I haven’t journaled or read much recently. I’ve been vegetating, working out, and going on dates. Indulging in the moment, as it were. I begin my job training two weeks into the new year, and I’ve been coasting on the elation of vacation. But three weeks into not working has left me feeling slow, underutilized, and my mind feels achy, as if it hasn’t stretched itself in a very long time.
Actually, my life has been pretty crazy recently. I think I’ll be starting a new blog to document the more insane aspects of my life, the aspects that make mothers and young children squeal in horror. I’m human, and I’m an individual. The moral herd and their herd instinct reel back in gross distaste when they observe such behaviors, so I should categorize them in a more appropriate digital venue. My anonymity has already been compromised with this blog.
My life is a charade really. Who I perceive myself to be, and what I show others is rarely congruent. Often times I forget that I’ve constructed the life I have for myself. On paper everything seems so nice and neat. So organized and educated. So clean and crisp. Internally, my life is a melding of mayhem, a confluence of colours representing competing drives and motives for domination, for gratification, for adulation.
I look down upon people who haven’t achieved what I have, on paper anyway. Why? Because if I can do it, anyone can do it. And if you don’t, you lack imagination and will power. But I guess those two commodities are in ever short supply.
It’s funny. When people meet me, they think I’m so innocent. So good. People will often tell me they don’t want to tell me this or that because I will judge them, because somehow I will think they are weird, or off, or less of a person. They perceive me in my pressed slacks and starched shirts with my blonde hair and inviting smile, and they recount the reputation that has preceded me, the education, the work experience, and they see the pictures of my blonde family, my youthful mother in her cardigan, my all-business father with his wiry glasses and books, and my two beautiful sisters, and they construct a narrative that resembles some modern all American boy. Underneath there is a dark pool of filthy possibility ever circulating, of ambient energy just waiting to be materialized into some creative illusion, devoid of a collective conscience, except where beneficial for appearances.
Context is all important. Branding. Associating with the proper symbols of cultural and capital worth. Weaving a backdrop where people can neatly place you, effortlessly. We must do the work for other people. Do not let them surmise. Do the surmising for them. Do not be explicit. Be implicit. Let them think they are doing the mental work. “Oh, how clever you are! You were able to figure me out so well! You know me better than I know me! Goodness gracious.” And my smile spreads all the more.
To understand context, you must comprehend society and demographics, social values and cultural currency. These provide the landscape of semiotics with which you can arrange an image, a story, an interpretation.
As I get older, I get colder. People become more empty to me, more mechanical, more meaningless. Not individuals, just people. Often a person will stereotype individuals, I simply stereotype people. The whole mass of’em. In a group, they are simply a machine, connected by their communication and collective values. As individuals, I have no judgement: you are a blank slate that each encounter draws upon. And like a blank slate that loses its hard chalky lines to temporal weathering, my memory affords your character with the same charity. Time makes us new, so long as we seek to overwrite our past rather than reinforce it. In contrast, the majority of people insist that “individuals don’t change”, and I think that’s a sad projection of their personal appraisal of themselves. Individuals can change, we just need to let them change. However, people “en masse” are as predictable as ever in their reluctance to change. As if tradition is true and convention is comfortable.
So when I have a task that involves other people, I treat them as such. I can produce the proper combination of emotional responses to elicit the behavioral response I’m seeking. I do not try to reach them. I do not try to invest emotionally. I simply want a reaction. My emotions are invested in my future goals. Not their competing opinions and pursuits. People are a means. Individuals are ends.
In sales this paradigm is all important. You must never respond to an individual, only to the person who comprises a much larger and predictable population. Their response to your efforts of influence, whether desirable or not, represents a mark on the bulls eye, or a single sketch line. When you are trying to hit the center, you do not put all your efforts into one arrow. You grab as many arrows as possible and shoot them all. The more you fire off, the more likely you’ll hit your target. Likewise with sketching an image. A single sketch line will not guarantee the contours were captured. Only several lines, repeated with persistence will yield the absolute symmetric reflection of the body’s reflection.
Your will power dictates the excellence produced. The clearer your eye, the clearer your goal, the more definite you will capture your intention. All this requires a type of reflection that continually keeps your sight aligned.
I need to pack today. Speaking of intention, I intended to pack last week, but the “house manager” told me I could move out a few days later since the next tenant wouldn’t be in another week, and that I could take my time. Seeing as how I had dozens of potential dates with very fine women to attend, I chose to procrastinate and put off moving. Until today. I need to move out today. I would say about 15% of my room is in storage. It is a sad statistic.
I like to write about my dates the past several weeks, but I think I may have to save it. I’ve been looking for a girlfriend, but when you’re dating, you want to keep your options open, never wanting to cut off something that could potentially work. So what happens is you begin talking to dozens of women, and suddenly they are people rather than individuals. Over the past several weeks I’ve had some crazy times. I’ve learned some valuable lessons. I’m eager to write them down. Words of wisdom.
Anyway. I’m done writing. I never write what I mean. I always produce some fictitious story of what I think I mean, some faux fabrication of my perception. I just write what I think. And sometimes what I think and what I mean are totally different. Thinking of more verbal, more syntactical. Meaning is more emotional. I can mean whatever I want. How it materializes into words is another story.
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I just reread this post, and I’m certain that most psychiatrists would diagnose me as a sociopath. I’m not sure what that means (although I’m completely aware of the definition). I reject institutional evaluations of all types, for the same reason I reject the church’s decrees, and academias overly zealous certainty, and the governments posited altruistic benevolence. They are not truth, only instruments of domination. What is domination? It is a declarative thetical assertion. The Greek root of thetic means “to put or place down”. Such as a gavel laying down the law.
I seek to override these institutional forces by coining my own worldview as an individual. I love my humanity, and the humanity of everyone else. I acknowledge these institutional forces and laws and practices, and I yield to their authority according to the utility that restraining my own will provides.
I’m fairly certain that most great leaders are sociopaths. Anyone who reads the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” is setting themselves up for glorious liberation. Anyone who practices rhetoric and develops speeches to move the masses into agreeable feeling and thinking has already adopted this disease as essential for getting ahead of the pack. Leaders and successful people understand that what matters is results, not how you feel about getting the results.
Is it okay to say something you don’t mean? What on earth does it mean to “mean”? Suspend feelings. Capture attention. Do what it takes to get the job done.
Anyway. I’m really done writing.
William Dare 