Philosophy – Page 3 – William Dare

friend is a four letter word

Pick your friends. Do not let your friends pick you.

Do I know what I want? Yes. Have I ever had it before? No. Have I ever seen it before? No. Will I know when I see it? Yes. Is it going to be a long hard confusing struggle before I achieve this desire? Yes. Will I falter at times? Yes. Will I settle for things that are less than what’s best for me? Yes. Does that make me weak? No.

Sometimes I settle for less than what I know is best. I use excuses to settle or take shortcuts like… all this extra effort is unnecessary, or it won’t matter right now, or I just gotta use what I got instead of looking for better, or other inane devices that make it, for a time, alright to avoid responsibility for myself. I despise the urge inside me to question my own convictions. When something is out of place and I let it be, neglecting the thought to do something about it, I am cheating myself. There are people all around me that are special and great and as people are about as normal as the populace they’re surrounded with. Most people think they’re original. That they have something that no one else has. Granted, there will never be another like them, but most times that’s the only quality that sets them apart. They would never dare to be original. To be extra-ordinary. They are terrified of being outside the embraces of societies standards of normalcy. They are too insecure and too frightened of being a lone. That’s the burden of being a leader, being original. You are alone and chastised by everyone in the outside world. There will be some who will tell you they too relate to the struggle but their lives lack the burdens that the responsibility of being a leader carries. They prefer to slide back into the shadows. Why? They don’t know where they’re going or why. If they gave it some thought and ask themselves what price they’d pay for the pains of rejection they’d decline and go back to the security of knowing nothing they did would be criticized and reprimanded because they’re all the same.

I live behind glass. These eyes are the windows of my soul. I hear noises coming from the walls of my ears. My senses provide me with enough raw material to deduce my own style of thinking. I am not a mirror that reflects the behaviors of the automatons that surround me. They are all mirroring each other. When I say that we have free will the concept is so foreign they don’t know how to assimilate the idea into being. What they do is reinforce the false notion that they actually think for themselves and further justify their ignorance instead of break free from it. Its a dangerous world. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing<-(pope)

I pity the people around me. There are few whose eyes shine forth ingenuity and the innocent hope of braving new frontiers within their heart and mind.

I walk around programmed. I program myself, like most others, and I do my best not to think myself into a fit of insanity. I forget that I constantly need to recalibrate myself according to the ever changing circumstances. What I do got me where I am. If I want to go anywhere else I need to change what I do, else I stay the same.

My life is a brilliant song I'm striving to compose. I carefully search for the most beautiful notes to render the most awing performance of genius when it's my chance to perform and all eyes are watching. I don't want to resemble anyone else.

Primitive

We’re so primitive. Cluttered, smoggy, tangled lives. Surrounded by things, choking on fumes, tripping over wires. We sit on our high throne and pat ourselves on the back for our great progress. We’ve made no real progress. The philosophies that govern the majority of the lost and dying world we live in today are no different than those practiced in antiquity. Has our brilliance truly saved more lives than it cost? The famine, the killing, the lies and deceit and confusion. Do we possess any more of life’s answers than ever before in history? Are we any closer to what we’re looking for? As long as there is death and struggle, confusion and war, pride and ego, I would say we have squandered our time and exasperated our resources. No matter the theory or philosophy, free will has perfection shackled and out of reach forever. Only a strive to attain the ideal exists. That is universal.

little boy.

I am a little boy. I like simple things. Why does everything have to be complex? and when it’s simple, why do I feel that I haven’t put enough thought into it and I’m missing out? Why is there a contradiction here? I want to run at life with my arms wide open and catch whatever fleeting opportunities I run into.

******

So I regressed to the depths of my thoughts- to a place where freedom seems to lead to an automatic state of existence. Why is this thought of freedom so exciting? When we are free, then what? Free to choose whatever or feel however we want. Would we be any closer to knowing what it is we want? As technology frees us from the constraints of time and effort, I feel that we are sliding ever closer to a dependency and less towards the freedom we strive for. I feel that this dependency is turning us into automatons that do not think of the implications of their actions. I feel that freedom never exists. There needs to be a dependency on something. Nothing is free to do what it will without sacrificing it’s integrity somewhere along the line, sacrificing a piece of itself. Freedom is an allusion.
A people cannot be free without sacrificing certain rights.
A person cannot do whatever it wants without being dependent upon a means.
In order to eat, I am dependent upon food sources. I am dependent upon people. Upon the land.
In order to be happy, what am I dependent on? Can I be happy for no reason? Can I be happy due to my dependence of ignorance? Or can I be happy due to the dependence of people, things, circumstances?
Are we always dependent upon certain variables around me?
Do we have the freedom to do whatever we want without consequence or implication?

My Ethics.

Over the years I’ve developed a strong understanding and conviction of proper morals and ethics through a variety of my life experiences. For a long time the ethics and morals I held for myself were relative to the situational occurrences and were usually based on how my actions would leave me feeling at the time. This philosophy quickly eroded as it was tested and failed time and time again. I realized that my ethics are a direct reflection of my character and a strong character is something that not only I can rely on in times of doubt, but others can look to for valuable guidance. A strong character is consistent, noble, respected, and trustworthy. Being morally and ethically sound involves being full of integrity, doing what’s right no matter who’s looking, being straightforward and honest, and being selfless in the decisions you make to benefit others as well as yourself. I think a man’s character is the only thing he has when all is stripped away. It’s the reputation that precedes him as well legacy he leaves behind. I realize there were flaws in my personal philosophy and ethical standards that were detrimental to my success. Upon realizing this, I made a resolution to refine myself to exemplify excellence in every endeavor or thought I undertook. My thirst for success motivated me to turn my search for answers to those who were successful and exemplified a life of excellence and honor, so that I could assimilate the best of what they learned and lived into my own life. My pursuit led me to read books of awe inspiring truth and wisdom such as the Bible, to books by authors such as James Allen, Napoleon Hill, John Maxwell, W. Clement Stone, Claude Bristol, Dale Carnegie, and other honorable men. My father is also a source of inspiration in his unwavering conviction to pursue what’s right and flee from what is wrong no matter what the consequence. When interacting with others, I often revert to the golden rule in one form or another to judge my decisions by placing myself in the situation of whomever I’m interacting with.

During my youth I was involved with many toxic activities which, in hindsight, caused many setbacks toward my long term aspirations. Due to moving over twelve times and attending twelve different schools throughout the first twenty years of my life, I developed a strong love and appreciation for people. This love often caused me to compromise my ethics and morals in order to satisfy or appease my friends and their expectations. Though I tried my best to exemplify my convictions, I often found myself compromising many of my ethical and moral standards when I was around my friends.

Many of the situations and dilemmas that caused me to compromise my ethics tended to be more internal clashes as opposed to visible confrontations. I do my best to assume full responsibility for my actions in the midst of any adversity. I consider myself a terrible liar, and as much as I dislike the feeling of being dishonest towards other people who trust me, I most of all despise lying to myself. When I get caught for doing something wrong, I embrace the responsibility for my actions and accept the consequence of my shortsighted mistakes. I do my best to spot these incongruencies in order to eliminate any detrimental conflicts with my values. I find it important to acknowledge the mistake without hesitation and take the appropriate measures to remediate.

I have learned that problems never go away until they are fixed. If you put off fixing problems they will eventually build up to overwhelm or drown you. They never fix themselves. When I was a younger I had misconception of responsibility. Taking the form of procrastination, many problems would pile up and eventually lead to a downward spiral. The same analogy goes for flawed ethical decisions which, if not immediately and emphatically fixed, pile up, causing severe damage to you in the end.

Interior & Exterior relationships

Stories. Stories transcend explanation.

In every experience, in every interpretation, there lies a relationship between self and that of the occurrence. Either literally or metaphorically, you are engaged in a meaningful intimate relationship that is prompted by the desire to examine the dynamics involved, as well as how they react towards previous experiences. I will state that reality is rarely real, rather a conjecture of assimilated facts and relationships. The facts of any reality are reinforced outcomes that provide a constant source of reliance when testing variables to other unknowns; or when hypothesizing (you might say philosophizing) the relationships that exist between these facts. The dynamics are endless and soon supporting evidence, namely facts for the sake of stability, run out. What remains is a question in which you must settle for an answer based on what your assimilated experiences and intuitions have led you to deduct as true. This seems like a faulty way of approaching life but it seems that this is the way people perceive reality.
The exterior landscape of our mind acts much like a collage would if we glanced at the array of snapshots organized and orchestrated to provide the most significant meaningful interpretation possible. It’s the exterior landscape. Our eyes look at what is, through our eyes. We choose to see matter existing and we allow it to pass through our eyes and encode itself into an image that we place in the back of our mind. Now the greater collection of these images the more correlations can be made. The exterior landscape of our mind consists of the logical processes of life. What the sky looks like. How clouds move and form and dissipate through evaporation or precipitation. What a woman looks like. What the sound of laughter resembles. What different forms the landscape portrays. The erosion in the soil, the rivers and streams, the luminous trees extending upward coated in a sheen brilliance of chlorophyll saturated leaves, the ocherous discrepancies in a striated mountain. People of different races. A vibrant color, a shape, a design. There are the elements we use to shape our exterior landscape. We perceive them to be real.
The interior landscape exists on a much more universal plane. It deals with metaphorical, analogical, relational consistencies and patterns. This is the formula we use to deduce meaning from the exterior landscape. It makes the inanimate, animate. The interior landscape sees beyond tangible patterns and explores the relationship between one perceived entity and another. This creates understanding that fuels future assumptions and allows more significance to be gleaned from the exterior landscape. New concepts, insights, and ideas are aroused that give substantial meaning to once potentially unimaginable visions and experiences. The interior landscape is a universal language that can only be spoken and understood if the proper exterior landscape exists to incubate these metaphorical connections. The interior landscape must be tilled through extensive attention to detail. Keen and open experiences, even brief aphorisms that resonate and illustrate tangible tested qualities of truth- provide details, that paint and color in the regions of intentional brush strokes left by the assimilation of the interior landscape. The less color- the less comprehension is transcended to others for relation. You can work with very little experiences and deduct very similar conclusions. Your limits are imposed by your lack of imagination within the interior landscape. Not due to lack of tools and opportunities provided by abundant experiences supplementing your exterior.
The drive for communicating foreign contexts of exterior landscapes and the intrinsic meaningful relationships of the interior landscape behind them, from one person to another, truly relies on the ability and understanding to communicate on an interior level. To make the relationships identifiable through sheer honesty of the formula used to assimilate the experience. Every story has a formula that consists of much more than basic nouns and pro-nouns and prepositions. It is the diction, the rhetoric, the language, and gesture, and style- totally separate from intellect- that fits together in a universal communicable truth that arrives at the ears of the listener. It involves the faculties of the metaphysical intuition, which resonate with truth and integrity, to embrace the extended shared experience. You can grow just from hearing another’s story. His interpretation- His perception of assimilated events stowed away carefully in a supportive woven web of meaning.

No matter if you don’t understand this concept. The significance of thinking has degraded generously the past century. Thinking is a job, and as long as we aren’t getting paid to do so, we’d rather rely on tangible crutches to do our thinking and form the relationships we use to signify meaning. It seems rare in this culture at least that creativity is original. It’s all copped and cropped. We are no longer stimulated to think. I feel that this lack of enthusiasm is due to the misconception that it’s all been thought before. That all your answers are out there. Except for the basic anomalies of God and existence and dimensions- there are only lose ends to be tied up and soon enough they will too be explored. It may be hard to recognize the meaning in something so trivial as the lost art communicating of multiple levels.

There is a dark giant cloud of cultural, economic, and political oppression that exists to convince us that our interpretations are as irrelevant in the scheme of life as a single drop of water is irrelevant to the whole ocean. I’d like to see beyond that significance.

this is what i think

you know what. i used to have so little faith in myself. i thought i was a failure. i thought i just lacked what it took in this world to be great. i just considered myself special as an individual but i never realized how i could possible excel and contribute. the past year ive changed tremendously.

my whole metaphysical system for understanding what it means to be successful has been totally redone. it started with me failing high school. then me being a drug addict. then me losing a girl i loved with all my heart that it hurt and what hurt more was my inadequacy, because she deserved the best and i wasn’t. and i had to give her up in my mind because if i loved her i wouldn’t want to be a burden for someone that special. anyway.

i eventually sorta gave up, got kicked outta my house and was homeless for awhile. it was then, when i realized i would die or be a totally depressed unhappy bum if i didnt take responsibility for my thoughts and actions did i start exploring how to be successful. i started reading books, and the first book i picked up changed my life. “as a man thinketh” by james allen. i never even read prior to that book. i read it and it changed my view of the potential inside me that was crying out to be tapped. ever since ive continued reading books by the most successful people in the world and i never thought i could read so me or have so much ambition and positive hope for myself and my future.

failure is not an option to stop. i realized it simply became a stepping stone to success. you fail at something, you just dont do it that way again. otherwise youd be insane (doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results) instead you try try again reading and thinking about how to to it better and you will succeed. there are alot of tools and understanding ive aquired as the priciple foundations for success. anyway. anyway. i went back to highschool with a renewed spirit, got my degree, looked at colleges, read books, found landmark, readup on it, thought it sounded amazing, applied and paid for all those fees and here i am. i swear im so excited to get challenged, esp in an environment where they understand my frustrations i face with ADD and my mind. cause i don’t operate like the norm, and throughout high school and prior i thought i was just a crazy lunatic who was too scatterbrained and not focused enough to really make progress. i know now i can.

i think about that girl and it hurts so bad but i tell you whenever i feel lazy or contemplate procrastinating i think about her and how much it hurt to feel like a failure and now worthy enough for her. i expect much from myself. i want to give the world to her. and its not so much her as it is someone that i will have those feelings for again in the future. its extremely painful to let go of something you love more than anything. it motivates me to read dozens and dozens of books on dozens of subjects and get up early and go to the gym and do errands and be creative and just my the best person i can be. we all have unlimited potential its up to each of us in this lifetime to realize the potential. only then can be possibly tap into it.

i realize i am who i am and im ok with that. i will succeed and reach all of my goals so long as i have goals. goals are huge. without them we wander aimlessly in life. we need to know where to set the bar and what we’re working for and applying our efforts towards. the only thing more fulfilling than accomplishing a goal is the thought of the possibility of accomplishing it. its so invigorating. the challenge is like a reservoir of satisfaction waiting to be tapped. ah. so anyway. i want to prove to myself that i can be as successful as i think i can. it aint for the degree. it aint for the money. its about learning and adding to my knowledge and understanding. every accomplishment builds confidence towards the next even more challenging endeavor.

looking forward to catching up at school. we have the potential to do whatever our mind can come up with however amazing. “whatever the mind of a man can conceive and believe, the mind of a man can achieve.”-napoleon hill. you gotta think big and be positive and just on every opportunity to overcome a challenge or a fear. i got some good books ill introduce you to. ultimately, its what you want from this life and yourself. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” so true. problem is we don’t ask, and we don’t seek, and we don’t pursue. anyway.

this place is awesome. its built for people like me. they have all the right teachers and resources to tap into for help and encouragement. and from here, if I utilize everything available to us, we can go on to any higher more challenging institution for learning we choose. its exciting.

i like all music. my friends got me into the hardcore scene. not a huge fan of country yet, just doesnt do it for me, and rap and r&b is aight. hiphop a little more perferable. i dont get into any music scene tho. i tend to go with what speaks to my emotions at the time. anyway.