plagues you is part of what you take your individual self to be, and maybe it’s even the greater extent of most people. How necessary an escape becomes then.
In that regard, science can come off cold and uncaring, which pragmatically it is. Fundamental constants and objective observational accounts have little regard for your happiness. Science is the pursuit of understanding the natural world. This father figure who has been killing you for at least 200,000 years over every mistake you make and with every phenomenon you don’t understand. Perhaps we have a hard grained inclination to fear treading on the knowledge base of this powerful realm we’ve been punished by for so long. An individual at this point needs to be able to feel like they have a decision. I can’t even make the statement that they have to make a decision, or that they should pick one over the other. When presented with a dilemma of fear, one needs to feel empowered, and they need to know how to keep those feelings in check. This could circumvent some of the natural tendency to stay afraid, avoid, and become defensive.
I think the pursuit of knowledge and truth, moreover, science, does this. You will find smart people who speak 5 ancient languages, spent their careers studying the bible, and still think Jesus came back from the dead, literally. To me, through their self-empowering exploration and opinion, they’ve only managed to develop a proclivity to defend any number of unchecked and unresolved ideas they have about life. If each of us is a king, and our arguments are castle walls, no matter the design or number of people whom we put upon them in our defense, it won’t cure our brain cancer. The main differences between people are how and why they accept information.
When an objective person is presented with an idea, it doesn’t matter what it is, they do not accept it absolutely. This is hyper, and in my opinion, necessary rationality. If you are a fan of saying “we can’t know everything” then we can keep a healthy skepticism about everything. When a subjective person is presented with an idea, they only care about how it fits into their mental and social contexts. As I tried to show earlier, if your mental and social context arose from a “bad” place like early church ideas, some edified political philosophy, or even just your really cool but really misinformed friends and family, in the long run you do no favors to yourself or your offspring by holding those idea absolute. And yes I understand this is where people argue for the cohesiveness of their family life etc, but hey even Jesus said to break those ties and follow him. Not like people do that anyway but…..
Of course, it’s here we get into more speculation than anything, but I think reasonable inferences can be made through examples. Who’s to say a belief in a god won’t be the most esteem promoting idea 50 years from now that leads to some massive overhaul in how we treat each other and view happiness? That isn’t the kind of question that really matters though. The questions that matter, that we can draw inferences from, come in the details. Can we infer that it is unhealthy and unproductive to cut off a little girls clitoris? I would hope if you’ve managed to make it to the internet there would be a resounding yes in the heads of my readers. Can we infer that an institution that harbors and defends the rape of young boys, even deaf young boys, does not have the best interests of its followers or alleged beliefs in mind? Again, please don’t hesitate to say yes.
What happens when we get to the more detailed questions is an ability to start saying yes or no. And for the record, this is explicitly the area there should be “debates” and arguments because the answers are not always clear. Is it a good idea to believe you exist after you die? What does that idea to do an individual? For example, I do not believe I will exist in any form of a heaven let alone hell, and it helps motivate me to appreciate the friends I have, take control, mostly, of my disposition, and glorify the work and influence I put into the world. It is one of the most empowering thoughts that I have a chance, however small, to be whatever the hell I want. For others, it could be the exact opposite. While I don’t actually believe those who say they would just go off and rape and murder people if there was no heaven or god, I think they are speaking at least to the very human problems of accountability and recognition. From there you can explore better ways of recognizing, and maybe even revamp what it means to be accountable.
Further nuanced questions. What impact does someone’s faith have on society? The plain truth of the matter is that faith alone, very obviously, is used as the excuse for extremely good and extremely bad things. Is faith in and of itself bad all together? When, why, and should we believe anything without evidence? Do we just need a better vocabulary for how we talk about the whole issue? Maybe you don’t really have faith, unquestioning, undeniable, and unshakable. Maybe you have a chain of life occurrences and a list of good and bad reasons that would dispose you to landing in a quasi-religious vein. No, it’s not as concise as, I have faith, or I believe in god, but is it reasonable to think this way is perhaps more accurate? When you break down someone’s life into moments and points of decision can you not better analyze and discuss where those decisions came from and how those moments happened? But, is this a process someone who absolves themselves of individuality, even if only superficially, likely to take?
In come again the individuals. Someone who is not as prone to joining up and fitting in still needs a context, a framework, and an ability resolve their own realities. If you have good reason to distrust the group/s, (see rape protection) because they suffer from parallel tendencies and internal discrepancies, you have to turn inward. You have to make it your priority to assess yourself in the context of this world so as not to subject yourself to the same things you view as problems. You are compelled to accept a problem for what it is. You are compelled to change. This cannot happen when you focus on adding another brick in your wall instead of realizing it’s 2010, Obama’s drone is still likely to annihilate you. See what I did there? Obama’s drone is like the science that will obliterate bad ideas and arguments….ha, and in the explosion it will illuminate the world that much more…and I lost that analogy before it began.
Back to seriousness though. This is a gigantic PR problem that my heroes of the atheist world and yes, I, have suffered from. It’s too easy to call someone deluded and say they should get over it. It doesn’t account for the nuances of thought or the holes that doing as such would create. I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of being extremely harsh in this way, and I think this blog is basically reflecting on why. I like to make it personal. When I question someone on their faith or alleged beliefs, I can’t help but ask direct questions and fish for specific answers. To me, the idea is we aren’t just basically stupid, we just aren’t engaged in a manner that prompts and expects intelligent answers. I imagine this is why it’s so easy for me to get headaches out of people. My skin still kind of crawls when I hear someone say they don’t believe in evolution or some comment to the effect that it is ridiculous or unproven. Almost in the same breath, ten seconds later, they’ll tell me they haven’t investigated or studied it even remotely. So how can I get angry or distressed by the statement that doesn’t really make sense? Even if I vehemently distrusted Einstein, I can’t say relativity is stupid and crazy if I can’t even begin to understand what it took to arrive at that theory. Nor does this mean you can’t learn why you can trust in his theory.
What bothers me more is how ready people are to make the claim in the first place. And actually, the worst feeling is when I want or can provide them with an opportunity to learn more and they absolutely want nothing to do with it. That’s when I feel I’m at the forefront of our demise. If someone genuinely offers me a website, book, or article on the bible or their beliefs, I read it. I then proceed to quote it, source check it, compare it to other sources of information, and break it down to what seems to be reasonable and what isn’t. To me, that’s respect and personal responsibility. If I quote the bible and get something wrong or source a textual critic you can prove to be fraudulent, I accept the clarification and cease using that person as source. Why do I not get the same level of respect? If we’re friends, or intellectuals, or just reasonable people, why am I not allowed to expect certain things about your behavior when it comes to dealing with information?
For me, I’m not really valuable to you or myself if I don’t have good reasons for my actions. If I can’t construct a context or line of reasoning to justify the things I put the most thought towards, what the hell was I doing with my brain power? Why should you rely on me for anything if I can’t even place where my own decisions are coming from? Would I really have anyone take the time to read four pages of my inferences and gleaned ideas if the message was about a new book I dug up that says we’ll all be living on Mars in ten years because god got angry at how we treated the earth? There is a standard I hold myself to, and it is one I wish I could “convert” everyone to. It keeps mine and others’ interests at heart because it identifies and understands, mostly explicitly, how and why those interests exist.
Your decisions affect everything. Your fear makes others afraid. Your lack of knowledge leaves others uninformed. People will suffer your existence, and I don’t think this is what most people seek to do to each other. In order to change anything though, you have to accept that you’re never just hurting yourself. Your best intentions don’t speak to the consequences. You don’t just lead your life.
Monday, March 15, 2010
[214.2] Grandpa Syndrome
There’s a special kind of safety in
numbers.
I think there is a sort of duality in how we look at ourselves. Some of the freakiest moments and thoughts I have are on nights like these. Nights where I’ve stayed up, done nothing but think, catch myself staring in the mirror as if my reflection is going to get away with something I won’t notice. Everyone asleep, vulnerable. Certain truths about people’s behavior and our positions in life really set in deep. I’m sure watching a cop show where death and tragedy are routine and displayed almost as callously as people feel in real life doesn’t help. But not to lose focus.
The idea of people taking things for granted is weighing incredibly heavily on my thoughts. You don’t have to merely believe that I remind myself everyday of what I have and what I’m willing and capable of working towards. At the same time, I feel as if something is dying in me. My insatiable perception keeps my eyes working and my ears tuned. Moments tick by. I feel there are times when I’d have to fight to persuade people they ever existed.
People are a double edged sword. I’ve been reciting the line “no man is an island” endlessly in my head for the last few hours. When you’re alone, you face your endless potential. You have a looming and impending freedom caged only by your mind. What can you convince yourself of? The simple fact being, anything. Is that where you have to be to realize you can’t trust anyone? Is that where you have to be to stoke fires of sociopathy? Or perhaps it’s less dramatic. Maybe it’s just the place where you finally understand how entitled to life you are. It could be where you go secure the validity of your manic feelings. But then, why would you put in any work to sort through that mess? Just get a friend.
The power lies. The power lies in you getting to believe that you’ve mastered and understood yourself. Every mirror you employ qualifies you. Every outlet clearly labeled for how much it can take. Your thoughts, yourself: Terms that you no longer have to take responsibility for because they can be shared. They can be corroborated, changed, or forgotten. It doesn’t really matter, as long as they just don’t have to be yours. How terrifying it would be to face a reality where you’re responsible. Why try to survive in a world where you take the blunt of every broken relationship and every unanswered yell into the darkness.
I’ve been trying to understand why I carried on the way I did the first few months of living here. I’ve deemed it “grandpa syndrome.” I don’t need five couches to sit on. I don’t have to wash your dishes or clean up after stoners, take out your trash, dance around your feelings, or even pretend you’re worthy of making eye contact. I hardly think that someone of my strapping caliber to make rape and spousal abuse jokes about birthmarks and rape victims, while they’re sitting next to me, is trying to respect and preserve a sense of “common courtesy” or “social norm.” Yet nonetheless, I’ve spent money, time, maybe even credibility when it came towards sticking up for people who weren’t worth it, paradoxically, towards even more people who aren’t worth it.
I’ve had someone tell me, “give them time” and “not everyone can deal with it or think on those levels.” In my mind, time isn’t slowing down. To my knowledge, I wasn’t born a genius, nor were the people who I generally consult with, and somehow they manage. This leads me to conclude something from a point of desperation. Gifts, favors, time and effort, concessions, and silence are the yearning for there to be some example of how I wish everyone would behave when it’s appropriate. It’s a metaphorical hole. The more I dig towards a magic treasure chest of understanding and genuine appreciation, the easier it becomes to forget I’m in a huge fucking hole. I find it rather sad I would even characterize this treasure chest as magic, given that I know everything in it can and does exist.
“They didn’t ask for anything.” Another thing I heard. You have to wait until someone completely breaks down, bottoms out, and comes crawling to you before they’ll be able to conjure some long lasting personal reason to appreciate your help. Bullshit. These are the people who ask for everything, endlessly. They cry out for validation, they’ll bum a few hundred smokes, fries, or rides without even realizing they got something. Most importantly, they ask to be perceived in a very specific way without putting in any real work. And what way is that?
Not dysfunctional. Damn any hard fought, truly personal pursuit or cause that speaks to your very core. As long as you can check the box labeled assimilate, the test is over. Now deemed a “working” gear in some bastardized semblance of a machine, you’ve found your purpose, meaning, and understanding. I should stop and make something clear. You know it’s a lie. You absolutely and completely understand it’s a lie and how you make it work. But as long as you have your machine you get to do all sorts of new and exciting things to distract you from the lie. Plug her in and all of a sudden the food you eat is the most amazing thing you’ve ever tasted. The same ten dollar bill can be used to pay the bills and a shoe shine man. Your time, your ever fleeting time spent resenting and building walls, is always validated and reinforced by your other spinning gears. Just don’t try to turn too fast.
I’ve been drawn to the yin yang symbol since I first saw it. Not because of the philosophies or ideas behind it, I just really liked the symbol. The more I think on why, I keep returning to the word balance. I don’t regard balance as juggling school, work, and a girlfriend. Balance isn’t leveraging friends, nor is it exploiting others in the wake of how exploited you’ve felt. To me, balance is understanding you feel exploited, and that you can exploit, and then deciding to do neither. It’s knowing that if and when you lie, if done with poor judgment, you should expect to see, and own the feelings, of its ugly consequences.
In a way, I’ve acted with poor judgment. I took equality for granted. I believed that I could bring happiness (that hurt so much to type) to people who might not even be fit to spell the word let alone understand it. I thought work, risk, and honesty would create an environment that people would be begging for, not dying to escape from. When you put your values out there, the things that keep you centered, hopeful, and sane, and they are thrown in your face, you feel something want to die. It’s not even that you just want to give up, it’s that you want to not care. Your desire becomes the antithesis of your mangled reality and failed (at least in that moment) dreams.
At the end of the day though, I’m still able go: I’m mutha fuckin Nick P. I see where and when what I do matters. I respect and appreciate the people who understand and love the same values I do. I know who and what to trust. Nothing about your fucked up buddy system machine or depressed, lazy, and scared bullshit will be what does me in. I’m not going to ask when you’ll get it or why you don’t care. I’ve wasted enough time with that bullshit. I’m setting the mandate. You own yourself, or I do.
I think there is a sort of duality in how we look at ourselves. Some of the freakiest moments and thoughts I have are on nights like these. Nights where I’ve stayed up, done nothing but think, catch myself staring in the mirror as if my reflection is going to get away with something I won’t notice. Everyone asleep, vulnerable. Certain truths about people’s behavior and our positions in life really set in deep. I’m sure watching a cop show where death and tragedy are routine and displayed almost as callously as people feel in real life doesn’t help. But not to lose focus.
The idea of people taking things for granted is weighing incredibly heavily on my thoughts. You don’t have to merely believe that I remind myself everyday of what I have and what I’m willing and capable of working towards. At the same time, I feel as if something is dying in me. My insatiable perception keeps my eyes working and my ears tuned. Moments tick by. I feel there are times when I’d have to fight to persuade people they ever existed.
People are a double edged sword. I’ve been reciting the line “no man is an island” endlessly in my head for the last few hours. When you’re alone, you face your endless potential. You have a looming and impending freedom caged only by your mind. What can you convince yourself of? The simple fact being, anything. Is that where you have to be to realize you can’t trust anyone? Is that where you have to be to stoke fires of sociopathy? Or perhaps it’s less dramatic. Maybe it’s just the place where you finally understand how entitled to life you are. It could be where you go secure the validity of your manic feelings. But then, why would you put in any work to sort through that mess? Just get a friend.
The power lies. The power lies in you getting to believe that you’ve mastered and understood yourself. Every mirror you employ qualifies you. Every outlet clearly labeled for how much it can take. Your thoughts, yourself: Terms that you no longer have to take responsibility for because they can be shared. They can be corroborated, changed, or forgotten. It doesn’t really matter, as long as they just don’t have to be yours. How terrifying it would be to face a reality where you’re responsible. Why try to survive in a world where you take the blunt of every broken relationship and every unanswered yell into the darkness.
I’ve been trying to understand why I carried on the way I did the first few months of living here. I’ve deemed it “grandpa syndrome.” I don’t need five couches to sit on. I don’t have to wash your dishes or clean up after stoners, take out your trash, dance around your feelings, or even pretend you’re worthy of making eye contact. I hardly think that someone of my strapping caliber to make rape and spousal abuse jokes about birthmarks and rape victims, while they’re sitting next to me, is trying to respect and preserve a sense of “common courtesy” or “social norm.” Yet nonetheless, I’ve spent money, time, maybe even credibility when it came towards sticking up for people who weren’t worth it, paradoxically, towards even more people who aren’t worth it.
I’ve had someone tell me, “give them time” and “not everyone can deal with it or think on those levels.” In my mind, time isn’t slowing down. To my knowledge, I wasn’t born a genius, nor were the people who I generally consult with, and somehow they manage. This leads me to conclude something from a point of desperation. Gifts, favors, time and effort, concessions, and silence are the yearning for there to be some example of how I wish everyone would behave when it’s appropriate. It’s a metaphorical hole. The more I dig towards a magic treasure chest of understanding and genuine appreciation, the easier it becomes to forget I’m in a huge fucking hole. I find it rather sad I would even characterize this treasure chest as magic, given that I know everything in it can and does exist.
“They didn’t ask for anything.” Another thing I heard. You have to wait until someone completely breaks down, bottoms out, and comes crawling to you before they’ll be able to conjure some long lasting personal reason to appreciate your help. Bullshit. These are the people who ask for everything, endlessly. They cry out for validation, they’ll bum a few hundred smokes, fries, or rides without even realizing they got something. Most importantly, they ask to be perceived in a very specific way without putting in any real work. And what way is that?
Not dysfunctional. Damn any hard fought, truly personal pursuit or cause that speaks to your very core. As long as you can check the box labeled assimilate, the test is over. Now deemed a “working” gear in some bastardized semblance of a machine, you’ve found your purpose, meaning, and understanding. I should stop and make something clear. You know it’s a lie. You absolutely and completely understand it’s a lie and how you make it work. But as long as you have your machine you get to do all sorts of new and exciting things to distract you from the lie. Plug her in and all of a sudden the food you eat is the most amazing thing you’ve ever tasted. The same ten dollar bill can be used to pay the bills and a shoe shine man. Your time, your ever fleeting time spent resenting and building walls, is always validated and reinforced by your other spinning gears. Just don’t try to turn too fast.
I’ve been drawn to the yin yang symbol since I first saw it. Not because of the philosophies or ideas behind it, I just really liked the symbol. The more I think on why, I keep returning to the word balance. I don’t regard balance as juggling school, work, and a girlfriend. Balance isn’t leveraging friends, nor is it exploiting others in the wake of how exploited you’ve felt. To me, balance is understanding you feel exploited, and that you can exploit, and then deciding to do neither. It’s knowing that if and when you lie, if done with poor judgment, you should expect to see, and own the feelings, of its ugly consequences.
In a way, I’ve acted with poor judgment. I took equality for granted. I believed that I could bring happiness (that hurt so much to type) to people who might not even be fit to spell the word let alone understand it. I thought work, risk, and honesty would create an environment that people would be begging for, not dying to escape from. When you put your values out there, the things that keep you centered, hopeful, and sane, and they are thrown in your face, you feel something want to die. It’s not even that you just want to give up, it’s that you want to not care. Your desire becomes the antithesis of your mangled reality and failed (at least in that moment) dreams.
At the end of the day though, I’m still able go: I’m mutha fuckin Nick P. I see where and when what I do matters. I respect and appreciate the people who understand and love the same values I do. I know who and what to trust. Nothing about your fucked up buddy system machine or depressed, lazy, and scared bullshit will be what does me in. I’m not going to ask when you’ll get it or why you don’t care. I’ve wasted enough time with that bullshit. I’m setting the mandate. You own yourself, or I do.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
[214.1] Denial Amongst Other Things
I won’t stop writing until my
headache goes away.
I feel like I see everything. I keep myself positive, but the negative doesn’t disappear. I hate that I see the flaws in people most. If I can’t deal with people, it becomes infinitely harder to get the things I want. I hate that I can’t trust people. I hate that I allow myself to be played by this primal “need” or urge to feel connected and able to open up to people. Why do I feel that? I do I think I need to trust people like hatsam with things about my life. Why do I need to have conversations with these people and struggle to find things about them that I can empathize with? I guess I don’t. I really don’t. Maybe, at bottom I am just simply meant to feel, think, and be alone. At some level. Maybe the key to being as real as possible is to be the best faker possible. Say all the right things, make everyone smile, and “deny” all the truth and objectiveness out there. At least make it look like you’re denying it. What purpose does that serve though? Other than making you “fit in” with people who cause you stress and love to get lost in their lies. That isn’t the whole case though, right? It’s isn’t just a ball of stress and bullshit the whole time or you wouldn’t volunteer yourself to be in positions around them.
Are you just convincing yourself of this? Are you making yourself believe that the fun you have is genuine or is it a hard fought struggle to squeeze what you can out of people who pretend they don’t understand? You feel like you’re trying to convince yourself that you have fun. This seems to mean that you need to reassess and think harder about how and why you’re having fun in those scenarios. You have fun when you’re being funny, when people have real conversations with you, when you make money, when you accomplish something you set your mind to. While you don’t endorse the peoples’ behaviors that come to your parties, you know that you set it up, you’re the one making a little money, you’re the one who can potentially find someone or something of value that will aide you down the line. You’re happy making idiots laugh, knowing their idiots.
You have to keep hatsam at arms length. He doesn’t want to tell you some “big” shit that should come up in conversation, you don’t give him another inch. You chanced it because you’re human, not because you’re stupid. Human means you have a genuine ever present itch to connect with people. It means you will fight your rationality, destroy your body, dive head first into two feet of water to assimilate and play off of the group dynamic and vibe. It does not mean you are always comfortable. It does not mean you won’t be made a hypocrite. It does not mean you can convince yourself of any value to the situation beyond knowing that you’re just a stupid ape who wants to be around other stupid apes for shots in the dark at something more fun and more fulfilling.
God, I would love to just be working. I would love to accomplish and make deals. I want to create, play music, record, make movies, play sports, learn tricks. The level of commitment I have to these things would bring me more joy than just doing them in and of themselves. I could play my guitar for an hour after class every day. I know that to play at the level I want, I’d have to practice 8 to 10 hours a day and potentially have a teacher to show me a few tricks. I know I could create some cool pictures and advertising things, but it would take the hours of lessons in photoshop to really do it right. I want to know my time is going towards the higher dignity of the action, not just spent “doing what I enjoy” as a pathetic excuse for being bored or desperate to look like I’m accomplishing something.
You do laugh at and with these people. Fun is possible and is a good reason to be around someone.
You are alone. Deal with it. You know some real motherfuckers, but just like you, they can’t solve their shit anymore than you can. You guys can collectively bitch at the same level, but that doesn’t mean anything positive, outside of potentially alleviated headaches, can result. Is that a sick necessary consequence of our existence? That you can see the problems, know the people who can make it better, and always sit and watch because there are too many external factors to really get anything done? It seems like it, and it hurts to think it might be true, so let’s explore the other side and see if my head feels less shitty.
The other side: You get enough real people. They all take over a portion of what they are best at. They handle the people they can pick apart better than you. They teach? They force? They persuade? They enable? They do enable. They do the things that make a lot of people “happy” at once and sit in silence and understanding of what they’re doing and how it all works. So this seems to mean the problem lies with the real people. They either perpetuate the general level of bullshit, or they go down in a solo ball of flames in vehement opposition. The other side only able to see the “hypocrisy” and strident anger associated with it.
I have such a fucking headache. Walking around a new city. Done it. Eating at a place that served, at least to me, a mediocre meal and paying 15 dollars for it. Everyone is money grubbing. A better way to say that, everyone wants something they think will provide control and power. Whether you want something that gives you those things in a hippie commune or play by the real world’s rules, those are the things you want. They make you feel unimaginably good. They allow you to provide for those you care about. They allow you to fix problems quickly. But why are those problems there in the first place? The “wrong” people are merely after the same things you are, so it would appear that we are all after the wrong things. What are we after really? What “should” we be after?
I’ll throw out that what we should be after is balance. But a balance of what? Between what? Good and bad? Ideals and fakeness? Headaches and laughter? Is it a balance that we can even control? Is there some underlying law of the universe that is going to make things good or bad for you despite what you think you’ve done to improve your karma.
What if you truly are just destined to be fucked? What if you will just have to deal with everyone and everything from a point of hatred and frustration and there is nothing you can do about it? Every broken relationship, every failed business, every lost dollar, every lonely thought and suicidal night. What if that is what you are? Then you can’t just feel good about it. Then maybe you can’t just think yourself into happiness. Well, have I advocated merely thinking into happiness? It’s more of a process, practice. Thinking is definitely not making me happy right now. It’s causing me a stress headache. And how do I know it’s a stress headache? Because when I think about something I write, and it comes out brilliantly, or I explore some idea, it starts to fade out. This is why I won’t stop until the headache is gone. Somewhere in this everything currently beating the shit out of me will exist, and it won’t have to be crammed in one place.
Money. I am “worried” about money. I have to make enough to keep my roommates and live for one more year. It isn’t the biggest problem in the world, but there are a slew of pretty terrible necessary consequences of not maintain the kind equilibrium I’ve stumbled into currently. I really don’t want to have to deal with a roommate I can’t trust to not take my shit, go into my room, or not start fights over the dumbest shit.
What really bothers me is to think that there aren’t that many stupid people. I don’t know how I would deal with the reality where everyone is just as smart as me and can still manage to carry themselves in the way they do. I don’t know how to survive people like me, thinking about me and how I think, and still being able to get stoned every day. I don’t know how I could convince myself that I don’t care about my life in a year. I don’t know how I could not remind myself that something was a bad decision or that a friend was completely unreliable. I don’t know how I could manage to see literally hundreds of opportunities and convince myself that I need to stay in school. I don’t know how I could judge somebody so horrendously incorrectly that I might as well be lobotomized because there just aren’t any thoughts I am worthy to have. I don’t know how I could pretend not to hear. I don’t know how I could pretend not to see. I don’t know how I could be comfortable with being insanely lazy about something that involves people I should be relatively beholden to. I don’t know how I could spend all day every day playing a game of any nature. I don’t know how I could convince myself that the people I’m playing with are my friends. I don’t know how alcohol by itself is a good time. I don’t understand how making 90 percent of my conversations a reference to some youtube video is fun. I don’t understand wanting to listen to something in Japanese and reading the show I’m supposed to be watching. I don’t understand making a comment in a very snippy pointed manner like “Well then you shouldn’t have said easy!” and not realize it was pointed and snippy; then, if it were to ever be throw back at you, or a snippy pointed thing gets said about something else to you, you’d have a million and a half things to say about it to anyone with a set of ears.
I reveal way too much. My only saving grace is that I can always find a new set of people and work the game correctly again. I allowed my humanity to take me over. I allowed myself to fall into the same kind of ruts of the people I most despise. I can understand you fucking fuck of fucking assholes. I get it, I really fucking sickeningly do. Do I excuse myself? Do I shrug it off? Do I punish myself? Is it even possible to avoid? Is it even something I should treat as a major problem? Is there something wrong with me for even viewing “the human condition” of which I’ve subjected myself to, or been subjected, as this crazy inferior damaging ridiculousness to labor scorn upon? I’m sick of saying yes and no.
I can’t dignify denial. Denial I’m defining as a very direct and pointed understanding of something and behaving in a completely contradictory way. It’s literally running mentally and physically away from something that can, at the very least, be talked about if nothing else. You deny what you’re capable of. You deny how you feel. You deny who you’re real friends are. You deny what makes you happy. You deny that you know how to fix it. Is this why you never really care to understand or exist happily? Why you don’t fix problems. Because you deny they even exist? You truly don’t think they matter? You truly feel helpless. You truly feel alone, at all times, with little to no recourse but to do any and everything in your power to reinforce that wall of denial? That seems to make sense. I get headaches because I genuinely believe I can fix something. Because I am always convinced that I will bump into someone, something, some scenario that won’t make we want to bust out and break down out of anything more than excitement. If I am able to deny that it’s possible. If I am able to convince myself that this is my rut, that these are my people, that nothing, absolutely nothing I do, whether it makes me happy or sad for a fleeting moment, will ever change that, a sense of overall contentedness follows. Religion…this is why hell never actually bothers people because they’re already in the rut that they are saved or at least repentant.
The next question seems to be how to deal with a world of deniers. You can’t deny yourself or, well you’d probably just off yourself as that would be the only thing that made sense. The real problem is that you can’t really be sure that what you’re saying and doing are following from how you meant them to come across. When you give an order, and the order goes through, you can’t trust that it happened because you said the order. Some other “denial world” reason had to permeate that made people behave. They didn’t do it because they respect you, understand you, or even remotely care, they did it because they deny that you gave them the order, and they are doing it because they want to, will get some sort of satisfaction out of it, etc. Is this the source and kind of fun people are having at parties? They are denying the have homework, they are denying that the only reason a cute boy is talking to them is to sleep with them, they deny cigarettes and pot will damage their lungs, they deny they aren’t jealous or feeling as happy as someone else, so on so forth.
Well fuck. Then what does this mean about how it all got started and how deeply it runs? I would imagine it starts with the denial of death. What a great time you can have when you think you’re going to live forever..if you have somehow managed to convince yourself that’s a good idea. When you hate that your sibling or neighbor got something you didn’t, you deny the joy they have. You, every desperate to validate your pathetic notions and misunderstandings of a situation. I don’t even know if I could call this selfish given that it doesn’t even truly work in your favor.
Do I make myself sick because I don’t deny? Do I hate everything because I accept it all? Does it mean I have to be locked in a desperate “towing the line” of cracking and remaining the real and capable person that I know I am? Why do I accept it all? Why am I so likely and so compelled to take on the burden? Do I know way more than I’d like to that no matter what I feel, I still always and forever will know the other side of the coin. I will always see the implications until the end. I will always play out every scenario and am able to talk endlessly about what can and probably will or won’t happen given a set of conditions. I know I can remind myself of the good things, but that’s not good enough. I know I can keep my mind oriented towards the positive, but that’s not good enough. I need to know it all. I need to see it all. I need to not just believe, I need to manifest. I thrive on results, and being proven right, even if it seems to fuck me in certain scenarios. I thrive on being correct. Do I know that provoking steev will cause bowman to give me shit and not want to give back mystic, yes. I do it anyway. Why? I know it will happen. I wish it wouldn’t, I wish more than anything it wouldn’t, but I know it will. Why do I know it will? Because I’m that smart? Because people are that pathetic? A combination of both? Because there is a silent lonely dignity in being correct? When no one else ever seems to be, it’s nice to be reminded that yes you can predict things and yes people, even the smartest or ones you used to have the most faith in, will manage to fit into the line you’ve drawn of their lives.
Puppet master who just wants to be in the audience. Who can never be in the audience. Puppet master playing all the roles, giving a mirror, providing an insight for those who want to watch, but can only be seen as a puppet. No amount of death, drama, jokes, or dances can cut the strings. No one in the audience will refrain from sustaining their childlike “innocence” as they watch and are carried along. Because that’s all they can be, carried along.
I know what people do and don’t care about. This is a giant source of problems as well. I know hatsam doesn’t give a fuck about the house, not really. He doesn’t really appreciate it. He has taught himself to say something a thousand times because he is someone who only needs to say it once, and the rest are just him being him. I know that he knows he would be just as “happy” getting a shitty job in Washington, making new “friends,” fulfilling his obligation to the house and dip setting. I know this because he isn’t getting fulfilled in his relationships with nick, Jeremy, and bendixon. I know this because he doesn’t trust or truly appreciate me. So, when the time runs out, when he gets the chance, he will do anything. Why? Because he’s completely uncaring and knows he’ll be happy regardless. I’m not happy when I don’t care, I’m happy when I care more than anything and things seem to be going right along with the how’s and why that happiness came to be. You can’t be happy and not caring at the same time. It is a false happiness, just not the false you want to admit. You deny how and why it isn’t a real, and that makes you as “happy” or “happier” than anyone else who’s taught themselves a method of denial.
A lot of problems seems to be solved with the idea of denial. It no longer means people aren’t logical. It no longer means they don’t see the same problems I do, it allows them to feel, think, and behave in ways that are exceedingly close to happiness. It allows them to damn themselves without it feeling too bad, and still “love” themselves with the most bastardized understanding of the word. Everything I say, everything I do, all the wrong or right, they can manage to deny what it meant and where it was coming from. This can speak to the level of “deepness” in relationships and why they persist so long amongst people who cause me this level of frustration. We are primarily friends because they deny my blogs, they deny my contributions, they deny my utility, they deny my feelings, they deny my comments and behaviors, and anything else that is essentially me. All for the sake of their own misunderstood, bullshit, lies, and insecurities. They deny me because I am them. They uphold a false “god” and false idol because that voice is only a whisper that can be distorted by drugs and alcohol. They do it because it doesn’t have a real face. They do it because it can be fought by the lack of thought. How necessary is this denial? What thousand purposes has it served that would cause us to adopt it so freely and so loudly, but have it still be this difficult to suss out and discuss?
Have I managed to say how to deal with these deniers? Do I carry them along for a ride? Do I enable? Do I manipulate without a hint of fear, shame, or worry? Do I stop calling how I could behave towards people disrespectful and a denial of their being and understand it as simply acknowledging how they are choosing to be? Do I have to let them know? No. Do I have to feel bad about it? It doesn’t seem like it anymore.
My headache stopped a little while ago, now I have a dull roar of a bunch of new thoughts which I think I’ll be able to manage.
I feel like I see everything. I keep myself positive, but the negative doesn’t disappear. I hate that I see the flaws in people most. If I can’t deal with people, it becomes infinitely harder to get the things I want. I hate that I can’t trust people. I hate that I allow myself to be played by this primal “need” or urge to feel connected and able to open up to people. Why do I feel that? I do I think I need to trust people like hatsam with things about my life. Why do I need to have conversations with these people and struggle to find things about them that I can empathize with? I guess I don’t. I really don’t. Maybe, at bottom I am just simply meant to feel, think, and be alone. At some level. Maybe the key to being as real as possible is to be the best faker possible. Say all the right things, make everyone smile, and “deny” all the truth and objectiveness out there. At least make it look like you’re denying it. What purpose does that serve though? Other than making you “fit in” with people who cause you stress and love to get lost in their lies. That isn’t the whole case though, right? It’s isn’t just a ball of stress and bullshit the whole time or you wouldn’t volunteer yourself to be in positions around them.
Are you just convincing yourself of this? Are you making yourself believe that the fun you have is genuine or is it a hard fought struggle to squeeze what you can out of people who pretend they don’t understand? You feel like you’re trying to convince yourself that you have fun. This seems to mean that you need to reassess and think harder about how and why you’re having fun in those scenarios. You have fun when you’re being funny, when people have real conversations with you, when you make money, when you accomplish something you set your mind to. While you don’t endorse the peoples’ behaviors that come to your parties, you know that you set it up, you’re the one making a little money, you’re the one who can potentially find someone or something of value that will aide you down the line. You’re happy making idiots laugh, knowing their idiots.
You have to keep hatsam at arms length. He doesn’t want to tell you some “big” shit that should come up in conversation, you don’t give him another inch. You chanced it because you’re human, not because you’re stupid. Human means you have a genuine ever present itch to connect with people. It means you will fight your rationality, destroy your body, dive head first into two feet of water to assimilate and play off of the group dynamic and vibe. It does not mean you are always comfortable. It does not mean you won’t be made a hypocrite. It does not mean you can convince yourself of any value to the situation beyond knowing that you’re just a stupid ape who wants to be around other stupid apes for shots in the dark at something more fun and more fulfilling.
God, I would love to just be working. I would love to accomplish and make deals. I want to create, play music, record, make movies, play sports, learn tricks. The level of commitment I have to these things would bring me more joy than just doing them in and of themselves. I could play my guitar for an hour after class every day. I know that to play at the level I want, I’d have to practice 8 to 10 hours a day and potentially have a teacher to show me a few tricks. I know I could create some cool pictures and advertising things, but it would take the hours of lessons in photoshop to really do it right. I want to know my time is going towards the higher dignity of the action, not just spent “doing what I enjoy” as a pathetic excuse for being bored or desperate to look like I’m accomplishing something.
You do laugh at and with these people. Fun is possible and is a good reason to be around someone.
You are alone. Deal with it. You know some real motherfuckers, but just like you, they can’t solve their shit anymore than you can. You guys can collectively bitch at the same level, but that doesn’t mean anything positive, outside of potentially alleviated headaches, can result. Is that a sick necessary consequence of our existence? That you can see the problems, know the people who can make it better, and always sit and watch because there are too many external factors to really get anything done? It seems like it, and it hurts to think it might be true, so let’s explore the other side and see if my head feels less shitty.
The other side: You get enough real people. They all take over a portion of what they are best at. They handle the people they can pick apart better than you. They teach? They force? They persuade? They enable? They do enable. They do the things that make a lot of people “happy” at once and sit in silence and understanding of what they’re doing and how it all works. So this seems to mean the problem lies with the real people. They either perpetuate the general level of bullshit, or they go down in a solo ball of flames in vehement opposition. The other side only able to see the “hypocrisy” and strident anger associated with it.
I have such a fucking headache. Walking around a new city. Done it. Eating at a place that served, at least to me, a mediocre meal and paying 15 dollars for it. Everyone is money grubbing. A better way to say that, everyone wants something they think will provide control and power. Whether you want something that gives you those things in a hippie commune or play by the real world’s rules, those are the things you want. They make you feel unimaginably good. They allow you to provide for those you care about. They allow you to fix problems quickly. But why are those problems there in the first place? The “wrong” people are merely after the same things you are, so it would appear that we are all after the wrong things. What are we after really? What “should” we be after?
I’ll throw out that what we should be after is balance. But a balance of what? Between what? Good and bad? Ideals and fakeness? Headaches and laughter? Is it a balance that we can even control? Is there some underlying law of the universe that is going to make things good or bad for you despite what you think you’ve done to improve your karma.
What if you truly are just destined to be fucked? What if you will just have to deal with everyone and everything from a point of hatred and frustration and there is nothing you can do about it? Every broken relationship, every failed business, every lost dollar, every lonely thought and suicidal night. What if that is what you are? Then you can’t just feel good about it. Then maybe you can’t just think yourself into happiness. Well, have I advocated merely thinking into happiness? It’s more of a process, practice. Thinking is definitely not making me happy right now. It’s causing me a stress headache. And how do I know it’s a stress headache? Because when I think about something I write, and it comes out brilliantly, or I explore some idea, it starts to fade out. This is why I won’t stop until the headache is gone. Somewhere in this everything currently beating the shit out of me will exist, and it won’t have to be crammed in one place.
Money. I am “worried” about money. I have to make enough to keep my roommates and live for one more year. It isn’t the biggest problem in the world, but there are a slew of pretty terrible necessary consequences of not maintain the kind equilibrium I’ve stumbled into currently. I really don’t want to have to deal with a roommate I can’t trust to not take my shit, go into my room, or not start fights over the dumbest shit.
What really bothers me is to think that there aren’t that many stupid people. I don’t know how I would deal with the reality where everyone is just as smart as me and can still manage to carry themselves in the way they do. I don’t know how to survive people like me, thinking about me and how I think, and still being able to get stoned every day. I don’t know how I could convince myself that I don’t care about my life in a year. I don’t know how I could not remind myself that something was a bad decision or that a friend was completely unreliable. I don’t know how I could manage to see literally hundreds of opportunities and convince myself that I need to stay in school. I don’t know how I could judge somebody so horrendously incorrectly that I might as well be lobotomized because there just aren’t any thoughts I am worthy to have. I don’t know how I could pretend not to hear. I don’t know how I could pretend not to see. I don’t know how I could be comfortable with being insanely lazy about something that involves people I should be relatively beholden to. I don’t know how I could spend all day every day playing a game of any nature. I don’t know how I could convince myself that the people I’m playing with are my friends. I don’t know how alcohol by itself is a good time. I don’t understand how making 90 percent of my conversations a reference to some youtube video is fun. I don’t understand wanting to listen to something in Japanese and reading the show I’m supposed to be watching. I don’t understand making a comment in a very snippy pointed manner like “Well then you shouldn’t have said easy!” and not realize it was pointed and snippy; then, if it were to ever be throw back at you, or a snippy pointed thing gets said about something else to you, you’d have a million and a half things to say about it to anyone with a set of ears.
I reveal way too much. My only saving grace is that I can always find a new set of people and work the game correctly again. I allowed my humanity to take me over. I allowed myself to fall into the same kind of ruts of the people I most despise. I can understand you fucking fuck of fucking assholes. I get it, I really fucking sickeningly do. Do I excuse myself? Do I shrug it off? Do I punish myself? Is it even possible to avoid? Is it even something I should treat as a major problem? Is there something wrong with me for even viewing “the human condition” of which I’ve subjected myself to, or been subjected, as this crazy inferior damaging ridiculousness to labor scorn upon? I’m sick of saying yes and no.
I can’t dignify denial. Denial I’m defining as a very direct and pointed understanding of something and behaving in a completely contradictory way. It’s literally running mentally and physically away from something that can, at the very least, be talked about if nothing else. You deny what you’re capable of. You deny how you feel. You deny who you’re real friends are. You deny what makes you happy. You deny that you know how to fix it. Is this why you never really care to understand or exist happily? Why you don’t fix problems. Because you deny they even exist? You truly don’t think they matter? You truly feel helpless. You truly feel alone, at all times, with little to no recourse but to do any and everything in your power to reinforce that wall of denial? That seems to make sense. I get headaches because I genuinely believe I can fix something. Because I am always convinced that I will bump into someone, something, some scenario that won’t make we want to bust out and break down out of anything more than excitement. If I am able to deny that it’s possible. If I am able to convince myself that this is my rut, that these are my people, that nothing, absolutely nothing I do, whether it makes me happy or sad for a fleeting moment, will ever change that, a sense of overall contentedness follows. Religion…this is why hell never actually bothers people because they’re already in the rut that they are saved or at least repentant.
The next question seems to be how to deal with a world of deniers. You can’t deny yourself or, well you’d probably just off yourself as that would be the only thing that made sense. The real problem is that you can’t really be sure that what you’re saying and doing are following from how you meant them to come across. When you give an order, and the order goes through, you can’t trust that it happened because you said the order. Some other “denial world” reason had to permeate that made people behave. They didn’t do it because they respect you, understand you, or even remotely care, they did it because they deny that you gave them the order, and they are doing it because they want to, will get some sort of satisfaction out of it, etc. Is this the source and kind of fun people are having at parties? They are denying the have homework, they are denying that the only reason a cute boy is talking to them is to sleep with them, they deny cigarettes and pot will damage their lungs, they deny they aren’t jealous or feeling as happy as someone else, so on so forth.
Well fuck. Then what does this mean about how it all got started and how deeply it runs? I would imagine it starts with the denial of death. What a great time you can have when you think you’re going to live forever..if you have somehow managed to convince yourself that’s a good idea. When you hate that your sibling or neighbor got something you didn’t, you deny the joy they have. You, every desperate to validate your pathetic notions and misunderstandings of a situation. I don’t even know if I could call this selfish given that it doesn’t even truly work in your favor.
Do I make myself sick because I don’t deny? Do I hate everything because I accept it all? Does it mean I have to be locked in a desperate “towing the line” of cracking and remaining the real and capable person that I know I am? Why do I accept it all? Why am I so likely and so compelled to take on the burden? Do I know way more than I’d like to that no matter what I feel, I still always and forever will know the other side of the coin. I will always see the implications until the end. I will always play out every scenario and am able to talk endlessly about what can and probably will or won’t happen given a set of conditions. I know I can remind myself of the good things, but that’s not good enough. I know I can keep my mind oriented towards the positive, but that’s not good enough. I need to know it all. I need to see it all. I need to not just believe, I need to manifest. I thrive on results, and being proven right, even if it seems to fuck me in certain scenarios. I thrive on being correct. Do I know that provoking steev will cause bowman to give me shit and not want to give back mystic, yes. I do it anyway. Why? I know it will happen. I wish it wouldn’t, I wish more than anything it wouldn’t, but I know it will. Why do I know it will? Because I’m that smart? Because people are that pathetic? A combination of both? Because there is a silent lonely dignity in being correct? When no one else ever seems to be, it’s nice to be reminded that yes you can predict things and yes people, even the smartest or ones you used to have the most faith in, will manage to fit into the line you’ve drawn of their lives.
Puppet master who just wants to be in the audience. Who can never be in the audience. Puppet master playing all the roles, giving a mirror, providing an insight for those who want to watch, but can only be seen as a puppet. No amount of death, drama, jokes, or dances can cut the strings. No one in the audience will refrain from sustaining their childlike “innocence” as they watch and are carried along. Because that’s all they can be, carried along.
I know what people do and don’t care about. This is a giant source of problems as well. I know hatsam doesn’t give a fuck about the house, not really. He doesn’t really appreciate it. He has taught himself to say something a thousand times because he is someone who only needs to say it once, and the rest are just him being him. I know that he knows he would be just as “happy” getting a shitty job in Washington, making new “friends,” fulfilling his obligation to the house and dip setting. I know this because he isn’t getting fulfilled in his relationships with nick, Jeremy, and bendixon. I know this because he doesn’t trust or truly appreciate me. So, when the time runs out, when he gets the chance, he will do anything. Why? Because he’s completely uncaring and knows he’ll be happy regardless. I’m not happy when I don’t care, I’m happy when I care more than anything and things seem to be going right along with the how’s and why that happiness came to be. You can’t be happy and not caring at the same time. It is a false happiness, just not the false you want to admit. You deny how and why it isn’t a real, and that makes you as “happy” or “happier” than anyone else who’s taught themselves a method of denial.
A lot of problems seems to be solved with the idea of denial. It no longer means people aren’t logical. It no longer means they don’t see the same problems I do, it allows them to feel, think, and behave in ways that are exceedingly close to happiness. It allows them to damn themselves without it feeling too bad, and still “love” themselves with the most bastardized understanding of the word. Everything I say, everything I do, all the wrong or right, they can manage to deny what it meant and where it was coming from. This can speak to the level of “deepness” in relationships and why they persist so long amongst people who cause me this level of frustration. We are primarily friends because they deny my blogs, they deny my contributions, they deny my utility, they deny my feelings, they deny my comments and behaviors, and anything else that is essentially me. All for the sake of their own misunderstood, bullshit, lies, and insecurities. They deny me because I am them. They uphold a false “god” and false idol because that voice is only a whisper that can be distorted by drugs and alcohol. They do it because it doesn’t have a real face. They do it because it can be fought by the lack of thought. How necessary is this denial? What thousand purposes has it served that would cause us to adopt it so freely and so loudly, but have it still be this difficult to suss out and discuss?
Have I managed to say how to deal with these deniers? Do I carry them along for a ride? Do I enable? Do I manipulate without a hint of fear, shame, or worry? Do I stop calling how I could behave towards people disrespectful and a denial of their being and understand it as simply acknowledging how they are choosing to be? Do I have to let them know? No. Do I have to feel bad about it? It doesn’t seem like it anymore.
My headache stopped a little while ago, now I have a dull roar of a bunch of new thoughts which I think I’ll be able to manage.
Friday, March 5, 2010
[214.9] Who's Really Deceiving
I just got done watching “The Obama
Deception” by Alex Jones. There are a ton of thoughts rushing
through me right now so if this is insanely disjointed or seemingly
random, my bad.
I want to state first that I don’t agree with motivation through fear. When I watched this documentary, fear is the most resounding feeling I thought they were running with. I didn’t feel enabled, necessarily more informed about something specific, nor told how to do such abstract things as “get my liberties back” or properly juxtapose the histories of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao with Bush and Obama. It really does a disservice to a cause to draw such dramatic analogies of complex historical examples and say, “just go do your homework.” It doesn’t help your cause to have someone who may or may not know something about economics or the early history of our country, and also call global warming a sham or conspiracy. Yes, I will question their judgment and perspective much more because scientists not so motivated by politics and greed across varying fields and countries concur independently a fact not dictated out of a fearful and distrusting perspective.
With that said, some ideas the documentary presents do seem to make sense to me. For example, I have no problem believing there are a handful of rich people with all sorts of interests and future goals. I have no problem believing they don’t really care if I live or die. In the documentary it’s referred to as the Bilderberg Group. These are alleged as the people who cause financial crisis, start wars, and swallow the world in debt. I don’t like feeling that this isn’t hard to believe either. Do you remember when I asked why someone can’t just be “stupid” or “immature” they have to go on and compile it with a host of actions that make them look exponentially worse? Well, now I think I can apply that to our existence.
It’s not just good to be rich, you have to beSUPER
rich, and have a need to dominate. It’s not simply that you fucked
up the economy once in the 1920’s or 30’s, it’s that you
continue to fuck it up 90 years later. You can’t just employ one
asshole with biases and ties to organizations that you police; you
have to put someone like that at the head of every
organization under your umbrella. It’s never one lie to one person,
but a thousand to a thousand people. Negativity begets exponential
negativity. Negativity only “exists” when you refuse to create or
preserve something positive. I want to state first that I don’t agree with motivation through fear. When I watched this documentary, fear is the most resounding feeling I thought they were running with. I didn’t feel enabled, necessarily more informed about something specific, nor told how to do such abstract things as “get my liberties back” or properly juxtapose the histories of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao with Bush and Obama. It really does a disservice to a cause to draw such dramatic analogies of complex historical examples and say, “just go do your homework.” It doesn’t help your cause to have someone who may or may not know something about economics or the early history of our country, and also call global warming a sham or conspiracy. Yes, I will question their judgment and perspective much more because scientists not so motivated by politics and greed across varying fields and countries concur independently a fact not dictated out of a fearful and distrusting perspective.
With that said, some ideas the documentary presents do seem to make sense to me. For example, I have no problem believing there are a handful of rich people with all sorts of interests and future goals. I have no problem believing they don’t really care if I live or die. In the documentary it’s referred to as the Bilderberg Group. These are alleged as the people who cause financial crisis, start wars, and swallow the world in debt. I don’t like feeling that this isn’t hard to believe either. Do you remember when I asked why someone can’t just be “stupid” or “immature” they have to go on and compile it with a host of actions that make them look exponentially worse? Well, now I think I can apply that to our existence.
It’s not just good to be rich, you have to be
I try; I try ever so hard to view things simply. I felt overwhelmed trying to process the sea of “facts” and “documented material” I was swimming in while watching this. That isn’t to say that some parts didn’t show the actual documents, nor does it mean that some factual information wasn’t translated. What that does mean is those facts I feel comfortable denoting as such, consisted of the recorded speeches of campaign promises later contradicted, the reporting of “secret” meetings, and the actual sections of bills and reports highlighted on screen.
But let me go back to fear and make things simple. Take a situation where you’re sitting with your friends at a coffee shop. You see someone who isn’t a cop with a gun holstered. While you might not be completely freaked out, it isn’t hard to believe that you or a good portion of people around you might become uncomfortable. Why are they becoming uncomfortable? It’s because a guns sole purpose is to kill. That idea of a weapon does not bode good feelings, comfort, or togetherness. It preempts the idea that someone or something is dangerous. A coffee shop in Bloomington is an unlikely spot for such caution.
Weaponizing anyone or anywhere will only cause this effect en masse. Yes, you might feel comfortable around guns as you would a field of daisies because you were raised on them or just love to shoot. I would probably get off on the idea of shooting shit too, let alone an opportunity to blow something up, but I would gladly forgo that feeling if no one else had to do it with a gun either. So, when I see a war, I think automatically bad. I know if I had bullets flying by my head, it would suck. I know that the idea of accidentally killing a random kid or “innocent” person isn’t good. I know there are people that want us dead. I know there are ideologies that call for my death and people planning on using their weapons to do it. I think there are better ways.
Switching gears a bit, I want to talk about the “war” for ideas and information. I have to say, even as a person who fights to stay objective, it was pretty hard to try and sift through information I thought I might find semi-reliable, and shit that was absolutely ridiculous, while watching this documentary. If it was hard for me, and is still hard to really swallow and make sense of, it will be damn near impossible for most. I’ve already stated that the tone I got was fear, which means fear is presumably all anyone will feel if they don’t have the will or mind to pick it apart and dig deeper.
But again, the war of ideas can be fought simply. If in fact there is a secret sect of people who are willing to control us, then, as the film calls for, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and direct our actions appropriately. If we can say to ourselves, “A gun would not make this scenario better” and put the gun away, no one trying to put a gun in our hand is going to succeed. If we can understand that no single person can possibly enact the kinds of promises that Obama made, then we can stop celebrating the collective ignorance about saviors. Also, we can stop demonizing the puppet put in place to convince us. We need to persuade ourselves of better ideas about what it means to be rich and healthy. We need to persuade ourselves, and this is the sickest thing misunderstood, that as we suck away money or attention towards the things that make us heroes, we suck away our reasons to live.
I’ve said that I’m celebrating our species demise. I can’t begin to persuade myself that things will get better as long I see how we go about establishing our “beliefs.” When you believe in a god for example, despite every single good thing you can attribute to it, you are disposed to magical, impossible, fanatic thinking and when something emulates that, you will be disposed to trusting it. This isn’t because you are stupid; this is because that is how brains work. I’m not trying to insult my religious friends; I’m trying to scream from the rooftops BIOLOGY.
Very practically speaking, if we take what the documentary says on its face, very important implications come out of a few scenarios. There have in fact been bills that have called to restrict or prohibit gun access to the” not convicted of a crime” public. It starts with those on the no fly list, it ends where? Now no, I don’t believe we should have the guns in the first place, but it’s at this point that I think we get into a situation of self-defense. If cops become federalized, if the military actually is being used to destabilize countries, if we are in fact being driven by corporate interest into a depression, I’d shoot a mother fucker or two myself if I was in that specific of a proverbial corner. But, things don’t have to get that complicated.
Every person in the military is a father, mother, brother, sister etc. There is no such thing as the “military” there is a collection of people with various ideals and reasons for joining an organization they either believed in or believed would help their life. Super soldiers follow orders, individuals make decisions. I can’t think of a single person I know who is in the military or has been that would comply with oppressing or fighting people in this country for government or corporate interests. Does that mean they wouldn’t? No, but I find it so unlikely I’ll state it for the record and chance at being proven wrong.
Before someone controls you, you have to give them something. What our elected officials, what your religion, your school, and your clothes company all want is your trust. This is why trust, for me, is the most important idea possible. It is the most respected thing to keep, and the most powerful thing ever abused. We trusted Obama; that was our folly. Well before him we trusted ourselves to know what to trust. We trusted that Federal Reserve meant actually federal and an extension of the government, not a private company. We trust that people give a fuck because we insolate ourselves around the few that do about us most often. The “awakening” as it’s referred to, needs to be an overt display of our reality, our nature, and our potential. Consciousness razing is more than becoming a bleeding heart for cancer or starving children.
The irony here seems to be that it already exists; we just refuse to accept it. It’s not a movie when you hear of genocide and/or people starving. Every time someone says, “It’s 2010 and we should be past this now” is only speaking to denial, not technological or moral maturity. We are in a war. We are killing innocent people for oil. We are poking holes in our atmosphere. We are bankrupting people before they are born. We are polluting our food. We are just a bunch of stupid fucking apes. Every complicated issue with its years of history, context, cause and effect, yada yada boils down to we are stupid fucking apes. This is why I just kind of “am” about our existence and factual in my assessment of it. I try to live and hold ideals in spite of my reality. That doesn’t mean I don’t accept it, it means I assess, idolize, and express the best parts of it.
This is what I mean when I tell people to wake up. This is why my thoughts are always racing. This is why I say things matter and other things don’t. This is why I feel like I have any authority what so ever over anything and appreciate people who are willing to engage the discourse or express the ideals. When you hear a person say “This bill prevents so and so from spending money or such and such organization from doing that” in an interview outside the building where a group of people are defying that bill, the bill doesn’t do shit. You’re reciting something stupid. You’re wasting your time. The bill did its job by getting you to recite what it is allegedly supposed to do The reality about the governmental body, law process, and nature of “regular” people to want and believe in it is just an “oh, duh”’ away.
What’s the motivation for a 125 people to control the world? Who cares!? What can happen when 1 person controls too much? Ask yourself this question about your shitty boss and your shitty job. What’s their motivation? It’s to maintain his or herself. Be it supporting a family, paying off debt, or just getting the bills to shut up, it’s not hard to imagine. To a greater degree, I’ll guess this is those rich peoples’ motivation as well. They understand what 7 billion confused, ignorant, pissed off, ideological, etc. people can do if destabilized. If they didn’t, I don’t imagine they would care to be in the business of destabilizing. The real “sin” of theirs is not making things simple and living humbly. And honestly, I think this is the only way to combat that problem regardless of the motivation or intention on our lives.
This is only possible with that sense of personal responsibility, accountability, and sense of being “awake.” You have to make your own rules that follow simple principles. Be specific and honest. The reason people are allowed to complicate an issue with platitudes like “it’s not black and white” is because they refuse to get specific. Is a belief in a god good or bad? That’s the wrong question. Does this person’s belief in a god create more positive in their life and the lives of others than it does destroy? Potentially. Make no mistake, because it does indeed destroy something, but what it’s destroying can still exist and even grow in the mind of someone else. Also, when whatever is being destroyed is contained in the mind or collective consciousness, it brings the “fight” to a much safer and tolerable landscape. I would be much more content with a world where everyone but me believed in a god, but no one wanted me dead or to kill themselves in service to it.
If there is one service you can do for yourself or your country it is to make people be specific. Don’t allow thousand page bills to be passed in an hour. Don’t believe everyone, particularly you, is entitled to everything; this ranging from the nominal and obvious things like guns, to abstract notions of respect and love. The idea that people would refuse to even acknowledge and change themselves scares me way more than a police state or Illuminati-esc super group pulling strings. One means our generation, or maybe foreseeable generations, will get fucked, the other means we literally will never care to know how to stop it.
Monday, March 1, 2010
[214] Loners
I think I’ve managed to piss off or
insult a couple people over the last few weeks that I didn’t mean
to, and I’m in some sort of introspective mood so here’s some
words about me.
I’m a loner at heart. I think this
plays into my relationships much deeper than people realize. If we
don’t talk for what might seem as a long time or our life
circumstances take us far apart, if we’re cool, to me we’re still
cool. My best friend I talk to maybe once every 5 or 6 months. My
whole thing is, I don’t want to be that person that just asks about
your day or how school’s going out of formality. I’d like to be
in a mood where I’m trying to be invested in your answers or take
the conversation somewhere.
I’m kind of
creepily okay with sitting alone watching a show or movies, playing
music or whatever. And if I find myself doing those things, it isn’t
about me trying to be shady towards you or passively dissolve a
friendship. I think I might be so “apt” at being by myself
because of paranoid/a.d.d.-ish habits. For example, I’m finding the
ridiculous amounts of people in the library right now as distracting
as any show projected at home. It was actually the contemplation of
my sitting here in the context of them that got me away from homework
and onto this blog.
I wonder if most people are loners. I
have to believe there is this sort of happiness or security that
comes from realizing you’re the only one truly inside your head.
Almost as a necessity would you develop some way to “cope.” How
could society function, how could these kids come in to this place
day in and day out if there was no enjoyment? I’m not positive that
would make sense. Of course there would be some complicated “social
forces” picture that could be drawn to circumvent the happiness,
but eh, not really in the mood.
Clearly, being what I’m trying to
describe as a “loner” doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy or can be
good at social interaction. I think it’s more about what you rely
on primarily. Is it your own thoughts or the ability of others to
distract you? Ha, thinking on how hard people fail at being
consistent sources of distraction it seems almost assured you’ll
jump inward.
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