So you want to endeavor down a path of abstinence, you tell yourself? You affectionately want to lack something in your life, something that's been a bit of a friend, a bit of a family member, and has ruined both types of relationships in a predictable arch of power and sheer energy?
Sit back and ask yourself if you're ready not to be dependent. Ready to re-engineer your social world, your capacity to relax, your inability to focus, and your desires, at their basest levels.
The world is a circus of complexity, I won't lie. Grand narratives are easy gigs to get hired for and hard to add details to sufficiently for the second paycheck. Technical manuals are boredom incarnate. Romance is for the movies. Cold hard reality is for the novels. Your life is for you living it to your own self-ordained standards and authority.
Alcohol is a numbing agent.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Delusions for the Sake of Happiness -
Always been a fascinating topic for me: whether and to what extent self-evolved delusion really is delusion, or just a 'way of living' and to what extent the search for accuracy in all things leads to depression, or even madness.
There are infinitely many accurate ways to view a situation that will yield no progress whatsoever. There are also probably infinitely many ways to delusionally view things while yielding no progress.
But there are subsets of both of these possibilities that allow progress. Question is really: what sort of progress are you looking for? But that question seems subsumed by the first question, which is really how to manufacture higher levels of happiness, flow, contentment, fullness, etc.
Naturally delusional thoughts can yield to harsh setbacks that pop up to snuff out fairy tale desires.
But I don't think seeking accuracy in life, whatever that may mean, is any less susceptible to the setbacks of reality. Because reality is so huge, seeking accuracy alone is not a good means-test for which direction one should head, that is, emotionally speaking, so that one's life, both internal and external (how we relate to ourselves and to others), is as rich and multiplicitous as possible.
Which can leave us free to make up our internal subjective reality to some extent--whatever extent we are allowed given the confluence of genes and previous experiments.
Which is reality. I.e. most people are delusional, including yours truly.
Part of the hard part of life, though, is allowing others to appreciate and endeavor in their delusion when you know it is a delusion (maybe because you lived it previously). This is ripe ground for hypocrisy and other assorted nasty but omnipresent phenomena.
Anyway, I've cycled through what I meant to say in the beginning. Which is mostly that being delusional maybe not be inescapable, but it also may not be so bad. It IS the norm, that's not an issue. The question is whether we want to, or can, change the norm. The answer isn't quite clear. Mostly because of this, and here's the main point, I promise:
We rarely have structural level information about anything. We are mere particles, individual pieces of data.
I know, I know, we should endeavor to understand as much as possible through collection of as much data as possible so we can, what: get higher than individual particles. That is what we do, collectively. I don't know if we can do it individually.
Searing insights, when they come, are fundamentally lonely things.
I'm sloppy and soft, I know, wallowing, even. But I'm not kidding myself so much about how hard and unidirectional I am anymore, and that's a good thing. '
To be continued.
There are infinitely many accurate ways to view a situation that will yield no progress whatsoever. There are also probably infinitely many ways to delusionally view things while yielding no progress.
But there are subsets of both of these possibilities that allow progress. Question is really: what sort of progress are you looking for? But that question seems subsumed by the first question, which is really how to manufacture higher levels of happiness, flow, contentment, fullness, etc.
Naturally delusional thoughts can yield to harsh setbacks that pop up to snuff out fairy tale desires.
But I don't think seeking accuracy in life, whatever that may mean, is any less susceptible to the setbacks of reality. Because reality is so huge, seeking accuracy alone is not a good means-test for which direction one should head, that is, emotionally speaking, so that one's life, both internal and external (how we relate to ourselves and to others), is as rich and multiplicitous as possible.
Which can leave us free to make up our internal subjective reality to some extent--whatever extent we are allowed given the confluence of genes and previous experiments.
Which is reality. I.e. most people are delusional, including yours truly.
Part of the hard part of life, though, is allowing others to appreciate and endeavor in their delusion when you know it is a delusion (maybe because you lived it previously). This is ripe ground for hypocrisy and other assorted nasty but omnipresent phenomena.
Anyway, I've cycled through what I meant to say in the beginning. Which is mostly that being delusional maybe not be inescapable, but it also may not be so bad. It IS the norm, that's not an issue. The question is whether we want to, or can, change the norm. The answer isn't quite clear. Mostly because of this, and here's the main point, I promise:
We rarely have structural level information about anything. We are mere particles, individual pieces of data.
I know, I know, we should endeavor to understand as much as possible through collection of as much data as possible so we can, what: get higher than individual particles. That is what we do, collectively. I don't know if we can do it individually.
Searing insights, when they come, are fundamentally lonely things.
I'm sloppy and soft, I know, wallowing, even. But I'm not kidding myself so much about how hard and unidirectional I am anymore, and that's a good thing. '
To be continued.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Fairy Tale Endings
I believe we desire a common ending: life without restriction.
But I'm guessing the life we desire in actuality is one without boredom, one wherein we're almost chronically engaged, where there is no tolerance to new experiences.
That's probably why fiction is so riveting, and so false. It is at once pure movement, pure "doing" of some sort. There are no red lights except as a pause toward something. There are no moments of dull banality except as to point out a character flaw or an intriguing supposition that will flood out into a blossom of involvement.
But I'm being disingenuous. Good fiction is like dipping into a greater mind than the one you inhabit, and also being able, capable, to inhabit it. And good fairy tale endings are transitory at best.
But the point of this post was to express a simple piece of data: that we are often delusional about what makes us happy. To wit: drinking, excess, extremes and endeavors that wreak of showing off, but rarely result in incremental upticks in sated minds, or even more than a glance or subjective bounce of placebic simplicity.
But I'm guessing the life we desire in actuality is one without boredom, one wherein we're almost chronically engaged, where there is no tolerance to new experiences.
That's probably why fiction is so riveting, and so false. It is at once pure movement, pure "doing" of some sort. There are no red lights except as a pause toward something. There are no moments of dull banality except as to point out a character flaw or an intriguing supposition that will flood out into a blossom of involvement.
But I'm being disingenuous. Good fiction is like dipping into a greater mind than the one you inhabit, and also being able, capable, to inhabit it. And good fairy tale endings are transitory at best.
But the point of this post was to express a simple piece of data: that we are often delusional about what makes us happy. To wit: drinking, excess, extremes and endeavors that wreak of showing off, but rarely result in incremental upticks in sated minds, or even more than a glance or subjective bounce of placebic simplicity.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Infinite Reasons to Freak Out
The slice of the universe that I can touch and feel, the one that wraps itself around me and coos into my ear at night (the same one that beats me with a whip, or masticates my steak fat once I've flushed it (and yes I flush it), in some heap of liquid trash somewhere), provides endless stimuli for apprehension, anxiety, and general paranoia. And this wholly disregards evil third parties--I'm really just zoomed in on those whom I think are reasonable people and can find a way to twist my reality into a grotesque though compellingly real mirror wherein I'm forced to recognize those things about myself that I do not want to realize.
My relative status in all endeavors, for instance. It is not consolation that everyone's relative status in all endeavors (those who I meet) is low. I don't desire to be high status in the fame and glamour sense. I desire to have convenience and to maintain as much singular focus on my own interests as possible. This is presumably the only reason for pining in such a way. Interests provide a way to focus (to Flow), wherein life is neither too boring nor too anxiety-producing.
As soon as I establish flow on all days within the confines of a grey cubicle, naturally, there are interruptions. Interruptions I loathe. Like a high powered drill deep in the walls of my apartment building when I've just graced myself off to sleep. Like my cat deciding to utilize the litter box mid-coitus (not hers!, mine--what a weird weird way to imagine my cat!-a contender, it would seem, for some serious fetish sites of which I would never frequent, but which, given that strange mix of non-specific references, I would have lived through in my mind's eye for long enough to write this).
To be straight: I don't desire laziness. I hate laziness in myself, however evident it has been in my life (I used to have "emotional problems"--but these have been ironed out enough to shine with enough glean to show you that I'm straight, so long as you don't linger).
My ideal world is not 24 hour television, or imbibing in other fashions. My ideal world is relative challenge and immersion. I don't need to be structurally analytic, it's just what they taught me in school. I don't even like it! By that rationale, though, I must simply make up my own words, which happens not infrequently and forces me into a coffin of shame when they are murmured on unsuspecting ears, often in a light tone of humor.
This post has no end. There are no sages in life. Anyone who tells you they're a sage is trying to impress you and get something. For themselves.
I'm slowly learning not to trust. This compared to previous levels of trust that were wildly out of control. This compared to a drinking trusting idiot. This compared to an antique mirror. This compared to the reality of myself. This compared to that which I am learning to look at with a detached smear of a glare. This is it.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Drinking Exhibits Status -
Your choice (my choice, either way) of booze--even the word "booze"--is an indicator of social status, both self-perceived and actual.
For example, understanding the subtleties between types of red wine, particularly descriptive words for flavor, smell, dryness, and such, allows one to exhibit learned knowledge of previous consumption, expertise, and capacity for a lot of imbibing over time.
What does this mean?
It means you indirectly have the money and wherewithal to go out and become educated and actualize that education. It means that, for instance, you are more likely to also express yourself with a tightly linked cluster of indicators that also crop up when talking of wine: travel, for instance, cuisine, and topics related to refined luxury.
The take home point is this: if you've been an alcoholic who is now cleaning up your game, and you decide to stop drinking, you are affirmatively stepping away from the circle of intimates who you've tried very hard to become part of for a number of years.
This isn't less relevant than if you've been drinking cheap beer, but note that even the number of microbrewed beers has increased exponentially in the last few years. The reason isn't just that people intrinsically love their microbrewed beer. It is as much a part of belonging to a group as it is drinking a microbrewed beer.
Showing team loyalty is paramount.
Which makes cessation of drinking all the more difficult. It isn't just that you've decided to park in a different lot, or to use a different internet subscriber. It is very much that you've decided to drastically change your social world, which likely provides most of the significant feedback onto your own self-identity that you have, absent family (or even including family), and it just isn't as meaningful to hoist a "cheers" to a great trip with a glass of ice water.
That is one of the social dollar signs that you must extract from your budget if you wish to get sober.
And you must do it now if you've decided to become sober.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could tell you that you will be able to continue as you have. But you will not. The sooner you accept this and stop trying so hard to fit into the old mold, the better for us all.
For example, understanding the subtleties between types of red wine, particularly descriptive words for flavor, smell, dryness, and such, allows one to exhibit learned knowledge of previous consumption, expertise, and capacity for a lot of imbibing over time.
What does this mean?
It means you indirectly have the money and wherewithal to go out and become educated and actualize that education. It means that, for instance, you are more likely to also express yourself with a tightly linked cluster of indicators that also crop up when talking of wine: travel, for instance, cuisine, and topics related to refined luxury.
The take home point is this: if you've been an alcoholic who is now cleaning up your game, and you decide to stop drinking, you are affirmatively stepping away from the circle of intimates who you've tried very hard to become part of for a number of years.
This isn't less relevant than if you've been drinking cheap beer, but note that even the number of microbrewed beers has increased exponentially in the last few years. The reason isn't just that people intrinsically love their microbrewed beer. It is as much a part of belonging to a group as it is drinking a microbrewed beer.
Showing team loyalty is paramount.
Which makes cessation of drinking all the more difficult. It isn't just that you've decided to park in a different lot, or to use a different internet subscriber. It is very much that you've decided to drastically change your social world, which likely provides most of the significant feedback onto your own self-identity that you have, absent family (or even including family), and it just isn't as meaningful to hoist a "cheers" to a great trip with a glass of ice water.
That is one of the social dollar signs that you must extract from your budget if you wish to get sober.
And you must do it now if you've decided to become sober.
I'm sorry.
I wish I could tell you that you will be able to continue as you have. But you will not. The sooner you accept this and stop trying so hard to fit into the old mold, the better for us all.
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