[695] Everyday Whisper

I feel if I don't write this correctly, I'm never going to be able to approach the task I've set out for myself with even the prayer of remotely completing it. The longer I linger on a fundamental question about myself, the more it sinks in the reality of the implications and hindrances.

I have what I think is a healthy fear of myself. I know my potential. I've proven things to myself time and time again. I know how I can arrive to just about any justification. I know how to change moods and mindsets. I know how to extract money whether I need to lean on illegal or immoral ways. I know how to earnestly practice. I know how to read all day. I know how to binge watch. I know how to meal prep. It feels like just yesterday I decided to “work all the time” in service to completing my house, and while I know I've watched a shit ton of media and made progress, from July until now March, it might as well be one condensed blur I regard as a kind of “sacrifice” of my 29^th year. The problem is that I've stated a number of times that I'm no martyr.

A good portion of my life looks the way it does because I've always been embedded in a structure. Every inch of your formative years requires waking up and going to school. Every assignment needs to be completed, if only poorly. If I wasn't forced to march in band, I wouldn't have any good or bad memories of it or an imposed perspective that's permeated my decisions and associations indefinitely. In a flash, your structure gets erased if you aren't keen to search and sacrifice to get plugged into another one. I keep thinking I'll get to “start my life” after a dollar amount or perfectly balanced budget. I look back on old messages about visiting friends or making plans that fell by the wayside because something “more vital” felt pressing.

Ultimately, my efforts are futile. Chris Rock's words come to mind in a piece of advice he tries to beat into his children's minds. Once you step outside the front door, not one single person gives a shit about you, and really, sometimes that's true about the people inside the house too. I find this one of those ideas I accept intellectually, but my body rejects in a fit of anxiety. My school structure reinforced ideas of what constituted good behavior and achievement worthy of reward. I got paid to read. I got the A so I could continue to keep partying. It “mattered.” People did give a shit about me, at least enough to punish me if I didn't do well enough.

But what is the punishment if you're “smart enough” to pay the bills and stay alive? What's the self-imposed selection pressure to become every inch of who you are? I try to be conscious of when I'm doing things out of desperation verses actively picking to engage with them. I do this so I don't end up picking up bad habits like lazily practicing an instrument and working against myself. I do this because I think we're sort of defaulted to a position of always trying to dig ourselves out of holes and are perfectly unaware of what making a choice really constitutes. I read through blogs dozens of times to figure out what kind of illusion I've weaved for myself to keep me away from my vaguely imagined “ideal.”

In my life, there are exceedingly weak standing repercussions if I don't do things. I've now gone so far as to orient my life in a way white trash or a junkie could support. If you can pay your bills via plasma donation, what's stopping you? It takes hiccups of effort to pay $100 here or there, resolve yourself to sleeping in your car, or work part time at a mind-numbing job to keep just barely above water. No one cares if I can play an instrument or 10. No one cares if I lose 30 pounds. I'm not headed to prison if I can't remember the brunt of a philosopher's argument or name of a character I've seen in 100 episodes. Reading 9 books one week and 200 comics isn't getting me an award from a librarian. Every single thing I do with my day is beyond meaningless to everyone but me, and I hate that idea so much I allow myself leeway to forgo all the meaning I could grant myself.

I think I've arrived here for a number of reasons that I don't feel right describing as “faults” on anyone's behalf. Whatever I am, I'm still an ape, and apes work best with a social component. Byron's sister came to town and we went out like the old days. It felt like putting on a perfect fitting jacket making jokes and pouring drinks and shivering for each trek between bars. Mild past grievances go up in joyous tipsy smoke. It simply feels great to be on the same page, regardless of what you're reading together. Now look at the other 364 days of my year, and I'm back to wondering what whim will swing me where.

I, of course, still have much to prove. I've concocted a gigantic narrative about myself and what I'm capable of. I reference my track record often. I still get indignant at the hint of condescension and lazy retorts. No matter how many “lazy” or “depressed” days I have to put away, I still haven't come close to abandoning a conception of myself at a fundamental level. But it remains hard to dream. It sucks to be humbled daily about all of the shit you can't control. It's sad and tired to report to yourself “progress” that always comes with a catch. I'm not motivated to buy more things, I don't want more time to myself, and I reject out of hand undue praise or persistent self-destructive indulgence. I'm terrified of the idea of “peaking too early” as if there's any reason to believe you can't always be progressing along some metric.

I think, without meaning to, I started to rely too heavily on “hope” despite my persistent condemnation of it. I should present an offering to the underlying ironic pulse of existence. I hope someone joins me on the land or wants to create something together. I hope I get a chance to give back and take care of in equal or greater measure to what I've been given before I die of a coronary from sitting too long or catch a catastrophic accident. I want to be right, desperately, so I make appeals in the dark to the faceless and voiceless amalgam of ghosts from my past who've helped shape me thus far. I started taking cues from likes and upvotes and nit-picking the vitriol at the heart of earnest imbecile commentators. I let one of my hands fill up with the shit of stress from over-working, under-organizing, and letting things I care about slowly die via mismanaged sacrifice.

I want to always be the guy who can start a coffee business in 3-6 months. I want to be the one who can reconcile everything with the right amount of alcohol, jokes, and mixed potentially difficult company. I want to watch way too much TV. I want to boast about things about myself that age thinks it won't have to rip from my cold dead hands. I want to know more details about shit you don't care about and things you're only pretending to care about. I want to create things you'd never imagine. And I want to do that because that's who I am, not because it means anything to you. I'm a complete and unrelenting asshole, and the nicest guy who's earnestly suffered in service to the people he's cared about. I'm fat and lazy as shit, and work more than people in countries who are killing themselves over the same amount of hours. I can set and meet any goal for myself, and write up a ten page compelling argument describing the relief and craving for death.

I've been living in one long hangover. I've poisoned myself with a grandiose dream, while perfectly achievable, by no means so in the short term barring an extremely improbable turn. The day after dosing I'm clamoring to quell the anxiety and guilt of my temporary embarrassment for my circumstances. But I'm not embarrassed. I'm disorganized. I'm alone. I'm incredibly angry. It feels like I already had what I wanted, and life construed itself to tear it apart. I had an amazing friend group that one by one gave up on either me or each other. I had the energy and time to bring people together. I had the resources to bring my ideas to fruition practically this instant. I had a place. I had help. I had a sense that I actually meant something worthwhile and important.

That's where the energy comes from. That's where the “reason” works its way into a positive feeling feedback loop. I don't mean for this to sound like I don't appreciate or recognize the people who have been nothing but supportive either. I never care to pit my despair against someone else's. But as the structure around me degraded, so did I. I retreated to a kind of street hustle. I looked for things to blame as I was tired of it always being my fault. I'm still tired of that. As long as it remains true, I need to reconfigure what I'm to blame myself for. I'm sorry I flirted with accepting your standards. I'm sorry I asked you for a reason, for you to want me to come around. I'm sorry that no matter what example I set I'm never going to think it's good enough. I'm sorry I throw my life at you like you give a shit. I'm sorry I don't care how you feel. I'm sorry I hang on to every fucking ridiculous thing I feel you've done to me. I'm sorry I'll never trust you. I'm sorry to be alive and bother trying too hard. I'm sorry for apologizing because I don't have better words for “I'm not fucking sorry and I don't give a fuck.”

I clench my jaw. I am wired tight. I get food handed to me 30 times a day, and I still jump when they come up to the window. I suspect that only way I'm ever going to “normalize” is by getting back into studies, and I still have only managed to think a severe acid trip paired with an anxiety inducing incident I'm forced to overcome might rewire my brain enough to bother trying again. I need to stop pretending like I even have a concept of “vacation” or want to spend money hanging out before a higher level of comfort has been achieved. I need to plug myself into a machine of my own making, reintroduce the butterflies that kept me going to pointless class, pointless jobs, and pointless social interactions. I've extracted all the value I could handle from that system and need to believe the dividends from what I borrow and improve on will pay out in even higher measure.

What does it look like if every single day I do a little bit in service to every part of me? I know what I'm capable of, but what's the catastrophic upper limit? What if I make a blood-thirsty show of my sacrifices of “hope” and “luck?” I can work, and manipulate, and learn, and play, and create all at once every day. I can do it “alone.” I can try and fail studies and go back to work the same day. I can have depressed indulgent days and still make my 30K a year and budget like I'm making 100K. I can keep in mind every person I've met who's done it or is doing it as well or better than me who I want to be just like, and I can watch myself transform just as I have into whatever you want to call me right now. I know where I want to go, and I know the very small number of things I can control in order to get there. I need to retain that control. I need to crave my future and not make desperate swipes at it while know-nothing hollow dogs bark in my ears. I need it to be the kind of difficult I know I'm the only one suited to overcome.

So let's kick it off. All at once, all the time, every day.

[523] The Body Politic

I need to readdress the idea of good, gooder, and best. When I first spoke about it, as time provides irony with a field day, it was with regard to relationships. I see, or at least pretend to see and sometimes argue for, a difference in relationships of convenience, abuse, or mutual encouragement as existing on a kind of sliding scale. You can be in a good relationship that “keeps the lid on” something about you or perhaps opens you up to new experiences, but remains couched in crippling insecurities about being alone. Depending on what level you want to look at or what you want to be steered by in life, the description can change fairly quickly.

This time around, it's about politics, as the conversation keeps swirling around Hilary or Hitler 2. As a habit, I'm fundamentally uncomfortable with often false dichotomies. Literally nothing exists that's “only” one or the other. Besides me begrudging people for introducing bad philosophy into their “pragmatic” conversations, I see a sort of “fundamental” concern that keeps getting ignored. I don't believe any reasonable person thinks it's hard to distinguish the nuclear fallout of a Hitler 2 presidency verses the, albeit very bad, neoliberal warmongering wall street jerking of Hilary. I get it, sorry poor children of the world, America doesn't really give a shit about you, Hitler 2 is right around the corner.

My concern is about where does the hard and fast line exist between “practical” and “idealist” show up? I contend that things change, almost randomly, for any number of unforeseen reasons. To maintain that the “only” way forward is to remain complicit in systems that are broken seems so ridiculously callous, lazy, and unwise but I hear it over and over again from politicians I admire or celebrities I enjoy, and I'm trying not to adopt a kind of doublethink about where they're coming from, and why I'm not voting for Hilary.

Say you never have to make a decision. Say your whole life is carried out for you by servants or a level of extravagance reserved for royalty. How would you make your decisions? What's most distracting? What's most pragmatic? Do these words even mean something to you at that point? Your attention is already whatever you want it to be. Your desires are met and there's nothing to “sit and deal with.”

Now you have to introduce some outside force. You get in a car accident. You decide to not just buy, but build the most amazingly safe car ever built and mandate the roads be cleared for your travels. You get sick. You build the most amazing hospital and import the world's doctors. You're reacting to your fears. You're making decisions in service to combat the dangerous reality that surrounds your extravagance. Consider what Hitler 2 promises and how his solutions, solutions for fear mind you, are as fanciful and hard to imagine as the person given all the resources in the world insulating themselves from danger or death.

To state the above explicitly, when nothing exists that concerns you beyond fundamental truths of existence, you can choose to live in fear.

Here, the hard work of discussion and philosophy needs to remind us that advocacy and sticking by what's best can remain worthwhile and viable in a world absolutely consumed by hatred and fear. Because make no mistake, the business as usual is complicated legalese that spells out someone in power's hatred for your being. Hatred for your rights, bodies, opinions, or even presumption that you have something they don't. And they have so much, and it's never enough, and it's because it's rooted in fear.

You're royalty. No bills to be paid. No wars to be fought (that you're not creating for amusement.) You're not hungry, you're not even bored. You can choose to live for other people or ideals that exist outside of your safe space.

In order to do that, you need to not just be aware of how good your life is going, you have to be able to explain, in due detail, all the forces that have to come together to make sure it remains a safe space. The millions of minds that lend credence to your royalty. The advances in science that will help keep you alive. The guards and caretakers and entertainers that you devour. You have to introduce guilt. You have to hold yourself accountable to something that nobody else can. What you've learned, what you've argued for, what you'd like to see in the future. It's when you've actually done the work to become something more than what you've been born into.

It's a tall order when all you have to do is react to remain complicit with the other side. How easy is it to fear Hitler 2? It's a cliché. You don't even have to think about it. In fact, I would argue, the ethos and purpose of modern society is to be able to label Hitler 2 as such without irony. Of course, I'm afraid of him. Of course I want to laugh more than cry when I see footage of his followers. But I'm not going to live my life in anymore fear than is necessary. I'm not going to pretend Hilary speaks for the same things Bernie does. What are synonymous vote percentages in lieu of a conscious or basic awareness of the problem?

That's what bugs me. I understand there's a political game always afoot. I get that there's sometimes inconvenient truths about the balance of power and influence. I do not understand approaching a system so dominated, by what used to be incidental quirks, as it now completely renders the desires of the population mute with your “vote” for what's going to keep it that way. Even if you're vote is symbolic. Even if it only has the fleeting impact of a set example. Are we going to get where this irrational, angry, and afraid animal needs to be by exercising it like the hateful planners at the top figured we would?

And honestly, I feel I'm not even explaining it as compellingly as it feels. If you want a child to do something, you can threaten them or you can encourage their best behaviors. I view humans as perpetual children. Hilary is threatening us with Hitler 2. Hitler 2 threatens everyone and encourages people to as well. If it's “my” vote, I choose die in the self-righteous flame of actual progress. I've been saying I don't believe in progress, which seems as of late to speak to the deficiency of language. There's things I want over other things. I want Bernie over Hilary, practically anything over Hitler 2, an informed and rational population over oligarchy and capitalism. And what I want is still out there, and it needs advocates. It's realities want a shot at being the new “practical reality” (you know, unless you're already there as a different civilized country.)

If Hitler 2 wins, it will be your fault. You don't know what you stand for and you deny your fear. You took it easy on your racist uncle. You adopted a catch-phrase about undocumented workers. You refused to read links I often provide offering context or numbers that soundly destroy some mythology shat out over pundit bickering or Hitler 2 himself. You allowed yourself to be swallowed, as we're all swallowed, by the system and then resolved yourself. You got tired and didn't ask why. You gave away all your time and then clung to the weekend that much harder. You threw personal pity parties and trumpeted your shallow conception of self-worth and righteousness as waves of ignorance and guilt washed out the notes.

My vote for Obama was because I hadn't figured out what I stood for. I was raised in a Democrat household. I believed minority opinions needed to be elevated and by that metric alone might help things. I thought the system was “basically good.” By all comparisons, my life is a breeze, the breeziest of breezes, and it's because of this country. But the foundation of my life is not because of the politics of today. It's because the people before me stood for something that we've lost all institutional memory of. How does it come back for my grandkids? Not with my vote for Hilary Clinton. How will I know I don't want grandkids? When you show we've accomplished so much only to elect Hitler 2.

[491] Fear and Loathing

When do we get to stop being afraid?

I almost just want this to act like something of an exhaustive list. Why shouldn’t we be afraid? If you’re financially insecure, something as small as a flat tire can cripple you for months. Live in that place long enough and try not to think about getting hurt or sick. What if your life is at the apex of decisions you made long ago you didn’t realize were terrible? What if you never find the job? What if you never find the partner? What if the partner leaves? Isn’t it great that if things go well you’ll get to watch your family members die before you? 

What if you’re afraid of yourself? How are you going to get the depression and anxiety under control? You know how you are when you drink, what if you hurt someone? What if you think too long about why you drink? What if your friends or boss finds out you’re a fake? What if you can’t face how much your heart isn’t in it anymore? How can you deal with what people will think and say about you if you pursued what you wanted? How do you expect them to forgive you when you can’t forgive yourself? And what are you going to do about all this debt? 

Make the misstep of being a well-read person. Heard about our crumbling nuclear infrastructure? Read up lately on the long term fall-out of Fukushima or the Deep Horizon oil spill? Can you keep up with the number of going extinct species or what comparable state’s size describes the last chunk of ice that broke into the ocean? Think the government is spying on you? They are. Think we’re cultivating unrest and perpetuating terrorism? We are. Think your food and water is poison? It is. Are you afraid of Russia or ISIS and yet ignorant of how much more likely you are to die in a car crash? But at least the car isn’t actually trying to kill you, right? Unless you ask the quality control department at GM. 

Did you know that advocating for fascism from a national pulpit to an enraged and ignorant populace can literally have us replay instances from various Holocaust-adjacent scenarios? Did you know a Trump presidency is 6th on the highest rated threats to global economic security? How funny was his comment now? You were only laughing because you’re afraid though too, right? He can’t be serious...that’d be as insane as your support for him! And you’re not insane. Things aren’t your fault. You’re just scared and getting by. You could be randomly shot at like in Paris and Turkey! You could be on the next plane headed for a national icon! 

Let alone you just meditate on how quickly time seems to be going on and how you’re significantly more afraid of being alive and being full of shit than you are death. Gotta meet the celebrities, travel everywhere, compile the Instagram photos, put your heart and soul into a lost but meaningful cause. Why think about neglect, abuse, greed, and social security when you’re so fit and capable now? When your knee starts shaking another reason to be afraid. When your arm can’t raise as high you keep it securely wrapped around your stomach in an insecure hug. 

Infuse your being with your minority or sexual status. You have crazy people constantly targeting you as randomly as terrorists seem to. You have institutions who threaten to punish you more severely than one of the “normals.” You have an entire sex that can single-handedly kill you any time they get angry. You’re demonized daily for just being alive and then told things about how “great” the country once was when every “ism” was (still is) in state-sanctioned overdrive. You’re told a “just” god is inspiring language and legislation that will see your grandchildren eventually oppressed. 

And what do we do in response? 

As much as I reflexively feel like I don’t want to blame people, I feel forced to. We take pride in distracting ourselves. We chalk the real work and responsibility up to a few donations or volunteer hours here and there. Our job title more important than what it’s purported to do. We adopt every possible cliche about how life operates and how little our role in fixing it means. Or that role has to be “humble” and give you a quiet smile that let’s you carry on like you really care, don’t you, you do-gooder you. We point and blame and celebrate fringe details and ignore the all-encompassing smog suffocating reasonable paths forward. We pick and peck, looking for grains of food in a quicksand pit.

We distance ourselves. We smile too hard. We drink too much. We spend all day in front of our TVs or phones or desks as we project our lives “one day” against the office backdrop. We smugly shake our heads like “I could never” or we naively play with fire like all’s fair in this hopeless headless chicken race to the end. Could I possibly do or say anything as negative as the person who can’t figure out the difference between Trump and Sanders? I’m negative? How much do you have to hate your own sense of reasoning and how burdened by intrusive thoughts must you be to be suffering like that? How broken of a soul is willing to innocently inflict such impropriety upon their friends and family? How broken and negative do you have to be to entertain them in return? 

We campaign! We say “it gets better.” We say wait till you’re older and the bullies start to respect your affinity for science. Hell, they’re gonna be the one’s paying for your skills to be rolled into the next war machine. We proselytize for different gods and Eastern mysticism. Come into the moment and self-actualize. Find your direction and better digestion when your mind is at ease knowing it’s all about you and your ability to physically kiss your own ass. Know that god is love and this ephemeral ineffable thing is perfectly reasonable the more you stoke your sense of loss and helplessness. It’s not enough to have a scrapbook with personal photographs and cherished memories. You’re in marketing now. You have to be a cheerleader for your definitely happy life and pay deference to the struggle by lip service to how real it can feel but assure us it’s definitely still your bitch. 

Fear is a mental handicap to honesty, and honesty is the only way to learn how to not be afraid. Fear hijacks and makes excuses for your perspective. It literally lowers your capacity for intelligence. Fear beats your chest in the dark trying to chase away apparitions created by blood vessels racing across your eyes. Fear cripples humility and fairness. Fear taps into the life affirming response for why you’re here and another animal is not. In doing so, fear always feels justified. It always feels righteous. It’s maniacally invigorating because it seems to belay existence itself. 

Perhaps most disconcerting is the thought I have about someone reading this. An extremely loud and condescending “WE ALL KNOW THIS! WHY DO YOU EVEN BOTHER!?” 

I think we’re lying. I don’t think we know in the same way someone who experiences an epiphany and changes their behavior in an instant might. I think we pretend to know like we pretend to be friends and pretend to love our families. Because it’s a common narrative that brings order to the chaos. Because generations of people who were quicker to die with infinitely more accessible reasons to be afraid gave us stories and habits to pretend otherwise. As we currently exist on the precipice between human and whatever human plus Pentium chip will be called, we still refuse to do anything but play into the legacy of fearful thinking. We don’t demonize the universal roots of atrocity because they retain their utility in giving us every excuse to play our own selfish games with the mythical demons. 

Here though, I’m not going to tell you to stop being afraid. I’m not going to offer a fix. I’m just gonna say watch. It’s the thing we’re absolutely stuck doing no matter the amount of effort we put into fighting it. You can’t shut off your eyes. Watch Trump become president. Watch a bomb go off in a major U.S. city. Watch cities get swallowed. Watch your fellow ignorant monkeys adopt cartoonish faces as they bask in the glory of their demagogues. Watch every day as your reality and morality morph to excuse and accept the ethics of ignorance and fear. 

I’m negative? In trying to incorporate and work with the danger and fear, in mocking, in joking, in reminding, in building it into my proposed solutions and resources, in owning and tattooing the idea of it on my very being, I’m the negative one? We’ve been sold this mythology that evil is to be overcome like by becoming a champion of implicit quasi-religious morality. Like Jedi don’t turn to the dark side. Like angels don’t fall from heaven. 

Do you think my approach to fear is one of excuses, hand-holding, or avoidance? Because all I seem to ever see is people putting distance between me and their idolized version of what they consider constitutes life and their obligation to it. My biggest sins are what? Getting nit-picky in conversations? Getting a little too drunk and obscene sometimes? Trying to play the games offered to me despite a feeling of constant personal sacrifice to your own fears of starting a fight I wasn’t offering? 

The lack of perspective is our cultural sin. It’s our collective denial that turns non-issues into declarations about dramatic life-altering consequences, and genuine problems into cat toys we bat around the floor without irony. Kick up your feet and watch.

[413] From Ear to Ear

I kind of hope this is the last time I ever have to talk about this. It strikes me that I've only ever really danced around or made weird jokes instead of digging in. I've just gone through another round of watching fucked up immediate and accidental death videos as well as a few beheadings.

When I say another round, I don't mean to suggest it's like a hobby. As with many things that garner my attention, these videos made it to the front page of reddit in a forum where someone explicitly asked for them. I think there's more of a “general fascination” with something so fucked up and foreign to our daily reality than people having secret killer fantasies and getting off or something. Nonetheless, I'm sensing a ton of things that also need to be said, at least by me.

First, the mess of comments. Someone will point out that “we all could be like them.” It's a version of this that usually follows a discussion of WWII and the Holocaust. Then there's the gung-ho types who are positively sure the “answer,” as perverse as that feels to type at the moment, is to meet violence with violence. I think what strikes me the most, is that no one speaks to how afraid they would be. What seems like the real driving force for what makes these videos so jarring barely gets a nod.

At some level, everything we engage with is a kind of illusion. You can only focus on a spot the size of your thumb on your outstretched arm. Your eyes black out every time they change direction. You can stir all form of emotions from characters, real or animated. You buy into ideas about education or government that fulfill a kind of need for structure and purpose where the kind of depravity in these videos essentially disappears. To some extent, the videos act as an illusion, keeping the violence “over there.”

Part of me feels like I should be, or am, really fucked up that I could watch this shit and then switch back to Bunheads once I get done writing this. To hear someone's final “Oh God!” as a building crashes down on top of them. To see the blood gushing from a man's face after he shoots himself in the head. To watch 100 people burn alive. But I feel my “entertainment” has been helping me cope with things like this my entire life. Worse than that though, I feel like death isn't the worst thing some of these people could be experiencing.

I think there's kind of a “dream” end goal. To die in a bed in your sleep, right? Old as shit, basically egging it on, after you've achieved your numerous goals and know you have a few grandkids. Not mid speech with your eyes rolling to the back of your head. Not because a waitress accidentally sets you on fire or a brick falls off a truck Final Destination style and instantly kills your wife after hurling through your windshield.

Maybe reality is too scary. Maybe it really is just way too much of a random shit show to justify anything less than the measures we have in place to play along like we'll all get the solemn and dignified death bed scene. I speak to ridiculing fear very often. Granted, I'm usually poking fun at your inability to do little things like ask someone out or change your shitty job, but to your body, to your mind, fear is fear. “Irrational” fear still has consequences.

Take recent news. Have you ever been a cop who's been afraid? They aren't supermen after all. I'm certainly not saying anything less than a rabid liberal would about gun violence, police training, or poor black kids, but I also know on average cops die sooner than most people just from stress. To look at the moment, or 6, he fires in that vacuum is to sort of absolve the overall culture and context. Justified? Answer reduces to opinion. Understandable? Predictable? Alterable? Questions that encompass more than what you think of the cop as a person.

I'm drifting a little too far.

I look at these videos and I don't think to myself “this is evil,” and obviously not for the accident ones. To me, the essence of evil lies. That's not an incomplete thought. It's to look at something like this and to deny the world that created it. Evil is patient. It lies in wait. It unfolds in every look the other direction. In every “I could never!” It's when you refuse to learn. Horrible shit happens for insanely foreseeable reasons. And every time you absolve yourself of a little or a lot of the responsibility for creation, you ensure the shit will keep coming.

I've expressed a number of times that you need to feel it. And, I'm beginning to think that's wrong. Because I feel it, barely, but what makes me concerned or guilty or sick is attempting to own it. And because no one can make you, I don't see “the world” becoming a better place. How many people want to be responsible for this random, violent, and terrifying chaos? I haven't talked myself out of the prospect, but fuck me for the amount of unbelievable shit I'd be getting myself into. Help?

[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.