Two things:
A problem with modern society is that to an extent, you feel like you're in a constant battle with the other people around you. Your boss isn't on your side. Everyday you go to work there is the potential of life altering conflict which is ultimately not really in your control. Your company could simply decide to downsize. Through some misunderstanding some idiot with power over you could suddenly decide to destroy. At any time you can be ruined. And you try and try to worry about such things. All, usually, while being stuck in a situation where you can't actually do anything.

And at the same time you then go home in your metal box to your stone or wood box and are otherwise highly isolated.

In comparison, go back to a 'simpler' lifestyle. A farming community. Each ...group/family is relatively self sufficient, which is to say, they go out and plant the seeds, etc and survive off that basis. It really isn't that difficult. There isn't the (at least I surmise) potential of life altering conflict with people who essentially have total power over you on a daily basis.

I read once that actually they had to work so much harder on farms and we're living in luxury today in comparison. This isn't really true. Scott Nearing went off into the wilderness and carved out a good life (he wrote a book called Living the Good Life) for 50 plus years; living to be 100. He said they worked for four hours a day. And this work again, was not the stressful stuff it is in our modern society.

Humans aren't meant to have so much stress on a daily basis. Perhaps occasionally. From evolution there had to be occasional conflicts, fights, tribal wars. But what we have today instead ruins health. Causes unhappiness. Causes mental illnesses. Despite attempts by the sick psychiatry system to make mental illness sound like it's genetic in origin, we know for example that the rate for schizophrenia is much higher in big cities. Why this is I can't say for sure. Perhaps people have hypothesized it's from excessive pollutants? I think though it could just be people put in more stressful situations, more often having to deal with other people, whom they don't consider on the same 'side' and thus instead have to deal with as potential threats. Endless potential threats, more stress, slowly wearing them down.

There would still be conflict in a society where people were more self sufficient. There would still be stress. But it seems it wouldn't need to be such a consistent daily thing.

There is then furthermore the potential isolating factors of all the technology we use. Sitting alone in the dark in front of the TV with what little free time we have (and we have too little free time, we're hardly only working 4 hours a day like Nearing). And the fact we live in one place and then spend half our waking time at some other place far away where we're usually around no one who lives where we actually live.

And so on. All of which isn't to say going back to an agrarian lifestyle would mean instant utopia. I'm sure it's very possible for that to be miserable. But I think we could recognize that from such a lifestyle which is more suitable for the psychology of man and try to incorporate it into how we're living.
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So many books have characters who are in effect caricatures. I think, in a way, this is not a bad thing perhaps. It is maybe kind of like more generalized efforts to take complex human interactions and simplify them into something that is more easily understandable (while not totally losing all truth in the simplification process). And such books with antagonists that stray in the direction of being two dimensional. And in general characters that just aren't as complex as real life people, isn't necessarily a bad thing. It maybe can serve the same purpose in a way.

We can't hate that which we understand.
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If you truly understand someone you cannot help but love them.
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I vaguely remember thinking of love as truly understanding someone and that ideally with truly understanding everyone we could love everyone. And I mean by 'love' a very deep euphoric feeling. This contrasted to an idea lately of 'love' being more or less the opposite, where instead it's based on idealizing someone. Basically just pretending they're someone other than who they actually are. Or doing that to some extent anyway.

Which is more correct? I think when I felt the former, the highly positive feeling about love, I was at the time idealizing actually. And that exactly because I was idealizing my 'understanding' equaled truly loving the person. (Because they just then happened to be exactly what I wanted them to be. Because I simply decided to perceive them as exactly what I wanted them to be.)

The above is an example of failing utterly to pangloss anything. Here I started out trying to hope to for a change successfully say something positive.

The first quote: "We can't hate that which we understand."
Is true. I made it up.

The second quote: "If you truly understand someone you cannot help but love them."
I took from someone off of facebook. And unfortunately I can't see that it's quite true at this time...

I was hoping it could be true because that which appears to be evil is hard to spend much time facing. I can face it and manage to see that it's not actually evil. It's never actually evil and thus something to hate, it's instead always some combination of stupidity and/or ignorance. If only understanding this led to love. But stupidity and/or ignorance is not a thing to love at all. It's still an ugly thing I'd rather not spend a lot of time thinking about.

If instead focusing on that which appears to be evil led to understanding it and thus loving it, then it would be much easier to want to spend one's time focusing on that which appears to be evil. As it stands it is instead an activity that it's hard to stand doing much of, this recognition of stupidity/ignorance.

So, can I make it about love?

Love is such a motivator.

And it seems to me that ultimately my art must be about investigating, examining and understanding that which appears to be evil. Understanding every little facet of IT. If at the end of the tunnel stood love I could stand to do it much much more. Instead all I see is ugly ignorance, stupidity... fear. Nothing worthy of love... And it's slightly torturous to spend time dwelling on it.

Although still it is an attempt, no matter how unlike it is of any meaningful success, to do good. Ah, but it is an almost surely futile attempt which instead only leads to endless time spent dwelling on stupidity and ignorance. It is like torturing one's self with Fox news.

If the end result was that I could learn to love Bill O'Reilly (lol) then it wouldn't be so bad. But instead I can at best just learn to feel sorry for him, just feel sad about the harm he's causing. I cannot love such actions.

It's just torture to face that which appears to be evil. But I think it is perhaps an essential thing to do for the production of 'worthwhile' art...

Or maybe I could love Bill O'Reilly. Maybe I could work on that. Brings me back anyway to the point that I love complex real antagonists instead of the 2D stuff. What is the reality really? I can only look inside myself and try to find common points with such people it seems...

Which reminds me to think about lying. As I feel asleep last night I was trying to remember the examples of me still having dishonesty lurking within me. (And not practical stuff like saying I loved my last job at a job interview).

First thing that strangely came to mind is lying about the number of women I've slept with. Which is truly silly. What's wrong with the number of women I've slept with? I was imagining a scenario where I felt the need to hide how low the number was... Then when I actually thought about it, actually just simply used my fricking brain, the idea of hiding such a thing was clear in so many ways as simply STUPID.

And I fear that in understanding that which appears to be evil; that which is stupid or ignorant, there is unfortunately not usually some complex and interesting thing going on. Instead of some mistake hidden amongst a complex line of reasoning there is usually just blank stupidity at work. Just simply not thinking at all.

Which I suppose then the point is to understand why people don't want to think in the first place. Surely somewhere in here there is something actually interesting. And there's a myriad of reasons for that....

...heh. Why do I fear that? Being interesting is only related to writing stories. As far as that what is more or less interesting is reading about the protagonist's reaction to these actions, thoughts, etc which cause harm.

This is two different things I've slightly convoluted I think. Real life 'evil' which usually isn't very interesting and 'evil' within fiction stories which also usually isn't very interesting of itself. But two different things. In real life I want to find a way to stand thinking about 'evil'. In fiction stories it doesn't necessarily matter that in truth 'evil' isn't interesting. The positive reactions of the protagonist hopefully are.

A bit more about memory: as I get older I realize more and more how essential it is to have a bad one. If some worthwhile stuff gets chucked with the bad, so be it.

Liked that from Barker's Imagica; the wizard who can't remember anything that happened more than ten years past.

Because a single punch in the face is more remembered than 100 hugs. Also in a sense it seems more like one positive thing for every 1000 negatives. It seems that is.
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The spurious blog is a relatively good one I guess. He's framented himself into two people, which I really think that's what characters are. I don't think they're complete and realistic people. As such just wouldn't be quite so interesting. You need symbolic people. Not real people. Not saying totally 2D, just not really real. Would usually be a little boring otherwise, I think. I'm considering doing the same here, for the heck of it. Maybe would be a somewhat useful exercise. Maybe. Part of me feels very silly doing so though.
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Murakami's Kafka on the Shore: the title is a little annoying. I don't see the connection to Kafka. I didn't get it expecting there to be one though. In the end I continued reading just for the final battle scene, which is another thing I can't get myself to do. It's no different than:
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Salvatore's Drizzt D'urden: He's just a decent guy who's a kick ass sword fighter. He uses that sword to fight against the evil society he's in, up to even killing the very gods of that society I think. But I couldn't quite do it. Sword fighting? Too silly. But then any fighting, any characters clearly pitted against one another I ultimately have an issue with... The 2D evil characters? I remember feeling kind of revolted by how 2D they were originally. Somehow I ended up reading 22 books of it though... (O.o) I don't know if I could stand to make them.

I did read a couple Drizzt books and years later reread at least one entire book without ever remembering having previously read it. Figured it out near the middle of the next in the series.

But I don't have to clearly pit (put) (pit?) people against one another. The bad guy can be the very structure of society. Or more wonderfully the bad guy is defeated with reason. He finally quits being a slave to his/her unconscious. He finally opens his mind.