[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.

[214.11] Titled

Do you know you’re in my dreams?

Can you feel when my thoughts

Are no longer for me,

Distraught over what

We can no longer be.

It never mattered if you cared

Got lost in a place where

You’re empty and scared

Walking alone down the

Spiral stairs

Was it so hard to find an answer?

Watch the clock tick by

Afraid of what you’ll find

Ever waiting, no one forcing

From what are you divorcing?

Did you ever know?

I can no longer think so

To mar innocence

To bar happiness

As some sad penitence

Alas you inspire!

For while I do not weep

And memory fades

You’re with me as I sleep

Do you tire of the fight?

Move past the lies

And tears and cries

Go back to when you

Were we

[214.10] Roll Over

I’m proposing a challenge. Help me drop out of college

I’m staring two papers (total 10 pages) two midterms (total bullshit) in the face and all I can think about is how bad I want to drop out of this fucking place. I don’t like the feeling of not being in control of my life. “Of course” I always am, and to all of you go-getters that say “Do everything you want in your free time just make sure to get the school work done” you clearly don’t appreciate how disgusting I feel dedicating any of my time towards school.

I want to start businesses. It’s a simple enough goal. I want to provide a service, make something, or entertain people for money. Whether it’s introducing rich kids to my hot friends dressed scantily, building custom pong tables, or helping start a coffee shop, it hasn’t taken anyone four years of random classes and unrealistic expectations to wrap their head around this process.

Presumably we are in school for a reason. We are arming ourselves with knowledge to “compete” with our fellow man for the ever decreasing number of jobs and opportunities. We are becoming “well-rounded” and “manageable.” The connections and resources we take away are supposed to influence everything, if only being able to email an old professor. When you achieve in school you matter just a notch more in society and can look down your nose at all those who’ve yet to swallow the amounts you have.

I have more than a few issues with that premise. Let’s take for granted it isn’t evil or purely designed for fucking me and my parents out of thousands of dollars. If you are so passionate about something you can think of no better time than sitting and reading old papers and theorizing new tests to run to further your field, go to college. If you want to be a number on a ledger in a corporate office and consistently told how to manage or behave or look, go to college. If you want to be a doctor, go to college. Anyone else is here out of tradition. Even our prestigious music school will almost certainly never place you anywhere beyond a feeder orchestra maybe making enough for a cheap apartment.

Every day I participate. Every day I shut up and deal, I feel as if I’m actively killing how I actually believe and am struggling to express while still immersed. I care absolutely nothing about how wrong the earliest philosophers and psychologists were about the nature of reality. I could never even persuade myself to care about why stereotypes of men and women exist and how blind we believe we are to advertising. Please oh please make me suffer a 26 year old p.h.d. teacher “skim” an explanation of evolution when I’d put money on at least 10% of the class not even believing in it.

Because we invest so much of our focus in this structure and it being the “only” or “best” way to achieve stability and happiness, we completely ignore and deny the conversations and relationships that could be shaping our current realities. Because there is no money is happiness and creativity. You always need an initial investment, or person to fill in some blank of knowledge. Once you’re “stable and mature” you’ll be capable of taking such risks and having fun with what you always dreamed you’d be doing. Of course by that time you’re 35 and have made much more impactful, and dare I say damning, decisions that provide all the excuses you’ll ever need.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want to kill myself over a 7 page paper discussing how people qualify the words sex and gender. I will derive no happiness; I will feel invaluable and wasted. It’s not something I could even remotely have reason to persuade myself to be happy about. And yet, I will watch and feel myself die a little more and struggle to tie together random papers and bullshit to fulfill the requirement and pass. I’m not sure why anymore. I thought it was to perpetuate my current lifestyle, but I could get a job and pay the bills. It’s not to impress parents. It’s not that I secretly do want to go into psychology. And it certainly isn’t the case that I have nothing better to do. Someone please explain to me why I lead such a contradictory lifestyle.

The whole problem is feeling like I have no purpose. I of course subscribe to a ton of purposes, but everything about being in school screams to me the idea that I’m not in control. My choices only matter insofar as they can let me bitch, but still hand over the cash. I can hate to my heart’s content as long as I’m “still doing what I have to do.”

It was here that I originally posted the opening lines of this blog. I want to enable and be enabled. I won’t leave to circle jerk my way around some pet project or ill-conceived dream. I won’t leave to jump right into the fast food or retail chain. I’m not joining the Peace Corps or randomly backpacking the world to find myself. I want to be put to meaningful work. I want to generate a profit. I want to be an example. If you know the people or the projects that want the same things I’m asking for your help to get connected with them. Here’s a secret, this isn’t a hidden world I desperately need to be introduced to, and will almost certainly involve your wishes, dreams and desires.

Of all the material things I could need to start a proper business, of all the know-how I never got in college, I will never escape the guilt of wasted time. No, assuming I really do need to pass midterms and turn in these papers it isn’t realistic to spend 8 hours a day playing guitar and drums. No, when I’m in class during normal business hours, I can’t spend two hours on the phone with the IRS trying to wrap my head around one of ten numbers that tell the government I’m legal. When you’ve got that job maybe jumping paycheck to paycheck it’s not hard to believe that making it out to city hall to hopefully run into someone that matters and can explain to you grants and zoning starts to seem impossible.

It isn’t just your “endless drive and spirit” that gets you places. You need time to focus. You need people to share the burden. You have to know the politics and personalities that will carry into all the future work you do. I can’t pretend that people who succeed to such notoriety or power didn’t have someone open a door or two. Yes, I hold the responsibility to act, but I reserve the right to act efficiently and purposefully. I’ve seen what a few hours or a handful of the “right” people can do to a situation. I’m under no delusion about the value of school or work for work’s sake.

To a greater extent, everything I want I already have. The only missing piece is feeling the pursuit of more. Being able to express how I feel about my life and the people I’ve let into it in a much more grandiose capacity than house parties. How terrible it would be for so much potential to stay trapped in my head.

[214.8] You Say You Want A Revolution

The theme of my recent discussions has been change and perspective. One fun fact that I’m learning, is that apparently in order to want massive change and gain the perspective on how to potentially achieve it, you had to have a stark raving mad parent or two. But that’s neither here nor there.

I am a firm believer that change, very dramatic and significant change, can happen instantly. This isn’t some mysterious notion to me as every new person I meet can take me somewhere or tell me something that instantly starts to take shape in a new experience. If that hidden asteroid hits the planet, in mere moments none of us will be able to ponder what it means to change again. It’s important to note that something simply changing doesn’t mean it is good or bad. My relationship with one person, regardless of how it turns out in a week or month, just “is” and either creates opportunities or doesn’t. The pain in the ass thing about change is that it is a double-edged sword. You can work to make something better, or change how it’s fundamentally run, but its propensity or potential to continue changing more or “backward” doesn’t stop. This is why a phrase like “lasting change” is, on its face, a contradiction.

What is truly important in establishing something is your ability to maintain. Where it gets complicated, is that you have to maintain something that is willing and understanding when it comes to change. The best way I can try to relate this idea is to talk about mental states. I try to keep my mind in a state of perpetual doubt. This doesn’t mean I don’t have ideals or standards, but it means I am and willing to change them if compelling reasons can be made for me to do so. I make my own mental rules for how to deal with any given person or situation. This, apparently, is very different from most people. In my world, when someone is unable to regulate and police themselves, I start to avoid them and/or cut them off depending on the severity of the problem. In the “normal world” when your friend or family member is being unacceptable, you put up with it at the expense of your reason and will.

In order for any sort of massive social reform to take place, I believe many more people have to get comfortable with being, for lack of a better term, cut throat. I cannot convince myself to feel anything towards someone who proves over and again that they are unable or unwilling to practice behaviors that improve or fix problems instead of create them. I am unable to conflate a situation with “love” or “morals,” as they are poorly referred to, if there is a very plain cause and effect nature happening. This moves us on to exploring how a small or skewed perspective perpetuates these disingenuous practices.

For as big as I’d like to believe my perspective is on at least a few important matters, I understand that it is infinitely small. Of course, I’ll never get credit for my humility on that matter, but it’s whatev. What bugs me is how many people feel, not just that they have authority, but that are in fact THE authority on something. What truly makes this upsetting for me is that I venture that this hubris is not from spending 30 years in a library memorizing and getting published, but instead is a manifestation of how passionately they feel about something. Good luck compelling any change in someone like that.

To me, it only seems to make sense to want change when there is a problem and/or goal. Perhaps the most change only happens when there is a combination of both, but who knows. I would want to change how we educate people in this country because of obvious problems. My goal would be not to just improve a school or two, but to utterly reform the structure in a way to promote passion for learning and productive, willing people into society. A further goal would be enough of these people to alleviate other problems that arise when someone is uneducated, unmotivated, and underappreciated. Essentially, I want to change specific problems because their waves of influence will alleviate many more.

You will never “feel” your way to the proper head on the Hydra of problems. It takes a willingness to be objective. You must take responsibility for and action against the results of your analysis. You have to devise and enforce actual consequences when something or someone is wrong. This also speaks to why people don’t change. When you take into account both edges of that sword, you can also say that it not necessarily reasonable or the best thing for people to change what can be assessed as a negative or bad situation. The only way I think I can make sense of this is to talk in terms of family.

It seems to be a theme of existence to have one or more fucked up parents, step parents, or siblings. They are as irrational as the day they threw sand on the playground and they still resent that you stole their dreams. 18 years of them giving you hell and you can finally say “fuck you” and go on your merry way. But wait, they’re paying for college. They bought your car. They have the only recipe for your favorite mint chocolate chip cookies. Is it worth it to cut all ties and see if you can find your own way to pay and support yourself? Probably not. It is at this point that the ever important perspective needs to shine. No, realizing that everyone hates their families doesn’t make putting up with yours any easier, but realizing that you are capable of reacting properly towards, and conceptualizing, their behavior can.

Tammi, or my “mom,” is crazy. When she accuses me of studying witchcraft, I have more options than to get pissed off and write a three page email in protest. I can say, she is extremely weak minded. She is disappointed with herself and her family’s past. She’ll never accomplish more than being an adequate to exceptional secretary, nor does she have any knowledge or drive to express herself in any form beyond that of an insecure and petty dictator. Does someone of my mental caliber and personal respect dignify a person like that? No, so I won’t talk to it. I won’t pretend it makes sense and give it a stage. As long as the school money keeps flowing, I understand there isn’t even a real place to fix what isn’t a real problem. If anything, the only thing I would try to fix is how long offspring are practically forced to remain financially dependent in the first place.

My perspective on the matter doesn’t pretend like the faux expectations about love for one’s mother make any sense. I don’t wrestle with my anger for days and pretend that if I am angry at you it has something to do with unresolved feelings about her. Why is this hard for people? Why is being direct, rational, and honest in your assessment of yourself and other people a literal phobia? No, it isn’t always pleasant to truly feel that you are capable of atrocious thoughts or actions. I know how much you hate it when I make you say, and thus equate, that the “love” for your boy or girlfriend amounts to “well, he’s kinda funny and we hang out a lot” or “I don’t want to be alone.” How can anything be more painful and degrading than pretending you don’t have these thoughts? What purpose does perpetual resent and guilt serve you?

The tragedy is that there are people just like me who simply think and accept, and are overwhelmingly happier and better adjusted than most could ever hope to be. It’s not a secret why they are my friends. It’s not magic that they don’t hear condescension, anger, and sociopathy when we talk. If you want to compel change you have to be the leader of yourself. Even after you choose to do that, you have to guard against the problems that frequently plague leaders. Things like, distracting yourself with superficial and meaningless tasks or people to avoid your mental responsibility, thinking so much you make yourself sick, or settling with a smaller or meager standard that keeps you merely contented or at least stoves off insanity. In the beginning it will feel hard and be your job, but sticking with it will change and dictate who you are.

I personally think that nothing of significance can be done to reform or improve anything in a situation where there aren’t people who grasp and handle themselves. (haha) There won’t be a massive global shift in human rights, drug reform, health care, or any other of the myriad of complex and diverse problems until the leaders are motivated towards objective beneficial change instead of profit. This includes not just money, but power, protection, and influence. Whether you’re hiding behind lawyers and paid politicians or religious dogma, you should not be allowed to benefit from playing off of ignorance and fear. If it’s established that not only is it irresponsible to get too big to fail, but it’s a bad idea to get too big in the first place, we can start to identify and deal with not just specific problems, but problems that don’t carry dramatic or inconceivable implications.

Do you want to be a victim of corporate interest and waves of public feelings and opinions? Our world has already been there and done that with our problems. Do you like the idea of your life laid out in front of you? A “destiny” or sorts to live and die with the tide. If Captain Planet got one thing right it’s that the power is yours. If you understand that and use it right, you’ll find happiness, you’ll recognize opportunities, fix problems, and inspire others. Until then, I’m happy to run my game of pissing you off with endless questions and assessments while touting my know-it-all bad boy attitude ;).

[214.7] How To Read My Blogs

….my blogs.

Note: This and my next blog are in the wake of long ass discussions with Jake George.

It has been brought to my attention that when I write it may be very easy to misconstrue, get your feelings hurt, or otherwise find some way to massively fuck up in how to read my little blogs. With that in mind I decided to provide a set of things you should probably keep in mind before you decide to dive into my thoughts. Now, this is not for those of you who understand that for years I have in fact been writing in English. Nor should you bother with this if I have some sort of emotional hold over you, because frankly, you’re simply not going to believe me and get all flustered anyway.

When I write, if I am not using your name, I’m not talking about you. Yes, I have a recurrence of the days or months events, and you may have been there, or you may feel as negatively about what transpired as I do, but that doesn’t mean you are the topic or even relevant to a later point. I have “called out” specific people in the past about some bullshit action of theirs, and yes it was antagonistic, specific, and was a signal of how little patience I have for those actions, and how quickly I want them to be publicly ridiculed. Be aware, I never just run into a problem and rush to put it on Facebook. From my point of view, you literally have to do everything in your power to refuse diffusing something before it gets big, practically asking for it, before I mention you’ve crossed my thoughts. I care even less about your drama than a random reader who’s never met you.

Apparently, I write or think without a heart. If someone is a friend who no longer acts like a friend, I stop regarding them. I don’t think about them, I literally could not give two shits what goes on in their day to day. When I detail my reasoning, very pointed and play by play of how and why I mentally delete people, it does not mean I don’t give a shit about anyone or am somehow unable to have friends. If this isn’t like “what the fuck did you say that for” obvious for you, you probably shouldn’t bother reading. If you are prone to making insanely ridiculous logical jumps like these, you will fair terribly when it comes to understanding what I’m saying.

I am very dismissive of your feelings. I know feelings can be geared, manifested, and given perspective with proper mental vigor and practice. When someone “reacts emotionally” to something I say, all I’m telling myself is “An irrational person would of course behave and say what they did.” I do not empathize with “feeling my way through my actions.” I like to pretend thoughts and decisions compel me to do things, not physical responses. This does not mean I deny the existence or power of feelings, but I have no patience for them. So, when I go after a religious belief, or harmful action, or failing situation, I truly and completely disregard how you felt, I just state the facts. Call me insensitive I suppose.

Finally, the majority of what I write is me following a line of thought and drawing necessary conclusions. I report, rehash, and reword more than anything. Most of what prompts me to write is people’s own views as conveyed to me through their mouths. If I learn something or say something about religion or relationships, it’s not because I have some grudge or open wound that can only be dressed by bitching. I try to speak plainly and factually, and I want to be engaged in the same manner. I want to be challenged and put in a place to get as many details out as possible. Unfortunately, people hate details. Details make them feel uninformed, pissed off, or drives them to denial and indifference. This is why I don’t write for you, but it’s endlessly redeeming and uplifting when you like or agree with something because it is quintessentially how I feel and think.

[214.6] Not Good Enough

I’m going to run with the premise that most people are “good.” In order for me to do so I will state a few conditions that must be true in order for someone to be considered “good.” A good person does not kill unjustly nor steal things of consequence. A good person is disposed to helping others or at least a feeling to want to help others even when they don’t. Honestly, at this point I already can’t think of anything else that could make someone qualify as anything more than merely “good” or maybe even better stated “not necessarily bad.”

I figure there is a sliding scale of what it means to be good, but nonetheless most people would consider themselves at the very least good if not so much as moral and decent. I suppose I want to explore these ideas in the context of our current life situation and how things will or won’t change. I recently had a discussion with Jake George about what can compel change and both of us, unfortunately, can’t see much of a point beyond mass extinction or extermination, so I would like to see if that relative conclusion is justified.

Often, when we describe something as good we see little reason to make it better. Good can plant pleasant feelings of accomplishment and worth. Good is encouraging. Of those who find themselves trying to make things better, many times they can find themselves trapped in a world of “never getting good enough.” I’m positive there is some cliché about not over cleaning or eating that I’m missing that speaks to the point that something will never be perfect and you should leave well enough alone. There is something that the people who may tend to over analyze have that those who strive for “good” don’t. They have motivation.

Motivation precedes change. A good person or a good system will rarely and slowly change, and not necessarily in any specified or positive direction. Our criminal justice system is “good” at catching and convicting, but it lacks any motivation to guard against wrongful or pointless convictions. A motivated system concerned with money and/or human well-being would collectively fight to stop racking up drug convictions for example. A good system/person will follow the rules just enough to get whomever is next in rank off their back.

Both Jake and I think there is another motivator besides mass death though, and that is self-actualization. It is finding something that intrigues you, challenges you, makes you endlessly passionate, and enabling you to do as you will with it. Currently, we have a system that attempts to “mass actualize.” We prod children through school like cattle, and proclaim we are getting better educated because we have a tried and true educational system. The glaring inadequacies and decades old complaints about school are too well known to be gone into here, but how little they tend to actually motivate is why I think they will always fail at actually teaching something.

This means I do believe people will convince themselves the classes they are taking are relevant or interesting. When enough time, money, and mental effort is spent on something, you will find some if not many ways to justify taking 4 months to learn something 2 days on Wikipedia and Google would have taught you.

Not to stray too far from an initial point I guess I was making, what are the implications of a bunch of good people inhabiting the earth? It means nothing. If you are a simply a good person you are almost certainly willing to watch as life happens, refrain from delving too far outside your moral scheme, and can die contented with the rules you’ve set up within the rules of a good system. When injustice happens you do not believe it falls on your shoulders because you do not take the responsibility of motivated action. The reason starving African children commercials don’t bother you is because you’ve never wished them ill will and can convince yourself any effort you put forth would get polluted by some corrupted motivation that’s asking for your money. Neither thought necessarily incorrect or unconvincing.

The problem comes in demonizing motivation. There’s an inherent problem in truly realizing and being responsible for a free and powerful will. The easy story I constantly hear is from my fellow dreamer and starter friends. They explain to someone a big idea and it’s met with hostility, doubt, and often fear or ridicule. There seems to be a deep-seeded distrust, anger, and fear towards the doers or arbiters of change. I think these feelings arise in people who have never been taught, nor found the will, to understand how, why, and when things need to change. Because to live in our society means it is good to get angry at those who would threaten your “moral foundation” and distrust people with “different agendas.”

When you realize the implications and power of enacting your will, you automatically take on how far you want to push it. Who you’re willing to work with, what you’re willing to sacrifice, and how you’ll defend what is essentially the expression of your being. This is not a light responsibility and it is not hard to see why most don’t bother to venture such roads. I would argue that in order to have a lasting species, you simply have to get over it. An ignorance of oneself is going to debase and confuse more than any amount of ignorance of another subject.

Motivation doesn’t die, and part of the good news is that it is contagious. I think this is the only reason we’ve managed to get as “far” as a species as we have. On the backs of a few who are motivated towards good, civilizations can thrive. The problem comes from how and why people are motivated. It seems to be a harsh reality that you have to go through some amount of bullshit that compels you to want to react and behave differently. The ones best at regulating their emotions had to deal with years of parental fighting perhaps. Hopefully, after said life experience it generates that “I don’t want to be like them” response and pains are taken to be better. Of course, there are going to be those who take that example and run with it. “If it ‘works’ to illicit this response, I can do it too.” It would be hard to imagine someone that can’t empathize with that thought or see how things play out. And thus we have the inherent distrust of people's motivations.

People are easily manipulated if only because they’re motivations can be known. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing for someone to know how you tick when getting the best out of you means getting the best for themselves. A sure way to avoid being or fostering a leech is to have your own goals and general means of obtaining them. To me, this is impeded when the majority of people just want to live “the good life.” I suppose what I would like to see instead is people living a passionate life. I would love to hear people stand up for virtues and literally fight to preserve the dignity of what they respect and admire. Another problem seems to just be a numbers game. Surely thousands of letters and emails were mailed to our government or BP or Goldman Sachs executives. Protests and rallies sprang up, endless articles written etc. But nothing really changed. Those CEOs and companies still making millions, our leaders still holding seats.

I don’t want you to be good. I want you to be excited. I don’t want you to hate, but motivated to fix or responsible and capable enough to avoid and/or punish justly. The worst kinds of people are those who deliberately and frequently distort the truth to breed anger and fear. These people are motivated no doubt, but are not even remotely hard to identify (I’m looking at you FOX). Therefore, the best kinds of people are the ones who fight to preserve and teach the information we have. The people who read the famous quotes, business guide books, and trends of their era and know, explicitly know, there is an endless array of potential and influence they can exert and are willing to be responsible for.

Teaching and enabling are more than handing something about and saying “here it is.” You have to put it to work. You have to weave whatever you’re teaching into your life and show and explain how you wouldn’t be you without it. You have to express the passion that your knowledge and your life brings you and make people want it so badly they can’t help but feel the same way. It’s not being someone people want to be, it’s being someone that they have to be. Because they know if they aren’t, they aren’t really living. They know that by not holding themselves to that standard they won’t be able to do anything but get by and remain good enough. It’s the absolute hardest form of manipulation, but I have to believe the only honorable form there is.

[214.5] Something Or Another About Hate, Desperation, And Pathetic Hypocracy

I’m going to try and avoid “rant blog” style and try to illustrate the deeper points and implications I’ve come to after a revealing discussion with my dad.

Why can’t it be that people are “just” fill-in-the-blank problem? It’s not enough for John to “just” be a little childish and immature; he has to send inflammatory texts, draw lines in the sand about friendships, and equate his value with the items placed around the house. It’s not enough for Javon to be “just” a bit of a hypocrite about money; she has to throw efforts to save her some in your face, spend it flagrantly on people she’s complained don’t pay her back, and whisper to new roommates about Sam’s finances like she has a clue or inch to speak. She would “by chance” choose to say “corn you didn’t pay for” only a few days after I shared a snow crab and shrimp meal she, uh oh, didn’t pay for. It’s not enough to hear through various grapevines how many “friends” I have who “had such a crazy awesome, etc cliché” on a party night, and have endless amounts of shit to spew about said parties a few weeks later.

In my own “family” I have people with money who refuse to invest it and spend it instead on random shit they don’t need or use. They make unnecessary renovations to my grandma’s old house under the guise that they want to move her back in there. You know renovations like a hard wood slippery floor instead of carpet for my grandma who can’t walk. Things like flat screen tvs in the bathroom for my grandma who can’t do much but stare comatose into the abyss. I have uncles take my aunt and her husband out to eat on father’s day while my dad who works as an iron worker comes home to take care of my grandma. I have an aunt has borrowed and lost insane amounts of money and refuses to see my grandma for more than an hour or so a week. She also refuses to come by if one of my uncles is there. My aunt is 52.

Less I confuse my point with these digressions; people don’t change. Odds are if you’re a hypocritical childish asshole now, you’ll be one when you’re my aunt and uncles’ ages. If there is any confusion why I am so quick to cut assholes out of my life, it is because I understand that they will forever bring me down. I choose not to invite them nor indulge them in their pathetic want of a life.

I perceive much of life in cycles. We live in a country where an oil company gets paid to bypass regulatory and safety measures. They get paid to kill, and hasten our imminent demise. Surely, they are not the first “big corporation” archetype to fuck things up with no consequence. I must agree with my dad on the idea that things will reach a point where the earth is so fucked, people are so poor and disenfranchised, it will boil over into a revolution. This is not a proper fix or long term strategy. This is just what happens when the lazy and stupid reach the end of their complacency. Yes, this means they are still lazy and stupid.

I find myself constantly asking how these people can live with themselves. I never parade myself as a saint, but I don’t think anything I’ve ever done, particularly when I started taking an overactive sense of responsibility for my actions, even remotely touches the kind of assholes I’m surrounded by. I don’t make it a habit of bumming cigarettes, alcohol, rides, entertainment, or food from anybody. I don’t lie outright to people’s faces. I don’t have anything I would only say in private that I wouldn’t say to your face. I don’t have this…need?....to denigrate and shit on things I claim make me happy.

I am very proud of the fact that I can identify those people and circumstances in which I am happy. I still, literally, everyday remind myself how good I have it to be in this kick-ass house with a kick-ass projector, new computer, car (albeit a poorly made one), legit friends amongst the torrent of assholes, and a thousand other little things that make my life ridiculously awesome. With that in mind, I am adopting a harsher policy about the assholes I keep. I’ve been giving inches, and now I won’t. I don’t expect you to excuse my behavior, and I won’t yours.

I’ve never felt the urge to give my real friends anything even resembling an ultimatum. That’s why if you somehow feel like you’re in an “us vs them” scenario, you put yourself there. I act on my behalf and I react to your bullshit. I am willing to take an infinite number of chances on making new friendships before I’ll allow one person to drag me down to their level. But AHHHHH this is all sounding so gloomy and angry…

I’m in the group celebrating on our species downward spiral into extinction. I have a vast array of dreams for the future, and how I want to prosper and help others to prosper as well. I simply can’t be the best kind of person I want to be by allowing my time to be focused for too long on people who can’t understand, or don’t care to, acknowledge that dignity and respect must be honored if I’m going to be persuaded they’re real people. I need friends who understand consequence and accountability.

There’s just too much to say. Scattered and random blog paused….broken record effect initiated…

“Is it worth it can you even hear me?…::scratch::…is it worth it can you even hear me?…::scratch::.. is it worth it can you even hear me?”

3…..2…..1……System reboot

2nd chance at finding clarity: engaged

I want people to stop making themselves so easy to hate. I don’t want to genuinely feel like nothing will change. I want standards. Maybe I’m fucking crazy, but I don’t readily invite people who abuse women to share drugs and alcohol with. Even if I can understand where they came from, something like that should change the nature of that relationship. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that I would walk into a friend’s house, drink their alcohol, burn their carpet, fog up their house, leave dishes and trash, and never once feel an obligation to help pick up. Even being relatively broke I feel obligated to pay back Schroeder who will think nothing of saying it’s on him in order for us to go out. I put debts onto myself. I feel burdened by the idea of not being equal or capable of providing for extraneous indulgences. Why is it that for everyone one person I know who isn’t like this, I know 20 who are?

I want to feel honored that you choose to be my friend. I want there to be a level of respect and understanding that other people envy. I want great talks, movie nights, summer outings, shared experiences. I want us to be able to teach each other new things. I want honesty even if it means leaving out details. I want memories of the fun times and dreams of the goals we help enable each other to work towards. If you’re my friend you’re not a passing acquaintance I happened by because I was roomed in Ashton. You’re not just a pretty face to try and fuck around with at parties. Whether you feel “special” or not means nothing because you simply matter to me.

With so much of our lives seemingly out of our control I will always seek grounding in myself and the company I keep. I’m going to try and be the nicest, most honest, and most generous fucking asshole you’ve ever met, and depending on how you read that statement will tell you everything you need to know about our friendship.

Gosh Nick P., so dramatic…

[214.4] Nuance

As with any blog with religion as even a remote subject these things will happen. I will find myself feeling redundant and uninteresting (actually, I managed to come to different insights I’m proud to say), the random “friends” who’ve never read or heard me say anything on the topic will be open to all sorts of judgments and interpretations of where I’m coming from, and some will wonder why I so actively seek to damage relationships. With that in mind, there is now a reason only a select number of people can read my shit on here anymore.

I’m amazed, if you will, at the level of detail involved in any given situation and how any single aspect of that situation can send a wave of influence in any direction. To me, it speaks to the idea of how, unstable, perhaps everything is. It’s not even in just the details of someone’s life that urges them towards a specific faith. It goes farther into how and why they choose to interpret those details. It calls into question what they are even able of perceiving or comprehending before presented with a new idea or situation.

It’s this instability that influences my view in my previous blog to be “resolved” to the idea that nothing will change. Now, on its face this seems contradictory. How can I think nothing will change when it all rests on an unstable foundation. The question though speaks again to the nuances. The fact of the matter is, whether everyone believed in magic sky daddies or not, it does not remove the deeper unchanged foundation of fear and uncertainty. Whether every environmental and human rights foundation were the richest companies or not, it wouldn’t stop people from feeling greed. If every great idea had a platform and served to make the lives of millions a monochrome better, it would not escape one person who had the desire, resolve, or influence to pollute if not destroy it.

The problem, to me, is at the individual level. The answer to why has many answers; uninformed, not caring, unable, scared, deluded. The sad fact that to some level we all suffer to some extent of all of these conditions. While marred within these hindrances, or plagues, we establish our institutions from which to draw insight and inspiration; churches, governments, social hierarchies in general. Our ideas about truth and justice are embedded within these frameworks. So maybe I can denote the problem in a clearer way, the absolution of the individual. This seems too incomplete and not speaking to the deeper issues.

We create the establishments for reasons, albeit many bad ones along with the good, but reasons nonetheless. Where did we draw the reasons before the institutions existed? My initial thought is that pool of uniformed and scared instinct. At the heart of existence, at least that we can reasonably surmise so far, we are driven to reproduce. This does not take hundreds of years of moral debate and theological philosophy, but if those things exist in any capacity that facilitates more reproduction, then they are considered beneficial. This, another reason to not be overly dismayed at the idea that things won’t change.

But not to lose focus. We absolve ourselves, behave in relatively sensible ways from a genetic point of view, and are beleaguered by the haunting facts of our nature and existence. Now this brings up an interesting conundrum. If, at our core, we want to reproduce and create this fantastic future for our offspring, why are so many pitted against science and the ideas that will help them better understand how to live? I have a hard time believing that many people genuinely don’t want be alive and this is just some dramatic cultural “secret” suicide pact. I also don’t really believe people genuinely want their offspring to suffer.

Here we come back to the individual. I don’t think people even remotely appreciate their impact on the world. And yes, I am guilty of it too. We are resolved to the idea that you can never really see how you are perceived in someone else’s head, and therefore behave as if we aren’t really being perceived. But what of insecurity and social stigma? Well, maybe these are not really about other peoples’ thoughts, but your fear and misunderstanding of those thoughts. As much as we absolve ourselves in institutions, it doesn’t erase the plagues. What plagues you is part of what you take your individual self to be, and maybe it’s even the greater extent of most people. How necessary an escape becomes then.

In that regard, science can come off cold and uncaring, which pragmatically it is. Fundamental constants and objective observational accounts have little regard for your happiness. Science is the pursuit of understanding the natural world. This father figure who has been killing you for at least 200,000 years over every mistake you make and with every phenomenon you don’t understand. Perhaps we have a hard grained inclination to fear treading on the knowledge base of this powerful realm we’ve been punished by for so long. An individual at this point needs to be able to feel like they have a decision. I can’t even make the statement that they have to make a decision, or that they should pick one over the other. When presented with a dilemma of fear, one needs to feel empowered, and they need to know how to keep those feelings in check. This could circumvent some of the natural tendency to stay afraid, avoid, and become defensive.

I think the pursuit of knowledge and truth, moreover, science, does this. You will find smart people who speak 5 ancient languages, spent their careers studying the bible, and still think Jesus came back from the dead, literally. To me, through their self-empowering exploration and opinion, they’ve only managed to develop a proclivity to defend any number of unchecked and unresolved ideas they have about life. If each of us is a king, and our arguments are castle walls, no matter the design or number of people whom we put upon them in our defense, it won’t cure our brain cancer. The main differences between people are how and why they accept information.

When an objective person is presented with an idea, it doesn’t matter what it is, they do not accept it absolutely. This is hyper, and in my opinion, necessary rationality. If you are a fan of saying “we can’t know everything” then we can keep a healthy skepticism about everything. When a subjective person is presented with an idea, they only care about how it fits into their mental and social contexts. As I tried to show earlier, if your mental and social context arose from a “bad” place like early church ideas, some edified political philosophy, or even just your really cool but really misinformed friends and family, in the long run you do no favors to yourself or your offspring by holding those idea absolute. And yes I understand this is where people argue for the cohesiveness of their family life etc, but hey even Jesus said to break those ties and follow him. Not like people do that anyway but…..

Of course, it’s here we get into more speculation than anything, but I think reasonable inferences can be made through examples. Who’s to say a belief in a god won’t be the most esteem promoting idea 50 years from now that leads to some massive overhaul in how we treat each other and view happiness? That isn’t the kind of question that really matters though. The questions that matter, that we can draw inferences from, come in the details. Can we infer that it is unhealthy and unproductive to cut off a little girls clitoris? I would hope if you’ve managed to make it to the internet there would be a resounding yes in the heads of my readers. Can we infer that an institution that harbors and defends the rape of young boys, even deaf young boys, does not have the best interests of its followers or alleged beliefs in mind? Again, please don’t hesitate to say yes.

What happens when we get to the more detailed questions is an ability to start saying yes or no. And for the record, this is explicitly the area there should be “debates” and arguments because the answers are not always clear. Is it a good idea to believe you exist after you die? What does that idea to do an individual? For example, I do not believe I will exist in any form of a heaven let alone hell, and it helps motivate me to appreciate the friends I have, take control, mostly, of my disposition, and glorify the work and influence I put into the world. It is one of the most empowering thoughts that I have a chance, however small, to be whatever the hell I want. For others, it could be the exact opposite. While I don’t actually believe those who say they would just go off and rape and murder people if there was no heaven or god, I think they are speaking at least to the very human problems of accountability and recognition. From there you can explore better ways of recognizing, and maybe even revamp what it means to be accountable.

Further nuanced questions. What impact does someone’s faith have on society? The plain truth of the matter is that faith alone, very obviously, is used as the excuse for extremely good and extremely bad things. Is faith in and of itself bad all together? When, why, and should we believe anything without evidence? Do we just need a better vocabulary for how we talk about the whole issue? Maybe you don’t really have faith, unquestioning, undeniable, and unshakable. Maybe you have a chain of life occurrences and a list of good and bad reasons that would dispose you to landing in a quasi-religious vein. No, it’s not as concise as, I have faith, or I believe in god, but is it reasonable to think this way is perhaps more accurate? When you break down someone’s life into moments and points of decision can you not better analyze and discuss where those decisions came from and how those moments happened? But, is this a process someone who absolves themselves of individuality, even if only superficially, likely to take?

In come again the individuals. Someone who is not as prone to joining up and fitting in still needs a context, a framework, and an ability resolve their own realities. If you have good reason to distrust the group/s, (see rape protection) because they suffer from parallel tendencies and internal discrepancies, you have to turn inward. You have to make it your priority to assess yourself in the context of this world so as not to subject yourself to the same things you view as problems. You are compelled to accept a problem for what it is. You are compelled to change. This cannot happen when you focus on adding another brick in your wall instead of realizing it’s 2010, Obama’s drone is still likely to annihilate you. See what I did there? Obama’s drone is like the science that will obliterate bad ideas and arguments….ha, and in the explosion it will illuminate the world that much more…and I lost that analogy before it began.

Back to seriousness though. This is a gigantic PR problem that my heroes of the atheist world and yes, I, have suffered from. It’s too easy to call someone deluded and say they should get over it. It doesn’t account for the nuances of thought or the holes that doing as such would create. I’ve been trying to get out of the habit of being extremely harsh in this way, and I think this blog is basically reflecting on why. I like to make it personal. When I question someone on their faith or alleged beliefs, I can’t help but ask direct questions and fish for specific answers. To me, the idea is we aren’t just basically stupid, we just aren’t engaged in a manner that prompts and expects intelligent answers. I imagine this is why it’s so easy for me to get headaches out of people. My skin still kind of crawls when I hear someone say they don’t believe in evolution or some comment to the effect that it is ridiculous or unproven. Almost in the same breath, ten seconds later, they’ll tell me they haven’t investigated or studied it even remotely. So how can I get angry or distressed by the statement that doesn’t really make sense? Even if I vehemently distrusted Einstein, I can’t say relativity is stupid and crazy if I can’t even begin to understand what it took to arrive at that theory. Nor does this mean you can’t learn why you can trust in his theory.

What bothers me more is how ready people are to make the claim in the first place. And actually, the worst feeling is when I want or can provide them with an opportunity to learn more and they absolutely want nothing to do with it. That’s when I feel I’m at the forefront of our demise. If someone genuinely offers me a website, book, or article on the bible or their beliefs, I read it. I then proceed to quote it, source check it, compare it to other sources of information, and break it down to what seems to be reasonable and what isn’t. To me, that’s respect and personal responsibility. If I quote the bible and get something wrong or source a textual critic you can prove to be fraudulent, I accept the clarification and cease using that person as source. Why do I not get the same level of respect? If we’re friends, or intellectuals, or just reasonable people, why am I not allowed to expect certain things about your behavior when it comes to dealing with information?

For me, I’m not really valuable to you or myself if I don’t have good reasons for my actions. If I can’t construct a context or line of reasoning to justify the things I put the most thought towards, what the hell was I doing with my brain power? Why should you rely on me for anything if I can’t even place where my own decisions are coming from? Would I really have anyone take the time to read four pages of my inferences and gleaned ideas if the message was about a new book I dug up that says we’ll all be living on Mars in ten years because god got angry at how we treated the earth? There is a standard I hold myself to, and it is one I wish I could “convert” everyone to. It keeps mine and others’ interests at heart because it identifies and understands, mostly explicitly, how and why those interests exist.

Your decisions affect everything. Your fear makes others afraid. Your lack of knowledge leaves others uninformed. People will suffer your existence, and I don’t think this is what most people seek to do to each other. In order to change anything though, you have to accept that you’re never just hurting yourself. Your best intentions don’t speak to the consequences. You don’t just lead your life.

[214.2] Grandpa Syndrome

There’s a special kind of safety in numbers.

I think there is a sort of duality in how we look at ourselves. Some of the freakiest moments and thoughts I have are on nights like these. Nights where I’ve stayed up, done nothing but think, catch myself staring in the mirror as if my reflection is going to get away with something I won’t notice. Everyone asleep, vulnerable. Certain truths about people’s behavior and our positions in life really set in deep. I’m sure watching a cop show where death and tragedy are routine and displayed almost as callously as people feel in real life doesn’t help. But not to lose focus.

The idea of people taking things for granted is weighing incredibly heavily on my thoughts. You don’t have to merely believe that I remind myself everyday of what I have and what I’m willing and capable of working towards. At the same time, I feel as if something is dying in me. My insatiable perception keeps my eyes working and my ears tuned. Moments tick by. I feel there are times when I’d have to fight to persuade people they ever existed.

People are a double edged sword. I’ve been reciting the line “no man is an island” endlessly in my head for the last few hours. When you’re alone, you face your endless potential. You have a looming and impending freedom caged only by your mind. What can you convince yourself of? The simple fact being, anything. Is that where you have to be to realize you can’t trust anyone? Is that where you have to be to stoke fires of sociopathy? Or perhaps it’s less dramatic. Maybe it’s just the place where you finally understand how entitled to life you are. It could be where you go secure the validity of your manic feelings. But then, why would you put in any work to sort through that mess? Just get a friend.

The power lies. The power lies in you getting to believe that you’ve mastered and understood yourself. Every mirror you employ qualifies you. Every outlet clearly labeled for how much it can take. Your thoughts, yourself: Terms that you no longer have to take responsibility for because they can be shared. They can be corroborated, changed, or forgotten. It doesn’t really matter, as long as they just don’t have to be yours. How terrifying it would be to face a reality where you’re responsible. Why try to survive in a world where you take the blunt of every broken relationship and every unanswered yell into the darkness.

I’ve been trying to understand why I carried on the way I did the first few months of living here. I’ve deemed it “grandpa syndrome.” I don’t need five couches to sit on. I don’t have to wash your dishes or clean up after stoners, take out your trash, dance around your feelings, or even pretend you’re worthy of making eye contact. I hardly think that someone of my strapping caliber to make rape and spousal abuse jokes about birthmarks and rape victims, while they’re sitting next to me, is trying to respect and preserve a sense of “common courtesy” or “social norm.” Yet nonetheless, I’ve spent money, time, maybe even credibility when it came towards sticking up for people who weren’t worth it, paradoxically, towards even more people who aren’t worth it.

I’ve had someone tell me, “give them time” and “not everyone can deal with it or think on those levels.” In my mind, time isn’t slowing down. To my knowledge, I wasn’t born a genius, nor were the people who I generally consult with, and somehow they manage. This leads me to conclude something from a point of desperation. Gifts, favors, time and effort, concessions, and silence are the yearning for there to be some example of how I wish everyone would behave when it’s appropriate. It’s a metaphorical hole. The more I dig towards a magic treasure chest of understanding and genuine appreciation, the easier it becomes to forget I’m in a huge fucking hole. I find it rather sad I would even characterize this treasure chest as magic, given that I know everything in it can and does exist.

“They didn’t ask for anything.” Another thing I heard. You have to wait until someone completely breaks down, bottoms out, and comes crawling to you before they’ll be able to conjure some long lasting personal reason to appreciate your help. Bullshit. These are the people who ask for everything, endlessly. They cry out for validation, they’ll bum a few hundred smokes, fries, or rides without even realizing they got something. Most importantly, they ask to be perceived in a very specific way without putting in any real work. And what way is that?

Not dysfunctional. Damn any hard fought, truly personal pursuit or cause that speaks to your very core. As long as you can check the box labeled assimilate, the test is over. Now deemed a “working” gear in some bastardized semblance of a machine, you’ve found your purpose, meaning, and understanding. I should stop and make something clear. You know it’s a lie. You absolutely and completely understand it’s a lie and how you make it work. But as long as you have your machine you get to do all sorts of new and exciting things to distract you from the lie. Plug her in and all of a sudden the food you eat is the most amazing thing you’ve ever tasted. The same ten dollar bill can be used to pay the bills and a shoe shine man. Your time, your ever fleeting time spent resenting and building walls, is always validated and reinforced by your other spinning gears. Just don’t try to turn too fast.

I’ve been drawn to the yin yang symbol since I first saw it. Not because of the philosophies or ideas behind it, I just really liked the symbol. The more I think on why, I keep returning to the word balance. I don’t regard balance as juggling school, work, and a girlfriend. Balance isn’t leveraging friends, nor is it exploiting others in the wake of how exploited you’ve felt. To me, balance is understanding you feel exploited, and that you can exploit, and then deciding to do neither. It’s knowing that if and when you lie, if done with poor judgment, you should expect to see, and own the feelings, of its ugly consequences.

In a way, I’ve acted with poor judgment. I took equality for granted. I believed that I could bring happiness (that hurt so much to type) to people who might not even be fit to spell the word let alone understand it. I thought work, risk, and honesty would create an environment that people would be begging for, not dying to escape from. When you put your values out there, the things that keep you centered, hopeful, and sane, and they are thrown in your face, you feel something want to die. It’s not even that you just want to give up, it’s that you want to not care. Your desire becomes the antithesis of your mangled reality and failed (at least in that moment) dreams.

At the end of the day though, I’m still able go: I’m mutha fuckin Nick P. I see where and when what I do matters. I respect and appreciate the people who understand and love the same values I do. I know who and what to trust. Nothing about your fucked up buddy system machine or depressed, lazy, and scared bullshit will be what does me in. I’m not going to ask when you’ll get it or why you don’t care. I’ve wasted enough time with that bullshit. I’m setting the mandate. You own yourself, or I do.

[214.1] Denial Amongst Other Things

I won’t stop writing until my headache goes away.

I feel like I see everything. I keep myself positive, but the negative doesn’t disappear. I hate that I see the flaws in people most. If I can’t deal with people, it becomes infinitely harder to get the things I want. I hate that I can’t trust people. I hate that I allow myself to be played by this primal “need” or urge to feel connected and able to open up to people. Why do I feel that? I do I think I need to trust people like hatsam with things about my life. Why do I need to have conversations with these people and struggle to find things about them that I can empathize with? I guess I don’t. I really don’t. Maybe, at bottom I am just simply meant to feel, think, and be alone. At some level. Maybe the key to being as real as possible is to be the best faker possible. Say all the right things, make everyone smile, and “deny” all the truth and objectiveness out there. At least make it look like you’re denying it. What purpose does that serve though? Other than making you “fit in” with people who cause you stress and love to get lost in their lies. That isn’t the whole case though, right? It’s isn’t just a ball of stress and bullshit the whole time or you wouldn’t volunteer yourself to be in positions around them.

Are you just convincing yourself of this? Are you making yourself believe that the fun you have is genuine or is it a hard fought struggle to squeeze what you can out of people who pretend they don’t understand? You feel like you’re trying to convince yourself that you have fun. This seems to mean that you need to reassess and think harder about how and why you’re having fun in those scenarios. You have fun when you’re being funny, when people have real conversations with you, when you make money, when you accomplish something you set your mind to. While you don’t endorse the peoples’ behaviors that come to your parties, you know that you set it up, you’re the one making a little money, you’re the one who can potentially find someone or something of value that will aide you down the line. You’re happy making idiots laugh, knowing their idiots.

You have to keep hatsam at arms length. He doesn’t want to tell you some “big” shit that should come up in conversation, you don’t give him another inch. You chanced it because you’re human, not because you’re stupid. Human means you have a genuine ever present itch to connect with people. It means you will fight your rationality, destroy your body, dive head first into two feet of water to assimilate and play off of the group dynamic and vibe. It does not mean you are always comfortable. It does not mean you won’t be made a hypocrite. It does not mean you can convince yourself of any value to the situation beyond knowing that you’re just a stupid ape who wants to be around other stupid apes for shots in the dark at something more fun and more fulfilling.

God, I would love to just be working. I would love to accomplish and make deals. I want to create, play music, record, make movies, play sports, learn tricks. The level of commitment I have to these things would bring me more joy than just doing them in and of themselves. I could play my guitar for an hour after class every day. I know that to play at the level I want, I’d have to practice 8 to 10 hours a day and potentially have a teacher to show me a few tricks. I know I could create some cool pictures and advertising things, but it would take the hours of lessons in photoshop to really do it right. I want to know my time is going towards the higher dignity of the action, not just spent “doing what I enjoy” as a pathetic excuse for being bored or desperate to look like I’m accomplishing something.

You do laugh at and with these people. Fun is possible and is a good reason to be around someone.

You are alone. Deal with it. You know some real motherfuckers, but just like you, they can’t solve their shit anymore than you can. You guys can collectively bitch at the same level, but that doesn’t mean anything positive, outside of potentially alleviated headaches, can result. Is that a sick necessary consequence of our existence? That you can see the problems, know the people who can make it better, and always sit and watch because there are too many external factors to really get anything done? It seems like it, and it hurts to think it might be true, so let’s explore the other side and see if my head feels less shitty.

The other side: You get enough real people. They all take over a portion of what they are best at. They handle the people they can pick apart better than you. They teach? They force? They persuade? They enable? They do enable. They do the things that make a lot of people “happy” at once and sit in silence and understanding of what they’re doing and how it all works. So this seems to mean the problem lies with the real people. They either perpetuate the general level of bullshit, or they go down in a solo ball of flames in vehement opposition. The other side only able to see the “hypocrisy” and strident anger associated with it.

I have such a fucking headache. Walking around a new city. Done it. Eating at a place that served, at least to me, a mediocre meal and paying 15 dollars for it. Everyone is money grubbing. A better way to say that, everyone wants something they think will provide control and power. Whether you want something that gives you those things in a hippie commune or play by the real world’s rules, those are the things you want. They make you feel unimaginably good. They allow you to provide for those you care about. They allow you to fix problems quickly. But why are those problems there in the first place? The “wrong” people are merely after the same things you are, so it would appear that we are all after the wrong things. What are we after really? What “should” we be after?

I’ll throw out that what we should be after is balance. But a balance of what? Between what? Good and bad? Ideals and fakeness? Headaches and laughter? Is it a balance that we can even control? Is there some underlying law of the universe that is going to make things good or bad for you despite what you think you’ve done to improve your karma.

What if you truly are just destined to be fucked? What if you will just have to deal with everyone and everything from a point of hatred and frustration and there is nothing you can do about it? Every broken relationship, every failed business, every lost dollar, every lonely thought and suicidal night. What if that is what you are? Then you can’t just feel good about it. Then maybe you can’t just think yourself into happiness. Well, have I advocated merely thinking into happiness? It’s more of a process, practice. Thinking is definitely not making me happy right now. It’s causing me a stress headache. And how do I know it’s a stress headache? Because when I think about something I write, and it comes out brilliantly, or I explore some idea, it starts to fade out. This is why I won’t stop until the headache is gone. Somewhere in this everything currently beating the shit out of me will exist, and it won’t have to be crammed in one place.

Money. I am “worried” about money. I have to make enough to keep my roommates and live for one more year. It isn’t the biggest problem in the world, but there are a slew of pretty terrible necessary consequences of not maintain the kind equilibrium I’ve stumbled into currently. I really don’t want to have to deal with a roommate I can’t trust to not take my shit, go into my room, or not start fights over the dumbest shit.

What really bothers me is to think that there aren’t that many stupid people. I don’t know how I would deal with the reality where everyone is just as smart as me and can still manage to carry themselves in the way they do. I don’t know how to survive people like me, thinking about me and how I think, and still being able to get stoned every day. I don’t know how I could convince myself that I don’t care about my life in a year. I don’t know how I could not remind myself that something was a bad decision or that a friend was completely unreliable. I don’t know how I could manage to see literally hundreds of opportunities and convince myself that I need to stay in school. I don’t know how I could judge somebody so horrendously incorrectly that I might as well be lobotomized because there just aren’t any thoughts I am worthy to have. I don’t know how I could pretend not to hear. I don’t know how I could pretend not to see. I don’t know how I could be comfortable with being insanely lazy about something that involves people I should be relatively beholden to. I don’t know how I could spend all day every day playing a game of any nature. I don’t know how I could convince myself that the people I’m playing with are my friends. I don’t know how alcohol by itself is a good time. I don’t understand how making 90 percent of my conversations a reference to some youtube video is fun. I don’t understand wanting to listen to something in Japanese and reading the show I’m supposed to be watching. I don’t understand making a comment in a very snippy pointed manner like “Well then you shouldn’t have said easy!” and not realize it was pointed and snippy; then, if it were to ever be throw back at you, or a snippy pointed thing gets said about something else to you, you’d have a million and a half things to say about it to anyone with a set of ears.

I reveal way too much. My only saving grace is that I can always find a new set of people and work the game correctly again. I allowed my humanity to take me over. I allowed myself to fall into the same kind of ruts of the people I most despise. I can understand you fucking fuck of fucking assholes. I get it, I really fucking sickeningly do. Do I excuse myself? Do I shrug it off? Do I punish myself? Is it even possible to avoid? Is it even something I should treat as a major problem? Is there something wrong with me for even viewing “the human condition” of which I’ve subjected myself to, or been subjected, as this crazy inferior damaging ridiculousness to labor scorn upon? I’m sick of saying yes and no.

I can’t dignify denial. Denial I’m defining as a very direct and pointed understanding of something and behaving in a completely contradictory way. It’s literally running mentally and physically away from something that can, at the very least, be talked about if nothing else. You deny what you’re capable of. You deny how you feel. You deny who you’re real friends are. You deny what makes you happy. You deny that you know how to fix it. Is this why you never really care to understand or exist happily? Why you don’t fix problems. Because you deny they even exist? You truly don’t think they matter? You truly feel helpless. You truly feel alone, at all times, with little to no recourse but to do any and everything in your power to reinforce that wall of denial? That seems to make sense. I get headaches because I genuinely believe I can fix something. Because I am always convinced that I will bump into someone, something, some scenario that won’t make we want to bust out and break down out of anything more than excitement. If I am able to deny that it’s possible. If I am able to convince myself that this is my rut, that these are my people, that nothing, absolutely nothing I do, whether it makes me happy or sad for a fleeting moment, will ever change that, a sense of overall contentedness follows. Religion…this is why hell never actually bothers people because they’re already in the rut that they are saved or at least repentant.

The next question seems to be how to deal with a world of deniers. You can’t deny yourself or, well you’d probably just off yourself as that would be the only thing that made sense. The real problem is that you can’t really be sure that what you’re saying and doing are following from how you meant them to come across. When you give an order, and the order goes through, you can’t trust that it happened because you said the order. Some other “denial world” reason had to permeate that made people behave. They didn’t do it because they respect you, understand you, or even remotely care, they did it because they deny that you gave them the order, and they are doing it because they want to, will get some sort of satisfaction out of it, etc. Is this the source and kind of fun people are having at parties? They are denying the have homework, they are denying that the only reason a cute boy is talking to them is to sleep with them, they deny cigarettes and pot will damage their lungs, they deny they aren’t jealous or feeling as happy as someone else, so on so forth.

Well fuck. Then what does this mean about how it all got started and how deeply it runs? I would imagine it starts with the denial of death. What a great time you can have when you think you’re going to live forever..if you have somehow managed to convince yourself that’s a good idea. When you hate that your sibling or neighbor got something you didn’t, you deny the joy they have. You, every desperate to validate your pathetic notions and misunderstandings of a situation. I don’t even know if I could call this selfish given that it doesn’t even truly work in your favor.

Do I make myself sick because I don’t deny? Do I hate everything because I accept it all? Does it mean I have to be locked in a desperate “towing the line” of cracking and remaining the real and capable person that I know I am? Why do I accept it all? Why am I so likely and so compelled to take on the burden? Do I know way more than I’d like to that no matter what I feel, I still always and forever will know the other side of the coin. I will always see the implications until the end. I will always play out every scenario and am able to talk endlessly about what can and probably will or won’t happen given a set of conditions. I know I can remind myself of the good things, but that’s not good enough. I know I can keep my mind oriented towards the positive, but that’s not good enough. I need to know it all. I need to see it all. I need to not just believe, I need to manifest. I thrive on results, and being proven right, even if it seems to fuck me in certain scenarios. I thrive on being correct. Do I know that provoking steev will cause bowman to give me shit and not want to give back mystic, yes. I do it anyway. Why? I know it will happen. I wish it wouldn’t, I wish more than anything it wouldn’t, but I know it will. Why do I know it will? Because I’m that smart? Because people are that pathetic? A combination of both? Because there is a silent lonely dignity in being correct? When no one else ever seems to be, it’s nice to be reminded that yes you can predict things and yes people, even the smartest or ones you used to have the most faith in, will manage to fit into the line you’ve drawn of their lives.

Puppet master who just wants to be in the audience. Who can never be in the audience. Puppet master playing all the roles, giving a mirror, providing an insight for those who want to watch, but can only be seen as a puppet. No amount of death, drama, jokes, or dances can cut the strings. No one in the audience will refrain from sustaining their childlike “innocence” as they watch and are carried along. Because that’s all they can be, carried along.

I know what people do and don’t care about. This is a giant source of problems as well. I know hatsam doesn’t give a fuck about the house, not really. He doesn’t really appreciate it. He has taught himself to say something a thousand times because he is someone who only needs to say it once, and the rest are just him being him. I know that he knows he would be just as “happy” getting a shitty job in Washington, making new “friends,” fulfilling his obligation to the house and dip setting. I know this because he isn’t getting fulfilled in his relationships with nick, Jeremy, and bendixon. I know this because he doesn’t trust or truly appreciate me. So, when the time runs out, when he gets the chance, he will do anything. Why? Because he’s completely uncaring and knows he’ll be happy regardless. I’m not happy when I don’t care, I’m happy when I care more than anything and things seem to be going right along with the how’s and why that happiness came to be. You can’t be happy and not caring at the same time. It is a false happiness, just not the false you want to admit. You deny how and why it isn’t a real, and that makes you as “happy” or “happier” than anyone else who’s taught themselves a method of denial.

A lot of problems seems to be solved with the idea of denial. It no longer means people aren’t logical. It no longer means they don’t see the same problems I do, it allows them to feel, think, and behave in ways that are exceedingly close to happiness. It allows them to damn themselves without it feeling too bad, and still “love” themselves with the most bastardized understanding of the word. Everything I say, everything I do, all the wrong or right, they can manage to deny what it meant and where it was coming from. This can speak to the level of “deepness” in relationships and why they persist so long amongst people who cause me this level of frustration. We are primarily friends because they deny my blogs, they deny my contributions, they deny my utility, they deny my feelings, they deny my comments and behaviors, and anything else that is essentially me. All for the sake of their own misunderstood, bullshit, lies, and insecurities. They deny me because I am them. They uphold a false “god” and false idol because that voice is only a whisper that can be distorted by drugs and alcohol. They do it because it doesn’t have a real face. They do it because it can be fought by the lack of thought. How necessary is this denial? What thousand purposes has it served that would cause us to adopt it so freely and so loudly, but have it still be this difficult to suss out and discuss?

Have I managed to say how to deal with these deniers? Do I carry them along for a ride? Do I enable? Do I manipulate without a hint of fear, shame, or worry? Do I stop calling how I could behave towards people disrespectful and a denial of their being and understand it as simply acknowledging how they are choosing to be? Do I have to let them know? No. Do I have to feel bad about it? It doesn’t seem like it anymore.

My headache stopped a little while ago, now I have a dull roar of a bunch of new thoughts which I think I’ll be able to manage.

[214.9] Who's Really Deceiving

I just got done watching “The Obama Deception” by Alex Jones. There are a ton of thoughts rushing through me right now so if this is insanely disjointed or seemingly random, my bad.

I want to state first that I don’t agree with motivation through fear. When I watched this documentary, fear is the most resounding feeling I thought they were running with. I didn’t feel enabled, necessarily more informed about something specific, nor told how to do such abstract things as “get my liberties back” or properly juxtapose the histories of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao with Bush and Obama. It really does a disservice to a cause to draw such dramatic analogies of complex historical examples and say, “just go do your homework.” It doesn’t help your cause to have someone who may or may not know something about economics or the early history of our country, and also call global warming a sham or conspiracy. Yes, I will question their judgment and perspective much more because scientists not so motivated by politics and greed across varying fields and countries concur independently a fact not dictated out of a fearful and distrusting perspective.

With that said, some ideas the documentary presents do seem to make sense to me. For example, I have no problem believing there are a handful of rich people with all sorts of interests and future goals. I have no problem believing they don’t really care if I live or die. In the documentary it’s referred to as the Bilderberg Group. These are alleged as the people who cause financial crisis, start wars, and swallow the world in debt. I don’t like feeling that this isn’t hard to believe either. Do you remember when I asked why someone can’t just be “stupid” or “immature” they have to go on and compile it with a host of actions that make them look exponentially worse? Well, now I think I can apply that to our existence.

It’s not just good to be rich, you have to be SUPER

rich, and have a need to dominate. It’s not simply that you fucked up the economy once in the 1920’s or 30’s, it’s that you continue to fuck it up 90 years later. You can’t just employ one asshole with biases and ties to organizations that you police; you have to put someone like that at the head of every organization under your umbrella. It’s never one lie to one person, but a thousand to a thousand people. Negativity begets exponential negativity. Negativity only “exists” when you refuse to create or preserve something positive.

I try; I try ever so hard to view things simply. I felt overwhelmed trying to process the sea of “facts” and “documented material” I was swimming in while watching this. That isn’t to say that some parts didn’t show the actual documents, nor does it mean that some factual information wasn’t translated. What that does mean is those facts I feel comfortable denoting as such, consisted of the recorded speeches of campaign promises later contradicted, the reporting of “secret” meetings, and the actual sections of bills and reports highlighted on screen.

But let me go back to fear and make things simple. Take a situation where you’re sitting with your friends at a coffee shop. You see someone who isn’t a cop with a gun holstered. While you might not be completely freaked out, it isn’t hard to believe that you or a good portion of people around you might become uncomfortable. Why are they becoming uncomfortable? It’s because a guns sole purpose is to kill. That idea of a weapon does not bode good feelings, comfort, or togetherness. It preempts the idea that someone or something is dangerous. A coffee shop in Bloomington is an unlikely spot for such caution.

Weaponizing anyone or anywhere will only cause this effect en masse. Yes, you might feel comfortable around guns as you would a field of daisies because you were raised on them or just love to shoot. I would probably get off on the idea of shooting shit too, let alone an opportunity to blow something up, but I would gladly forgo that feeling if no one else had to do it with a gun either. So, when I see a war, I think automatically bad. I know if I had bullets flying by my head, it would suck. I know that the idea of accidentally killing a random kid or “innocent” person isn’t good. I know there are people that want us dead. I know there are ideologies that call for my death and people planning on using their weapons to do it. I think there are better ways.

Switching gears a bit, I want to talk about the “war” for ideas and information. I have to say, even as a person who fights to stay objective, it was pretty hard to try and sift through information I thought I might find semi-reliable, and shit that was absolutely ridiculous, while watching this documentary. If it was hard for me, and is still hard to really swallow and make sense of, it will be damn near impossible for most. I’ve already stated that the tone I got was fear, which means fear is presumably all anyone will feel if they don’t have the will or mind to pick it apart and dig deeper.

But again, the war of ideas can be fought simply. If in fact there is a secret sect of people who are willing to control us, then, as the film calls for, we have to take responsibility for ourselves and direct our actions appropriately. If we can say to ourselves, “A gun would not make this scenario better” and put the gun away, no one trying to put a gun in our hand is going to succeed. If we can understand that no single person can possibly enact the kinds of promises that Obama made, then we can stop celebrating the collective ignorance about saviors. Also, we can stop demonizing the puppet put in place to convince us. We need to persuade ourselves of better ideas about what it means to be rich and healthy. We need to persuade ourselves, and this is the sickest thing misunderstood, that as we suck away money or attention towards the things that make us heroes, we suck away our reasons to live.

I’ve said that I’m celebrating our species demise. I can’t begin to persuade myself that things will get better as long I see how we go about establishing our “beliefs.” When you believe in a god for example, despite every single good thing you can attribute to it, you are disposed to magical, impossible, fanatic thinking and when something emulates that, you will be disposed to trusting it. This isn’t because you are stupid; this is because that is how brains work. I’m not trying to insult my religious friends; I’m trying to scream from the rooftops BIOLOGY.

Very practically speaking, if we take what the documentary says on its face, very important implications come out of a few scenarios. There have in fact been bills that have called to restrict or prohibit gun access to the” not convicted of a crime” public. It starts with those on the no fly list, it ends where? Now no, I don’t believe we should have the guns in the first place, but it’s at this point that I think we get into a situation of self-defense. If cops become federalized, if the military actually is being used to destabilize countries, if we are in fact being driven by corporate interest into a depression, I’d shoot a mother fucker or two myself if I was in that specific of a proverbial corner. But, things don’t have to get that complicated.

Every person in the military is a father, mother, brother, sister etc. There is no such thing as the “military” there is a collection of people with various ideals and reasons for joining an organization they either believed in or believed would help their life. Super soldiers follow orders, individuals make decisions. I can’t think of a single person I know who is in the military or has been that would comply with oppressing or fighting people in this country for government or corporate interests. Does that mean they wouldn’t? No, but I find it so unlikely I’ll state it for the record and chance at being proven wrong.

Before someone controls you, you have to give them something. What our elected officials, what your religion, your school, and your clothes company all want is your trust. This is why trust, for me, is the most important idea possible. It is the most respected thing to keep, and the most powerful thing ever abused. We trusted Obama; that was our folly. Well before him we trusted ourselves to know what to trust. We trusted that Federal Reserve meant actually federal and an extension of the government, not a private company. We trust that people give a fuck because we insolate ourselves around the few that do about us most often. The “awakening” as it’s referred to, needs to be an overt display of our reality, our nature, and our potential. Consciousness razing is more than becoming a bleeding heart for cancer or starving children.

The irony here seems to be that it already exists; we just refuse to accept it. It’s not a movie when you hear of genocide and/or people starving. Every time someone says, “It’s 2010 and we should be past this now” is only speaking to denial, not technological or moral maturity. We are in a war. We are killing innocent people for oil. We are poking holes in our atmosphere. We are bankrupting people before they are born. We are polluting our food. We are just a bunch of stupid fucking apes. Every complicated issue with its years of history, context, cause and effect, yada yada boils down to we are stupid fucking apes. This is why I just kind of “am” about our existence and factual in my assessment of it. I try to live and hold ideals in spite of my reality. That doesn’t mean I don’t accept it, it means I assess, idolize, and express the best parts of it.

This is what I mean when I tell people to wake up. This is why my thoughts are always racing. This is why I say things matter and other things don’t. This is why I feel like I have any authority what so ever over anything and appreciate people who are willing to engage the discourse or express the ideals. When you hear a person say “This bill prevents so and so from spending money or such and such organization from doing that” in an interview outside the building where a group of people are defying that bill, the bill doesn’t do shit. You’re reciting something stupid. You’re wasting your time. The bill did its job by getting you to recite what it is allegedly supposed to do The reality about the governmental body, law process, and nature of “regular” people to want and believe in it is just an “oh, duh”’ away.

What’s the motivation for a 125 people to control the world? Who cares!? What can happen when 1 person controls too much? Ask yourself this question about your shitty boss and your shitty job. What’s their motivation? It’s to maintain his or herself. Be it supporting a family, paying off debt, or just getting the bills to shut up, it’s not hard to imagine. To a greater degree, I’ll guess this is those rich peoples’ motivation as well. They understand what 7 billion confused, ignorant, pissed off, ideological, etc. people can do if destabilized. If they didn’t, I don’t imagine they would care to be in the business of destabilizing. The real “sin” of theirs is not making things simple and living humbly. And honestly, I think this is the only way to combat that problem regardless of the motivation or intention on our lives.

This is only possible with that sense of personal responsibility, accountability, and sense of being “awake.” You have to make your own rules that follow simple principles. Be specific and honest. The reason people are allowed to complicate an issue with platitudes like “it’s not black and white” is because they refuse to get specific. Is a belief in a god good or bad? That’s the wrong question. Does this person’s belief in a god create more positive in their life and the lives of others than it does destroy? Potentially. Make no mistake, because it does indeed destroy something, but what it’s destroying can still exist and even grow in the mind of someone else. Also, when whatever is being destroyed is contained in the mind or collective consciousness, it brings the “fight” to a much safer and tolerable landscape. I would be much more content with a world where everyone but me believed in a god, but no one wanted me dead or to kill themselves in service to it.

If there is one service you can do for yourself or your country it is to make people be specific. Don’t allow thousand page bills to be passed in an hour. Don’t believe everyone, particularly you, is entitled to everything; this ranging from the nominal and obvious things like guns, to abstract notions of respect and love. The idea that people would refuse to even acknowledge and change themselves scares me way more than a police state or Illuminati-esc super group pulling strings. One means our generation, or maybe foreseeable generations, will get fucked, the other means we literally will never care to know how to stop it.