Thursday, August 06, 2009
It’s been a long time since I have written anything. I don’t even know where to start. So much has happened, and so many plans have fizzled out or been forgotten. I don’t even know why I am writing. Will anyone ever read this? I used to envision people reading my journals and analyzing my thoughts long after my death, but I suppose that’s my arrogance kicking in. I used to tell myself it was only confidence, that I would make a difference in the world and everyone would know and remember me, and see me as a genius. I am not the overconfident person I used to be. But, I do feel like I performed much more efficiently and effectively at whatever it was I was doing in that mode. I don’t know if I will go back to that or not. I do know that I don’t like where I have navigated in life, or who I am, currently. I know I have to initiate some radical changes, and transcend the lifestyle of mundane degeneration I have adopted for myself lately. I never thought I was like most people, content to sit and watch the latest sitcom, repeating some insipid job that would be better performed by a robot, feeding into the money-making machine, where some unscrupulous asshole collects surplus capital produced by my labor, while I struggle to pay bills and feed my kids. I always knew I wasn’t into that, and growing up, I rebelled against it in some pretty unintelligent ways; I fucked around a lot and didn’t really get anywhere, but I did dream big. Eventually, when I joined the US Navy, I started to really pursue a few of those big dreams, putting foundations and support structures under those castles in the sky. But, I have always felt utterly alone in those endeavors. I longed for cooperation, relation, and understanding. I have yet to really experience that. And, I believe that, by making some pivotal choices and directing my life as I have, I’ve ruined my chances of completing those structures, unless I make some changes, now.
I have not been going home much lately. My vehicle broke down and I don’t really enjoy taking the trolley home, or riding my bike to work anymore. I did it for about six months, on and off, but I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t really want to do much. I am tired of struggling and not really making much noticeable progress, and encountering increasing resistance every step of the way. People’s advice, though usually well intended, doesn’t contribute in the least to any solid step I could make toward recovery from the catastrophe that is my life lately. I fear, as with every other time conditions have gotten rough, that I am going to have to fix it, improve it, and move on alone, with little or no cooperation, and over-stress myself until I break down again. Is that the way life goes? It should not be like this. The only feeling I have about that sort of execution of human life, is deep despair.
I have done my utmost to be a positive, constructive, creative, contribution to society—one that improves circumstances, not only for myself, but for others, for society itself; I even dedicated years of my life in an attempt to facilitate the improvement of two human beings in dire condition—but I have nearly destroyed my ability to succeed and flourish in the process. I have definitely destroyed my motivation to go on in pursuit of my dreams. And, I feel like my sacrifice was worthless and stupid. I feel that I made a terrible choice, and that I would have and could have better served the world, and myself, by avoiding my compassion completely. But, that’s also what I feel is the greatest hindrance to humanism, and the furthering of human ethics. People don’t give a shit about each-other, and when they do, they get taken advantage of, and suffer for it. It reminds me of that e.e. cummings poem about humanity. I love people, but I hate them for being so stupid. And, I guess that goes for me as well.
I am sorry for not giving my kids a better life. I really wish I could have provided more for them. I didn’t do my best until it was too late, and then, while I was doing more than superman himself could have done, over-achieving and pushing hard to make more money, to learn, and to do well, my efforts were continuously degraded by fucked up people, and a fucked up system that doesn’t give a shit about anyone.
The thing I like about free-market libertarianism, Ayn Rand, and conservative political philosophy of people in the US is that it invokes a sense of personal capability, initiative, responsibility, and worth. But, I don’t agree that altruism or egalitarianism is a hindrance to social progress, or even personal progress. The fact that some people are paying $500 for face creams, or pumping hundreds of dollars a month of gas—lining the pockets of people who openly hate America, and the Americans who are in bed with them—into their unnecessarily oversized SUVs, polluting the air their children will be breathing after they’ve killed themselves by smoking cigarettes, while other people are literally eating trash out of dumpsters, makes me angry. And that’s what over-adherence to that philosophy has produced. Of course, it also produced a lot of wealth for our society, but, apparently, if my ship is throwing thousands of pounds of food in the garbage and pumping into the ocean on a weekly basis, not to mention spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on gas on a weekly basis, we are not being very responsible or intelligent about using that wealth. Better yet, if we are using that wealth to trick people into thinking that some ridiculous herbs will make them live longer and lose weight without exercise, or that because some celebrity said they used a brand of makeup, it will somehow make them more nearly attractive or personable as that celebrity, only to dupe them out of giving up their money, then we are not being responsible with our wealth. Usury is ubiquitous, customary even, in American society. We pride ourselves on kicking people’s asses, legally robbing them, and putting the less deserving in their place—underneath. So we’ve essentially reduced ourselves to a bunch of crabs in one giant bucket. Who cares if you get out? Your brethren are still struggling, and dying in there, and you might have stepped on them or pulled them down in the process. Unfortunate circumstances befall people, the future is not clear, and people make bad decisions that lead to hardship. There’s no reason to leave them to die of disease or starvation in the street, or struggle seeking remedy for their pain alone.
It’s more than halfway through 2009 now, and I have great hope for the future. I just have lost a lot of the hope for my own. I would have liked to be born about fifty years from now, or maybe further, depending on how much we’ve progressed. It seems that visionaries and optimistic artists are always overestimating how fast we’ll progress as a species. Humans are cursed with an animal nature that they have symbolized in demons, devils, and evil spirits. I don’t believe in any of those symbols actually existing, only that they are anthropomorphized icons of that instinct in human nature which drives people to dominate one another. We can wash our hands of this, and that is my hope for the future.
"The real advantages that should result from this progress, of which we can entertain a hope that is almost a certainty, can have no other term than that of the absolute perfection of the human race; since, as the various kinds of equality come to work in its favor by producing ampler sources of supply, more extensive education, more complete liberty, so equality will be more real and will embrace everything which is really of importance for the happiness of human beings ....
The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason; when tyrants and slaves, priests and their stupid or hypocritical instruments will exist only in works of history and on the stage; and when we shall think of them only to pity their victims and their dupes; to maintain ourselves in a state of vigilance by thinking on their excesses; and to learn how to recognize and so to destroy, by force of reason, the first seeds of tyranny and superstition, should they ever dare to reappear among us."
-Marquis de Condorcet (1744-1794)
Some people might say this is only a lofty dream. I can’t think of a more noble purpose to which to dedicate one’s life.
As is demonstrated by my life thus far, we can strive to force-feed our vision and values to other people, even if we think that’s what’s best for them, but they’ll resist it. They have to find their own way. And if they are unwilling to relinquish their usurious, parasitic behavior, they can never be absolved as humans. I have stupidly spent years of my life in the pursuit of the impossible, as noble a cause as it were. And, I know that my wife and children have benefited from the fruits of my labor, but has it been worth the cost? Has the cost been necessary? Has the suffering been necessary?
I don’t think so. And I don’t blame only myself, or them, but everyone. The human world is juvenile, continuously infantilized by our damnable instincts and stubborn resistance to or rejection of cooperation and foresight.
I can’t bear to live any longer with these lazy, stupid people I love, and that love me as well, while we punish each other with our desires, demands, and judgments.
I tried.
I don't want to give up.
