I recently distanced myself from anarchism.
A 40-second clip from a stefbot video
epitomizes quite well the conception
of anarchists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULJQnaHD1Bw
2:20 - 3:00
"I kind of ran out of arguments for... anything
the State can do.
...
Larry, I'm beginning to realize something.
There's nothing that the State can do well
that the Free Market can't do better. Does
this mean that I'm an anarchist?"
"Yes, it does."
The stereotypical conception of the anarchist,
of course, is the rebellious teenager who wants
to disobey the rules and hasn't grow up to the
"real world" where laws exist and people work
with each other, as opposed to being rebellious
individualists.
This, however, was not the reason for distancing
myself. And, if it was, I ought be ashamed for
"leaving" for such a silly reason. What I left
for was something a bit different, though perhaps
equally childish.
Let's look at the definition of anarchism:
An-arch-ism.
Disregarding, first, the obvious
grammar aspects of the word - first the "an", meaning
not, and then the "ism", standing for philosophy,
ideology, or something like that, we're left with
ARCH.
Arch here stands for Archon, or Archy. Starting with
the word "archon", you can google and find references
such as "ruler", "prince", or "king". Now that sounds
quite like what people who are against authority -
especially illegitimate authority, are about. No rulers,
meaning no kings or princes -- de facto ownership without
the effort.
And now with archy, that's a more familiar root, found in
such things as Hierarchy, Democracy (actually, no...),
Monarchy, Theocracy (well, that c keeps getting in there...),
... other terms don't come to mind, so we'll use
Hierarchy and Monarchy, disregarding the cracy's at the moment.
The important one, actually, is Hierarchy. I'm not against Hierarchy.
The example I most commonly use for this is someone who rocks
at basketball and someone who sucks at it. Are you sure you don't
want to put them into a hierarchy with a scale such that one of
them is obviously better, and one worse?
Actually, now having realized that the root words may be misleading,
and perhaps I am in fact doing some amount of equivocation, I'll
leave this slightly open-ended.
So now to one of the other versions of the word:
An-archy.
Which brings us back to the ruler issue. Does Archon indeed mean
"ruler", "prince", or "king", or does it mean ruling? Or... what?
A common complaint against anarchists is that they don't
believe in rules, law, or regulation. In other words, the stereotype:
Anarchy is lawlessness and chaos.
With some people I've talked to, it's assumed that I left it for
that reason, for that assocation. Not in the least. If that was
what I was up against, I would lead with this rebuttal, and let's watch
the string of responses:
"So you're telling me that you're going to give a group of people
to which you've designated a special name (gov't, police, whatever)
that means they get the resources... guns,
and do you expect them to solve problems? What's their incentive to?
I'm not against laws, I'm not against regulations; I'm against
giving a group of people guns, and then just trusting them with the
guns."
"Who's going to enforce the laws?"
"Let me reflect that back to you: who's going to make sure the special
people are going to be subject to the very laws they apparently enforce?"
"Voting and the legal process."
"So you're telling me that if 51% of people want so and such,
the 49% are ignored? So, are you telling me that if 51% of people want
money from 49% of people, then the special people will, with their
guns, take the money from the 49%?"
"Do you have a better system? Democracy might not be the best, but
it's certainly better than chaos and anarchy."
"You're repeating a point from before that is still in contention.
Repetition works, but only for so long. My not having a system
does not mean defaulting to Statism is a better option, any more than
not having an alternative to Christianity or The Venus Project
means that not having a solution is bunk."
"I'm sure when you get older you'll understand why what you're talking
about is utopian. We can't have a society without laws. And you've told
me that you don't vote. If you don't vote, why are you criticizing the
system? You haven't even participated or done anything. Why don't you
let your voice be heard? Vote! That's the only way to change the system."
"Ageism. Again bringing up an assumption that is still in contention -
I said that I'm not against laws. And by voting you're saying that you,
at least in part, agree with how the system currently is - you've participated.
If the system is shitty, you have no-one to blame but yourself. I, on the
other hand - and I'm quoting Carlin - who did not participate, can not
be blamed for this shitstorm of a mess that we're in. At least, not in '
the arena."
"Ok the, wise guy, what do you propose? What's your solution?"
"I just want to get rid of the cancer that is the State. I just want
to get rid of the belief and support for the monopoly on force that the
supposedly-special group has. And I'm going about to do this in two ways:
1. Conversing about this to convince people otherwise.
2. Refining my conversation, tactics, and other things to be more effective
at dismantling The State."
Of course it's biased.
Now, why did I reject anarchism? It was because of a little quibble
in a comment section, to do with how anarchism is against hierarchy.
To me, this was insane, and so I rejected the label. At this point,
I'm thinking that it was premature to do so. To give some more context,
this was just after I'd been having heated debate on the Anarchism
page on facebook about Capitalism. What I consider Corporatism is
how people were using the word Capitalism. I consider[ed?] Capitalism
as essentially synonymous with "Free Market", and so was confused to
hear about "anti-Capitalism". From what I saw, it is related to
Marxist rhetoric.
For this lack of definitiveness that I saw in anarchism, I rejected it,
after having had this long history of trying to find a label that would
fit the "neo-anarchists" on YouTube, and moved overtly into Anti-Statism.
Anti-statism had a much more concise definition (and a much more
obvious one), and this is what I wanted. Although it has also an ironic
twist to it, which is that it aided conversation away from discussing
labels and into discussing the ideas themselves, since the anti-statism
label is, of course, not associated with chaos. But I hadn't gotten
away from anarchism for that purpose. It was a nice addition, though.
So, accordingly, it appears that I am, indeed, an anarchist.
Are there subgroup labels for anarchism like there are for atheism?
Like, an anti-statist anarchism? anstat-anarchism? Anstachism?
Astatchism? The problem with going near a-statism is that we are not
without the State. Unlike with A-theism, lacking belief in the thing
does not make This thing go away. It's more social than that.
To a certain extent, it's the same with atheism. However, this is only
the case to the extent that a State exists, since the State has a referent,
whereas God does not.
Unlike with Meme, a term for this has not come up yet...
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God. Show all posts
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Let There Be God
Let me describe "God" to you.
God is that sense of connectedness that you feel with others.
God is that groundedness with the universe you feel at that moment you feel at peace.
God is the thing that people slander, not knowing they insult Infinite Being.
> I < slander Infinite Being.
Now Let me tell you about people.
People are not labels, though labels are useful when you're in a hurry.
Being perpetually in a hurry, perpetually afraid, is religion.
Anytime God becomes specific, God becomes a
spiteful, vengeful, jealous, hateful being.
God becomes the thing slandered.
We slander because we have a mind design,
and our mind designs take on individual components.
All the Gods are one; but, ask any of the protagonists - I speak from the Devil.
I am The Devil and God incarnate.
I am responsible for all heavenly things,
and all dastardly things.
Is this reason to worship me or slander me?
You are The Devil and God incarnate.
You are responsible for all heavenly things,
all dastardly things.
Responsibility is a farce.
It exists because of higher cognitive functions -
cause and effect -
mixing with mind design.
Without farces, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist.
Bullshit defines life.
As time goes on, bullshit manifests in increasingly smaller spaces.
Because there is more instant interconnectedness,
and reactions that might otherwise not occur, do.
Where did that 10-second no-anger rule go?
The flip-side is that there are others, like us, who are not farcing.
Fencing?
We are less dependent on each other;
we are more dependent on each other;;
It matters less, because there is now a better connection-loop.
Internet destroys authority-based;
it scares the religious.
Cannot see outside their narrow ideology.
But neither can I.
That's why the philosopher (as I seem to be) is just as much blind as the religious.
And I, too, have the mind design.
I was, after all, a Christian.
Let me tell you some about God.
The more specific God is,
the more false God is.
Do you want to worship God?
Go ahead, and prepare for war.
That is the flip-side of worship.
God is that sense of connectedness that you feel with others.
God is that groundedness with the universe you feel at that moment you feel at peace.
God is the thing that people slander, not knowing they insult Infinite Being.
> I < slander Infinite Being.
Now Let me tell you about people.
People are not labels, though labels are useful when you're in a hurry.
Being perpetually in a hurry, perpetually afraid, is religion.
Anytime God becomes specific, God becomes a
spiteful, vengeful, jealous, hateful being.
God becomes the thing slandered.
We slander because we have a mind design,
and our mind designs take on individual components.
All the Gods are one; but, ask any of the protagonists - I speak from the Devil.
I am The Devil and God incarnate.
I am responsible for all heavenly things,
and all dastardly things.
Is this reason to worship me or slander me?
You are The Devil and God incarnate.
You are responsible for all heavenly things,
all dastardly things.
Responsibility is a farce.
It exists because of higher cognitive functions -
cause and effect -
mixing with mind design.
Without farces, the universe as we know it wouldn't exist.
Bullshit defines life.
As time goes on, bullshit manifests in increasingly smaller spaces.
Because there is more instant interconnectedness,
and reactions that might otherwise not occur, do.
Where did that 10-second no-anger rule go?
The flip-side is that there are others, like us, who are not farcing.
Fencing?
We are less dependent on each other;
we are more dependent on each other;;
It matters less, because there is now a better connection-loop.
Internet destroys authority-based;
it scares the religious.
Cannot see outside their narrow ideology.
But neither can I.
That's why the philosopher (as I seem to be) is just as much blind as the religious.
And I, too, have the mind design.
I was, after all, a Christian.
Let me tell you some about God.
The more specific God is,
the more false God is.
Do you want to worship God?
Go ahead, and prepare for war.
That is the flip-side of worship.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
A Mind Fuck Haze
It would be rather confusing to see yourself as god and others as god as well, and not sure which gods to follow. Such is the predicament I got myself into after listening to Alan Watts a good bit.
:P Here, have a taste:
1-200: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrMVous0Ac&feature=PlayList&p=A55EAF0FBF6E88BD&index=0&playnext=1
200-400: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSk-IrSGcTw&feature=PlayList&p=FCA9178E25A6E7B9&index=0&playnext=1
As I am wont to do, I watched them all (well, all up to about 260) in fair succession. A thorough mind fuck, really, no movie or hypnosis needed.
The problem for me is that of knowing what to do, now. We're in a game, and as it is, I'm playing it. And for so long, I have rebelled against playing it, while being supported in the game by others who took and take it very seriously.
After having studied anarchy, Ayn Rand, and confederalsocialist, with the a/theism debate far behind, to this I went - Alan Watts. And with Alan Watts, everything is again blown apart and shown to be mere ghosts of reality. Likewise, everything that I had studied before made all the more sense -- theism suddenly looked crystal clear in its clarity, along with why it perpetually lost debates and seemed a very intuitive and personal thing -- it is. And, like with the want for poly-politics (many candidates instead of one -- or, even better, total self-representation, or, democracy on small scale of zero), the showing, with comparative religions, of how all of the gods interrelate, and why each god is divine and supreme, along with those who leave the religion as heretics.
Consider, for a moment, a balloon with white dots on it (yes, This example, if you're familiar with it). Blow the balloon up, more so than it was before. Each of those white dots moves out and away from the original point, and each in relation to all of the other dots. This has traditionally been shown as an example of the universe expanding. Now imagine something like god, or a transcendental experience. It'll pop up occasionally, and when it does, it will "expand", and you could say it does this with the actions and words of the person who experienced it. So now, we have all these balloons from history, and some of them have gotten dangerously large - some have even "popped" and "absorbed" other balloons. And here along come these heathen atheists who go about popping them! Well good! hahaha! More balloons will come blowing up along. The ones that last the longest are rather interesting, aren't they? Must have gotten the best type of expanding material and whatnot. But no balloon can go on expanding forever. And so the longer the balloon expands, the sooner a heathen will go about popping it, or it will destroy the very people that it was uplifting.
And such is the nature of religion.
Well! And to think that I was having difficulty explaining myself and thought I had lost my word craft! Relaxation from doing stuff at C.R.O.S.S. was quite the blessing.
:P Here, have a taste:
1-200: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLrMVous0Ac&feature=PlayList&p=A55EAF0FBF6E88BD&index=0&playnext=1
200-400: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSk-IrSGcTw&feature=PlayList&p=FCA9178E25A6E7B9&index=0&playnext=1
As I am wont to do, I watched them all (well, all up to about 260) in fair succession. A thorough mind fuck, really, no movie or hypnosis needed.
The problem for me is that of knowing what to do, now. We're in a game, and as it is, I'm playing it. And for so long, I have rebelled against playing it, while being supported in the game by others who took and take it very seriously.
After having studied anarchy, Ayn Rand, and confederalsocialist, with the a/theism debate far behind, to this I went - Alan Watts. And with Alan Watts, everything is again blown apart and shown to be mere ghosts of reality. Likewise, everything that I had studied before made all the more sense -- theism suddenly looked crystal clear in its clarity, along with why it perpetually lost debates and seemed a very intuitive and personal thing -- it is. And, like with the want for poly-politics (many candidates instead of one -- or, even better, total self-representation, or, democracy on small scale of zero), the showing, with comparative religions, of how all of the gods interrelate, and why each god is divine and supreme, along with those who leave the religion as heretics.
Consider, for a moment, a balloon with white dots on it (yes, This example, if you're familiar with it). Blow the balloon up, more so than it was before. Each of those white dots moves out and away from the original point, and each in relation to all of the other dots. This has traditionally been shown as an example of the universe expanding. Now imagine something like god, or a transcendental experience. It'll pop up occasionally, and when it does, it will "expand", and you could say it does this with the actions and words of the person who experienced it. So now, we have all these balloons from history, and some of them have gotten dangerously large - some have even "popped" and "absorbed" other balloons. And here along come these heathen atheists who go about popping them! Well good! hahaha! More balloons will come blowing up along. The ones that last the longest are rather interesting, aren't they? Must have gotten the best type of expanding material and whatnot. But no balloon can go on expanding forever. And so the longer the balloon expands, the sooner a heathen will go about popping it, or it will destroy the very people that it was uplifting.
And such is the nature of religion.
Well! And to think that I was having difficulty explaining myself and thought I had lost my word craft! Relaxation from doing stuff at C.R.O.S.S. was quite the blessing.
Monday, August 31, 2009
I'm in denial? Nu-uh! Well, maybe a little...
It is not exactly preferable to be in denial if you are in pursuit of truth and reality, which I am. To be honest, I do admit that I am slightly in denial. So I will explain the ideal that I intend to exude with this.
I wish that I did not have a body with needs for food and drink. I also wish that I did not require shelter. In the state of things of the USA, you are born into a virtual slavery (in my opinion). To live is to either leech off of other people, or to be in debt to something called "the government" by way of owning property; or you could rent, which has the same essential feature (in my opinion). You could, of course, just live outside in the cold and be rained on, but I do not prefer this, as I'm sure many others don't.
Having used "(in my opinion)" twice and possibly annoying someone who might read this - well, having annoyed myself - I give an explanation of what that sentiment means: this requires more explanation which I currently don't want to bother explaining.
It might do well to explain how I've gotten to this way of approaching life. I was raised a Christian, and one of my questions regarding God was, "Why does God love us?" I pursued this question and never got what I thought was a satisfactory answer. It usually boiled down to something like, "Well, why does the artist make a painting?" or "Why does the artist love his painting?" But... God does not require anything. Which would then be counter-acted with, "God's love pours out." Yet, it still did not explain anything. Why did God love us, and why was his love pouring out?
I used to imagine what the afterlife would be like, after the earth would be gone. It was much like C.S. Lewis' "cold place" version that he wrote of in one of his books, and like the vision of Narnia; it could also be compared to the planet that Mr. Manhattan went to when he was pissed at the reporters. A cold place, desolate from all human activity but my own, on a small planet that wasn't exactly big, but not exactly small, perhaps like the planet that the prince from My Little Prince inhabited, and I would be sitting on it, the rest of the planet utterly dark (more of just a loss of focus from it), and I would watch earth, with all of its destruction and drama. And I would feel at peace.
For a long time, I wondered if I had autism; or perhaps its lesser counterpart, Asperger's. I used to write in my journal/diary everyday, not quite religiously, just voluminously and vigorously. My ideal was to capture all of my thoughts, and analyze them, each and every one, and see what I could find, and if I was consistent in my thoughts. This part of it happened more-or-less after someone recommended Plato to me and I read his Apology. I loved the Socratic method and adopted it.
What I think now was probably the case, and still is the case, is that I might have some mild form of autism/Aspergers, but only as relates to what every other shy person has. That is, I'm suggesting that there is, perhaps, a link between shyness and autism. Well, not really suggesting it, but I am trying to see what the similarities or links might be. Perhaps I'm a combination of the two, as it were, a "very high functioning autistic". Perhaps "shy" could be interchanged with that.
These are the types of discussions I would have with myself in my diary. I would take a possibility, and then try and demolish it, while retaining it enough that the battle of affirming and disproving could never be over; or, if one possibility became more apparent, I would simply travel further down the list of possibilities, and then also, make another outrageous statement or connection, and then go about trying to figure that one out, too. And then I'd tie them together. Put simply, I loved using the written word as a means of exploring reality. Reading books, writing my thoughts, and exploring ideals.
About the time that I started asking why god loved us, I noticed that I saw patterns. In later reading some of Anne Frank's diary, I'm wondering if that was about when she noticed colors. It was, then, very "male" of me to notice that I saw patterns. She noted that she saw all sorts of colors. Me, I saw all sorts of patterns. And then I soon found a type of mind that might help me with my question: geniuses.
Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin (and so on)... I googled "genius, creativity" and many other things daily in attempt to wield more information from the internet. I browsed the online library and checked out books on genius, creativity, madness, and all combinations thereof. Soon I found autism, idiot savants, and Asperger's, too. I wanted to find the extremes, since nature reveals its properties soonest when working with extremes.
I wanted as much time as I could possibly get to study the world and think about it. Since I have/had only about 80 or so years of life, I focused on thinking as often as I could (which wasn't too hard), and more importantly, speeding up my perception of time so that 1 second would seem like 10 seconds, 100 seconds, an hour, or longer. Longer was preferable. I couldn't and haven't figured out a way to do it, though. The main possibility seems to be either training for it, or a rush of adrenaline. Thing with the rush of adrenaline is, the probability of focusing on problems with paranoid vigor. I'm not sure if that's a detriment to thinking, or an advantage.
I guess I'm sort of writing a mini-autobiography. That's kind of how it is when you're explaining part of your life to someone, I guess. I wonder what the verbal/visual format of it will be called. We have YouTube now, after all. A mini-autobiography is what it's going to be until I "catch you up" to the current times, which I kind of intend in doing with just one broad stroke, though this might not happen. And then this'll be more like a... blog? Diary? I don't know. I'm playing it by ear and trying to find out if I'm OK with this.
I've always been slightly introspective. It was increased after an event. In October of 2001, a man named Andrew Pudewa held a writing conference. My mother got word of it by newpaper, and knowing of my interest in bettering my writing, suggested the event. I was enthusiastic about it and went. The event was (and I wish I had a better word for it, but still after 8 years, I don't) spiritual for me. I couldn't attend the speech he gave, so my mom got a copy of it on CD. I listened to it 7 times right away. It has also been is uploaded to YouTube. Andrew Pudewa also gave reference to someone else, John Taylor Gatto and his book (which can be read for free online), The Underground History of American Education.
I loved his vision of how learning should be done. My mom was homeschooling me (having taken me from public school because my sister and I were having problems there; a girl was teasing me and my sister was being a bully and threw a kid in a garbage can); I stopped doing the curriculum, instead focusing on research on genius, creativity, madness, and autism. This caused problems, since I didn't have a job. I was, essentially, leeching off of my mum and dad. This didn't settle too well with me, but neither did I want a job. I'd read about the tyranny and discomfort of having a job (How to Be Idle [Amazon link] by Tom Hodgkinson) and didn't want to get one.
This went on for about a year. Finally, my mother couldn't take it any longer, and took me to a counseling place to get me evaluated. I saw it as a chance to show her, officially, that I was depressed, instead of telling her myself, since I was trying to avoid her. I was diagnosed with Mild Depression, and my mother cried over it. Mostly, I was surprised that I wasn't diagnosed with severe depression.
During one of the last visits to the place (they tried to help me with psychiatric care and it just didn't mix), she suggested a private Christian school. At this point, the word Christian had begun to have a bad taste in my mouth. But I was tempted to see what Andrew Pudewa was talking about in regard to the corruption of schools. So, I agreed and went.
It was a good year. For the most part, I liked it. I even passed out CDs about the Andrew Pudewa stuff to a teacher or two, and we tried the system. It didn't last for that long (and later the school closed), but from a recall point of years later, it was probably the best time and most stimulating time I had when doing a school assignment.
The school year ended, and I expected to go back to my research on genius, creativity, and so forth. Instead, I fell into a deep depression, and found YouTube. Thereat, I searched around and listened to people, and soon found TAA (or, TheAmazingAtheist). This was back before when TAA's videos were a lot better. I concurrently started at his first video, and listened to all of his videos. I also went looking for long (2+ hour) debates on religion.
About 5 or 6 months later, I started calling myself an atheist; first, abashedly (since many of the atheists were also anti-theistic and rude), and then, more comfortably (I made another category of anti-theist/YouTube atheist, both of which have the first meaning of being against the Christian religion and thinking that it's memetic destruction will benefit the human race, with the second meaning being an atheist that might have a tendency to be an asshole to Christians). The main definition used by the atheist community is: the lack of belief in god(s). As opposed to having unbelief, or, disbelieving (or something of that elk). In which case, the Christian then claims that the atheist "has even more faith than the Christian!"
Then came college. As it saw it, since I would be, essentially, kicked out if I didn't get a job soon, my two options were live on the street somehow, or attend college. Since I was curious about what college would be like, and if it was true that college is corrupt, and since I couldn't think of a way that I would be able to live on the streets, I went with the college option, to increase the amount of time before the inevitable crash. I looked at a lot of them and visited a few. My favorites were St. John's, Cornell, and a lower costing college.
And then there were costs to consider. Since I didn't want to take out extravagant loans (I hate owing people money; I would rather people owe me money and give them a lenient time to pay it back with interest), the lower costing college became the only viable option. It still wasn't attractive, but it was college, or bum; I didn't want to be a bum, and I was, as I said before, curious about college.
The first semester went beautifully. Stimulating and full of stuff to observe. However, what happened at the second semester was unexpected. It seems that I had absorbed what I needed to absorb about how college worked. With my interest having declined, I had an issue with homework. It wasn't the work aspect that I had trouble with, it was someone else telling me what to do when in regard to what I thought about. I guard my intellectual focus with a passion, and homework was a direct intrusion upon it. Why didn't I have an issue with it before? Because it was part of the investigation.
I started missing homework assignments, and soon simply skipped class. And because I was also talking about the subject of suicide in my videos, concerned teachers had me admitted to a psych ward. I at first went willingly. Upon discovering that I was actually locked in, I spent the next three days in paranoid rebellion. The night of the second day they called my parents; they asked if I wanted to drop out and go home. I did. Home I went with a 4k bill from the hospital and a determination not to pay it off since it was, basically, imposed on me. Not that I had money to pay it off...
At about the time that I was about to be submitted to the psych ward, I was trying to get laid. From craigslist. I had an interesting experience with an older man, and then I met a girl who was "experienced with helping virgins." She also had a husband, a kid, and something she put up her vagina that prevented pregnancy. I went back home, and when we visited our grandparent's house (that's where she lived), I took the opportunity to arrange with her an night to fuck. And we did.
Having the Christian mystique taken away from sex, I could now better evaluate it and incorporate the experience into other things, like what books said about it. It seemed over-glamorized. And the jealousy that was attached to it I found confusing. Why couldn't people fuck who they wanted to? Why were people jealous of other people fucking "their" girlfreind? I could only relate it to my first love when I was a Christian, and my scathing jealousy at the thought of someone else fucking her. The next question, then, was whether jealousy was a theistic concept, or, if jealousy had similar elements that theism had. Or what sort of animal it was that I was dealing with. As it was, I preferred (and prefer) sluts and polyamory.
After the vacation at the grandparents was over, I left with the family back to home. However, I now wanted to live with the woman I'd met, instead of my family. After some talk, and a few weeks, we had some time of goodbyes and I left to back to where she was. The situation wasn't great, I wasn't technically supposed to be there, so I slept in the garage for much of it. Since I didn't have a job, I tried out a daily labor place that paid you at the end of each day.
After doing a few jobs for the place, one being heavy-work, the other a long time standing in one place, I realized that I could not handle hard physical labor jobs. I lived off and on in a homeless shelter. The place had an overall feel of tyranny to it. It wasn't overtly tyrannical, but it had Christian overtones and annoying schedules. The place was somewhere you didn't want to be if you could help it. Which, I suppose, was a positive, since that encouraged people to leave.
As it was, and is, I was trying to get a job for a place - any place - and never getting one. Consequently, I focused my efforts on online methods (specifically PTCs) as a means of making money. Unfortunately, the current PTC that I'm hoping pans out, I didn't discover until the last month or so. Apparently, the renting for NeoBux may not be that great. If it's not, then I'm kind of out of options, especially since I seem to be eternally unable to get a job.
I shall explain more later, perhaps.
I wish that I did not have a body with needs for food and drink. I also wish that I did not require shelter. In the state of things of the USA, you are born into a virtual slavery (in my opinion). To live is to either leech off of other people, or to be in debt to something called "the government" by way of owning property; or you could rent, which has the same essential feature (in my opinion). You could, of course, just live outside in the cold and be rained on, but I do not prefer this, as I'm sure many others don't.
Having used "(in my opinion)" twice and possibly annoying someone who might read this - well, having annoyed myself - I give an explanation of what that sentiment means: this requires more explanation which I currently don't want to bother explaining.
It might do well to explain how I've gotten to this way of approaching life. I was raised a Christian, and one of my questions regarding God was, "Why does God love us?" I pursued this question and never got what I thought was a satisfactory answer. It usually boiled down to something like, "Well, why does the artist make a painting?" or "Why does the artist love his painting?" But... God does not require anything. Which would then be counter-acted with, "God's love pours out." Yet, it still did not explain anything. Why did God love us, and why was his love pouring out?
I used to imagine what the afterlife would be like, after the earth would be gone. It was much like C.S. Lewis' "cold place" version that he wrote of in one of his books, and like the vision of Narnia; it could also be compared to the planet that Mr. Manhattan went to when he was pissed at the reporters. A cold place, desolate from all human activity but my own, on a small planet that wasn't exactly big, but not exactly small, perhaps like the planet that the prince from My Little Prince inhabited, and I would be sitting on it, the rest of the planet utterly dark (more of just a loss of focus from it), and I would watch earth, with all of its destruction and drama. And I would feel at peace.
For a long time, I wondered if I had autism; or perhaps its lesser counterpart, Asperger's. I used to write in my journal/diary everyday, not quite religiously, just voluminously and vigorously. My ideal was to capture all of my thoughts, and analyze them, each and every one, and see what I could find, and if I was consistent in my thoughts. This part of it happened more-or-less after someone recommended Plato to me and I read his Apology. I loved the Socratic method and adopted it.
What I think now was probably the case, and still is the case, is that I might have some mild form of autism/Aspergers, but only as relates to what every other shy person has. That is, I'm suggesting that there is, perhaps, a link between shyness and autism. Well, not really suggesting it, but I am trying to see what the similarities or links might be. Perhaps I'm a combination of the two, as it were, a "very high functioning autistic". Perhaps "shy" could be interchanged with that.
These are the types of discussions I would have with myself in my diary. I would take a possibility, and then try and demolish it, while retaining it enough that the battle of affirming and disproving could never be over; or, if one possibility became more apparent, I would simply travel further down the list of possibilities, and then also, make another outrageous statement or connection, and then go about trying to figure that one out, too. And then I'd tie them together. Put simply, I loved using the written word as a means of exploring reality. Reading books, writing my thoughts, and exploring ideals.
About the time that I started asking why god loved us, I noticed that I saw patterns. In later reading some of Anne Frank's diary, I'm wondering if that was about when she noticed colors. It was, then, very "male" of me to notice that I saw patterns. She noted that she saw all sorts of colors. Me, I saw all sorts of patterns. And then I soon found a type of mind that might help me with my question: geniuses.
Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin (and so on)... I googled "genius, creativity" and many other things daily in attempt to wield more information from the internet. I browsed the online library and checked out books on genius, creativity, madness, and all combinations thereof. Soon I found autism, idiot savants, and Asperger's, too. I wanted to find the extremes, since nature reveals its properties soonest when working with extremes.
I wanted as much time as I could possibly get to study the world and think about it. Since I have/had only about 80 or so years of life, I focused on thinking as often as I could (which wasn't too hard), and more importantly, speeding up my perception of time so that 1 second would seem like 10 seconds, 100 seconds, an hour, or longer. Longer was preferable. I couldn't and haven't figured out a way to do it, though. The main possibility seems to be either training for it, or a rush of adrenaline. Thing with the rush of adrenaline is, the probability of focusing on problems with paranoid vigor. I'm not sure if that's a detriment to thinking, or an advantage.
I guess I'm sort of writing a mini-autobiography. That's kind of how it is when you're explaining part of your life to someone, I guess. I wonder what the verbal/visual format of it will be called. We have YouTube now, after all. A mini-autobiography is what it's going to be until I "catch you up" to the current times, which I kind of intend in doing with just one broad stroke, though this might not happen. And then this'll be more like a... blog? Diary? I don't know. I'm playing it by ear and trying to find out if I'm OK with this.
I've always been slightly introspective. It was increased after an event. In October of 2001, a man named Andrew Pudewa held a writing conference. My mother got word of it by newpaper, and knowing of my interest in bettering my writing, suggested the event. I was enthusiastic about it and went. The event was (and I wish I had a better word for it, but still after 8 years, I don't) spiritual for me. I couldn't attend the speech he gave, so my mom got a copy of it on CD. I listened to it 7 times right away. It has also been is uploaded to YouTube. Andrew Pudewa also gave reference to someone else, John Taylor Gatto and his book (which can be read for free online), The Underground History of American Education.
I loved his vision of how learning should be done. My mom was homeschooling me (having taken me from public school because my sister and I were having problems there; a girl was teasing me and my sister was being a bully and threw a kid in a garbage can); I stopped doing the curriculum, instead focusing on research on genius, creativity, madness, and autism. This caused problems, since I didn't have a job. I was, essentially, leeching off of my mum and dad. This didn't settle too well with me, but neither did I want a job. I'd read about the tyranny and discomfort of having a job (How to Be Idle [Amazon link] by Tom Hodgkinson) and didn't want to get one.
This went on for about a year. Finally, my mother couldn't take it any longer, and took me to a counseling place to get me evaluated. I saw it as a chance to show her, officially, that I was depressed, instead of telling her myself, since I was trying to avoid her. I was diagnosed with Mild Depression, and my mother cried over it. Mostly, I was surprised that I wasn't diagnosed with severe depression.
During one of the last visits to the place (they tried to help me with psychiatric care and it just didn't mix), she suggested a private Christian school. At this point, the word Christian had begun to have a bad taste in my mouth. But I was tempted to see what Andrew Pudewa was talking about in regard to the corruption of schools. So, I agreed and went.
It was a good year. For the most part, I liked it. I even passed out CDs about the Andrew Pudewa stuff to a teacher or two, and we tried the system. It didn't last for that long (and later the school closed), but from a recall point of years later, it was probably the best time and most stimulating time I had when doing a school assignment.
The school year ended, and I expected to go back to my research on genius, creativity, and so forth. Instead, I fell into a deep depression, and found YouTube. Thereat, I searched around and listened to people, and soon found TAA (or, TheAmazingAtheist). This was back before when TAA's videos were a lot better. I concurrently started at his first video, and listened to all of his videos. I also went looking for long (2+ hour) debates on religion.
About 5 or 6 months later, I started calling myself an atheist; first, abashedly (since many of the atheists were also anti-theistic and rude), and then, more comfortably (I made another category of anti-theist/YouTube atheist, both of which have the first meaning of being against the Christian religion and thinking that it's memetic destruction will benefit the human race, with the second meaning being an atheist that might have a tendency to be an asshole to Christians). The main definition used by the atheist community is: the lack of belief in god(s). As opposed to having unbelief, or, disbelieving (or something of that elk). In which case, the Christian then claims that the atheist "has even more faith than the Christian!"
Then came college. As it saw it, since I would be, essentially, kicked out if I didn't get a job soon, my two options were live on the street somehow, or attend college. Since I was curious about what college would be like, and if it was true that college is corrupt, and since I couldn't think of a way that I would be able to live on the streets, I went with the college option, to increase the amount of time before the inevitable crash. I looked at a lot of them and visited a few. My favorites were St. John's, Cornell, and a lower costing college.
And then there were costs to consider. Since I didn't want to take out extravagant loans (I hate owing people money; I would rather people owe me money and give them a lenient time to pay it back with interest), the lower costing college became the only viable option. It still wasn't attractive, but it was college, or bum; I didn't want to be a bum, and I was, as I said before, curious about college.
The first semester went beautifully. Stimulating and full of stuff to observe. However, what happened at the second semester was unexpected. It seems that I had absorbed what I needed to absorb about how college worked. With my interest having declined, I had an issue with homework. It wasn't the work aspect that I had trouble with, it was someone else telling me what to do when in regard to what I thought about. I guard my intellectual focus with a passion, and homework was a direct intrusion upon it. Why didn't I have an issue with it before? Because it was part of the investigation.
I started missing homework assignments, and soon simply skipped class. And because I was also talking about the subject of suicide in my videos, concerned teachers had me admitted to a psych ward. I at first went willingly. Upon discovering that I was actually locked in, I spent the next three days in paranoid rebellion. The night of the second day they called my parents; they asked if I wanted to drop out and go home. I did. Home I went with a 4k bill from the hospital and a determination not to pay it off since it was, basically, imposed on me. Not that I had money to pay it off...
At about the time that I was about to be submitted to the psych ward, I was trying to get laid. From craigslist. I had an interesting experience with an older man, and then I met a girl who was "experienced with helping virgins." She also had a husband, a kid, and something she put up her vagina that prevented pregnancy. I went back home, and when we visited our grandparent's house (that's where she lived), I took the opportunity to arrange with her an night to fuck. And we did.
Having the Christian mystique taken away from sex, I could now better evaluate it and incorporate the experience into other things, like what books said about it. It seemed over-glamorized. And the jealousy that was attached to it I found confusing. Why couldn't people fuck who they wanted to? Why were people jealous of other people fucking "their" girlfreind? I could only relate it to my first love when I was a Christian, and my scathing jealousy at the thought of someone else fucking her. The next question, then, was whether jealousy was a theistic concept, or, if jealousy had similar elements that theism had. Or what sort of animal it was that I was dealing with. As it was, I preferred (and prefer) sluts and polyamory.
After the vacation at the grandparents was over, I left with the family back to home. However, I now wanted to live with the woman I'd met, instead of my family. After some talk, and a few weeks, we had some time of goodbyes and I left to back to where she was. The situation wasn't great, I wasn't technically supposed to be there, so I slept in the garage for much of it. Since I didn't have a job, I tried out a daily labor place that paid you at the end of each day.
After doing a few jobs for the place, one being heavy-work, the other a long time standing in one place, I realized that I could not handle hard physical labor jobs. I lived off and on in a homeless shelter. The place had an overall feel of tyranny to it. It wasn't overtly tyrannical, but it had Christian overtones and annoying schedules. The place was somewhere you didn't want to be if you could help it. Which, I suppose, was a positive, since that encouraged people to leave.
As it was, and is, I was trying to get a job for a place - any place - and never getting one. Consequently, I focused my efforts on online methods (specifically PTCs) as a means of making money. Unfortunately, the current PTC that I'm hoping pans out, I didn't discover until the last month or so. Apparently, the renting for NeoBux may not be that great. If it's not, then I'm kind of out of options, especially since I seem to be eternally unable to get a job.
I shall explain more later, perhaps.
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