Abnormally Sane

I'm a big fan of abnormality.  I purposely cultivate friendships with "strange" people.  Put simply, they're more interesting because they challenge what "normal" is, and if it's really something we want.  Normalcy, at least in terms of sociological behavior, can be even more insane than individually abnormal behavior.

Don't believe me?  Consider the following:

1.  Economically, we value and depend upon greed as a motivating force to make our economy work yet somehow have trouble understanding when it leads to financial collapses and rampant inequality.  Despite the fact that the majority suffer so that a tiny minority can hold the purse strings and reigns of power, the majority puts up with it because that what they're told to do.  And we do it.

2.  Sociologically, women and men are still far from equal.  Even in so called civilized western societies, it's still par for the course if you treat women as objects of possession and/or with the mind of a child.  In the rest of the world, it's the law and duty of the culture to treat women as no different than property, with little regard for their rights and even less regard for their individual identity.

3. Morally, the vast majority of people still decide what's right and wrong literally based on beliefs that use guilt, fear and authority as moral yardsticks.  You have to believe it or...Else.  Else is usually fear, backed up by some kind of threat by a disembodied Authority figure who can make you suffer, or reward you at will.

Seriously.  This is the model billions of people use for their moral judgments.  

These kinds of beliefs keep us morally subjugated as they exploit facets of our psychology, using manipulation that makes us feel bad in principle (with concepts like Original Sin or some version of the "inherent evil nature of mankind") and then come to the "rescue" with some type of authority figure that can "absolve" you (read: psychologically conditions you to respond to rituals to remove that nagging sense of guilt or fear the belief itself caused).

It's a lot like driving on a lost deserted road and suddenly getting a flat tire.   Somehow... amazingly...there's a lone service station, only a quarter of a mile from where you broke down.  It's only after you pay way too much for a replacement that you realize that nail in the road was placed there by the same guy who fixed your tire.  

You don't motivate good behavior by instilling guilt and fear in people, and then turn around and promise if they only swear their loyalty, they'll get divine grace and forgiveness in return. Whatever that is, it's not morality. Using passive-aggression to corrupt a person's self-esteem, and overwrite their sense of identity so it's entirely dependent on a singular belief (or person) is pretty fucking immoral for a number of reasons.  How this is still regarded as "right" is still a huge mystery to me.

What's worse is these kinds of belief systems are usually instilled in children to keep them mentally sedated, emotionally dependent and "well behaved" all the way into adulthood.
     
This is all true in our culture, yet if an individual were to hold a similar belief that resulted in non-culturally approved of behaviors (for example, someone who cuts the head off a chicken and uses the blood as an offering to some sort of god), they would be regarded as quite insane by contemporary American culture.

But how is this really any different than drinking wine that supposedly transmutes into blood, or eating of bread that represents the body of a supernatural being?  The principle of the belief itself is just as crazy as the guy who thinks you need to drip chicken blood in a circle to come to some greater spiritual awareness.

The "magic" of cultural authority is it gets beliefs that are quite insane to the status of completely normal.  

I think there's a silent majority out there who seriously question just how screwed up all this actually is, and must be thinking to themselves "I wonder if anyone else thinks this is really fucking weird?"

Maybe they have.  Maybe even the vast majority are all thinking this.  But they're not going to do anything about it because they've been led to believe that's just the "way things are."

Heath Ledger's version of the Joker sums it up pretty well:

You know what I've noticed?  Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan."

The vast majority never seem to question (at least publicly) whatever moral narrative they've been spoon fed since childhood.  

Then there are those of us who are labeled quite weird or abnormal by the rest of society because we constantly re-evaluate what we are, who we are, where we are going as individuals, and as a species.  We are the social misfits and the troublemakers, and contrary to popular opinion, real progress in society (that actually leads to less suffering and better quality of life) would not occur if it weren't for people like us who push against the status quo of mediocrity and culturally approved insanity.    

Most people just integrate into society, adopting the cultural insanity and all, if only to get what they need (or think they need) to have a good life.   I've noticed American culture has basically three different strategies or coping mechanisms that seem to be employed with some of the more crazier cultural beliefs:

• Don't ask, don't tell.   Deny, deny, deny.  Our collective social way of dealing with questions that challenge the authority of harmful cultural practices is to deny their existence entirely.  Doing anything approaching a real solution is considered socially crazy or politically suicidal, and will get you isolated and marginalized accordingly if you were to make your beliefs public.      

• Binary solutions.  Zero or one?  True or false?  My way or the highway?  We tend to think of answers to questions as only having two possible solutions or approaches, when they actually have many more.  This limits our imagination in the solutions we come up with.  Binary solutions also tend to reinforce existing power structures where nothing really changes, even if the balance of power shifts to the "other" option we're presented with.  

• Distraction.  This is a relatively new strategy in the cultural game of keeping your population from noticing just how insane things are.   Advances in technology have allowed distraction to become not only a form of social control, but also a form of self-entertained control that we readily and willfully submerge ourselves in.  We can get lost in our own little world of distraction while the rest of the world burns to the ground and we'd be none the wiser.   

I think we have largely lost the ability to think about existential questions meaningfully because we've all been indoctrinated into some form of the above cultural system.  We are all very conditioned to let some combination of external authority and distraction dictate our lives.   Somehow, this is all considered very normal.

Don't trouble yourself with such questions and complicated sociological issues...just do whatever X says, be happy with the degrees of freedom and choices you're given, and just shut the hell up.  That's pretty much the message I got in formal education settings.  

Depending on who you are and where you start, finding your niche in society can include:

• Going to college and finding something you're interested in, spending massive amounts of time and money studying it, and then finding a job where you can be a "productive member of society."

• Learning to hustle and sell anything you can to make enough money to live if you can't afford the above option.  

• Working nine to five in your cubicle, collecting your paycheck, and drinking yourself to sleep as you worry about not being able to pay your mortgage and bills.

Your identity or baseline for "normality" is largely dependent upon what it takes to survive in your immediate environment.  Don't assume what's normal for you to think and feel, is what everyone else ought to think as well.  After you start really talking and getting to know people, you learn very quickly that most everyone is hardwired slightly differently because they all inhabit slightly different environments.  But there are shared and common experiences that we all have, and I'm betting some of us have come to the same conclusion...

Something is seriously insane about our culture.  

Yet, people en masse don't tend say anything when it's all a culturally reinforced illusion.  Individual identity becomes submissive and subverted to cultural authority.  It's considered weird or rude if you share doubts or voice criticism that flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and even if you do have these thoughts, you're told you can't go against the status quo anyhow.  If you do, you're quickly put into your place by others who believe they're similarly limited, and therefore confer the same illusion onto you.  It becomes a vicious self-reinforcing cycle where everyone learns to limits their degrees of freedom in what they're allowed to think and consequently, what they're allowed to change.

Instead, we play this game where talk to each other, but don't really communicate anything.  It's just parroting and repeating of the thoughts of those around us.  We're so interconnected now that I think a lot of individuals of this generation don't know how to make themselves more self-aware in a world where being interconnected with everyone and everything is instrumental as part of how we "make our living."   In the process of doing this, the skills of honing and developing individual responsibility, personal authority and a strong separate identity are quickly becoming a thing of the past.    

The Magician's Mind

Funny how conversations with people you know can change the way you look at the world and yourself. Or how changing aspects of yourself consciously can alter your perceptions, radically changing what you value or how you view the world.

Are successful people just intuitively good at figuring how to re-program (read: fool) themselves or others?  Is this something you're just born being good at, or is an acquired skill?

Is it a coincidence that the most famous and successful people, as we define them in our society at least, are extroverts?  They get energized by meeting people.  Not only that, they learn from other people at the speed of light.  Their emotional intelligence is usually off the chart, which gives them the unique ability to network and meet new people with ease.  In a lot of ways, they have their own "internet" of people.

It is primarily the two abilities of re-programming the self and ability to network and learn from other people that are probably the highest predictors of success in whatever field a person chooses to excel in.  Being book smart can only get you so far.  The valuable bits of information are really kept in the heads of other people, that you won't find by Googling.    

I used to look at this point of view with a certain disdain because I assumed it required mock sincerity.  Self-proclaimed gurus, healers and self-help salesman usually make me want to vomit.  But the truth is some of these people know what they're talking about.  Especially the ones who aren't looking to make a buck directly from dispensing their "wisdom." They're describing  a very real social placebo effect.

But when you see real life people employing similar belief systems that focus on the self, and seeing them become more successful, it's hard to argue that whatever it is they're doing isn't actually working on some level.  They're trying to meet some kind of of bar or measure of success, and having that bar regarded as something that is quite real in their mind seems to make success more likely.  

For better or worse, that is the price we pay for living in a society that defines the bar of success as being able to fool and/or educate as many people as possible.  The most successful people in the world aren't those who produce the most amount of widgets per hour.  They're the people who convince you that you need the widget to begin with and profit as a result.  

Think about it.  Some of the brightest minds and life altering ideas have developed in total obscurity and weren't the result of being motivated by success or fame.  The people who came up with these ideas didn't go seeking contemporary success and fame in order to get posthumous and historical recognition.  It just happened that way in hindsight, and we see people like Plato and Shakespeare as larger than life only after enough time has elapsed and we've decided (after the fact) that their work is meaningful.

I used to think I could be happy with the contemporary obscurity choice.  But I see it's not even possible in today's society to get your basic needs without resorting to selling something that people actually need or think they need.  If I had to pick, I'd want whatever it is I choose to do to feed a real need, rather than just help someone put another dollar in their pocket.

But at the same time, I realize that I need some financial success in the here and now in order to purchase additional degrees of freedom.  I may not give a rats ass about being wealthy, but I'd like to have some type of shelter to rest at night, a working toilet, a hot shower, a full belly, and a soft bed where I can lay my head down.  Do I need these things to live?  No.   Do I think everyone deserves access to these things as a basic human right, no matter how menial their job?   Absolutely.  And here we are, still the biggest first fucking world power, and we can't even do that.      

I feel like I have to pretend or become something I'm really not in order to get what I want out of life.  I have to "sell myself.".  And that requires a bit of selling out and playing the game; or as magicians call it, playing into the role of performing a good trick.. It can be a slippery slope to believing in your own magic.  But I don't have to believe in what I'm saying is actually valuable to everyone; just to me.  If others find it useful, cool.  If not, that's cool too.  

Fuck society's expectations.  There are people out there who have already figured out the key to success is to NOT care that the world is full of stupid, selfish people who mostly take up space and leave the planet and the people worse off than before they came into existence.  Maybe it's equal parts caring and not caring.  Not caring enough to know the odds are against you if you want to do whatever it is that makes you happy and makes your life meaningful, but caring enough to do what you want anyhow despite the obstacles and people in your way, and leaving behind some type of legacy that would benefit others in some way.    

Making the Statue of Liberty disappear is a great trick.  But it's also pretty fucking useless.   It doesn't make me understand the trick any better by telling me "it's magic."     No, it's not just fucking magic.  And it's not God, or the spirits, or luck, or raw talent, or the flaming ego of the magician that makes what they do so great.  But you know what, David Copperfield?  If that's what makes you happy, go ahead and do that.  Personally, I prefer Penn and Teller because they're good enough to show the audience that it's all just a trick.

The greatest trick of all time is to think success is anything more than a socially constructed illusion.  If society were to collapse tomorrow, all the paper money, stocks and gold in the world would be worth jack shit.

In the end, it's just a skill someone has refined to the point of near-perfection.  It's an ability to make others perceive the world as you do, either by the art of ego-stroking persuasion or by discovering and exposing fundamental truths about the world or yourself, that make others think you're onto something.  

On Love and Free Will

After looking and re-reading my previous posts, I think I might come off as a Negative Ned.  Far be it that only dark and depressing things hang around my mind.  So let's talk about love.

I think love is the most deeply powerful, emotional and mentally life affirming thing in the world.  Or at least that's how it makes me feel.  I could write a thousand pages on one lover, regarding every experience I've ever had while in was in love with her, and it sill wouldn't come close to the emotion itself.   This is how good it feels.  To someone who has felt this, they may or may not relate to this feeling.   This is my own internal feeling of how I think romantic love feels and consequently, how it ought to feel.

I'm about to get all Subjective romantic theories of love on your ass.  Maybe when I finally finish up my degree, I'll call it something more academic   Anyhow, my hypothesis is this:

I think our first love hardwires us as individuals, more so than most of us we'd be willing to admit. This effects our degrees of free will.

It helps to form our emotional concept of love and consequently, requires us to make comparisons to this feeling as a kind of emotional baseline of what love is, the next time we think we feel it.  Subconsciously, the first person (you fell in love with) traits and personality get correlated with the emotion that we assign as "romantic love and attraction", and this is the actual reason we continues to act in (either wise, but mostly stupid) ways because the first emotional correlation of love (which isn't necessarily the healthiest one) continues to fuck with our understanding of love far into adulthood.

How's that for an abstract?  I always wanted to search the word "fuck" in the peer-reviewed journal databases.

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure this has been studied at some point, but I'm not here to do original research   I've been similarly guilty of re-inventing the hover-car.  Seriously, when I was around 6, I hadn't yet watched the Jetson's or Star Wars, and I drew a hover car, complete with drawings and little diagrams showing how the rubber skirt kept the air from blowing out.  Anyhow, my dad promptly told me "They already have those" and in my mind, I remember thinking "son of a bitch" and that scene where Ralphy from A Christmas Story gets his decoder ring from Little Orphan Annie, only to find out the secret message is an advertisement for Ovaltine.  If you younger people haven't seen this, go Youtube.


Anyhow, I think our concepts of love develop depending largely on what type of personality traits you had before you experienced love for the first time.  

If you're someone who falls in love often (or thinks you do...not sure if there's a difference), you may have some kind of biological predisposition for your internal feeling/association with love, combined with the personality traits of the person you first associated love with, and you act in ways where you think you can repeat this feeling by seeking out partners with similar behaviors.      

Duh, right?  You knew that.  You ain't no dummy.

But then there are those of us who rarely feel it, for whatever reason  For whatever reason, be it biology or rearing, it takes a certain something more to turn us on.  Fewer people seem to be built this way.   I'm going to go out on a limb and say a whopping two people I've been in love with is on the low side at the age of 33.

Yet, I'm pretty sure I've never really thought about this fact about myself because I've never thought outside of my own head.  Now that I am, it's pretty clear that probably is going to skew my perception of love, and it needs to change if someone like me wants to be in something like a relationship..  I have to be willing myself not to act in ways in which I'm merely "filling the emotional hole" temporarily.  Or at least find someone who's willing to have their hole filled many many times.  *ba da tiss*    

It all comes down to the degrees of free will you actually want, versus the degrees you were born or programmed with.

I'm using scientific language, but I think this has all been covered in poetry.  Give me some fucking Dylan Thomas or D.H. Lawrence, and their descriptions of love will make you cream your pants, dripping with sultry hot lovers on cold winter nights, or the excesses and destruction love can wrought on the hearts of those who love too much.

I think I want part of what everyone else wants.  Someone who understands and cares about them, but also wants the passion of being wanted (and wanting them) on a gut emotional/physical level.   I want that to work and not be dysfunctional.  

That's a hard match for me.  She's out there somewhere.  At least I like to think so.  Here's some Nick Cave.  He explains it better than I can.

https://youtu.be/rKlaV-9Vzsk