A bunch of people successfully caught and shipped off to a concentration camp because they're insanely optimistic such that they refuse to face the obvious. But at the concentration camp they keep their optimism. Making jokes and having a grand old time as they starve to death and/or are killed by their tormentors. A heart warming story for the whole family.

I see the holocaust in how you say hello.
I see the holocaust in how I'm spending this beautiful Saturday.
I see the holocaust in facebook.
I see it at work.
And I see something even worse.
I see a world where we might as well kill each other, because we don't know how to do much really of anything else anyway.
It's horrible but true... I read Night by Elie Weisel and I think that trying to survive in a concentration camp sounds like about as much fun and meaningful an existence as any other. And I have real world experience. I look back fondly on basic training in the military. Being threatened constantly with jail and physical violence. 3 hours of sleep max each night. Pushing my body to its limits daily. People attempting suicide around me.
And I look back fondly. Finally, on something a lot worse than all that. The silent scream. The creation of a malevolent god that I was beating simply by going on.

All of this, I see nothing more worthwhile than it.

I see the holocaust in you and you and you. Over and over again. The way you've treated me. Each and everyone of you. The holocaust makes perfect sense. I look forward to the next one. Because, come on now, let's at least be honest... There is nothing worthwhile in this world. There is nothing that matters. The most impressive thing about humans is their ability to kill one another. Everything else... there isn't anything else really. Just resting periods between massacres.

My kind was finished long ago. I've tried to be an angel amongst these demons and how really was that going to turn out?

First they gathered up the foreign Jews. Took them all on a train out deep into the forest, had them dig ditches and then shot them. One survived and through great hardship made it all the way back to town. Where he told all the others what had happened. They didn't believe him. Said he was nuts. Laughed at him.

When they gathered up all the Jews onto the cattle cars, one woman screamed that she saw a fire, they gagged her and finally beat her to make her shut up while her very young son held on to her.

What sort survived compared to what sort didn't?

It appears things didn't work out so well for the optimists. But then for sanity's sake, one must become an optimist. And they so routinely faced persecution that all this, at first, must not have seemed so new. And with their optimism they assumed that surely the Germans were basically still human...

So you ignore the negatives. You ignore, you ostracize, you dislike... those who aren't optimists. And usually this makes life mostly tolerable.

Is it moral for a slave to be happy in his slavery?
Is it moral for a nonslave living in the vicinity who isn't directly connected to slavery to be happy?
Is it moral to be happy in this world?

I have thought that it isn't for many years.

This morning the thought was completely foreign to me. Lately I've been feeling a fear, a stress that is really making me unhappy, to the extent that I just want it overcome so that I can be happy. The idea of the immorality of happiness was forgotten and seemed just bizarre to me.

Does one need to be unhappy in order to want to make a situation change?
Does being unhappy help make a situation change?

Made quickly. Could easily be made a lot better. Can you imagine a world where it would matter? My imagination is failing me on such matters. Still I like it quite a bit.

I built a bunch of bookshelves that are attached to the wall. Something like 140 feet of shelf space. Maybe barely enough for my books. But then I didn't quite finish putting all my books on them. Why? Not quite sure entirely but it may have something to do with feeling like I won't be living here long. Then also night shift has me not spending much time in the room (would bother sleeping wife). This all ties into feeling though like the space I live in, that it just doesn't matter much to make it nice. In this world it just doesn't matter. Work is way too much chop chop savagery. Not to mention even without the chop chop something essential is missing... Such that nice spaces don't matter.

Writing a beautiful piece of music doesn't matter.

Recently I was thinking that 'good music should not be written in this world'; instead music that sounds like it can hardly bother. Music with blatant mistakes. Music that doesn't have any polish in it's production or original composition. For that matter, if you can overhear someone flushing the commode in the background, etc, that's a good idea too.

Where would it matter?

Where having beautiful spaces mattered.

Where for that matter, living or dying actually mattered.

What would such a world look like?

There is a lady at work who seems pretty wonderful. My wife met her at a party with 10 or so people. Upon leaving (I had never mentioned her at all) she immediately mentioned what a wonderful person she seemed to be. So we both independently came to this conclusion.

She sort of looks like me. Large head. Reddish hair. Angular face. Large nose. She's the one who suggested the book club at work. The book club it's looking like may actually have an inagural meeting. From at least 50 people at work a grand total of me, her and two other people just might show up. There's nothing to understanding why I like her. Not like my weird attraction to S. With K it's perfectly obvious and nothing to go on about.

A world of such people as those by the way. Where one simply gave up on the rest. Where one made sure to spend absolute minimal time associating with those other kind of people.

Well, in such a world as that, I suspect it might matter a bit. Simply by gathering together people who existed more. (I think therefore I am. The more I think, the more I am.)

It's not such a horribly complex idea. I'm around such people and I immediately feel so much better. As if someone put my shoulder back in it's socket. As if sensory deprivation has suddenly ended. The world is just so much more when around such people. K in particular, at least it seems.

It's startling. No amount of philosophy seems to me anything at all for human happiness compared to simply being around the right sort of people. But there are so incredibly few.

...Fredrik Douglas barely survived slavery. Rather than take another whipping he attacked a white man. I think most such people were killed. His circumstances were just exceptional. I strongly feel that being an intelligent man didn't make it easier for Douglas to survive his brutal existence. I think it made it much harder. I strongly think that most such men as him, were removed from the gene pool. I know it's highly verbotten to mention but the evidence of the result is there.

That evidence would not be worth mentioning except that the same thing is still going on around us. There is something very awful to learn from slavery which no one is allowed to admit.

"Darkness has descended upon mankind."

A many headed blob of all that's dark, all that's wrong, all the fear and hate and isolation. All massed together into one creature. This creature looms, this creature sits there in your memory. Sometimes you forget it. But it returns again and again.

Imagine a second creature, it's opposite.

Which of the two will win out?

The very end of Ran, where the blind boy is playing the flute while standing on a precipice is my favorite bit of movie ever.

Saw Kurosawa's The Lower Depths a couple nights ago. It's maybe nothing original but it's the most blunt, fundamental presentation I can recall. So starkly laid out. The Predicament. How to cope with this life. Sad to know after all those good films he tried to kill himself, slashing his wrists more than 30 times just because he couldn't get funding for movies after already making so many masterpieces. The miracle was that he ever got to make movies in the first place that were so cerebral and dark. Wonder if WWII had something to do with it...

Also watched Gilliam's 12 Monkeys again. Rewatching a lot of old movies on netflix that are free and instantly available online. Sort of a memory test. Who was I back then? Howard the Duck was interesting in trying to remember who I once was. Awful, absurd movie that I still liked. And I remembered why as I watched it.

Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is a lot more like Brazil than I remembered. The time travel thing, watching his own death, is just too gimmicky though.

I've tendency to misremember my intelligence when younger in the sense of thinking myself dumber back then then I actually was. My main 'lack' back then was actually just having too much hope in me. Being too optimistic. Thinking there might be a way forward. A point in trying.

..on a subconscious level I was wishing for death the other night. Was thinking about how people slowly kill themselves, not just with alcohol or illegal drugs, but even with junk food. Or for that matter by destroying relationships, perhaps. All not necessarily with even realizing just what they're doing. In a sense in the face of the typical obese flat affected hospital patient I'm seeing a nihilist who's been slowly killing themselves for years.

(Not that it's entirely all that bad. There's two levels. There is the one where indeed it's that bad. Where, indeed, there is no hope at all. That humans are awful, disgusting creatures. Where the number that break through, the true revolutionaries, the ons who manage to show compassion, concern, friendliness to people outside their family or prospective family are so rare and so setting themselves up for pain that one anymore wishes them to just not even be that way....etc.

But then there's the mere survival, moment to moment life. Where there's some security, some jokes, decent health. And hardly any hurry anyway. It's all a short blink anyway.)

I've been looking forward to death for at least a few years now. The feeling though has definitely increased, recalling back to a poem someone read a few years ago. Since then still more negative information has been uncovered.

It all worries me. I'm afraid I'll have a moment one of these days, where I suddenly feel too 'artistic' and I slash my wrists 30 times. Try to remind myself there's hardly any hurry. And my health's good. I can go jogging for a bit yet before my joints give out. My wife is very very nice. My parents are too. And I have some slight association with a couple beautiful people, to the slight extent they're not locked into barbaric social norms. Anyway there's no hurry and nowhere to go anyway.

Try to withhold honesty on the topic of suicide because I know of quite a few on the political left who have been 'suicided'. Steve Kangas comes to mind. Getting Jack Daniels forced down his throat in a bathroom while he bled to death from the hole in his head. Or perhaps Gary Webb. I surely don't matter at all though and have nothing to worry about there.

No. It's just interesting that my subconscious is thinking about such things. While my conscious has almost completely ignored such questions. Or I should say my conscious has only thought of such things theoretically and generally, but not personally. At least in the last 18 years. Consciously I don't go around thinking about killing myself. If it were to happen it would very sudden. Which is what worries me.... Sometimes I'm driving and it just pops into my head how wonderful it would be if I just suddenly jerk the steering wheel...

What to do?

Remember there's no hurry I guess. And not bother stressing too much during chop chop times.