Thursday, May 7, 2009

About this blog

This blog was originally an experiment in creativity.

Personal experiments can be comically painful things. Not only in failing spectacularly but also in that it can end up appearing the experimenter must be a nutter, as they may be doing something other than just conforming.

I can conform quite well, but I recognize all too well when I'm just mindlessly conforming and as I look at the world it seems I'm correct in believing I should be questioning everything.

So this blog started as an experiment but is multiple things and slowly changes from day to day in terms of tone and level of conformity and what I'm experimenting with, etc. The original experiment had to do with something Milan Kundera mentioned: the concept of imaginary eyes. He claims that everyone has imaginary eyes upon them. He said you could be imagining the whole world, or a group of friends or your lover or, rarest of all, an imaginary person. You imagine these eyes are watching you. You can pretend to talk to them. They care about your life. They make you feel not so alone, etc.

Kundera didn't mention it but I wonder if some people's imaginary eyes are 'god'. I also wonder if all people actually have imaginary eyes. I've asked around and of course people claim they don't. But all of us hardly understand what's going on within us a good part of the time, so unfortunately all the time people will adamently claim things that aren't necessarily true. I think that most of us sometimes do and sometimes don't feel as if we have imaginary eyes on us. Not literally, not paranoid schizophrenia, but often just in terms of a separate part of us that is constantly reassessing our actions. But that often we hardly notice as being something separate. I think perhaps the ability to cry takes a belief, on some level, that someone is watching, someone is at least present who could potentially care; as crying is the form of unhappiness (sadness) where we are appealing for help.

This blog was originally, primarily, an attempt to cultivate the eyes of an imaginary person upon me whom even if I haphazardly write something down that isn't well explained, they'll understand and be interested in it. This as opposed to microsoft word where it at least used to be that I imagined I was utterly alone and who really cared? In the beginning this stifled my creativity. I needed to imagine someone was listening.

Why not just have real live people who actually are listening? Unfortunately one can rarely be totally honest then. And one has to constantly worry about being misunderstood.

So first and foremost that was the original point of this blog. Imaginary eyes or an imaginary muse to get my creativity going, to start actually producing something. With a long term goal of writing fiction, etc...

Secondly, or just the first point expressed somewhat differently, this is something to try to help me avoid writer's block and to just remember all the endless little more or less original things I've thought up. (Not necessarily anything that is truly original, but things that I reinvented I suppose.) I really like the labels/key terms function. It's nice to be able to scroll down through the words and quickly remember concepts and be able to click and immediately all the stuff I've written on such and such is compiled.

Thirdly this is a sort of diary. The idea of going through life and just forgetting pretty much everything I've thought and been bothers me. Forgetting is a sort of death. But I've never been able to keep a normal diary. I can never stand to go back and read what I've written in the past. Can never stand my previous stupidity and feeling so sorry for that unsuspecting person about to get blindsided by such and such future disasters... I find it works better here.

4. I can conform. I can act normal. I can be relatively happy in the real world. But I'm not ....much worried about doing such things here. Here I am purposely trying to find fault with society. Trying to figure out better ways to live, etc. Reinventing the metaphorical wheel. I am looking at unhappiness. I can be happy but I purposely try to spend much time focused on problems/unhappiness as a result of my ethical code.

The name of this blog, the too far future, refers to the most essential quality of humans in determining how they act, that being the degree to which they are short term or long term thinkers. The more long term you are, the more you 'waste' your time being altruistic, not turning away from unhappiness; the more time you spend thinking about things for which there probably won't be found any solution in your lifetime.

The picture at top was painted by Van Gogh two days before he killed himself. I think that if we truly and utterly break free of all conformity, truly and utterly quit finding ways to mentally frame things so that we'll feel happy, and instead look at the world 'objectively' it is really kind of awful. Understand though, that the understanding of this awfulness is not strong at all in my mind. Weak enough that at times I feel I really need to be reminded of it by doing things like posting Van Gogh's last painting.

Why oh why would I torture myself so?

Because someone ought to. Someone needs to check out that other barely discernible path. Maybe it leads somewhere better?

5. I leave the comments closed because I don't want my creativity stifled by having to worry about the endless obvious points I'm not having time or remembering to mention here. Again, I'm trying to be critical. I don't really need to worry about some person taking issue with my criticisms. This doesn't mean I'm a closeminded person. I love to be told I'm wrong but this here is the formative stage of creativity where criticisms get in the way. As time passes I may eventually post less and less often here (and get more into actual fiction writing) and then when I do bother to post it may be more well thought out and perhaps some day I'd even open up comments.

Also comments open would really wreck havoc on the whole imaginary eyes/muse concept.

6. People I communicate with who know of this blog,
Please, please don't assume what I write here has anything to do with you. In fact if I say something negative about some anonymous person in this blog, you can basically be certain it isn't about you. Even when I say negative things about any other people by the way, I always believe they can change, and although at times I've vented, in the real world there is no person I hate. None at all. I recognize we are all imperfect but all capable of change.

Also please, please don't think my reason for communicating with you is necessarily related at all to the purposes of this blog. Whatever communications I've done that have been tied (linked back) to this blog, have been just to be nice, etc. Me just following my ethical code and/or finding people I'd want to be friends with/see such as possible..., etc. (Or really wanting to ask a question and not having a better way to do it.) Although as far as making friends, I really think this blog would unfortunately scare off all but the most intelligent.