Even through such a long recurring cycle, everything seemed completely new. There was a sense of discovery and novelty in everything, to a degree. And there still is, and I'm sure there always will be, because that is the dynamic nature of an examined life. But, those potholes that take me back only disappoint me and make me wish I had broken free completely.
I'm not the kind of person that holds unrequited emotions. I'm not the kind of person that leaves embers smoldering for years because of my own inadequacies. But, I still carry appreciations and positivity with me, even years after. What used to fill me with regret is now more of a nostalgic lesson, and a reason to look backward at all.
But the more you try to preserve those things, the more they are revealed to be what they always were: evanescent temporalities based on a false seed. They originate from the Self, and end at that same location, like a loop through the air. Whatever it touches is only reflected in itself and not throughout, but dwelt upon. They are the poisons of purity in the world of Man.
There are times that you have to cut those things loose, not out of spite or emptiness, but out of pity and anguish.
The lowest common denominator is what we're all after. When yours is miles above the next person's, your lowest is never low enough to maintain itself. Your lows are never met with any grounding.
The height, conversely, is always grounded and drives everything forward -- but not without the staggering reminder that it will always be free-form in some way; always erratic at its core. And that is what disillusions me to people, to other people, to others that I have known. It isn't that things move on, or that things develop away, or even that things are shown false. It's that realization that things never were in any real sense, because I have been led by the short-term memory of God straight into a wall that was always there to begin with. It makes the effort seem meaningless, and it makes the meaning of that all the more negative.
Deep within the circuity, there has to be some alternate route. There has to be something to justify all of this, somewhere...
And in that path lies much more emptiness, to be sure.
I can never find that root of understanding in another person, because there is no one deep enough to even recognize its existence. All of my points fall to be shallow puddles in muddied water, filled with adrenaline and the epitome of dopamine. That is all everything ends up amounting to. Dopamine. Fucking dopamine.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
I Am a God-Fearing Atheist
The idea of atheism conceptually disposing with any idea of God or a higher power is a misconception. Although the term has been hijacked by both religious people and non-religious, both sides miss the point, I think.
Asexuality, for example, means essentially, "without sexuality". Atypical means something like, "not typical". The prefix simply negates the rest. Atheism means, "without theism."
I make this distinction because the difference between theism and atheism is not the difference between God's existence and non-existence. Theism is an idea that supposes a Creator that deliberately intervenes with Human existence. Deism, on the other hand (the belief that is understood to be held by our founding fathers), is different than theism because deism is a more agnostic approach to the idea of God.
It is still essentially monotheistic, but not in the sense that it is "theistic". Deism is the idea that there is some grand design or God, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Human actions. A "Grand Observer", for example.
To be an atheist, to me, means that you are against the idea that God has given us a specific route to follow. It means you are against any person who believes God has directly spoken to them, or sent them literature, or given irreversible rules that must dominate our actions. So then, atheism is really the rejection of man-made religion and practice.
I am definitely an atheist in this sense. However, I am somewhat of a deist, because to believe that saying there is no God is kind of like saying there is no sense of physics. Whether it is called God or Nature or The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster. Simply because "He" can not realistically be an anthropomorphic representation of ourselves, it does not mean that there is nothing at all.
Agnosticism, however, is more of a buzz-term for being too open-minded. People tend to use agnosticism to say, "I'm smarter than you because I will believe anything, and therefore nothing completely." That kind of thought just shows how flawed our sense of Self has evolved.
So, if there is a concept of God, then what will that be, in terms of manifestation? To us, at least, and to what we have observed in our history, God has only taken one real shape: Rationality. Understanding. Reality.
As we learn, we find irrevocable truths about reality. The way that chemicals interact, the ideas of Human rights that become more universal as we become a global culture, the denunciation of all things inherently negative and self-centered, and our responsibilities to uphold what we deem to be true in the purer sense. Some day, far into the future I'm sure, there will be a single, singular truth; there will be one rationality and reality.
It will be something that is universal enough to encompass all of our modes of thought, yet dynamic enough to adapt to every situation in a contextual sense. It will be the representation of our complete understanding of our own behavior and psychology. This, in the end, will be the only form that God will ever realistically take in our world.
So, I am God-fearing, only because I fear going against what I know is morally right. Dogma is too easy to see through if you take the time to do so, and as a person builds his or her intelligence, such dichotomies are painfully obvious. There is the true and untrue; the right and wrong. While this is almost always hard to apply, it is still there. There is always one wrong and one right, even if we don't understand the application thereof, or how it directly applies or can contribute to a solution. There is only one God, and one Satan. I fear doing anything to empower that concept of the Devil, because I do not want our society as a whole to descend into moral depravity. Not in the Christian sense, though, but in the absolute sense of it all. Slavery will always be wrong, whether we recognize it or not. Whether we do so is whether we admit our obligation to God, our obligation to existence itself. We are obliged to do what is right, because we are here.
This kind of concept is what I believe the post-modern movement was supposed to uncover. However, it has only seemed to be interpreted as a way of justifying moral relativism and self-interest as dogma. But, no matter how many people may ever think that owning another person is right, or abusing for the sake of abuse is right, or raping Nature itself is right... it will always be wrong. It is Humanity's choice to follow The Light, or self-destruct in Darkness.
Asexuality, for example, means essentially, "without sexuality". Atypical means something like, "not typical". The prefix simply negates the rest. Atheism means, "without theism."
I make this distinction because the difference between theism and atheism is not the difference between God's existence and non-existence. Theism is an idea that supposes a Creator that deliberately intervenes with Human existence. Deism, on the other hand (the belief that is understood to be held by our founding fathers), is different than theism because deism is a more agnostic approach to the idea of God.
It is still essentially monotheistic, but not in the sense that it is "theistic". Deism is the idea that there is some grand design or God, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with Human actions. A "Grand Observer", for example.
To be an atheist, to me, means that you are against the idea that God has given us a specific route to follow. It means you are against any person who believes God has directly spoken to them, or sent them literature, or given irreversible rules that must dominate our actions. So then, atheism is really the rejection of man-made religion and practice.
I am definitely an atheist in this sense. However, I am somewhat of a deist, because to believe that saying there is no God is kind of like saying there is no sense of physics. Whether it is called God or Nature or The Great Flying Spaghetti Monster. Simply because "He" can not realistically be an anthropomorphic representation of ourselves, it does not mean that there is nothing at all.
Agnosticism, however, is more of a buzz-term for being too open-minded. People tend to use agnosticism to say, "I'm smarter than you because I will believe anything, and therefore nothing completely." That kind of thought just shows how flawed our sense of Self has evolved.
So, if there is a concept of God, then what will that be, in terms of manifestation? To us, at least, and to what we have observed in our history, God has only taken one real shape: Rationality. Understanding. Reality.
As we learn, we find irrevocable truths about reality. The way that chemicals interact, the ideas of Human rights that become more universal as we become a global culture, the denunciation of all things inherently negative and self-centered, and our responsibilities to uphold what we deem to be true in the purer sense. Some day, far into the future I'm sure, there will be a single, singular truth; there will be one rationality and reality.
It will be something that is universal enough to encompass all of our modes of thought, yet dynamic enough to adapt to every situation in a contextual sense. It will be the representation of our complete understanding of our own behavior and psychology. This, in the end, will be the only form that God will ever realistically take in our world.
So, I am God-fearing, only because I fear going against what I know is morally right. Dogma is too easy to see through if you take the time to do so, and as a person builds his or her intelligence, such dichotomies are painfully obvious. There is the true and untrue; the right and wrong. While this is almost always hard to apply, it is still there. There is always one wrong and one right, even if we don't understand the application thereof, or how it directly applies or can contribute to a solution. There is only one God, and one Satan. I fear doing anything to empower that concept of the Devil, because I do not want our society as a whole to descend into moral depravity. Not in the Christian sense, though, but in the absolute sense of it all. Slavery will always be wrong, whether we recognize it or not. Whether we do so is whether we admit our obligation to God, our obligation to existence itself. We are obliged to do what is right, because we are here.
This kind of concept is what I believe the post-modern movement was supposed to uncover. However, it has only seemed to be interpreted as a way of justifying moral relativism and self-interest as dogma. But, no matter how many people may ever think that owning another person is right, or abusing for the sake of abuse is right, or raping Nature itself is right... it will always be wrong. It is Humanity's choice to follow The Light, or self-destruct in Darkness.
They aren't all beautiful...
I used to have a lot more faith in Mankind, because I knew deep inside me that I was a part of it, and therefore what I held to be valuable could be reflected somewhere else, or even in a multitude of points. But, I'm 25, and I've never found any real evidence that this is true.
To say that I don't feel the Human race deserves to have people like me alive at this moment in time sounds pretentious, or vitriolic, or bitter... but it's how I feel. It isn't that I'm so lofty and high-horsed that I look down on everything, or that I am forlorn to the point of rejection. But when I look at all of the different ways the world is slowly descending into anyone's conceptualization of Hell, I start to believe this more and more.
I don't really think the world deserved someone like Nietzsche. I'm not sure he really ended up doing any good. I don't think the world deserved Aristotle, because all we've done up to now is rape his ideas for our own benefit. I don't think the world ever truly deserved music in the grander sense.
Because, right now is where we are at. We may have done great things in the past, and we may still do great things, but as of right now, we don't deserve any of our virtues. The only thing we do deserve is a steadfast surrender to death, or to self-destruction of some kind.
And, to pull this feeling around is going to take so much effort, so much optimism, so much innovation that I honestly don't believe that Humanity has that kind of capacity. It's as if we've reached the penultimate point of evolution, but we can never cross over that gorge because we weren't meant to. We are all caught in a protracted cycle of Roman collapse in the historical sense. We are all meant to relive tragedy, but without the familiar catharsis at the end.
All I can do to keep my sense of self is to disconnect and do what makes me happy. All I can do to make myself happy is to forsake the rest of Humanity, and delve within. Isn't that the antithesis, though, of what I desire in life? I would like to be a part, however small, of that great upending; the distortion and final collapse of selfishness.
It would be such a grand movement, and it would be the changing root that gave birth to incomprehensible greatness. But what it requires to take hold is something that I don't believe the Human brain is capable of. Because, for every Nietzsche, there is an Elizabeth, waiting to take every feeling of love he had for her and twist it, posthumously raping his ideals. For every Aristotle, there is a Plato; a more dialectic, but more degenerate form of purity, waiting to drag something into the depths of the Deimos. For every great musician willing to plumb every depth and cleanse Mankind of its ill-gotten philosophies, there are a hundred faux performers, jesters and emotional thieves and playwrights.
For every ounce of truth that we have constructed over millennia, there are tons and tons of selfishness, of emotional egocentricity, of pure sin. And this isn't the kind of sin that we'd like to attribute to monotheism. This is the real kind; the waiting, brooding snake that is a truth underneath our vaguer thoughts.
We'd rather clutch the wheel and watch those around us plunge into fire, not realizing the entire time that we are also headed there, because we'd rather have the spectacle. We'd rather give up, because the end cannot be pure in a selfish sense; once tainted, everything is scrap and trash. There is nothing worth saving in the existential sense, because we are all born into the falsely Human-defined concept of "sin".
It shows in our political structures and movements, our social hierarchies, our prejudices that last even through a barrage of rationality. It shows in everything we do. We are selfish first and foremost. There is no real purity, because that is our current root. Postmodernism is an ashamed idea that was never conceived to give us this result. We are the children of relativism that is absolute only in the fact that it is absolutely self-centered and greedy.
Like clockwork, I always go back to what someone told me a long time ago... that I was too smart for my own good.
To say that I don't feel the Human race deserves to have people like me alive at this moment in time sounds pretentious, or vitriolic, or bitter... but it's how I feel. It isn't that I'm so lofty and high-horsed that I look down on everything, or that I am forlorn to the point of rejection. But when I look at all of the different ways the world is slowly descending into anyone's conceptualization of Hell, I start to believe this more and more.
I don't really think the world deserved someone like Nietzsche. I'm not sure he really ended up doing any good. I don't think the world deserved Aristotle, because all we've done up to now is rape his ideas for our own benefit. I don't think the world ever truly deserved music in the grander sense.
Because, right now is where we are at. We may have done great things in the past, and we may still do great things, but as of right now, we don't deserve any of our virtues. The only thing we do deserve is a steadfast surrender to death, or to self-destruction of some kind.
And, to pull this feeling around is going to take so much effort, so much optimism, so much innovation that I honestly don't believe that Humanity has that kind of capacity. It's as if we've reached the penultimate point of evolution, but we can never cross over that gorge because we weren't meant to. We are all caught in a protracted cycle of Roman collapse in the historical sense. We are all meant to relive tragedy, but without the familiar catharsis at the end.
All I can do to keep my sense of self is to disconnect and do what makes me happy. All I can do to make myself happy is to forsake the rest of Humanity, and delve within. Isn't that the antithesis, though, of what I desire in life? I would like to be a part, however small, of that great upending; the distortion and final collapse of selfishness.
It would be such a grand movement, and it would be the changing root that gave birth to incomprehensible greatness. But what it requires to take hold is something that I don't believe the Human brain is capable of. Because, for every Nietzsche, there is an Elizabeth, waiting to take every feeling of love he had for her and twist it, posthumously raping his ideals. For every Aristotle, there is a Plato; a more dialectic, but more degenerate form of purity, waiting to drag something into the depths of the Deimos. For every great musician willing to plumb every depth and cleanse Mankind of its ill-gotten philosophies, there are a hundred faux performers, jesters and emotional thieves and playwrights.
For every ounce of truth that we have constructed over millennia, there are tons and tons of selfishness, of emotional egocentricity, of pure sin. And this isn't the kind of sin that we'd like to attribute to monotheism. This is the real kind; the waiting, brooding snake that is a truth underneath our vaguer thoughts.
We'd rather clutch the wheel and watch those around us plunge into fire, not realizing the entire time that we are also headed there, because we'd rather have the spectacle. We'd rather give up, because the end cannot be pure in a selfish sense; once tainted, everything is scrap and trash. There is nothing worth saving in the existential sense, because we are all born into the falsely Human-defined concept of "sin".
It shows in our political structures and movements, our social hierarchies, our prejudices that last even through a barrage of rationality. It shows in everything we do. We are selfish first and foremost. There is no real purity, because that is our current root. Postmodernism is an ashamed idea that was never conceived to give us this result. We are the children of relativism that is absolute only in the fact that it is absolutely self-centered and greedy.
Like clockwork, I always go back to what someone told me a long time ago... that I was too smart for my own good.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
We were the ones that marched and fell...
I'm not a vindictive person, in the sense that I do not enjoy being so. I don't take pleasure in the kind of dominance that the primal brain craves and strives for. But I feel as though I always come off in a contrary tone.
I spend so much time and effort honing my thoughts. I come to very complex realizations, but not in a conceited way. I don't think I'm better for having the views that I do. But I respect the rationality of it all.
It's hard to keep real views like mine, because everything in society is built on linking views to personality. The way you feel about something is the way you feel about yourself. And, while true in a basic sense, it should not mean that you are defined by those connections alone.
There are phrases and concepts that I always seem to remember in a detailed way, hard-written somewhere in my brain. One of these is the idea that Western (specifically American) culture is so centered around the association between wrong/right and true/untrue that it equates being wrong about something (even something completely factually-based) with being inadequate or stupid. If you're wrong, then your soul is wrong somehow; you are defective and have defected.
And I see where it can be justified. But the problem is that it leads people to assume that they should always be right, because it means more as self-confidence than anything else. So, nobody learns new things that challenge their world-view, because that is threatening information that promises to impose on their sense of security.
It's the reason that America is only now seeming to wise up to the idea that climate change is real, the reason that religion is such a deadly force in the realm of public philosophy, the reason that I can never seem to explain anything to anyone without their own personal opinion coming into play.
It's so stupid, because it allows people to be so glaringly ignorant, yet never be viewed as ignorant. It lets people choose to be stupid, to be shielded from reality and not feel like they are living in a fantasy world. It allows society to slowly crumble without progress, while fading dreams of irrational, childhood selfishness is the life preserver.
So, I stopped trying to plainly explain anything years ago. I usually say what I think will give the impact I'm looking for, and it's usually only half-true; I usually try to go in for the kill-shot before my voice falls on retracted ears. I believe that everything should be challenged, and if it cannot be defended, then it should fall. The reason for this is that everything in life that is even remotely beneficial or remotely valuable in any sense is able to be spoken for, at least on a primal level. There is always a grain of truth, even in a large concept that is flawed and untrue.
So I come off as condescending, as an ass, and that's fine with me. I don't really care what other people think, and I don't mean that in any way other than the literal. I really am apathetic towards what other people think of me. I don't have time for that. I measure my own worth, as everyone should.
This comes around to sound like a contradiction, though: As if I want to judge everyone else, but don't want to be judged by anyone. I don't know how to explain that idea away, because it is completely false. I abhor that kind of logic... but that's what it sounds like I'm doing.
Most people don't know how to challenge ideas; they only know how to challenge people's personalities and emotions. They only know how to berate and belittle. I can do that too, but I can do it to concepts and abstractions. I don't need to feel better than other people, because I don't really think I'm all that great. I just have a wealth of knowledge and intelligence that I wish I could use in some constructive way. The only thing I've found, though, is that blaring destructive argumentation. All I can do is kick out the foundation, and still, it is for a good reason. It's out of the kindness of my heart, as weird as that sounds.
But, at the same time, the more time I spend around people, the more I see them as not really deserving of real change. I see all of the debased behavior and all of the egotistical self-gratification in everything people say and every pose they make. All I see when anyone acts is them patting themselves on the backs in a myriad of ways; I see them reassuring themselves that they're more important than anyone else. I see them scoff at different beliefs and ideas, not because the ideas are stupid or pointless, but because they believe the people are stupid and pointless. Their sycophantic meanness comes out in that, and it is something that should immediately turn someone into the most unattractive person imaginable. But... it doesn't, of course.
Those are the kinds of people that make it the furthest. Those are the kinds of people with many friends, with many loves and opportunities. Those are the ones that make families. How sad is that? How much sadder is it that I don't think anyone understands what that really means?
To be true to myself, I have to be that sledgehammer. Even though I almost always choose to be silent or apathetic over being a prick, I still have those moments. And when someone does it to me, I do not shell up and defend my childhood self. I still look at the message more than the messenger... and I feel like I'm the only person who knows how to do that.
Whatever happened to real thought? What happened to the connection one was supposed and expected to make between their own personal morality and their actions? Why do I feel as though Humanity has become an empty game, where people can just find whatever they want to justify selfishness and waste, greed and domination, slavery and enslavement? It wasn't always like that.
The death of God is part of that equation. Nietzsche meant that people no longer fear that literal specter. Societies no longer move in unison with transcendental beliefs in the way that they once did. I'm sure that one day in the distant future, the Pope will announce that abortion really is alright, and the Church will keep a few more stragglers. They already did it with the idea of unbaptized babies sitting in Purgatory for all eternity...
Is that really what the height of the Human mind results in? Will we always just be a society of territorial children who can split atoms and alter the structure of nature itself? What a contradiction it all is....
I still like to tell myself that if I can exist with my state of mind, if I can see that deeply into thought and what it means to be a part of Man, then there has to be other people who think the same way. There has to be a reasonably good-looking chick who thinks like I do.
With my luck, she's probably overweight, homely and too introverted to realize anything substantial. It's nights like these that I relish all the opportunities I passed up to get laid from an empty relationship or a one-night stand. Even though sometimes I would regret it, in the long run, I'm so much happier knowing that I didn't sacrifice a part of myself for the same thing that everyone seems to be alive for (and only for).
Ever since I started writing again, I started thinking like a writer again. And once that started to happen, I realized just how base my surroundings have become. I realized just how dumb everyone around me is. I realized just how empty society has become; even moreso than I last remember, which I didn't think was possible.
I spend so much time and effort honing my thoughts. I come to very complex realizations, but not in a conceited way. I don't think I'm better for having the views that I do. But I respect the rationality of it all.
It's hard to keep real views like mine, because everything in society is built on linking views to personality. The way you feel about something is the way you feel about yourself. And, while true in a basic sense, it should not mean that you are defined by those connections alone.
There are phrases and concepts that I always seem to remember in a detailed way, hard-written somewhere in my brain. One of these is the idea that Western (specifically American) culture is so centered around the association between wrong/right and true/untrue that it equates being wrong about something (even something completely factually-based) with being inadequate or stupid. If you're wrong, then your soul is wrong somehow; you are defective and have defected.
And I see where it can be justified. But the problem is that it leads people to assume that they should always be right, because it means more as self-confidence than anything else. So, nobody learns new things that challenge their world-view, because that is threatening information that promises to impose on their sense of security.
It's the reason that America is only now seeming to wise up to the idea that climate change is real, the reason that religion is such a deadly force in the realm of public philosophy, the reason that I can never seem to explain anything to anyone without their own personal opinion coming into play.
It's so stupid, because it allows people to be so glaringly ignorant, yet never be viewed as ignorant. It lets people choose to be stupid, to be shielded from reality and not feel like they are living in a fantasy world. It allows society to slowly crumble without progress, while fading dreams of irrational, childhood selfishness is the life preserver.
So, I stopped trying to plainly explain anything years ago. I usually say what I think will give the impact I'm looking for, and it's usually only half-true; I usually try to go in for the kill-shot before my voice falls on retracted ears. I believe that everything should be challenged, and if it cannot be defended, then it should fall. The reason for this is that everything in life that is even remotely beneficial or remotely valuable in any sense is able to be spoken for, at least on a primal level. There is always a grain of truth, even in a large concept that is flawed and untrue.
So I come off as condescending, as an ass, and that's fine with me. I don't really care what other people think, and I don't mean that in any way other than the literal. I really am apathetic towards what other people think of me. I don't have time for that. I measure my own worth, as everyone should.
This comes around to sound like a contradiction, though: As if I want to judge everyone else, but don't want to be judged by anyone. I don't know how to explain that idea away, because it is completely false. I abhor that kind of logic... but that's what it sounds like I'm doing.
Most people don't know how to challenge ideas; they only know how to challenge people's personalities and emotions. They only know how to berate and belittle. I can do that too, but I can do it to concepts and abstractions. I don't need to feel better than other people, because I don't really think I'm all that great. I just have a wealth of knowledge and intelligence that I wish I could use in some constructive way. The only thing I've found, though, is that blaring destructive argumentation. All I can do is kick out the foundation, and still, it is for a good reason. It's out of the kindness of my heart, as weird as that sounds.
But, at the same time, the more time I spend around people, the more I see them as not really deserving of real change. I see all of the debased behavior and all of the egotistical self-gratification in everything people say and every pose they make. All I see when anyone acts is them patting themselves on the backs in a myriad of ways; I see them reassuring themselves that they're more important than anyone else. I see them scoff at different beliefs and ideas, not because the ideas are stupid or pointless, but because they believe the people are stupid and pointless. Their sycophantic meanness comes out in that, and it is something that should immediately turn someone into the most unattractive person imaginable. But... it doesn't, of course.
Those are the kinds of people that make it the furthest. Those are the kinds of people with many friends, with many loves and opportunities. Those are the ones that make families. How sad is that? How much sadder is it that I don't think anyone understands what that really means?
To be true to myself, I have to be that sledgehammer. Even though I almost always choose to be silent or apathetic over being a prick, I still have those moments. And when someone does it to me, I do not shell up and defend my childhood self. I still look at the message more than the messenger... and I feel like I'm the only person who knows how to do that.
Whatever happened to real thought? What happened to the connection one was supposed and expected to make between their own personal morality and their actions? Why do I feel as though Humanity has become an empty game, where people can just find whatever they want to justify selfishness and waste, greed and domination, slavery and enslavement? It wasn't always like that.
The death of God is part of that equation. Nietzsche meant that people no longer fear that literal specter. Societies no longer move in unison with transcendental beliefs in the way that they once did. I'm sure that one day in the distant future, the Pope will announce that abortion really is alright, and the Church will keep a few more stragglers. They already did it with the idea of unbaptized babies sitting in Purgatory for all eternity...
Is that really what the height of the Human mind results in? Will we always just be a society of territorial children who can split atoms and alter the structure of nature itself? What a contradiction it all is....
I still like to tell myself that if I can exist with my state of mind, if I can see that deeply into thought and what it means to be a part of Man, then there has to be other people who think the same way. There has to be a reasonably good-looking chick who thinks like I do.
With my luck, she's probably overweight, homely and too introverted to realize anything substantial. It's nights like these that I relish all the opportunities I passed up to get laid from an empty relationship or a one-night stand. Even though sometimes I would regret it, in the long run, I'm so much happier knowing that I didn't sacrifice a part of myself for the same thing that everyone seems to be alive for (and only for).
Ever since I started writing again, I started thinking like a writer again. And once that started to happen, I realized just how base my surroundings have become. I realized just how dumb everyone around me is. I realized just how empty society has become; even moreso than I last remember, which I didn't think was possible.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
The Irreversible Voice
Self-creation trumps everything.
People take too much solace in the cover of trends and labels. On an individual level, there are only two types of art: Truth and untruth. The first is the only one that matters; the latter is the antithesis of art.
Being accessible is confused with being pedantic, to the point that completely negates the idea of creation. Something can be accessible without being shallow, and something can be overtly deep, but pedantic. This is the paradox of art, and the contradiction in any type of self-conscious attempt at expression.
The new music movements are all centered around self-consciousness, as if that alone makes it self-aware. These are two different things. Artistic expression that is self-aware has a sense of its own structure, but is not embarrassed at that. Self-conscious art carries a tinge of inferiority about it, and is so painfully narrow that I can't stand any part of it.
This is where the vocal-centric movement in music has failed. I guess vocal-centric tendencies have always been around, but the postmodern approach violates every sensibility in anyone who knows anything at all about art (at least, it should). The dance, drum-n-bass and hip-hop facets of this are pathetic in that self-conscious way. Words become their own posts, instead of what grunge made into its own art form: The ability of lyrics to be amorphous and organic; so much so, that it becomes a part of the music itself.
But, this new generation, I feel, doesn't know anything about that side of music. They are the social herd in the literal sense. They only want self-reflection in as shallow a flavor as possible, so that they can relate to it. Four-beat structures, no real innovation, stolen rhythms; sacrilegious in its banality. And with those ankle-deep expressions, the failed interpretation of a failed post-modern society and the way the social herd seems to carry everyone's fascination around with it, art suffers a slow, poisonous intoxication. But not intoxication in the sense of Eros, or the Bacchanalian ecstasy in organic expressions. It is the intoxication of a dumb-downed culture. It is the intoxication of anti-intoxication.
Sex has become a form of possession. Women have become a life-form that delights in being subjugated and dominated. Morality has become a tunnel-chamber, used to fire out any self-justified relativism that reinforces selfish desires. Depth has become an analogy to a lake filled with sediment; inch-deep water that encompasses the breadth of existence, and is thought of as the penultimate. The voice has become a means of expressing that self-conscious drive, that pathetic, shallow reflection based on an undeveloped mind. Art has fallen from Victorian to cattle-driven. And music, for the most part, has fallen to a level of market-ism, of social consciousness akin to believing that the most inane pseudo-philosophers were the greatest prophets of Human existence.
People take too much solace in the cover of trends and labels. On an individual level, there are only two types of art: Truth and untruth. The first is the only one that matters; the latter is the antithesis of art.
Being accessible is confused with being pedantic, to the point that completely negates the idea of creation. Something can be accessible without being shallow, and something can be overtly deep, but pedantic. This is the paradox of art, and the contradiction in any type of self-conscious attempt at expression.
The new music movements are all centered around self-consciousness, as if that alone makes it self-aware. These are two different things. Artistic expression that is self-aware has a sense of its own structure, but is not embarrassed at that. Self-conscious art carries a tinge of inferiority about it, and is so painfully narrow that I can't stand any part of it.
This is where the vocal-centric movement in music has failed. I guess vocal-centric tendencies have always been around, but the postmodern approach violates every sensibility in anyone who knows anything at all about art (at least, it should). The dance, drum-n-bass and hip-hop facets of this are pathetic in that self-conscious way. Words become their own posts, instead of what grunge made into its own art form: The ability of lyrics to be amorphous and organic; so much so, that it becomes a part of the music itself.
But, this new generation, I feel, doesn't know anything about that side of music. They are the social herd in the literal sense. They only want self-reflection in as shallow a flavor as possible, so that they can relate to it. Four-beat structures, no real innovation, stolen rhythms; sacrilegious in its banality. And with those ankle-deep expressions, the failed interpretation of a failed post-modern society and the way the social herd seems to carry everyone's fascination around with it, art suffers a slow, poisonous intoxication. But not intoxication in the sense of Eros, or the Bacchanalian ecstasy in organic expressions. It is the intoxication of a dumb-downed culture. It is the intoxication of anti-intoxication.
Sex has become a form of possession. Women have become a life-form that delights in being subjugated and dominated. Morality has become a tunnel-chamber, used to fire out any self-justified relativism that reinforces selfish desires. Depth has become an analogy to a lake filled with sediment; inch-deep water that encompasses the breadth of existence, and is thought of as the penultimate. The voice has become a means of expressing that self-conscious drive, that pathetic, shallow reflection based on an undeveloped mind. Art has fallen from Victorian to cattle-driven. And music, for the most part, has fallen to a level of market-ism, of social consciousness akin to believing that the most inane pseudo-philosophers were the greatest prophets of Human existence.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Salvation...
The death of the individual mind comes with placing priority in the social mind.
Most people are raised to believe that the social mind is most important, to the degree that their inner dialogue becomes nonexistent in any substantial way. Opinions begin to originate as a conceptualization of what the social mind should think, and what outside reaction is. And the multitude becomes a hive.
Critical, non-apologetic, individualistic thinking has been snuffed out. Even the extent of individual thought is something that is so shallow compared to the purity of real individuality.
Our categories, our opinions, our recognitions, our freedom itself... becomes a hive.
I haven't written in a long time. I haven't wanted to. I have become so carved out because of the emptiness of society that I haven't even felt like committing the act of extroversion. I find only emptiness outside of myself.
Sensory deprivation; isolation is the key. There is no other path to enlightenment. The social mind is the antithesis of progress, especially when the social mind has become reactive only to knee-jerk emotions and propagandist control. My truth has never been reflected in anything outside of my own creations, and so I have suffered in development due to neglect and apathetic surrender.
I haven't composed anything in months. I haven't written in a serious manner in probably a year or more. Everything has become trivialized, and I never even noticed, because I have been trying to understand the social mind; I have felt outcast and wanted back in. And now, for some reason, gestalt as it may be, I return to my stance of rejection of the hive.
Where is real growth in a person? How have I never found it? The mirages that I manifest in other people throughout my life has always proven fruitless and melancholic. It's depressing.
But all I can do is build a universe of my own thought, because that is the only thing I have found to be truly amorphous; the only treasure discovered.
My preconception of killing creativity through mood regulating medication has built psychosomatic responses, creating that reality within me. But it doesn't have to be that way. There is no reason that I can not delve deeply, no matter the circumstances, no matter the chemical. Because when I reach my end, I feel I must have a record of both my descent and my own salvation at the final moments.
I have felt inferior because of my destructive nature towards thoughts I feel are misguided, because they are shared by so many. My own ideas are never shared by others, in my experience. This has caused me to doubt my own psychology and philosophical grounding. To be a disciple of Nietzsche is to occasionally lose oneself to a tumultuous thread, that once was split into two easily discernable strains... but now seems joined together in a stream of nonsense. It takes a lot of discipline and focus to find subjective truth, not in the sense of blind, relativistic conceding, but in a mighty self-obliteration and subsequent rebuilding. To hone yourself as an individual, not as a working insect: To put your individualistic mind before the social mind is the real truth of being alive. I will never be apologetic for that, no matter how sharply I condemn others for their folly, no matter how often I am berated for looking down my nose at untruth, no matter how many times I'm trivialized because of my "lack of understanding". There is truth in real appreciation; not in hive-mind opinionation.
Most people are raised to believe that the social mind is most important, to the degree that their inner dialogue becomes nonexistent in any substantial way. Opinions begin to originate as a conceptualization of what the social mind should think, and what outside reaction is. And the multitude becomes a hive.
Critical, non-apologetic, individualistic thinking has been snuffed out. Even the extent of individual thought is something that is so shallow compared to the purity of real individuality.
Our categories, our opinions, our recognitions, our freedom itself... becomes a hive.
I haven't written in a long time. I haven't wanted to. I have become so carved out because of the emptiness of society that I haven't even felt like committing the act of extroversion. I find only emptiness outside of myself.
Sensory deprivation; isolation is the key. There is no other path to enlightenment. The social mind is the antithesis of progress, especially when the social mind has become reactive only to knee-jerk emotions and propagandist control. My truth has never been reflected in anything outside of my own creations, and so I have suffered in development due to neglect and apathetic surrender.
I haven't composed anything in months. I haven't written in a serious manner in probably a year or more. Everything has become trivialized, and I never even noticed, because I have been trying to understand the social mind; I have felt outcast and wanted back in. And now, for some reason, gestalt as it may be, I return to my stance of rejection of the hive.
Where is real growth in a person? How have I never found it? The mirages that I manifest in other people throughout my life has always proven fruitless and melancholic. It's depressing.
But all I can do is build a universe of my own thought, because that is the only thing I have found to be truly amorphous; the only treasure discovered.
My preconception of killing creativity through mood regulating medication has built psychosomatic responses, creating that reality within me. But it doesn't have to be that way. There is no reason that I can not delve deeply, no matter the circumstances, no matter the chemical. Because when I reach my end, I feel I must have a record of both my descent and my own salvation at the final moments.
I have felt inferior because of my destructive nature towards thoughts I feel are misguided, because they are shared by so many. My own ideas are never shared by others, in my experience. This has caused me to doubt my own psychology and philosophical grounding. To be a disciple of Nietzsche is to occasionally lose oneself to a tumultuous thread, that once was split into two easily discernable strains... but now seems joined together in a stream of nonsense. It takes a lot of discipline and focus to find subjective truth, not in the sense of blind, relativistic conceding, but in a mighty self-obliteration and subsequent rebuilding. To hone yourself as an individual, not as a working insect: To put your individualistic mind before the social mind is the real truth of being alive. I will never be apologetic for that, no matter how sharply I condemn others for their folly, no matter how often I am berated for looking down my nose at untruth, no matter how many times I'm trivialized because of my "lack of understanding". There is truth in real appreciation; not in hive-mind opinionation.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Somewhere Along the Highway...
Will America ever really, truly change? Will the sycophantic notions of disconnected observance ever be eradicated? They permeate everything. We are just the voyeurs that have sat down in front of death for decades. And even optimism is the same disingenuous, disconnected apathy.
I take politics too seriously, I guess, because I actually want things to change. Everyone would rather talk about a plane crashing into a house, and stare at photos of gigantic infernos, and gossip about tragedies. The American psychology, I thought, was broken recently. Now, I'm starting to think it was always broken.
Where is the outrage that lasts longer than a few weeks? Where is the purpose that doesn't lose itself to any leading emptiness? Where is the iron fist to bust through all the lies that our country has become?
I think it will take much more violence, despair, suffering and slavery for anything to really change. I do not have faith in the Modern American Way. We are still empty relativists, we are still ignorant, wide-eyed watchers; we are still infantile. We are still the consumers of information, and have never learned to produce our own.
The most realistic vision that I can contemplate is that we will be passed by, phased out by the rest of the world. We will lapse from our own complacency, and become a footnote on a failed concept.
America was supposed to be the Grand Experiment; a beacon of free life. We can't even protest without being arrested, or have personal liberty, or have justice dealt to the multitudes that destroy our systems of government and currency. It's pathetic.
As horrendous as it will ever get, as horrendous as I can imagine it will get, I would rather see the country descend into chaotic fervor, into violent misery than watch it go on any longer as a walking corpse; a walking, optimistic, relativistic corpse.
I take politics too seriously, I guess, because I actually want things to change. Everyone would rather talk about a plane crashing into a house, and stare at photos of gigantic infernos, and gossip about tragedies. The American psychology, I thought, was broken recently. Now, I'm starting to think it was always broken.
Where is the outrage that lasts longer than a few weeks? Where is the purpose that doesn't lose itself to any leading emptiness? Where is the iron fist to bust through all the lies that our country has become?
I think it will take much more violence, despair, suffering and slavery for anything to really change. I do not have faith in the Modern American Way. We are still empty relativists, we are still ignorant, wide-eyed watchers; we are still infantile. We are still the consumers of information, and have never learned to produce our own.
The most realistic vision that I can contemplate is that we will be passed by, phased out by the rest of the world. We will lapse from our own complacency, and become a footnote on a failed concept.
America was supposed to be the Grand Experiment; a beacon of free life. We can't even protest without being arrested, or have personal liberty, or have justice dealt to the multitudes that destroy our systems of government and currency. It's pathetic.
As horrendous as it will ever get, as horrendous as I can imagine it will get, I would rather see the country descend into chaotic fervor, into violent misery than watch it go on any longer as a walking corpse; a walking, optimistic, relativistic corpse.
Monday, February 9, 2009
How to Operate Your Brain
You might catch yourself sliding in and out of a hallucinatory state... Relax and enjoy.
The Human brain contains 100 billion neurons. Each neuron is as powerful as a large computer, and each neuron has around 10,000 connections with other neurons. Within our foreheads, there's a chaos. Inside our brains, there is a galaxy of information, which is incomprehensible to our linear minds...
The Human brain contains 100 billion neurons. Each neuron is as powerful as a large computer, and each neuron has around 10,000 connections with other neurons. Within our foreheads, there's a chaos. Inside our brains, there is a galaxy of information, which is incomprehensible to our linear minds...
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