Reflections – Page 2 – William Dare

Droplets in the Sea

“…for the time being I gave up writing – there is already too much truth in the world – an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed….” -Otto Rank

This is how I often feel. About everything. Sometimes I get comparative and I forget that the driver behind my actions should be purely expressive and therapeutic. There is no absolute truths, no direction to speak of, no purpose for all. I often think that I am speaking or writing over a clamoring chorus of cacophony so that my contribution only adds to the confusion, to the dissonance. So I decide that I’d rather not write. But it needs to come out. It is a compulsion that bubbles up and bursts into a full spectrum of epileptic color. I need to get in the habit of writing again, or thinking consistently, with a purpose that I can arbitrarily delegate to myself and justify through my actions, not because there’s any inherent merit.

So what have I been thinking about lately? Generally speaking, how everything is an illusion. How we are so totally blind to ourselves. It’s wacky just thinking about how inane our belief systems are, our quirks and world views. We justify what we’re comfortable with. Humans attract more of the same. I heard on an NPR segment these academics call it an ‘echo-chamber’, or an ‘identity silo’, if I’m not mistaken. The speakers were discussing information systems like Google or Facebook that have algorithms that feed us more of what we like by accessing our browsing or interaction history. It all operates off of confirmation bias. The vast majority of people do not deliberately seek out information that conflicts with our world view or philosophy. In fact, many people get agitated when they are exposed to systems of thought with which they disagree. Instead they find information that confirms and reinforces an insular world view or belief system. This creates a concurrent resonance so that information going out is confirmed by information going in. It is a reverberation that amplifies beliefs. The result is a severely skewed picture of the world. The threat is radicalism.

Anyway. We all do this. People are not prone to novelty or newness or anything foreign or unknown that may threaten or unravel our nice picture of the world. People like the path of least resistance, comfort and ease.

All belief system’s are lies (‘Myth’ is a nicer word). Mine as much as any one else’s. But why I think mine has more legitimacy lies in the fact that it has no legitimacy. (Legitimacy is an ethical claim, not a quantitative or measurable claim. My belief system would not produce a successful priest, or lawyer. Perhaps, only a good citizen of the world, or philosopher. Perhaps it’s only good for me, Michael.) My beliefs are arbitrary. Most people would never dream of throwing their beliefs to the wind and calling them arbitrary. Why? Because our belief systems offer us techniques for dealing with the world, with other people, with ourselves, with mortality. Beliefs make everything sweet and sanguine. “The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.” But the longer we hold onto a single belief and fail to venture into new perspectives of the world, the longer we are exposed to sheer ignorance, and the harder it is to escape.

Yea. Beliefs. Character. What the hell is character? It is a defense mechanism. Like all of our ideas that provide us with an orientation when confronting the world. If we fail to maintain character, we fail. Our shortcomings are exposed, our wretched limitations lay open for us and the world to see. Inconsistencies in a world where people depend on consistencies, on ideals and values that endure beyond temporal constraints and natural rotting.

Yea. Beliefs are limitations. We spend our entire lives building these vast belief systems that serve one function: to limit us. They limit us to the overwhelming possibility that has confronted us since our birth. What in the hell is this place called earth, mom, food, hot, pain, god, lies, trust, etc? These ad hoc, explosions in our face, these phenomenon that we didn’t choose but were thrust upon us. The sheer ridiculousness of entering a world overflowing with sensations and ideas.

The moment we exit the womb we begin to limit, to delineate the contours and trace out boundaries of experience, cutting off and segmenting this ocean of possibilities into more manageable pieces for consumption. We ‘rationalize’ this world by limiting it. By censoring it. By condensing it. By symbolizing it. Ugh. It’s all a myth. We are afraid of possibility, of potential. If we weren’t, we’d be something else, we’d be continually born anew.

So much to think about.

So my current situation. I need to get active. Analysis paralysis. A general listlessness about life has settled on my mind. It’s pathetic.

I ran today. I will run tomorrow, and lift. I am spending the remainder of my summer restricting my caloric intake and subjecting my body to intense physical stress. I’m well aware that the mind is connected with the body, the heart, the soul, whatever. A sound body is a sound mind.

I will read more. I say, more than six hours a day. Very doable. A book a week.

I don’t understand people who live on a superficial plane of existence. There are multiple layers that we wear. There’s the superficial layers filled with linguistic clichés and verbiage that allow us to navigate through interpersonal interaction. Then there is a layer that yields our beliefs, our defense mechanisms, our reflections and questions. The final layer is a recognition of our fear, our denial of our inadequacy, our frailty, our inevitable death that will arrive no matter how much we make, what we know or achieve or believe. That is the breaking point for most people, when serious changes and restructuring occurs in their mind. When the other layers have failed, this layer takes control.

Anywho. I don’t get superficiality. I’m great at it, at bullshitting. Most people exist in this layer. Banter. That’s all it is. Useless noise that gets us what we want, a reaction out of people, out of our world. But most people don’t move beyond it. Ever. They exist there. Their mind is so pathetically shallow. That’s why we have Television and the internet and games and amusement. It placates our superficiality. If we actually had to think about life, about our beliefs and actions and deliberations and consequences, most people would unravel or lose themselves.

I watch these people rush to watch their favorite television shows. Their TV. They don’t read. They listen to their music. They read their fantasy novels. They indulge in religious services or shopping sprees. All superficial techniques for avoiding the self.

It’s insane. They don’t write. They don’t read. They don’t converse about meaningful projects. About feelings, about dreams, desires, goals. Knowledge and creativity isn’t prized like it used to be. It’s all about amusement, or power.

So. The human condition has been swiped aside. The humanities departments across the country bear signs of the recent insignificance that plagues them in the face of power. What thrives? Engineering, business, law, science. Disciplines that allow us to master others, master our world. Why do they have the greatest growth? Because they allow for the accumulation and application of power.

Everything comes down the this will to power. I need to think more on it and write more later.

Language. Ideas are public goods. There is no private language, just as there is no private ideas. If it is an idea, it must be accepted and shared by the community, otherwise it will fail to flourish, and die. Ideas are public. You cannot escape the conversational constraints dictated by the public arena. Artists do this though, or attempt to. They create feelings and ideas where there was none previously.

My language traps me. I cannot think beyond it, I cannot communicate about it except with the language I have been afforded by my culture. That is why reading is so amazing. It allows me to transcend my limited abilities so that I can articulate and convey ideas to a broader audience.

/end rant.

Ran

‘Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.’
— Henry Brooks Adams

Your life is a lie. All is a myth. There is no matter of fact that lies beyond the assaulting grip of dispute. Everything can be contended.

I’ve been feeling great lately. Have a great story to tell. I need to begin blogging again. Starting… right now. Every day I’ll spew something about my day, about my thoughts, recent conversations, stuff I learned at work, etc.

But back to my original thought. All is a lie. A myth. We create these myths through out desires. We justify these myths, these upending urges that swell and burst into action, through irrational beliefs. But that doesn’t stop us from trying to rationalize these beliefs. Oh no.

What I’ve realized is that people are bat shit insane. I nod most of the time. They ask me what I believe, wouldn’t you know it, I say “what works.” They usually ask me to come again, to clarify. I say, I don’t believe anything. I just adopt beliefs that work within a given context to get me what I want or bring me where I want to go. These beliefs account for a multitude of emotional, social, and relational factors.

I am a skeptic. I believe in the ego, the I, the ‘consciousness’ and that’s about it. I believe this ego manifests desires and that it justifies its actions according to these desires, whether it is the desire the self-preserve, or look pretty, or get in shape, or be smart, or whatever.

I am a skeptic, I repeat: I doubt. I insert wedges of doubt behind every thought so that I may unhinge my biases, my habituations, my prejudices. I am a skeptic. I believe that knowing nothing is the best route to knowing more. When you have your mind made up, you have failed yourself. Always leave room for doubt. Even test the reasonableness of your methods for doubting. Doubt everything. Leave no stone unturned. We live in a web, a sticky web: a context where thoughts in the now are found at the center, where the periphery extends into the far reaches of the past. Let us probe. Let us look for where these webs unravel, let’s unravel these webs of beliefs and string together something totally new and magical. Something original and wholly mine.

I like my job.

This world is about power.

Everyone is blind. Blind to themselves.

I need to spend time fully typing out all my thoughts.

Money is power. Power is money. They are synonymous. They buy influence, satisfaction, discontent, life, death, whatever you can dream up. But money and power doesn’t give you answers. That is left for wisdom, something that supersedes and transcends both. I desire to have money, power, and wisdom. Eh.

Sage advice: Buy gold. The dollar is losing its value. The fed stopped quantitative easing/printing money. Deflation will be sure to ensue, briefly. So they’ll start again. Interest rates are at zero percent. Major trade deficits loom. The economy will be volatile the next few months. Buy mining company shares, like Newmont. And Microsoft, because it’s a severely undervalued stock right now. So help me god.

Anywho.

I need to go to bed.

Most people think they think big. But their idea of big is awfully small.

On Selfishness, Values, Creativity, Death

There is no selfless act. Though you die for values and ideals, they are nonetheless yours and yours alone, subjective and independent of external facts and realities. Insofar as self-preservation is the prerogative of all life, the preservation of ideals and values is the prerogative of the human consciousness.

But what of love? some may say. Love is a selfish conception. If it is not predicated as a pleasure or passion, it is predicated as a subjective concept projected onto the world to characterize a type of relationship. To die for another is to die for your ideals and values, not the subjective values of others. The act of dying for another or another’s values is embedded with subjective valuations. Camus said that what man believes to be true must determine his action.

Echoing Nietzsche in his essay On Truth and Lies in the Non-moral Sense, truth is a metaphorical representation that is coined from an originally subjective perception of experience and passed on as an objective fact of experience. Though it may be passed on as objective, its application in life through experience is nonetheless a subjective assertion. Insofar as we exist before we perceive the world, all that is conceivable and doable is a sui generis selfish act, whether it’s to preserve the well being of the body or preserve the conceptions of the mind.

But what of martyrs or saints? others will say. Are not these selfless acts of death or denial? I would reply that they are no more selfless than suicide or any other act that preserves a subjectively possessed belief or ideal.

The only selfless acts are those selfish deeds which indirectly and consequently improve upon the lives of others so that they must do the same when taken to denouement. That is, selfless acts are no more selfish than any other act, only that their corollary influences others to perform actions which empower others to empower others.

In this way one may pursue the ideal of freedom selfishly but in doing so he not only apprehends freedom personally, but apprehends this freedom for others as well. Likewise it is with equality, so that by cherishing equality for selfish motives he secures equality for all. What must be preserved in these acts is an inherent method of propagating the power of others to do the same.

Creativity must not be confused as being exclusively devoted to the arts. Creativity is the ability to stipulate something from nothing, to instantiate new conceptions according to new or existing demands. The constructive value to life inherent in creativity also contains an equally threatening detriment to life. By their very nature new and original conceptions destroy uniformity, disrupt equilibrium and threaten the familiar. The foreign and alien, the new and novel, have no place in circular systems. Circular systems arise from habits formalized as convention, routine, pattern, method and the like. They allow predictability and consistency and uniformity. Their adoption requires a suspension of familiarity so that a leap of faith is required for their assimilation. In many cases the familiar must not only be amended, but totally destroyed and annihilated to sufficiently accommodate change. In this way change requires adaptation, an alteration of existing units and relations within a system.

These systems may represent cultural practices, or histories, or traditions or rationale. One must not rely on the past to sufficiently guide and navigate the future. So long as there is time, there is change, and all change must be embraced accordingly. Negating the existence of changes is the source of all problems. If life is an activity characterized by growth, problems are a natural phenomenon and must be welcomed as such. But what is growth if it is not life? And what is life if not a continual pursuit of preservation? To preserve the past is to celebrate death; but this is precisely the natural character of humans. Nietzsche said “Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.” As with all things living, it is human nature to preserve the self, to struggle to exist, but the rarity arises in man’s specialized ability to preserve. This ability resides in the act of perpetuating equilibrium through adaptation, through the creative employment of reason and imagination to adjust to changes. Non-living matter can be said to be in the greatest equilibrium of all.

But this is where man diverges from other life. It is not enough to maintain equilibrium. Man contains a will to create equilibrium where there is not, to dominate his surroundings in an effort to project an ultimate equilibrium that renders a congruency between the inner life of the self and his environment. This is why Nietzsche dismissed the Darwinian notions of struggle for existence in favor of the will to power which more accurately reflects the nature of man. Evidence of the will to power becomes obvious when we turn to the modern day manifestations of man and witness artificial disequilibrium instantiated as civilization and technologies. Going far beyond all the past pursuits of life that merely sought to preserve corporeal existence, man has successfully learned to preserve the inner self. He has fully exercised his freedom to impress his inner world onto the outer world, to fashion it according to his liking.

Leaders are creators who operate to conjure and implement new realities and visions that accommodate real or perceived changes. While leaders can be oppressive in this way, they can be, more importantly, liberators who sow new realities and ideas that empower others. The difference lies in the values contained in the given vision and whether or not these values empower others to empower themselves to empower others.

Candidus: The Art of Suffering

Ah. To be happy. I can be happy. I am happy. But the dumb are happy. It doesn’t take guts to be happy. It takes guts to be sad. To endure hardship and suffering. Sure, happy is pleasurable. But imagine, just imagine a life that was entirely happy. I like to think that such a life would be terribly boring. Terribly nauseating. Like eating sugar at every meal, you’d get sick of it. Most people think that suffering is a curse. I tend to disagree, quite vehemently too. Suffering and sadness are blessings. They harden and humble a man. They make him more appreciative, more aware. And while they might callous soft skin, they deepen the capacity to care and contemplate, to hold more in.

To be happy: the dumb are happy. That is what I observe. Any blubbering idiot can be happy. But to be sad? This requires courage, but not just courage, it requires sacrifice. Sacrifice of the pleasures that preponder the mind night and day.

Amusing. I resent those who keep themselves constantly amused. Do you know what the word amuse stands for? It is a suspension of thought: ‘a’-‘muse’. As in, ‘no muse’. As in, to divert attention, inspiration or thought. The french came up with that one. It’s quite clever.

So we have a society that prides itself on amusement. It is a virtue to be amused. To be dumb.

Suffering and sadness create depth. I can always spot the deep thinkers. They’re the sensitive type, but you’d never know it by looking at them. They keep it in. Some people have the good fortune of being born sensitive. In these cases suffering and sadness are thrust upon them. For everyone else, well, they need to wait for misfortune. And some never have the fortune of misfortune.

But the suffering and sadness doesn’t just make people deep and contemplative. No. It makes them bold. Bold to be themselves. To be happy. To embrace it all. They know no boundaries. For them, fear has been found. They fear nothing. They understand that to fear suffering is to already suffer from what you fear. They realize that it is all apart of the play. For everyone else, they avoid pain. They avoid hardship, suffering. Their lives are a despairing denial. They seek comfort and in this comfort they water down their potential.

Some people run. They run from vulnerability. They run from pain. They run from ever really experiencing joy. Let them run. They run only from themselves, and then they never really know themselves. For them life is a sheet of paper containing wondrous lines and colors, but no depth.

Yes. The man who has suffered greatly finds himself at home even in the most terrifying worlds, worlds which most no nothing about. Ah yes. To be happy. You fool. Life is not always happy. You have bought the lie, swallowed the pill, forfeited your life.

Life is suffering. To embrace suffering is to embrace life. To avoid suffering is the strongest sentiment of death. When life hurts, know that you are alive.

Let us embrace the balance. Let us embrace the crests and troughs. The balance lies in the synthesis, the contrasts created by the peaks and valleys. To reside in the middle is lifeless. While the moments spent there are brief and good, a life in the middle, or at one extreme or the other, is a predictable flat line. Let’s find balance while undulating across the extremes. This way we can mark our progress by degree.

I believe that some people are born wild, while others are born domesticated. Some born free, others born slaves.

With a large intelligence and a deep heart comes the inevitability of pain and sadness. Great men, I think, must have great sadness.

Oh you disagree do you? What great achievement was ever won without the perspiration of pain? One must embody the discipline of driving through suffering and sadness.

I am happy. But I choose my moments. I prefer to be conscious, to have a pulse, rather than be happy. So this may be why I am always thinking. It is an involuntary response to being fully alive.

Thoughts on Evolutionary Economics: Organic Models of Economic Growth

‘Progress’ or ‘evolution,’ industrial and social, is not mere increase and decrease. It is organic growth, chastened and confined and occasionally reversed by decay of innumerable factors, each of which influences and is influenced by those around it; and every such mutual influence varies with the stages which the respective factors have already reached in their growth. In this vital respect all sciences of life are akin to one another, and are unlike physical sciences. And therefore in the later stages of economics, when we are approaching nearly to the conditions of life, biological analogies are to be preferred to mechanical, other things being equal. (Alfred Marshall 1898: 42-3)

Examine the Thesis: Economic models must not be closed. Rational models are not reflective of nature as a function of change and therefore time. The creative and adaptive enterprises of men cause rational economic models to become outdated in the long run. Rational economic models are suitable for short run analysis but can not make accurate long run predictions.

Pragmatic Science Studies: Thoughts

All things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Examine the thesis: Science serves as a social utility that facilitates the economic and political power over a community.

Elucidate the utility of science from an individual and national level. Show how science and economy are reflexively compatible and serve as complimentary forms of power.

What are the pros of accepting science as truth? What are the cons? Can one accept external truths and retain freedom? Internal?

Continue reading “Pragmatic Science Studies: Thoughts”

Insanity

What is insanity? The most familiar definition that comes to mind is from Einstein who said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is peculiar to think of insanity this way, particularly because it flies in the face of normalcy. Many believe that the socially responsible and acceptable thing to do is to adhere to certain norms and customs and traditions, and that these will allow you to adequately function in society. What normalcy doesn’t guarantee, however, is individuality, or originality. To be an individual, one must do things differently and expect different results. But what of a society that values doing things differently only to achieve the same results, such as participating in all the counter-cultural rituals to gain acceptance as an ‘individual’ ? Can it be said that such a person has achieved individuality?

‎”Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” -F.Nietzsche

Insanity. What I find insane is society. Civilization. Tradition. Custom. Ritual. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the utility of consistency. I understand the pragmatic element of predictability, from a linguistic standpoint as well as a logical and epistemological standpoint. After all, learning curves are greatly reduced by assimilating the knowledge past down by forbearer, no? And we can’t very well go about creating our own neologistic language and expect to be effective interpersonally, now can we? But where do we draw the line between maintaining and gaining? Passing on and passing over? Subsisting and thriving? Progress requires change. Change requires adaptation. If we sell out to maintain the status quo, if we fail to commit to the efflorescent incarnations of possibility in favor of the denouement of equilibrium, we must embrace our death; for we have already died.

Society is insane. Look at the way they scuttle around in the rat race, trying to secure these temporal provisions; see how they frantically instill meaning and comfort into fabricated facticities. Observe the perduring populous that embodies repetition; always allied to the alacritous attachment of doing the same thing, over and over again, and always expecting different results. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. In the end everyone’s demise is the same. Society is a self-fulfilling prophecy; a reflexive perpetuation proselytizing more of the same. The social consciousness does not readily expand but rather, it promptly strengthens itself onto itself.

So what is insanity? A break from conventional norms, I suppose. So sanity, once again, is doing the same thing over and over again. The endorsement of cultural customs, e.g. materialism, hedonism, consumerism, aceticism, celebrityism, sciencism, etc. I suppose the great majority of people think they aren’t insane because they don’t expect different results. Predictability is offered as a sycophant of security.

That is the real tragedy. When people not only do the same thing over and over again, but they do not expect different results. They have been sedated or conditioned or desensitized to rudimentary routines and rituals. 9 to 5. Primary, secondary, tertiary schooling, followed by a stint of rebellious youth, cue the career, make room for marriage, corral some kids, restfully retire, and then comes the inevitable surprise of death.

Sanity: “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results.” This rationalist program will inevitably suffer the same stifling fate as freedom. Time waits for no man. If you are not progressing, you are regressing. Life is meant to flourish. Growth and evolution should be the cynosure of contemplation, the mark of progress. But not by any quantitative measure imposed by external authority. It should be an inward journey. Growth is not static.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.” -R.W. Emerson

Insanity is characterized by senseless or abnormal behavior by societal standards. But how amazing it is to look at societal standards! Especially through the perspective lens of time! How standards change!

So the question of insanity remains. Are you insane for following your desires? Even if your desires lead to your demise? Even if they cast you into chains? Even if they toss you into pain and hardship? Would you be willing to escape sanity and embrace the lucres of authentic freedom? At what price?

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.
-A. Camus

The Rational & Intuitive Struggle

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an “overjoyed hero,” counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty. -Friedrich Nietzsche

What is it about life that I just can’t get a grip on? Where is the consistency? Do I give life ground? Or does it just float, to and fro, out of reach? I’d like to say my life was whole, was coherent and clear, but that simply isn’t the case. I envy those with naive dreams. I long to be whisked away into ethereal imaginings, but that simply will not do.

What is nauseating is routine. What is terrible is the familiarity. It breeds boredom. The stale nature of permanence. Tradition. This is why I yearn for adventure, for chaos, for the unpredictable. I want the painful, the scary, the out of control. I don’t want to get a grip. The harder you squeeze, the more it escapes through your fingers.

I wish I could write about something important. I wish I could produce a novel insight that actually leaves me feeling inspired. I’m tired of talking about flames and fire and passion and mind and wit. Its stupid. I just want to wake up. Wake up forever. How do I shake myself out of it? Sadness, the despairing shadow that keeps in step, follows me. It lurks on the other side of the sunshine. How do I ignore its bleak contrast? It elucidates nothing. It gives depth, but it obscures and blurs.

What is important? I can’t figure it out. I can’t seem to see past the same old thoughts. My identity? It fluctuates. It is never regular. Not inside anyway. Success today? How about sadness? Deep? Trivial? Adventure? Security? Why oh why can’t I find a balance. Why can’t I ingest some illusions that allow me to transcend this skepticism?

Normally I’d find something wrong with this situation, but what criteria would I judge it by? I am not ‘sad’ per se. Nor am I ‘happy’. I am constantly overflowing, and this leaves me feeling incomplete. Why can’t I fit anything more into my world? Where is the color? I don’t know how else to describe it other than color. Color incites the senses. It is phenomenal. It actually moves you into a mood. Moods are powerful. Temporary as they are.

I think I know what my problem is. The will. My will. I have lost control of myself. My vision has faltered. My body has slowly settled. Settled with what? Demands. Expectations. Routine. It kills me inside. But I know these are permanent facets to life. I cannot escape them. School, work, whatever, the real world, they will persist and remain. I must learn to direct myself, master the sub conscious, and overcome the will.

Deciding is the issue. Having a self generated purpose seems so fabricated. I’d like some spiritual, transcendent calling. But why? Just so I can escape the responsibility of individuating my own being? Of declaring an original voice?

I’d like to wake up with a bolt of lightning. I want it to zap me and keep me charged all day and when night comes, I soar into open dreams.

There is something wrong with my thoughts. With my conception of self, of the identity. I don’t have to acknowledge everything. I am biased anyway. My current perspective is not whole. It is mostly lies. I don’t see the whole picture. In fact, I’ve got myself believing that there is a whole picture. There isn’t. Us humans can only indulge in slivers at a time. Our perspective is a simple slice of possibility. We need to flow from slice to slice accidentally, free forming our experiences from the vast material of the moment.

I need wonder. WONDER. SMILE & WONDER. Do I generate it? I also need justification. It provides a confidence in my intention. I need a strong intention. A wild imagination. I want to throw myself onto the world. At the world. With the world. I want to preserve what’s mine. I don’t want to become one with them.

I feel totally out of my mind. Something needs to give.

Will.Power.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.

-Vince Lombardi

I just read an article in the New York Times that delineated the qualities of mental prowess possessed by elite athletes. Their mental stamina, their ability to push beyond the mental limits where physical pain and psychological torture reside, is a hallmark of every successful person.

I believe that the principles of success are learned and acquired through any undertaking that requires a great deal of struggle. Without the struggle, without embracing the hardship, there is no virtue to be gleaned. As an athlete, there is no way around this struggle. When the time comes for competition, the corollary of your daily perseverance will shine for all to see. Whereas one can get by doing the minimum and appearing to excel in more relative matters such as business and school, there is no escaping the public eyes of the arena in athletic competition. You cannot hide the deficiencies you failed to confront and develop. Come time for competition, all your short-cuts, all your breaks, all your excuses and rational for stopping short are exposed for all to see. When the competition is over, a competitor can look on his performance in one of two ways: they can hold their head high, proud of their unfailing allegiance to the will; or they can shirk and shrink inward and displace the blame, not on their own failures and lack of will, but on things outside their control. Only one of these two competitors will continue succeeding.

“I was given a body that could train every single day.” Tom said, “and a mind, a mentality, that believed that if I trained every day — and I could train every day — I’ll beat you.”

“The mentality was I will do whatever it takes to win,” he added. “I was totally willing to have the worst pain. I was totally willing to do whatever it takes to win the race.”

This is why elite athletes have such a developed sense of will. They recognize that there is no escaping responsibility. They refuse to make excuses. Their only refuge is knowing that will conquers all. It is the starting point for all capacities of human development.

The article discussed visualization. As a firm believer in visualization, I was intrigued by the contrast between amateur competitors and elite athletes.

In studies of college runners, [Raglin] found that less accomplished athletes tended to dissociate, to think of something other than their running to distract themselves.“Sometimes dissociation allows runners to speed up, because they are not attending to their pain and effort,” he said. “But what often happens is they hit a sort of physiological wall that forces them to slow down, so they end up racing inefficiently in a sort of oscillating pace.” But association, Dr. Raglin says, is difficult, which may be why most don’t do it.

When I read this, I think of a responsibility avoidance. There is a fear that prevents these athletes from embracing the pain and struggle. They fail to size-up the challenge and accept the burden of responsibility for its attainment. By contrast:

“Our hypothesis is that elite athletes are able to motivate themselves continuously and are able to run the gantlet between pushing too hard — and failing to finish — and underperforming,” Dr. Swart said

To find this motivation, the athletes must resist the feeling that they are too tired and have to slow down, he added. Instead, they have to concentrate on increasing the intensity of their effort. That, Dr. Swart said, takes “mental strength,” but “allows them to perform close to their maximal ability.”

Elite athletes find the boundary where their limitations reside. They practice reaching that boundary, that fluid limitation, on a routine basis. They know it well by inspecting its character and uncovering its various strongholds on potential. They become comfortable and familiar with its discomforts, continually dancing the line of what their current capacities can handle, and what their will demands of potential and possibility. When the time for competition arrives, this boundary of limitation will whiz by in the periphery, acting as nothing more than a reminder that all boundaries are meant to be crossed. Success, and traversing the limits that lead you there, are a matter of will.

Conceive. Believe. Achieve.

You must see where you want to be, visualize its nature, its pains and joys. You must conceive a world where you are already there, a world of possibility where time is your only enemy. You must believe that your potential is limitless, that you will win, that you will not lose. Only then will you gravitate toward this vision of success and achieve your ends. If you cannot conceive possibility, if you cannot believe in yourself and your ability to inevitably succeed, you will never achieve.

Jūdex

I believe in transparency; with yourself, with others. What have I to hide? Mistakes? An unworthy life? I am not ashamed of my past or present conclusions. Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself. I am am a creature in continual flux. I change and grow, like any life. My moments speak for themselves. However naive, my intention is pure. What matters the cares of the worlds? Can’t I maintain cares of mine own? Or the lack thereof?

Risk and reward are tantamount, otherwise everyone would get their fill of life. Living boldly means taking great risk. Be prepared to sacrifice your comforts and security. Pain will lurk close. Unknowns will abound. Adaptation means consistent action.

I will not apologize for my decision to live life boldly. The past is gone. It floats in a nonexistent oblivion. Memories prove too unreliable to cast just ratiocination on yourself or others. What matters but now? If you are there, who will attend to the here? What character will be under review? The character of him who is here, or the character of our memory?

Be open. If you hide yourself from the world, you are hiding yourself. We do not see things as they are; we see the world as we are. Only when we drag our full nature into the light of the world can we see the nature of its fullness.When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. This requires a confrontation with whatever issues or vices or insecurities that chronically shirk from exposure. Attack them head on. See yourself as whole, as flawed, as awesome, as existing here and now.

Alive

I feel alive. It’s the first time in a long while. Usually I endure the suffocation. The demands. The routine pressures. As soon as I give a big fuck you to the world, to the expectations, to the voices; it suddenly melts away. It dissolves into clarity. I become light, my chest fills with substance and the aching void is replaced with pouring rhythm.

What it is to ‘be’. Its not doing. Its not pleasing people. Its not succumbing to everything out there. Its a defiant, oppositional rejection to it all. Perhaps its the fear that melts away? The fear of not sufficing, of not doing enough, maintaining enough. The fear of rejection. The fear of being no good. These forces worm their roots into my core and choke my sense of self. They fester and grow, feeding off my ability to be and act. It desiccates potential, leaving it shriveled and withered. I say no. I would rather die, rather blow off my head and choke my life of consciousness than live a mediocre life of struggle. I would do anything so long as my being could breath again. When the ultimatum hangs between ending your life, or ending the angst, the answers don’t seem so allusive. It becomes a simple decision of action. A courageous act of anger. Anger towards everything that’s been weighing you down.

No longer will my breath be bated with apprehension and insecurities. Death, or life. Chains, or freedom. So much of my life I prey on self-deception to rid it from its burrows; but its insidious contrivances slither beneath awareness and latch hold ever so gently. At times, it seems to be a comfort, this angst. It plants itself and soon becomes a deceptive constant. Over time it slowly coils and constricts the spirit until I awake disoriented and lost. The spirit and its zest for life, the simple pleasures of being, seem to have taken flight, and I am left deserted. A relativity takes hold and an indifference spreads over me. I become weightless, ungrounded.

Being real- whatever real is- seems to be the only salvation. It requires an intense gaze into these abysmally vacant depths. You must stare and search with a righteous anger and bitterness and resentment. You must find these gnarling roots, and hack deep. Confront the demons, the self-judgement, the doubt. Stare hard. Get angry and defiant. Defy anything that is keeping you from the now.

You can be no more than you are, and who you are is not who you will be. Decide to be. Whatever is holding you back must be uncovered and exposed. It has no power when you bring it to the surface. It loses its substance and dissolves into oblivion. The battle is daily. Either life is a burden, or it is no burden at all. Lose the burden.

numinous.

I have a tendency to sound sententious. Forgive me.

My generation, and all those proceeding mine, have me embarrassed. I have been born into a time and place where people are no longer hungry to survive, nor are they hungry to thrive. The great majority of my peers are no longer hungry. What scintilla of hunger remains is reserved for idleness. They are pathetic, passive, consumers, hungry for leisure and ease.

Daily I delve into a commotion circulating society, void of zest, void of passion, void of purpose.

Advertising, academics , entertainment, all woo the willful intellect into a lullaby, a deep slumbering recant.

Our lives are not our own. We have lost ourselves, our traditions, our roots, our history and heritage, to the media, to the experts. We are no longer fit to brave life’s excursions without a guiding figure. Uncharted territories exist in a space beyond us and our imagination. We are not fit for such adventure. So we suspend the will to live, forfeit the alms for something greater. Where bridges would be, we spend our lives building walls and cling to our emaciated dreams.

There is no personal history, no family, no origin. We are nationals, Americans, raised by television, the Internet, our schools, our jobs. Starved of new light, our conscience shirks in the penumbra. We are drones.

How do you wake up a nation cultivating and perpetuating its own poison? How do you lay claim to an intellect defined: circumscribed and standardized. What is will? what is freedom? Notions lost to the strong and gifted, a chance missed by all but a few.

In a word, Emerson said ‘A man is what he thinks about all day long.’

Given this description, what state do we find ourselves?

I talk to young minds who have never developed the ability to question. They never ask whether they are on the right path, whether their beliefs are toxic delusions, whether their behaviors and habits will reap negative consequences, or consequences at all.

What becomes of a man who does the minimum in school to get by, who watches TV in his free time, who absorbs societies prescriptions for his health, wealth, future, happiness? Four hours of TV a day? Six hours of TV? Never mind the trash, the propaganda, celebrated on television as glorified miscreants who are impoverished in spirit. Hours of mindless internet surfing? Playing mindless video-games that envelope the consciousness, sucking its attention into a digital world of no consequence?

What will become of our future leaders? Who will follow them? The zombie fascination is a prescient of our future condition.

TV, Mass media, even the beloved science community, has led us to believe a lie. Everywhere we move but rarely do we progress. We adorn our external lives with material fixtures that fade with the fads. Never to do we exercise reflection to look within, to ratiocinate about the barren pallid walls of our world, home to the human spirit, private to us. Instead we chain ourselves to the flux of the masses, the appeal and approval, and overlook the function, the utility of our laboring aims.

Time has become an inconvenience, not because we have so little time, but because we have too much.

I despise the corpulence, the venery, the stolid and dull, all foibles born out of the American malaise.

We need to grow radical. We need to act now, but within. Our fight should exist internally and should be waged endlessly in the name of freedom and imagination, of humanity.

Freedom and Spirituality

Abstract
This essay explores the phenomenon of spirituality by delineating the rise of free will as a product of a reflective consciousness synthesized from conditioned responses resulting from external demands.

Contents

Reflection as a starting point for analysis and reducibility

Necessity of cause

Freedom

Predictors of Demand
Rise of Ideas
Free will
Reflection as Action
Distance Defines Knowledge

Spirituality

God’s Nature
Conversions

The Rise of Spirituality

Continue reading “Freedom and Spirituality”

Epic Blurb

I love swimming. Becoming totally engulfed in an essence. I love swimming in the ethereal feelings and thoughts kindled in my glowing imagination. I want to live fully. What do I think?

I cannot keep putting off responsibilities. Responsibilities like… homework, studying, keeping in touch with people, being happy. I have a responsibility to be happy ya know. No one else is responsible for my happiness. Its unique to me.

Is it good to avoid criticism? Should one look for it?

***

I visited cousin at Amherst College this weekend. Watched the football game. Beautiful campus. Small population of students but spacious none the least. Hung out with the football gang. All seemingly intelligent people. It’s odd to visit a wet campus. Alcohol prevails in every dorm and every hall. The smell of stale beer leads you to the next party. Filled with juvenile adolescents indulging in self destruction- pounding away at another helping of hoppy watered-down ethanol or some other distilled liquid pleasure. These people. Freedom is such a new quality. I remember the days when I was overwhelmed with freedom. It’s where the irresponsibility started and accountability faded away as I justified my actions with those of my peers. Sad really. My individualism was lost amongst the crowd. And for what? Acceptance is too cliche for an answer. I stripped and tossed my convictions without hesitating a moment. No contemplation. We don’t think that far ahead in our youth. We live in the now. We rarely take time to see into the distance future. If we did, we would see how our accumulated actions would be disserving and adjust accordingly.

Maybe its alright to pander to some of our fleeting youthful satisfactions. Its a slippery slope. The miligram experiment by social psychologist stanley milgram perfectly illustrates what happens when we undermine our convictions. We continue this trend until there are no limits to what we do. The line has been crossed, we are confused, we lose sight of right and wrong as we justify out previous slip.

Amherst was fun. I’m through with the binge atmosphere. I want social glee. I want to be surrounded with quality people who enjoy the finer things in life. Who rise above mindless impulses and short-lived thrills.

Education will not solve the worlds problems. The worlds problems are more than the tangible pressures we face. We face trials of the heart. When the man is right, his world will be right. How can education cause men to be more introspective with their intentions? Just because a man is sincere doesn’t mean he can’t be sincerely wrong. Is man the measure of all things? How far does this measure extend?

*****

I often wonder what would happen if I forfeit all the wisdom I’ve believed to have accumulated? What would happen to my world is I tossed my convictions and standards into the wind and remained wild, totally free from reason. Ha. As I say this I just think of how most post-modern liberals behave. I’m sure my behavior wouldn’t be that different.

*****

I need to write a paper. A LONG paper. A case study. On a company with a woman who’s got no work ethic. Who started a business strictly because she does not work well with authority. Who stated that shes alright with her businesses minimal growth because she reaps tax benefits and money from subsidies to small businesses. She is stealing our tax money becuase she refuses to work hard to earn more money for herself. Wow. This women is nice. She’s got some good ideas. She is clueless when it comes to investing herself into a vision and seeing that vision come alive. She instead settles for mediocrity. A business that’s providing barely enough to get by. She comes to work late. She fired every employee shes hired because of ‘personality conflicts’ but stated that she prefers an employee because that makes me come to work on time. People. I swear. How the hell do I even approach this study. I outlined a business plan proposal. When I write the paper I obviously want to write like this is going to a valuable company with vested stakeholders- instead, I think about how this women won’t heed a damn word and although my analysis of her basic production methods is legitimate- I find that all she needs is a good lesson on working hard and the principles of success. Being an economics paper I can’t very well write a philosophy discourse of strategies for success, but I’m EXTREMELY tempted. If there wasn’t a hefty grade attached I would write such a paper and throw it in her face. I’d also rattle off a few rants on why any social distribution of wealth is inherently flawed due to free loaders like her.

My God! People must misunderstand me all the time! When I talk of success- this doesn’t translate into financial gain! People probably think I’m so egocentric and highfalutin because they totally misinterpret success. Actually- they are totally ignorant to success in general so they are stigmatized to the notion!

SUCCESS!!!! What it means!!! Progressively realizing a worthy ideal!— And working towards it with every molecule and vibration in your being! Being excellent and exploring the unknown wellsprings of untapped potential! BEING THE BEST AT WHAT YOU DO! If you decide to do something- put your all into it! Enough???? “Aren’t I doing enough” you ask? Enough is only your best! Do not lie or deceive yourself. There is no such thing as failure. There is no such thing as try! There is Do. or Do not. Live. or live not. You choose.

I believe that all psychological illnesses stem from people not realizing their full potential. They sabotage themselves and what they think they can or cannot do! They become entrenched in limiting thoughts and habits and live their lives, like Thoreau said, ‘in quiet desperation’.

****

Some people feel that they lack motivation or intelligence or desire or skills. HA! HAHAH! I pity these people. I do. Continually focusing on what they lack instead of what they have at their disposal! How can one gain more by spending his time counting everything he hasn’t! All man needs to succeed he already possesses. The most valuable tool in his arsenal of achievement? Will. What is will? The ability to apply oneself to a decision. We all possess the ability to make a decision. Focus on that decision- never mind the details for they’ll take care of themselves- and you will watch live spring to life. Will! The more you exercise will the more you empower yourself! Have Dreams! Have vision! “Vision without action is a dream. Action without vision is simply passing the time. Action with Vision is making a positive difference.” (Joel Barker)

*****

I want to help other people find their potential. They may ask- what is potential??? What does that mean??? It is everything you are not and you want to be.
I often get caught up thinking that I need to possess the answer in order to plant inspiration within people. How childish! How can I possess all the answers for each individual? Can I make up their mind? Can I pretend to know the depths of their soul and the curiosity of their spirit? No. What I must possess is hope and vision. All I need within myself is the ability to question. To challenge. To encourage people. People have the answers within themselves. They need to look. All I need to to ask the questions that cause people to look within themselves. There they will find the burning flame that starves for more to breath. When this flame catches a breath it will burn brighter and more passionately then they’ve ever known. It will illuminate them from within and their eyes will shine with wonder and awe. They will yearn for more and more and their enthusiasms will cause others to combust in a dazzling display of human achievement.

****

It’s odd. As I often do, I find myself caught in a paradox of conflicting ideology. On one hand- I hold people to the highest most exalted esteem, adorned and lauded for their precious nature. On the other? I find people utterly reviling, evil and carnal in nature. Lost and complacent with consuming the empty tales of hope. Listening fervently with open ears to the flowery but empty rhetoric that evil spews forth. Lies- deception and deceit. It pulls at the strings of their heart and beckons them to follow but leads no where. Are they sheep? They are defiant sheep. I cannot hate the ignorant. I myself am just as ignorant. I do- however- hate the lies. Those that lead others astray have gained my utmost contempt. Their words are like honey to the lips that poisons and incapacitates. These men lead nowhere.

****

I love life. I wish I would think less and act more. At the end of the day all that matters is what was actually accomplished. When my life is over- I won’t be able to celebrate the hours of cathartic reflection and quiet contemplation. I will have to show what my life produced. When the harvest is ready- one cannot make excuses for anything less than his best. This life we sow our best, till and prune and water and tend. When this life is over only the fruits of our labor will reveal our success.

***
I have to work. I have much to do. I have much to write about. No holding back.

****