Can somebody help me understand these two states of Kierkegaard's, and the transition from the former to the latter? I'd be surprised if anyone on here is well versed in Kierkegaard, but figured I'd give this a shot. My current understanding is that a Knight of Infinite Resignation, to use the dancer metaphor, has not yet fully resolved the dissonance between the leap and the landing. The KOIR, upon the finite "ground" to continue with the metaphor, is not at peace with the finite. So he continually returns to the infinite, again and again in this kind of dance. In a sense I'm not sure if the dancer metaphor is the best... more like somebody walking on hot coals (the hot coals being the finite). At some point, eventually one jumps and finds cool relief in the infinite. (But doesn't that just lend credence to the idea that faith or religion is a mere opiate of the masses?) For the Knight of Faith, this dissonance is out of the question. He is beyond this dissonance, though at one point he was not. It is now no longer thought about because it makes no difference whether he's up in the air or has his feet on the coals. There is seamless fluidity and synchronicity between the finite and infinite for the KOF. Yet the reason they are not dancing on the coals *isn't* because the soles of their feet have been calloused, but something like the opposite... and is that what's "absurd" about the KOF? That the KOF is dancing on the coals because he chooses to, not because he has to relieve the pain of the finite or has numbed himself to it? That is to say, is the KOIR hopping about from foot to foot on the hot coals, "dancing" as it were, while the KOF is literally ballet dancing on the hot coals unaffected? I feel that I don't really understand either though. I feel like I'm getting there, but they're just out of reach. It seems to me that the Knight of Faith is an impossible ideal, embodied seemingly only in Abraham, and the value is in the striving for it, not its attainment. One can get infinitely closer to it, but never truly be *it*. (or am I only saying that because I'm a Knight of Infinite Resignation lol?) My other question: is the transition from KOIR to KOF a point of no return? Or can an individual go through periods of life in which they are experiencing what it's like to be content and at peace with the finite and the infinite, and then somehow they fall, lose their balance, and must get up and start again, just like even the most professional dancer can make a mistake?
Well. This is a pretty crazy big step. I'm going to try and keep going with the short sentences. Inspired by a video that another member on here recently shared, which was about Tony Stark's narcissism (by Cinema Therapist). Also hard work I've been doing in therapy has led to these realizations. When I was much younger, in elementary school and in middle school, I was what might be typically described as an overt narcissist. To be honest, I've never had a strong sense of internal, intrinsic self-worth. I'm *slowly*, painfully starting to figure out what that is... kind of. It's difficult for me to understand what it is and how it works, and why other people have such strong manifestations of it whereas mine is nearly non-existent. That is the first marker of narcissism (note that narcissism is a spectrum, and is not necessarily the same as Narcissistic Personality Disorder). The way I initially coped with this up until around high-school is that I would devalue other people or things that threatened my ego, and I would lie to inflate my ego. I would make things up about myself to try and make myself somehow more interesting or cool or otherwise "worth more". When you're young this can be chalked up to relatively innocent daydreaming or overactive imagination or something like that, but right around the time you go to high-school it becomes super unattractive. When it stopped working and eventually began backfiring, in addition to a couple seriously humbling experiences, I was banished into covert narcissism, where I have been largely stuck ever since. This is why in the past I have said that in many ways my depression has been self-inflicted. Because when you become a covert narcissist, to get that reassurance you can often resort to manipulative behaviors. Passive aggression is a good one. But instead of having the self-righteous "how dare you" attitude when you're an overt narcissist, it's a "woe is me" or a "how dare I" attitude. Instead of you playing the role of The Asshole, you try and gaslight other parties into believing they're somehow the asshole, in order to assuage your weak ass self-worth. You parade around just how pathetic and worthless you are, so that people throw some alms your way. Luckily, if the word is even appropriate to use, I think my depression was also genuine. I may have sometimes used it as a crutch, but it was real, and so I wouldn't often resort to manipulative behavior because I am fortunate to have some loving people around me, have had good friends, all of whom have struggled to teach me how to be a better person. Writing also helped, in the sense that it was something I genuinely want to do (sometimes). Fiction can screw right off, but I can't lie and say I've *never* enjoyed writing, or never gotten anything out of it, or else I would have left this place looong ago. And no, I don't just write to get reassurance for my self-worth. I write to try and make sense of things. I like how I can share potentially valuable information and knowledge with people. I like having conversations with some people. I like learning new things. And it can even just be fun, for its own sake. Writing also helped in the sense that in order to improve, I have to actually want to improve. I can't just farm woe-is-me points, but I have to actually do stuff. And the good news is that, at least for some things, there are tangible and tried-and-true ways of improving. Practicing grammar, spelling, revising for clarity, etc. Fiction is different, but I've been over that enough, I'll go back to beating that dead horse another day. So sometimes I exhibit covert narcissistic behavior because I had the overt narcissism beaten out of me by life. That coping strategy stopped working and so I found a different way. Now the way forward is continuing to figure out the self-worth thing. Religion has helped a little bit with that, in terms of having some sort of inalienable value, something to protect and to live in a way that honors it. When I first became an atheist it was in a sort of narcissistic way, of look how stupid these Christ-tards are, and their idiot beliefs of their fairy tale book, let's point and laugh. Thankfully many other narcissists were led by their narcissism to atheism, and seeing them do this same thing made me cringe, which became the first inklings of self-reflection. Focusing more on other people has helped immensely. None of it would have been possible without having self-reflected, and writing has helped me do a LOT of that, perhaps sometimes too much actually. Even though my brain or heart or mind sometimes go rogue, I am well aware the world does not revolve around me and things will not always go my way, and therefore it makes no sense to take everything personally. Helping others, acts of charity, recognizing and acknowledging the feelings of low self-worth when they come up and patiently denying them from feeding on any toxic reassurance. Instead, just being open and honest about your feelings and needs can be way better. In a sense, a covert narcissist is a stride closer to serious healing than an overt. I think often an overt hasn't fully had that self-reflection, that brutal beatdown by other people or by life. Some people have stronger narcissism "powers" than others, so maybe some narcissists, especially the personality disorder category, are practically immune. As in, the only way their ego dies is if they literally die. But narcissism is a spectrum upon which many people will fall, sometimes just for brief moments in their life, sometimes entire chapters of their life, etc. I am glad I am becoming more aware and I hope my behavior hasn't hurt other people here. I hope at worst it has just been something annoying that you can easily ignore. It can be hard to trust somebody who has ruined that trust with their narcissism traits / behaviors. What's funny is that even as being a person who has exhibited narcissism at various times in their life, I have also found it extremely annoying when exhibited by others. I hope you can believe me when I say that "I get it". Thank-you, then, to the people who have helped me communicate better. Writing was a big help with that. Instead of being obnoxious, toxic, manipulative, just saying "I'm not feeling well right now and I was wondering if you had time to talk". And instead of being passively aggressive with the apology, resist the urge to make the other person feel bad. Going forward, I want to express myself more in these healthier ways, and less with exhibitionist flagellation. I *have* apologized for asking for help or emotional support. The shitty thing is that it can be hard to tell the difference between somebody genuinely feeling like a burden, and somebody trying to make you feel bad. But if you pay close enough attention, these become easier to tell apart. If you don't feel like a victim of passive aggression, then it's very likely that the other person was thinking of you and was sorry if they had burdened you with their own problems. Narcissism, depression, anxiety. It doesn't have to define you. There are things you can do to try and improve yourself, and often times prioritizing the world and the people around you will consequently lead to your own betterment as well. If I had to pick the thing that sucks the most about narcissism, it's that people doubt if you're being genuine, or if everything is some elaborate ruse to just get emotional sustenance. I guess all I can really say to that is if you've been seriously hurt by a narcissist, consider what forgiveness can do for *yourself*, set boundaries, and know you are under absolutely no obligation to give them a second, third+ chance. Giving more chances is not at all a requirement of forgiveness. Do what you need to do to keep yourself safe and healthy. Perhaps, as a thought experiment, see this other person as a drug addict. Just like some people on street corners aren't really ex war veterans or victims of some crazy disaster or whatever, but are using their fake sob story to get their fix. It's not right, it's sad, it's tough, it shouldn't be your problem, and in some weird way they simultaneously CAN and CANNOT help themselves. A narcissist is literally trying to do the same thing with their self worth. If it wasn't you, it would have been somebody else from which they try and get their fix. They probably treat *everybody* that way, and sadly narcissists keep exhibiting the behaviors until or if they have a chance to seriously self-reflect (which unfortunately the narcissism itself is designed to not do at all costs), and receive professional counseling that helps them understand what their issue is, why they act the way that they do, and also how they can change. Peace.
I was gaining some sense of the world and the characters but then it's lost. Everything is confused. The script changes every time I look at it like I've got Idea Dyslexia. Every part of the play is happening at once, and yet not at all. I used to know the end, and then forgot. I used to know the beginning, and then not. The story was supposed to contain some message, convey some sort of meaning. Doubts made quick work of all that nonsense. It happened like this. No, it happened like that. No, that's too much like Dark Souls. Well your idea is too much like— Where is this going? In circles. Spiraling down. To a dead-end. The point moves like a floater in my eye. The movie plays in my mind, and then it skips. The movie plays in my mind, and then it skips. The movie plays in my mind, and then it skips. The movie plays in my mind, and then it skips. I give up and play a video game instead again. I'll never get anything written. Haunted by characters who won't even talk to me because they've been doomed to manifest in somebody unworthy. Wait, what's character? How's the plot go again? Where did I put the setting? A theme is emerging. Deja vu. This looks suspiciously like the beginning. Almost as if all this time I still have gone exactly Nowhere. Just outline bro! No dude bro, don't listen to Bro Dude, just wing it! Forget what Guy Friend said, listen to me: read all of Tolstoy, all of Dostoevsky, and a short list of 100 other classic texts and only then will you be prepared! Hey there; take my course and I'll give you The Big Secret (authors hate him)! Somebody else comes along and spews out some writerly advice from fucking Plato, Aristotle, Stephen King, but I'd sooner take Chekov's gun and paint all of my bullshit ideas on a wall, to be done with this once and for all. Oh! That's right. I was taking inspiration from Dante and imagining hopeless, helpless depression as its own reality. How original. Back to daydreaming. My ideas are infinitely better in my head than on paper. If my mind is so crushed under the weight of its own genius that writing fiction is made impossible like getting laid is for an incel, then my hand is an unapologetic megalomaniac for thinking it could ever possibly transcribe such genius, like one of those assholes who claims to talk to God. I guess you'll get to experience my magnum opus when neural-link becomes so advanced you can hook up directly to my imagination and get the unfiltered experience. Not this lackluster, convoluted, cardboard-character-populated, shitshow of a fucking joke. I hope you're enjoying me reconciling with destined failure by inflating my ego to previously-thought-impossible proportions, encapsulating our entire universe into a single finite phrase: "the universe".
Vibrant green stems, made as tall as trees by their ancientness, wavered in a sea of wet and oppressive heat. Beads of condensation slid down their lengths, and dripped from the tips of their blades to feed the soft rich earth. The flies and gnats swimming in the humidity had disappeared. The cacophonous chattering of unseen insects had ceased. All around him now the towering grass rustled, but not by any wind. In the gaps in the grass which grew ever smaller, ever darker the further from Remy's eye, something colossal circled him. "This air... it feels like breathing in water, doesn't it?" The whisper came from his left, and yet started in his mind. He stopped. The sweat on his brow ran cold. Silence. "It feels like drowning without releasssse," it hissed again, this time in front of him, voice rising to a crescendo as its scaly head and neck reared into the sky, eclipsing the sun. The glint in the snake's hazel eyes fixed Remy in place. His feet refused to turn away. "Who are you, wanderer? Sssspeak. And do not lie, for I only ask what I already know." The snake smiled, bearing its human-sized fangs. "My name- my name is Remy," he replied, barely able to catch his breath. He swallowed. "That is the name you were given. Have you still no memory of what you have forgotten?" "I can only remember that I have forgotten," he answered. ... "Could you meet the gaze of the Perfect Good? Or would you look away, bow your head in ssssshame?" It laughed dryly. "You know you are not the first, nor the second, nor the third wanderer. Ssstill you think yourself different. Perhaps not unduly so." "Do you know how it ends?" "I know it will be what you decide to make it. But what you will decide to make it I do not know." ... "I have gone by many names, Guardian of Zoí most prominent among them." "If you are the Guardian of Zoí, I do not understand. What has happened?" Remy asked. He no longer stood paralyzed in fear, but stepped forward with caution. "You do not even know if what you ssseek is a person, a place, a thing, or all of these. I suppose that cannot be helped." With a hiss-like sigh the creature rested its great head on the ground. "Light casts its own shadow, and you ask me to protect her from herself?"
In the windows of my eyes you might see reflected all the faraway places I dream of. Bamboo forests. Shrine stairways. Cathedral steps. Canal crossings. City skylines. Bob Ross mixtures of stormy skies and sunrise. Landscapes that will put the awe in your jaw. Rain that puts a smile on your face. Snow that tickles rather than stings. Beneath the surface, in the pools of film processing fluid that fills my eyes, are the picture perfect moments captured with mental polaroid, ready to trap you in their infinite stillness. They'll never come back, and yet they're right there. I'm still at prom. She's still in my arms. She's still in my hoodie. Keeping my eyes open now is the only way to keep me blind to my prison. I haven't seen in 5 years. I don't sleep anymore. "Surround yourself with what you want to attract." I did, and somehow all I have attracted is disappointment. I make my morning commute with no soundtrack. I reach out and touch the pixels with fingertips and find there is height and there is breadth but there is no depth and there is no breath. Eat your TV screen. Chew on the glass. Wait for another one to casually mention her boyfriend. Wait for another unattractive girl to fall for me. Laugh internally at the absurdity of coming into the dating scene like a piece of shit on a mission to find toilet paper on a pandemic Sunday. I move in my mind and my body stays in place behind. I speak in my thoughts but don't speak my thoughts. I pass out in sober exhaustion hoping to wake-up from this nightmare, roll-over and check my phone to find out that it's 6/22/2016. 5 years and counting; emotionally arrested without trial, without jury. I walk a straight edge now but it's still serrated. I'm stuck in customs with no return address, waiting for deliverance.
I had my roommate angrily yell in my face in front of people at a party which made me dissociate. I forgave him. I never felt more alone in my life than right then. I've been sober since 5/1. I dissociated again and again. I had panic attacks. I cried uncontrollably. I've been to the doctor's, the hospital for my mental health; everything in the world felt fake, like I'd seen behind the curtain. I thought for a while I'd truly lost my mind. I've gone back to therapy. I've prayed for deliverance. I've pushed internet friends away with my self-fulfilling prophecy. I went away for a while. I wrote a page of a novel during one of those manic creative bouts then lost all confidence in my writing ability and was drowned in the same old negative self-talk that made me quit writing and quit here and hate myself. I've been going to the gym three days a week. I reconnected with some friends. With a resurgence of depression and anxiety came a strange relief of familiarity grounding me from dissociation. Intrusive thoughts, disturbing and doubtful, have risen. I earned all A's last semester and a 3.8 GPA at university. I've signed up to possibly be a mentor for a new student next academic year. I've decided to get involved in something on campus this coming semester. I've made myself sick trying to figure out who I even am. A payroll, a database, a birth certificate, told me I'm an employee, a student, a son. I've wondered why it is that if nobody reminds me of who I apparently am, of who I'm supposed to be—if nobody reassures me of me, I become nothing, nobody. Interests, likes, dislikes, fictional worlds, are all too intangible. I've tried and failed to figure out what identity is, what self-worth is; in a shape-shifting labyrinthine library I've scoured shelves of archaic, dusty tomes, and found nothing but blank pages or dyslexic lexicons. Here, I am my posts. My writing. I am my profile picture. I am my persona. I am the music I listen to. I know who I am and who I want to be. But out in the real world? Since 5/1, a lot has changed.
Professor and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion" has been a blast to read. I don't mean that in the sense that it has confirmed what I already wanted to believe, or knew to be true, though that has sometimes been the case. I also mean it in the sense that it has introduced and taught me many new things that I want to learn even more about. This should be recommended reading in every American university. Seriously. If not high-school. I'm hesitant as to whether I agree that "corporations are individuals". I'm more inclined to believe that corporations are made-up of individuals, and the more that a given corporation creates the conditions for cooperation, the more successful that corporation will be as a whole. In other words, while perhaps a corporation *can* be a monolithic, the two are not synonymous or always co-present. Anyway, Haidt isn't so much making an argument as to whether or not it is good for our legal systems to view corporations as individuals. Instead, he simply states that that's how it is, and investigates the following question: "What can leaders do to create more hivish organizations?" (page 276) You see, Haidt posits that humans are dual-nature. That we are "selfish primates who long to be part of something larger and nobler than ourselves. We are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee." While this is more metaphorical than it is a literal scientific fact, he backs up his claims with numerous examples, both in terms of modern experiments that have been done, and also in terms of research that's been conducted in anthropology (historical *and* current), sociology, biology, and genetics. As you can see, this is pretty difficult for me, a layman, to try and pull together. There's so much here and it's hard for me to know where to start, and it's tempting for me to just say "Screw it, go read it yourself! You won't regret it!" But in an effort to better my own understanding and have some discussion, I'll do my best to summarize and note some key points. A big difference between humans and monkeys is that monkeys, like chimps, lack what is called "ultrasociality". For the past several decades, thanks to intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins and his work "The Selfish Gene", too many people are quick to dismiss group-adaptation, even though the jury is far from out, and even though there is still a great deal of evidence that group-adaptation is as legitimate as evolution on an individual level. There is a belief, in other words, that anything selfless can be undermined and understood as nothing more than masked selfishness. I happen to believe that the only reason why psychopaths and sociopaths have still survived to the year of 2021, is that they have learned to *fake* selflessness. They have learned that faking selflessness is a means of getting what they want, when outright selfishness would be disadvantageous. In other words, to co-exist, everything must be viewed as transactional or a means to their own end. They just put in some extra work for the sake of appeasement, but only because that very appeasement benefits themselves. Be too overt of a psychopath or sociopath and you might go to prison, or you'll garner such a terrible reputation that you'll have to move somewhere and start completely over, which is a waste of resources when you can exploit the same watering holes all the time while avoiding being exiled. Haidt doesn't address this. But he does make a great case for selflessness being a reality. For starters, he pulls from a few different military sources; historical ones such as the famous "phalanx" formation, and modern ones, in which veteran and historian William McNeill says, "Many veterans who are honest with themselves will admit, I believe, that the experience of communal effort in battle...has been the high point of their lives....Their 'I' passes insensibly into a 'we,' 'my' becomes 'our', and individual fate loses its central importance....I believe that it is nothing less than the assurance of immortality that makes self sacrifice at these moments so relatively easy....I may fall, but I do not die, for that which is real in me goes forward and lives on in the comrades for whom I gave up my life." I think you see the same sentiment, though not as dramatic, in sports. From having followed sports even only casually, and playing sports video games throughout my life, I began to notice something. There were players who were very talented, but what separated some of them was their ability to work with a team. This is how you get players like Ronaldo or Messi who can do it all; they can dribble and take on three guys on their own and score, but they also are great playmakers, because nobody, not even Messi or Ronaldo, can take on entire defenses by themselves over and over and over again. They pass the ball. They build up each other, rather than tearing down others or only worrying about themselves. Not only that, but think about trades. We see players traded all the time, but sometimes it is as if the only consideration in the trade was the player's *individual* stats. Nobody was thinking how well they would fit into the new team, or how well they fit into their previous team. On the other hand, guys like Lebron James, though I find some parts of his personality annoying and I disagree with his politics, can go to seemingly any team and turn it into a winning team. The same I think can be said of Tom Brady. Team *chemistry* is important. A team full of selfish players who either think that they are better than the rest, or for whatever reason can't fully trust their teammates, are dysfunctional. It doesn't matter how individually talented each of them are. They will always lose to an equally talented, or even slightly less talented team that is more cooperative. And this is when I laughed out loud and said "NO WAY!" I couldn't believe what I was reading: "Increase similarity, not diversity. To make a human hive, you want to make everyone feel like a family. So don't call attention to racial and ethnic differences; make them less relevant by ramping up similarity and celebrating the group's shared values and common identity. A great deal of research in social psychology shows that people are warmer and more trusting toward people who look like them, dress like them, talk like them, or even just share their first name or birthday. There's nothing special about race. You can make people care less about race by drowning race differences in a sea of similarities, shared goals, and mutual interdependence." I had such a smug smile on my face reading this passage on page 277 that I stopped reading and came here to write this blog post. It's everything that I'd been saying for so long and finally, somebody with a degree, somebody with the "right", with the "authority", somebody who had done the work and done the research and has the experience to back-up their claims and evidence, in other words somebody who really does know what in the fuck they're fucking talking about, FINALLY somebody descended from the heavens and graced us with their presence. This flies in the face of things that I am paying THOUSANDS of dollars (i.e. $$$$$$$) to be told at university. Professors, paid in the thousands, schools receiving all sorts of federal funding and money from hard-working parents, are creating *division*, not *unity*. This obsession of race, this need to, as they say "see race", and that it is actually racist to do the very thing that Haidt is stating here, is completely absurd and totally unbacked by the science. I cannot wait to sharpen my understanding of this around the edges. Because when I inevitably need to, I cannot wait to bring up these facts, this scientific evidence about what creates real unity. While I've always been quite an individualist, over the past few years I've realized how alone that that's made me feel. I began to realize that I needed to make sacrifices, that I needed to get off the high-horse once in a while and actually try to empathize, sympathize, understand other people. And I would never agree with all of them. Of course not. But I rediscovered my appreciation for belonging to a *team*, something that I lost when I quit soccer in my middle-teens. I also found a company to work at that is, on the whole, pretty good. While working for this company in fast food service, I've realized that it's only as good as the people you work with. I still feel pretty disconnected from whatever goes on at corporate, so I'm not that selfless. In fact, I feel more like McNeill when he describes the experiences of veterans. I feel closer, more responsible for (and to) my immediate co-workers and manager, than I do the district manager, or anybody higher up the chain. That is to say, I'd be making sacrifices for my comrades, not for some fart of an idea about what the big company thinks that they represent. And then maybe some customers, depending on who they are and how they treat us. But sacrificing myself for some cause? That's laughable. I'm making sacrifices for a 401k that I'm grateful to my employer for providing, for a good paycheck insofar as wage-slavery goes, and then sometimes for my co-workers, most of whom are pretty cool. America I think became too individualistic. That sentiment became too highly regarded in the zeitgeist or something. Like most things, there is a balance, and here the balance is between conformity and individualism. As with just about anything, at the extremes some bad things can start to happen. I leave you with one more thing in this disjointed mess of a fucking post. I play a video game called Day of Defeat: Source. It's a WWII multiplayer shooter, and very simple. You can play as the Allies or the Axis (Americans or Germans). You can pick what's called a class, or a preset loadout of weapons and tools to take out the enemies with and...
My response to a question worth one point on a test made-up-of over 30 questions. --- "What are your experiences with code-switching? In what circumstances or contexts do you code-switch? Do you do it often? Why do you do it? How does it feel for you?" My experiences with code-switching mainly revolve around vulgarity and informality, so I have to do it all the time. The reason why I do it is because it's taboo to swear or be offensive except among the closest of friends, and increasingly in society we are seeing the erasure of our right to free speech today. It's easier to go along than fight battles and die on hills all day, every day, like Tom Cruise in "Edge of Tomorrow". Now, there are times where code-switching makes sense to me, and I don't see it as an affront to freedom of speech. At work I represent my employer, one of the many things delineated in the albeit indecipherable legalese word-salad you sign. My actions at work have consequences—the sensibility of which I shall not delve into questioning here—that not only impact myself, but also my employer, either in monetary or reputational ways (both of which overlap). Similarly, in job interviews or other "professional" settings, such concerns often exist. Nonetheless, one of the reasons why I hated school is because I could never be allowed to be my true self. For 6-7 hours a day, five days a week, it was against the rules. Oh how many times would my peers say to me upon meeting me outside the confines of school, "You're like a totally different person!" And unlike the private sector in which I *choose* to work there, and I can stop doing so at any time, attending and completing my public education was a mandate of law. Thus being myself might be dramatically put as having been against the law. What's interesting is that my brain tends to be a lot more emotionally cool and logically calculating than my tongue-in-cheek when given enough time and space. Without putting a great deal of extra effort into it, I would never answer this question if it were put to me face-to-face with the level of formality featured here. It'd be stressful, and I also probably wouldn't have a captive audience like I do now. I can re-read and re-write this as many times as I want before I hit submit, and I can take as long as I want in thinking of what I want to say and how I want to say it without awkward silences of incredible lengths. Or, at the very least, lots of annoying verbal fillers, embarrassing stuttering, and repeatedly tripping over one's words. If you try this elaborative, contemplative approach in day-to-day conversation, you won't have to worry very much, because it turns out other people will talk before you and talk over you and you'll never get a chance to say anything anyway. So you might as well say something stupid and vulgar to participate at all. If you don't have a personal sound-bite at the ready, forget it. You won't get through more than 10 seconds of your moot eloquence. When asked to write something in a more informal voice like the recent synthesis assignment, I code-switch by trying to simplify my language and sentence structure. You know, like using colloquial and conversational phrases or slang, using a 5-cent word instead of name-dropping vocabulary found on the SAT, following Hemingway's writerly advice, etc. This is because my natural level of formality is so uncouth that I even have to fake being informal. The level of formality I've presented here is in itself satirical. After all, to me it makes much more sense to expect adults to have developed a thick enough hide that they can understand words are a dance, it takes two to tango, and it therefore takes two to give a word power, rather than trying to police what is acceptable and what is unacceptable with nobody to police the policemen. In the words of the great and greatly missed (by some) Christopher Hitchens, offense can only ever be taken. Never given. And in these times in which words like racism, sexism, phobic, fascist, and truth meet the same fate as the Boy who Cried Wolf as the result of arbitrary redefinition per political convenience, why not just go the full monty and make these words completely meaningless? What He giveth, He can taketh, and since man giveth words meaning, so can he taketh. Semantic satiation. But people will continue drawing the stupid distinction that swearing is for the stupid, and I will code-switch and use this linguist's cosmetic stencil kit so long as we go on othering ourselves by brow-height; if only to relish in just how many hypocrites there are who come from backgrounds in which the r-word and g-word were not used in ableist or homophobic ways, but instead were homophones completely and entirely cleansed and reclaimed from their previous contexts, denotations, and connotations to become words to describe things that the parliamentary "I quite dislike that" could not (like homework and chores), and in literal speakeasies these very hypocrites continue using these words today, but only after taking to the digital public square and denouncing these very linguistic improprieties in which they themselves partake in private. In order to be published or become a heralded public figure, I'd have to code-switch my soul, because my real beliefs ain't popular.
For months I've been hesitant to buy a new gaming rig. I think the jig is up. To the chagrin of humans, forests burn away their dead wood. And I've been feeling like burning something. Thoroughly eradicating something from my personal life. Deleting people I've never met in real life from my friend's list, people who I haven't played games with in over a year, people who I don't even remember how I met them or who they are, satiated the thirst for a bit. But it's back again demanding another sacrifice. Recently video games haven't been very fun. They've been a way to waste the time away because laying in bed actually doing nothing drives me up a wall. I usually just end up going to bed angry and frustrated, both that I didn't accomplish things I needed to actually do or arguably should've done, and for not doing well playing a game that doesn't matter. So it is that I'll be going to bed here shortly, somewhat pissed off at everything and anything and nothing at all, dreading an 8-hour-shift that begins in just 6 and a half hours. And by going to bed, I mean laying in bed and tossing and turning for an hour. I quit smoking/vaping over half a year ago. I haven't drank since Saint Patrick's Day. I guess I was under some self-induced illusion that my life would make some dramatic turn-around. Honestly, I wonder why I quit in the first place. For some imagined, potential pitfalls or something. The reality is that I'm still stuck with the same problems of my life being pretty mediocre, uneventful, sub-par, slightly below average, uninteresting, a bore, a chore. Exceptional at things that don't matter at all. I'm starting to remember that alcohol and nicotine made that reality tolerable. It's impossible to accept otherwise. The irony is I'm too unwell for the spotlight that part of me craves. Too inconsistent. A star one moment, then the next everybody's whispering if I just got lucky. Even I find myself whispering that to myself. Like starting a comedy set with a killer joke, then getting in your own head and bombing after that. Like playing an incredible opening song, and then getting booed off stage after that. Like having a 1-2-3 first inning and then getting pulled in the 2nd inning after walking four straight and then the next guy hits a grand slam on you. Like every story you write having a great hook, solid first page, and then sucking mega-ass from thereon. As if... as if suddenly you're not the same person anymore. The successful person left, and you have absolutely zero control over it. Like you're destined to fail. I feel like writing. But then I remember I suck, so then I don't. Too much work. But there's nothing else to do, because video games aren't fun anymore, because I suck at those too and they're completely unproductive. I'm too tired to read and I have too many things to read. And why would I read if I suck at writing? So I can be good at trivia when I go to the bar or something useless like that? Maybe I'll just watch anime, sleep, work, eat, watch anime, repeat. One begins to realize that success, to any degree, isn't worth it. It's unsustainable and it leads to inevitable failure. I feel like I'm changing inside but I really am not. That's how living with BPD is. As soon as you feel okay or that you are improving, you're not. You can't trust your own success, your own experience. You feel like a different person every day. You feel like completely different people throughout the day. One moment fairly positive, other times manic, the next completely dejected and jaded and done with life. Wearing a mask in this pandemic is nothing to me. I wear masks every day. One for when I'm at work. One when I'm with my roommates. One when I'm with my dad. One when I'm with other family. Yet another when I'm with friends. Another when I'm on here. And another when I'm in my classes. In the midst of all the masks, there is no me. With BPD, all you want is to be one thing, and one thing always. But you don't have a self-identity that isn't just a bunch of arbitrary meaningless bullshit, like a birthdate, or superficial characteristics that constitute appearance and a random name that people decided to give you. You get tired of the tumultuous volatility that makes you an exhausting pain to be around. You just want to be consistent every single day. Instead, every day is like a nightmare where your hands move contrary to your intent. You fail even though inside you're literally screaming, and crying, totally baffled as to why you can't do something right all of a sudden. The car crashes even though every muscle in your body, every synapse in your brain, is fighting against it. So you just want to give-up trying at all. You start to dissociate and feel like consciousness is a Hell in which you've been put into a body that moves all by itself in pre-scripted determinism. You have no control over your own success or failure. Rather, your ego lies to itself, telling itself that it brought about the success. The reality is that I'll never write a great novel. The reality is that I'll never be exceptional at anything except by complete and total luck. I'll only have a good family and children if that was decided. I have zero control over any outcome, because all the effort in the world would never get me what I want, if what I want was decided to be for thee but not for me. Everything is impossible except the very little which has been pre-ordained for you. All you have control over is whether you want to pretend like you're an agent of free-will, or just an observer along for the ride. If you start to believe the latter, then pray God made the movie of your life at least good enough to stay curious. As far as I'm concerned, I'm no different than a character in a story. The author decided what has happened, and what will happen. He simply let me think that I have influence. One begins identifying with the negativity, because it's more real, more *consistent* than anything else. You find yourself the anti-thesis of life, preferring a flatline to the ups-and-downs.
By myself, I was no one. --- Xoic's recent blog on here got me thinking: I know character development is a thing (in a way, it's more or less character + plot = character development); character and plot are intertwined far more than they are separate; I know about setting; I know about showing vs. telling, and not to info-dump; I know about pacing and rhythm and varying sentence structure; I know about beginnings, middles, climaxes, resolutions. I've fired Chekhov's gun; I went up the mountain and learned of the archetypes; I know about themes and I know about style and voice; I know about POV and tense. I've read and I've read. I've absorbed storytelling in its many forms across all the mediums. And yet, somehow, my stories and storytelling are still total trash. I look around and must simply wonder aloud, what in the fuck am I missing now? If only that were a rhetorical question, and I wasn't expecting answers from either the aether or the void.
The other night, I had a one-on-one discussion with my roommate's girlfriend about the role of education, and what it means to be an educator. I was trying to explain to her that there is a difference between indoctrination and education. In a nutshell, the disagreement was this: I should be deliberately biased in the perspectives and views that I present to my theoretical future high-school English students. This was her response to my dissatisfaction with how my professors offered only a one-sided worldview where white man, man-man, capitalism-man, and Christian-man bad. Any person of any other race, especially if female, and pro-socialism, and who spends their free time owning stupid Christians, is the new master-race. The most interesting part is that throughout high-school, our history books were very bland. Exceptionally dry. If there was any juice or interesting substance to be had, it was in the questions that our history teachers would prompt us with. Our history books, albeit only from what I can remember, were quite neutral and fact-driven. This happened on this day. This person did this. X caused Y. Now, I do emphasize *quite*. There were, of course, other biases. The fascist Nazis were criticized, denounced, castigated (and rightfully so) for their atrocities, where as Stalin, Mao, or Castro received hardly a slap on the wrist. Hmm. The Founding Fathers were viewed generally favorably, with the fair mention of facts like Jefferson and others owning slaves, etc. Pretty balanced there, in my opinion. The Revolutionary War it was also handled pretty evenly, with the exception that it was seen as producing an overall good result. But the real nutrition was to be found in the class discussions, writing essays and responses to questions, and having *us*, the students, individually as well as together, come to our own conclusions on what it all meant. That, insofar as I can tell, is education. Indoctrination is teaching only what amounts to an anti-thesis of anything Western, just as much as a strictly pro-Western classroom would be. As far as I can tell, while it may not be possible for bias to be escaped entirely in the classroom, and that teachers will inevitably find there was always more to the big picture that they just couldn't cover, the substantive difference is in the intent, and in the effort. My current advisor for my major, who also happens to be one of my professors this semester, said to us in one of our very first classes (and unfortunately I must paraphrase, as I can only remember this one word) that we are here to be "groomed" by this program. Sure enough, I find myself reminded of this a couple months later by an assignment in which we must read some specific statements by the NCTE (National Council Teachers of English). "As public intellectuals and agents of change..." this one begins. A statement so loaded that it's like playing Russian roulette except that only one of the chambers is empty, rather than only one of the chambers being loaded. An agent of change for who? For what? It goes on. "... educators are complicit in the reproduction of racial and and socioeconomic inequality in the classroom." I might have reworded that as "can be", but that's a nitpick. The real point is that racial and socioeconomic inequality is loaded verbiage. An inequality does not an injustice make. That isn't to say I wouldn't seek to make my own classroom as equal as possible, because I do think that that gives every student the best chance at growing, but that's more to do the profession justice and each of my students justice. That doesn't mean I necessarily think every inequality is the result of an injustice. "This document is built upon our values and democratic sensibilities..." Well. There you have it. Joinnn usss. One of us. One of us. Jokes aside, their "values" and their "democratic sensibilities" are not the same as mine. I find it interesting that the NCTE is being used with such great confidence that it's as if this possibility wasn't even considered. Am I so deep into this program that I ought to keep up the act so as to not attract the attention of the body-snatchers? "We intend this document to provide teachers and teacher educators with a philosophical and practical base for developing literacy classrooms that meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners." Because this whole e-text is "built upon" the "values and democratic sensibilities" of the NCTE, naturally a vast majority of the document consists of loaded language. Words that, if not given a deeper thought, are easy to just take for granted. The philosophical and practical base is, as they say themselves, their own. It is not meant to be compatible with yours. If it is, more power to you. If not, go fuck yourself. Here come their principles for their ideology. Teachers and teacher educators must respect all learners and themselves as individuals with culturally defined identities. I was with them up until the "culturally defined identities". What does this mean? Who is doing the defining? I mean, this kind of worldview is rather baffling. If they mean to suggest that stereotypes exist, well no shit. But maybe they don't accept the identities that these amorphous, ill-defined "cultures" try to assign them. In fact, an individual always defines their identities for themselves. If they don't, then they aren't thinking for themselves. And since my job is to have them think for themselves and to grow, how other people try to define them is irrelevant. Identities aren't defined by a culture(s). No matter how hard a collective of people may try to speak on behalf of every black, white, man, woman, homosexual, Christian, or atheist, anybody who says they belong to any of those groups is a unique individual, with a personal, unique concept of their own self-identity. If they DON'T have that, then my job is to help them foster their own self-identity and breakaway from the image that left or right-wing ideologues project onto them, often without their consent. In other words, all that matters is how that specific individual student defines that identity for themselves. They are not culturally defined. I mean seriously, am I expected to apply the "cultural definition" to an individual? I hope that isn't what they meant, because that's hilariously insulting. "5. All students need to be taught mainstream power codes/discourses and become critical users of language while also having their home and street codes honored." No, they don't. This is what my biased, left-leaning professors have been doing. Since I've already stated I'm not in the business of indoctrination, I am not here to give them propaganda, which "mainstream power codes/discourses" are a synonym for. It basically just means "All students need to be taught left-wing progressive views." Moving on. "Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional personal and professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity." Teachers need to be open-minded, agree-to-disagree, and respect each of their students. In terms of what "social justice" and "equity" mean here, they are using their own definitions for what these mean. Again, it's presumed that their beliefs are unassailable and should not be questioned. The last thing a teacher does is say that something cannot be questioned. Therefore, I will not base my teaching on an unquestionable ideology. --- "Teaching is a political act." I grow tired of all this non-sense that gets packaged and embedded into what could have otherwise been good things. After a while I just wish I wasn't the only one. Every one else either doesn't give a God damned fucking shit, or thinks there's nothing wrong. Teaching isn't a political act unless you want it to be. That doesn't mean it will ever be perfectly clean of bias, but just like how the US government isn't perfect, you try and set-up a system of checks and balances that should make biases negligible. It starts with intent to educate, not indoctrinate. Then it continues with how much effort you put into that. And then you multiply that by how many *different* individual teachers attempt to do the same thing. That doesn't mean you don't touch politics. It means you let students decide for themselves. It means you try and provide them with at least a three-dimensional view of a topic. You don't only expose them to anti-Western thinking. You don't *only* expose them to social justice beliefs. When you do that, many will become stupid followers who will take everything you say for granted. That's what some of these activist types want, I notice. For you to become enlightened. To follow the truth, the light of their new god. Their beliefs about inequality, social justice, equity, were all written on a stone tablet and taken down from the mountain top. Fuck off man. This world is going to fucking shit because people's synapses are full of this garbage. My students will have strong, *informed*, rounded stances on the matters that arise in their lives. They will build a habit of seeking information from a few different points, evaluate that information, and learn how to structure an argument for their conclusion. If that conclusion is anti-Western, so be it. But it is to be lamented that so many of our youth, or even MY generation or the generation just before mine, do not know names like Thomas Sowell, or do not conceive that there is more than just Democrat and Republican. So let it not be said that they came to that conclusion because they were never, ever exposed to any pro-Western thought. *That* is bias. *That* is indoctrination. *That* is bullshit. I will not rob my students of the chance to question, to challenge progressive ideology, and all of its presuppositions. Figure out who you're not allowed to criticize, question, or make-fun...
"Do you think God thought about how all of those leaves would fall? Was there some step-by-step process He planned with the wind, the trees, the leaves? I think God lets some things surprise Himself, and surprise us, for being all-knowing would be a Hell of its own, and we are only here ultimately out of curiosity. The leaves fall into a bed that they make for themselves, and without fail they make these mosaics never seen before and never to be seen again." I was a leaf. God didn't have a plan for me. Maybe I'd never find a place where I belong... But if this ghost could only find a way to belong in his own head, then maybe he could belong anywhere and everywhere, forever. Maybe, just maybe, I'd surprise Him. Music rippled away, over the water, as our pontoon boat circled its anchor. Conversations went around and around the same old topics, with fireworks punctuating the pauses and punchlines. The joint exchanged hands and filled the smoky air with earthly odor. Shooting stars watched themselves for the first and last time explode like supernovas across the surface of the lake, painting their likeness onto the backs of our eyelids. I looked up at that colorful night sky, and opened the door. I'd finally come home.
I called off work last weekend with some totally fabricated, phony "symptoms". In other words, I'm a jackass taking advantage of the pandemic. But to me it doesn't feel that way. Obviously I'm not literally sick, but mentally I definitely am. It's just that saying I'm physically ill is understood to be much more legitimate than some amorphous, stigma'd mental illness like depression. Thanks to COVID, I do not have to worry about being treated as a liar. The slightest throat clear is received with a sharp inhale and a worried expression. Perfect. I have a bad cough. I have a sore throat. I feel like I might throw-up. Okay, don't come to work. I feel like I want I want to kill myself. Okay, maybe you should be fired. Fuck you, you worthless, unreliable, weak, waste of space. So I've learned to be a professional liar. This pandemic is the best thing that might have ever happened to me. I still have my job thanks to it. In the same vein, I've sent a completely false report to my university's health report app system saying I have COVID-like symptoms, but that I am not verified positive. It gave me an automated response to not go to campus, and that I will apparently hear from some COVID team or whatever soon; I presume within the next 12-24 hours. In addition, I have one class in which my professor told me I have to be there IN PERSON for the next 8 weeks, three days a week, starting today. Ha. Go fuck yourself. Sent him an email saying that I am self-quarantining as requested both by my work place as well as by the official university health app. Told him to please tell me what I need to do here at home to stay on task. What a joke man. My only hope at this point is that psilocybin passes its testing phases as a legit depression treatment. My depression is so bad that I don't want to go to sleep. I still take Nyquil or drink alcohol to force myself to sleep (never both, because that can cause severe liver damage). Why on Earth would I want to fast-travel into a future I'm not looking forward to? My mind wants to believe that if I just stay awake longer that the future will never come. But it always does, and I'm always underslept. I don't look forward to tomorrow. To class. To people I don't connect with, assignments I either don't give a shit about or are so mind-numbingly easy that they're a waste of time and thousands of $$$. To a future that I'm unfit for. A future that demands consistency of me that I am incapable of delivering. A future of more boredom, loneliness, sadness. Piss-off. All of it. The only thing I want to do, is nothing. The reason I don't want to sleep is because I know I'll wake-up.
On the street corner, under night-sky streetlight, with a cherry lollipop in-mouth you'll find me whoring for attention. I can throw a pithy pity party the likes of which Gatsby couldn't fathom; sinking into darkness by the fathom, to sirens singing my narcissist anthem. Wolf of Wall Street in blue-collar clothing, I can't stop fleecing admiration— Insatiable vampiric thirst for blood, applause, sex, prostration. It's a complex complex, this home-made maze of mirrors. But now I see myself naked, and I hate it. A narcissistic masochistic sun that blinded itself. Oh how the Narcissus has become the Oedipus.
A tidal wave is crashing. In its wake, enrapturing. There's desperation to resist but I give in to temptation of surrender. Why does this seem more real than anything else seems real? It's not fair. It's not right. It's not. To be drown by the very thing you need. Being happy. Emotions. Oceans. Feelings are better than hearts stopped beating. Leave me be with drawings more relatable than reality to color emptily by drinking increasingly sorrowfully. Please. It's hurting, and not stopping. I'm dying. Sinking slowly. I'm so sorry.