CONFESSIONS

Creative Forums Creative Writing
1

• The most interesting and frustrating thing about living in this age is that there is nothing stable left to stand on.
The concept of truth has been dishonoured and along with it all the ideals that were dependant upon it.

A world released from external definitions settles for illusions to recreate itself continuously and it invents perils and desires to maintain cohesion by keeping its parts in a continuous state of mystification.
Anomie keeps the social brew bubbling, making the boundaries attractive and the extremes, factories of doe-eyed wellness.

This is the world of my preference.
This is the world where the sightless get swept away by passing fads and the sighted, even if one-eyed, project inner islands outwardly, and call them home.
The time for sorrow and anger is over.
Now comes the time for glee.

• The thing about me is that I never became ambitious enough in the areas where I was told I was supposed to be.
Whereas others accepted whatever forms of self-definitions were presented to them as the highest forms of self-realization, I couldn’t see the point of it all.
I felt the natural urges, just like everyone else, but I couldn’t rationalize the expenditure of so much effort in pursuit of the promised rewards, to myself.
I had little interest in these rewards when all around me they were being hyped and spun into mythologies.

I was once told, by someone, that the underlying reasons for this ‘flaw’ in me, might be my fear of failure and a deep-seated fragility wanting to protect itself.
It forced me to reconsider my past and re-evaluate my present.

I couldn’t remember one instance where failure or the thought of failure had caused any debilitating emotion in me. I’ve felt the natural disappointment and embarrassment everyone feels when a goal is not reached, but not to the extent where it would stop me from any future attempts.
I couldn’t recall one instance where I was broken and left grasping at darkness for help.
In the end anger always welled up in me and woke me from my self pity.

In all honestly, I’ve mostly entered into projects in pursuit of goals which I never really wanted.
I did it because of this exaggerated sense of responsibility and compassion I have towards those I feel indebted to, for one reason or another.
I did it because I doubted myself and succumbed to external influences that promised satisfaction and desirable rewards.
The pressure to be what others believe represents success or strength or value abound. It takes a certain degree of remoteness or separation to notice that all constructs of self, come through social prerogatives.
The forces of responsibility, commitment and guilt enforce a certain course of action.
It takes a strong mind to resist and to accept the burdens of consequence.
It takes an ideal.

• Experiences are enjoyed more in expectation rather than in their actuality.
Then they are enjoyed in retrospect.
The mind has a way of forgetting detail.

• Should I be feeling shame for it, should I be embarrassed because of it?
Progress has certainly done its best to make me feel so. It has certainly tried to convince me that I should suffer for it, that I’m born guilty of it - just by being me- just by being.

But besides an earlier bout with bad conscience and an infantile infatuation with the redirected hypocritical selfishness of idealistic altruism, I’m more inclined to feel pride and pleasure in it these days.
A recognition of an entirety, I’m not fully responsible for, I guess.

• Remorse never solidified in me, it clung there for a while, and then slid away leaving only scar tissue in its passing.
Disfigurements are the inevitable souvenirs of pressure.

I’ve salvaged whatever remnants of self-respect I could from the corrupting forces of a world that wanted to absorb me into its wholeness and make me a willing member of its entourage, and I now hold them up like a banner of honour. A symbol of waving belligerence in the wind:
“I’m still here, damn you! I’m still, fucking, here!” I shout, even if nobody cares but me.

• I, sometimes, stand there enduring the hysterical shrills of a misbehaving infant or the demanding vocalizations of a needy child, and I’m gripped with the excruciating desire to splatter its little fucking brains onto the nearest wall, before I turn my rage upon the imbeciles that produced this foul bundle of need and brought it within my vicinity to disturb my peace.

It takes a village…my ass!
Since when has everyone become part of my village and who invited them in?!
Since when have I been forced into the idea that I am now responsible for people I neither know nor care to ever know, at all?

‘Brother’s keeper’ indeed, problem is, they aren’t my brother’s.

Proud parents show-off their genetic excrement, seeking approval or primate grooming displays from the surrounding villagers.

“He’s/she’s so cute” I hear, knowing most of it is a part of social ritual meant to keep the illusion going and the alliances intact.

Cute? Cute!!!
Even a Hyena’s pup is cute for a while.
Then it grows up to become a scavenger of cadavers.
But at least it, unlike the two-legged kind, is honest about it.

Cuteness is a deception of form and those big innocent eyes hide an unwritten, and often vile, future but most of all they hide a tabula rasa waiting to be scribbled upon, waiting to be taken, like a two-dollar whore.

Is there any doubt that Hitler was cute as a child?
Was Nero anything but adorable in his youth?
Can we be sure that any of those villains, we love to hate, were not once endearing and full of untapped potential and unbridled hope and …cute?
Now we call them monsters or insane and we shudder at the mention of their names and at the remembrance of their actions so that we can pretend we are better than that, that we could have never…

How attractive, really, was Jeffrey Dahmer and how did Joseph Merrick compare?
The same Joseph Merrick that wrote this:

[size=150]“Tis true my form is something odd,
But blaming me is blaming God;
Could I create myself anew
I would not fail in pleasing you.
If I could reach from pole to pole
Or grasp the ocean with a span,
I would be measured by the soul;
The mind’s the standard of the man.”[/size]
[size=59]-Joseph Merrick[/size]

• The moment human life was raised to the level of holiness, it ceased to matter.
The moment every human life became a precious commodity and as a by-product made all forms of life objects of veneration, the entire idea of self was obliterated.
God on the cross is a symbol of pretentiousness and the beginning of the end for the human species, as we know it.

• This aggression, this deep need to destroy lurks secretly behind my outward civility. I, sometimes, gnash my teeth to keep it confined.
It’s an antithesis to my very social character, a characteristic intolerable and punishable under these cultural circumstances.
Funny thing is everyone is this way.
Some openly, some secretly while others don’t even dare consider the possibility at all.
These last, become the most disgusting and brutal of them all.
Ugliness isn’t the absence of symmetry; it is the absence of recognition and acceptance of self in its entirety.
It is beauty and symmetry unrecognized.

It is this denial of what you are that makes it possible to be controlled by it.

• I’m a walking contradiction, only because I’m never in total control over my entire being.
One moment I’m this and then I’m that, with only my mind remaining a constant, or should I say, with only my mind’s interpretation of continuance and self-awareness, as the only constant.

Satan is confronting Eros inside me - as Freud would put it - wanting to obliterate the products of assimilation and unification, wanting to simplify.

[size=150]“Mephistopheles: ‘I am the spirit that negates
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin
This everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent-
That is my proper element’.”[/size]
-[size=59]Goethe (Faust {Part 1, Section 3}.)[/size]

I always did have a soft spot for the fallen angel. This would explain my indifference concerning evil spirits and bogeymen, as a child, and why horror films, involving ghosts, possessions and haunted houses, have made me yawn more than cringe.

Mankind has always been the most horrific thing on this earth for me.
Man and the products of his imagination.
Man and his bullshit, pretending to be virtuous.

Nature and its creations were always tolerable to me, its dangers and rules honest and straightforward.
But man? Man is intolerable in his insincerity. He permeates the landscape, dominates it, warps it, infects it with ideas and ideals he cannot live up to and then makes excuses for his failures, which is to be expected in a reality where nature has been pushed to the fringes and where man and his imagination governs the vistas.

Man and his insufferable language.

• The dilemma for every weakness - if it becomes conscious enough to see the choice - is between submission and a temporary humbled existence through assimilation, or resistance and a fiery proud death as a distinct entity, before it is consumed and forgotten.
Both drives pull at me at different times, and my anger often wells up in me for having so few other options and for being forced into the choice, at all.

But such is existence: the will to life, the will to death - swirling in a Taoist smear.

• “Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make my happiness complete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies - but not before they have hanged.”
-[size=59]Heine (Gendanken und Einfalle {Section 1}.)[/size]

From God I ask for no such favours. Delightful work, as this, I’ll do gladly on my own and with not as much mercy or sympathy.
But my hand is stayed by the safeguards of a civilization built on the myth of unconditional love and compassion which has resulted in so much filth and… emptiness.

It threatens me with its many minions and its insufferable bureaucracy contains me with its rationale.

• ”We wot that our parents do but bear us into death. A strange thing, that.”
[size=59]-Julian of Norwich [/size]

What a wonderful absurdity that we are given life only to become aware of and experience its slow loss; a wonderful farce that so perfectly reflects the human condition.

How appropriate then, that this ‘gift’ is often given by ones so in love with living and the false sense of self that they seek to find eternity through the creation of another, only to find that they have passed on the dilemma to someone else and have both cursed and blessed them with consciousness.

“There in the morning, I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.”
[size=59] - E. M. Cioran[/size]

It is our parents that condemn us to the realization and unceasing expectation of death.
We call it life.
Then we dedicate its measured loss in search for beauty and power and a way out of its inevitability.
We search for pause buttons…then for excuses.

“To have committed every crime but that of being a father.”
[size=59]- E. M. Cioran[/size]

• It’s never about the one involved.
If it were, then there would be lamentations at birth and celebrations at death.

-Instead we celebrate our own renewed hope and the unburdening of our successes and failures upon the newcomer, whom we welcome as an extension of our self.
We rejoice over being able to now live vicariously through their fresh start and for being able to finally escape our growing sense of unease concerning our insights and our insignificance.

-Instead we mourn over being forced to adapt our consciousness around their absence and we resent their sudden escape from our reality.
We grieve for being left behind to endure an added suffering and their peaceful indifference fills us with a sense of resentment we cannot bring ourselves to admit.

• “Having tested young Nachiketa and found him fit to receive spiritual instruction, Yama, king of death, said:
The joy of the Atman ever abides,
But not what seems pleasant to the senses.
Both these, differing in their purpose, prompt
Man to action. All is well for those who choose
The joy of Atman, but they miss
The goal of life who prefer the pleasant.
Perennial joy or passing pleasure?
That is the choice one is to make always.
The wise recognize these two, but not
The ignorant. The first welcome what leads
To abiding joy, though painful at the time.
The latter run, goaded by their senses,
After what seems immediate pleasure.

Well have you renounced these passing pleasures
So dear to the senses, Nachiketa,
And turned your back on the way of the world
Which makes mankind forget the goal of life.
Far apart are wisdom and ignorance.
The first leads one to Self-realization;
The second makes one more and more
Estranged from his real Self. I regard you,
Nachiketa, worthy of instruction,
For passing pleasures tempt you not at all.”
–[size=59] Upanishads (Katha Upanishad [2] 1-4[/size]

In all honesty, the idea of losing self to some grand idea involving an interconnectivity of a larger Self fills me with just as much dread as the idea of dying.
For me the thought, about a collective unconscious existence, is but a clever way of dealing with the entire process of coming to be and then surrendering to being.

I’ve always been filled with a deep admiration and a lasting love affair with the concept of separateness. What I am, beyond the commonalities and underlying forces that brought me about, is a consciousness of distinction.
It is the part I must play in this spectacle.

“Better one’s own dharma, imperfectly achieved, than another’s dharma carried off with skill.
Better it is to die in one’s own law; another’s way is frightful danger.”
[size=59]- (Gita 3.35) [/size]

It is no more my nature to be a manifestation of a larger fabric than it is for me to become aware of this manifestation as part of a multiplicity.
It has been this ego, this arrogance of presence, which has kept me at the outskirts of any idea that diminishes conscious self on the behalf of some greater unconscious, collective-soul idea.
I can see the logic in the spiritual acknowledgment of wholeness and equality of ancestry. I just can’t abide by its ultimate sacrifice nor can I ignore the intermediary circumstances of environment that brings about the efficient utility of discriminating thought.

“Ordinary mortals do what they are told, and get attached to anything: their counting, or a piece of land. Everything they work for, secular or religious, comes to nothing.
Only those who find out Who they are and what they want find freedom, here and in all the worlds.”
[size=59]- (chad.VIII.1.5-6)[/size]

The truth is that I’ve never loved anything or anyone more than this combination of talents and faults I call me, and in so doing, I’ve remained true to my nature and I’ve embraced the totality of consciousness.

Like Mithras I battle the bull and I remember Balder when I weep.

• It has become evident to me that those most willing to give up the ‘I’, no matter how illusory it might be, are those with not much ‘I’ to lose in the first place.

They jump onto any bandwagon promising them an extension, an enlargement of their becoming, a reprieve from their consciousness which impresses them as equally as it impresses others who observe them.

They tread water in the shallows, wondering why swimming is so bland and only intuitively gain an appreciation of their own failings when they see someone else surfing by the reefs.

• It was never about hating my self nor was it about being insecure or lost or afraid.
It was always about hating what the world forced me to change about my self, what it forced me to bury or lose, and what it amputated.
How it imposed its rule and offered me the do-or-die dilemma.
How it made me go underground to preserve what I valued most.
There was only so much I could compromise before I settled for biting tolerance.

It has always been my adaptation that embittered me…this and the high cost of resistance.
It humbles me by reminding me about how helpless I am against my environment.

• Every idea, every position every thought can be used to portray the mind, under its influence, as either weak or strong or in either a negative or a positive way.
The solution is to take a stand on a single position and embrace all the ramifications of your decision, accepting all definitions.

The difference is that, while you’ll be doing it with foresight, demanding integrity, others will be doing it with hindsight, demanding excuses, and they’ll call it the same thing.

• I believe I’m a sort of reluctant nihilist.
Part of me wants to find something meaningful to make existence more than a version of reality endlessly reproducing itself. But everything I find crumbles under the pressures of my fingertips, as I manipulate it before my eyes, as I peel away its layers.
What doesn’t, warps under my needy gaze or it forces me to either adjust my trajectory to its gravity or abandon its atmosphere altogether for the quiet void.

Loss and gain are the natural offspring of all choices; even the choice of living.

• In the dry fields of my soul I’ve planted vine sticks with my own two hands.
In time they have grown, fed with the fertilizers of my awareness and watered by the tears from my sorrow and the sweat from my brow; and they have born fruit.

I have been patient and did not rush to harvest this bounty of the sun. Even when pests savoured their flavours and blemished their near perfection, I held back.
I’ve let the sun burn them ripe and I’ve allowed the heat to pull out their natural inner sugars and when the season came I crushed the grapes into pulp, with my own two feet, and let them ferment slowly into wine, in cool, subterranean cellars and secret chambers.

Now, strangers drink this nectar and comment on its sweetness or they spit it out because of its overstated bitterness.
But they want to taste it again and again.
They want to savour the aromas and delicate aftertastes that linger on the palate, no matter its insensitivity.
They want to enjoy the delicate intoxication and become lost in the sensation of unleashed power it invokes.

They don’t know why.
I do.

2

I enjoyed that Satyr. I would love to have the time to respond but its probably just as well I don’t. It is, after all, a confession… which may only need to be released?

3

Fantastic! I hope to be able to read more of your writing-style in the future. Don’t change a thing! :sunglasses:

4

Careful Satyr, name a demon and you summon it.

Nicely constructed piece as always - but if you even half-believe the things you write, then, pfff, I feel great pity for you.

You’ve betrayed yourself somewhere along the line, and relinquished hope for empty insight. Your vines will wither, the weight of the fruit they bear will break their stems and the sun, now an enemy, will crisp the leaves and peel the bark.

I suppose you take some comfort in that your pain will end with you.

[size=75][Holds up little Tab][/size]

Ain’t he cute…?

Try to see it Satyr, really. Try.

5

Tabula Rasa

No what you are doing is pitying yourself, if you were to believe that what I say is true.
You imagine how you would feel if you thought as I do, based on the little information you have, and you sense the emotions of jumping into a cool pool after lying in the sun for a few hours.

But you don’t know me, so it’s irrelevant.

ah-huh.

As it will with you.
Insinuating that there is no pain in you, is how you cope with it.

Your ability to reinforce my original assessment of you is remarkable.
Keep up the good work.

I’ve yet to encounter evidence concerning your impressive credentials, except those very imaginative and theatrical displays of creativity.

Palouk.

6

From the first lines, I knew what these confessions were about. They are great (I see that you are an exceptional writer, and most important, I see that you think for yourself!!!). Don’t just repeat the clichés people love to repeat. That is fine. I feel always like you do guy, now it is my turn to tell yourself to “keep it up”.

Regards,

Fabiano.

7

Ah-huh.

Satyr: Okay - I deserved that one - we both share a talent and a liking for empty rhetoric at times… But, you know, on some fundamental level, I think that’s the phrase that will always sum up how you and I feel about eachother’s views on life. Though personally, I’d have said Uh-huh, you see - we can’t even agree on that. [Now where’s the sad and sighing smiley when you want it] We just flat-out do not get eachother.

Anyway - we did the point/quote/rebuff thang on the other threads, and well, you know and I know it goes no-where. Worse still, it goes no-where slowly, and with a really shitty ride quality. So I’m going to have a ramble, and try to explain how I feel about life, the universe and everything. (Sorry Fabiano - I like clichés)

You said one thing that struck a chord: “Insinuating that there is no pain in you, is how you cope with it.” The rest as usual fell into three catagories - Stuff I didn’t understand; Stuff I understood but went - that’s just eye-popping sheer insanity; And the traditional - Stuff I kinda understood but eventually tossed into the cardboard box reserved for blatant Satyrisms, which sound deep as all hell, but ultimately mean zilch.

There is no pain in me…

*Is there regret over paths not taken…? No. I am happy with my current hat-hanging situation, and all the paths I took, and all the paths I didn’t take… Led me here.

Would I have been happier over there…? Would I have been more sucessful over here…? Ifs and buts - Scylla’s and Charybdis’is - life is full of them. Choose your tack and lash the rudder. Be content with the here and now. If you have a shithole life. Well - tough shit. You fucked up somewhere down the line, or allowed someone else to fuck it up for you. Or got fucked up by blind chance. Whatever. Do what is necesary to get to somewhere else. But don’t sit on your arse and moan that the whole world is this way - that the foundations are inherrently squiffy, that your fall was… inevitable… :unamused:

*Is there remorse over questionable actions in my past…? No. I did what I did, learned from the consequences and moved along down the road. I am not what I was, but I stand on the shoulders of all the people I used to be.

*Is there a hatred of all the illusion in my life/life in general…? No. There is acceptance. Illusion is necessary. My illusions of love and self and the way the world works around me are beautiful and comforting and ultimately the only thing of worth I can create. I am my illusions, they so utterly permeate me that we are one thing. They are a magic carpet on which I fly out over the abyss in which you so happily dwell. Flimsy - yes, insubstantial - yes, falsehood/delusion/bullshit - yes-yes-yes. But they are what enable me to do what I do, and give what I give for and to others. And that is the concrete end that justifies the means. Yeah, yeah - cliché, Hitler Blah-blah. But only if you assume the means are to the detriment of another. I decieve only myself, I delude only myself - in order to function as that most deplorable of things: a ‘nice’ human being. A thinking man’s sheeple.

Of course aspersions can be cast at the inner clockworks of altruism, but who cares, as long as the clock itself tells the time…? It is the end product that is of lasting value, not the workings of the mind that wrought it. The rescued do not question the motivations of the rescuer. They are grateful. End of story. The coward, who stood at the sidelines, and did nothing, or hesitated - He is the one. He is the one who attempts to dismantle the clock. Half in the vain attempt to learn how it’s done, half simply to break something of an intolerable beauty. Illusions are armour, illusions make heroes, if you believe strongly enough.

*Am I stupid…? [size=75][debatable but I’m biased][/size] No. All the darker philosophies hovering around the forums and elsewhere, they stink of the same thing: Complacent defeatism. As you say… Glee. “Look around you - you blind/deaf sheeple…! - Life is shit !!! You see that guy/girl over there - you know - the one you look up to…? They’re shit too !!! The little babe you hold so carefully in your arms… They’ll be a shit as well - THERE’S NO ESCAPING” [size=75] [Hee-hee/titter/gibber] [/size] You forget that beneath the wool there may just be a brain. One that has already seen the shit you choose to wallow in, and consciously chosen to stop up its nostrils, put on its blinkers - and act as if it were shinola. For the greater good, you size=75[/size] understand…

The thing about your ideas, they are not new. I have heard them before, not so eloquently put perhaps, not so temptingly… lusciously… ‘deep’ seeming. But I’ve been there, so to speak, and bought the proverbial tee-shirt - you know - the brown one, with the stick on carroty bits. That I choose not to wear it, is what makes me what I am.

There is no pain in me.

Because I do not allow it to gain a hold.

Ramble over. And discussion over. As you say of your equally gleeful ‘User’s Guide’ I tell. I don’t ask.

But thanks for listening. :wink:

8

– Tab

If ‘we’ all live under this beautiful illusion (even if we recognize it as illusion…)… from the beginning to the end of ‘us’… doesn’t that mean it is part of ‘the way things are’? If linear time is an illusion, yet it is part of our perception – doesn’t that mean it is part of the way things are or will seem to all of us? I mean… as far as ‘experience’ goes.

So. Impossible to break, is my point. Consider the movie “The Matrix” and the “steak” scene. Some choose the illusion of the steak. Some find it and everything it represents to be … not worth “succumbing” (sp?) to. It may not be possible to break… but… is “resistance” futile?

If we ridicule that resistance – is it (our ridicule) ‘simply to break something of an intolerable beauty’?

9

Hi SomeNewName,

The ‘breaking’ metaphor is just about the underminement of an altruistic action by examining its often self-serving motivations in the ‘doer’ - my point is, wether or not these questionable motives are extant, it does not change or detract from the outcome of the action. The coward finds the hero’s percieved purity of intent intolerable - but mistakes that for the whole of the thing.

My idea of illusions are not of the all-encompassing Matrix scenario. My illusions are the little ones that are fuelled by belief and effort. Love (of the monogamous) type. Faith in people. Faith in children. Faith that stuff will get better… eventually. You are welcome to say that I just bury my head in the sand - while the real world continues to go to hell in a handcart above. But you’d be wrong. Life by and large is a series of choices concerning which illusions you wish to buy into. Some are easy, and require little effort to maintain. Satyr’s bleak world view is such. Too easy - you say resistance, but it is not. It is a child’s reaction to a game it doesn’t like. Scribble on the board and trash the pieces, undermine the rules and laugh at the manufacturer. To stop playing at all is safer for some than to discover that they aren’t the player they thought they were. And to complain of the debasement of self involved in playing, is shortsighted, there are many games, in many locations - it’s a matter of wandering - and finding one you like.

Other illusions are harder, and require sacrifices to maintain. But you’re a mother I believe - so you know all about that.

10

tabula rasa
But philosophy isn’t about illusions.
It is about perceptions of reality.
It is about honesty.

We aren’t here to exchange illusions or recipes about coping with, what we fear, might be reality.
We are here to describe the underlying essence of things, completely, fully and with integrity.

Accepting what is, or portions of what is, which is not always flattering and finding the motives behind every action does not only teach us about the other, it teaches us about self so that we do not become overly romantic and delusional.

This is what I said:

Then you say:

It is easy indeed.
One can say that what is safer is the opposite of that.
Continue playing the game, as if its outcome mattered or with the seriousness of someone that can see nothing beyond the game and then laugh away with clever quips and inventive sarcasm anyone questioning the rules and the game itself.

In a world of game playing, how easy is it to just play along?
. Peer pressure.
And how easy is it to defame, degrade and insult anyone that confronts our popular opinions and label him (her) sick or a deviant compensating for a weakness?
What is psychology, anyways, and criminology but the art of finding and defining what is deviant and uncompromising and that which resists?
The art of explaining difference and attempting to rehabilitate it to a popular norm.
They place ‘scarlet letters’ on the lapels of those that do not quite fit in or that display characteristics that differentiate them from the common, making them eccentric or, in the worse case scenario, dangerous to the accepted norm and the popular myths?
Then they incarcerate them behind walls or behind chemical treatments.
They are all ill, compared to the stable, passive-aggressive conventionality.

I mean, what kind of person would refuse to adapt, unless he/she were incapable of adapting, right?
Who would choose isolation and separation over sacrificing self to participation?

Is there something more important than survival?
What about integrity, pride, nobility, self-respect, liberty?
Would we give all these up so that we can be allowed to live?

Would we suck someone’s dick to survive?
Yet, here we are sucking dick daily and whoring ourselves for a piece of the pie.
And how dare anyone remind us of this fact.

The logic here being that: this is the only game in town so who wouldn’t want to play it, unless they wanted to excuse their bad game play, right?
How easy to insult the other and flatter ourselves with one explanation.

And I wonder, as I wander:

Was it not always this spirit of resistance this dissatisfaction with what is that forces change and innovation?
We could say that man invented a tool to compensate for a physical weakness and his brain is overcompensation for a deficiency in comparison to other beasts.
Can not everyone who has ever stood up to ‘normality’ and the system itself and nature, be defined as someone who wanted to change the rules to suit himself because the rules he was given undermined his efforts or were meant for minds with different talents and inclinations?

We could say that Communists were just those that could not compete in the Capitalists markets.
Christians those that could not cope with the brutal reality of ‘survival of the fittest’.
Democrats those that could not find self-worth or empowerment unless it was sanctioned and defended by a communal ideal.
Nazis those that could not cope with growing despair and poverty in a world of bureaucratic indifference.
Materialists those that overcompensate for an absence of depth by acquiring breadth to display and give off the illusion of substance.
Buddhists those that deny life so as to not become victims of it.
Conformists those that tired of the questioning and the resisting and settled for whatever reality dominated in their environment.
Altruists those that self-gratify by becoming useful to the other, assuring that the other will then be useful to them.
Liberals those that want to level the playing field because they can never stand out.
Conservatives those enjoying systemic privilege, often through no effort of their own and through no individual worth, and wanting to defend this privilege from the encroaching waves of change.

Bleak?

Hardly.

It is one-sidedly honest in a world that focuses on the other side continuously and paints everything in bright, happy colors.
It is a counter-reaction to this naïve over-optimism, hinting of delusional self-gratification

11

Uh-Huh. :smiley:

You say “poh-tay-toe” and I say “Pah-tah-toe” you say “Toe-may-toe” and I say “Toe-mah-toe”…

I dunno Satyr - I think you flat out just don’t allow yourself to get me. Perhaps people are not simply only defined by what they believe, but also by what they cannot allow themselves to believe. This works both ways of course.

Still - At least it’s a nice difference from arguing against air-heads like POR and the other one.

12

You must understand that I find life magnificent. It is the only way ‘I’ exists.

But I cannot ignore the rest. My nature does not allow it.
It would make my mind a farce seeking out retribution and reasons.

13

How much of a Nihilist are you…? I don’t particularly like the credo myself - it grates against the romantic in me, but haven’t really been able to put a definitive crack into it.

Here’s my last stab in slightly edited form:

I’m afraid it amused, rather than converted the masses… :frowning:

Anyway - putting our more destructive posting foibles aside for a while, what do you think about Nihilism - happy with a total denial of pretty much everything I/we have ever stood for or thought important…? Or want to take a pop at the whole shoe-gazing crowd of them…?

I’ll take anything you say at face-value, and reply with the same.

Tab.

14

Ditto… the ‘steak’ being a metaphor for those beliefs…

I like the Matrix, but not so much I wanna marry it. Same with Spiderman and Good Will Hunting. I must keep up my ‘dork’ reputation, you know.

– Tab, to Satyr

just curious… do you say a per cot or a pri cot or ay pri cot or ay per cot? I say the first one.

I think there are levels of selfishness. Selfishness that benefits others will of course be considered altruistic by those others and will be more highly appreciated by them, whereas selfishness which does not benefit others, or harms others, will get a neutral-to-negative label from others… and if one wants to selfishly ‘belong’ to those others (need to affiliate, strength in numbers), one will make sure to include them in their selfish endeavors… lest the others turn on the them and take them down. Why does it feel good to do stuff for others? 'Cause it gives you a feeling of being affirmed, and of belonging… it’s selfish. That’s just the way it is.

There’s nothing to have a problem with unless you had it pounded into you that selfishness is evil and that any selfish intention is “impure” – but, in reality, since every intention is selfish, every intention is ‘impure’ in that system of devaluing selfishness/reality. Stop devaluing selfishness, and selfish intentions cease being impure, and non-selfish intentions cease being pure… because they are recognized as illusion.

A real hero will never claim to have done their deed purely altruistically… will never claim to have gotten ‘nothing’ out of it whatsoever… IF so (or if others make it out to be that way…), they would be lying… which is the intolerable thing about it… it does not represent the reality of the situation.

Seeing it how it is, is only bleak to those who wish to see it how it isn’t, for whatever reason.

For others, it is nice to be freed from their illusions… to see that they were not seeing the whole picture… parts were missing… the view was fuzzy… whatever…

I’m not saying Satyr necessarily has the clearest, most complete view. Not saying that at all. But he goes a little/lot further than most in examining it – and he puts it out there to see if there are others who see it the same or can help complete or clear up the picture…

What – stop examining? Don’t you see that some just have a need… telling them to stop examining is like telling them to stop breathing…

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” as some old crusty fellow once said.

15

somenewname

That is only because I’ve only presented parts of it.
This bleakness and cynicism is not the entirety of what I see.
I see beauty and wonderment and pleasure.

But in a world where naïve minds create this illusion of lovy-dovy, butterflies in poppy fields scenarios where selflessness is even possible and purity what rules human interactions, it is only natural that I would focus on the opposite and try to slap reality back into the conversation.

Sure the communal, love will redeem our sufferings, there is an ultimate purpose and everything is going to turn out alright with education and enlightenment and where ‘good’ will triumph over ‘evil’ with compassion and cooperation is a scenario very appealing to me.
I too was a child and the thought of Santa Claus bringing gifts filled me with a sense of belonging and that there is something watching over me.

Then a mind matures and realizes that ‘goodness’ is a definition that does not exist but must be made to exist in accordance with an ideal constructed by the human mind.

Man brings paradise and hell into this universe.

16

i hear you…

yeah… and you see it in the bruises on the grapes… so do I.

I haven’t abandoned the ST thread, in case you wondered. Just stepping back from it for a while, you know.

17

Hi SomeNewName , Satyr,

First up, the important stuff:

I say [size=75]h[/size]ey-pri[size=75]x[/size]-cot[size=75]ton[/size]… SNN - do you drop the ‘h’ in herb - that really gets my goat. :imp:

Re: selfish heroes…

Arrgh. My point is, I do not care about motivations. They have no bearing on the outcome. Nobility does not exist. I know. You know. Everybody knows. Do you go to movies and spend the whole of the film whispering - “You know - he’s only doing that cos he wants to shag that bird…?” - no (hopefully) you sit back and suspend your feet as well as your disbelief… And just enjoy the damn movie for what it is.

Life is the same.

It is even nicer to be able to superimpose those illusions back over reality. Think lingerie over naked skin. Think…er… a really well done fake tan over some musclebound himbo. You two seem to like to look at life as if it were a corpse, I see the mortification too - but I take the time to put some lippy on the stiffy and dress it in its sunday best…

I always did wonder why they gave him a hemlock coctail… :smiley: I differ only in that I like my philosophy with a little marzipan on the top.

By all means examine. By all means breathe. :wink: All I’m saying is the bruise is not the whole of the fruit, turn the fruit around till the part that faces you is perfect - and it, as well as life, will be more rosy.

Life is hard enough, without overly dissecting the rare moments of beauty you come across on the way.

Now look what you’ve done: I sound like a Christmas card. :smiley:

It’s Luvvy-Duvvy btw. So - shoot Santa between the eyes and squash the tooth fairy with a copy of Grey’s Anatomy hmm…? Why do you feel that it’s natural to slap people’s illusions from their smiley faces…? What did they ever do to you…? That’s why we have governments, we pay them taxes to bribe them into creating social structures where our illusions can survive. You speak of adventure, I’ve had my adventure thankyou, now I want to sit by the fire with some warm cocoa and spin tales of cannibals and pirates, that have absolutely no basis in grim reality, and where the good guy always wins… AND plays (reasonably) fair whilst doing so. :smiley: Just to make my kid happy.

Okay, your cynical Santaless offspring will have an advantage over my little munchkin, and very probably make him his bitch… :cry: For a time. But my little one will remember Captain Scarlet’s eventual defeat of the nefarious cannibal king, and rise - to bludgeon your overly wise junior-Satyrs and NewNames with his toy sword. Like Keats, who went after the bullies with rocks in his fists. Illusion lends strength, as well as weakness.

And Woman brings the shopping…? :smiley:

18

Yes, I do go to the movies (on the rare occasion that I do go), spending the whole of the film whispering (to myself of course) about what the audience (and screenplay writer, etcetera) thinks is going on, relative to their value systems, etcetera, so on and so forth. Movies whose (whose?) whole point is to reveal the layers underneath and get you to see something from a different perspective… those are the movies I like the most… 'cause then I don’t feel all weird (weird as in… “why can’t I just enjoy this like everybody else is doing?” or weird like “what brainless fuck made this stupid-ass movie?” … I don’t like feeling that way about my fellow-humans…) … again, then I don’t feel all weird disecting a movie that was meant to be taken as-is…

I can do both at the same time, of course. Take “Me, Myself & Irene” for example, which I’ve seen a bazillion times and never get tired of it. That movie says stuff about human interaction (bet you didn’t notice). But it’s also funny as all heck.

That would be nice, maybe… but it’s not for me the way it is for you (I presume, from what you wrote). My own motherhood does not escape it. The beauty I feel/see in my children, I compare to the feeling/perception/nurturing of all other mammal mothers as if this beauty is not original, not unique, not special but experienced almost universally and for the sake of genetic survival. But it doesn’t make it any less beautiful, of course.

19

This is my point.

20

I skipped that last time for lack of time, but… I’m not exactly sure what the heck you’re talking about here. My best guess is “hypocrite” but I was saying “apricot”. Do you think I think you’re a hypocrite, or do you think I’m a hypocrite (and if so, how so?), or are we both a couple o’ apricots? By the way, I do drop that ‘h’ in ‘herb’. I say erbal tea, erbs and spices, and so on… 'cause I feel like I’m saying some dude’s name when I pronounce the ‘h’. But I don’t drop the ‘h’ in ‘hypocrite’, and there is no ‘h’ in apricot.

I always wonder if maybe the hemlock was preferrable to essentially being told to stop examining…? I do not know what marzipan is.

I’m 99.9% culture-free, if you hadn’t noticed.

I thought your point was “Life is hard enough, without overly dissecting the rare moments of beauty you come across on the way.”

The rare (sometimes not-so-rare, and thusly almost heart-breakingly beautiful) moments of beauty invite even more examination, atleast from me, and I can’t say that it ruins the beauty.

I can say that certain others’ examinations do take the beauty of things… do seem not to recognize that beauty… or atleast… if I examined in the same way… it would ruin the beauty for me… and it is those interpretations I label “fuzzy” and “incomplete”… maybe due to bias… maybe not.

I don’t want to come off as arguing with you or anything. It ain’t no biggy to me.