[265] Tech(no)Logic

“Reality is that which, when you cease to believe, continues to exist”

I’m confused as to why people don’t opt to be logical. Let’s quickly do away with the clichés and non-starters:

“People aren’t logical, that’s just how it is. Thinking is hard and people are afraid. You don’t understand everything, so you can’t possibly make sense. Just because you think you’re so smart or logical doesn’t mean that’s actually the case. Who says in their own little way, they don’t make sense?”

I’m not talking about any other context than reality, as far as it can be discerned. I’m not culturally relative or sympathetic to feelings. I’ve been known to say that logic is “cold” in this way. What seems to be missed is that the more informed you are, the more explicit in the hows and whys of your actions, the more you legitimize your sympathies.

I hope people will call me out when I don’t make sense. Drugs; legalize all of them. Nothing about the legality will determine whether or not I will choose to do them. If alcohol can kill you and others you’re not smarter or morally righteous by opposing “harder” things. Abortion; not remotely wrong if you’re not shooting for late term. You “kill” more cells scratching your nose than you do if you abort properly. Less we forget how often a woman’s body naturally aborts. How about the death penalty? No one wants to see more people dead than me, but how we run it and what it’s supposed to do simply doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t deter crime and doesn’t send the message that “killing is wrong.” Then there’s sex. If it isn’t hurting anyone and you’re comfortable, keep on fucking whenever you please. Religious and spiritual issues is as simple as, if you become an incomprehensible or raving lunatic, I have a problem with you. When you unjustly condemn people or pollute knowledge, I have a problem with you. When you make shit up, I’m less than a fan.

It’s hard for me to call positions I hold as unreasonable. If you look at the consequences of my views, they tend to lead to less stress, more knowledge, acceptance, and freedom. They allow people to be honest instead of make excuses. What about that sounds bad? Surely I have been wrong on a multitude of issues over the years, but anyone who’s even remotely followed my blogs, or if you pop over to tumblr right now, you can see how once I learned more I changed and improved my view. At present, it’s hard to imagine some “aha!” moment where I need to revamp everything I think. It’d be great if it happened in light of new evidence, but most of the way I conduct myself and my thoughts on the world I would categorize as “oughts” of behavior for most people of similar circumstances.

It seems like most people’s biggest problem is lack of imagination. The world as it stands had to come from the intention of people before you. The changes I see happening, the role I want to establish for myself, and the various veins in which I’ll feel accomplished all stem from imagining the consequences of being rational. They come from playing to cause and effect instead of how you or I may feel. It bugs the living shit out of me when people pretend like there aren’t consequences. As if absolutely nothing can be foreseen.

I guess I just wanted to raise a flag for thinking. I’ve been slinking back into reading things related to religion and arguing again and it’s just sending my brain for a loop. There’s so much “folk knowledge” or many “common sensibilities” that I just wish people would check. Everyone’s dumb.

[264] Life and Everything in It

I exercise my right to be. Fundamentally, it’s the only assumption I need to assume to be true in order to forward any agenda. I perceive. I’m typing. It’s all just a chain of decisions, for better or worse, that are supposed to speak to what’s “me.”

Sometimes, I really don’t understand where I’m coming from. Other than a basic cost/benefit analysis, I don’t really get how I justify. Tonight, for example, I helped a drunken kid get home as I waited for my ride. We bullshitted about the Bulls and ultimately realized Derrick Rose would never touch Michael Jordan. Who thinks I give a fuck about this guy? What the hell possesses me to engage in cordial conversation and make sure he can find his stupid ass home?

Perhaps I sound cold. I’m just confused. Is there some innate thing pushing me towards being a good example? Is it just a result of my practicing? I didn’t even get his name. Maybe I just never want to see myself “falling” too far into the kind of person I know I could be. The more good acts in my favor, the less I need concern myself with flirting around dangerous edges. Does that seem right to you?

I’m fascinated by the power of a decision. I get it in my head that I own something, I will, regardless of what the fuck you think, accomplish something, and it happens. I literally dictate existence if I work towards it. This power I find stunning. I can become anyone. I can play any game. I can even tell you how and what I’m doing and then mold that into how I run something. There has to be something odd about that. Some form of red flag has to go up. I seem to only really relate to people who play with that fire.

It isn’t some cheap thrill either. It’s literally all I can think about. How I can be a person who’s been head over heels and work towards being endlessly dismissive. How I can care hopelessly deeply for a friend and be prepared to cut them down when they decide to crack. I don’t want to say that you “shouldn’t” or man not ought to have to deal with being both, but I can’t deny the conflict. I can’t pretend to know the medium in which I err on the side of positive while someone practically explicitly like me could pull some utterly atrocious shit.

I talk about the regulating influence of my friends. I talk about being the boss and owning shit. I allude to being the most evil/moral/cold/understanding etc. All for what? To better understand myself? To contribute to some haphazard idea of a collective consciousness? Maybe somewhere in the depths of my naiveté I’ll come to believe some future I shape was really about me and my intentions. It feels so crass and simple to say “because it feels good.” Like I’ve simply been conditioned enough to work towards relatively agreed upon societal good things from which to start my positive feedback hamster wheel.

All I can do is flow along with what I like. I like people with strong positions. Strong not meaning intransigently irrational and fear based. I like the simple human interactions and games. It isn’t a lie just because I know what’s going on. I like the idea of being better than someone; of fighting. I need to stop caring if I’m understood and just overtly be, regardless of where I’m drifting towards next. I can’t possibly be hijacked by the problems of the fucking hippies and head-up-their-asses conservatives for I’m far too dismissive of everything. The best I can “hope” for is a meager message that translates in ways that permeate deeper than your shitty opinions.   

[263] Mr. Lonely

Let me explain the nature of my loneliness. It’s very particular, potentially volatile, and stems from making an effort.

It isn’t that I don’t have friends. I have the best friends. They spend money at my shop so you know they’re not just faking it. They loan me their cars. They let me drink their alcohol and eat their food and crash on their couches and be a whiney bitch in blogs and not really give me shit about it while a few even put up with run-on sentences. It is nothing lacking between me and how I view my friends that speaks to this kind of loneliness.

It isn’t that I don’t have a supportive family. I have a dad that would go to the ends of the earth for me. I have, at least a few relatives, who I know if shit got heavy I could count on. Even in some very odd plane of existence I somehow get transported to, without my knowledge, my psychotic mom and bro sibling would probably help me if need be.

It isn’t that I think I’m too smart. I honestly feel like 90% of the shit I say is testing the waters. I wait for people to offer a differing or more refined idea. I want to be stumped and corrected early. I may respond vehemently or have to dig my way up after starting with an initially unclear premise, but the idea remains the same. I try to share my ideas so I can make sure I’m focusing on the right things the right way.

My loneliness comes from a state of always being “on.” I never really allow myself excuses. I’m never comfortable with the status quo. I loathe clichés and complacency. I want to be different. I need to be an example. I think I sometimes, okay often, try to see this in other people who very likely don’t give a shit. That doesn’t mean they give no shits, but they either don’t care about the same things I do, or don’t care to act in general against a perceivable wrong. Hell, if they even regard it as wrong to begin with. And I don’t feel right just saying “that’s okay.”

I don’t know how I would justify not fighting. Everything I want is grounded in this world, in my relationships, and in the examples I set. My life isn’t exactly a direct and calculated path, but nothing I do makes sense outside of the future I envision. I never feel more motivated than when I start to work through the details of that future. It’s perhaps my biggest current failing to be unable to empathize with being motivated by business as usual.

When I roll with the “smart kids” I hear echoes of disenfranchisement. “If only the world this, if only people that, I’m just going to disappear into an area of intrigue I find interesting and cross my fingers.” And then I lose touch. When I roll with the “regular” people it's “Well, all I can really think about is drugs or my boy/girlfriend and you wouldn’t believe how much I hate my job.” Obviously, again I’m lost. I talk to the old crowd, “This is how it’s done, how I remember it, what ‘worked’ for me, and I admire your spunk, but don’t get dragged down by all that ideal stuff, you’ll just get old and waste your life.” This, a prospect I find incredibly hard to believe. I read articles from the rich, poor, the connected, motivated, scientific, militant, and plain ignorant. All with their own personal resolve to sit from their perch and offer their brand of white noise.

People are happy to get lost in their own lives, and who can blame them? At what point do I turn myself from “that friend with a coffee shop” to “this person I genuinely believe wants to take over the world.”? I recognize my life as a shared experience. I don’t drink alone. It’s extremely important for me to get people on my page, and I’m terrible at it. I’ll save the obvious reasons why for another day, because I see enough in others to concern me well before they learn my disposition.

I’m genuinely worried about damaging my relationships for holding too strenuous a standard. I don’t really feel I have that much time to be perpetually misunderstood, misrepresented, or dragged into fights. I have no idea the extent to what I say matters or who reads what I put out there, but I put it out there. I have 265 blogs, thousands of pages, about who I am or am trying to be and why, and I don’t think I give people an excuse to be wrong about me.

But they are, and likely always will be.

If I didn’t care to try, it would be much, much easier. I’d hack away at a greasy grill, hide away in my basement and grow closer to TV characters than I ever could actual people. I’d get really good at guitar, and no one would hear me. I’d rearrange furniture and try not to think about the constant stream of foreboding information I read every day. My conversations would be safe, “friends” meek and indecisive.

It isn’t that I want to go so far as to say I don’t see people trying or that they don’t care. I think many if not most fall into that category, but nonetheless. I just don’t think the ones that get it, feel it as deeply. Understand just how far implications can carry. They can’t always tap into an endless stream of motivation. They don’t want to be the loudest, the greediest, most kind or be capable of doing the most evil. They don’t want to expect everything. I do.

[262] Housing a Counter Culture with My God Complex

Within a few months here, I should be able to start making bigger leaps into creating a counter-culture. Most of my speech and actions will be about the prospect of making money. It will be all about the money. Money does buy happiness, at least for people like me who want to get things done in a world controlled by idiots. Money speaks to idiots. While I’m distracting people with money, I’ll be able to sneak in all of my ideas.

And what are my ideas? One is being small and sustainable. Another is fulfilling actual needs. I’ll go further and say sacrificing in the short term for a better long term outcome. I think accountability and humility are important as well. I want to open businesses right next door to ones I think do it wrong. I don’t view things as competition that don’t stand for the same things I do. Starbucks in Target is simply a target, and an example I get to shine against.

I want to get the grunt work out of the way and make it easy for people. I want to play with the immoral people so they don’t have to. I want to create a pyramid scheme that rewards your effort instead of exploiting your good nature. I operate under the, what I’ll no longer denigrate as an assumption, that people are idiots. They will act from their ignorance well before they know how to act in their own best interest. I’m not going to appeal to the idiots. I’m going to give the people that understand and opportunity to be an example that the idiots will feel the consequences of ignoring.

These are monetary consequences, of course, because again, money speaks to idiots. When I get a building full of Hatsam’s that want to be comfortable and spend their time having fun, while getting the work done, then I’ve done something right. With a bottom line that depends on dependable people who motivate themselves and see problems for what they are, I don’t think you can lose. At the end of the day, when one number is higher than the other, the numbers that say “fuck all” to your opinions and ideals, you know to keep pressing forward.

I can only move as fast as the people who agree with me. I don’t make the endless appeals for people to get onboard to tell me their ideas for nothing. Culture changes when behavior does. Until I find the people to stand with me, I’ll keep having to invest my time in how I appeal to idiots verses refining the full implications of standing with good ideas. And I’m okay with that, for now. It’s why I’ll work 3 jobs and opt out of sleep. I refuse to wake up when I’m 30 and wonder where the last 6 years went. If you think it takes 10 years, I want to do it in 6 months. If you think it won’t work under the current paradigm, I’ll show you how it works in mine.

Changing and adapting are easier when you have the resources, and people can change more than they give themselves credit for. We live in a world that charges you to use money you’ve earned. Punishes you for using a service a handful of colluding companies provide. Persuades you that change takes a lot of time and is very hard. And all of that is bullshit once you start acting differently.

For as many reasons as I have to hate much of this world and fucking people in it, ultimately I am the keeper of my mood and my acts. I will always be more motivated by my ideas and what I can do for my friends than I will be dragged down by the oblivious idiots I will no doubt collaterally help while they rain criticism. I’ll try not to be the guy who adopts a puppy and then kicks it for shitting on the rug.  

[261] Brain Vomit

Legalize all drugs. From a “moral standpoint” if people die from alcohol your inability to swallow the connotative impact of the word heroine doesn’t make you more moral or logically consistent.

I’d rather not have hope then meagerly grasp at the frayed tapestry of the current state of our species. In other words, I don’t respect when people pray for things to get better because of their isolated and small perspective related to acts of kindness. Problems are systemic and take practice to alleviate. Your short term solution and hope mean DICK.

If there was a god, the only sin would be being unaware. You’d think of this being that is supposed to be in and around everything, seemingly existing to question and get to know itself, so the parts that just float on by and pretend like there isn’t a world around them would be the bits you want to weed out.

I’M NOT A FUCKING INFORMATION KIOSK. I’M NOT A FUCKING HAND SANITIZING DISPENSER. YOU WON’T BE BACK. I’M NOT A FUCKING BANK. YOU CAN’T BORROW A CUP OR PAPER TOWELS, THAT SHIT COSTS ME MONEY.

I understand that most people don’t want my ideas. I’m reality based. I must have no ideas how to get around this. How naïve I must sound when I say I’m in the business of ideas. Clearly, I must not know how successful businesses got that way. Clearly, I’m thinking too small.

There’s something wrong with a system that has you graduate college, open your own business, and still requires you to work all night on the side while the corporate umbrella you’ve chosen bleeds you with rent. That second job has 2 ½ hour orientations that go over how to wash your hands and mop a floor. Why bother with school in the first place if our fast food jobs can teach us? In universal terms, I’m no better or worse than anybody. In the realm where we pretend judging people matters, I’ve never felt so degraded. I’m hopelessly better than someone who needs to be explained to them how to carry on cleanly in a workplace.

I get the feeling people shy away from talking to me or offering advice because they think I’ll jump down their throat or won’t appreciate where they’re coming from. This isn’t the case. I simply don’t want obvious advice. I literally never again want someone to tell me I should advertise. It insults your own capacity for thinking and only wears on my spirit.

I think people need to be controlled by something, but they should pick better things than the banks, Wall Street, and the government to do it. I want to take of the world. “I” is a collection of the ideas that would serve to show cause and effect tendencies that have proven to result in improved human happiness and productivity. “The world” is simply the medium in which we actualize my intentions. It’s an easier task than people realize and it can manifest in a million ways.

If everything isn’t designed to screw you, we need better metrics for establishing what those things are. It makes no sense to say “corporations are evil.” The “We’re No. 1!” status of a company is irrelevant. I don’t really care if you get free lunch and sing on a jukebox at your company, how are you using your employees and your influence to change the very corporate world? What other standards are you holding yourself to once you get beyond the flash?

90% of the music I reject sounds like a failed attempt at something “electro” or played out super chill indie crap. I won’t say songwriting is dead, but I think ease of access and a completely retarded younger generation has pushed it to the margin.

One of the integral factors for why I will always and consistently win, if only eventually, is that I am not afraid. Better said, I don’t allow myself to be arrested or impeded because of fear. Given that I don’t live a ridiculously troubled or traumatic life it’s hard to site a “hardcore” example. Just, when shit gets serious, I get very calm. I’ll look more hysterical at seemingly stupid and petty shit than I ever will if a bomb actually goes off.

I need to get more organized. If you’ve tuned in this far, I offer this blog as evidence. I read once that the more we try to multitask, the worse we are at it, and I only keep adding things to my plate.

A driving force for my actions, or inaction, is the idea that all things are connected. Why it can never be “just think about the money now” is because the moral has to carry or I’ve defeated the purpose. Nor can you simply push a moral without caring about how and if it’s understood. People may not know, or just forget when I tell them, nothing I genuinely care about or have worked towards, have I ever failed at. It’s an extremely long game I’m playing, and it’s something I’ve never stopped caring about.