Ramblings: 04/19/2006
I'm almost certain that I'm not alone in having had this feeling. Occasionally you experience a fleeting moment, and in that blink of an eye you feel this crushing, boundless loneliness, abandonment, and as a result, hopelessness. Though the moment is transient to the point of nonexistence, it crushes down upon with a tidal surge, destroying the frail houses of your sanity. I know I'm exagerrating to a great extent here, but I'm serious. Some times you just feel utterly alienated and alone in the cosmos. I don't mean that other people don't exist to me, because to me that'd be a form of egocentric insanity, but I do mean that I don't exist for other people.
Although we are ultimately the only ones who can definitely state whether or not we exist, there is something to be said for external validation. I personally am too self-scrutinizing to ever hold many extremely positive views about myself for any great length of time. Even my morals and my moral actions are second-guessed by the persistent process that has a stronghold on my consciousness. This process is one that constantly refutes the wonderfulness of my ego.
Sure, human ego can lead to some pretty horrifying and terrible things, but it is still at its core what makes us us. Without our ego we wouldn't be human; we'd be mere drones. So there is some pride to be had in the singular I, the acknowledgement of our own existence not dependent on some other source. Our own self-recognition is fantastically powerful and weak at the same time; subject to the dynamic forces that underly consciousness, they ebb and flow with the power and consistency of some enduring tide. We build up layers of self-confidence, only to have one event crash through those layers with the full force of a demented comet, throwing up a dirt cloud to obfuscate our view for even longer there after.
Why does this happen? I've been full of rage lately, full of it. This is unusual for me because I rarely harbor any kind of anger very long without having a serious drain on all levels of my being. I have no idea why I operate that way, but I do. Now, two weeks into my seething anger, I keep trying to both placate myself and instigate myself. In a very powerful way, I want to say what I want to say, and I want to say it with the full force and clarity rarely afforded anything save those most basic of natural processes. At the same time, I try to hold myself back, apparently in the belief that there is nothing good to be gained from such an action, even though my intuition tells me that there is at least the long term achievements made therein.
That kind of a view seems feasible. While short-term feelings and goals are infinitely more potent (because they focus on the present, which is all the human mind ever truly seems to focus on), long-term feelings seem hinged on the idea that a greater good will be achieved by suffering the present. Though I love that ideal, there is nothing necessary about it and in many ways, it can absolutely fail. There is an exception to every rule, and many people can think of a case when every conceivable good is attempted only to result in an inconceivable bad. Though I won't offer examples here (hate me for being lazy if you'd like), consider that. Good does not always lead to good, but it does not necessarily have any meaning unless you adhere to some structure of morality.
More and more every day I realize that I don't believe in many of the objective norms that we as westerners take for granted. Take, for instance, the belief that there is an objective morality. This means that there are morals that exist beyond the level of sheer human relative action; there are some things that are just intrinsically bad and some that are just inherently good. This kind of marked dichotomy permeates so many levels of our society that it's startling. Good vs. evil, religion vs. science, reason vs. absurdity, logic vs. madness, democracy vs. oppression, the list goes on and on.
So I should state this outright: I don't really care if there is an objective reality or an objective anything. I reached this conclusion at some point in the last year, though the weight of it has descended upon me more as of late. This doesn't mean that I reject objective views, it just means that I find them inconsequential for my intentions and goals in life. If objective reality doesn't exist, then so what? I think I exist and that's good enough, and if an objective reality does exist, that's fine too. Either way, the paradigms on which my life is built don't really depend on such ideological security, rather they depend on a security of self. But when my relentlessly second-guessing mind roars into action, serious conflicts arise.
I don't know why I care sometimes about so many of the things that I care about. I'm a dreamer, I always have been and always will. I dream of certain marvelous futures, read about them, and imagine my own. Many of the problems in the world today are roadblocks to that goal. Also, in some corner of my biological being, there is a will to species survival. Ultimately though, I somehow ended up caring about some other people (I won't wear the false pretense of caring about everybody in the world, because I'm probably much more evil than that). Either way, I should be reducing people to mere variables, playing off their strengths and weaknesses, making their victories mine and their failures theirs alone. Success is a resource game, so why am I doing nothing to gather my resources?
My vague and kind of retarded conceptual framework prefers to view each person as inherently equal, if not superior, to me. If that is the case, I can never reduce them to a mere variable. Clearly, though, I am as guilty of this as anyone else. So why should I care if I do what's right. Doing good has not seemed to earn me much over the years, hell, it hasn't even earned me peace of mind. Though I've been blessed enough monetarily and to have a good family, every year I more and more feeling completely isolated. I desperately want some kind of peer recognition, but I know that's a fruitless endeavor. If it doesn't involve drinking, how can I expect there to be any success for any enterprise I start here at JMU.
Morality has brought me little. Perhaps if I believed in the afterlife or some cycle of living reincarnation, this would matter more to me. But it doesn't. Long-term death doesn't phase me much anymore (though obviously I'd have completely different instincts/reactions in the short-term), and the presence of an afterlife is trivial. Even from a religious standpoint I think that God would rather us be moral for the sake of being moral rather than for the attainment of some alleged promise. Who knows? Heaven may be real, and that conception of God may be real. I'd say I'm going to burn in hell, but given the divergence of books present on the subject, I don't think a good God would eternally damn me just for not following one of his many religions at any given time. So no, I don't feel hell, and I don't worry about heaven. I'm quite happy being a part of a grand cosmic cycle, and even though nothing, not even a memory, will be left of me in a few decades or so (hopefully no sooner), I of course want to keep living.
Note: sorry, but I'm getting delirious from either lack of sleep, the sickness I have, or some combination of both
I'm too out of it to right more. My brain is inexplicably dropping sentences completely from memory even as I think them. Names and concepts are just washing over me at that this point, and I can't care. Anyways, good night!
Although we are ultimately the only ones who can definitely state whether or not we exist, there is something to be said for external validation. I personally am too self-scrutinizing to ever hold many extremely positive views about myself for any great length of time. Even my morals and my moral actions are second-guessed by the persistent process that has a stronghold on my consciousness. This process is one that constantly refutes the wonderfulness of my ego.
Sure, human ego can lead to some pretty horrifying and terrible things, but it is still at its core what makes us us. Without our ego we wouldn't be human; we'd be mere drones. So there is some pride to be had in the singular I, the acknowledgement of our own existence not dependent on some other source. Our own self-recognition is fantastically powerful and weak at the same time; subject to the dynamic forces that underly consciousness, they ebb and flow with the power and consistency of some enduring tide. We build up layers of self-confidence, only to have one event crash through those layers with the full force of a demented comet, throwing up a dirt cloud to obfuscate our view for even longer there after.
Why does this happen? I've been full of rage lately, full of it. This is unusual for me because I rarely harbor any kind of anger very long without having a serious drain on all levels of my being. I have no idea why I operate that way, but I do. Now, two weeks into my seething anger, I keep trying to both placate myself and instigate myself. In a very powerful way, I want to say what I want to say, and I want to say it with the full force and clarity rarely afforded anything save those most basic of natural processes. At the same time, I try to hold myself back, apparently in the belief that there is nothing good to be gained from such an action, even though my intuition tells me that there is at least the long term achievements made therein.
That kind of a view seems feasible. While short-term feelings and goals are infinitely more potent (because they focus on the present, which is all the human mind ever truly seems to focus on), long-term feelings seem hinged on the idea that a greater good will be achieved by suffering the present. Though I love that ideal, there is nothing necessary about it and in many ways, it can absolutely fail. There is an exception to every rule, and many people can think of a case when every conceivable good is attempted only to result in an inconceivable bad. Though I won't offer examples here (hate me for being lazy if you'd like), consider that. Good does not always lead to good, but it does not necessarily have any meaning unless you adhere to some structure of morality.
More and more every day I realize that I don't believe in many of the objective norms that we as westerners take for granted. Take, for instance, the belief that there is an objective morality. This means that there are morals that exist beyond the level of sheer human relative action; there are some things that are just intrinsically bad and some that are just inherently good. This kind of marked dichotomy permeates so many levels of our society that it's startling. Good vs. evil, religion vs. science, reason vs. absurdity, logic vs. madness, democracy vs. oppression, the list goes on and on.
So I should state this outright: I don't really care if there is an objective reality or an objective anything. I reached this conclusion at some point in the last year, though the weight of it has descended upon me more as of late. This doesn't mean that I reject objective views, it just means that I find them inconsequential for my intentions and goals in life. If objective reality doesn't exist, then so what? I think I exist and that's good enough, and if an objective reality does exist, that's fine too. Either way, the paradigms on which my life is built don't really depend on such ideological security, rather they depend on a security of self. But when my relentlessly second-guessing mind roars into action, serious conflicts arise.
I don't know why I care sometimes about so many of the things that I care about. I'm a dreamer, I always have been and always will. I dream of certain marvelous futures, read about them, and imagine my own. Many of the problems in the world today are roadblocks to that goal. Also, in some corner of my biological being, there is a will to species survival. Ultimately though, I somehow ended up caring about some other people (I won't wear the false pretense of caring about everybody in the world, because I'm probably much more evil than that). Either way, I should be reducing people to mere variables, playing off their strengths and weaknesses, making their victories mine and their failures theirs alone. Success is a resource game, so why am I doing nothing to gather my resources?
My vague and kind of retarded conceptual framework prefers to view each person as inherently equal, if not superior, to me. If that is the case, I can never reduce them to a mere variable. Clearly, though, I am as guilty of this as anyone else. So why should I care if I do what's right. Doing good has not seemed to earn me much over the years, hell, it hasn't even earned me peace of mind. Though I've been blessed enough monetarily and to have a good family, every year I more and more feeling completely isolated. I desperately want some kind of peer recognition, but I know that's a fruitless endeavor. If it doesn't involve drinking, how can I expect there to be any success for any enterprise I start here at JMU.
Morality has brought me little. Perhaps if I believed in the afterlife or some cycle of living reincarnation, this would matter more to me. But it doesn't. Long-term death doesn't phase me much anymore (though obviously I'd have completely different instincts/reactions in the short-term), and the presence of an afterlife is trivial. Even from a religious standpoint I think that God would rather us be moral for the sake of being moral rather than for the attainment of some alleged promise. Who knows? Heaven may be real, and that conception of God may be real. I'd say I'm going to burn in hell, but given the divergence of books present on the subject, I don't think a good God would eternally damn me just for not following one of his many religions at any given time. So no, I don't feel hell, and I don't worry about heaven. I'm quite happy being a part of a grand cosmic cycle, and even though nothing, not even a memory, will be left of me in a few decades or so (hopefully no sooner), I of course want to keep living.
Note: sorry, but I'm getting delirious from either lack of sleep, the sickness I have, or some combination of both
I'm too out of it to right more. My brain is inexplicably dropping sentences completely from memory even as I think them. Names and concepts are just washing over me at that this point, and I can't care. Anyways, good night!
posted by Andrew McKenna at 10:55 PM
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