[272] Drunken Bar Banter

What do you get when you have two ex veterans arguing about war, politics, and morality? A time to intervene!

I’m getting fairly sold on the idea that I really don’t need to talk to anyone anymore on the whole “life” issue. Here’s why. When I do, I find that they either have some “life experience” that ultimately informs their position in such a vehemently held way that you could just never understand, or they have some “of course you know this” rhetoric that blankets the issue with unsubstantiated facts or tentatively held figures.

Ultimately, when you’re fighting, the irony is that you want peace. Whether you want to call the middle east a bunch of towel headed fatwa inciting America hating sand niggers or not, you don’t want one of them to shoot you. Nor do you necessarily want to go out of your way to make sure you can shoot one of them. I talked to a guy tonight whose job it is to hunt down traitors (read dissenters) and see them prosecuted (if not dead if I understood him correctly) but could still agree that despite differences, “America” (think South Park) was “more evolved” than the people in the middle east and it was our responsibility to show them how a country is supposed to be.

Can we pause and soak that in?

(Ignore this paragraph) It’s the position of the 30 something in the bar to step in and try to qualify the conversation in terms that are fair to both sides. Because, after all, the youngins at the bar are all still discovering themselves and the extra 14 years he’s had on the planet has given him this unique perspective on breaking up potential fights and qualifying bar patrons. But really, the guy I talked to who wasn’t the one after dissenters was alright, but I can be condescending in my own blog he’ll never read. (you didn’t ignore this paragraph)

When I pulled out the figures for the amount of civilian casualties in this “war on terror” he fired right back with the alleged number of soldier casualties. The guy who stepped in and pointed out that neither sides’ number mattered, was right. I didn’t pull out Google and site my shit, though I would have, and regardless of his, dramatically inflated number of soldiers killed, his point was that “AMERICA’S troops are being killed” and mine was about collateral damage. Neither was reaching a point that was going to be mutually respected and understood.

Facts don’t matter. And that is hard as fuck for me to swallow. The culture you create around them does. If I’m to make any difference in the world, it’s going to be developing an environment that breeds understanding. It’s not going to be in merely presenting the facts, but entrenching them in someone’s life. This military guy, this republican, this whatever the fuck label you want to give him, wants the same shit as you do, he just wasn’t brought up in in an environment to realize it without his fair share of bar debates or time spent in the military. People aren’t THAT different.

The ones who are out there finding the relative few to have informative and fulfilling semi-drunk bar conversations don’t believe the rest of the world gets it. Really understand this. The ones that believe or have the potential to change and discuss things, basically don’t believe in their potential to change things, let alone through discussion. This is a problem for me. I overhead people qualify their conversations all the time. “I’m not necessarily saying this or that and I don’t mean to be this or that, and I hope you don’t take this to mean more than what I’m saying” from the dumbest sorostitute to the public intellectual. People are smarter than they want to believe. They recognize opportunities to be misunderstood. They maybe just don’t understand the nature of how smart they are?

And I don’t want to think I’m grasping at strings for hope in humanity. I still think we’re fucked. I just see enough to work with. Just remember that you’re human, they’re human, and we’re all dumb fuck animals trying to figure shit out until we die. Getting drunk at a bar or dicking around on an instrument or mouthing off about how compelling our feelings are, is the PINNACLE of the human experience. When you can’t respect someone else’s right to waste as much of their time as you do yours on shit that makes you a hypocrite and liar, you’re the biggest kind of asshole. How wonderful it would be if we didn’t have to keep making excuses.

[271] C'est La Vie

I feel like a weight has been lifted. I've been a Debbie Downer for the last week and it stemmed from an overflow of anxiety about the “immorality of the world” and being seemingly unaware of the forces that oppose it. Luckily, or maybe it has nothing to do with luck, I managed to have a few conversations with friends to talk me down and I figure I’m back around normal. Maybe it’s the timing, but right as I’m settling back in, the discussion of free will is back. I want to explore my experience under the likely certainty that I don’t have it.

If I didn't feel like I had free will, from where would my anger, angst, or fear come from? Does my inherent non-belief in it speak to why I don’t generally persist in these modes of thought to begin with? What personhood named “Nick P.” is there to justify labeling anything as if he really understands the nature of it. If I’m at the same time the most horrible and most moral creature and I’m “one with everything” then where is the room to get pissy?

If we don’t have a choice, that shifts the priority. It is no longer about punishment and judgment. It becomes wholly about the experience; the very fact and act of perceiving. It’s not confusing why someone would be friends with a person who is openly “fake” because the experience between those two is simply a net positive. It’s not a secret why you can switch areas and switch friends, because it was never about that specific person, it was about what they allowed you to experience. When the memory of them becomes non-existent or painful, it slips away. Nor should you feel like you’re immoral or cold, you don’t have a choice, that’s how your brain operates.

Speculating from a “universal” standpoint, if there was one agenda that our cold and empty vastness could want, it would be to experience itself. I mean, we exist. I see and hear from no gods or anything else magic. It wasn’t born with a conception of good or bad. It just is. We just are. Our planet has seen millions of years of animals be born and go extinct and hasn't blinked an eye. When you get wrapped up in your personal feelings, you lose the game you’re not acknowledging you’re playing.

You have to convince yourself you have control to feel anxious. It’s logically unsound to believe you control anything. Your decisions are made well before you become conscious of them. The consequences you see obey different or more complicated rules than your perception governs.

I think when you lose yourself it isn’t a bad thing. I’m feeling creepily zen in typing this. I’m not motivated to get angry and the anxiety has been drained. It’s a constant reflection. When you’re not afraid you don’t engage in consequences of the fear response. You don’t have to fear and speculate about the consequences. It no longer becomes about justifying a presumed future. You don’t have to denigrate your current experience or understand anyone else’s as anything more than something they do in fact feel.

I hope this allows me to conceptualize my judgments in a manner that does not stem from or create more of the feelings I've been exploring this last week. I hope if I make any sort of sense to someone who reads this it allows a deeper appreciation for our time and experience together. We were brought here and we’ll leave here without our will consulted. Why should we think the forces that can do that would concern themselves with the messy details in the middle?

[270] A Conversation Worth Having

Allysia Sims

tell me something that will blow my mind.

Nick P.

Seems like a lofty task

I'll tell you something, but it's your responsiblity to get your mind blown

Allysia Sims

ok

go!

Nick P.

I don't think what I'll spend my life working towards will be worth it.

I think my conception of people as tools and bags of meat will destroy any and all relationships I hold where that isn't assumed.

I think I hate more than any other feeling, this peculiar given how happy I can be and how often I laugh

Allysia Sims

why do you hate so much?

Nick P.

Because it's for things worth hating

I'm probably developing a psychological hold and pattern on a bastardized conception of honesty.

Allysia Sims

I don't think anything is worth hating.

Nick P.

I think that's retarded

Allysia Sims

Thats ok

I think it's retarded to consume yourself with hate

Nick P.

To experience and to consume are different

If I felt consumed, I'd think myself retarded as well

Allysia Sims

So, then, you having the feelings shouldn't be an issue

Nick P.

The feelings in and of themself, no

how they help me translate and justify my actions, potentially

I corner myself mentally, from that "desperate" position I get creative

Allysia Sims

shitty feelings create the most inspiration.

thats why I only paint when I'm depressed. lol

Nick P.

the cursed blessing

Allysia Sims

it's stupid

Everything is.

Nick P.

so it seems

I think I'd rather be honest than friendly

honesty does more for me psychologically than friendship

I don't think some of my friends would enjoy this disposition

Allysia Sims

me too, especially because most friendships are lies.

no, but if they are your true friends, they'll accept it.

Nick P.

The standard I certainly hold them to

Allysia Sims

as they should be

Nick P.

I hate people that want me dead

Allysia Sims

who wants you dead?

Nick P.

Those at the top of society

And the people who "don't care"

The question is the ratio of passive/active desire

Allysia Sims

I don't think not caring means they wish you were dead.

Nick P.

two different people, the top, and the not carers

and they certainly do

they're the extreme passives, but that must be what they want if they truly don't care

it's the people around them who's intent sparked their will to attack their own will

Nick P.

the thieves who rob them of an identity or purpose

to the point where the only reply, the only way to "fight" is to give in and say you don't care

but that's the disenfranchised base

the real problem are the ones who create the conditions under which that happens to people

Allysia Sims

Well, the person I love the most wishes I were dead, so those people who "dont care" are irrelevant to my emotions, I don't need to waste time hating them.

Nick P.

it's less about them and more the ideas they espouse and reinforce

Allysia Sims

So?

Nick P.

they make excuses, they give up

I think those are things worth hating

Allysia Sims

So?

Nick P.

they are antithetical to life

if you are genuinely that way, kill yourself and at least be consistent

don't drag people down and go nowhere

don't set a shit example

Allysia Sims

alright, well it sucks to have people like that, but I still believe it's a waste of time and effort to even put thought towards people like that. If you're so anti-attitude of theirs, then paying them any mind only fuels the fire.

for you and them.

Nick P.

you can't consider solutions to the problem without respecting and acknowledging that it exists

and if you don't understand the nature of it, you 'll be incapable of addressing it properly

Allysia Sims

You can do that without expressing hate.

expressing*

Nick P.

if you can't understand your own hatred and what it does to inhibit or motivate you, the message you have for others about their feelings will be incomplete

to be a proper teacher and example, you need to own the extremes

Allysia Sims

Yeah, I guess thats true. If you didn't have a passion against it, then you couldn't fight against it.

Eh, stop proving your point. I don't like it. lol

Nick P.

I appreciate you at least qualifying that I'm doing so

Allysia Sims

I'll always admit it, but you better believe I'll bitch about it. lol

Nick P.

hatred is merely a tool, all feelings are. how you express and empathize are what count

Allysia Sims

very true.

Nick P.

my issue isn't my feelings, it's the fact that I'm prone to action

that when I say something, I really mean I'll do it

Allysia Sims

thats not always a bad thing, as long as you can control your words and actions.

Nick P.

until you can't control your words or actions, or better, until you lose your conception of what you think is worth controlling

Allysia Sims

is that something you think you'll have to worry about?

Nick P.

when all you do is think and reevaluate, of course

Allysia Sims

isn't that all anyone does?

Nick P.

I run the risk of severely altering my perception every day

not at all

the "anyone" reaches a point where they become to mentally exhausted, afraid, or disinterested to keep pursuing the implications

and they'll tell you this outright

they meet your inquiry or personal exploration with a polite smile and glances around the room for a way out

they hear that you're upset, not that you're calling them to arms

Allysia Sims

So what are you saying?

Nick P.

they won't fix themselves

so does someone have to?

and then who among them is that person going to listen to? how can they be considered when they don't know or care enough?

how do you establish a survivable system that doesn't have mechanisms for self correction? That doesn't know how to weed out what doesn't help or actively harms?

you need to make people courageous enough to be scientists

Allysia Sims

It's simple, if you are aware of it's happenings, you pull yourself out of it. Stop doing what you've been doing that cause the feelings, and try something new.

^exactly

Nick P.

there's the rub, they're aware. They're just too stupid, and I don't mean academically

they live in a stupid society

they are born and raised with horrible conceptions of themselves and reality

and breaking those requires behavioral therapy

Allysia Sims

well if we didn't have the stupid, the smart wouldn't be so appreciated, nor would our intelligence even matter, because there would be nothing to fix.

I wonder how stupid females feel when you talk to them/

Nick P.

I don't think that follows. First, the smart aren't appreciated. I don't know if you've caught any Santorum speeches lately ridiculing the idea of going to college. Second, Intelligence, technically, only matters to the extent that it helps you produce offspring, so any appreciation for it needs to come from contrived but respected rules about it's utility beyond that. Third, as someone who considers himself intelligent, if only because I try to inform myself and people seem to be helped by my advice, I know there is no "peak" of things you can learn and that given the changing nature of everything, something you used to be smart about is almost certainly different now, always leaving a gap to fix

Allysia Sims

....again, I wonder how these girls feel.

But, I see what you're saying. But personally, I appreciate stupid.

Nick P.

appreciate stupid? expound on that

Allysia Sims

Because sometimes I feel like I'm too complex, the workings of my mind can drive me absolutely mad. Stupidity at its finest has the ability to remind me to stop taking life so seriously, as damaging as stupid can be, it's also a reality check in way, for me.

Nick P.

stupid as a measure of what it simply means to be human isn't the problem

Allysia Sims

touche', however, you can't fix stupid. But you can learn to deal with it better.

Nick P.

the "fix" for stupid is to change the culture around it

first getting people to recognize there's even a culture to begin with

Allysia Sims

No, it might improve the amount of stupid, but stupid will never go away.

Nick P.

the goal isn't to get stupid to go away

i'm not being clear

Allysia Sims

You, my dear, need your own blog or something

Nick P.

I have one...written some blogs or so

Allysia Sims

I believe that

Nick P.

we just did to stupid what society needs to do to it

we conceptualized it

as a human facet, who cares, everyone's going to do stupid things

as a societal womb, it's insanely dangerous and has far reaching implications

but in recognizing that it has two different meanings or can be implemented in different ways, we get to have a coherent discussion about it

I can in one hand "take it as given" and project the sort of ho-hum attitude most people take about it, while acknowledging what I'm actually fighting against and focusing on to change

there's a huge problem with language that speaks to why problems perpetuate...

Allysia Sims

well, as much as I'd love for you to expand on this, I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open, therefore, I think it's time for bed.

So, I shall talk with you later. Goodnight. lol

Nick P.

kk sleep well, it's been a pleasure