tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19223754671432553172024-03-08T10:24:25.230-05:00Funding Your AnalystSwimming in the delicious upstream of marbled fat.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger229125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-15370672672851138312013-02-27T19:35:00.001-05:002013-02-27T19:35:56.298-05:00What Is Life About?<br />
God help me, because I don't know anymore.<br />
<br />Is it mating? Is that it? Raising issue/kids? Is it about status, finding a way in this cold world and holding your head high against the tides that be?<br />
<br />
A Beethoven string quartet? Beauty? Some aesthetic ideal? Aren't aesthetic ideals just sort of reflections of what's so beautiful about life, though, in some more essential way?<br />
<br />
Getting into good relations with others? Well, what does that mean? What relationship is crucial and honest, not a pot-luck or amalgam of hesitations and false-starts? Which relationships work?<br />
<br />
Having respectful kids? Parents? Elders?<br />
<br />
Is it not going mad by the time you've reached middle age? Recognized mortality? Fended off youthful idealism? Found enlightenment? Where? How? What does it look like? Is there any right answer? I'm stunned for something correct. Please provide it.<br />
<br />
Have faith? Is that the answer? Have faith that there is purpose?<br />
<br />
In the end, is religion effective because it is effectively all we can do??<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-87742813329928247642013-01-13T21:04:00.001-05:002013-01-13T21:04:44.376-05:00Always So Serious?<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">Odd thing is that I don't think I'm serious, in my head. This is almost an autistically removed answer because it might seem rabidly literal. On the other hand, it is utterly true. I do tend to stray toward the intense, or whatever. Whatever in that I don't take the label so seriously, knowing the level of intensity that others I've been exposed to subscribe and act accordingly. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">How to respond, then, while not making the questioner uncomfortable? </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">See, side note necessary here. [insert] I'm trying to figure this out as I write. I don't have it pre-figured and ready for writing. There's a bit of a difference between the two. During the first, I actually am exposing myself in a kind of thorough way that's frightening. And exhausting.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">Here's a separate side note, to myself, from myself: folks don't really care. It isn't worth actually being vulnerable. Every possible stimuli out there, exterior-side, screams toward the pedestrian, the strategy, that is, to be utterly fake and impulsive-driven and vaingloriously self-obsessed, mannequin-like when listening to other viewpoints, lioness-like when pouncing down the throats of non-interlocutors--non-interlocutors, I'll remind thee, self, that are fundamentally hard to identify. Damnit. It isn't a puzzle. It is a fucking diaphanous piece of opacity, of dual layered glass, that I/you can see through and see a reflection in, and I am reduced to measuring geometrical approaches to understand the angle of others, whether they are, as it were, in the reflection, or on the other side. And either option is not heartening.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">Another side-note. If you don't know who is on your side, it doesn't make sense to jump down random throats. It also doesn't necessarily make sense to have sides, except that they increase cooperation exponentially, because they offer psychological buy-in, which is a precious commodity, one that, shucks, can't just be produced by sheer will, but is the by-product of a series of emotional compromises and mutual reckoning. Also, there's the issue that if you tell yourself that folks don't care, and act accordingly, they certainly won't care, but if you are sincere, and act accordingly, perhaps you'll find a commonality out there, one that can ring true and whatnot. The question is of weighing the possible nuclear size harm of being hyper-sincere all the time, and of the problem, of course, that when you're sincere and interested in things, people are always asking you things like, "why are you so serious?" and that's fucking annoying, and makes you not want to be so sincere all time, and basically revert to a kind of nihilistic solipsism that's carnally gratifying and totally empty. Which is the problem, isn't it?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">So, there's a blindness. That's what it is. A blindness to taking action. And there's a blindness in speaking (or writing on a blog); one that manifests itself in the incapacity to produce cocked and ready-to-consume pithy titty-pinchers of humorous content. Mostly because we don't know who we're interacting with, not that easily, anyway, and certainly in a large anonymous place like the internet. And, worse, perhaps, there's no guarantee, even in that space, of other like-minded souls to find their way together, even if I'm as sincere-as-is-possible. There are no monitors of companionship, after all. There's no assurances, no guarantees </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">There's only you/me, our looking glass butane-filled science experiment of piecing it together, pretending that, once we get there, to the end of the journey, we'll have been successful getting some message across to one another about our experiences, so that we can breath a sigh of relief, and die knowing that: we weren't alone after all. That would be a feeling of relief worth dying over, don't you think?</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-74677678838620751202012-12-22T21:22:00.001-05:002012-12-23T11:39:49.126-05:00Living Life Shame FreeImagine it, if you will, walking around without the crushing weight of wrongness, of deadness, of stale old lived in life, mocking you like a favorite outfit you've been forced to wear for days and now wreaks of body odor and wrinkles in all the wrong places. Imagine knowing life without the desperation to prove yourself in a constant tug of war (to others, to yourself, to notions of whatever the good thing is or has been defined as), touching it in a way that is at once childish and innocent, truly interactive, and also knowledgeable, aware of everything but the layer of cynicism that we often hold over ourselves in a coup not to feel, for the sake, always, to stay away from our previous failures, to hide it is who we are and run away forever. Imagine not doing it relentlessly and with suicide-level zeal. Imagine if it were just the case that you could be seen as human, instead of one-dimensional, and that this richness pervaded your own view of others too, and you might frolic into a dance of conversation and sharing bliss with those you felt least like you before.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-4880830559519006602012-12-11T22:12:00.001-05:002012-12-11T22:12:22.221-05:00Descriptive Accuracy Doesn't Equate to Pliable Feasibility<br />
Why is it that we fool ourselves into thinking that approaching a comprehensive and exhausting pronunciation of exactly what it is that we suffer from might in turn script a policy of prescriptive highlights and blow outs? (What is it that the salon in our heads offers us half off? Decomposed rodenticide laced corpses?!)<br />
<br />
Okay, side point.<br />
<br />
Main point: why the fuck do we think that once we've got a handle on it that the handle will allow us to manipulate it? At all? Why is it that we're just as mindlessly obsessed with rationalizing all of our actions to the cohorts of people who are forced to be friends?<br />
<br />
Here's my secret. Gossip is relentlessly pointless when you are not part of the circle. It holds negative weight.<br />
<br />
And still. And still, we ascribe endless loops and call them intentional meanderings, with a cross here and a supplication there, and we expect people to believe us; we expect them to capitulate to our own idolized notions of reason, however corrupt and obsequiously selfish.<br />
<br />
I don't even know where life exists anymore.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-3422263158278299992012-12-10T23:05:00.001-05:002012-12-10T23:05:53.267-05:00Higher Status FriendsAlmost all of my friends are/were higher status than me at some point in my life, and many have pulled into seriously high positions that I can't really hope to obtain. Yes, I can dream of obtaining, but at this point I simply don't have the confidence for the game, and I definitely don't, because of my erratic training, such as it was, don't have the hard skills.<br />
<br />
It is as much my fault as the fault of anything external. I don't blame myself too horribly. This isn't about blame, or shame, or anything like that. I'm just saying that it is humbling to realize that wasting one's 20s in a haze of ambition and multi-headed energy was not the best way to do it. I don't necessary wish I had what I was running from for so many of those years. But the good parts of having it wouldn't be bad!<br />
<br />
My higher status friends are all very modest. But they are in another league. I can't compete. Everyone has fallen off with everyone else because of continental drift anyway, but I can't help, at times of righteous self-loathing, to propel my sputtering self into a realistic dichotomy, kick myself in the ass, and try to scrape up the crust of dessicated and used up happiness that has nestled itself into the crevices of my so-called life.<br />
<br />
And when I do suck on that bit of solidified grease for a few moments, I realize that I'm alive because of it, and that when I stop comparing it to everything, perhaps I can find more flavor than at first seemed evident. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-77213558758957461962012-11-27T08:29:00.004-05:002012-11-27T08:29:59.492-05:00Emotional Attachment to One's Job - I think we, ambitious, studious, people, try very hard (and earnestly believe) in the capacity for our jobs to be fulfilling. After all, there are tons of Emotionally Fulfilled people out there doing jobs that seem rather fantastic. Solving big problems. Making lots of high level decisions. Etc.<br />
<br />
But over time, most of us, as a rule, simply see our jobs for what they are, and become less engaged with them. We're "on the clock" and that's about it. We want to be comfortable. We want to be paid for it. Etc.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-24065907360013974512012-11-17T17:32:00.001-05:002012-11-17T17:32:27.601-05:00It's Complicated<br />
Simplification is nice, but often simplified elegance loses a lot of the necessary details to understand an experience, on the ground, step-by-step. Of course, describing, in full detail, an entire experience is also tantamount to actually experiencing it, and as such, we who want to figure some stuff out conceptually before we actually participate in the stuff, have to find a way to get information that's neither too limited and not actionable, on one hand, or, on the other, so thick that it is impossible for us to differentiate signal from noise.<br />
<br />
We basically need smarter people to tell us what's important.<br />
<br />
And we need it bad.<br />
<br />
Don't believe me? Fine, go out and make your own mistakes. But being bitter doesn't make anything better, trust me, and less ego earlier may lead to better results later. Maybe. I'm not sure. See, I also know that assholes, i.e. those with high ego, may in fact have more courage to get what they want faster and with less shame than those with less ego and more concern for others. At some level of decision making and action, after all, we will run into the problem of competing interests. It probably happens all the time. Structural coordination that isn't highly efficient leaves loopholes for assholes to exploit and get ahead, and create more structural loopholes for their assholish behavior. Fair doesn't cut it, in that world. Knowing how many assholes are out there, and what their strategy is, and how to deal with it or undercut it, is much more effective, for instance, than muttering asshole under one's breath and losing a couple bucks/minutes in frustration.<br />
<br />
I'm not advocating for assholes. I am also not advocating for pure peace. Simplification is an easy tool to let oneself become blinded, because it allows for post-hoc rationalization of everything and anything, and therefore, disallows learning, whether emotional or intellectual. See, again, I'm forced to admit that learning is difficult because it is often times the place where waste happens unintentionally.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-30092125455247745942012-11-14T22:43:00.001-05:002012-11-14T22:43:01.845-05:00Damnit, My bank account still reads only $313.12! No magic jackpot!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-73217963099408706732012-11-13T08:41:00.001-05:002012-11-13T08:41:39.006-05:00Skin In The GameConceptual understanding is fine. It is, after all, most of what we do. But it doesn't quite indicate how we would act if we had to navigate the parameters of our conceptions. We chronically under-value lots of important stuff and over-value our own positions. That's not new. But actually having skin in the game, wherein decisions have some realizable impact, sure does change how we evaluate and act. Which is interesting. If individual conceptual understanding doesn't do a good job of showing what we'll actually do in a given situation, what does? Forced skin. Money on the line. What have you. That's the only real answer, as unappetizing as it might seem.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-6239760947334300162012-11-11T12:37:00.001-05:002012-11-11T12:37:39.866-05:00Living Life Better<br />
It is a may be even cliched reasoning, but when we become autonomous and independent enough to make our own decisions, we, in one fell swoop of energy, blossom, also, into the realization that those in charge of making decisions for our lives previously weren't quite as bad as we thought they were.<br />
<br />
Or maybe I'm just telling an American story. Maybe this story isn't so true in other countries.<br />
<br />
Either way, it tells of our budding narcissism, even in, or especially in, youth, and I don't know what to do to change the patterns.<br />
<br />
Everything is stereotype and real at once, and that is not a truth people want to acknowledge, or to repeat. It is a complicated truth, instead, one that moves when you push on it.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-61672306862175443382012-11-06T17:00:00.001-05:002012-11-11T12:38:02.014-05:00Easy to . . .<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">Come up with complicated historical narratives for why and how things are fucked up (and how multifarious that fucked-up-ness is).</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">Much harder to carve out a positive and good-natured future existence. Clean and honest and resolute.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">Too easy to justify one's ego and indiscretions for an honest appraisal ever to get done, mostly. That's the fundamental error in human reasoning, me thinks. Wink. Yes. I'm flirting with you.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-80153537828024144092012-10-25T22:01:00.001-04:002012-10-25T22:02:03.901-04:00Minute Moments All Linked Up<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">To the BIG FUCKING PROBLEM, which is, undoubtedly, colossal doom, some calamitous event.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">In fact, the calamitous events that I think of when I think of calamitous events are not even events which I can write here. Because even though I know better, I don't wish to somehow summon them.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Of course, linked tightly up with my nature regarding such events is the equally unmentionable dreams of my youth, withered and battered as they are. I haven't yet taken them seriously as I might have wanted to, or given the concept of time a good hard kick in the ass.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Making excuses for things is a motto for a lot of people and for about 2 years I've been trying to NOT live making excuses. However, I've also stopped living in a lot of ways, dried up and dessicated as I've become, I haven't forgotten the wonder that used to drive my daily life, the "indefatiguable wonder" that I read enthralled a young Vincent Van Gogh as well, though it just so happens that whatever I read lays itself over my life like a well pressed outfit. </span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">And I've bought and sold things here, gentlemen and ladies, and I've found myself sucked into the adrenaline race so that I think every moment matters for all of the big decisions that have yet to be made or could be made, and maybe I'm wrong, just wrong, because sticking oneself down into the cracks, down near the lint, and grime, and rust, well, it just doesn't allow too much perspective to seep in, and pretty soon, I've masked myself with plaster dried, and I've found the old allusions are all tacky and wrought up in disdain.</span><br />
<br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;" />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify;">Pray with me please, and I mean that figuratively.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-18222764729122555092012-09-16T11:56:00.001-04:002012-09-16T11:56:20.532-04:00Delusion for the Sake of Happiness<br />
Always been a fascinating topic for me: whether and to what extent self-evolved delusion really is delusion, or just a 'way of living' and to what extent the search for accuracy in all things leads to depression, or even madness. <br />
<br />
There are infinitely many accurate ways to view a situation that will yield no progress whatsoever. There are also probably infinitely many ways to delusionally view things while yielding no progress.<br />
<br />
But there are subsets of both of these possibilities that allow progress. Question is really: what sort of progress are you looking for? But that question seems subsumed by the first question, which is really how to manufacture higher levels of happiness, flow, contentment, fullness, etc.<br />
<br />
Naturally delusional thoughts can yield to harsh setbacks that pop up to snuff out fairy tale desires.<br />
<br />
But I don't think seeking accuracy in life, whatever that may mean, is any less susceptible to the setbacks of reality. Because reality is so huge, seeking accuracy alone is not a good means-test for which direction one should head, that is, emotionally speaking, so that one's life, both internal and external (how we relate to ourselves and to others), is as rich and multiplicitous as possible. <br />
<br />
Which can leave us free to make up our internal subjective reality to some extent--whatever extent we are allowed given the confluence of genes and previous experiments. <br />
<br />
Which is reality. I.e. most people are delusional, including yours truly.<br />
<br />
Part of the hard part of life, though, is allowing others to appreciate and endeavor in their delusion when you know it is a delusion (maybe because you lived it previously). This is ripe ground for hypocrisy and other assorted nasty but omnipresent phenomena.<br />
<br />
Anyway, I've cycled through what I meant to say in the beginning. Which is mostly that being delusional maybe not be inescapable, but it also may not be so bad. It IS the norm, that's not an issue. The question is whether we want to, or can, change the norm. The answer isn't quite clear. Mostly because of this, and here's the main point, I promise:<br />
<br />
We rarely have structural level information about anything. We are mere particles, individual pieces of data. <br />
<br />
I know, I know, we should endeavor to understand as much as possible through collection of as much data as possible so we can, what: get higher than individual particles. That is what we do, collectively. I don't know if we can do it individually. <br />
<br />
Searing insights, when they come, are fundamentally lonely things. <br />
<br />
I'm sloppy and soft, I know, wallowing, even. But I'm not kidding myself so much about how hard and unidirectional I am anymore, and that's a good thing. '<br />
<br />
To be continued.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-58640463019869706952012-09-08T09:17:00.001-04:002012-09-08T09:17:31.252-04:00Infinite Reasons to Freak OutThe slice of the universe that I can touch and feel, the one that wraps itself around me and coos into my ear at night (the same one that beats me with a whip, or masticates my steak fat once I've flushed it (and yes I flush it), in some heap of liquid trash somewhere), provides endless stimuli for apprehension, anxiety, and general paranoia. And this wholly disregards evil third parties--I'm really just zoomed in on those whom I think are reasonable people and can find a way to twist my reality into a grotesque though compellingly real mirror wherein I'm forced to recognize those things about myself that I do not want to realize.<br />
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My relative status in all endeavors, for instance. It is not consolation that everyone's relative status in all endeavors (those who I meet) is low. I don't desire to be high status in the fame and glamour sense. I desire to have convenience and to maintain as much singular focus on my own interests as possible. This is presumably the only reason for pining in such a way. Interests provide a way to focus (to Flow), wherein life is neither too boring nor too anxiety-producing.</div>
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As soon as I establish flow on all days within the confines of a grey cubicle, naturally, there are interruptions. Interruptions I loathe. Like a high powered drill deep in the walls of my apartment building when I've just graced myself off to sleep. Like my cat deciding to utilize the litter box mid-coitus (not hers!, mine--what a weird weird way to imagine my cat!-a contender, it would seem, for some serious fetish sites of which I would never frequent, but which, given that strange mix of non-specific references, I would have lived through in my mind's eye for long enough to write this).</div>
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To be straight: I don't desire laziness. I hate laziness in myself, however evident it has been in my life (I used to have "emotional problems"--but these have been ironed out enough to shine with enough glean to show you that I'm straight, so long as you don't linger).</div>
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My ideal world is not 24 hour television, or imbibing in other fashions. My ideal world is relative challenge and immersion. I don't need to be structurally analytic, it's just what they taught me in school. I don't even like it! By that rationale, though, I must simply make up my own words, which happens not infrequently and forces me into a coffin of shame when they are murmured on unsuspecting ears, often in a light tone of humor. </div>
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This post has no end. There are no sages in life. Anyone who tells you they're a sage is trying to impress you and get something. For themselves. </div>
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I'm slowly learning not to trust. This compared to previous levels of trust that were wildly out of control. This compared to a drinking trusting idiot. This compared to an antique mirror. This compared to the reality of myself. This compared to that which I am learning to look at with a detached smear of a glare. This is it. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-20859805923599307252012-09-03T20:13:00.000-04:002012-09-03T20:13:26.794-04:00Honesty and Sex. Possible?How many women fake orgasm?<br />
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Men?<br />
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Incentive to be honest/lie? Who? Well, you tell me. <br />
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So, yes, it is a stacked deck already. And if you're a man, you are an easy lay.<br />
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Coincidentally, who is the opposite of a misogynist? <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-7763896534281179662012-08-22T22:00:00.000-04:002012-08-22T22:00:32.630-04:00Why Leftist Intellectuals are Wrong First criteria to all lefty arguments is how screwed up the system is and how harmed everyone is.<br />
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This is testable and false. More of us live longer and have more comfortable lives than anyone else in history. <br />
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Second criteria: the market is fundamentally bad.<br />
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Also testable and false. Open markets is linked with all sorts of positive outgrowth, less human rights abuses, and generally better lives for almost everyone.<br />
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Third criteria: you must agree with me or you're an idiot.<br />
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See, lefties, maybe even more than others, still distinguish themselves through consumption patterns, hold themselves in high status, and find lots of reasons to avoid dissonance, including not updating their worldview.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-37537129821944935592012-08-14T21:17:00.001-04:002012-08-14T21:17:00.895-04:00Laughter's Function<br />
1) Laughter is a waste of breath. To laugh is to show, simultaneously, that we don't need the breath for something else, mainly running<br />
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2) Laughter shows vulnerability. When we want to signal comfort, we can use laughter to do it. We do not have to use breath to run away = we are comfortable<br />
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3) However, laughter also can show dominance; it can be used as a show: I don't need to use this breath to run because I'm not scared of you.<br />
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When we are nervous, we often laugh to try for a return laugh, which could signal comfort. We are also trying out a little dominance; we are testing the waters for a response.<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-59529063261298876122012-08-13T22:14:00.001-04:002012-08-13T22:15:18.492-04:00Every Day<br />
I try not to hate the routine. I try hard to stay energized. I try to find meaning in the grey cubicle world that so many would long to relish. I am pushed into many meetings. I am forced to compel numbers toward electronic transmissions. Am relegated to the inside of my head. Have difficulty expressing the humor I feel everywhere. Have lurking suspicions of eavesdroppers just out of my visual field. Award myself for discipline. Plan to accomplish too much.<br />
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Plan on grand connections that are asexual, but manifestly full.<br />
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Barely succeed in running out, the doppler effect of my scream changing tone for all those but me.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-156631062521186522012-08-11T09:16:00.002-04:002012-08-11T09:16:25.534-04:00We Don't Know . . .<br />
We don't know whether God exists.<br />
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We do know that social bonding rituals are strong.<br />
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We do know that group coherence is a primarily important feature of future human generations and survival generally.<br />
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Role playing (specific designated functions) are also highly necessary, and specialization creates fields of expertise that take years to understand and learn.<br />
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It is intuitive to think that, above the structures of specialization that we've created, someone, a boss maybe, a super manager, must be watching, and that such an entity by default has more perfect knowledge, because only that entity has access to all the information.<br />
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The ideal of an all-knowing systems manager is behind assertions of God's truth. But we are partial imperfect knowledge knowers, so we by necessity, cannot know whether God exists.<br />
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That doesn't stop most of us appealing to the notion of grand authority, and because group dynamics are strong, doesn't stop groups from causing conflict with other groups who hold different conceptions of authority.<br />
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The problem: human-created authorities are endless. Hence towns of only 3000 with 7 denominations to worship in come Sunday.<br />
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The secondary problem: if there's not a grand systems manager up there, however abstract, the meaning for our role-playing as well as we might isn't quite as crystal clear. <br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-31065071224282756432012-08-05T12:48:00.001-04:002012-08-05T12:48:07.930-04:00Perfecting the Look: Orgasm and Chess?I've been looking through a lot of bios lately. There's one thing in common with these bios (mostly of writers, but artists in general, and professors, and anyone who uses their mind to create stuff that's artistic or artful): they all long to get this kind of far away, but deadly serious, look. Inevitably, there's those little white sort of reflection bubbles in their eyes, and their cheeks are rosy, and the focus in their eyes is, how can I say it: unfocused, relaxed, peaceful, IN COMMAND, and also: hungry and desirous, nay, ravenous. How the fuck do they get those two looks into one picture like that? As if they'd just had an incredibly potent orgasm and then dove right back into an intense game of chess. THAT is the look, my friends, and you too should start to perfect it if you dare.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-50288384760119013232012-08-04T13:14:00.001-04:002012-08-04T13:14:22.463-04:00Two Types of Friends<br />
There are the types of friends who you go to because you want your ego restored. You've been insulted, or you feel insulted, or you're just feeling crummy, and seek them out because they support your conception of your self as it already was. They're shoring up the cracks.<br />
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Then there are different types of friends. Those who don't worry about how you're going to maintain your image. They're not disrespectful. Perhaps they are even more respectful because they don't placate false versions. They push you harder than you push yourself at times. They tell good truths. They falsify nothing. They're honest and it hurts, but out of the hurt comes a stronger version of you. These friends are harder to listen to at first, like some good music, but with time develop to reveal layers that the other types of friends can't conceive of, no matter their assertions to the contrary.<br />
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Of course there are straight up strategic friends, and there are people who only seek strategic friends, and only know friendship as strategy. And there are lots of people who seek out friends only to assuage their own egos. And that does upset me, yes.<br />
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But other people exist. And they won't always be easy to know, to spot, that is, or to know over time, but they'll be much more varied and understanding and they won't placate. There's something to that.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-66707713254347841152012-07-26T22:15:00.000-04:002012-07-26T22:15:25.943-04:00In A Funk: No Fancy ending<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">I think we read fiction because it ends, and that's tremendously calming.</span><br style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><br style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;" /><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 14.999999046325684px; line-height: 16.66666603088379px;">The reality is much less pleasantly clear.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-36419374451683718362012-07-19T21:50:00.003-04:002012-07-19T21:50:43.071-04:00Belief in Justice<br />
We all presuppose the rule of law (or morality, or justice, however you want to phrase it), and we, all of us, also believe we're inherently better than other people, and mostly that we don't deserve punishment and other people do deserve it.<br />
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To say that we're hypocrites only begins to highlight the fiction we create to explain our own actions to ourselves: our narrative ascription is really wide and deep, and we're never in need to maintain our effort to propel it into action. We're natural liars, in other words.<br />
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Even knowing this doesn't do it justice, though, because we, me included as I write it, believe, automatically and defacto, that, having greater knowledge we'll self-deceive less than previously. And we're just as wrong about it as we were about initially recognizing it. Because it happens in dynamic situations, over and under playing our hands, and selecting information.<br />
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Repeat after me.<br />
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I don't know.<br />
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Fuck if I know!<br />
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Fuck you, I just don't give a damn anymore because I don't know!<br />
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If I knew, I wouldn't be here.<br />
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It takes me a long time to process information.<br />
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I don't understand what you're saying.<br />
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My preferences are not clear, which is the reason that I'm unable to manufacture the appropriate level of confidence to be taken seriously, which is the reason that I'm unable to function in a normal and acceptable manner, and which has multiple feedback loops into my sockets of justification and self-belief in the exceptional and special nature of perfume laced feces.<br />
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Half of my thoughts are bullshit, but I say them just to fuck you over.<br />
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I have trouble trusting other people.<br />
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Other people are far too trusting.<br />
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Faith is like this: meaningless. <br />
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And yet. I believe. Unshakably.<br />
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And I'm scared shitless. That I'm entirely wasted right now. That my fragile ego won't be able to save me again. That I'll spend the weekend wiping my ass with the window curtain. That the curtain will not smoothly block light ever again, and that, despite repeated washings, will exude an odor notable enough to be remarked upon by the crudest of punk rockers or the waspy of fancy pants.<br />
<br />And if you tell anyone, I'll kill you, straight up. Because other people's opinions matter. What other people think about my thoughts matters.<br />
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Except that it all matters a great deal less than I used to know. And I'd be happy with a little cabin and a cord of dry hardwood for the winter.<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-24598867781412770982012-07-06T14:17:00.002-04:002012-07-06T14:18:24.763-04:00New Podcast on Self-ControlHere is the <a href="http://podcastdownload.npr.org/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/510221/155602051/npr_155602051.mp3?_kip_ipx=381689112-1341598572">link</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1922375467143255317.post-17919925598978272062012-07-01T10:55:00.001-04:002012-07-01T10:55:29.935-04:00Telling yourself you are too old -That's just what I've started to do.<br />
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How stupid.<br />
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Actually, it is a handy way not to try.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0