[293] Circle-Jerk

Humanity is a circle-jerk. I know I like to usually go with calling things patterns, but we’re much more passionate about jerking off. Take a look at a book store; “Here’s my struggle to success as a swimmer, tennis player, or minesweep champion.” You’re one dramatic picture away from taking a bunch of “cool and interesting” stories about yourself, slapping the picture on a cover, and calling it a book. Or look what happens to people when they reach a certain age. “Look how amazing my boy/girlfriend is!” Now is the time to start collecting as many other couples as we can so we can digress about those things couples do. How exciting! I initially started vocal musings about playing music. The most dramatic, up their own ass, incessantly focusing on their problems bands tend to be the “best” or get the most notoriety. Getting good at a sport, becoming a professional musician, or getting really good and fucking your spouse are these super “personal” things that become glorified and manifest as culture.

I’m not saying at this point that this is necessarily good or bad; I just want things to be acknowledged for what they are. Indiana University, for example, is a business. They may “bring the magic of music” for thousands of kids or help with scholarships, they also throw many in state students under the bus for Asians and kids from Long Island. Is it that you believe in the music program when you donate money, or do you fall in love with the atmosphere of prestige and project your personal experiences over the very obvious and business-wise pragmatism of the school? Recalling your experiences to obfuscate what actually happens is the kind of circle-jerking I refer to when I contemplate the demise of our species.

Now there is great utility in circle-jerking to be sure. God forbid everyone just remain completely unengaged or bored. I’m sure the quieting impact of videogames and music and relationships does a great deal for the masses. I just don’t know if the good outweighs the bad. I think the good can be thought of in a different way so the bad doesn’t get hidden away or made excuses for.

I’m concerned about this because I’m concerned for the well-being of people and how they organize their minds. If there is a more intelligent way to think about yourself or how and why you engage in activities, I think it should be preferred over defaulting to a set of behaviors that, upon reflection, only bring fleeting fulfillment, regret, or stress. It’s not hard to get into a relationship because that’s what you’re “supposed to do” and over a period of time come to lament who you’ve become or what you’ve perpetuated. You won’t have to look very hard for the kid who pursued most everything in their life at the beckoning of their parents, only to be shocked or horrified at the revelation that they may have had more of a choice the whole time.

If I don’t feel like I have anything to contribute, that’s when I start to get bored. If I didn’t seek to start a conversation or become better informed or challenge a perception for the goal of a clearer head and less stress, I wouldn’t say anything. The same reason I haven’t become dramatically better in guitar is the same I haven’t become insanely informed to the level I am/did with religion vs science stuff. I thought then that I could contribute something; so naïve, right? ;) When you’re not needed, and you really only get something from being someone for someone or about something, you just kind of sit back and watch. I simmer.

:: paused for 3 days and thusly picked back up ::

My current form of circle jerking is this cab job, real estate (to an extent), reading up on things that I hope upon hearing about them again later they will click a little faster, and brushing up on basic musical stuff. My position in society semi-forces me to do this because of bills. There always has to be something on the horizon or I can’t justify my life. Right now, I’m responsible to my friends and family who don’t really expect much more of me than what I’m doing now. It’s nice enough, but I can’t deny the utility of pressure. Many, if not most, people are “self-motivated” but the tools need to be there to incentivize.

I will however make a Declaration of Intent never to settle. The second I feel trapped or like some window is closing in over my life, I’m immediately hauling ass somewhere far and random. I’d rather get skinny not having too much to eat and sleep on a beach then feel complacent and complicit in an inadequate future I didn’t dictate for myself. If only I could get better at having other people tell me what to do. Or, what if I could just forget how to read and how to remember what I’ve read. No, magic forces of the universe, this isn’t a call to be maimed in a car accident to the point of full retarded or anything.

Can you tell I probably fell off my initial train of thought when this began? Go Cubs!

[292] Or, Such Is The Case Otherwise

Blaaaaaaahhhhhh. I write with a heavy heart. My “instinct” so to speak, is to just be mean. It’s kind of sad. Most of what I view in the world I pretty much generally hate, so I’m not terribly off in erring on the side of dick head. Alas, it is not always the case though and I need to find myself humbled in ignorance.

I assume. It’s a “necessary” evil to feel contented about your place in the world. I like to pretend that my perspective is informed after engaging in activities that most are not privy to. But at the end of the day I can be wrong. When you’re forced to be an honest person against your naïve initial interpretations, it’s a very interesting landscape. And that’s what I had to face tonight.

My fundamental hatred has its implications. My doubt and skepticism can be taken too far. I just so happened to unleash on a small business owner. To be fair, he wasn’t exactly quick to accept my retractions or clarifications, but still, I was selling myself as king asshole.

The problem was that I have firsthand knowledge of how much things cost. To me, “local” should by its nature be cheaper and more accessible, fuck the farmers market and the bullshit people will tell you. So when you’re selling something “local” for 2 or 3 dollars more than picking up the same thing form a Kroger shelf, I have a reaction.

It didn’t take dick for me to run the coffee shop, and that’s a part of the reason we were able to last as long as we did. Were it not for the rent, nothing would have prevented us from pulling in pretty nice figures. How am I to believe that anything else is so dramatically more complex or more expensive? If you own the land you’re farming, if you collaborate with other hippie fucks in town, and if you source and sample your menu form the readily available non-GMO esc foods around, forgive me if I think you’re a dick for charging 5 or 6 bucks.

I think small business is the key to jump starting the economy. I think the people making an effort to think locally and sustainably is important. But give me a fucking break, I won’t pretend that growing your own shit in you r backyard or sourcing form every hippie fuck within a ten mile radius justifies a higher price. It’s a bullshit argument. And the smug look of satisfaction staring back at my drunk or otherwise ass does not change the fucking numbers. Either you as the face is being scammed or everyone else is just as keen to the scene of how much you can milk the idea of local goods.

When I tell you, “You can eat a dick” it’s for this reason. I’m not convinced you’re thinking far enough. I don’t think you have the care to hold the people you source from accountable. I think at the end of the day it’s about your personal circle jerk. Whoopy fuck you decided to hit up every “organic” and “local” venue that touts itself important. How ever fucking blind you are to the self-righteous pride you’re feeling“ providing” the service that you do. How easy it is to look down on people who don’t know your numbers.

I’M NOT CONVINCED!!! Our default is to be fucked up! We fundamentally are going to strive for the bare minimum. We may try to feel like something more, something significant, but it’s all a dance. It’s a psychological playground of self-righteous indignation that we don’t believe or don’t fight for or don’t understand. I’m just as empty a pipe-dreamer in striving for my goals without the philosophical underpinnings that answer “why.” This is not an easy message to get across when your initial position is to tell someone to “eat a dick.”

But again, who fucking cares? It isn’t worth it. Even if it were it would be short lived and ill remembered. It would be the grandstand and folly to think my digressions and explanations of the day’s events translated into genuinely giving a shit.  

[291] Abstraction Distraction Attraction Reaction

I need to better define so as not to get lost in abstraction.

My basic needs are met, so in a way I’ve peaked. I can say that I don’t think you need to know strife and pain to appreciate being perpetually comfortable. I think strife and pain come out of boredom or when intellectual needs are not met. Whether it is working through a difficult problem or just a compelling distraction, engaging the mind seems to be one of humanity’s biggest projects. I’m currently interested in the “why” people pick the veins they do. I need to find a better definition for what I try to justify doing, because currently I’m doing relatively dick.

Patterns are my best friend and potentially worst enemy. How I choose to define something says everything about what role that thing will or won’t play in my future. If something is “just a job” I will sound and behave like someone who just wanders about town just doing jobs for petty cash. If something is “too big to be handled correctly/currently” by myself, it gets filed away like most of the problems I concern myself with. If something fundamentally feels like “spinning my wheels” or an “empty gesture” I may come across as disrespectful or non-caring.

I understand that it’s all a matter of what you work towards, the perspective you force your brain to have, or the La La Land you can trap yourself in. What I perceive are people who are comfortable enough. They have “a job.” They have “a significant other” or “their friends.” They are filled with “their opinions” and they’ve served them long enough to get the things “they want.” This system or pattern or basic M.O. makes me uncomfortable. Not the healthy skeptical level of discomfort, but the “maybe I should re-evaluate my entire charge in life and thoughts about people” kind.

It bugs me because this propensity in people may speak to something absolutely fundamental and absolutely overlooked by me. And I still may not have a way to define it that makes sense to me. I look at the opinions of the optimists. They say things like “when things get to the point of ultimate shittiness, that’s when we’ll do our best.” Or they’ll go on about how technology will save us all. Some just site all the historical examples of how we’ve managed to not go extinct or take their perspective of time and take for granted “one day and one way or another” things will look just as desperate and terrible then as they do now and we’ll “overcome” if only our imminent denial of the current problems.

To what end? I always go back to this. The only time in my life I’ve felt that loss of self in being so uber motivated is when I thought I had “all the answers” or at least “the best and most reliable” method for bringing about what was correct and true into the world. It was fundamentally coming from a position of naivety. The more I argued, the more I learned, the less people around me cared or knew what I was talking about. The intellectual leaders I went to seemed content to rehash the same speeches and move on to their next book. Then I get my view shaped more by brain and social science. I become disillusioned by how easy and quick it is to get lost in semantics and connotation. I decide friends are better to have than a fight. Then, boom, one day I kind of stop giving a shit after 3 ½ years.

The only steady parameter I have in life right now is to maintain a basic level of comfort. When I have the tools to endeavor into something new, I will do so, and I will treat it as a game. Everything I do has a flavor of superficiality and it’s not intentional. I know everything I change can be changed back. I know the story in my head is never the one someone is going to receive exactly as I tell it to myself. I know that most people are mostly concerned with themselves and what makes them comfortable. That comfort can be reached infinitely more ways and by infinitely easier methods than I may prescribe. But it all feels empty; logically and honestly empty. “Mattering” simply becomes the extent to which you can argue something does. My problem is that I appear to have nothing to argue that doesn’t feel like mental masturbation.

So much of the world seems self-evident to me that I’m losing that passion to keep saying the same things over and over. I’m not feeling like I have anything to prove. My justifications aren’t for you so they remain as explanations of me. The irony of knowing you can do everything and then feeling like you’re doing nothing. Simply knowing that the “everything” and “nothing” go as far as you’re willing to see them is the whole point. All you can do is ground your decisions in feelings; taking cues from your environment. How lucky to not be in complete control over how we feel…right?

[290] Open Source Manipulation

You should be able to talk about anything. My favorite topics are religion, relationships, and “real life.” All of which I hope to intertwine in a beautiful web of thought now. Stand back and be amazed.

I’m a manipulator. What it means to be a manipulator is to not come off as trying to manipulate. It’s the soul, deliberate spelling, rule. If they see what you’re doing, unless you deliberately made them see it, you’re doing it wrong. As a manipulator, I’m very sensitive to other people trying to manipulate. Mostly, because they do it horribly wrong. A fun fact about the manipulation game is that it is open to everyone to play. You can see the strings as easily as me. You can play the same cards because we all hold a complete deck.

My claim of manipulation gives me a very particular perspective on what it means to call something “real life.” I see the life I can infer about you. I hear what you tell me. I find out what other people feel about you and me. But mostly, I endlessly doubt that any of it is the complete story. To claim an informed perspective, it means I need to have one seemingly “beyond” or “outside” yours. There’s the natural one we have via our specific histories. Then there’s the one you choose to have to actively or passively shape your world. I like to err on the side of an active shaping.

Actively shaping involves honesty and responsibility most of all. Therefore, when I see people who passively get shaped, I’m skeptical of how honest or responsible they are being, namely with feelings. What are some topics that are just utterly feeling laden? You guessed it; religion and relationships. Interestingly enough, people tend to claim a lot of active shaping while being all but slaves to the various consequences of their beliefs and people in their lives. The shape this problem takes is…tricky.

Apparently, there are some people who are utterly terrified to talk religion with me. I use the word terrified because they must have a genuine fear that I could talk them out of their beliefs. Otherwise, offering such a sentiment wouldn’t really make sense. If you have undying faith, well, I gave up arguing rational verses irrational a long time ago, so you’ve nothing to fear. If you claim to be reasonable, then we both know going into it that I’m, if not persuasive, very likely to make you think, and likely not in the direction you wish to currently. The only real problem is your ability to be honest and cope.

Where’s this ego come from? Trick question, it isn’t about my ego or what I feel when making my argument. In the same way that I could get in a car, and subsequently run you over, is how I would deliver my message. Nothing about how you feel or think about cars that contradicted their capacity to run you over would matter. That’s how logic is supposed to work. When it doesn’t work, you move out of the way and tell me a god whispered in your ear to do so.

That ability to see things magically is dangerous. The inability to grasp the confluence of forces and influence the world has on you, and you have on it back, arrests and degrades your potential. Your relationship to a god is the exact same as your relationship to anything else. It’s an idea first. Ideas are intertwined. Ideas overlap. One bad idea can spark another bad idea and pollute aspects of good ideas. If you’re not willing to work on solidifying how to denote and be responsible for your good and bad ideas, I think this is a bad thing.

The expectations that come along with ideas seem to be the problem. We all feel them. We don’t all put them where they need to go. If you go into a relationship and you have all these ideas about love or boyfriends and girlfriends or the magic of a blessed union, how long do you think it takes to feel the first pains of anxiety? When do you start to realize that something just isn’t right? Is it the first fight? Is it what you whisper to yourself during the times that are supposed to be special? Is it amidst the regret of not getting something else? Not learning facts or caring to acknowledge human behavior can do that to you.

That’s why I’m persuasive. I know your fear. I know your anxiety. I know that when I’m having a conversation about god, I’m not really speaking to the intellectual stopping point of “well you can never actually prove otherwise.” I’m speaking to your emotionality. I’m speaking about the relationships you may damage. I’m thinking about the fear of reevaluating yourself or the fear of being alone. You don’t care how much I know about the bible or science stuff. You didn’t come for a history lesson or digression of logical fallacies. Well, you didn’t come at all, but that’s the incorrect sentiments you think I care about when talking with you.

When you make excuses, I’m concerned. When you’re afraid or angry the same thing applies. When you can’t talk about anything, I’m convinced you have a problem; an addiction to bullshit maybe, or phobia of self-exploration. Granted, I’m speaking to the habits of excuses, anger, and fear. It’s one thing to get into a heated discussion, it’s another to be perpetually put off from addressing something or creating problems where none need exist. I’m happy to adjust myself if you disagree with the language, but don’t use that as an excuse to run from the subject matter.

And isn’t that how religion, relationships, and “real life” are dealt with? This is all I’ve known, don’t attack it, because then you’re just an asshole. This is who I love so you could never understand it, you’re just a fool for even trying. This is what I’m afraid of and how dare you throw it in my face like I don’t have a protective unbreakable bubble. MOOOOM, HE’S BREAKING MY BUBBLE!

Working yourself out of a faith-based mindset takes time. Working yourself into a healthy relationship takes time. Mulling over shit like dying and failure and fear will consume a fair amount of head-space. I understand things to be a process with many layers. The more you unpack those layers, the more you see the patterns, the more you can address the problems, and the more you can put aside the fear of changing your mind. Once you get there, you hold the power, you’re the manipulator.

Your feelings become yours to address, not to suffer. Your friends are hand-picked, not the kids you happen to live next to. Your ideas get the time and attention they need to work on you positively. This is what I want for people, my friends. I care about your mental health and I don’t think living a lie is healthy. It doesn’t matter if you even regard it as a lie, it’s not semantics, it’s the effect you have on the world. If I’m a part of that world, and all you send is negative effects, I know you’ve something to work on.

If you’re willing to take on the invented problems: guilt over sin or sex or other people's stressors and bad ideas, you’d think you’d choose an effective solution. But, overwhelming people don’t. They stick with what’s comfortable and what they think they know. They hurriedly rush past, and thus bury curious thoughts. They regret, they get angry, and they make it your problem. If you care about them, it’s your problem, and if you don’t, it’s even more so. Be manipulative. Take control of your mind and don’t blame me for being right about something. Don’t be afraid of how you feel and push your limits. You know what you’ll find; something new to be afraid of. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

[289] Free Form Formulation

Fair warning: I think I have something to say. I haven’t sussed out explicitly what it is.

It all boils down to thoughts. It all boils down to the thoughts right now. Any discussion of reality that ignores what you actually think in this ever present moment just misses the point. It seems that the degree to which we respect and acknowledge the thoughts, right now, is our subjective conception of character. Whether we choose to act on them, is the story we lay out for others to tell of our character.

I feel trapped in a fundamental and inescapable duality. It is something I describe as A Game that I have simply no luck in explaining to people who aren’t playing the same one I am. The more I conceive of the conditions of the game, the more doubtful I am of the premise. As in, when I say my group of friends is the example, the projection onto the world at large, the more I feel I’m exploring my place amongst them over their general characteristics.

I may have an impossibly terrible conception of self. If only the logical conclusions are to be drawn from semantics and relative subjective experience are to be respected, the foundation of some personally responsible being with traits x, y, and z might as well be a fart you try to catch and paint blue. By all accounts of my “rational” and ever meager grasp on things, I’m fundamentally irrational. I’m inert material that can spontaneously explode. I’m presumably at the will of everything that’s come before.

One of the few things I trust is change. I don’t buy for a minute any strongly held opinion about anything given the right conditions to change it. In a small minded way this translates to “not caring.” It’s not a frustration or an inability to cope with the world that makes me want to throw my arms up. It’s not an utter disregard for “you” or how we may relate. I think this serves a dual purpose. One, it insulates me from taking undue advantage. Two, it allows me the “eh” elbow room conceptualize various judgments and behavior.

I don’t think this is how most people operate. I think, to the greater extent, people are self-conscious. I don’t want to undersell my conception of self-conscious. The anxiety and doubt associate with me me me is a vein. The prospective future you think you’ll acquire. It’s the endless fear that you’ll do something that’s so “beyond” what you feel capable of conceiving yourself doing. It’s a contingent existence. Given my x understanding of things and c constraints I can plot my life along y. It hinges you to the levels of distraction or comfort. It’s what you lament when you’re forced to deal with life after a tragic event.

Yet, it’s what we’re all reduced to as a default. To be pragmatically free is an exercise of will and disregard that, beyond the implications of destabilizing the system at large, could ironically preempt an expression of pure instability. And we humans need structure. Sooner or later you’re not really free to be a functioning heroin addict.

I suppose I want more people involved. When I speak of the game, I alienate. When I test waters, I make people angry. When I flirt with “truth” I feel marginally immoral and don’t respect myself. Of the many ways I can take advantage, I haven’t learned the secret of getting people the clue. I can’t tune them to a frequency. I can play, dance, scheme, and utterly shape the environment, sure. But an implicit understanding and connection may well be a fairy tale.

I don’t really know what to do beyond keep playing. The best and worst service I do to myself is to regard my actions as, hopefully and at the very least, mostly nondestructive. Will my boredom and disregard win out against my odd and potentially naïve views about respect? For anyone paying attention, the answer should be obvious.

[288] Judging Judging Judging Judging Judging

There is an artful and tactful way people can go about being passive aggressive. It comes from a perceived level of acceptance, or at least nonresistance, from the group. It latches onto an easily stigmatized subject, and it’s almost always shaded by laughter or superficial “shameful” bow of the head and grin. My concern is why people feel compelled to go passive aggressive in the first place. My thought is that it comes from some level of insecurity. In the spirit of this insecurity, I’ll digress.

I try very hard to be what I say about myself. Not all the jokes hit. Not all the ideas rest neatly in your heads. But the last thing I think you can say about me is that I’m faking it. Now this seems all well and good when you look at the surface bullshit things about me and think I’m professing my realness like some overzealous teenager. I’m not trying to flip the bird and scream I don’t give a fuck. I’m trying to say that I hope my example translates how I mean it to and not what people would project or assume.

I feel free, to the extent I’m able, but there is no better way to describe what I crave or wish for other people. Just, at the very least, be as much you as you actually can or have ever even hinted at wanting to be. If you’re cute, stop pretending otherwise. If you’re smart, sometimes it’s safe to shove humble up your ass. If you’re unsure, the amount of fear and anxiety associated is directly proportional to how often and whether you act in spite of it all. Own it all.

Now that I’ve established my friends as the case study, I feel it ever more important to state things plainly You are never and not alone. Do you understand that? Friendship is a support group. The ones who don’t support, don’t make it into the group. You’re not stranded on the highway. You’re not alone in a fight. You’re never too broke or without a second option or chance. This scrapes the surface of the commitment I want towards my friends.

Fun fact; Of course I’m talking about you, but I’m not JUDGING, dun dun dun, you. I may have to talk callously or freely associate and circle around until I get somewhere, but guess what, I’ve made peace, to the extent that I can, with the fact that people don’t reach the same places at the same time and I don’ t seek to make that your problem. I don’t want to add to your potential fears or insecurities. I don’t tell you I think you’re cute or intriguing because I secretly had some shitty thought I’m trying battle against. I’m not stoking an ego out of pity. My head isn’t racing with excuses for your behavior; I’m not trying to justify some action of mine that treats you differently. I’m hopefully, clearly, going to be me, and what’s apparently less clear is I genuinely want you to be you.

And there’s the rub.

I think I see more in you than you wish to reflect back towards me. I’d like to just claim “super perception” and put another sticker next to the word ego, but I’ll go self-conscious about it instead. Am I doing a bad job at being a friend? Am I not a safe investment? Am I a liar or impossibly naïve to an extent that it hurts me or my friends? Am I whitewashing my conception of myself as a person with an overbearing or over extended character? I think I do an injustice to my cause by scaring people away or giving them an easy out to compartmentalize my behavior. If such is the case, it simply won’t do.

Whether I’m dead on in my observations or experiments, I’m ever so rarely completely off the mark. My best guide is history. I notice curiosity or affection. I can hear doubt. There’s a difference between the “healthy skepticism” of being someone perpetually in thought, and the laborious monkey on your back reminding you to “keep it cordial.” Seriously, if that’s all you want, we’re never going to be that good of friends. I respect people who take risks, and honesty tends to carry with it a potentially high level for being risky.

I can’t be a better person if I can’t be kept in check or focused on the correct things. If you genuinely believe something about my character or commentary, we’re not going to stop being friends because you brought it up. I feel like there is a powerful fear that “things will change” or someone will flip a switch in how they treat you if things got too serious. I don’t want to feel that about you, and you certainly don’t need to fear it from me. Passionate discourse and self-exploration will only endear me to you more. But these things apparently take time, and very deliberate dialogue. If my understanding of most people is they barely grasp how or why they do things, try squeezing workable or motivated assessments out of that.

My issue is a false perception of peaking. It’s really just frustration for all I see and the interesting potential conclusions or conversations not taking place. I get too brazen and bored and just kind of destroy little bridges because they’re only gearing up to take me where I’ve been before. It’s severe enough for me to talk myself out of being a pervert or too flirty if that’s any indication. I can’t qualify myself as healthy if I’m making a game out of my friends. I can’t feel or give respect if we’re not capable of recognizing and discussing potentials. Neither of us is that special and yet potentially the most important persons to each other given some circumstance. Does that conception wax and wane like the feelings of a confused teen? Or is it based on something insidiously honest and intrinsic to the interplay of our characters?

I may not always be able to guess or infer what you’ve genuinely hidden away. I will always notice what you explicitly show me. I don’t think enough rules and understandings have been agreed upon in order to address some topics without them inevitably degrading into a fight or awkward situation; that only serving to impede conversation even further. But I don’t feel the need for the insecurity and thrive on trying to be trustworthy. The more “risks” you take in how we relate to each other, the better person I think I can become. I take a chance every time I open my play book and very often when I open my mouth. I’ll let you freely misinterpret or misunderstand me, but god forbid it hangs you up on some final judgment. We’re works in progress till the day we die.

Barring some unforeseen overblown mind boggling realization of incompatibility, I’m going to be your friend if you’ll have me. I want to know everything I’m good for. Test me. I'll just go to waste otherwise.