Some guy I was friend with as a kid comes around about twice a year and wants to reminisce(sp) about people from back then, what's happened to them, etc. Usually he brings up people I don't even know. This last time I missed him and he left me a message to tell me that some guy I barely knew 25 years ago died.

I guess we've got so little in common it's either just don't speak at all or speak about such things. I dislike it though because it's a sort of pretending that we're a part of some community, when in fact there is no such thing these days. You get in your car and go to work and get back in your car and come home. There's not really any other people, except whomever you work with, relatives, one single person whom you have sex with, and possibly children. That's it. I never really even knew this guy from 25 years ago, in part because it was about the same back then. To sit around talking about him and acting as if I give a shit that he's dead is to pretend community still exists here in this world where it no longer does.

It annoys me for that reason. Primarily for that reason but then furthermore because I just hated my childhood in general and really don't want to reminisce about it.

This guy has tried to do this reminiscing with me for years. I've repeatedly given hints that I really don't want to hear about such and such whom I don't even remember. He keeps doing it though.

I don't want to be a mean person but, not only do I not want to hear this reminiscing, I don't really want to speak to him at all anyway. He withholds his negative thoughts. I don't consider him an actual friend anymore. Our relationship is superficial now and meaningless. I'd just as well not waste my time with such things. Along with really not wanting to put on an act and be dishonest and pretend the world is something other than what it actually is.

Yet I don't want to be rude.

So I finally just don't know how to respond. If I attempt to follow my moral laws, I'll pay, I always do. Instead I have this time finally just not responded.

Ugh. That's awful though. So, I'll go tell him that I remember the guy and really don't care that he's dead and really don't want to reminisce about anyone from 25 years ago. It was an ugly time for me and I'd appreciate it if he'd quit bringing it up.

Better maybe..., I'll say, "Chris, are you familar with the story The Lord of Flies?"

He'll say he isn't as he's never read a book in his life. (But that's the best there was where I grew up.) And I'll have to attempt to explain. Then I'll say that him always bringing up people from our youth is to me, as if he was bringing up people that we had spent time with on this island.

"Hey do you remember super asshole #237? The one who liked to torture small animals and sniff glue? Well he died."

"Don't remember him but sounds like a good thing."

"And that guy who just said nothing and went along with the pack as they beatup 'Piggy'?"

"Nope. Don't remember him at all."

"Huh? Had brownish hair? About 5'10", hung out with Mike Smith?"

"I don't even know who Mike Smith is. Sorry, no recollection whatsoever."

"Well, he got married."

"OK, good for him. So what are you up to these days, Chris?"

"....I work, eat, sleep and my wife and I are trying to have a baby. Sometimes I watch TV."

"Oh."

"So do you remember Alice Jones? I hear she's pregnant."

"Nope, don't remember her at all Chris."

...
No, best to just not bother saying anything. This person doesn't care about truth. Most people don't.

Their's not to reason why
Their's just to mindlessly follow the absolute moral laws
Into the valley of death
Thanks to a lazy copout

-

Such I've done. A bit like a martyr. In theory a utilitarian but a practicing Kantian(?) Like the atheist with 10,000 discussion board posts talking about how he's living life to the fullest because he knows this is the only life.

Don't think, just feel heroicly masochistic, knowing full well I'm hurting myself and too busy thinking about that to consider I'm not really helping anyone else either anyway.

Not being an "arrogant elitist" and not wanting revenge go against each other. Either you're constantly brought back to those who've wronged you, those who've acted like demons, or you're able to dismiss them as too pitifully stupid to waste time on. But to do this, to think that those who've wronged you are not your equals but instead pitifully below you, with no potential to see their mistakes, etc, this means being an arrogant elitist. The egalitarian wants revenge, wants to teach people a lesson, exactly because he doesn't believe them beneath him, because he believes that they can learn a lesson and become better. The elitist dismisses such people as forever beneath him, and the idea of "teaching them a lesson" is as absurd as trying to teach a wild animal a lesson.

The egalitarian goes through life constantly returning to past negatives, forever twisted by what's been to done to him. Constantly longing for an ideal world with justice. The elitist is the source of hatred by the rightwing, by the people who don't read, who watch Nascar and professional wrestling, who are intolerant of those who don't follow their religion, who don't actually value intelligence anyway.

The "arrogant elitist" is happier. The way to personal happiness is always by going to the right. The true arrogant elitist is a rightwinger. The egalitarian is on the left of course. The eqalitarian is more likely to want revenge, to hold on to the wrong and want it addressed, want the person to realize their mistake, and make them to not do it again. 'Revenge' isn't really the right word for what anyone ever wants. It's what left as we see, as we know that they'll never ever admit what they've actually done, they'll always refuse to look reality in the face. And if they refuse to quit being a monster, then the world is better without them. To remove them is to make the world a better place. "Revenge" thus is an altruistic act.

The arrogant elitist instead believes that it's hopeless, there's too many monsters. Best to just avoid them.

And the rightwing, the great evil, the ultimate source of all the wrongs, wrongs and then demonizes the left as arrogant elitists, and the left then so wants to avoid being hoity toity, pretentious, arrogant, etc. The left bends over backwards to be equalitarian towards his Nascar watching neighbors. Nobody's too dumb. He refuses to really recognize idiocy because to do so would mean being exactly what the rightwing demonizes him as. And he's trying to make them like him. To reach out to them and show them they're wrong.

So, the idiocy which he refuses to see hurts him. And because he's stuck in believing the idiots are essentially his equals, he's stuck in wanting to teach them a lesson and/or revenge, etc, instead of just dismissing them from his thoughts. And then past wrongs stick for years.

One thing though, the entire idea of arrogant elitism is a pile of bullshit. As opposed to addressing the actual ideas of the left, the right finds red herrings to attack, finds way to demonize.

And so they wrong you, while at the same time making a propaganda point whereby you're stuck with the wrong forever, if you give the propaganda point any weight and believe that you should avoid being an arrogant elitist.

Arrogance is related to being closeminded. But making ever making a decision at all is closeminded.

Everyone is not equal to me. There are people that are simply stupid and worthy of just being dismissed completely from my thoughts. The rightwing 'arrogant elitist' propaganda is an incredibly sick, evil idea. It amounts to the hatred of intelligence. And also mires people in bitterness, unable to truly recognize idiocy.

I term things as absolutes while the correct path is a question of degree. I lack the language to express the proper degree though when talking of generalities. Dividing everything up into leftwing/rightwing... it's not an absolute that the right path is always to the left. In order to stay sane, to have some happiness in this dystopia, one must have some rightwingness. One can't be completely openminded. One can't be a pure egalitarian. One can't really go around always seeking truth, thinking every disagreement can be worked through, and that nothing should ever be held back.

Well whatever. Point just that letting go of past wrongs means recognizing simple idiocy and thus being an "elitist". So for example I had my scientific career destroyed. So many people did so much that was wrong. Endless idiocy.... To really see it for what it is, means raising myself up so high that I feel like a ridiculous caricature of the rightwing's "arrogant elitist" idea.

Someone I knew went on and on about how they were treated badly at a women's refuge. I tried to help this person. I talked about having my career destroyed and how I've tried to deal with it. You'd think with what I've been through they might give some weight to what I had to say? But no. I never even saw any evidence they were even paying attention and actually understood what was done to me.

A year later they're still going on about it. Still seeking revenge for it.

I more strongly attempt to give my thoughts, how I attempted to deal with such things instead of being consumed by the need for revenge. And they abruptly throw some insults my way and suddenly never speak to me again after having been (I thought) a good friend for the past two years.

Well that one's easy compared to what was done to me, again, when my career was destroyed. Although the career being destroyed was just one thing. There is also just the accumulation and the horrid realization that the entire world is an idiocracy. At which point the elitist becomes a hermit, trying hard to be myopic in order to stave off the nihilism, either way death comes whenever.

---

Enjoying George Martin's Game of Throwns series. Great characters. Very well developed. Worked on a song today that I made up the other night at work. Been practicing the cello hard. Rediscovered blueberry smoothies. Seem to help me sleep. Hoping I'll manage to nap today as I got up at 4AM and leave for work, for a 15 hour day at 5pm.... Pond pretty much finished. Has water lettuce, water hyacinths, a water lilly, the waterfall is more or less finished, 5 gold fish. Love the fish in a pond. Planted another tree. Now thinking to plant some more pampas grass for more privacy at the pond. Hoping to start jogging again. Just a long run once every 4 days (to the extent I can manage that with 15 hour workdays). Had a vacation last week to Canada. Saw Casa Loma. Love castles. The unfinished upper part reminded me of Gormaghast. Everyone should live in such castle. In a sane world we would. Casa Loma was reviled and almost torn down. Which is the proper POV in such an unegalitarian world. Lately just can't see the point in bothering with the creative writing. I should be taking notes from Martin's series. Such excellent characters. At the same time I see him do things that I just can't. Couldn't even come close to managing... And yet still, even if I could, he falls too short to be worth the personal effort. I'm just not a writer I think.

Rereading George Martin famous 4 part series more than ten years later. Some of it I do remember. It's guilty escapist pleasure like Robin Hobb but also interesting for thinking about memory.

From it:

"Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it."

But I'm not an entomologist!

Bugs are hard truths.

Minature horrors all around us, that we don't quite really register just how awful they are. I dream of an utopia, of everyone being on the same side, not against each other, not a world where even altruism is thought of in how useful it is for one group to defeat another. ("Altruistic groups defeat selfish groups...", actual quote from some sort of scientist praising altruism.) I dream of a world without bugs... Without nature... Without lions killing antelope... Without capitalism. Without nuclear families.

Remember as a child a magazine with microscope pictures of bugs. Was hard to look at. Worse is video of such a thing. And much, much worse still, at least was to me 7 years ago, was it being right there in front of you, alive, just you and the bug alone with a microscope. Too awful then. Such an awful truth. Couldn't stand to look it in the face. To stare closely into its face. Without a high powered microscope they're really too small to see their faces clearly. With it, what a fucking horror.

Or I suppose. I couldn't actually do it. Got it all set up, but couldn't look through the microscope at it.

It's not that such things are symbolic, they're more than symbolic. They are the awful truth which is all around us, that we try to not think about. The truth of nature. How cruel it is. How cruel humans are also for that matter.

To really look at humans, look at the evil they do, as if you had them under a magnifying glass/microscope, is like being an entomologist. And few people are "weird" enough to enjoy that.

Bright sunshine in the far past. So awful but why? Because this time was futile. 1910 or 1972 all that they did was futile. They ran and ran but were caught in the end. They tried and tried but it was all for nothing. Nothing but pain and then forgotten.

This is the place that one slips through to within the bright sunshine. A summer morning filled with such hope. Such painful hope.

Tad Williams, To Green Angel Tower.

Now this is truly fantasy and not because there's elven creatures (sithe), magic and low tech setting. But because the characters are incredibly simplistic, straightforward. All personality traits are exaggerated. The characters are caricatures. It can be thought of as a major key. Music in a major key is more simplistic. The fractions being smaller whole integers. So is this. And when the writer just has a few of the same characters over and over again, we can call it repetitive.

There is one hell of a beauty in making it so simplistic. These character caricatures appeal to the conservative within us, whom wants to decide he's got the final answer, the final judgment on someone, that he's got all the answers about life. Paragraph after paragraph the caricatures stream on and on, and we can read it and hardly notice and yet be soothed by it. Straight white and black. Good and evil. Like being clearly consonant or dissonant.

It has very very little to do with reality, and that's what makes it enjoyable to read. The more real, the more less enjoyable it would become.

Or so it seems, and this is a problem that I must solve.

Writing must both be an immediate short term enjoyment to do and yet something of use to the real world beyond other's short term entertainment in reading. The two seem to go exactly against each other.

It's not that it's a fantasy setting, it's that it's fantasy people. Truly fantasy people. Not in their physical appearance, but in how they act.

As instead shades of gray pop up, as things quit being so simple and straightforward,
as it's not so clearly good versus evil, it's no longer something worth leaving the real world for.

And so George Eliot's Middlemarch sits halfway read after probably a good month now. Wonderfully detailed and realistic characters. But just not as much keeping one interested in it. The insights are interesting. But not quite interesting enough....

Make 2D simplisticity, with bad guys to root against, and it becomes something to escape to... but the insights are gone. Interesting insights into human nature have no place in a simplistic escape story. As the real escape isn't from the planet, it's from how people actually are.

Can the characters be like in a George Eliot novel while still being something one would want to escape to?