[269] Animals

I want to put my disposition up to a vote. I’m tired of trying to think my way past or justify things. I want to know what the rest of the world actually wants, if anything, and then respond accordingly. It would be a huge oversight to just try and work at things without anyone actually believing in what you’re doing. If they don’t buy into it you won’t get any change, let alone the big ones you’ve assumed to be the most worthy and over reaching. So tell me, how should I feel, and for how long?

We live in a country that outright denies someone DNA testing that would likely prove them innocent in order to “finally put them to death” and move the financial burden from our minds. How do I categorize that? Is it collateral damage of too many people with too many views? Is it the most abysmal example of a human rights abdication I can think of? Is it secretly a positive thing because we should be cutting back on the amount of people on the planet anyway? I want to know.

We live in a country/planet where people are comfortable hurting people because they would feel bad allowing those people to live otherwise. We let people’s ignorance reign supreme. I know my friends are a small sample size of the population, but you are primarily not the people I’m referring to here. So tell me, how should I feel about evidence not mattering, equality not mattering, or uninformed and dramatic feelings dictating where I can get in life? Tell me how I should feel about my ever fleeting time being spent hearing the words [and debating the merit!] of the weakest and most evil among us.

It is becoming increasingly less about my effort or knowledge. I put in the time to try and be informed and productive. It doesn’t seem to matter. How should I feel about not mattering? Do I need to bring in all the theoretical examples I’m setting for people that I’ll never hear or see? Do I need to stop giving into the façade that my impact is truly as powerful as I’d like to believe? Is it better for me to adopt “that’s life” adages and fit? I want to know the secret. I want to know how to stomach it.

I’m feeling less and less justification for being happy. I’m asking because I don’t precisely know why I should continue making myself. It isn’t about what I have. It’s about what we are. Animals.

[268] Spilling My Guts

I can feel a rift forming and I think it’s because I tempted fate. (Impossibly vague and indirect)

I have the power to start a fight without anything actually fought over happening. I have an innate ability to send signals insanely deeper than an advertisement (fucking hopefully) or silly moral anecdote about life and your place in it. Is it a matter of respecting power or engaging and acknowledging it? You should respect the consequences of course, but the power? The power is there, it isn’t biased or judging. You just take it or you become subjected to it.

I don’t think or feel “macho” when I refer to power. Power for me is cause an effect. I’m a “moral” being simply out of cause and effect and it’s hard not to throw in the word cynic stating it that way. I genuinely can’t feel happier than when I can contribute. Be it a joke, a helping a hand, an idea. What the fuck ever. When I’m an active part of the process, my disposition grows, hence my obvious friendships. When my level of comedy or productivity grows because of them of course we should grow closer.

I’m not even positive what it means to say “the human component” to things. There is no humanity to me. There are bodies with feelings and potential. You play by the rules that make each other happy or you don’t. If there is some universal balance rule at play, it surely doesn’t give a shit which you “choose.” But there has to be a choice. Why become conscious if not to collapse that wave function and dictate? Why pick a mate, pick a friend, develop an agenda or sense or moral outrage if not because the choice projects a much more enjoyable ever present now? Maybe the particles don’t choose, maybe the cooperation allows for choice. Haha oh fuck I’m talking myself into free will. That’s kinda cool. #notbackedupscientifically….yet

I think I want to make a difference, but it’s very important for me that it makes sense. I can’t think of a bigger identity crisis than to consider everything I say just a happenstance relative position about an undisclosed and uncertain amount of constraints that I “feel super strongly” about in order to project some safe or contented future. When I attack something like religion, it’s not actually because I want you to feel bad. It’s not that I don’t think your feelings are genuine. It is simply that I’m insanely more concerned with honesty than I am about how you feel about me. Being “real” is hard. It’s often depressing. It’s not something you choose lightly. But I’d rather be dealing with the tear inducing bullshit of life with people I know who get it than jump into a pool of excuses and formality.

I want and expect the best. As a result I find myself moved towards dramatics. It’s one thing to get stuck in a day to day habit and another to flip the entire script with a pointed and calculated decision. I’d like the decision to be collective. I’d like a convergence on reality. There are too many barriers from people who don’t care or don’t realize the harm they cause. I can’t have them in my circle. I’m only good at cutting things off from practice. I wasn’t actually born this cold, and maintaining it is fucking insanely stressful.

The best course of action I can take is to run the experiment. If I manage to obtain some old fuck disposition with clichés like “that’s life” and “just be happy with such and such” I’m going to get there the hardest way possible. Barring some tragedy, you can spit in my face and call me a failure if I’m not pursuing the full extent of my vision. I hope you can find me dramatic, but not unreasonable. I hope you have my ideas well before I ever get to them. And I really fucking hope it’s worth it.  

[267] Stuck In The Middle With You

I’m stuck.

How do you balance your practically lost “hope” for things with a need to be practical? I mean, I genuinely have no hope for the “big picture” at this point. I think we’re going extinct. I think we’re all the most horrible kinds of people in the world. I think the planet is more than on its way gone at least for our long term or mass habitability. I don’t trust a single thing I eat. I think people are allowed to feel too safe which makes them too dumb and the majority of people will claim being “too nice” to do or say anything about it.

I don’t like staring at the fact that it isn’t about how much you work or are willing to do, it’s about whom you know and how much excess you have to waste to achieve your means. I’m the kind of person who is willing to work 23 hours a day. And even having done that I’ve found myself exactly where I am, stuck. The only thing I have going for me is that it drives me crazy. I want to be doing something more or better and frequently different.

I don’t really see the good in people. Sure you can catch them off guard and they’ll often opt to be polite or lend a hand. Not going out of your way to cause harm is not the same thing as being “good.” To me, it would be good to see more people constantly pissed off. I want to see people who can’t take their minds off of worldly problems to the extent that it alters their disposition and behavior. The level of comfort and complacency is what scares and bothers me the most. Everything is taken for granted.

When you take on responsibility for your actions, you aren’t allowed to see things that way. It simply doesn’t make sense for me to think that I’m going to just go about my happy day doing as I please and spending like it’s my job, and I’m going to be able to maintain a business. I don’t get to blame my feelings or actions on a divine plan or will so when I dictate the reasons you’re a friend of mine and the kind I’ll try to be to you, that’s mine to own. I don’t pretend that I’ll always have friends “just because.”

I often wonder where my responsibility stops and someone else’s kicks in. I’d like to think I can just chalk it up to history. Literally every financial hurdle I’ve had to deal with is the result of dealing with a greedy non-caring and massive business entity that knows the game of fucking people. It’s my responsibility to own the decision to open and when I need help, but it would just be wrong to say opening was a bad idea or that I somehow can’t do this. I mean, it’s a glorified lemonade stand. Everything about the food industry is wash, rinse, and repeat.

How do you have the conversation with the person who’s comfortable selling shoes out of a hole in the wall for 20 years that there is exceedingly more to life and even if they feel like they help or give back, clicking Paypal donation buttons or commenting “that’s just awful” about something you see on the news is not nearly enough. How do you persuade the primarily waddling masses that the problem isn’t their thyroid? Who hears the message that practically everything about their day-to-day is built on a culture of greed and death…like literally…people dying so you can complain that your screen isn’t loading fast enough.

And it sounds so angst ridden teenager or crazy hippie, but it’s actually a thing that bothers me. And you read about the pathetic little activist groups who don’t see how things work and let their emotions drive them to some country or to a picket line while business conducts as usual. It really is no wonder why some of these people choose to get violent. They know nothing is changing and it must feel like a dramatically lesser evil. Worse, think of taking these “feelers” and explaining to them their pet cause is misguided, naïve, or flat out wrong. Now you’re toying with a group already motivated to action.

This may speak to why I never feel like I can stop writing even when I’m not feeling like I’m saying much. Unless I see it in the news or sneakily slip it into conversation or trap someone in a rant, nothing gets discussed. No reason or plan is ever established. No time or respect is given to the circumstances. No moment of silence or reflection. We just go about our day.

[266] That Settles That

TL:DR People are stupid, I still hate them, things aren’t getting better.

I think that everything that can be known about us or the nature of our existence currently exists and has always existed. Knowledge is discovered, not invented. As a result of this thought, I’m on the endless pursuit of running thought experiments. Given X constraints under Y conditions, what can we probably discern about the nature of reality, if only with regard to the practical implications? I’m starting to get burnt out on news because, as with most things, I’m starting to see a very depressing pattern. When the world around us starts crashing, it’s always predicated on someone being willfully ignorant.

On the surface, it seems naïve to rally against the “stupid people.” You get the “well who’s really stupid, who are you to judge” conversation. You get model court cases where you present your side, they present theirs, and everyone loses because no one pointed out that it’s possible to argue for years under no or bad logic.

There are tell-tale behaviors of people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. There are explicit actions and statements the ignorant make. I could watch a hundred interviews and pick out the liar or the half-truth teller every time by simply sorting and counting instances in their language. Why can’t others seem to see it?

This honesty thing is lost on us. People don’t know how to tell the truth or hear the truth so they simply pass themselves between the various groups looking to take advantage. They squeeze the world into their tiny perspective and declare absolutes in utter disregard to reality, let alone nuance. Meanwhile the thinkers warn, the scientists inform, the peaceful campaign yet are all silenced because money reigns. The powerful have created a culture where what you have or the luxuries you can afford “win.” The part about you buying into their game is their real victory.

These campaigns against Wall Street, secret and not-so-secret bailouts, attacks on unions and education, debate about how your charitable donations are being used….name your issue, the center of the controversy is monetary. Who gets it and why. I so rarely see, if ever, discussions of human responsibility; instead its name calling, pointing fingers, scapegoating. They allow the issue to become obscure in the first press release, with the first interview until there's no telling how far the discourse degrades.

We’re so dumb we can’t learn or appreciate just how dumb we are. We’ve had an economic model for the past 60 years that has always degraded into “kill for freedom and democracy.” We try to apply mathematical models onto populations and pretend that there aren’t instantly things to be said about how they won’t apply. Or worse, we know they won’t work and persist in them anyway. In the mainstream, there’s no discussion about the human psychology behind people who hold terrible or oppressive ideas and how they’re used. There’s no discussion about how unhelpful the rhetoric is or the fact that it’s even rhetoric.

We’re quick to judge and conceptualize things in a sound bite. I click through a montage of the dead famous and accomplished and each one’s life is summed up as “So-and-so, philanthropist, died August 20, 2011.” What an insult to their motivations, to their potential message. If I'm remembered as anything less than an "Everythingist" something went wrong. We say things like “right to work” and “national school choice” and pretend they aren’t complete misnomers. We reinforce our delusions every time we repeat the script. Every time we give it a stage, that’s all we come to know, the only thing we can manifest. From Congress to shitty fast food jobs, until you raise the level of discourse and act in deliberate and informed ways, all you can do is manifest hatred and complaints and pass the problems onto the next person.

I’ve been told I’m naïve or dumb for what I expect from people. I, who [somehow!] is basically peaceful, accepting, desperate to get informed and work towards something that matters, I observe and draw conclusions, I don’t accept an ideology and proclaim it’s the only way. I manifest my will and my views in relationships, writings, and work. I am the kind of selfish that understands I’m “alone” in a social and real context. For me to disregard the potential for others is to deny my own. For me not to respect your ability to make good or bad decisions is to deny my own. I may be the result of a seemingly random confluence of forces, but what I currently am is mine to choose. The very fact of my life is the standard I expect from the world.

I don’t want to lose sight of the point of struggling. I kind of just want to sit and think. Or maybe just sit and breathe. The same story gets old. It’s the same ignorance and fear. I know I keep writing the same blog too.