[283] Practice Makes Permanent

I want to paint a despotic picture. I want to do it through the lens of my meager and small perspective. I hope if you care to tag along on this journey, you’ll get the same things I’m after in writing it.

I’ve been everywhere, or at least, that's what it feels like. I remember what it feels like to have a small, but strong enough conception of family. I remember what it’s been like to be insecure and scared. I’ve never felt so alone than when I thought I was in a kind of love that no one could understand. I have punctuated and deliberate memories of times when I “woke up” to who I was when things needed to change. I reached a point where I could not bear the anxiety and stress of holding a bad idea. I didn’t need to keep relearning the consequences of my behavior. I didn’t have to deny my feelings or thoughts.

You can read through old blogs where I’ve been an emotional train wreck. You can read depressing and dramatic professions of confusion and doubt. You can probably hear the inflection I give the word “fuck” in some of my most pissed off rants about religion, relationships, or general tom-fuckery from various people I’ve occasioned to know. I feel it necessary to bring this up when it comes to my digressions about people and their motivations. I don’t exactly seek to wear street cred on my sleeve. I operate under the assumption that we’re all human. What good is my advice or meddling disposition if not to see results! Why get a little cocky about getting laughs or part-timing as a therapist if there isn’t something to be said about my potential insight?

The thing that I’d love to be too arrogant about were I not so humble, my personality, my perspective, my genuine understanding of something you may not be as keen to as me, is what I look for in other people. There’s the default personality you get by being born under your circumstances and your history. Then there’s what you get to shape when you start making decisions. I think the problems that will extinguish us as a species lie between those two different “Yous.”

I have a relatively psychotic mother. I can take my childhood and know all of the enraging, depressing, demoralizing, and humiliating places it can send me. I can feel them right now just trying to pass on by. That’s the history me. The one who’s, calmly, writing through the heartbeats is the decision me. There are feelings, staples of our beings, which we may never shake. Whether there are physical reactions, winding thought patterns, or little ticks that, for all intents and purposes, dictate us at that precise moment. How we conceptualize them, how we break them down, or where we put them in our chosen mental framework, I think, will dictate our very survival.

It’s easy to feel. It’s too easy to feel. For the better part of our existence, it’s our feelings that meant life or death. Run or fight. Are you afraid, ferocious, or both and the adrenaline rush doesn’t care to split hairs. I very really hate when people take the easy way out. Stated differently, I hate when people don’t think. For surely, thinking is taken for granted. You can’t even get up in the morning without thinking about how to get out bed. Obviously, if it feels good or the people around you agree with it, how fine a comb do you expect needs to be run through it?

The one and only thing that makes me “cool” or “informed” or “Nick P.” is the exercise of my brain. Only when I sat and thought a fuck ton about what it meant to love or be in love did I find myself upon a defensible position on the matter. Only after I assessed the likely consequences of my future with certain people in my life did I start to form strong opinions on ideas about family or what it means to be in a relationship. After 283 and counting blogs of self-exploration can I even regard what have truly been traumatic and compelling moments with oft fondness and purpose to inform and hopefully better the life of someone who’s been there as well.

And that speaks to the consequences of the thinking individual. It’s not to preach, but to educate. It’s not to self-deprecate, but to conceptualize. It’s a move towards freedom of expression and a celebration of choice. It’s exalting knowledge and respecting its ability to, if not erase, draw such an immense picture around the pain and confusion, it becomes a mere compliment to the artist’s overall motif.

This is how I judge character. This is where I play with my internal scale regarding my level of interaction with some person, idea, or endeavor. This is how I choose my heroes and what I “waste my time” with. And like recognizes like. And when you’re not a certain way, it’s jarring; it sticks in my head and troubles me in ways that take it well beyond my probably already spent conception of you. Now it’s at the idea level. Now it’s about the implications. The “what if society at large” questions arise. The uniquely human psychological dispositions and interplay of personalities is a never ending snowball.

It’s how I learned to make a distinction between you and your so-called ideas. It’s why I softened up arguing so vehemently about religious topics. It’s why I try not to automatically stigmatize something and ask a million questions. I feel like this isn’t particularly new behavior, but I haven’t stated it like this. And I’d totally understand why someone would think me hard-lined as for or against. To say that I’m anti-religion or spirituality or whatever else is to simply get me wrong. I’m against unhelpful or incorrect ideas.

But what arrogance! How can you have an incorrect idea? When it doesn't take you where you were trying to go. If you make a claim about yourself and nothing about your actions or feelings reflect that, your idea is incorrect. If you're not prepared to recognize how easy and often the incompleteness of your knowledge on a situation can corrupt your ideas about it, you're not doing yourself any favors.

What we see and do pragmatically is ultimately dictated by the philosophical underpinnings that either enable or inhibit potential courses of action. If the decision makers believe that pursuing carbon emitting fuels is better than sustainable energy, the likelihood of an extinction event rises past a point people concerned with living should be comfortable with. It doesn’t matter how much you may recant your actions faced with the reality of your decision, it’s no longer really an option for this particular group of 7 billion people to carry on into the next few hundred years.

It’s not my concern that there aren’t enough smart people out there or enough personalities. I don’t think everything is fucked up. I think there are different layers to the game. It’s a numbers game, it’s a group psychology game, and it’s an information gathering and translating game. But mostly, it’s a game people are playing incorrectly, and it’s hard to really measure how much blame lies with them and how much is the field that’s been narrowed before they got there.

What’s most disturbing to me, and hopefully it’s just a symptom of my small perspective, is what I find the solution to be: thinking. Taking lessons to heart, adopting and trying ideas, and forcing yourself to an actual platform or informed opinion. I find this disturbing because I know how subtle and nuanced our behavior and thoughts can be. I know we can say one thing, do another, and be on a completely different planet mentally that justifies all of it. I can say that my friends are better at not being like this than most, but they’re not immune. Certainly I could be under a spell about my future or capabilities given my ignorance of the state of the world at large.

But is this not how we learn? Hold an idea, fight for it, and see it through until the consequences? Was it not necessary for me to have and hold a host of terrible ideas in my past in order to garner the kind of perspective and habit of reflection I hold today? How do you fix a necessary precondition to enlightenment? How can you account for the infinite veins through which someone may learn a lesson? Surely an ignorance of the future, or even the here and now should not arrest our decisions or make us any less beholden to our ideas! At least, this is what I hear, time and again, and all I have is an emphatic well, maybe it should!

You see, we have a metric for judging ideas that takes us out of the ignorant monkey brains we’re stuck with. That metric is science. To talk of all the things science doesn’t know is for you to insult yourself, and the collective conscious that was overwhelmingly aimed towards making your life a little bit better, at least sometimes. There isn’t a single vaccinated person with an i-anything that has a right to speak against the advancement of information and technology or the impact it’s had on their lives. But then, why do we make it a controversy?

It only makes sense to me when you bring it back to the very real and much ignored human failings of thought. If we’re bored and want controversy, just pick a topic. If we’re confused or afraid of a subject, there’s a chemical fix in merely reacting. When you feel allegiance to a group, then what a great feeling to know your decisions can be made for you. We have personal, compelling, life-altering lessons that need to be translated en masse. It doesn’t matter how much they’ve sang and written about love, you don’t know MY KIND of love! My family, my experience, my small mind is more compelling, more understanding, and more accepting of what YOU and YOUR BIG world would call my failings, and that makes you wrong!

Just think of the children. I feel like any parent can relate to being in this situation and probably any teacher too. You don’t need a special kind of arrogance or sense of privilege to know when you can be an authority on something. Reduce our politics to overgrown children, and what happens? The people who cry, fold their arms, lie, and name call, with no one to keep them in check, win. We’re whiney children with no parents. And when we adopt a parent, let’s call it “God” for shits and giggles, no way, it tends to think like us! It believes in us, it will save us, we just have to provide no more reason to believe in it than because we wanna! We can get even more ridiculous and project onto a faceless entity called The State or Big Government while living in a democracy!

We crave being justified. It doesn’t matter if we’ve picked a reasonable topic to feel validated over. The very fact that we’ve found someone to agree is enough. The very fact of our compelling feelings is sufficient to keep the motor running. Being skeptical and checking your ideas are conscious and deliberate acts. You aren’t born with the knowledge that you can be profoundly and perpetually wrong. What that means for how you behave in the world I think can overwhelm every best and informed intention. It’s the habit, the norm, the default position and therefor the most likely and easiest.

What we prescribe for ourselves we paradoxically won’t advocate for our neighbor while they take our examples and react in kind. Human rights don’t extend past the front door. We can kill, but when killed it’s the most atrocious. We can steal but when stolen from it’s a threat to democracy and the free market! Today we have policies from 1984. Today we are causing irreversible damage to the planet. Today our numbers paint a grim picture for us and our offspring. Today we are arguing about demonstrable facts against magic. You aren’t separate or better than the discourse. It will come back around and affect you.

Our normal doesn’t work. Our normal is to fight. Our normal mishears, misreads, and distrusts. Our normal is fairly lazy. Our normal is about convenience and speed. We’re complicit and complacent in our circumstances. Our normal is to get used to it. We make excuses, we adopt distractions and vices. We project. Our normal is to ultimately reject everything about our normality ironically for “something more” we disable ourselves from ever creating. We want love, but refuse to understand or define it. We want God without holding a Godly standard. We avoid the struggle and pain because we refuse to think to a point where it finally pays out. We refuse to sacrifice even a sliver of ourselves if it means too much disappointment or another failure. Only to perpetually fail to think.

Practice makes permanent.

[282] Stupid Lucky

Sometimes I look at my life and say I’m too lucky. I think the real problem is any time I look at it and not feeling that initially. Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I absolutely do, but sometimes it just sinks in deeper than I know what to do with.

I’m stupid lucky. Everything about my circumstance is a gift. I don’t really think I know what it means to not feel indebted at this point. I don’t know if I’m ever allowed to shut up about my friends. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convey the impact you have on my life. I’m a mere reflection of the company I keep. I truly don’t know who I am without the context of you.

I know people who are willing to be honest to the point of alienating themselves. I know people who are willing to give all of themselves to a moment without a second thought. I know the value of honesty when people are willing to be open with me about some shit going on in their life. I get to take any and all strife from my life and reduce it to a spec under the overall plan of the future I envision for me and my friends.

The last three or so days has just laid this down hard. I’m spending my time with the most amazing people I could possibly know. I don’t know how I deserve it. I don’t know why I’m allowed to have such positive thoughts about us or the future. I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do with such circumstances.

I love you all and I don’t even believe in the word love.

[281] Random Rhyme Time 5: Not Random

Let the beat drop the tone lock your bones pop cus this time’s signature is don’t stop. Call the beat cops the hard knocks to keep locks on your happy feet. Meet your maker, the undertaker, the back-breaker on your labor screaming I am your neighbor! Face the music don’t get too [sic] it’s only too slick. Find a two-bit cheap amusement politicking time bomb. Waiting, debating, and suffocating are your charges. Cold callous criminals remain at large, holding all the keys to their iron bars.

Systemic hatred burns ironically as each fuse pops. Shoulders drop asking for lashes as hope dashes like a dog from an abusive master. These spell castors, class actors, who divide by a factor of zero. Non-sense non sums with greedy thumbs. These insulators and instigators just insta-gators while you try to tread water. Not a pot to piss in but hot enough to boil over. Roll over Red Rover the nightmare’s not over. Bandits and loons crept into your room and it’s safe to assume they are dangerous. Nefarious characters tear down your barriers only to find it hilarious.

Re-work the knee jerk attitude to platitudes the hip checks to balance you by the books. Dirty crooks with crooked looks and jagged hooks so you can bleed out. Don’t scream about what’s fair just hang out drip drying in despair. It’s not who cares, this game is for keeps, like I’ll keep you meek and I’ll take your sleep and I’ll take your feet while you’re on your knees begging for reprieve. Like this is not a Man you step to or get in their face as the place they have set for you is right at the base of their bed. Where you can curl up and bawl at blathering drawl wafting just over head.

You weren’t built for these compulsory capitulates, pessimistic petulants, and apoplectic hypocrites. A lyrical soul meets a tone deaf chorus. A deep sea diver has a suit too porous. Do you know what it is to drown? Try to scream for someone’s help but you can’t make a sound. Try to push off the surface with no floor to be found. Not a wave, not a splash, as you sink to the ground. And they watch, holding their breath and puffing their chest dumbfounded by why you would end it.   

[280] More On That Now

Keeping the lid on our reality is paramount. It’s not simply about trying to be happy. If you genuinely don’t care you isolate or kill yourself. Finding a ground that hopefully you’ve dictated is the goal. You don’t at that point have to deal with too much freedom. You get to make predictions about the future that feel gratifying. You get to feel engaged and like you’re contributing. It’s a positive feedback loop and process that is all tied up into the word “perspective.”

I think it’s easy to forget that it’s an infinitely small perspective, and in being as such it has implications for how we treat each other. To a certain extent, you have to figure out every new person you meet. You’re lucky if you still get to figure out people you already know for years on end and not because you’re coping with their drama. We’re all going to act in basically intelligible ways, let’s just not underestimate the word basic. In that sense, things can make sense in thought and theory, but not translate into a sense of action or even true empathy.

So when you look at a relationship or becoming obsessed about school or work or whatever, those become your grounding. It’s not you relating with someone on the idea and nature of your relative mediums. Well, what’s the difference? And have I even stated the issue clearly?

Your perspective is an investment. It’s a predictor. The very agendas you hold closest to your heart 10 years from now will be the result of the investments you do or don’t make today or have made before. At that level, it at least continues to feel free in your perpetuating or abstaining from some activity. But what happens when no one thing can work for you any longer? What if you allow yourself to be hijacked by ideas that can’t be nailed down? Say your goal becomes “justice.” Well you’ve just given yourself a number of options and surface contradictions that perhaps only you can arbitrate.

Is it better to be grounded? To me, I think the idea of grounding and engaging in it from time to time can be helpful, healthy, and important for developing a philosophical position, but I think there’s certainly something to my will that flirts with losing my own and stripping it from under others. What if you try to ground in “love” as evidenced by your maintained relationship or family? How many people have a solid definition of love to begin with, let alone would find themselves espousing it in the situation they’re working so hard to maintain?

With my small perspective, I can feel and know I’ve the potential to do or say just about anything. I know my will is free and constrained. I know I can be evil or righteous. I can live basically peacefully with people I more than a little think are trying to kill me and add stress to my life. I can plot out the CSI style investigation before I never do that thing you said I did and you all have my alibi. I can envision an “enlightened” future resting partly on the back on my effort. To the greater extent, I don’t feel grounded. I have my style and wits about me, but I don’t feel comfortable in picking my subject, my mate, or solitary goal.

I find myself in the ongoing conversation. It’s when I try to forward an idea or illicit a reaction. My toolbox is ideas and there are certain ones that overwhelmingly win out when it comes to characterizing me or my behavior. If I’m always doubting or judging or forming and reforming, the potential for negative consequences from destabilization are always there, but why don’t they win? Cus God made me moral, right? Haha.

My feedback loop is grounded in the complex web of feelings and explored thoughts which on the inspection of any one layer you can find a single instance of something “good” or “bad” or “me.” But if and when they can work together, it’s the absolution of all 3. I think the good news is that when you do this, the positives, practically or mentally, seem to massively outweigh the negatives. At least as they manifest currently. I still haven’t reacted violently to violent impulses. I still don’t attack commitments for sport. I manage to not debase myself for cheap thrills at the expense of some potential for more.

To that end, I think being grounded and set in your ways is extremely dangerous. Saying ‘how things are” without qualifying “only just now” can prescribe a very painful and dramatic future. If we’re going to have the temerity to speculate on the nature of existence or our place in it, how can we look for truth in anything more than the pools of freely flowing ideas? That is, what can we ever say for sure other than that things change? It seems if we’re ever going to understand the nature of things, it’s in describing that change. From there you can maybe hope to manifest intentioned consequences. Whatever that means.

[279] Let’s Get Ready To Rumbooooooooowl

Handle yo bidness!

This feels at least like the American ethic if perhaps not the one we’ve infected the rest of the world with. The fact is it’s personal. I didn’t say that loud enough. IT’S PERSONAL!!!! Caps save the day again.

We will never escape our little cavernous heads. Oh shit, time to freak out. As much as we’d like to project and predict, there’s a hint of lonely little “me” stuck wandering through the darkness of solipsistic muck.

I’ve been thinking about the utility of drama. I go on a number of digressions about my friends and the potential motivations/reactions to information. I don’t feel brought down or stressed out. It’s just a mental exercise. It’s fun to think about how who feels what given so and so fucked around with whomever while them and they said this and that flavoring the situation in such a manner. And of course it doesn’t have to revolve around sex, but go figure that’s where my mind would go first, right?

Every single person has their own stake in the game. Collaborate effort only works when people lose their identity. I don’t feel like “Nick P.” when I’m in an intense concert situation with a group of friends. I’m just a head of hair that happens to have hands and legs that manage to find the beat. Of course that isn’t the majority of our experience, and I think that speaks heavily to why things don’t get done.

Nothing escapes your small perspective. Me and the kiosk; I can get fucked for 9 grand and no one’s really empathizing with that. I have to allow the situation to mold me or not. I have to chalk it up to a lesson learned or a point to retaliate. Everyone is very happy to sit and listen to the story afterward, provided I don’t go on too long. Any and every relationship is the same way. It’s all special and amazing how he/she makes you feel. Dude, you just wouldn’t understand. But, at the end of the day, it’s very important you deny certain things, or at least ignore, suppress, or hold in less esteem to keep things going. (more on this later)

It’s seemingly impossible for people to evaluate in terms of how things could work. You have to be lucky that circumstances played out from time to time in your favor. It robs us of our agency. It takes work to empathize. It should take effort to build relationships. The last thing I’d be comfortable with is thinking the people I like and chill with are purely because we all live in Bloomington.

I think we allow our awareness to get trapped in order to feel comfortable. Whether it’s a job or school track, boy/girlfriend, “spirituality”, pick your poison. I discuss drama like it’s a tv show. I pick friends like my life depends on it. I clearly have to believe there’s more going on than the boring surface shit and fuck me if I don’t want to pick at you to get to it.

[278] What The Fucking Fuck! A Love Story

What the Fucking Fuck! A Love Story

I am currently in a state of profound unhappiness. I imagine it’s like losing someone you’ve mapped the rest of your life with; never entertaining the idea they could be gone in an instant. It’s losing something foundational and part of your core. I don’t even know if I have a simple name for what I think I’ve lost, but the more I focus on it, the more I want to lose control.

Maybe it’s my idea that if there is a problem, it can be fixed, if not relatively easily. Once you break it down into parts you can see every kink and immediately know what needs to happen to change course. Right now, it feels like some problems are so established or entrenched, the memory of how to fix them has been lost. The collective will-power or effort necessary is a shaky suggestion silently predicated with “if only” and “given a miracle.”

It’s one thing to try and fail. It’s soul crushing to try and know there are people, who without hesitation, will doom you to fail before you begin. When I think my cynicism can know no bounds, I find another layer of humanity to stomach. It’s one thing to read about it or watch Youtube clips exposing the corrupt and evil. Let it into your life, your bank account, your relationship with your family and friends. Try to explain anything without sounding like you’re making an excuse. Be “the most motivated” the “bravest” the one to take a “chance” and come face to face with the people who aren’t simply uncompelled or unimpressed, but make it their business to take advantage of you.

I develop or adopt the philosophy. I make the calls and meetings. I crunch the numbers. I pick the wording and keep the smile. I fit the puzzle together. I’m the boss whether I want to be or not. I get the stress and the drama and the stupid details you don’t care to hear about. I’ve worked 23 hours a day. I set myself to OWN what I use. I try to learn as much as I can in the time that I have and press forward because that’s the only direction you can go. I’m not the cabinet maker, architect, maintenance supervisor, plumber, electrician, or lawyer yet am expected to be as an entrepreneur. And if I’m not, I’m seemingly expected to catch the fallout from not adorning those capacities.

I can’t say I know it isn’t hopeless when I’m up against forces like these. I don’t mean in that I can’t succeed somewhere at some time. I mean with things. Like, life and morals and any remote sense of the word justice. I haven’t experienced genocide first hand or I’m sure I could’ve come to this sooner, but…to genuinely fear the loss of your resolve. To entertain the idea that your life is meant to be a cautionary tale about thinking and doing right and still having to content yourself with just what you have. To think that problems aren’t there to be fixed, they’re for keeping you in line.

It’s at this point someone tells me they know what I’m capable of. That one way or another I’ll bounce back or understand the consequences of doing one thing over another. And they’re right. We can both safely point to obvious character traits I seem to take reverence in. I’m also the person who is all of those things and still finding the capacity for hopelessness. What short term gratification it would be to just destroy. A surprise ending with a wave of conflicting feelings about legacy.

And it’s not like people can help, right? Even if they wanted to they’ve got class or their own bills or own sense of moral outrage and obligation. That was your charge Nick P. You explore that world and check back in with me when you start throwing parties again. Not that you can blame them.

I say I want my life to play out like a movie, and maybe I’m just getting everything I asked for. I really should have been more specific about the genre.

[277] Family Ties

Family.

Are you hit with compelling connotatively packed feelings with this word? You may find this surprising, but I am. They only happened as I got to know more of my family, but I feel/felt something and, holy shit, I think there is something to say about what I experience.

As a relative sociopath, stress relative, if and when I feel something, I take notice. My disposition is learned, informed, and often calculated. It takes something truly novel to “shake me up” and leave me exploring the various attitudes and avenues my mind decides to take. I’m more floored by the concept of family than I am in having one to begin with. I find myself separating my rationality from my feelings.

I think family should be a choice. It’s positively why I get so hung up on who I choose to be friends with. I like decisions, not happenstance. Our relationship shouldn't be an accident. Our allegiance shouldn’t be circumstantial. My family needs to be principled, fought for, worthy of envy and fear because others don’t think they can live up to what it symbolizes.

My family members sure can pee; all over my floor in fact. I honestly thought there was a weird noise coming from my plumbing for the first few minutes, then I ascend the stairs to find my cousin post up against my bar, picking what I’m assuming was a worthy and respectable spot on my living room carpet, to piss on. It’s truly a stream meant for Ripley’s. What it says about me not even being angry we’ll leave for another day.

This is a person who, along with his wife, had a host of things to say about our family throughout the day. Whether it’s about the petty shit that gets fought about or disrespecting the ideas my grandma lived for, it wasn’t all stuff I disagreed with. The funny, sad, ironic, WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK part about it all was his insistence that it’s about us to keep the Serbian traditions alive and be the mature ones.

The thing you can’t feel, or might in different ways, but certainly aren't right now, is my compulsion, at least initially to want to defend and stick up for family. The idea that, beyond all rational observation, there are these beings, that for lack of a better description, are kind of copies of “you.” Lying, defending, and justifying are not only fashioned as reasonable and assumed, but supposed to be the pinnacle of your responsibility and love. Forgive me? I’m not there.

It’s hard to hear every pipe dream-esc phrase and pronouncement of the future. He’s only an electrician so he can strike it rich with his other endeavors you know. And please, I don’t write this to make fun, I really EVER SO fucking really just want to give you an example to hear and learn from. I can’t be the only one with a relative who has all this dreamy wild-eyed naïve teenager talk somehow making its way past the lips of an alcoholic 30 year old.

It’s impossibly sad. It’s the most depressing thing I can think of for someone. The ONE idea, granted it’s usually centered around a god for most, but when your “faith waivers” people fall to their parents or family when things get really hairy…but the ONE THING you’re supposed to cherish and respect and protect, can make you feel like all those things while being the worst thing in the world for you. Explain that to someone…

I’d turn you in. If you had a bomb planted somewhere in a city and only I knew where to find it or where to get your launch codes, there are going to be a number of lives saved that day. I’d do this because I’d expect the same from you. If I lose my shit or being anything less than the kind of person you expect me to be, I don’t deserve an irrational and detrimental level of protection. That isn’t love or devotion. That’s brainwashed.

I can feel the pull of my genes wanting me to respect and look out for my linage above all else. I can also listen to my brain to recognize what’s fucked and what isn’t.

[276] Play Me Out Johnny

I think I want to describe a pattern. Patterns are a significant thing in how I describe my perspective after all. Given that things have been “slow” and not necessarily dramatic; I’ve had this long period of calm deliberate thinking about nothing in particular that seems to speak to exactly what I wanted to say; an example of which I hope to do again with this blog. I must be after something in writing so much. It’s the “what’s my motivation” question. What am I after with this voice?

I think it might be for a “pattern of everything.” I want to describe things in a way that account for all nuance and any misconception. I want be able to express the spectrum of emotion; from glassy-eyed and empty to talking too fast and too loud at precisely the correct level of enthusiasm. There’s theoretically a way to take every sentiment from every compelling song or bad poem or rant or criminal abjection of decency and describe it in complete terms. It’s probably just a matter of semantics.

But, why? Why keep talking? Why different words for the same sentiment? It must be some level of feeling appeasement. When you get the chance to write about something that gives you chills. Maybe that’s what I want to do. Describe the pattern and make it chill worthy. The ups and down compelling at heart level while they sooth your head scrambling to protest. I want a way to understand things that doesn’t sell the experience short. A way to understand having friends who you’ll never talk to again.

Maybe I stay away from hope because the more I see reason to have it, the less a place I see for myself in the world. Part of me knows the information is out there. I know there are people who are motivated. I know there are a lot of people much smarter or better connected with a perspective I may never get. Maybe they already have the reigns and are just reeling things in in due course. It seems to miss the question to ask “what does the world need?” and then jump to fill a role. It has and has had everything it needs. It’s answered the questions and had the experience and just waits around for you to discover what it already knows.

But not to personify too much and lose my point; if I ever have one. It’s of course TV that puts my mind into a framework. Whenever a main character is killed off it really sucks. They’re as much of the story as anybody else, right? They made you feel, they fill an integral role. I mean, how does the rest of the cast even make sense without their input? And then inevitably, the story plays out. They’re remembered in old videos or hallucinations. They get paid homage to and show up just in time for a flashback. But they’re just a memory. One that no matter how long or hard their friends want to hold onto will find itself competing for time. It’s not so much about it fading, but the fact that it’s all ever a memory to begin with.

Maybe if I can describe my dream, my memories, what arises and fades in me perfectly I’ll be able to start my cycle of change. Maybe by the end it will all just make so much sense.

I worry about transcending my ego. Why am I here if it’s to forget myself? Presuming I know myself, and a why, and what “here” is…It could just be a problem of bad language to describe the circumstances. I should, as a matter of habit, be able to describe a world that makes perfect sense without me perhaps even quicker than one where my intentions are felt. The ensuing melodrama I could cross my fingers is TV worthy. The moral of my disappearance lifted from a perfectly timed line coupled with spot on camera work.

It really is a good thing I’m not suicidal because writing myself out of the story doesn’t feel any better than watching a character die off in a show. In fact, it’s a dramatically worse feeling. But the story would still go on.

[275] Bury Me Somewhere Beautiful

Bury me somewhere beautiful.

Where leaves are always turning

Because it’s fall all year

Where when you listen close

You can pick out a whisper

“I’m here.”

Bury me somewhere beautiful.

Where the wind lifts you up

And we can fly away.

Where your tears can be dried

Before they ever find a chance

To stay.

Bury me somewhere beautiful.

A hidden place just for us

So we can keep playing.

Tag you’re it, now come find me

Don’t cheat just because I’m always

With you.

Bury me somewhere beautiful

In your dreams will do

I never meant to leave you know

As if I’d make it alone

It’s about that time, I’ll see you soon

Sleep.

[274] Cause Your Friends Don't Dance

I’m a media junkie, if you haven’t heard. The news didn’t help my mental disposition during my whole “down week.” I don’t actively go out and look for shitty things to read about to reinforce my concerns about the world, I merely try to accept the implications of an article. 16 people gunned down by a trooper? Here’s my line. We’re at war, and the rest of the world doesn’t want us in to control resources that will make rich people richer and destroy the planet. We have a corrupt government that allows politicians to be bought and lie their way into staying in power so they can vote for such a path. Our behavior has, by the numbers, reduced what used to be the “greatest country in the world,” so to speak, to a declining and naïve military empire. The people who died will be remembered as a “tragic circumstance” if remembered at all. We'll ignore all discussion of human rights. I haven’t checked a Kardashians’ twitter feed in a while…

That’s just the pattern. That’s what we are as a species and I can stomach that. The long term implications of remaining that way are what concern me. The not really seeing a “majority” of people who recognize what we are and maybe how to change it concerns me. If you can hold one contradictory or nonsensical idea, you’ve the capacity to hold every one. That’s why “how you think” is always on my mind. It’s why I get people whose thoughts I can rely on to talk me down when shit gets out of hand. It’s why no matter how polite I may want to be when talking about a “sensitive” issue, I’m certainly not feeling pleasant when I hear something absurd.

There’s a huge duality to everything. You get the burden of which side is supposed to “win” with any problem. You get the ideas about family against how your family may actually treat you and make you feel. If you needed another reason to despise the world love it’s for that conflict alone. You get the arguments or a feeling of needing to protect yourself verses the moral implications of killing. Huh, even typing “moral implications” right then felt absurd to me. We don’t even consider moral implications! It’s not even a thing! As long as it feels good in the moment, that’s what you’re going to do. It’s not an excuse if you genuinely believe you’re into it. You don’t excuse a god’s lack of intervening or providing evidence, you genuinely think he doesn’t need to operate that way, AND HOW DARE YOU FOR THINKING OTHERWISE…wag of the finger.

It’s fun to think of Type 1 or 2 civilizations, but I think a grounding component of something like that is massive cooperation and obligation to “what is” and not your “opinion of what is.” It’s not that we’re incapable of realizing or behaving a certain way. We just don’t want to. It feels too good right now to squeeze life into whatever conception is burdening us this moment. I mean look, I’m writing a blog. A key difference in when I write verses when I tend to hear people’s excuses is that I want to change. I want to be wrong. I’m prepared to argue my points only as far as they go and then flip on a dime when I’m wrong. I can maintain and claim my sovereign mind and be prepared to wildly change my conception of what that statement even means any day. The harder it is to change my mind should find evidence in the effectiveness of my ideas, not because I’m being a stubborn asshole.

Even a commitment to phrasing and acknowledging before we move past a topic would speak towards a grasp of the conflict or nuance in a situation. “I’m against war, but I can’t pretend to know the agenda of the military or what may be putting us in danger, so my criticism I hope you take with a grain of salt.” “I believe life starts at conception, but I also understand I’ve literally never been in a situation that people say I need to empathize with when they chose or needed one.” “Guns are bad and only meant to kill people! But I remember shooting once as a kid and it was kind of fun…” I know I go on and on about the “stupid people” and that’s every bit the mantra of someone in the service or HR industries, but I know there are bastions of support if I ever get around to working harder at the positive ideas I hold as well.

Here’s a secret, I don’t completely know what I’m to do. I have friends who would sooner drop and hate me instead of even bring up a topic they don’t think I’d either understand or be able to handle with kid gloves. I don’t know how you go to the Deep South and “persuade” a 50 year old racist biker who even having felt the burden of taking care of family members not covered by insurance that Obama passing the health care bill is not a sign of the apocalypse or America’s decline. This is how they feel. That being the only thing I’m equating by juxtaposing those examples. #safe. Given that constraint, all I can do is make them feel, which I explained in my last blog. Is it the “best” way? Will it teach anything? Is there a better way? Will it allow for long standing results? I have no clue.

Currently we engage in beating a dead horse. We simply haven’t had enough people claiming “Islam is a religion of peace” for people to buy it in the same way they do from the Christians happy to wage war. How long did it even take to get some states, not even all, to accept gay people getting married? It’s not about marriage being sacred, it’s that gay is still “icky.” Is there a method, process, pattern, you can put people into where things like human rights and peace are streamlined? Is there a model for psychological development and financial distribution that keeps ideas both sacred and in check? That’s what I’m after. That’s why I’ll always have something more to say and another question to ask. What’s the formula for “saving yourself?”

[273] Spin Round To A Beautiful Oblivion

For someone who likes to espouse the idea of balance, there are a number of things I’m stuck being pretty much either/or about. One example is in how I spend my time. I’m not good at being “marginally productive.” I either need to feel like I’m dedicated and killing it, or I’d rather just not do it. I can spend hours watching tv or perusing news articles just passing the time while remaining anxious about how that time is being spent. On its surface, this is ridiculous. Just go out and do something else.

I think and talk a big game. Doing that carries with it a mental state and a set of responsibilities. I want to act as big as I know I’m able. Anything less feels dishonest, lazy, and cheap. I’d rather be more honest in my laziness than resolved to make excuses for why I haven’t reached something yet. I suppose it’s up to you if that means honesty becomes my liability at that point. I’d argue that perhaps to an extent, but probably not very dramatically.

If we all have the things we’re good at, very broadly, I’m good at being a leader. When I’m not the leader, I don’t really know where to fit. I can usually get along well enough, but too much time not leading has its own consequences. The interesting part for me is whether I’m after being a leader of men, or just myself, and if most people feel this conflict. For surely actualizing your personal goals that have a universal implication is one thing and trying to be a persuasive diplomat another. I’m not a diplomat.

I need people to expect things of me, and to doubt the policy without doubting the man. It’s sincerity that I consider the most powerful and destructive force. You sincerely doubt me as a person; it’s all I want to prove you wrong. You think I’m an asshole for treating religious ideas a certain way, I might sit back for a while and refine my methodology. To me, that sincere will and steadfastness in whatever realm is what people find persuasive. Why you can find room in your heart for the Casanova who didn’t simply want to manipulate and fuck around as well as the bigoted family member who can’t purely be defined by their hatred for blacks and gays. You can feel nuance where the temptation to sum things up is strongest.

I think this speaks to, what I cannot really describe as hope because I said I’ve given that up, about our species. A potential to change or be understood in a different light, no matter how small, is still potential. You can change the net potential of something by creating an environment that breeds and respects the behaviors you want to cultivate. However long it took to domesticate dogs; that’s what I want to do to people. You’ll always have a few breeds that will be more prone to biting, but they’re nothing like the wolves from which they came.

I refrain from being too optimistic about our future. I think mine will be amazing and I hope it spills over to the extent I’d like. I think it’s easy to get lost in our own worlds, our own heads. It’s literally impossible to consider “everything” in practice, but information from a wide perspective is important for both personal and humanity’s growth. It’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes, but when you can’t move forward and you’re not going back, the only play is to be stagnant. There’s a whole host of things you can do to spin your wheels, but make sure you recognize that’s what you are in fact doing.

That’s what concerns me most when I try to appeal to the sources I find credible or the people I’d like to call heroes. How much political commentary is too much? When do you stop talking about abolishing the electoral college, or how ridiculous Santorum is for coming out against contraception and education, or Mitt’s magic underwear, before you take the steps to put policies, behaviors, and statements like theirs into the annuls of our sordid history?

There is something to be said about getting into the system to change it. Look at Occupy. They literally had to create something that could be sustained in a park by pulling themselves from the system. There are a lot of things that aren’t necessarily wrong with the system or that can be fixed fairly easily. To call the system the problem is to not have a clear understanding of the problem. I’ll tell you a secret, it’s not even “big government” “bankers” or “socialists.” It comes down to accountability. It’s a philosophy problem.

Some people think they are only accountable to a god or family. As a result, a broken relationship or an unlearned idea is the necessary component of their ongoing and “loving” relationships. Most people aren’t held accountable. As a result, greed takes over, excuses are made, prejudices and ideologies take foot, and often a backdrop of confusion and obscurity manifests that makes it even harder to make them accountable. I mean do you honestly have a good understanding of what the term “mortgage backed securities” really means? How often is abuse overlooked because of someone’s love and commitment to their cause or idea? It’s sad because these concepts, immensely powerful and consequential, get hijacked via sincerity. People really feel or really think or know in their heart something to be true, and more often than not, they’re dead wrong.

So I need to make my feelings, my thoughts, and my “heart” and have people experience it personally. This isn’t exactly hard. Literally every time I’ve made someone cry, I’ve been calm and we were politely chatting about life or people. My feelings, or lack thereof, were felt deeply and personally to the point that someone could only break down with the realization that someone like me exists, quite happily, and genuinely without a care in the world for the people who can’t get on board. It’s more than a few children I’ll leave behind. It goes the opposite direction as well. I really did/do want people to feel safe and free to act like immature drunken assholes from time to time, hence my behavior towards my house. If you felt motivated or happy, hopefully it’s because you recognized I was to help you get there. I’m obviously seeking to push this further when it comes to business.

Of course it’s about me. But I’m not naïve to what constitutes me. I respect and recognize the various forces and circumstances that allow me to express my will, assumptions about its freedom notwithstanding. My ability to feel personally responsible, to understand things for their consequences, and to maintain an identity while yearning for a convergence of the collective is a gift. A circumstantial potentially happenstance gift of merely existing, but a gift nonetheless. Am I going to spin my wheels riding in circles around admiring it? Or is it something to be exalted and celebrated? I’m perhaps lucky that I don’t need to call upon faith, this is actually here, and this I can make people feel and see. I want to test the theory that it’s a capacity in many people who don’t show it. I want to prove that it isn’t lost, its hiding trying to preserve its essence in a world that would see it destroyed.

[272] Drunken Bar Banter

What do you get when you have two ex veterans arguing about war, politics, and morality? A time to intervene!

I’m getting fairly sold on the idea that I really don’t need to talk to anyone anymore on the whole “life” issue. Here’s why. When I do, I find that they either have some “life experience” that ultimately informs their position in such a vehemently held way that you could just never understand, or they have some “of course you know this” rhetoric that blankets the issue with unsubstantiated facts or tentatively held figures.

Ultimately, when you’re fighting, the irony is that you want peace. Whether you want to call the middle east a bunch of towel headed fatwa inciting America hating sand niggers or not, you don’t want one of them to shoot you. Nor do you necessarily want to go out of your way to make sure you can shoot one of them. I talked to a guy tonight whose job it is to hunt down traitors (read dissenters) and see them prosecuted (if not dead if I understood him correctly) but could still agree that despite differences, “America” (think South Park) was “more evolved” than the people in the middle east and it was our responsibility to show them how a country is supposed to be.

Can we pause and soak that in?

(Ignore this paragraph) It’s the position of the 30 something in the bar to step in and try to qualify the conversation in terms that are fair to both sides. Because, after all, the youngins at the bar are all still discovering themselves and the extra 14 years he’s had on the planet has given him this unique perspective on breaking up potential fights and qualifying bar patrons. But really, the guy I talked to who wasn’t the one after dissenters was alright, but I can be condescending in my own blog he’ll never read. (you didn’t ignore this paragraph)

When I pulled out the figures for the amount of civilian casualties in this “war on terror” he fired right back with the alleged number of soldier casualties. The guy who stepped in and pointed out that neither sides’ number mattered, was right. I didn’t pull out Google and site my shit, though I would have, and regardless of his, dramatically inflated number of soldiers killed, his point was that “AMERICA’S troops are being killed” and mine was about collateral damage. Neither was reaching a point that was going to be mutually respected and understood.

Facts don’t matter. And that is hard as fuck for me to swallow. The culture you create around them does. If I’m to make any difference in the world, it’s going to be developing an environment that breeds understanding. It’s not going to be in merely presenting the facts, but entrenching them in someone’s life. This military guy, this republican, this whatever the fuck label you want to give him, wants the same shit as you do, he just wasn’t brought up in in an environment to realize it without his fair share of bar debates or time spent in the military. People aren’t THAT different.

The ones who are out there finding the relative few to have informative and fulfilling semi-drunk bar conversations don’t believe the rest of the world gets it. Really understand this. The ones that believe or have the potential to change and discuss things, basically don’t believe in their potential to change things, let alone through discussion. This is a problem for me. I overhead people qualify their conversations all the time. “I’m not necessarily saying this or that and I don’t mean to be this or that, and I hope you don’t take this to mean more than what I’m saying” from the dumbest sorostitute to the public intellectual. People are smarter than they want to believe. They recognize opportunities to be misunderstood. They maybe just don’t understand the nature of how smart they are?

And I don’t want to think I’m grasping at strings for hope in humanity. I still think we’re fucked. I just see enough to work with. Just remember that you’re human, they’re human, and we’re all dumb fuck animals trying to figure shit out until we die. Getting drunk at a bar or dicking around on an instrument or mouthing off about how compelling our feelings are, is the PINNACLE of the human experience. When you can’t respect someone else’s right to waste as much of their time as you do yours on shit that makes you a hypocrite and liar, you’re the biggest kind of asshole. How wonderful it would be if we didn’t have to keep making excuses.

[271] C'est La Vie

I feel like a weight has been lifted. I've been a Debbie Downer for the last week and it stemmed from an overflow of anxiety about the “immorality of the world” and being seemingly unaware of the forces that oppose it. Luckily, or maybe it has nothing to do with luck, I managed to have a few conversations with friends to talk me down and I figure I’m back around normal. Maybe it’s the timing, but right as I’m settling back in, the discussion of free will is back. I want to explore my experience under the likely certainty that I don’t have it.

If I didn't feel like I had free will, from where would my anger, angst, or fear come from? Does my inherent non-belief in it speak to why I don’t generally persist in these modes of thought to begin with? What personhood named “Nick P.” is there to justify labeling anything as if he really understands the nature of it. If I’m at the same time the most horrible and most moral creature and I’m “one with everything” then where is the room to get pissy?

If we don’t have a choice, that shifts the priority. It is no longer about punishment and judgment. It becomes wholly about the experience; the very fact and act of perceiving. It’s not confusing why someone would be friends with a person who is openly “fake” because the experience between those two is simply a net positive. It’s not a secret why you can switch areas and switch friends, because it was never about that specific person, it was about what they allowed you to experience. When the memory of them becomes non-existent or painful, it slips away. Nor should you feel like you’re immoral or cold, you don’t have a choice, that’s how your brain operates.

Speculating from a “universal” standpoint, if there was one agenda that our cold and empty vastness could want, it would be to experience itself. I mean, we exist. I see and hear from no gods or anything else magic. It wasn’t born with a conception of good or bad. It just is. We just are. Our planet has seen millions of years of animals be born and go extinct and hasn't blinked an eye. When you get wrapped up in your personal feelings, you lose the game you’re not acknowledging you’re playing.

You have to convince yourself you have control to feel anxious. It’s logically unsound to believe you control anything. Your decisions are made well before you become conscious of them. The consequences you see obey different or more complicated rules than your perception governs.

I think when you lose yourself it isn’t a bad thing. I’m feeling creepily zen in typing this. I’m not motivated to get angry and the anxiety has been drained. It’s a constant reflection. When you’re not afraid you don’t engage in consequences of the fear response. You don’t have to fear and speculate about the consequences. It no longer becomes about justifying a presumed future. You don’t have to denigrate your current experience or understand anyone else’s as anything more than something they do in fact feel.

I hope this allows me to conceptualize my judgments in a manner that does not stem from or create more of the feelings I've been exploring this last week. I hope if I make any sort of sense to someone who reads this it allows a deeper appreciation for our time and experience together. We were brought here and we’ll leave here without our will consulted. Why should we think the forces that can do that would concern themselves with the messy details in the middle?

[270] A Conversation Worth Having

Allysia Sims

tell me something that will blow my mind.

Nick P.

Seems like a lofty task

I'll tell you something, but it's your responsiblity to get your mind blown

Allysia Sims

ok

go!

Nick P.

I don't think what I'll spend my life working towards will be worth it.

I think my conception of people as tools and bags of meat will destroy any and all relationships I hold where that isn't assumed.

I think I hate more than any other feeling, this peculiar given how happy I can be and how often I laugh

Allysia Sims

why do you hate so much?

Nick P.

Because it's for things worth hating

I'm probably developing a psychological hold and pattern on a bastardized conception of honesty.

Allysia Sims

I don't think anything is worth hating.

Nick P.

I think that's retarded

Allysia Sims

Thats ok

I think it's retarded to consume yourself with hate

Nick P.

To experience and to consume are different

If I felt consumed, I'd think myself retarded as well

Allysia Sims

So, then, you having the feelings shouldn't be an issue

Nick P.

The feelings in and of themself, no

how they help me translate and justify my actions, potentially

I corner myself mentally, from that "desperate" position I get creative

Allysia Sims

shitty feelings create the most inspiration.

thats why I only paint when I'm depressed. lol

Nick P.

the cursed blessing

Allysia Sims

it's stupid

Everything is.

Nick P.

so it seems

I think I'd rather be honest than friendly

honesty does more for me psychologically than friendship

I don't think some of my friends would enjoy this disposition

Allysia Sims

me too, especially because most friendships are lies.

no, but if they are your true friends, they'll accept it.

Nick P.

The standard I certainly hold them to

Allysia Sims

as they should be

Nick P.

I hate people that want me dead

Allysia Sims

who wants you dead?

Nick P.

Those at the top of society

And the people who "don't care"

The question is the ratio of passive/active desire

Allysia Sims

I don't think not caring means they wish you were dead.

Nick P.

two different people, the top, and the not carers

and they certainly do

they're the extreme passives, but that must be what they want if they truly don't care

it's the people around them who's intent sparked their will to attack their own will

Nick P.

the thieves who rob them of an identity or purpose

to the point where the only reply, the only way to "fight" is to give in and say you don't care

but that's the disenfranchised base

the real problem are the ones who create the conditions under which that happens to people

Allysia Sims

Well, the person I love the most wishes I were dead, so those people who "dont care" are irrelevant to my emotions, I don't need to waste time hating them.

Nick P.

it's less about them and more the ideas they espouse and reinforce

Allysia Sims

So?

Nick P.

they make excuses, they give up

I think those are things worth hating

Allysia Sims

So?

Nick P.

they are antithetical to life

if you are genuinely that way, kill yourself and at least be consistent

don't drag people down and go nowhere

don't set a shit example

Allysia Sims

alright, well it sucks to have people like that, but I still believe it's a waste of time and effort to even put thought towards people like that. If you're so anti-attitude of theirs, then paying them any mind only fuels the fire.

for you and them.

Nick P.

you can't consider solutions to the problem without respecting and acknowledging that it exists

and if you don't understand the nature of it, you 'll be incapable of addressing it properly

Allysia Sims

You can do that without expressing hate.

expressing*

Nick P.

if you can't understand your own hatred and what it does to inhibit or motivate you, the message you have for others about their feelings will be incomplete

to be a proper teacher and example, you need to own the extremes

Allysia Sims

Yeah, I guess thats true. If you didn't have a passion against it, then you couldn't fight against it.

Eh, stop proving your point. I don't like it. lol

Nick P.

I appreciate you at least qualifying that I'm doing so

Allysia Sims

I'll always admit it, but you better believe I'll bitch about it. lol

Nick P.

hatred is merely a tool, all feelings are. how you express and empathize are what count

Allysia Sims

very true.

Nick P.

my issue isn't my feelings, it's the fact that I'm prone to action

that when I say something, I really mean I'll do it

Allysia Sims

thats not always a bad thing, as long as you can control your words and actions.

Nick P.

until you can't control your words or actions, or better, until you lose your conception of what you think is worth controlling

Allysia Sims

is that something you think you'll have to worry about?

Nick P.

when all you do is think and reevaluate, of course

Allysia Sims

isn't that all anyone does?

Nick P.

I run the risk of severely altering my perception every day

not at all

the "anyone" reaches a point where they become to mentally exhausted, afraid, or disinterested to keep pursuing the implications

and they'll tell you this outright

they meet your inquiry or personal exploration with a polite smile and glances around the room for a way out

they hear that you're upset, not that you're calling them to arms

Allysia Sims

So what are you saying?

Nick P.

they won't fix themselves

so does someone have to?

and then who among them is that person going to listen to? how can they be considered when they don't know or care enough?

how do you establish a survivable system that doesn't have mechanisms for self correction? That doesn't know how to weed out what doesn't help or actively harms?

you need to make people courageous enough to be scientists

Allysia Sims

It's simple, if you are aware of it's happenings, you pull yourself out of it. Stop doing what you've been doing that cause the feelings, and try something new.

^exactly

Nick P.

there's the rub, they're aware. They're just too stupid, and I don't mean academically

they live in a stupid society

they are born and raised with horrible conceptions of themselves and reality

and breaking those requires behavioral therapy

Allysia Sims

well if we didn't have the stupid, the smart wouldn't be so appreciated, nor would our intelligence even matter, because there would be nothing to fix.

I wonder how stupid females feel when you talk to them/

Nick P.

I don't think that follows. First, the smart aren't appreciated. I don't know if you've caught any Santorum speeches lately ridiculing the idea of going to college. Second, Intelligence, technically, only matters to the extent that it helps you produce offspring, so any appreciation for it needs to come from contrived but respected rules about it's utility beyond that. Third, as someone who considers himself intelligent, if only because I try to inform myself and people seem to be helped by my advice, I know there is no "peak" of things you can learn and that given the changing nature of everything, something you used to be smart about is almost certainly different now, always leaving a gap to fix

Allysia Sims

....again, I wonder how these girls feel.

But, I see what you're saying. But personally, I appreciate stupid.

Nick P.

appreciate stupid? expound on that

Allysia Sims

Because sometimes I feel like I'm too complex, the workings of my mind can drive me absolutely mad. Stupidity at its finest has the ability to remind me to stop taking life so seriously, as damaging as stupid can be, it's also a reality check in way, for me.

Nick P.

stupid as a measure of what it simply means to be human isn't the problem

Allysia Sims

touche', however, you can't fix stupid. But you can learn to deal with it better.

Nick P.

the "fix" for stupid is to change the culture around it

first getting people to recognize there's even a culture to begin with

Allysia Sims

No, it might improve the amount of stupid, but stupid will never go away.

Nick P.

the goal isn't to get stupid to go away

i'm not being clear

Allysia Sims

You, my dear, need your own blog or something

Nick P.

I have one...written some blogs or so

Allysia Sims

I believe that

Nick P.

we just did to stupid what society needs to do to it

we conceptualized it

as a human facet, who cares, everyone's going to do stupid things

as a societal womb, it's insanely dangerous and has far reaching implications

but in recognizing that it has two different meanings or can be implemented in different ways, we get to have a coherent discussion about it

I can in one hand "take it as given" and project the sort of ho-hum attitude most people take about it, while acknowledging what I'm actually fighting against and focusing on to change

there's a huge problem with language that speaks to why problems perpetuate...

Allysia Sims

well, as much as I'd love for you to expand on this, I'm having a hard time keeping my eyes open, therefore, I think it's time for bed.

So, I shall talk with you later. Goodnight. lol

Nick P.

kk sleep well, it's been a pleasure

[269] Animals

I want to put my disposition up to a vote. I’m tired of trying to think my way past or justify things. I want to know what the rest of the world actually wants, if anything, and then respond accordingly. It would be a huge oversight to just try and work at things without anyone actually believing in what you’re doing. If they don’t buy into it you won’t get any change, let alone the big ones you’ve assumed to be the most worthy and over reaching. So tell me, how should I feel, and for how long?

We live in a country that outright denies someone DNA testing that would likely prove them innocent in order to “finally put them to death” and move the financial burden from our minds. How do I categorize that? Is it collateral damage of too many people with too many views? Is it the most abysmal example of a human rights abdication I can think of? Is it secretly a positive thing because we should be cutting back on the amount of people on the planet anyway? I want to know.

We live in a country/planet where people are comfortable hurting people because they would feel bad allowing those people to live otherwise. We let people’s ignorance reign supreme. I know my friends are a small sample size of the population, but you are primarily not the people I’m referring to here. So tell me, how should I feel about evidence not mattering, equality not mattering, or uninformed and dramatic feelings dictating where I can get in life? Tell me how I should feel about my ever fleeting time being spent hearing the words [and debating the merit!] of the weakest and most evil among us.

It is becoming increasingly less about my effort or knowledge. I put in the time to try and be informed and productive. It doesn’t seem to matter. How should I feel about not mattering? Do I need to bring in all the theoretical examples I’m setting for people that I’ll never hear or see? Do I need to stop giving into the façade that my impact is truly as powerful as I’d like to believe? Is it better for me to adopt “that’s life” adages and fit? I want to know the secret. I want to know how to stomach it.

I’m feeling less and less justification for being happy. I’m asking because I don’t precisely know why I should continue making myself. It isn’t about what I have. It’s about what we are. Animals.

[268] Spilling My Guts

I can feel a rift forming and I think it’s because I tempted fate. (Impossibly vague and indirect)

I have the power to start a fight without anything actually fought over happening. I have an innate ability to send signals insanely deeper than an advertisement (fucking hopefully) or silly moral anecdote about life and your place in it. Is it a matter of respecting power or engaging and acknowledging it? You should respect the consequences of course, but the power? The power is there, it isn’t biased or judging. You just take it or you become subjected to it.

I don’t think or feel “macho” when I refer to power. Power for me is cause an effect. I’m a “moral” being simply out of cause and effect and it’s hard not to throw in the word cynic stating it that way. I genuinely can’t feel happier than when I can contribute. Be it a joke, a helping a hand, an idea. What the fuck ever. When I’m an active part of the process, my disposition grows, hence my obvious friendships. When my level of comedy or productivity grows because of them of course we should grow closer.

I’m not even positive what it means to say “the human component” to things. There is no humanity to me. There are bodies with feelings and potential. You play by the rules that make each other happy or you don’t. If there is some universal balance rule at play, it surely doesn’t give a shit which you “choose.” But there has to be a choice. Why become conscious if not to collapse that wave function and dictate? Why pick a mate, pick a friend, develop an agenda or sense or moral outrage if not because the choice projects a much more enjoyable ever present now? Maybe the particles don’t choose, maybe the cooperation allows for choice. Haha oh fuck I’m talking myself into free will. That’s kinda cool. #notbackedupscientifically….yet

I think I want to make a difference, but it’s very important for me that it makes sense. I can’t think of a bigger identity crisis than to consider everything I say just a happenstance relative position about an undisclosed and uncertain amount of constraints that I “feel super strongly” about in order to project some safe or contented future. When I attack something like religion, it’s not actually because I want you to feel bad. It’s not that I don’t think your feelings are genuine. It is simply that I’m insanely more concerned with honesty than I am about how you feel about me. Being “real” is hard. It’s often depressing. It’s not something you choose lightly. But I’d rather be dealing with the tear inducing bullshit of life with people I know who get it than jump into a pool of excuses and formality.

I want and expect the best. As a result I find myself moved towards dramatics. It’s one thing to get stuck in a day to day habit and another to flip the entire script with a pointed and calculated decision. I’d like the decision to be collective. I’d like a convergence on reality. There are too many barriers from people who don’t care or don’t realize the harm they cause. I can’t have them in my circle. I’m only good at cutting things off from practice. I wasn’t actually born this cold, and maintaining it is fucking insanely stressful.

The best course of action I can take is to run the experiment. If I manage to obtain some old fuck disposition with clichés like “that’s life” and “just be happy with such and such” I’m going to get there the hardest way possible. Barring some tragedy, you can spit in my face and call me a failure if I’m not pursuing the full extent of my vision. I hope you can find me dramatic, but not unreasonable. I hope you have my ideas well before I ever get to them. And I really fucking hope it’s worth it.  

[267] Stuck In The Middle With You

I’m stuck.

How do you balance your practically lost “hope” for things with a need to be practical? I mean, I genuinely have no hope for the “big picture” at this point. I think we’re going extinct. I think we’re all the most horrible kinds of people in the world. I think the planet is more than on its way gone at least for our long term or mass habitability. I don’t trust a single thing I eat. I think people are allowed to feel too safe which makes them too dumb and the majority of people will claim being “too nice” to do or say anything about it.

I don’t like staring at the fact that it isn’t about how much you work or are willing to do, it’s about whom you know and how much excess you have to waste to achieve your means. I’m the kind of person who is willing to work 23 hours a day. And even having done that I’ve found myself exactly where I am, stuck. The only thing I have going for me is that it drives me crazy. I want to be doing something more or better and frequently different.

I don’t really see the good in people. Sure you can catch them off guard and they’ll often opt to be polite or lend a hand. Not going out of your way to cause harm is not the same thing as being “good.” To me, it would be good to see more people constantly pissed off. I want to see people who can’t take their minds off of worldly problems to the extent that it alters their disposition and behavior. The level of comfort and complacency is what scares and bothers me the most. Everything is taken for granted.

When you take on responsibility for your actions, you aren’t allowed to see things that way. It simply doesn’t make sense for me to think that I’m going to just go about my happy day doing as I please and spending like it’s my job, and I’m going to be able to maintain a business. I don’t get to blame my feelings or actions on a divine plan or will so when I dictate the reasons you’re a friend of mine and the kind I’ll try to be to you, that’s mine to own. I don’t pretend that I’ll always have friends “just because.”

I often wonder where my responsibility stops and someone else’s kicks in. I’d like to think I can just chalk it up to history. Literally every financial hurdle I’ve had to deal with is the result of dealing with a greedy non-caring and massive business entity that knows the game of fucking people. It’s my responsibility to own the decision to open and when I need help, but it would just be wrong to say opening was a bad idea or that I somehow can’t do this. I mean, it’s a glorified lemonade stand. Everything about the food industry is wash, rinse, and repeat.

How do you have the conversation with the person who’s comfortable selling shoes out of a hole in the wall for 20 years that there is exceedingly more to life and even if they feel like they help or give back, clicking Paypal donation buttons or commenting “that’s just awful” about something you see on the news is not nearly enough. How do you persuade the primarily waddling masses that the problem isn’t their thyroid? Who hears the message that practically everything about their day-to-day is built on a culture of greed and death…like literally…people dying so you can complain that your screen isn’t loading fast enough.

And it sounds so angst ridden teenager or crazy hippie, but it’s actually a thing that bothers me. And you read about the pathetic little activist groups who don’t see how things work and let their emotions drive them to some country or to a picket line while business conducts as usual. It really is no wonder why some of these people choose to get violent. They know nothing is changing and it must feel like a dramatically lesser evil. Worse, think of taking these “feelers” and explaining to them their pet cause is misguided, naïve, or flat out wrong. Now you’re toying with a group already motivated to action.

This may speak to why I never feel like I can stop writing even when I’m not feeling like I’m saying much. Unless I see it in the news or sneakily slip it into conversation or trap someone in a rant, nothing gets discussed. No reason or plan is ever established. No time or respect is given to the circumstances. No moment of silence or reflection. We just go about our day.

[266] That Settles That

TL:DR People are stupid, I still hate them, things aren’t getting better.

I think that everything that can be known about us or the nature of our existence currently exists and has always existed. Knowledge is discovered, not invented. As a result of this thought, I’m on the endless pursuit of running thought experiments. Given X constraints under Y conditions, what can we probably discern about the nature of reality, if only with regard to the practical implications? I’m starting to get burnt out on news because, as with most things, I’m starting to see a very depressing pattern. When the world around us starts crashing, it’s always predicated on someone being willfully ignorant.

On the surface, it seems naïve to rally against the “stupid people.” You get the “well who’s really stupid, who are you to judge” conversation. You get model court cases where you present your side, they present theirs, and everyone loses because no one pointed out that it’s possible to argue for years under no or bad logic.

There are tell-tale behaviors of people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. There are explicit actions and statements the ignorant make. I could watch a hundred interviews and pick out the liar or the half-truth teller every time by simply sorting and counting instances in their language. Why can’t others seem to see it?

This honesty thing is lost on us. People don’t know how to tell the truth or hear the truth so they simply pass themselves between the various groups looking to take advantage. They squeeze the world into their tiny perspective and declare absolutes in utter disregard to reality, let alone nuance. Meanwhile the thinkers warn, the scientists inform, the peaceful campaign yet are all silenced because money reigns. The powerful have created a culture where what you have or the luxuries you can afford “win.” The part about you buying into their game is their real victory.

These campaigns against Wall Street, secret and not-so-secret bailouts, attacks on unions and education, debate about how your charitable donations are being used….name your issue, the center of the controversy is monetary. Who gets it and why. I so rarely see, if ever, discussions of human responsibility; instead its name calling, pointing fingers, scapegoating. They allow the issue to become obscure in the first press release, with the first interview until there's no telling how far the discourse degrades.

We’re so dumb we can’t learn or appreciate just how dumb we are. We’ve had an economic model for the past 60 years that has always degraded into “kill for freedom and democracy.” We try to apply mathematical models onto populations and pretend that there aren’t instantly things to be said about how they won’t apply. Or worse, we know they won’t work and persist in them anyway. In the mainstream, there’s no discussion about the human psychology behind people who hold terrible or oppressive ideas and how they’re used. There’s no discussion about how unhelpful the rhetoric is or the fact that it’s even rhetoric.

We’re quick to judge and conceptualize things in a sound bite. I click through a montage of the dead famous and accomplished and each one’s life is summed up as “So-and-so, philanthropist, died August 20, 2011.” What an insult to their motivations, to their potential message. If I'm remembered as anything less than an "Everythingist" something went wrong. We say things like “right to work” and “national school choice” and pretend they aren’t complete misnomers. We reinforce our delusions every time we repeat the script. Every time we give it a stage, that’s all we come to know, the only thing we can manifest. From Congress to shitty fast food jobs, until you raise the level of discourse and act in deliberate and informed ways, all you can do is manifest hatred and complaints and pass the problems onto the next person.

I’ve been told I’m naïve or dumb for what I expect from people. I, who [somehow!] is basically peaceful, accepting, desperate to get informed and work towards something that matters, I observe and draw conclusions, I don’t accept an ideology and proclaim it’s the only way. I manifest my will and my views in relationships, writings, and work. I am the kind of selfish that understands I’m “alone” in a social and real context. For me to disregard the potential for others is to deny my own. For me not to respect your ability to make good or bad decisions is to deny my own. I may be the result of a seemingly random confluence of forces, but what I currently am is mine to choose. The very fact of my life is the standard I expect from the world.

I don’t want to lose sight of the point of struggling. I kind of just want to sit and think. Or maybe just sit and breathe. The same story gets old. It’s the same ignorance and fear. I know I keep writing the same blog too.