They told me of necrophilia, beastiality and pedophilia in their culture. How true was it? It was propaganda to dehumanize the enemy but I still think there may have been some truth to it. I mean to say such things may be more prevalent there than in other cultures. Although such things are probably even greater crimes there than here, if that's possible... Well maybe not beastiality of that they were many stories... Anecdotes from people not a part of the propaganda machine...

The extreme sexual repression did lead to the men being hypersexual. That which is hidden becomes an all consuming interest; the sight of an ankle being some huge turn on. And without any reality the imagination is free to run wild.

So what are the results of sexual repression on a society? We can't learn so much maybe based on real world examples... but sociological studies would be nice. For the real world there are other factors confusing the issue, not to mention genetics are real.

What was the point in the first place of sexual repression? There is the christian ideal of concentrating solely on the afterlife and having no interest in fun today. But I don't think that's really it so much, probably was based primarily on men owning women and making sure that other men simply wouldn't be allowed to even see them at all. Not even an ankle. I think this is what is basically still going on in the ME. With FGM in a few places to ensure further that women won't want to cheat. The men who made their women cover up and forced FGM on them perhaps were slightly more likely to spread their genes...? Or at least that kind of thinking in general led them also to other measures which did.

The same would work for men keeping covered too. To ensure a women wouldn't covet a man, thus make him cover up at least some...

So we hide how much we make. We hide what we really think. We hide our bodies...

Bad results of this repression? The marionette/isolation. Excessive preoccupation. Rape, etc? Bad matches... Seems so obvious to just look at naked tribes in the forest. But too many variables. Mostly... simply genetics.

The perfect study never to be done again:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15629096
Results locked away till 2066. Of course it's way more than 50% genetics. Short of routine beatings and/or malnutrition...

The PC thing to do is pretend we're all the same genetically and all our differences can be explained by our environment. .... There is a horrifying example of evolution which has happened in the last few hundred years which is so obvious. But we must not mention it. Keep that curtain closed!

http://www.vdare.com/Sailer/pioneer.htm
"Remarkably, separated identical twins were more similar than fraternal twins raised in the same home."
Of course.

"One scientist [presumably the great Arthur Jensen] had to be accompanied by an armed guard on his own campus, as well as guarded in his own home. Another scientist was required by his university to teach his classes by closed circuit television, supposedly in order to prevent a riot breaking out in his class. Several scientists had university and other speaking engagements canceled or interrupted by gangs of students or outside toughs. … Two scientists who had speaking engagements in Australia needed 50 policemen to rescue them from a mob. At one major university a professor invaded the class of another professor, led a raucous demonstration there, and had to be removed by campus police. The son of one of Pioneer's directors agreed to succeed his father on the Pioneer board, but then withdrew when the son's wife objected, citing social ostracism and physical danger.

Other examples of the intimidation of Pioneer-funded scientists include the 1973 beating of Britain's best-known psychologist Hans J. Eysenck as he attempted to lecture at the London School of Economics. In 1990, the Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, where Eysenck had been for 44 years, prohibited him from receiving any further support from the Pioneer Fund. Yet that was the same year that a survey of leading American psychologists and historians named Eysenck among the top ten most influential psychologists in the world."
Of course.

Anyway I recognize it's not very useful to try to understand the effects of cultural differences by comparing very large groups.

Too classic.

Power struggle/balance. Becoming a marionette. Becoming not you. Becoming incapable of being you. Forgetting what that even is...

....A different balance.... a mood balance... When one person is unhappy balancing them by being happier than you might otherwise be. And vice versa... But not everyone does it... and those who do, don't always.

There was once an unhappy person that I both "won" the power balance with and who was very unhappy. The result was me so at ease and naturally falling into a role of being so damm happy around them... trying to cheer them up and accomplishing the opposite I think. Like monkeys just... displaying dominance in some strange totally unmeant way. A smile Seems to mean such a different thing for humans... but does it really? Yes, it does. Sometimes.

Perhaps they're both just me. Too full of some kind of fear and the ultimate contrarian. Never have I thought any depressed person a "downer". Only happy people annoy me, lol.

These are all partial lies.

----

Today I went to a football game and yelled "Yeah!" at the crucial moment of a long touchdown run. Froze my ass off and was bored by the conversation. 12 hours of stupid sexual puns. But all that trifling talk and laughing, it works so much better at the end, at the moment of dropping the people off and saying goodbye. It makes sense then, seems that things have been the way they were "supposed" to have been. I suppose...

---

Discarded another song I wrote. So sick of music. Except this:

My 5 year old nephew is so silly. I try to teach him to read and he won't be bothered; more interested in being silly. I try to teach him even how to do a pushup even and it's the same. Anything that is percieved as unexpectedly wrong is seen as funny and my 5 year old nephew is constantly full of euphoria. The very act of me being serious is hilarious.

It worries me as one can't go through life like that. But really it would be a better way to live. I ought to go along with him more. So much better to look on the past and see lots of laughing...

Rooting out the magic... I think to enjoy music it must have something that is "magical" about it. Lately I've not enjoyed music much.

When younger I'd visit/move to new places and they'd have their own unique feel to them. It seemed a thing of magic to me. I wasn't able to logically understand how they "felt". Occasionally synethesia became involved. I remember driving in the middle of the night to San Franciso when I was 18 and it had such a strong feel and I even started to smell this... calming smell. (I whom have almost no sense of normal smell.)

Fort Ord was like the president's nuclear holocaust dream in Dreamscape.
Kentucky was like that place in Stephen King's The Stand; an awful dead place.
West Virginia is slightly positive. Not so many unhappy spirits, quiet at least.
For all it's chavs etc England was overflowing with magic. I'm someone else there...
Germany is hard to make sense of... like I wasn't really there...
Many places had not much feel though...New England, Crete, Maryland, Florida, New Mexico. Many just felt slightly sleepy like Niagara/Toronto.

Is it not all a pile of shaving cream? Was there really no magic? Just really unexamined thinking, preconceptions, a very few visual cues, etc, thrown together and becoming some psuedo magic? No different than people who think they're psychics/mediums?

No amount of time in Kentucky would change it. It is an evil place. Happy people from there are to be avoided...

I'd so much like it to be all magic going on within me. I can't quite stand to find out how wrong I am. I need some belief in magic. I'm losing what little I had.

The UK was especially some "magical" place. Not for any particular logical reason. But for magical reasons. I feel I was predestined to live there. That something went horribly awry. But it's a bit of belief in magic that is leaving me now. Ultimately I saw english TV shows and they sounded smarter with their pretty accents. They were the best TV shows (Doctor Who, Monty Python). Better than anything here. So, you know, half assed thinking when 10 or so became ingrained in me somehow very deeply beyond logical thought. But then furthermore I had the sex hormones running like crazy back then (must reproduce!!!) so I attached the idea of a english woman. That became a part of the predestined feel. But it was a vague thing of course. Now I Know real live people from the UK, with beautiful accents and they're too real. They can't be a part of that predestined stupid "magical" notion. They must be sufficiently vague for it to work.

You see you have to take a human and turn them into a symbol; much like is done with "love" as Zizek so complains about... (at least I think that's part of what he's getting at). And anyway, it's an awful thing to do to anyone; this turning of people into symbols. It takes some ignoring who they really are.

But then... as so much successful reproducing is accomplished thanks to this "love" perhaps people learn to act in ways where it's hard to not turn them into a symbol...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081124/ap_on_re_us/truman_syndrome#full

I wonder if this is related Kundera's Imaginary Eyes? Of course there is a very important difference. That difference being actually still knowing what reality is.

But does everyone really have imaginary eyes upon them? I don't think so. Perhaps they do and just don't realize it. Much like they cry without understanding what's going on. Or like there aren't actually any real atheists.. (sigh). I dunno. But it seems to me it's quite possible that many people don't actually have imaginary eyes upon them. Perhaps this edge of schizophrenia (where you have such bizarre things going on but yet still know what reality is) is also the essential beginnings of creativity.

----

There is a point of view. A view which attempts to encompass the entire world and in so doing finds a great lacking; finds an absence. And because of this situation; there are many actions which normally would be absurd.... dangerous, futile.... that instead are better than nothing.

But then at other times... these people aren't trying on a POV that encompasses the entire world and finds a lacking... and then so many of their actions seem absurd, dangerous, futile....

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/aug/09/slavoj.zizek
The picture completely and perfectly does not capture whom Zizek is. The picture is a perfect lie and makes pictures pointless.

-----

I have endless little pieces of paper strewn about my house with notes on them. Most are too embarrassing to even put here on an anonymous unlinked blog.

---
(The asshole, the marionette, and the homosexual....) (Hmmm, not good terms.) First the marionette, then the homosexual, then the asshole who at least likes you and is real.

"We 'feel free' because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom."
-Zizek (I think). From the movie 'Zizek!'

"I always tell the truth. Not the whole truth because one can't. To say everything is impossible. There aren't enough words. It's this impossibility which brings truth close to the "real"." -Jacques Lacan

(reminds me of my first attempt at naming my music... "Partial Truth"... as it really annoyed me how it wasn't the entire truth... Strange how that bothers me... Just want to seperate myself from the extreme posing of most people writing music... I guess... It's supposed to be facets of who you really are and it really seems that other people are usually pretending to be things they aren't. ...Or so clearly not real that there's no mistake... This of course totally my subjective opinion. My dumb subjective opinion.

I think of NIN compared to Skinny Puppy. Like many others I disliked NIN because they seemed a watered down version of Skinny Puppy which was safe for public consumption. Which is to say it was just selling out. And that... Reznor couldn't possibly like that crap music he's spent his life writing... Surely he couldn't! It's just posing! Dishonesty! Pretending to be something he's not! LOL. Of course at least in Reznor's case I think it is geniune... Not his fault his music doesn't quite do it for me or that the mass media wouldn't play Skinny Puppy.

But then soundclick has that same thing going on... music I don't like... so surely it's just "posing" (No, it isn't.) But then combined with fake writeups. "Shattered Ream burst onto the Toronto industrial scene in 2001 with their debut album blah, blah, blah combining syncopated blah, blah, blah with hard driving rythms..." (Bio actually written by the one guy who wrote the music alone with Fruit Loops...)

Plus just the very fact that it's fantasy to begin with... It's creativity. Of course it's not real...??

So in response to a feeling of dishonesty which comes from multiple sources; some real, some just arrogant personal failings, wanted to separate myself... But it ends up that the creativity is constrained because bizarrely it wants to stay honest....? Bizarre. What the hell does that even mean? I dune frikin newww.

----

LOL. Zizek is a one finger typist. The Elvis of cultural criticism. But how fast can you type?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta
meta-actions? Looking at any action and reducing it to it's essential meaning. Understanding the prime motive behind it. How it was a beneficial mutation. What essential purpose it served.

Doing this and going stark raving mad. What should be relatively small events, annoying minutia(sp), to downright seemingly innocent gestures... turned into symbols. All reduced to symbols in a fight to the death. The angry artist howling in rage at windmills. Very scary.

http://thetoofarfuture.blogspot.com/2008/11/not-right-scene.html
Not so much vitality/virility although that plays a role. It was about being able to see beauty in ..just about anything. And understanding how relative it is. For a fat women you think about flesh in general. With women it's softer so with a really fat women: wonderful endless soft flesh! Why you can just about disappear into it! The ultimate orgy of the flesh for Paxton!

One can look at a female ape... and if you weren't aware what the males looked like you'd think it male. But once you've seen the males, suddenly it's properly feminine, (if the relative you keep in mind is solely the male ape) The gentle sex. Gentle and snuggly and... that's enough. The point was just being able to see beauty anywhere and as result understanding how relative it is really. Personally I have tried to reject the usual understanding of beauty, where it's relative to all other members of the species and just taking the average. The most perfectly boringly normal. I don't like that version of beauty... But beauty is about being relative to something. Better than some other thing... the most general idea is less likely to be mutated/defective, thus normal beauty is the most perfectly regular features. (Yes, it comes right back to evolution/successfullly spreading one's genes.) I think of some royal family in europe long ago where they were so inbred their elongated jaws quit working properly and they had trouble eating... Saw a picture of one of them. Probably of course the most flattering possible picture. I thought her so beautiful. To me a long jaw is beautiful. Elongated faces, almost like Easter Island statues. In Australia it seems there's something going where a few people have these freakishly long faces. At least I've seen them in movies a few times and it was always Astralians. Was fascinated by it. I have it slightly. Not freakishly.

But being able to see every person as beautiful is a nice thing. And I can just about do it. Almost. But I quit bothering with it quite a while back, for the most part...

Attached somewhat to a larger idea of being alone in a room and staring at a wall for years and being perfectly happy. Bizarre idea of mine when younger. "I'm turning myself into steel to be invincible!" (Silly Fist of the North Star anime line.) That was the idea, to be invincibly happy.

But I rejected so much of my thoughts from back then. Regarded it all as... invalid as it was not based on the thinking of a person that remotely was the common man. Which now at least, in a sense, I'm the common man. Except with the remains of that having pushed me in something of an unusual direction.

I thought of it as being similar to stoics. And also associated with Vancian characters who even while being tortured kept a relatively even keel.

Quickly now.... "I think with my gut." That sounds a ridiculous way of putting it. How is it that people put it to make it sound like some kind of good thing? George Bush said it. This lady at work who's scared of Obama said it. Etc. Why do people think it's a good thing?

1. It suggests magic. They think they come to correct decisions this way. Some think it even a better way of making a decision then really sitting down and thinking things through. It feels so nice to decide that it has some merit. But for it to have some merit it is suggesting some unknown force. Magic, etc.

2. It's the easy way out. A way out for stupid people.

The reality is that the only difference between "thinking with your gut"/instinctual thinking and really trying to logically think things through is that the former is thinking that is completely unexamined. Just haphazard crap thinking. That is all. There is nothing magical about it. What it is really is a nice way to make a stupid decision.

If a person says such a thing, be afraid. They of course may still be a relatively decent person, better than average. They may have somehow had it ground into them to treat others with decency. But they're still making all kinds of mistakes. Probably their life is one big mistake. And spend enough time around them, and sooner or later, don't be surprised when they screw you over.

So it would definitely be too much trouble to keep multiple journals... I think. As opposed to just writing a bunch of different stuff in a single journal. The issue is diary type stuff. I've held back from including it here mostly. I shouldn't have. Will hold back less in the future. Good to have a clue who I was etc 10 years from now. I think back to who I was ten, 20 years previous. I have unusually good reasons for wondering if I was very similar as in some ways I've changed hugely over the years.

But ultimately I always had flashes of impressive intelligence combined with flat old stupidity. I scored in the 99.85%ile on the GRE. Had a bad day and scored in the 98%ile of my nursing entrance exam. Am barely surviving actual nursing school. Questions are way too subjective.

As with the AMA where half the potentially good doctors are turned away simply to maintain artificial scarcity and keep salaries inflated. So it goes in other fields I guess. It is capitalism. There must be pain for those who do OK. And there must be some who don't make it... So we have nursing school. My younger sister is a nurse. She was the dumb one in the family. She says she could teach me what I need to know to be a nurse in a couple weeks on the job. Every test I learn the material and then only get an 80/75% because there are always a number of extremely vague questions.

Your patient has trouble swallowing. Should you tell the nurses aide to:
A. feed him small amounts
B. cut his food into bite sized pieces

It so happens that I am a nurses aide on a neurology floor. I got this extremely vague question wrong. This question has nothing to do with anything really. Just a random spinning of the wheel to ensure there are some failures.

I'm thinking of a number. Is it:
A. 3
B. 7

Trying to just keep my mouth shut as I won't be changing the way things are done here. Perhaps I'll mess up big time these last few crucial tests. Probably I won't. No point getting annoyed/angry about it.

So close to freedom now. I suppose I could just take this week off..? Just daydream through class. Doesn't matter. Lectures are taped. Next week off. Tonight will look into building some cheap cat shelters. That will be fun. I remember I used to yearly try to save a few hundred tadpoles before parents cleaned their pool up for the summer.

I'd put them in a kiddie pool and they'd turn into frogs and hop away. Always loved frogs. One year my retarded rightwing brother-in-law flipped the kiddie pool when they were still all tadpoles, thus killing them all. The pathological liar... the very bad patholgical liar whom constantly tells lies that are so obvious they are that much more insulting claimed he didn't notice the 500 tadpoles in the pool.

I'm so impressed with myself that I never beat the living crap out of him; the stuff he's done. The thing is, ultimately it'd be like fighting a marshmellow. Lucky for him. (Not an issue now; this violence. Was when younger. Lucky for him back then he's such a pitiful marshmellow it held me back, he's done far worse than the... silly tadpole thing. That's nothing.)
----
How different, how the same was I ten years previous?

More temper. More sexual. More likely to destroy a multiple choice test but I think I can pretty much ignore these nursing tests. They are not about common sense. They are a special kind of learning to conform I think. Where it's not about logical thinking. It's about almost instinctually knowing what actions will be pleasing to the authority figure. So like Airman Mantooth lies and says he didn't have money to get a haircut. Why? Because it's not about universal ideals; not about the universal ideal of honesty. It's about the ideals of The Group. About being a team; working together. Pointing out this other's person dishonesty would show that the team was really not working together at all and instead it was just every man for himself. This would anger the leader, the older man.

Reading and loving Zizek. Wow! Wonderful stuff... Very... nourishing. Anyway though perhaps he doesn't understand (or I should say doesn't give enough emphasis) how men think in terms of groups, that such is our evolution. That it's rarely really about universal ideals.

And so, smaller meals or cut into bite sized pieces? Don't think logically about how we have no idea at all what the consistency of the food is. Don't think about how we should assume a continuum from steak to yogurt. Some bell sized probabilty curve of what consistency the food might be..... TBH, I have no clue how in the world anyone would deduce the correct answer is small amounts.

If you have to cut it, it's too hard. It should be food that doesn't need cutting therefore it's small amounts? Why would someone make such assumptions? They get the orders wrong all the time at the hospital. In class they've told us repeatedly not to make assumptions.

Oh, stupid to bother thinking about. Just a retarded question. When I hear other people got 90plus percent I think they must be stupid. Or perhaps much, much better at just instinctually assimilating correctly. This isn't logic. It's not universal ideals. The world we live in today is the result of some groups defeating others through violence. Being able to think logically was helpful... but it's a special kind of logic. Where the ability to think logically doesn't get in the way of the mindless assimilating necessary for the group to work very well together. IOW to just follow whoever managed to get the power thanks to their shortcomings. (Their power hungryness). To listen to the order to go kill those other people.

It is the same. The disregarding of logic and instead mindless conforming. The reason why it works, the reason it exists in our society is because it was a beneficial trait. A trait that increased the potential to spread genes. Because it meant listening to the power hungry leader and killing the Others. This same trait (mindless assimilation) is then used for things not related to war/violence. Mundane crap including even this nursing program, in which the material is too easy so they have to put extremely subjective questions and just almost arbitrarily flunk a few people. Which ends up being perhaps a few who don't instinctually assimilate to whatever illogical type of thinking they are supposed to be applying.

How did this one go...? Everybody's so happy... As the troops run across the battlefield they have such smiles. They work as a team. Working toward such glorious victory. A man's leg is blown off and he screams in agony. "Go to it boys!" he yells motioning them on...
--
In an office with a smile he sneaks up and stabs her in the back. She arches her back staggers forward, looks at the camera, smiles and shrugs and slips to the ground.
--
Jolly, jolly, jolly we march and dance and sing and slip the knives....

(ha ha HA)

Monterey 1990

In the distance off in the fields the machines harvest food aplenty for all. It's a beautiful day. The wind blows softly through the flowers. Birds sing in the trees. Across these beautiful fields we fly. There is no site of life in these fields but finally we abruptly hit civilization. Neat identical houses in grids of concrete roads.

We come to a row of long buildings and come through a window...

The older man venomounsly whispers... "Airman Mantooth, your sideburns are not within the 3/4 quarter inch regulation. This insubordination is the disobeyence of a direct order as per reg 5:24/03. I can have you put in jail for this."

The older man turns to Kessinger, "Hall Leader, was Airman Mantooth notified by you that his hair was out of regulation?"

"Yes sir, I notified him last week," lied Airman Kessinger.

"Is this true Airman Mantooth?" asks the older man.

Airman Mantooth thinks, 'Telling the truth (that Kessinger never said any such thing, not to mention no one was actually aware of any such regulation) would not work. It would be disasterous to do... but why exactly Mantooth could not put his finger on it... but he had learned that this was how it was.'

"Sir, I had no money to get a haircut."

The older man stared like to bore holes through him then asks, "In the future you make sure to ask your hall leader for money if you can't afford a haircut."

Some few additional threats made on his life later and the two leave the older man's office.

"Well I thought that went rather well," says Kessinger.

Mantooth snorts in disgust amazed that Kessinger would even speak to him after his betrayal.

Kessinger thinks, 'Well of course I had to save myself as anyone would do. No hard feelings...'

They come up to the chow hall line as the bell strikes 13. "ding a ring!!" Everyone simultaneously jumps in the air with a half twist to the right and a flourish of their right arm to the sky. Except Miranda who's flourish is hesitant and too parallel. Over the loud speaker:

"Airman Miranda, report to the office at 4:30pm."

Miranda turns pale and his fellows immediately move away from him.

Upstairs an airman sobs uncontrollably in his room, splits open his veins and looks out the window in the distance at the beautiful fields in the distance. He sees the machines. In the early morning when the wind was right you could even hear them. He does not know, nor wonder what they do; what they're for.

And this too because, well you know, this is like how our ethics is really nothing but self interest. The truth ever so slightly hidden behind some nice sounding words. And so this cartoon, Tom and Jerry, which all children of my age grew up with. This is the reality of that cartoon. This was our entertainment. The truth of it. There was something related to this, another cartoon about a cat, that did something horrible to me. And I'm not kidding, something permanently horrible that I never talk about because it's beyond understanding. Straight to the looney bin with me if I try. Wish I could find that one online.

How I loved this when I was 16. Doesn't quite work for me now. Why? I think I was just closer to exploding back then and not as choosey.

Not the right scene... there was a scene in this movie with the costar Bill Paxton where he's about to have an orgy with three 500 lb women. It's not that he's just got a thing for fat chicks, it's that he's got an extreme vitality/lust for life... I always liked the idea of being like that. And although 500 pounders are pushing it way too far I have tried to find the perspective where I could have such ..."vitality".. virility, whatever. Just to be that alive... I have tried to find a way where I find people attractive who really, by normal standards aren't. Just for fun, as I'm like that.

I don't know how it happened... was it from doing that... or did it just happen "naturally" later but I really like slightly androgounous(sp) or slightly manly women. Maybe I did the above and liked the results so much it stuck with me. (Lusting for really fat women has not stuck with me.) I can think of a number of women that most men would find a little disgusting in their manliness that I really find attractive.

Thing is a few of them are very alone. As being a manly women who still likes men (or thinks that they do... or some degree of whatever/confused). And so on top of that I feel like.. heh, I'd really like to show them that someone finds them very attractive. But married to a relatively conservative women I can't.

My current job has ruined my sexual appetite. Perhaps it's no big deal. But it makes me feel old.

In The Dark Backwards, it's a dystopia where people drink things like pig juice, that along with Paxton sucking slimey stuff off 500 lb women's breasts... My current job... heh. There are many ugly things tied into sex. I'm too aware of that to begin with and my new job (it's been 10 months now) brings certain ugliness into an even starker contrast. I don't think I've had sex 15 times in the last 8 months. I never thought I'd be the kind of person who rarely had sex. As that Paxton vitality used to be something I thought a good thing and prided myself on....

I love this movie though.

The lie of ethics

When typical atheists try to logically explain moral actions in practice all they're talking of really is self interest. Ask them about the ethicality of veganism and it turns out that morality is really just a nice word for self interst.

When you ask a christian about how one determines if an action is moral, it's just a matter of doing as one is told (along with interpreting what one has been told...)

It is a lie for such atheists to use words like ethics and morality. The christian can at least use such words, although they can't back it up with a very good reason why.

It looks like that old ugly idea that atheists are evil, which isn't actually the case at all. Because actually they do moral actions (not in their self interest) all the time. Because actually they don't truly act like atheists. In fact it's not actually possible to live like an atheist.

In fact they are more moral generally than christians as they are open more to the questioning of ugly traditions generally. And whether or not they are vegan they do act in ways that are outside of their self interest... occasionally. But whenever they do so they are going outside of atheism. They are not living as an atheist. But then when they get out of bed in the morning they've already ruined that.

...but that wasn't the point. The point was the lie. Christian ethics can't be taken very seriously. That leaves these attempts at logic which reduce to self interest yet are called ethics. It is a lie upon which our society sort of wobbles... Wobbles as although that's about the best people can manage to express/argue about, there is something very real other than that which is going on, which is making us act in ways that cannot be brought back to self interest or "god said so".

But it is such a hazy, fuzy, haphazard thing which is going on; a thing that these people can't express, s that of course we mostly do just act in our own self interest. A very short term self interest.

Veeellll.... there is only the game. There is nothing outside the game. All is happiness as one plays the game wholeheartedly; buying into the system completely... Win or lose, the game is goood. Yeppers.

(...those who dare to step outside...) DO NOT THINK OF SUCH THINGS!

I didn't drink coffee yesterday and thus slept well last night. The problem with sleeping well is that you wake up and it's like starting over. Things need reviewing... either because they simply were forgotten or at least one feels as if they must have been forgotten. And ugly things are reviewed. Endlessly reviewed... at least until you're old enough that you never sleep well. (Maybe that's the real reason older people are happier generally...)

Why not review mainly happy things?

One punch in the face is worth a hundred hugs....?

Or perhaps bad sleep just leaves one too tired to bother thinking enough to review these things?

I don't think so...

I've wondered before how would life be different if people didn't need to sleep. I think I thought it would be a good thing because we'd quit forgetting... our emotional states... and what really makes us happy/unhappy, etc. We'd stop endlessly repeating our failures...

Perhaps... but perhaps we'd instead very quickly realize just how little there is that makes up life. And quickly get very very bored. With perfect memory might not boredom come very quick?

A final pulling back of the curtain again.

Dunno.

But when I quit drinking coffee and started raging, was I smarter or dumber? Was it just some chemical withdrawal? Was I reviewing past negatives?

I think just the latter.

To what extent do fantasy goals keep people going in general?

My fantasy is to write books I suppose... that really make a difference. It's more out there than Joe The Plumber's. Becoming rich is I suppose a more realistic goal/fantasy. Socialism would certainly destroy the goal of many people. Would need to help them find some other goal...

And/or show them how empty their goal actually is...? But is it really empty, Relatively speaking?

...I wonder why properly formatted links don't appear, oh well.
http://unemployednegativity.blogspot.com/2008/11/address-my-fantasy.html

----

I have to sleep better. It was two weeks after stopping the coffee that I began having... "issues". Shall try to just drink a cup every other day or so.

I do believe in evolution.

I think our ancestors were single celled organisms with no ability to "think"; that certain mutations improved their ability to spread their genes.

That ultimately we exist, we are alive; solely to try to keep staying alive. This "thinking" thing we developed has... sometimes really increased our ability to spread our genes. But there are many other beneficial mutations that are highly illogical.

So much of what we do is ultimately pointless and bizarre. It's... stuff related to what was generally beneficial mutations that doesn't necessarily make any sense in this very different world today.

I ruthlessly pull back the curtain; strip everything bare and scream at the result. (And one of these days I'll check the proper use of a semicolon...)

At the same time I've recognized that atheism is wrong in that it's not thinking towards the future, it's not practicing enough forethought. With such forethought there is no reason to get out of bed in the face of the final total memory swipe. So I want "magic". I want "gods".

It's a huge contradiction. I'm pulling back all the curtains while wanting magic so bad; trying to create magic.

Something needs to be done about this contradiction. It's not possible for me to stop pulling back the curtain. I can't stand that which is unknown. Yet I desperately need that which is unknown because only the unknowable is magical/godlike/something other than ceasing to exist.

And everyday is like an entire life. Waking up and trying to quickly retrace the patterns in my mind; the important patterns; why am I doing such and such again...? Some days my mind just is too tired. Some days I fail. Some days by 4pm I'm ready to punch whoever so hard I'll decapitate them.
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Another pulling curtain example from long past very quickly and partially slapped down:

The heart of sex is just some bizarre illogical thing going back to single celled organisms. We can greatly heighten the enjoyment of it at least mostly by adding really ugly things on top. Suggestions of power, etc.

Like I talk really intelligently while caressing some lady's breast and she just about goes bananas. Ugh. She thinks I sound intelligent and that suggests power and that adds so much. It's reproduction plus latching on to someone who will even better ensure her genes will be passed on. Thus totally biologically, the beneficial mutations kick in. Etc. Ugh. Could go on and on. Can't stand to.
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Too intelligent. Devolution. That beneficial mutation called thinking went too far and quit being beneficial.

Lot of stupid posts here. But it's not linked anywhere...

Dreams (as in goals, aspirations...) (the size of) are some product of:
1. How long you think you're going to exist.
A. Life expectancy - age
B. Degree of belief in religion/spirituality........magic...
2. Belief in self...?

Harold and Kumar
I find it torturous to watch certain things in movies. In the past dishonesty drove me nuts. Much easier to watch a slasher film than a comedy based on someone going to extreme lengths to pull off some lie (like... Mrs. Doubtfire or that guy in The Fockers (ben stiller, etc, etc.) Drives me nuts.

In Harold and Kumar the scene with the swinger couple with the guy with the boils really was so hard to watch when I saw this movie a year or so ago. Now I'm thinking, "Hmm, hey why not just relax and have some playful fun. It's a nice pretty lady, what the heck. Boil guy runs in. Oh well.... You know. It's too bad this homophobia. It's an awful thing.

The whole damm time he was so nice. Before I was so horrified by this scene, now I'm thinking how sad that they go running out screaming.

The bully types at the convenience store. That sort of thing was torturous in the past. It was strange how it affected me. Now I don't know what happened. I got old? Don't value my life as much? (Yep). Some thing has changed in me. Worn out. Sense (need) of justice isn't as strong as it once was....

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Why read Marx, or Plato, or Aristotle, or Kant or even Neitzshe(sp)?

They've all been read so much already. They've been around a long time. Obviously it didn't work. Either the ideas have become a part of the meme(?) by now or it's just pointless stuff/wrong. Marx was right about a lot. Wrong about some things. I've gathered that. I usually call myself some kind of socialist and think it pointless to get any more specific but occasionally I'll say I'm a marxist because it's more hardcore and I want to counter the smearing the left has been subject to.

But to some extent I'm just a dummy; watching football, etc. Off now to look at football crap online. Watching crap TV. Surfing crap online instead of reading. Not being able to absorb what I read at times. Etc. That decade I had where I was incapable of reading because my attention just couldn't didn't help.

I don't have what it takes.

I'm stumble along all the same. I'm might manage eventually if I could ever have adequate free time.

OTOH, I'm so unimpressed by so much ultimately. My vocabulary sucks in part because it's very important to me to keep my vocabulary at a level where the average person can at least still hopefully understand me. And a big part of improving my vocab would be simply starting to use a bunch of words that the average person doesn't understand and then.. I could perhaps better read Kant or whatever. Which I still think is a waste of time.

Zizek OTOH is new and not known by most. So even though he seems to have called vegetarians degenerates (maybe totally out of context), I'll read him.