[868] Hippocratic Oaf

The dictionary.com definition of a “hypocrite” is as follows:

1. a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.

2. a person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, especially one whose private life, opinions, or statements belie his or her public statements.

What strikes me about these are that the person has to be “pretending” to be desirable or have a belief.

Anymore, I don't know that hypocrisy really exists. There are literally tens of thousands of examples born from modern history of Republican talking points being refuted by Republican talking points, a Trump tweet for a Trump tweet, a story of some religious leader's sexual proclivities mocked against their railing against homosexuality or the sanctity of marriage.

People “feel” internally consistent and justified about literally everything. Internal conflict arises when some political hierarchy is disrupted or plan you've put in place can no longer be anticipated. It's not that your soul is wrenching to speak to a saintly conscience. People are convinced of their moral sanctity. People are giddily complicit in their rage and joy. For every ten things you could tell them they were a hypocrite about, they'll have a hundred that fit perfectly together. People treat their decision making like drawing different shapes. A circle doesn't make a hypocrite of a square and a big triangle doesn't contradict a small triangle.

“Hypocrite” feels like a word invented by an uppity liberal blind to their own fascist idealism or moral certitude. How dare you!? In going back on your word or in showing us your true self how can polite society, nay, the universe, suffer the indignity?

To exist is to be positioned at the center of infinite unknowable forces. When one of them acts on you, in spite or ambivalence of another, that's not hypocritical, it's the often unfavorable condition to being here at all. Your staunch environmentalist will often find themselves in a car. Those pleading with us to not render their relatives as lunatic Nazis know intimately the love they've expressed to or felt from those lunatic Nazis.

In order for me to entertain the idea of hypocrisy, I have to respect your agency. Before that, I have to respect my own. In my world, you're allowed to call out hypocrisy. I worry about being remotely internally consistent and the seemingly always-changing ways in which that might look. Do I make Capital T “Truth” statements it behooves me to behave in service to? Or do I have a thousand little t true-enoughs that help me cope with my rage and indifference? Is not every moment an opportunity to affirm or undermine yourself? Can you spend your whole life in service to something, recant with your last breath, and be remembered primarily as a hypocrite? Ask Ayn Rand, because god knows The Fountainhead was about social security checks.

I don't regard people as respecting their agency, so I do not retain the impulse to tout their hypocrisy. It's like thinking my dog likes her food and feeling aggrieved when she eats a piece of shit.

With my agency, I attempt to demonstrate. I look for words. I build. I make calculated risks. I lament the things I'm “putting up with” and when I feel “stuck” and celebrate the opportunity to be uneasy about looking for something new. It's not psychologically gratifying to keep yourself on your toes. It is not anyone's first instinct to look for feedback from the mob or to test their new idea or behavior in the wild. As such, if I had 950 blogs talking about shitty friendships I still maintained or the things I wanted to do and learn with none in progress, you could be confident I had zero capacity or authority to wax about hypocrisy.

I have an idea that I have good reason to respect every little battle in which I wish to hold the line on one or more ideals that have held me accountable to myself. I'm fighting. I'm working. I'm looking for a daily reminder of the type of person I am and still wish to be. I'm actually in here doing and saying things outside for you to use in deciding whether or not you're going to take the license and responsibility that comes with advanced language.

Yesterday, I had a brief high in reflecting on how much money I made scrapping. It felt possible to scrape by with this single venture if scaled up and organized. It felt like a solid-enough piece of the dozen little things I wish to make part of my entrepreneurial pool. Then I got gas. Then I got hungry. Then I got a little too annoyed about the rust on my torn gloves and dust in my truck. I, incorrectly, thought that had I just kissed enough ass or went with the negligent flow of something like my State job, I'd have so much more money and feel some kinda way.

Did I contradict myself? Was I a hypocrite? I was out there actively pursuing a tangible perspective in service to the complaints and fights I got into over DCS. It's all good and bad all of the time for differently weighted reasons. It's all right and wrong. How do your decisions make you lean? What's the example and standard you’re setting?

[668] Swan Song

If I had a plan, it might include the following things.

I'd use my next 2 days off to learn how to build a website that forms the basis of all the things I'm trying to do at once. The purpose of this website would be to organize and give me a landing page to promote what I seek or create in the real world. I'd find a better website than Udemy, which, the first course I paid for, managed to show itself not to be up to date and buggy. I'd attempt to utilize a domain name and hosting I keep alive, at an arguably completely unnecessary expense so far, and put out a “bad” beginner conception of what I'm after. I'd do all of this from my screen in the living room where undoubtedly the time I wish to use to focus and learn will be interrupted by slamming kitchen drawers, the same piano song practiced for hours, and the shouting of “ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, ball” for several more hours.

On this site I would list things I have for sale, things I need to get accomplished in order to make my house livable, a daily goal list, and integrate my hobbies. I've thought for a while about having something more personal and reflective of the integrated nature of the mind as something to market for people, with a lesson plan on how to alter it as they change and grow. Myspace was good about letting you change the code and integrate things to make it personal. I want you to feel like you can actually connect or help me without having to rely on you catching the right status at the right time of day. Though you’d as well ignore it as earnestly given you’re your own graves to dig.

That would be the first half of the plan. The next parts involve having money I don't.

My problem is a feeling of general helplessness. I don't care if that's overstated. It's still “the holidays,” which means even while I'm working, the numbers coming in are less than reassuring. Say I were bored and wanted to do more “little things” like sapling removal, the weather has made that impossible. I'm starting to again get headaches like I had when I was growing up. They're reminiscent of the “constant stress” that you take for granted is normal until you're old enough to read about and better define emotional abuse. I'm starting to get the impression that “existing” is becoming a problem again, though I know it's partly that I have few outlets for real discussion, and partly because the harsh annoying reality of my situation is bleeding into others' in too real a way.

I think I've expressed this to some extent in the past, but the issue is that I'm not confused about what I want and need. I know exactly how I'd spend my next $10,000 were it available to me. I know that, if I had nothing else, I was willing to take the floor and my tablet, and now coming home hoping for the couch and my TV are registering as an overstep. I feel like the dad who comes home from work, and his wife doesn't bother to cook dinner. Except here, the wife doesn't just not want to cook, but hogs the TV, runs the laundry in the middle of the night, and let's the dog shit in my boots. It's like the more you're ignored for your effort or that even the smallest amount of your needs aren't being met, it's not just getting more frustrated or angry, you just don't want to exist. I don't know what to do or say that won't end up in a fight. I don't even know how to experiment with making the situation better.

I knew all along how terrible “normal” working conditions and expectations were. All of the time I spent alone reading about the world was it's own kind of depressing for sure, but at least there, I could just look away. Things got better when I stopped shaping my mind with the horribleness of the world. Here, it's the more active physical participation in your own demise. I'm not building anything of value for myself by sitting in the ClusterTruck parking lot. I'm scraping together cash at the expense of literally my whole day if I rush to get chores or errands done in the morning and plan on less sleep. “Multi-tasking” in marathoning TV even feels cheap. If I didn't have the car beeping at me the entire time, I used to just find myself driving in silence, catching my reflection in my tablet looking disheveled and blank.

I paused the 3^rd installment of “Atlas Shrugged” the movie series to start writing this. To be sure it, like the other 2 movies, are pretty terrible. No matter your shorthand opinion of Rand, I still can't shake the impression her books left on me and think I empathize with the general sentiment expressed in her philosophy and lines from her characters. You need an individual mind behind things. You need people who are capable and willing to excel. You need to respect the degree in which the contributions literally power the world. Her characters were actual creatives and geniuses. They actually built things and understood their crafts. They weren't bestowed cash and donned smug smiles claiming to be the best after political worming and exploitation. Lesser-evil Paul Ryans exist in her world, while the heroes provided, and took pride in what they made.

I'm my mind first. My “labor” is as replaceable as anyone else with a car and the ability to refrain from screaming “fuck you” at annoying customers. If I can't get my mind right, I have nothing. If I can't be “happy” or “understood” in what I'm doing, how it feels, or how long it has to take, it's game over. I consider it a problem that I can't persuade myself to fit in more “good” behaviors to try and combat the “bad” of constant exploitation. It really would only cause more stress to try and be “fit” in the middle of the night after work. I might punch a trumpet through a window if I felt like I was making progress only to be interrupted by a stupid conversation from someone knocking at it. Is this me being “negative,” or another attempt to find peace and clarity? Go on, insist.

If I were less ambitious and found myself unable to part with more money for what is certainly information just as poorly related for free as it is “structured” in some online class, I'd finish the last half of this 3^rd volume of The Runaways comics, and maybe power through more Civil War. I'd compile and condense the information I've saved on reddit for years into action-plans going forward. You know, there are dozens, DOZENS, of solo-entrepreneurs with great niche ideas that just followed these 3, 5, or 12 steps to go from 0 to 100K within a year with barely the money or know-how before they started. Maybe I can discover how to be as smart as them. I might pop over to the land and see if the tarp I laid out has blown over or if I can find what happened to my Bioshock and Borderlands games. If there's not a noble reason like those, it'd just be a waste of gas.

If I discovered I actually hate myself more than I'm letting on, I'd just marathon shows with subtitles and recent movie releases. Then at some point I'd hit Wal-Mart to pick up the handful of ingredients to make 3 types of meals I'd prepare for the next week or two. I'd consider heavily on drinking about a 1/5^th alone and seeing if that motivates me to wander the bars in search of more poor decisions. None of this could begin until I had fully realized the first goal of pretending to be asleep well into the afternoon.

Time is moving too slow. I'll be lucky to feel barely comfortable by 30 at this rate. I'd have to find a way to shake off the psychological and physical damage of too much work. I'd be praying the entire time that I only have to pay for the bills that already exist or I can see coming. Every single day is going to be the same conversation about what “more” I could be doing and how my head is hurting or what I'd rather be doing. I was prepared for nothingness and monotony when the weather was good and I thought I was making progress on the house. Now I'm just digging myself out of tax holes, freezing and waiting, and begging for a mental “reason” my efforts were turned into thievery and destroyed supplies. I'm making stupid mistakes and oversights because I can't be bothered to add another layer of bullshit.

The only reason I'm even awake at 6 is because it's actual alone time! I used to like to stay up all night, it felt natural, before I realized how quickly that wasn't going to be compatible with working all day. Now I'm just risking throwing off my rhythm for the sake of some quite time. The noise is 3 paragraphs of me bitching earlier. Hours later I can bother to start thinking again. My whole life feels way too noisy right now.

I'm going to finish this movie and then go to bed. Spoiler alert, the heroes will return, and the motor of the world will start back up. Her characters got to run to a secret escape in the mountains. They got to live in service to their, in the movie, very poorly worded and fundamentally naive ideals. I've been reading along with it about how Rand alienated so many people who didn't understand or jive with her philosophy. I wonder if “my philosophy” is doing the same thing to me, except, I don't have one that isn't a kind of value for critical thought and truth that sees me catching shitty consequences or silence. You tell me, should I not be talking to you? Should I accept or better appreciate the level I currently inhabit? I'm only kidding, I know I have no one to talk to. I know you think all sorts of deep and private things that I'm not allowed to speak to. I know my whiny contempt is the heart of all my problems and none of the “objective reality” raining fire.

Let's see what tomorrow takes.

[398] Merciful Masters

I suppose I'm cheating a bit in that it's really easy to start thinking about a lot of things once you've been engaged by a conspiracy “it's all about mind control, maaaan” documentary. Nonetheless, I feel an itch and I think it'll tie to other things I hope to unravel.

First, it seems very obvious if not preferred that someone's in control. Whether it's in a war and you're finding the pride to charge the battle field and take the first bullets so your brothers behind you can live on, or if you're looking for something to aspire to from mass marketing of the ideal living and family situation. We're a top down society in that sense. Something seems better than nothing. Being controlled or even enjoying in giving up control don't seem that bad in and of itself. Think about how elated religious people must feel...

Think of the idea of “herding cats” which is often a description about a group of atheists. You don't have to spend years of your life debunking myths and arguing with people online, finally overwhelmed with your knowledge and unable to escape it's conclusions. You can just be a random asshole who says “I don't believe in god.” Depending on where either of those two examples grew up, they could still find solace at an atheist convention, as if, because of sheer disbelief, that's how they'll form a friendship.

But they're still their own kind of cat. They still need a Dawkins or a feeling of fear or oppression that guides them to a place of common footing. They want their minds to be controlled as well, but by thoughts that can be characterized as "objective." These are people that wouldn't mind being told to go to school or get a job, but they're not going to trust the promises of a world unseen and without evidence.

In documentaries, especially like this one, I can't help but marvel at how sure of themselves each interviewee is. It doesn't matter if they're talking about a particular period in history, some influential character, or just from the pulpit of whatever board they sat on or place of insider knowledge. They give a presentation as if they're the authority. This isn't to say they know nothing or that their information isn't valuable or, genuinely, a form of expertise.

But it goes wrong. Take a random doctor from Harvard and let him say something about neuroscience. Now juxtapose that with Alex Jones explaining how the Bilderberg Group has been engineering schools to control your mind. You may want to forgo the grain and just swallow the salt shaker. But if you're informed enough about how schools have been funded, neuroscience, Alex Jones in general, and the people in charge of creating these groups and foundations who have a say in what gets taught, you can still begin to say something flirting with reasonable.

You're still stuck with fairly general ideas though. Should people who have an economic stake in how much you know be in charge of what you're taught? Probably not. Should leaders, who, as it basically comes with the territory are self-absorbed, egotistical, and often prone to sociopathy and psychopathy, be trusted to keep “everyone's” best interests at heart? Surely it happens, I doubt it's the norm. Do I want Alex Jones' perspective on ancient Greece or Plato? He's not my first choice.

The big secret that no one seems to want to say is that nobody trusts nearly anything they do. The ones who do are bred to. The rich kids or the spoiled kids who think and talk like Ayn Rand yet leech and never touch the kind of accomplishments her characters were shooting for. (The irony of Republicans touting her book and example is...staggering.) Though they have basically stopped the motor of government so here's a great example of leaders and the consequences of their interpretations.

Anyway, these mind control cautioners never seem to theorize about a world in which everyone's a raving lunatic with a megaphone explaining how you're not being controlled by the right parts of the machine. They rarely argue on behalf of awareness or changing some policy that sells people short. They just sort of lament this mongoloid hive mind that crashes into every layer of society. Mark their words, if we don't save ourselves, well, man, we're just never gonna save ourselves and that will be bad, bad news.

Drop out. If you're willing to ride your notoriety or your degree and claim a kind of authority on a topic, you have to bow and respect what your merciful masters set you up to have. If not, drop out. If you rely on ad revenue or a handful of rich fanatics to keep your voice afloat, you damn well expect their minds to be controlled by your outrage. Your institution gives you tenure and a platform, but for all your words of wisdom, you're being stamped out? You need Alex Jones to help you mold young minds or report on abuses of money and influence? If not, then who's being controlled where and what can we do to save them? It's the media? Okay, well, we'll leave that can of worms for another day.

I drop out to the best of my ability. I still get pulled over when my registration's expired. My master that day let me off with a warning. He was doing a pretty terrible job of reinforcing the idea of a police state I'd say. I don't even think he pulled his gun on me! But to listen to the news or to watch things like this, you'd think that it's even possible to exert such an exacting level of control and influence from the top. That for all the social upheavals and wars and even weather, it just takes billions of dollars to finally work out the science of controlling this world system.

I'd rather plead ignorance before fear. Fear shows a kind of precise naivety and heightened self-assuredness that seems to get us nowhere in conversation. Just onto the next blip from the next conspirator to fuel our anxieties.

And it's stupid to watch these things and say something like “Well, what they say does raise a lot of good points! Just ruminate on the overall idea but forget everything they're saying in service to it.” Um, okay, so we should probably drop acid or get really high and produce our own version that keeps the heart but drops the lies? Ya man, I don't like mind control and money is evil. Righteous. This sounds like a caricature, but I honestly don't know what else it would reduce to.

I could use a little more mind control. I actively try to avoid having a job. I've watched too many movies and read too many books to be too smitten by even the coolest or most novel ideas. I'd surrender to the machine if I saw any evidence that I could trust it. It can get pretty demoralizing to be a stray cat.

[101] Howard Roark And Jesus

Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 9:03am

“Look, Gail.” Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. “Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That’s the meaning of life.”
“Your strength?”
“Your work.” He tossed the branch aside. “The material the earth offers you and what you make of it…

There are a number of paragraphs throughout this book that resonate really deeply with me. I had a rush of thoughts after reading this and am going to try and work them out.

It’s been a common theme in my recent discussions with people, the meaning of life. The conversations are destined to glance from love to God to some other cliché and misunderstood concept. You won’t find it surprising that when I talk with the religiously inclined I get some version or another about how life is about worship, surrender, and faith. I think that what these people are holding up in such high exuberance is so artfully masked its led to every reason we can surmise to hate existence. Why is God praised? He created the cosmos, He lives forever, He is eternal peace and love, He is every answer, He is the means to His end. He is the effortless worker. People are not deterred by the atrocious acts He commits in the bible, because it isn’t about said atrocity, simply that He Is doing it. When’s the last time you can say you have been completely the person you are during some endeavor? When has life felt effortless and fluid? The unwanted and unnecessary stress of beleaguered minds wondering what the future holds, how their engagement was read, and why they acted in a way they can’t define. I feel that this lack of definition only stresses those with the wrong focus. This maddeningly obvious condition that makes you feel guilty and condemned after being put into words.

Let’s take a look at the Jesus story. His life was about his works and miracles. No one would ever dream of feeling like an equal separated from the flock. His most famous “act” was to die on the cross and forgive you of every sin. The most brilliant and selfless move of the miracle working teacher was to forgo what he was doing and allow himself to be martyred. Here’s where it gets interesting. Howard Roark is the character in The Fountainhead who is the quintessential martyr, in a sense, for the almighty I. He gets battered, mocked, and screwed over by almost everyone. All of it leaving him indifferent to them all. He doesn’t forsake his way for the sake of appeasing others. He doesn’t compromise and doesn’t care to hold any power over them. Every structure that is put up by him is magnificent for one reason, the fact that he designed it. What does the Jesus story tell us in light of this? It tells us to give up. It says to sway to will of fate and God. Our purpose is not in what we stand for, it is in that we stand for God, accept his gift, make of ourselves an offering. Only through subservience will we be allowed live forever and bask in the Light. Riddle me this. The God who seems to dwell within the character Roark, an atheist none the less, that sees the magnificence that can be achieved in creations emanating the human spirit decided the only way to instill and redeem humanity was to sacrifice it?

Those who crafted what Jesus would be were ingenious. Jesus gave up. Jesus was allowed to doubt the insatiable Will. He was granted the privilege of not just being the martyr for our sins, but also for the thing we feared the most; the will to conceive of something so perfect it would cast upon us the fear and loathing that comes with comparing it to reality. Jesus denies us reality, and therefore denies us any chance to understand the kind of will depicted in Roark’s character. Every job you could be doing, every testament you could be making, every mark on someone’s life that signifies that You, this person here and now was here, proud, and acting in the only way possible is erased. While Jesus was giving handouts, someone was working that much harder to say look what I can do on my own. Look what I can stand for. How can you mourn the death of a God? When you mourn the death of your soul and your will. When you watch the epitome of hopes and dreams suffocate and bleed out, you’re the one that can’t breathe or move. The whole reason his drawn out suffering death is endlessly praised is because people have become so disillusioned about who they are that all that’s left is to idolize suffering and death. They want to map their pathetic lives onto his works and call it saved. They want to transfer their pain as if it isn’t theirs to have, as if they didn’t earn it and can’t handle it. The most masterful maneuver in all of this, is that you are promised the type of fulfillment and joy that a character in a book about selfish magnificence would make you jealous of. Do you not see how hopelessly backwards the Jesus story is? He is the ultimate contradiction of any kind of God what would work to put him here. Our works, our story, and our will do not have to die in order to be recognized for how important they are. Deny this, and live in the hell you’ve created.

It is through the work that people do to exemplify this spirit that they live forever. There is no place for sympathy or excuses. You are not measured by how sorry you can feel about what you’ve done.

[100] Killer Times Dawg...Killer

Monday, June 23, 2008 at 9:10am

I have this feeling going on, and I think its stemming from a couple different things, so I’m just going to write until I’m not writing anymore.

I’m reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and all I can say is it is the most amazing book I’ve ever read. I can’t fully put into words what goes on in my head as I read though this book, just this overwhelming sense of awe that someone can portray so beautifully ideas I thought were either dead and ill construed, or lost amidst the infuriating simpleton facade fueling baneful existence. Obviously I’m ordering anybody who reads this to read the book as well. Non-negotiable.

George Carlin just died. This I find crappy because I rather enjoyed his standup and basically agreed with everything he’s ever said. He was a role model for speaking out about the ludicrousness exhibited in religion, and a purveyor of simple and direct talk. I still am in the middle of When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops. It’s funny because I spend a lot of time thinking about death. I already know I won’t cry when my family starts to go. I get this worried feeling not about death, but about what people are missing out on before they die. I don’t mean sight-seeing or grand accomplishments. I mean a sort of mindset. Well, not even a sort, just The mindset. I hate to sound redundant bringing up the theme of excuses, but it feels appropriate. When someone denies themselves the opportunity to think or do something because of some formality or taboo, they’ve denied what defines the human spirit. Be it the confluence of billions of years of evolution or the imposition of some divine thing, recognizing and affirming the “I” has been the non-stop force spearheading every advancement. I’ve been saying for a while that I think people should be more selfish, if only to be more honest. That’s one of the things I love so much about The Fountainhead. Simply put ideas than I can ramble about are unraveled and expressed masterfully.

I just watched a little clip from Fox News, if you can call it that, about some new faith healer. Why? Why are we beleaguered with such drivel. I swear I’m waiting for the hour long special about the pink giraffe some news anchors daughter put on the fridge all by herself. They had some other woman on there saying in so many words that she didn’t want to offend the preacher, but there are so many people who’ve been shown to be frauds in the past that she was still going to remain skeptical until the medical records became forthcoming. This is a bigger problem for me than the wasted time airing the preacher. Why do you feel the need to say that you don’t mean to offend someone you know, I know, and everyone with common sense of faith knows, is full of shit? Why take two minutes amidst your bullshit formality and cordialness to say that you’re a Christian and you have faith, but you’re not that crazy. When you say you believe in the power of faith, you just mean to the extent that it makes coincidence feel like they were meant to be. The power of god is so strong that you bumped into that cute guy at the coffee shop, but healing a broken arm is just way out of His league. I think if the news was dedicated to reporting every new or hardworking organization dedicated to advancing human knowledge and welfare, it would inspire and enlighten people to do the same. How about some news about CERN or specific debates and discussions about upcoming presidential policies. All you hear are fabricated conversations and puddle skipping stories about lost dogs or how to lose weight.

I’m sick of being bored all the time. I can’t find the right kind of people who can appreciate what it is to have fun. Simply being around people you refer to as friends, is not fun. Hanging out at White Castle creating an extremely random and hysterical scenario involving Black Castle, GRAW 2, and gold window frames….well you had to be there. It’s when you can make times that your laughing so hard that you can’t breathe you know you’re having fun. This is perhaps why I’ve never been drawn towards the whole alcohol and drug scene. I literally have so much more fun in remaining coherent while I stumble upon a laughable character or exciting situation. Though the new and exciting experiences are not forthcoming at the moment, I remain a firm believer that there is always something worthwhile you can be doing that doesn’t involve slow suicide. I think it’s bread into society that simply being involved in social activities, no matter what they are, sends out how friend worthy you really are. Everyone look at me I’m fitting in. That’s another thing I love so much about this book. It shows that person to the extreme and parallels it with struggle of genuine will. Bah, I’m sure there’s more to say, but this started off random and is ending prematurely anyway.