Month: August 2012

So… not much going on. Work work work. And allergy attacks. And work.

Does Match.com work? I mean, do you really end up finding someone compatible for you? A guy from my work, who’s 26, met his soon to be wife on match.com. She just so happens to be a doctor at Vandy, and their wedding is next week. Funny, huh?

I need a social life. Work Gym Eat Sleep. The weekends provide a narrow escape, but even those adventures are becoming routinized. I love life. Is that alright? When’s a good time to “want” to settle down? My motorcycle is in the shop again… should have it out in another month or two. I can’t wait to go on weekend roadtrips, by myself, to forests, and camp. Oh yes. I’m doing these things. Call them escapes. I call them wanderlust: the yearning for travel. But fiscal constraints need to be accounted for, so no long term flights just yet.

I was thinking of becoming politically active. I’ve always had an interest in politics, though not because of the rhetoric or the manipulation and pandering. It’s been a desire to contribute what sense I’ve wrought from my experience where I can, and politics is just a single outlet to do that.

My paradigm is shifting. I can sense the foundations beginning to vibrate and move beneath me, a reframing of values is taking place, a reorientation that will be much more accommodating to my new lifestyle, one that doesn’t fight the inevitable and push against the structures that I’ll need to learn to depend on.

I’ve had the pleasant surprise of learning that one of my room mates is a drug addict. Oh yes. Such a nice surprise! To be living with an opiate and meth addict? I can’t think of too many things greater! 😡

But honestly, his 128 hour insomniac bouts of mania are wearing on me. Troves of people visit at all hours, and stay for days. He’ll be up for a longgg time, then crash on the couch like a fetid log and sleep for 24 to 72 hours straight, virtually motionless within this time frame, with a fan blowing on his ammonia smelling body.

I conversed with the other roommates who’ve voiced similar horror and distaste for these things, and they’re planning on moving out, as I am. The guys nice, real nice, when he isn’t tweaking out from lack of sleep. His paranoid delusions are what really wear on you. He’ll clean the house a million times, over and over again, or work on dozens of trivial projects, like rearranging furniture or buying random mirrors and what not. Then he’ll freak out and sit us all down and explain that he can’t take our laziness, that the house is a complete mess and all he ever does is clean up after us. And we stare on with a dull look in our eyes, unamused, yet the situation is laughable. But I’m over it. I really, really don’t need this crap in my life. The house is amazing, the neighborhood is great, and I like the other roommates a whole lot, but I can’t go being subjected to his mood swings and threats and manic episodes. I suppose I could ignore it, but why the hell should I even have to tip-toe around the issue? Anyway.

I weigh 205lbs. I’m looking soft, but I’m stronger than ever. I’ve planned to do a anabolic cycle the next 10-15 weeks. That should jump start my gains. We’ll see. Still working out a few kinks with the PCT. I’ll have to get all my ancillary gear sorted out before I begin anything.

Other than that… what the hell am I doing with my life? Lifting is a nice project. I haven’t been writing, or reading, nearly as much as I have been the past several years. Come to think of it, I’ve been on a reading binge the past couple years, and its finally slowed down, almost to a halt. It’s like all the sudden all my accumulated knowledge is pointless self-masturbation, no one cares, and its not getting me any closer to the truth, cause the truth is: working for someone else seems to be one of the few options when you’re loaded up with student debt. Or perhaps I’m not being imaginative enough. What am I waiting for?

I’m been having severe mood swings myself. I wasn’t sure if it was cause of subjecting myself to my roommates drug problem and all his druggy whores and friends he brings over for days at a time… or just me coming to grips with the fact that life is no longer an adventure, but a trudge. A long journey of pounding the ground until time elapses and goals are achieved. But I need some goals. Actually, I need some goals I believe in. Not someone else’s, not for them or by them.

I’d really like to identify my strengths and pursue something that is honed in on really utilizing my naturally inclined abilities.

Anyway. I’m fighting an ear and sinus infection… allergies have me all clogged up and its been an ideal petri dish for little bacteria in my head. Ugh. When will the sinus pressure stop! I need some topical drugs to alleviate the symptoms.

Other than that… my phone broke. No phone. It’s been gone since Saturday. I have no desire to replace it at the moment. I figured I’ll wait a week. Going without a phone has been liberating… to say the least. We’ll see when I can enough to reconnect with this tangled mass of social media technology.

Bed time.

Appearances are all that matter, but the ability to control appearances requires cultivating the unseen. It matters a great deal what you show the world, but the  ability to carefully reveal yourself requires much work on the inside first and foremost.

Habits by nature are reflective. If they were not, they would be disrupted. Habits are purely repetitive impulse, cyclical chains of continual causation.

I’m too tired at the end of the day. Sometimes I work with one eye open. At least I’m not Chinese  I need capital. Money. Assets, Resources. Enough so I can incentivize people to work for me, to prod and prattle their imagination with fictitious opportunity.

Drone on. Fuck censorship. The world is rotten, from the inside out, moldy and boring. How boring? I don’t want to talk with you. You’re anal retentive. Boring. No imagination. No inner light. Your eyes no longer shine like they once did in your youth. They have been extinguished, and you have helped. You oppress yourself, you censor. You control.

No passion. No heart. No feeling. Only aches. Pains. Cramps. And nausea.

Hello little bird.
I see you there, tapping at my window.
I love your song,
your dance,
your colors too.
I love everything about you.
But I’m busy now,
keeping time with my books,
working hard to free myself.

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.” —Haim Ginott, Teacher and child: A book for parents and teachers (1976)

I have so many thoughts I need to explicate. Recently my life has consisted of fairly rote, routine behaviors. I have decided that I am alright with this. Initially I would assume that such days are simply lost, never able to be retrieved again. But then I think to myself how important it is gain some distance with thoughts now and again in order gain additional appreciable perspective on them.

That’s not what I really want to talk about though.

I want to discuss my culture.

I never really feel at home in my culture. I don’t really like participating in the mundane activities of the herd. I have a tendency to want to critique and criticize everything. Denis Diderot once said “Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.” I believe this, and it’s comforting to know that this man agrees with my modus operandi.

Society. I miss writing. I miss possessing clear and coherent thoughts that burst forth in stream from my cranium in brilliant displays of imagination. Or, that’s how I like to believe my thoughts gush anyway.

My mind is whithering and warping with every passing day. But I am no drone. I am a critical thinker, capable of inquiring about the most assuming questions. My task is to dig deeper, to delve and probe into the fathoms of reality, of social reality, the one true reality.

Language has been provided to us. It provides a mental scaffolding for ideas. These ideas are none other than concepts, the architecture of will, but the semantics of these concepts cannot be captured with mere propositions. There need be procedural knowledge, demonstrable modeling of the intention, in order to capture the true meaning of words. When the ligatures binding language to meaning have been cut, there is no more utility in the symbolic representation of our words. It is essential to inscribe these words into the world and into the minds, but even more essential is that these words, these concepts of our will, of our moral action, be inscribed into the hearts of men, lest they become trite and meaningless barbara, or fulsome foreign noise.

Power is represented economically. This word: economics, the “law of the home” or the “management of the home” is fitting, but it doesn’t contain the convey pecuniary interest of our material society. Money is law. It produces law. But yet, money is fictitious. It simply codifies and carries out a symbolic incentive, an incentive that drives man to work for others out of necessity, rather than sufficiency.

Swahili, the African trade language, is similar to the mainstay English tongue of today. The disparate tribes possessing their own language reflect a tongue born from the struggles afforded by the geographical demands of necessary survival. Within our country today we have many tongues, yet they all fall under the same “language”, under the same syntax that we call English. Can you speak in the language of physicists? Or perhaps cognitive neuroscientists? Or biologists? Or computer scientists and information technologists? Unless you were raised or socialized using these domain specific languages, or cultivated the tongue through many years of schooling, you would not be familiar with the terminology of these domains. You would be a foreigner. This is the specialization of labor. And each labor produces a unique vocabulary because each labor possesses unique demands, just like geography produces unique demands. In our current society, the division of labor has produced the specialization of language. And each language possesses its very own economic utility. But every language is born out of a people, and the closer you can come to gaining access to a network of people, the sooner you can learn and utilize their language, and in turn capitalize on the economic privileges it affords. But learning the language is not enough. No amount of schooling will provide you with experience, and just because you know Spanish doesn’t mean you know the traditions and customs and practices inherent to it. As a result, you must network, socialize, and mentor under these economic demigods.

The common culture that unites us all is no longer religion, like it once was in Ancient Greece with its pantheon of Gods and deities. Today it is television, social media, entertainment, news. Depending on your values, your world view affiliation, you identify with different cultural outlets. They become the constant structure of your experience. They organize your life, they create regularity, they provide hope and something to look forward to: the weekly TV show, the seasons next fashion line, the next big movie, the final in the trilogy, etc, etc.

Freedom only exists when people are free to survive on their own free will, assuming free will is, of course, a responsibility to our selves. As such, freedom can only exist when we own our own property, when we own the means necessary to guarantee our own survival. I do not want to rent my labor to someone else, no more than I wish to rent my mind, my thoughts, or my desires to another. This is why I refrain from cultural indoctrination.

Property ownership and government power are inversely proportional. The more property owned by people, the less intervention is required of the government. This is because government should serve only to protect the people from each other, and when a man possesses all that is required for his survival, why does he need the resources of another man? You might reply with greed, and that would be correct, and the government’s sole role and responsibility is to curtail that very tendency in man.

John Locke said that the only function of government should be to protect an individuals property because, he believed, that property was essential to the number one prerogative of man: self-preservation. Without property, man cannot preserve himself. He relies on others to preserve him as he grows dependent upon their property, their capital.

The less property owned by the people, the greater need of a government power. The reason? To curb or mollify or prevent exploitation.

The more property owned by the people, the greater freedom they possess and the less they need to rely on others for their survival.

I always know the weak, because they are the most sensitive to the opinions of others. They will always react in hasty retreat, or lash out in desperate defense. Yet their defense is always degrading, a weak attempt to lower themselves back into their ways, rather than rise above.  They are ruled by emotions that know no reason. Character is passion made reasonable. Their character contains flaws, and they are unwilling to reconcile this reality. I’m not sure I want a reasonable character, do I? Only if it is made by my reason, by something universal in me.

You are always better than you believe you are. You do not need the opinions of others to sustain your identity. You need only yourself.

I was reading a chapter from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, specifically on the Greek Themistocles. He was a powerful and persuasive politician and strategist. In his youth Plutarch noted that Themistocles cared little for the past times of his peers, and instead devoted his time to reading and writing on political and legal matters that he contrived from observation and imagination. He studied wisdom, probably of the philosophical school past down from Solon, of the kind that praised common sense and pragmatics as opposed to pure theoretical, speculative studies. I relate a great deal with Themistocles.

The illusion of choice gives rise to the illusion of freedom.

Is it odd that I agree with this man? I’m not for the mass genocide of my own race, but I believe that we live in a culture of oppression. It’s built into the fabric of our language, of our schools, of our political system, of the fundamentals of our society. It’s about the will to power, the drive to dominate, to spread or diffuse influence onto the world in order to wring some advantage out of it.

I would like to see all men freed from one another and have self sufficiency restored, but I’m not quite sure that’s possible. In so far as the group is stronger than the individual, it seems oppression is apart of survival of the fittest, and our willingness to participate in our own oppression is an advantage. Not to all, not forever, but for some, and for a short time. However, I believe we must learn to look beyond the few and the now, and see things with an eternal perspective. That is where authentic wisdom is gleaned for the utilization of our benefit. We must ask ourselves who is leading the herd? Did you consent to their authority? And why? Perhaps we no longer share similar interests?

I also believe that racism is an evolutionary advantage. The herd identifies with itself, and until race lines disappear, there will always be racism, whether its of the gender or the socioeconomic class variety. I’d like us to transcend the temporal, material constraints that bind us to the impulses of immediate sensation, but as beasts, as animals roaming the earth grazing for every efficient advantage, I’m not sure this is feasible, or at all possible.

And on that note I’d like to say that the second speaker resonated with me thoroughly, despite whatever racial overtones may have tinged the message. It is a call to all humanity.

I need to write. I’ve been delaying it recently, telling myself that I need to take a break from thinking. But then I find myself in the same old, vanilla routines and I want to go on a rampage.

I have these thoughts about the world. Everything I see appears so clear, yet so distant. I can’t do anything about it.

Institutions, cultures.

We are consumers.

I sit around with my coworkers. They babble on about their television shows, the drama. I think about life. About their careers typing numbers, pushing data. Everything they do seems so trite and meaningless. They escape through fantasy, through Television shows and movies and celebrity drama. They identify with the shows they watch. It becomes apart of their identity. “I tried getting into Workoholics, but I’m just not into that kinda humor. I’m more of a New Girl kind of person.”  They discuss their favorite musicians with such forceful passion; you’d think it actually mattered whether Radiohead was a “better” band than Michael Jackson. But the conversation seems glib and frivolous.

What is freedom? There is no freedom. Not so long as your valuations depend upon the affirmation of someone else.

Culture is an echo chamber. Words become fixed with meaning, then they spread. The rate and degree of their update depends on their utility, or their economic significance. In this culture the most “successful” people are the best imitators. The yuppies who parrot back expectations, who take the safest risks possible: bartering security for freedom. But they would tell a different story, a story of status and wealth. And somehow they believe that these are the same.

But status and wealth do not guarantee freedom, and security only guarantees bondage by securing you in place. We are evolving creatures, and so we need room to adapt, to move freely.