[230] Inside Outside Box

I need to learn more. What I learn needs to influence what I do more. When I say more, I mean it needs to extend some branch of “understanding” that I can only find frustration in currently. I suppose a good gauge of whether I am progressing is the more I feel engaged, happy, and productive. These of course predicated on how you know or can come to know about yourself and the various ways you can relate to people.

This whole notion of progress is frustrating. The only reason I have goals is because I picked them, or at least felt like I picked them; it wasn’t because they were magically revealed to be truer or better. The problem is when I realize how easily it is to think in a contradictory manner. How often or easily your once heroes can be taken down. What ideal do you hold “sacred,” terrible word, when foundations of your thought are proven to be untenable?

I’ve picked goals. To be as happy as possible as often as possible while understanding the various and often conflicting means to happiness. I want to enable my friends where possible. With these broad goals it’s easy to move to the specifics. I want to run a business, coffee shop, learn taxes, make money, etc. under that context. I adopt words like “utility” and drop words like “love” in order to better understand and express those goals. I want to create an internally sensible world that doesn’t pretend there isn’t an overlying, potentially chaotic and horrible, objective context.

I don’t like things to get dramatic. Why do we have to wait for a revolution before we figure out why and how government should be run? Why do we have to wait until the planet fights back when we screw up the environment? Why does the middle class have to disappear before we even acknowledge class inequality? Why do you need to be sick before wanting health care? Why do we strive so hard to be extremely wrong first? Is there really some ultimate annihilation button at the proverbial end if we decide to tip the balancing scales towards uninhibited objective realization?

I don’t want to care. Does that make things self-fulfilled or am I just holding out for the right time? I mean, I already care, so how can I not want to? Care about what? Well, myself, my friends, my shit, my ideas. It follows that I would care about the world, our political climate, emotional and mental stability and ability. What if the real questions is, how connected are we?

Perhaps an analogy for the world: Is it like saying you're like an apple, but part of it is rotting, and you try to eat it anyway? There are still good parts, but it’s still rotten. Can people be a barrel of apples? Can we simply chuck the rotten ones until they decompose and simply provide more soil over the next cycle? I suppose not as long as other stupid apples fall in love with the ones who are rotting. And, one of those rotting apples is threatening to die as the sole bearer of the knowledge on how to cure pimples, asshole.

So these apples can provide something, even while they are rotting. Maybe a deeper insight understands the capacity of every apple to rot. But an apple left on the ground doesn’t choose to be there. Either directly or indirectly it fell or perhaps thrown to its current position. It’s not like other apples can go pick it up, whether they had the capacity to care to or not. Maybe people should stop acting like apples.

Do we have a societal goal? It can’t be that whole life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness bullshit. Really, you can’t tell me war for oil, prison time for weed, and deregulated markets drew from wells extolling those ideals. That’s called the wrong kind of “selfish happiness.”

What if we had tactical kidnappings? We bust into foreign or warring countries, take the people doing a ton of bad shit, imprison them, but treat them like they are normal or potentially valuable people. You kidnap them, and put them up in a prison/hotel. Let them Skype with their brethren back home and learn how not-give-a-shit Americans really are let alone be in direct opposition to their favorite sky daddy. Of course the ones left who no longer wanted to fight or be indoctrinated would be threatened with death if they defected here, but it can’t be any worse then they’re current standing. 

What if we flew in and carted tons of people to be relocated in other countries who were equipped to handle new social and cultural programs, not unlike this melting pot of America and simply made sure that we treated other people well? You don’t force those that don’t want to leave and you don’t impose on those that don’t want to or can’t handle. You just provide the opportunities and make more examples out of people. What’s more convincing that someone’s own family member in their own language?

I guess that was my random let’s explore this idea moment after I wrote through initial frustration. I can’t help but to default into something “seemingly productive” once I think I’ve found a place for the bullshit.

I guess all I can do is keep living vicariously.

[229] An Infinite Capacity For The Happy

People need to die as long as they have the capacity to experience perpetual and potentially unending woe. It taken four days of pumping a depressant substance into my body, but hopefully we’ll reach a fun catch-all happy sentiment by the end. Doubt it.

One of my biggest problems is complacency. Complacency speaks to redundancy. Redundancy implies predictions. Take Dot Dot Dot. Good group of people. Talented musicians. They love their craft and the people who come out to see them. They play the same shit. They are a cover band. They got really good at taking other peoples’ idea and dancing behind it all. The same vigor and awesomeness I experienced my first round with the band is forever lost as long as they are just a cover band.

Next round: conversations.

I’ve reached the point in any and all conversations I have where I “cock-block” myself. Let me explain why. I have no interest in playing the game that makes you think I’m witty and attractive. I don’t want to deliberately phrase something or “accidentally” do or look a certain way that queues you up. So I go out, get in cool conversations, and as fun as it may be to go down some perverted track, I just pick that point to explain how and why it could go down that track. My saving grace is that the conversations are always different when the subject is that person’s history. It just feels hopelessly weird to be so fucking bored with it all. I either want to be extremely belligerently angry, or give the fuck up. And odds are, it’ll be a while before I give up.

I can’t think of a more depressing thought than to not be surprised anymore. I think I avoid conversations because of this fact. When I see how someone is just hardcore failing at something, but it’s the exact same way the last fifteen assholes I talked to are failing, it just depresses me. I’m lucky I have a perspective to know that five days of a depressant liquid are making me sound cynical and feeling like utter shit, but knowing the feeling exists just sucks so much ass. I would hate to think of the implications of a little bitch who feels this way. Or better said, the majority of people who don’t have the knowledge that they’re going to feel better eventually.

Final battle: recent events.

Old friends are back in town. So much time lost with people that I never had a problem with and never had a problem with me. Psychopathic cunt to blame? Geographical circumstances? I really want to stress to people. Particularly if you’ve never read my shit and stumbled upon this wondering how and why we’re “friends” on facebook. It isn’t hard for me to forget you. It isn’t hard for me to cut ties. I’ve actually recently learned of the neuronal basis that could account for my learned indifference. (Fun shit I need to learn more about) My point being, if we’re friends: If I give you the time of day: If regardless of everything I could ever hate about this life, and your being, and my thoughts, and whatever the fuck else excuse I might like to use for my actions….and I still manage to do you a favor, help you with some problem, or invite you out for whatever, I really give a fuck. I’ll probably kill myself the day I don’t think the fuckers I call friends realize that.

So here it is. Another digression amongst others. Like I had a choice, right? ;)

[228] Where The Hell Was This Going?

It’s nice when things are simple. Simple to understand. Simple to explain. I try fairly hard to take the litany of issues I can have with any particular subject and break them down into simple rules of how to deal with or fix something.

Take one of my biggest problems; how to deal with people. I find it almost too easy to disregard people. Yet, the conflicting thoughts of “wow, this is an awesomely fun time and I really appreciate or dig whatever this person said or did” pound away in defiance of my…habit. I had a really good time tonight where this is what happened.

I think realizing your potential can be a terrifying thing. Apparently, when I can’t remember the things I’m saying, my drunk mind speaking a sober heart has all the faith in the world as to my mental capacity for doing things. Having to always play the devil’s advocate to myself, it’s easy to dissuade myself from the seemingly outlandish implications of how I would choose to conduct myself. I think if I broaden my definition of what it means to be an acceptable human, I can get away with hitting the inevitable pitfalls of a broadening responsibility.

Explanation by example. I want to run the world. In a weird quasi philosophical notion-ish sense, I already do. The problem of trying for that kind of level of responsibility or understanding is knowing too much. When problems aren’t problems, just annoying temporary bumps on the road to the inevitable. When your relationships are practically impossible to maintain via mutual respect and understanding and always “degrade” into what you are or aren’t getting from them. The more you understand, or at least tout that you understand, the more you feel jaded. You get irresponsible, you test waters, you deliberately piss people off because what do they matter. This is a clear problem.

Simple equation. Food + music + alcohol + conversation. It’s an equation that I have had a ridiculously large amount of fun with. Does it last when you get to “serious” topics? When your friends start to think of themselves as too old or too responsible to act like the kids they were in college. I have this utter dread that the outlets in which I get some of the most fun I’ve ever had are going to continually dry up as people find the comfy spot they want to conform to. Then I become some kind of junkie looking to establish “new and exciting” relationships that will fall to the wayside like all the others.

It’s almost the same story when it comes to business. Yes, I want to own my shit. I can’t find the motivation to do it for myself. If I’m not enabling, if I’m not showing people how easy it can be when you have even one person who gives a shit, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I hate wanting to be that kind of person amidst a world designed to tear my ideals apart. We play political games instead of rewarding and protecting talent and innovation. What happens when I get the world? The exact same human things that make it the place it is will fuck something up. How do you justify fighting a battle that never ends? Because it perks you up? Gives you a sense of purpose? Maybe you can’t be about the “overall battle” and just have to bring it down to specifics. Fight for the people you choose. Fuck the world, I’ll just try to be an example for my friends. If only it was easier to ignore the world.

This feels all over the place. I don’t handle happiness well. I don’t know what to do with a ton of positive thoughts and a positive outlook. As if one day the impending cloud of “oh that’s why I stopped caring” will disappear. I wish I was more naïve and could just bask in it. This might be why I like dreaming so much. Stupid friends, making me want to grab them and never let them go, fuckers.