[808] The Grey

It's pushing 2 in the morning. I should probably sleep, I've got work tomorrow, and I've got plenty to try and make-up for rest wise with the mild drinking and disrupting of my sleep pattern from the day before. But, I'm making the decision to write. No one's forcing me. I'm not acting in defiance of sleep. In many ways, I'd rather enjoy sleeping more. This is important to me and something I designate as a function of my being and mental fortitude. This is evidence I'd like to remain oriented and must share. This isn't something I apologize for, nor will me being a touch extra tired tomorrow be a surprise.

As a “mature” adult, I make decisions like this every day. Eat shitty expensive food, or don't. Drink what will become unbearable stomach acid and likely puke session, or don't. Speed, or leave a little earlier. Spend a few more minutes picking better suited pants, or continue to sweat in the expediently bought corduroy because they fit and they're here already. You can probably safely assume that, in one form or another, I'm going to make it to work, or haven't run out of personal days, or anticipate the coronary episode in my future if I don't eat better and up my cardio.

How do we designate maturity? Let me first explain how I see it manifest. Maturity is distance. You are mature when you put away “childish” things, and behaviors, and start to gain a kind of resolve to wherever it is you are in life. “Life's not fair” doesn't maintain throwaway slogan status as your parents may have used it on you while you were throwing a fit, but becomes a badge and tool in your “I get it now!” toolbox. You position yourself away from your friends who don't conform to the comfortable spot you've cut out for yourself. You position yourself away from your parents and all the dreadful mistakes they made in raising you. You put the hobbies or interests that would otherwise haunt you at a safe distance away from your responsibilities.

Maturity also seems to manifest as silence. Children whine. Mature adults stare with dead indifference or pity and condescension. You maintain silence for atrocity because it's all been done before, and will happen again. You're silent about any growing list of obligations because it's seriously long enough already. You're silent about when you make mistakes, because it's a lot more professional and common courtesy to blithely drape a sheet of faux civility over the not-quite conversations about nondescript, yet somehow galling, indiscretions. When asked to take responsibility, for anything, you never lead with, “good point” or “while that may be true,” instead opting to redirect and probe for the mistake happening over there.

I have my maturity called into question pretty regularly. You can't be a teenager who works their way up to management, graduate college, organize hundreds of people, keep all of your bills paid, build a house in the middle of nowhere, be trusted to protect other people's children, start and run a break-even business, remain open to connection after betrayal and heartache, or choose to pursue and hold precious a level of pragmatic idealism long dead in everyone you meet, and be considered to have a handle on how this whole life thing works, let alone yourself.

No, to be mature, you have to feel as smugly complacent in the resolved decision making of the broken horses around you. You have to “get it,” that the only thing left to achieve is the ingratiating of yourself to as many power brokers or gift givers around you as possible. If you can keep making friends, maybe you'll get invited to the lake and parties. If you can let go of how the past has impacted you, you can reemerge like a phoenix ready to tackle not just your past trauma, but the idea that anyone could ever wrong you again with this impermeable identity rooted in the stern gazes and relaxed shoulders of those ready to die.

I think the fluidity with which people change is like sleight of hand, but they don't acknowledge how much practice they've put in to trick you. Where once they may be encouraging and full of energy, you missed the years of times they whispered to themselves how something was no longer worth pursuing or how tired they are after work. When you found yourself taking for granted you could trust them wanting what's best for you, they were in the back, with a calculator, trying to make the math work for the relationship turned academic exercise. One of the surefire ways I know things have dramatically changed and/or need to die? What I do regularly or wear on my sleeve is thrown in my face as something I'm completely unaware of or don't practice. Hey Nick, I know you maybe write every week or two in insane depth as to where you are, and I definitely caught the last 15 statuses where you talk about feeling anxious or dead inside or just generally put-upon by a million-mile an hour brain and difficult circumstance or relationship, but have you ever considered trying to get to the heart of your trauma? What's that? 807 blogs? I mean, that's a nice warm-up, but when are you going grow up and do the real work? You wouldn't have to write so much if you just gave up.

Coupled closely with this is the idea that you would ever have to feel bad in “defending” me. If I'm not worth defending, don't. If you've been in a position where you were defending me, thank you. If you weaponize your support for me, it's no longer support. It doesn't exhaust me to be friends with you and I've literally lost “friends” for reasonably sticking by people who deserved it. If you agree with the naysayers, pick them, and then either discuss whether or not there's something that needs to change with me and why, or drop the act. If it's not a shared “of course” we're going to look out for each other, what are we doing?

I'm not interested in what counts as “maturity” in the vast majority of what I observe. I don't need self-satisfaction like so many empty accolades and titles with nothing tangible left to do on my plate. I don't pretend like I haven't ridden the wave of my bitching to ever-increasing levels of comfort and long-term stability. Every drunk and bitchy blog will exist alongside the ones where I talk about fabulous weekends with people I care about, the amount of years I've paid my bills in advance, and as I'm surrounded by more and more of the things I want to learn, sell, and create. My concept of maturity takes many many words, elbow grease over rubbing, and a kind of forthcoming dare to press your luck in service to overcoming what you're unsure or scared about. It's a kind of consistency in nature and expectation that doesn't change not because it's dead, but because it's so useful and meaningful and “loving,” it wouldn't know how to be anything else while remaining honest.

Maturity, so named and understood, is also about forgetting. I don't mean real forgetting, I mean forgetting how to recognize where someone like me is coming from in how I write and what about. Forget the anger and pain. Forget the obligation. Forget the dream. Never forget how you've been wronged, because you'll always need ammunition to try and remind me of what I'll never be forgiven. Everyone play the forget game so we can pussyfoot around the egregious nature of existence and consequences. People hate that I genuinely forget them. They hate that I exist, for as rounded by, independent of, their existence. This happens when people want to make a name for themselves in criticizing me, not accounting for and affirming themselves. Or, suspiciously, they find great resolve and purpose in conquering me! You know, how the hero of the story always shushes and runs from the dragon.

No, I'm not mature. I'm 30, almost 31. I'm the collection of demons in my head and physical shared realities manifested from the anxiety and spite I have for everything around me. I'm consistent in a way you refuse to be, and I'm accountable to a higher order than your mismanaged words and petty expectations. Remember, I'm always made to accept and move on very regardless of my wishes, work, or opinion. I don't rehash the past for the romance, but to extract the lesson plan. I don't reminisce to revel in the naivety. I don't remember your weaknesses so I can forge the weapons to reduce you to dust, but because I continue to draw motivation and inspiration in who you were or what I believed about what we could do in spite of them.

I'll find substitutes. Do you hate that about me, or you?

[694] Don't Know How To Hate That

Lately, I've been feeling a little lighter. I can usually only tell such things based on how many times I refrain from cursing students not showing up on time or from leaving my car horn alone. Still, I find I clench my jaw a fair to excessive amount regardless, so nothing's perfect. What's weird, I suppose, is that I'm looking forward to being broke. Like, just broke. In $80 I won't even have credit card debt. I won't be bleeding. I won't have something quite yet in works, but I'll be broke, and that will be basically okay. The last chain I adopted is $95 a month on an installment plan to keep tax assholes out of mine. I could beg for more money. I could pay that in plasma.

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be an “entrepreneur.” It's kind of a stupid word to me. How I've conducted my life has had exactly nothing to do with a job title or some sort of “free” or “independent” spirit and connotation. I just want what I do to manifest in as great a measure as I can make it. When I was hauling ass at my first jobs, I expected raises and promotions and free shit. People were happy to give them to me. When I was doing my homework before the first bell rang and amassing a small fortune, my first spark as to what I was truly made out of flickered on.

Recently, I've heard accounts of people who knew they were going to be on a famous stage or knew they wanted to become some arbiter of justice or peace after they encountered a hero when they were younger. It's a familiar conviction. What is it about some kids that just know something about who they are or want to be? Why do some stories look like this massive build up of compounding forces until the inevitable finally clicks?

I've also been reading about how randomness effects whether or not people as “talented” or “smart” or “motivated” and “gritty” manage to get anywhere in life. The role that luck has to play is not inconsequential. Born with more money and better contacts? Get a “small million dollar loan?” For me, I had to wake up to the reality of my situation pretty quickly. I have support, but not fail spectacularly and bankrupt everyone around me kind of leeway. As time goes on and people grow comfortable or more precarious, there is no few grand hiding just around the corner to fix a big issue.

So then I think about my lifestyle. I take care of my shit. I live within my means. I guilt trip myself over indulges. I had an older acquaintance tell me that I should take more time to stop and smell the roses. I explained to him that I've already lead a perfectly self-indulgent life, and I could bother to be steeped in meaningful work more often. My concept of what that looks like has changed considerably over the years.

The biggest bit though is how I look with all of my built up potential hanging out in my field. Everything I do I try to treat as a down payment or investment. Money spends easy. Building something that generates it and enthusiasm is considerably harder than anyone bothers to cope with. It's why I hate forums and attempting to reach out. You learn extremely quickly that, well, at this point, literally no one will even take a hand out of the chance to buy into property. I try to wrap my head around what I'd be filled with if I stumbled across a post where someone said, “Here's my field, what can we build in it? You get your half, I get mine.”

When this kind of shit happens, where I'm made to feel, not just “different,” but like out and out wrong or perfectly backwards and annoying for going about things the way I do, I start to mythologize myself. Like, surely, I can't be the only one! I have so many examples of people doing what I want to do well. I didn't conjure this shit from the ether. And what part of any money-making endeavor, particularly if you didn't come from money, is supposed to be easy? No one talks about the last minute trips hauling supplies in the middle of the freezing night on your ill-suited car so you can help get something complete on a time crunch. And maybe while you're doing it, you come back covered in ticks, and you dropped a board on your foot, or shit car decided to die on the ride back. That's what “entrepreneurship” means to me. You do what needs to be done, now. You take it in stride. You ask for as much failure as quick as possible for as little money as you can make it cost you, learn, change, and try again. I'm not “gambling,” I'm barely “speculating,” and I'm not taking any more or less risk than I would with my life as it's managed to look so far.

The “failure” of the things I do comes to mind at this point. You know what a “failed” coffee van venture is? A great work van with a generator and equipment to work with whenever the time comes. The “failed” coffee shop was proof of concept for even shitty business, and a shit ton of supplies that don't just disappear. You know what happens when you buy land and build on it? The value increases dramatically. You know how you live comfortably when you're old so you don't end up working until you're 70 after your pension got wiped out and now you're waxing your poorly conceived business ideas to the enthusiastic “kid" at the bar? You start now. You invest now. You try and fail and work right fucking now. You accept that you're already dead, and your only shot at heaven is this life. If you can do better, do better. Be better. Fix the obvious, then fix the subtle, then double down on the exact right thing you should be doing to get the best out of yourself every chance you get. To the best of your ability and understanding is what you owe yourself. Anything less is death.

What else in life offers that kind of perpetual effort for self improvement? I saw a post on facebook about a famous pianist getting asked why they still practiced at 90. They said, “I think I'm getting better” or something similar. Do people feel that in their day to day lives? Are you practicing and improving and learning something new with your job? It's great if you are, I just have never managed to figure out how to feel the same way about anything I've ever been employed to do. There's usually “the way we do things” which, try as you might, there's usually pretty severe consequences for pushing against too hard.

As I'm rounding 2^nd base on my way to 30, I'm wondering, what's the alternative? If I wasn't navigating the things I am now in service to my desire to own and create with relative freedom and abandon, how else could I have gone about it? No “real job” has provided me the kind of mental security or self-respect to think something as drastic as, “I can totally do this, just for these (x) amount of years, and then my real life begins!” Like, at least I'm killing 2 or 3 birds with one stone in marathoning TV, books and podcasts, and drumming when I do ClusterTruck. It's basically just the thing that interrupts my otherwise attempting to be occupied attention.

A weird hard part about going about things the way I do is the endless waves of bullshit enthusiasm. I don't mean from people who've been following along or friends I know who are up to their own important things. I mean if I post some Maron-esc rant describing the kind of partner or help I need, and then 2 idiots chime in with how cool and motivating I am. Am I? Motivating? You read my story, my begging appeal from my knees, and your take away was 5 empty lines about your new motivation? Don't talk to me about your dreams, work on them. Incorporate them into what I'm doing. Stop wasting our time.

Here too I think about if differences in people just become more pronounced over time, or if they were already huge and there to begin with, but each either succumbs to their particular life forces or not. I could be 5 roommates deep, gaming all day, working IT for IU, have a car payment, and resolved myself to the excessively-average girl in the office after I watch the carnage between the rest of the pack failing with her. That's something I could've done. I could have screamed “fuck it” and went buck wild with my land cash and traveled or gambled or bought something showy under the deep understanding that “you only live once.” I could have catfished lonely OKCupid girls with dyed hair and nose rings into thinking I was deep and super nice and then moved us towards some kind of family unit. Try to be “normal” and “resolved.” It's in trying to imagine myself doing anything else that I start to question “free will.” I literally don't know how else I can be for it to seem even remotely “correct.” When I actually get back to practicing music every day, lose 30 pounds, and find where I left my half-inch of hairline, I'll be like 90% of my best self. It's presumed philanthropy and political engagement that might round out the last 10%. My honest desire and pursuit does most of the work for me already.

My ongoing freak-out concern about time notwithstanding, I have 1 month out of the year I need to work to live as well or better than I have lived since getting out of college. There's no gun to my head that says I need to spend $1800 RIGHT NOW to fix the moving truck. More than half of my yearly bills aren't even due until the fall, or don't necessarily need to be hooked up in the first place. It's just by definition lighter. I've erased variables that work to clench my jaw. I've consolidated the big mess of expenses into a story about number of days and hours, and how I'm going to corrupt those days to fit my agenda even if I'm forced to work in service to someone else's. I don't know how to hate that.

Here seems an important point. How often do I talk about things I hate? My driving force is about moving to a place where I'm as befuddled as I could possibly be in trying to regard my circumstances as anything more than impossible to hate. That's the voice in the back of my head. That's what sees me through drama and broken relationships. People won't talk or help? You can't find a reason to hate ones that will. Want to complain about your job or future prospects? Better get to creating in all this empty space you gave yourself. Better use your former rent money to promote and build. Tired of being surrounded by idiots? I suppose a desert would be more remote, but no one's going to bother you there. I can still find plenty to hate about my circumstances for sure, but it is possible for it to fall away. I can subject myself to a different environment that hopefully breeds the best kind of me. And since no one cares to build it for me, and I can't change for the better without doing so, nothing really matters that doesn't speak to that. Smell the roses? Help me learn how to grow them, and I'll smell the hell out of our effort.

[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?

[241] Engineer Sincerity, Depravity

Honesty is a funny thing. It changes the nature of what you’re trying to be honest about. It’s going to change this blog as I figure out what the hell is on my mind.

I write for me, for clarity, and to maybe in small, ever so small ways, influence someone who reads me. I talk about religion, personal squabbles, from time to time political crap. I used to just endlessly complain about things until I no longer had a headache. Granted, that may still happen, but it’s not the norm anymore. I have a problem where I never feel like enough has been said. I take things that people want to remember as “a fight” or “a platitude” and go on for days about the implications. My attempts, I suppose, to relate to this simple method of understanding is the random rhyme times or poetry. I’ll sort that under ironic.

I hate and love patterns. I love their utility. I hate when I see someone stuck in them. I hate to think of myself as simply being part of a huge one. Perhaps to some it’s some token of relief, “oh hey, it’s all planned out for me I can sit back and ride it out.” I have this searing desire to blame people for their actions and find pride in objectively accounting for how and why I behave. I’d like for there to be an inherent respect for using this chance to think about things to actually matter even a marginal degree more than those who say “fuck it” and scurry about haphazardly.

Logic is cold. When things behave in calculable ways, they just do. It doesn’t matter how you feel about math, things are going to play out according to the numbers, at least for this universe.

I don’t believe in free will while acting like I do.

As a result, I judge, while having very little faith in my judgments past a meager point. It keeps me perpetually confused, yet not necessarily frustrated. The problem is I want free will. I understand the implications of believing in free will. It would tie up a lot of loose ends about the battles I’ve engaged in or the decisions I’ve made. I just can’t convince myself it is real. If anything, I do things to perpetuate an illusion.

The illusion of free will is itself an illusion.

I thusly restrain myself to capacity. Let me explain. Because I can feel pain, I work on creating an illusion that keeps it minimal. Because I hate certain patterns, I mold my illusion to surprise me. I engage in this for the deliberate randomness. In this sense, I engineer keeping myself happy and sane. If there is a ridiculously high limit to what I can create or control, I try to find it. I keep going until I get bored or find “good reason” to stop.

A significant issue with this is when I involve other people.

I’m a loner primarily for the utility of trying to refrain from being deliberately evil. This is fundamentally why I seek out people who don’t just like me or get along well enough, but genuinely understand how and why and where I’m coming from. I can’t hurt people who know what I’m doing. And no, it’s not enough to act like you know, or assure me that you know, like recognizes like. When a psych experimenter goes into the doctor’s office pretending to have schizophrenic episodes, there’s a reason he fools the doctor but not the real schizophrenic sitting in the hall.

I admit I’m a social primate. I like hanging out and drinking, talking, fucking, gaming, Frisbee, and the occasional pissing contest. The conflict is whether these are the goals or the distractions. I think they’re both. Then you go a level higher, justifying the means, or lack thereof, for the ends. How much money do you think I need to make to drink, talk, fuck, play games, and continue on my quest to watch all the media on my hard drives? I’ll tip my hat to my relative ingenuity and perspective to say, not that much. But I hate hippies. I know that I would feel lazy and that I’ve wasted my potential. I mean, even having the idea of potential is part of my acting like I have free will. As long as my ideas about potential stay…stable…there’s still hope right?

You’ll learn it’s not your job to save the world. Excerpt from here. (now broken)

But it’s my world. And my world is worth saving. Once I learn this nugget, I’ve grown complacent, resolved to my fate. My world involves all sorts of people from those marginally helpful to the ones who are utterly destructive. I have very explicit goals and ideas about how these peoples’ behaviors influence my world. As a result, I need to change them or myself accordingly.

I know I can change people, but act like I can’t.

I want to be an arbiter of fate, not dictator. That would just fall victim to the pattern problem. It’s hard to look at social psychology, history, or mirror neurons and make the case against the potential for influencing people. We think because we can scream “you don’t know me!” and it actually convinces people, that we’re somehow insulated from everything before and around us.

This is me veering off topic. Any master plan I had to take over the world would have to make a priority out of nuance. There’s no way to account for every interpretation, but theoretically you could build in mechanisms to address the fallout. At the very least, try to protect yourself. This is me veering back

I like people, for a while. Thus I hate them, for they are the source of all my “misery.” My capacity for hatred should not be understated. Now, on the surface, even I want to call this projecting. This isn’t a bad thing. If I have very specific things that I hate, of course it’s because I recognize my own capacity for them as well. But, more of course, it’s because of the destructive nature of certain position. It’s not your pride or laziness or fear in and of themselves that I hate. It’s when you don’t yet, or moreover care, to learn when and why they’re bad things.

Maybe because I don’t see my potential for ever “getting over” being deliberately evil, I get frustrated when I see other people refusing to change. This compounded with my lack of belief in free will, creates a perfect storm of timidly pointing the finger, essentially back at myself, relying on a naïve hope about potential that can break the cycle. Yet, I never feel like a slave. I don’t go out of my way to cause harm; I just know I’m prepared to. I reach a point of “overtly compelling feelings” and simply make a decision. Or, at least, feel like the decision is mine.

So then the idea is to convince people they have a decision, even if it “should” only be in the service of goals on one end of a spectrum. Self-interest only works when people feel like they’re going to die and don’t actually want to. Social welfare only works when you even understand how much you’re getting from “the system.” Get your government hands off my Medicaid. I think this is why I opt for a “tough love” position; essentially forcing people to act in their best interests, the ensuing drama of not doing so not being worth it.

I’m left with just working with whatever is on my mind. I’m not trying to lie, but I feel I’m going to inevitably make myself look like a liar. I can state a goal or something about my character and still hold tight to the idea that the only truth is change; the rate and nature of which to be determined. Fate is more than just convincing yourself of an idea; it’s the moment to moment commitment to that idea. Maybe you’re only free when you realize your commitment to each moment.

[214.3] War On Happiness

In Waking Life, one of the speakers asks the question, “What’s the most pervasive human characteristic, fear, or laziness?” While I think they work together, I’m finally convinced the answer is fear.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been trying to make myself comfortable with the idea that people don’t change. When I think about the failed “friendships,” the lies, the hypocrisy, and oh the dramatic irony, I’m singed by the notion that I am literally in the midst of the reasons we will fail as a species. I am utterly convinced we will not survive, our efforts to gain more knowledge will be abused, exploited, and squandered, and the vast majority of people will never learn how or why they can be happy. I am convinced that for every one person that asserts who they are, there are a million who don’t know they are even allowed to ask such a question. I truly do believe my efforts to merely talk to people about, one of the few topics that really matters to me, religion, will serve to make people angry or uncomfortable, and if anything provide more fearful feelings that create a stronger resolve to ignore and deny what I say. I think we are stuck because of fear. I think we are doomed because of fear.

I’m not afraid of not finding a wife or perfect girlfriend. I’m not afraid of my grades being “too low” or if I’ll manage to find some job that pays off the amount of debt I’m not afraid to be in. I’m not afraid to die, I’m not afraid of fights and drama. I’m not afraid to fail. I’m moderately afraid of the dark, only because you’re vulnerable to unexpected attack, so it’s more of an air of caution. And, on the off chance ghosts existed, those would scare the shit out of me, because really, how the fuck can you fight a ghost and what does it say about all the weird “magical” shit that can happen if you have a fucked up death.

I think it is perhaps a significant reason that some people don’t like me because I behave like I’m not afraid. I don’t believe in a god because I don’t need to. I don’t care if your feelings are hurt over something petty, because it would only hurt me to play pretend in our fickle relationship. I’ve been accused of being an instigator, which I don’t think is fair, but let’s examine why it may be true in some instances. If someone does nothing but provoke, unjustly accuse, and look down on you, what do you have to lose in your relationship with that person? I may instigate the first direct comment, but the negative behavior initiated with the other person. To me, if I want to instigate, I will go out of my way to get a point across. I’ll create the plan and how it will all play out. Bringing an issue to the forefront is not instigation to me.

In any event, I think I started this to explore the differences between myself and other people. Note, this should not be read as “me or everyone who thinks like me vs them.” It’s my perspective, my ideas, and my exploration of the consequences when you adopt certain kinds of behaviors. I take responsibility for my thoughts and actions. I can tell you straight up that I didn’t wash the handful of dishes I got dirty in New Orleans. I can tell you I told John to get over it, threw his shit out, told Michele the best description I ever heard for why she hung out with our group was that she was “fuckable.” I took my doorknob back from Javon and moved her couches off the stadium after she said she was worried about them getting fucked up at parties. Yes I did, I asked why her and Jeremy weren’t fucking already. Damn, I didn’t tell this to Jesus or a priest so I guess it doesn’t really matter…

My point being, I act within contexts and respond as necessary. It doesn’t embarrass or tarnish who I am to accept when things are wrong. When people abuse my house, I don’t feel compelled to clean up after them on vacation. When people relate through internet memes and weed , and I don’t, I don’t take it upon myself to be a quite awkward stick in the mud in the room with nothing to say. When someone is worried about their shit, I move their shit. When someone tells me how they can afford to live in the house, and I try to reach a middle ground and help them live in the house, I don’t expect to get chastised and yelled at for it. When I share crab and shrimp I don’t expect to get yelled at over corn. It’s all so petty, stupid, wasteful, angry….and it will never change. The people involved act the way they do because they are afraid of themselves and they are afraid of me. (Read: they’re scared of each other too, not like I’m special.) So be it. The “worst” aspect of what it means to be Nick P. is that I can and will make you think. I’ll remind you when you’re empty, I’ll call you out when you lie, and I refuse to accept exceedingly untrue conjectures about this world or my behavior and personality.

Maybe you can call it complacency, but I’ve gotten used to the idea. I think that I will continue to claw my way to the “top” (read: place of happiness and accomplishment that really has no end) and it will simply have to be in this world and amongst these kinds of people. It’s a sobering thought to say the least. It doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t scare me. It only makes me wonder about a cure. I can stop asking why; the answer is fear. I still think some people are genuinely afraid I’ll haul off and hit them in the face for disagreeing with me sometimes, which is stupendously funny. I kinda just want to go on a list of typical things they’re afraid of. Afraid of talking…that’s a sad one. Afraid of being wrong. Afraid of what they’re parents will think. Afraid of “looking stupid.” Afraid of being alone, both in thought and without another person. Can this be simplified as a fear of change? A deep ingrained fear of the most inevitable fact of our existence. That would be odd. Or maybe it’s a fear of too much uncertainty or responsibility.

You can’t really be afraid when you feel like you understand something. And you understand something when you actively use your knowledge. How you use that knowledge is important though. You can use your beliefs and religious upbringing to make hundreds of “friends” and you can know all the right verses and things to say to get people waving their hands and or tearing up. To me, this way too manipulative. These things are done to create a net of happiness or security, not necessarily truth or objectivity. When science uses its knowledge of evolution to combat a disease or trace a genetic lineage, regardless of the scientists’ feelings, shit just is. When you predict something will mutate or adapt a certain way, and you’re wrong, you make a better prediction with the knowledge of what doesn’t work. The more you fail, the more you doubt, the better you can become. When you say or do the wrong thing in the wrong religious context, you threaten your very well being. The more you doubt, the more your friends dislike you, the more your parents get angry at you, the more you feel out of place during the things that once brought you so much joy. It’s easy to be manipulated when you’re desperate to be happy and not right. To me, the standard and use of knowledge in these two realms can’t be distinguished enough.

But hey, not like we have free will right, so I can’t blame you for being afraid. You can’t help it right? You don’t believe you’re hurting anyone, or worse, you very much don’t care if you are. Why should any facts of the matter tarnish your precious feelings? How can I be such an asshole and attack them? For me, it doesn’t matter how much denial, fear, bullshit, resentment, anger, confusion, hatred, piety, ego, pettiness, or wastefulness you present me with, I’ll be resolved to contemplating the cure.

[179] Why I'm Starting To Believe In Fate And Not Having Free Will

Monday, May 25, 2009 at 12:44am

I think our universe started with the Big Bang. I think whatever kicked things off is a natural, unguided, but yet "lawful" process. Given that we are composed of stardust which acts according to the laws of physics, and given that we wouldn't be alive with the billions of bacteria using us for their survival, I think we currently are and later will be just the result of natural processes carrying themselves out just as they do regardless of our thoughts and opinions about them. As far as free will is concerned, we think it important to attribute people with it for purposes of accountability. "The devil made me do it" doesn't even fly with people who believe in the devil and the super demon beasts ability to compel and mimic the big C. The foundation of all our actions though still remains, and what is the present then the culmination of the past? Theoretically I could've chosen to write this blog or not. Either way, both options always existed, or had the potential to exist, and no matter what I choose, particularly if its to spite what I originally felt, the choice then becomes the inevitable conclusion.

I also think it unwise to even use the term free will with no precise meaning of will. By what right does this abstract deterministic motivation of our psyche get associated with it the ultimate power to do anything? Free probably meaning unrestrained which one can obviously denounce the second they use that will to pretend they'll fly after jumping from a roof. Perhaps more appropriately one should say free thought, though that would run into the same sort of complications. You can think of a gold mountain, but you still predicated that with the concepts gold and mountain. By having even a meager understanding or imagination for shapes and the arbitrary pronunciations of words, you could think endlessly about a whole host of blobs and abstract shapes and call them whatever you'd like.

The only things that could have the word free associated with it are "everything" and "nothing." Neither of which terms we can fully understand or appreciate. Given that we barely know how to think of "things" let alone every one of them for ever and ever, I'd venture a guess at saying our universe as a whole, ever expanding, is the closest to what we could call everything. Nothing may only exist as a mathematical concept. In space, there are areas of just "nothingness," but I've also read that matter can spontaneously arise from this nothingness. I think this is simply plagued by a bad word for what we (are) looking at. We're quick to jumping and saying that nothing can't do anything, therefore you can't start with it to form any sort of logical progression. As far as I know so far, this is simply a flawed objection.

I heard a good answer for why there was something rather than nothing: "Nothing is too unstable." If we expand that to ourselves, and maybe even the reason the universe is accelerating I think you might be able to squeeze some sort of "purpose" out of our existence. That simply being, to get stable. This would explain why people don't feel compelled to change regardless of what "belief" system, or ideas about themselves, they ascribe to. When your not pressured to change, you won't, lending more credence to the idea that it takes something outside of "you" to shape or determine you. If this is indeed the case, then you can't say there is anything "right" or "wrong" about it, it just is. I would put things now in terms of stable and unstable. Test scenario: Why shouldn't you kill other people? It makes the public view and debate more unstable. Why shouldn't you steal? It turns others' minds more wary and unstable.

And this isn't necessarily utilitarian or "if everyone JUST BELIEVED like this..." either. I think you are unable to escape the judgment that about some specific person's belief being there to rock the boat, or better humanity. This is why I try to refrain from encompassing a hoard of people into one category unless its for some easy racist joke. You can believe in a god and still know how and strive for bringing about a more stable and healthy world. You can be an atheist and be an asshole that gets off on insulting the stupidity of "all christians." Either way you're still susceptible to falling into the convolutions of right and wrong or moral and immoral. I suppose this translates into health as well. What's "good" for you being bad for me. I shall think on this longer, but I think I like what I've come across.

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 Mike Gough at 1:07am May 25

nick, i think you know that i have also given some thought to this, and i'll tell you what i think. firstly, i decided that the 'free will' argument is irrelevant when you view time as simply another dimension. everything that ever was or will be or is, is already there, whether you thought it into existence or not. sure, you could say that every ... Read Moreexistence is the result of some other first cause, but in the concept of space-time, things don't happen before or after; they just fit together like a puzzle. if this is not the right way to look at it, then there's always the multiverse concept, which i think supports free will... assuming that decision-makers can steer themselves into one of an infinite number of universes, and each one is the created result of a unique choice... in the end, though, i think i'm a pragmatist and this stuff is all irrelevant. i just want to be happy. if i don't have a purpose here, i can honestly say i'm ok with that

 Billy Bowman at 1:10am May 25

If you subscribe to the idea of parallel universes, then fate is no doubt real, for everything you could ever think of doing does exist, so everything is predetermined. I say we let the physicists sort it out before we begin any more metaphysical debates on the subject.

I'll agree with many concerns about the definitions by which we attempt to ... Read Moreapply concepts, but that is a limitation of language. If we could communicate with thought, such conversation on these subjects would be easier.

I'm going to have to admit that I lose you half way through that fourth paragraph..I'm just not really sure how it relates... but I think it may be a result of reading web comics for the past 12 hours.

 Nick P. at 1:18am May 25

I'm with you Gough. I just had a spur of the moment compulsion to type this out. I'd go for the puzzle over the multiverse.

Bowman, I take the Futurama stance, there are only two parallel universes, and I'm wearing a cowboy hat in the other one. I definitely just kinda decided to write so my bad if things are unclear. I tend to just write out what makes sense to me at that moment so I can move past it.

 Greg Smith at 3:37am May 25

"If you subscribe to the idea of parallel universes, then fate is no doubt real, for everything you could ever think of doing does exist, so everything is predetermined."

I agree and disagree. (Maybe both in parallel...)
Even if every possibility is accounted for in an infinite web of splitting and converging universes, that doesn't quite get us ... Read Morepast the question of why we perceive only one of these paths. It doesn't quite suffice to say that some other instance of us is perceiving each other possibility-- if we think back to Descartes, the only unwavering truth that one can ascertain is that one has a singular consciousness. In some way that singularity is more fundamental than any other truth the universe can try and throw at us. Why do we perceive a single path, seemingly associated with one's free will? It's a hard question, and personally I think that it's unanswerable (in much the same way that the halting problem is undecidable). I have a lot of thinking yet to do though.

 Mike Gough at 10:58pm May 25

just because we percieve a single conciousness does not mean that there exists only one conciousness. how can you explain the existence of billions of people, each percieving their own reality? if there was only one conciousness, how could this be possible? i think that if there can be multiple conciousnesses during the present, in the percievable universe, then there could also be other conciousnesses in parallel universes

 Greg Smith at 2:32am May 26

That's not my point. Why do we perceive only one of these? This is what free will is about.

 Nick P. at 12:35pm May 26

How is only perceiving on of those paths what free will is all about? I get that your asking why if there's so many we're only acting in this one, but that seems to support that we don't given that we can't escape this one.

 Greg Smith at 7:14pm May 26

If there are infinite paths and we only perceive one, then what selects which one? Free will seems as good an answer as any. It's not so much that we can't "escape" this path, but rather that we are actively selecting the path we perceive from infinite possibilities.

 Adam Brewer at 10:02pm May 26

"If there are infinite paths and we only perceive one, then what selects which one? Free will seems as good an answer as any."

By that logic, then who's to say that that a God or Gods doesn't choose? Who's to say that my shut-in great uncle doesn't select which path? Who's to say that the perceived path doesn't waiver upon the whim of Joe Pesci? Thus is the doctrine of Faith. Faith of what, and in what/whom, is not the issue, I must add.

 Greg Smith at 4:50am May 27

Nothing says that but intuition. I believe the answer is unknowable.

[165] What's The Real Problem?

Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 4:35pm

I've been thinking much about free will and the nature of choice. In all reality, my life isn't the least stressful and my general cheery(ha) demeanor is my attempt at staving off breaking down or snapping. I'd bet you know what it's like to have a problem, then two, then ten so on so forth. I'm trying to just write them down and devise a strategy for taking them on one by one. It isn't even the problems in and of themselves that really gets to me. What bothers me is the circumstances that led to them. Not just a bad decision here or there, but the nature of our decisions and why and how we make them. As often as I say I feel free, I'm not sure that is the case. I don't mind being constrained by things like food or the inability to flap my arms and fly. Aside from that, it feels like everything that can be done or said is restrained. Do you have a choice in the classes you take, or is there a set list that others have deemed good enough for you? Can you pick up and drive wherever you want or are there parking restrictions, rules of the road, components of the car that are inadequate that slow you down or distract you from the wind in your hair? The only thing that I've seemed to settle on that could break through this is money. Even when I want to throw a party and just hang out and enjoy time with friends, I still have to think about potential cops coming, noise violations, angry neighbors, kool-aide spills, or someone puking over the balcony, all of which bring added stress and steps to the process of escaping.

When your angry you can't always hit the person you want. When your sick or depressed you can't even find time to yourself when you want. Right now I feel strangled by an idiot roommate, stupid classes, money for bills, responsibility to my dad, and lack of information I wish I had to make my plans come to fruition. I don't have a choice but to dig in and wait shit out. I don't have a choice but to follow every rule and regulation that keeps me in line and subdued. And quite honestly, I want to lash out like a mother fucker, but I can only see it leading to even more constriction and more drama. I've been relying on what I'd like to think is a strong enough will to quell stomach revulsion and snapping. I'm trying to keep the perspective of just being one of millions with more or less handleable problems. When it comes down to it though, it's still my life and my reality. I'm a spec on a spec getting ever smaller, and that fact should be humbling enough to make me not worry. Despite this, I'm not longer finding solace in my relationship with myself.

Sitting here in psyche as she tells us about our biology and what it means for anxiety disorders and maladaptive traits seems to add fuel to the fire. The thought that I might not be in control is frankly unacceptable. I don't believe in fate, even if there is no such thing as free will. I think there are suffering wills, broken wills, empty wills, but what good is a free will? The kind of freedom implies all the bad with the good. Free to contradict, lie, and pretend. There needs to be a wall between that potential for freedom. That wall, at least for me at this point, is constrained by all the wrong things. I want to be restricted by the potential for expression. All that's happening now is the slow tacking on process of "things I have to do." If "that's life" then life is pathetic. I would not want to live if I didn't have a (meager) hope for a way out.

[160] Not Feeling Good About Free Will

I've been thinking much about free will and the nature of choice. In all reality, my life isn't the least stressful and my general cheery(ha) demeanor is my attempt at staving off breaking down or snapping. I'd bet you know what it's like to have a problem, then two, then ten so on so forth. I'm trying to just write them down and devise a strategy for taking them on one by one. It isn't even the problems in and of themselves that really gets to me. What bothers me is the circumstances that led to them. Not just a bad decision here or there, but the nature of our decisions and why and how we make them. As often as I say I feel free, I'm not sure that is the case. I don't mind being constrained by things like food or the inability to flap my arms and fly. Aside from that, it feels like everything that can be done or said is restrained. Do you have a choice in the classes you take, or is there a set list that others have deemed good enough for you? Can you pick up and drive wherever you want or are there parking restrictions, rules of the road, components of the car that are inadequate that slow you down or distract you from the wind in your hair? The only thing that I've seemed to settle on that could break through this is money. Even when I want to throw a party and just hang out and enjoy time with friends, I still have to think about potential cops coming, noise violations, angry neighbors, Kool-aid spills, or someone puking over the balcony, all of which bring added stress and steps to the process of escaping.

When your angry you can't always hit the person you want. When your sick or depressed you can't even find time to yourself when you want. Right now I feel strangled by an idiot roommate, stupid classes, money for bills, responsibility to my dad, and lack of information I wish I had to make my plans come to fruition. I don't have a choice but to dig in and wait shit out. I don't have a choice but to follow every rule and regulation that keeps me in line and subdued. And quite honestly, I want to lash out like a mother fucker, but I can only see it leading to even more constriction and more drama. I've been relying on what I'd like to think is a strong enough will to quell stomach revulsions and snapping. I'm trying to keep the perspective of just being one of millions with more or less handleable problems. When it comes down to it though, it's still my life and my reality. I'm a spec on a spec getting ever smaller, and that fact should be humbling enough to make me not worry. Despite this, I'm not longer finding solace in my relationship with myself.

Sitting here in psyche as she tells us about our biology and what it means for anxiety disorders and maladaptive traits seems to add fuel to the fire. The thought that I might not be in control is frankly unacceptable. I don't believe in fate, even if there is no such thing as free will. I think there are suffering wills, broken wills, empty wills, but what good is a free will? The kind of freedom implies all the bad with the good. Free to contradict, lie, and pretend. There needs to be a wall between that potential for freedom. That wall, at least for me at this point, is constrained by all the wrong things. I want to be restricted by the potential for expression. All that's happening now is the slow tacking on process of "things I have to do." If "that's life" then life is pathetic. I would not want to live if I didn't have a (meager) hope for a way out.