I'll fancy dancethropy. Stointhropy. Disdains of disdains of misanthropy. Who really matters any more? Numbers can't hold a candle but let's just live in a certainty for once and oh the absolutes that mean so much. I watched children crawl across the ceiling just to see a bug spin down the wall and lick the floor and the feat of my cat. She savored the attention as I ignored her, sipping wine from a friend's cup left here in yet another bout of Baccanalian debauchery. It was fun while it lasted, friend, you should have been here and I'm sorry you missed it in the next day's paper. It was what they call whirlwind and flash you stupid sight. Sure, I wouldn't have seen you if I could. That was the mantle dripping you know. Eyes fucked by eyes. Surely you would have caught the smell. But now we're here. Now you insist I tell the story.
If I cube Pythagoras, or take him to the fourth, the fifth, etc., we won't find the answer in a vin induced discussion. But childlike we'll nod in absurd comprehension. I sit on my deck, you across, because in fact you are the only one I trust. So what stories we bend around because we are smarter than our social existence allows. Well damn all, here's to the ultimate solitude. I've given enough and you weren't even there, or, to the extent I imagined you there, I still awoke to find a puff of smoke still simmering by the bedside, floating gently out to the trees, across the fence, splitting, one half up farther towards the clouds, the other to the ground, spreading and descending, sinking into the soil. I stood at the back door, cigarette in hand, lit but dying, not wanting to mix the smoke, wishing you'd never even made the call.
When I'm dying I'll ask you, to myself, why you even bothered to call. To write. To smile when the last thought floating across your face was permanence. You are flighty like a butterfly that can't control the wind. I'm done with up and down and back and forth. I do seek that constant. It alludes even the most simple and stable hearts. What I could offer is lost in the bricks that make up your wall.
Let's just let me walk the path now . . . absent of smoke and drink yet blind with toxins, stumbling like that Frenchman walking the lobster, buried in his Parisian grace. Montmarte or Pere Lachaise, I can't remember. But I stood at your grave, remembering Aurelia. Foolish romantic searching literature in a foreign country, giving up the pursuit just a year later, knowing that your art was getting me nowhere. Had I known sooner I would have chosen to remain ignorant, stupid, blissfully the dunce of the parking lot. I know now there was no one out there to impress.
Nerval, what insanity haunted you, or demons of Wilde, out there, Sade, whatever, A reboirs, Against Nature, I can't stop thinking of any of you. But, but, but, what story have I told in this foolishness? None, I suppose, I'm just excising flight and fucking my past. I'm absolving, erasing, purging, moving on to the end. I can't accomplish that dance until I make all senses numb or, better, until I've awoken to realize there is no past. I'll go further back tomorrow or closer to now next week so that when I die not a single memory will remain. That's a blast, a shock, to stare stupid and lifeless.
My reason is to swirl and relive what brought me to the day so I can look head down without a memory and wonder why on fucking earth I didn't have a say in this one debacle. That's the laughter, the dance, the insane of insanities. I'll make a mockery of this thrusting.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Saturday, December 24, 2011
220 and 284
Looking for numbers, relations. Take 220 and 284. They are the match of friendly numbers. They are the love, the connection, the collaboration. The divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 110, and the sum is 284. The divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71, 142, and the sum is 220. Thus. 220 and 284 are friendly. A bond. I'll give you the 220, and, for me, I'll keep the 284. We are numbers. Connected. Math is life, breathing, that in which we search.
This is the quest. To be found or not found. A realism in search for a match. I'll give a locket, to feel alive, with a number. Perhaps 220. If the number given back is indeed 284, then there is a perfection, a truth.
I have no defection. I am not a defect. For my 284, I do not, never will, expect a 220. But in math I will know the possibilities. I will seek the friendly. Christ, it is about nothing but the quest. When I die, I will hold out truths, numbing, I was meant to be 284 without the 220.
I'll die by my own hand.
This is the quest. To be found or not found. A realism in search for a match. I'll give a locket, to feel alive, with a number. Perhaps 220. If the number given back is indeed 284, then there is a perfection, a truth.
I have no defection. I am not a defect. For my 284, I do not, never will, expect a 220. But in math I will know the possibilities. I will seek the friendly. Christ, it is about nothing but the quest. When I die, I will hold out truths, numbing, I was meant to be 284 without the 220.
I'll die by my own hand.
Friday, December 23, 2011
We Need A New Word, A New Classification: Stointhropy
A ten minute search of the word "misanthropy" reveals a million hits related to hatred. And not just hatred, but hatred with violence, with a violence. I think this is missing the point, in fact, it is bastardizing the belief. One can have a distrust, mistrust, even disdain for humanity, but does must that devolve into a hatred? If that's misanthropy, then it's too extreme for me. Yet I can hold on to the gems of misanthropy and make it my own, or should I search for more, a better classification?
Stoicism might be a close relative, depending on which definition you choose, of which school you adhere to. But stoicism as a collective approach to existence embodies a certain indifference while simultaneously insisting on brotherly acceptance. But can one internalize stoicism to the point of firing off humanity in exchange for a deeper, inner sensation of reason and resolution? If we combine misanthropy with stoicism, are we left with a person embittered by humanity while at the same time living amongst the people in order to continue doing good? Yes, and that is doable. As put previously, I in my own misanthropy can still co-exist and, by all appearance, be gently, kind, philanthropic.
I reject the hatred. I embrace the distrust. And I must rely on the stoicism to allow me to distinguish between truth and fallacy, to avoid the simulations. To avoid the hyper-real. It is reasoning that keeps me in check. It is misanthropy that reminds me how I got here.
I've not fully evolved. I've left certain plains, likely never to return, hopefully never looking back, but forward. I cannot continue looking forward without accepting that I will continue to evolve. If for the time being I can always add to whatever classifications fit the bill, then I will know I am growing.
I'll propose a new word for now, and call my day stointhropy. The definition will be borne out over time, but for now I will use such a word to describe that person who has rejected the belief in humanity while continuing to live within its grasps to maintain and promote most importantly one's inner salvation while, through reason, exist to avoid disrupting humanity's path.
Stoicism might be a close relative, depending on which definition you choose, of which school you adhere to. But stoicism as a collective approach to existence embodies a certain indifference while simultaneously insisting on brotherly acceptance. But can one internalize stoicism to the point of firing off humanity in exchange for a deeper, inner sensation of reason and resolution? If we combine misanthropy with stoicism, are we left with a person embittered by humanity while at the same time living amongst the people in order to continue doing good? Yes, and that is doable. As put previously, I in my own misanthropy can still co-exist and, by all appearance, be gently, kind, philanthropic.
I reject the hatred. I embrace the distrust. And I must rely on the stoicism to allow me to distinguish between truth and fallacy, to avoid the simulations. To avoid the hyper-real. It is reasoning that keeps me in check. It is misanthropy that reminds me how I got here.
I've not fully evolved. I've left certain plains, likely never to return, hopefully never looking back, but forward. I cannot continue looking forward without accepting that I will continue to evolve. If for the time being I can always add to whatever classifications fit the bill, then I will know I am growing.
I'll propose a new word for now, and call my day stointhropy. The definition will be borne out over time, but for now I will use such a word to describe that person who has rejected the belief in humanity while continuing to live within its grasps to maintain and promote most importantly one's inner salvation while, through reason, exist to avoid disrupting humanity's path.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Misanthropy Resolved through Math
There is an eternal truth, a constant. And if there isn't a proof, then the mathematicians will search for it. No one will let Fermat's scribbles rest. They will search. And Andrew Wile found it. The misanthrope doesn't so much search for truth, but for a proof. Humanity fails the misanthrope. Humanity is the hypothesis. It is that almost knowing, but under conditions of doubt. There is nothing, nor can there ever be, anything absolute about an hypothesis.
A misanthrope requires a proof. A theorem. A perfect absolute. The misanthrope starts with an axiom. He takes on the belief that something is right, and then endeavors to find that which will serve him into infinity. It is the quest for a theorem. However, a misanthrope must be guarded. Or rather, becomes guarded, in fact, perhaps becomes a misanthrope, because it is the quest that made him a misanthrope.
Before he was a misanthrope, he was a humanist. He relied on the hypothesis of man, that is man. And like a poor physicist thinking that he had found finally the foundations of matter in the atom, failure deals a blow by the discovery of the subatomic particles. The physicist's hypothesis has crumbled. A misanthrope does not make that mistake. An hypothesis is not enough. He needs a theorem.
Math solves the problem. Or at least one problem. Reliability. Consistency. Pythagoras sought an absolute. He would not trust the number unless it yielded an explanation. He found his theorem. He denied irrational numbers (despite the discovery in his lifetime that irrational numbers do exist). The perfect. The imperfect. A humanist trusts the numbers with blind faith and a leap. The misanthrope savors and constantly searches. Why does 1+2+3 equal 6? Note the divisors. All three numbers used to reach the sum of six divide evenly into six. The number six is perfect, it is perfection. It is what the misanthrope seeks. It is obtainable. Rare, but obtainable. Take another perfection. The number 28 and its divisors, 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14, when added, equal 28. A perfect number.
Wile would not let the unanswered proposition rest. The math community would not let it rest. So too can the misanthrope find perfection, not in humanity, but perhaps in one person: that one rare person. It is this quest that haunts the misanthrope. An hypothesis will not do. I could guess today that a perfect person must exist because I have met scores of great ones. And for each great one I meet, behind him or her there has been an even greater one. A scientist would be content in believing that, following this pattern, one day the perfect person will be found. Such a leap leaves the misanthrope in a state of unrest and panic.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
A misanthrope requires a proof. A theorem. A perfect absolute. The misanthrope starts with an axiom. He takes on the belief that something is right, and then endeavors to find that which will serve him into infinity. It is the quest for a theorem. However, a misanthrope must be guarded. Or rather, becomes guarded, in fact, perhaps becomes a misanthrope, because it is the quest that made him a misanthrope.
Before he was a misanthrope, he was a humanist. He relied on the hypothesis of man, that is man. And like a poor physicist thinking that he had found finally the foundations of matter in the atom, failure deals a blow by the discovery of the subatomic particles. The physicist's hypothesis has crumbled. A misanthrope does not make that mistake. An hypothesis is not enough. He needs a theorem.
Math solves the problem. Or at least one problem. Reliability. Consistency. Pythagoras sought an absolute. He would not trust the number unless it yielded an explanation. He found his theorem. He denied irrational numbers (despite the discovery in his lifetime that irrational numbers do exist). The perfect. The imperfect. A humanist trusts the numbers with blind faith and a leap. The misanthrope savors and constantly searches. Why does 1+2+3 equal 6? Note the divisors. All three numbers used to reach the sum of six divide evenly into six. The number six is perfect, it is perfection. It is what the misanthrope seeks. It is obtainable. Rare, but obtainable. Take another perfection. The number 28 and its divisors, 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14, when added, equal 28. A perfect number.
Wile would not let the unanswered proposition rest. The math community would not let it rest. So too can the misanthrope find perfection, not in humanity, but perhaps in one person: that one rare person. It is this quest that haunts the misanthrope. An hypothesis will not do. I could guess today that a perfect person must exist because I have met scores of great ones. And for each great one I meet, behind him or her there has been an even greater one. A scientist would be content in believing that, following this pattern, one day the perfect person will be found. Such a leap leaves the misanthrope in a state of unrest and panic.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .
The Misanthropic Transformation is Complete
With a pill, a miracle cure, a switch, the misanthropic transformation has found its mark, made a friend, danced in an empty room. The cloak of humanism is removed, tossed about, slightly eviscerated, done. Whatever hopes I held for humanity have vanished. Whatever it was that I cherished slithers into the soil. It is not a hatred, but a disdain. I can trust no one and there is no one left I care to trust.
I'll take courage in sinking into the corner and banter soulfully at my reflection, tipping drinks, glasses of wine, in celebration. This is my new friend. To you will my treasure be entrusted. To you will I seek a death in living. What masks I wear I give to no one else.
Misanthropy is the ultimate in simplicity. To some it is cowardice. To some it is an unreal escape, a torture of the weak mind and heart. To me it is the inevitable conclusion of over forty years of struggle, of searching, of vain attempts to exist and co-exist. I've tasted all cures, been open to all ideas, embraced human endeavors, and all the while made personal sacrifices. At the time and until only recently I felt I was becoming one with all around. I fucked and became the fool.
Just today I taught my children the word futile. Impossibility. In the context of resistance, I told them that it was futile. I will not teach them the futility of humanity. They will have to learn that on their own. They will have to come into reconciliation on their own. If they find peace and a piece of life then I will cherish their successes. But at least now they know the meaning of futility.
I, all the while, will embrace this two dimensional existence. I will nod, say kind things, give a child candy and the homeless money. I will make promises to my friends and abide by my obligations. On the surface I will be a friend, a father, a partner. But what depth I have reserved will be only for the internal pursuits of discord. I will find my own dimension in order to exist. My planet will be whatever my mind allows for, whatever my heart feels, on any given day I will live in a distant universe. I will curse them all, I'm sure, but I will be living in my own constant.
I have become static in my own abyss. Frozen in time. My emotional pursuits have plateaued. I've found my niche. As no one knows me now know one will know me tomorrow or the week after. I am passive without remorse. I'll follow nothing but the mirror.
As blame is questioned, I will take some responsibility for the misanthropic transformation and subsequent demise. I was on a path so long ago. That I'll admit. But when reaching out, accepting words and actions, I became vulnerable. I took a leap with some, with many, only to find the mirror. So, as I take blame for what curses I brought upon myself, I also look out, at the hand I held out for others, and at the others, I look out, and have realized that what trusts were promised, accepted, were empty words and awkward looks.
That is individual life. We all have demons. We all must do everything to take care of the self. We are not children. No one truly puts themselves out there. They hold on to their own. They hold on to what makes them safe. It is their life and it is the only one they will ever have. I do not blame them. That is part of the realization. That is part of the misanthropy. That is the antithesis of humanism. It is not about the greater good. It's about the individual. No more. We do what we need to do to survive.
To survive. Some are content with distance, with hyperreality. Some can live at such distance. Some actually find depth in a perverse bastardization of existence. That alone defies and decimates humanism. Yet they call themselves humanists. Or spiritual. Or progressive. Or, worse, all at the same time. Yet they live in social networks, texting environments, inter-web falsehoods. They are consumed not by what is real but what they have been told is real. They are nothing but symbols, simulations. People unable to live in the blood world. An emoticon is not a facial expression. It is two pecks on a keyboard. It is a fallacy. It is the beginning of the end.
For that I embrace misanthropy. For that my transformation is complete. I will not compete. I will not trust. Not because people are untrustworthy. In fact, I believe their are intentions are pure. But their intentions are borne from selfishness. From selfsurvival. That is not a criticism. It is a reality. And it is a reality I am prepared to accept. I will not insult others anymore. I will not put them in a cave. I will not dance shadows in front of them. I will not dare to presume any form of ignorance. I will simply nod from a distance. My dance with them will be robotic. Nothing more because that is what existence has become. I am two-dimensional now to all but the mirror. That is my misanthropic cave.
It’s just something I knew I had to do. The transformation is complete.
I'll take courage in sinking into the corner and banter soulfully at my reflection, tipping drinks, glasses of wine, in celebration. This is my new friend. To you will my treasure be entrusted. To you will I seek a death in living. What masks I wear I give to no one else.
Misanthropy is the ultimate in simplicity. To some it is cowardice. To some it is an unreal escape, a torture of the weak mind and heart. To me it is the inevitable conclusion of over forty years of struggle, of searching, of vain attempts to exist and co-exist. I've tasted all cures, been open to all ideas, embraced human endeavors, and all the while made personal sacrifices. At the time and until only recently I felt I was becoming one with all around. I fucked and became the fool.
Just today I taught my children the word futile. Impossibility. In the context of resistance, I told them that it was futile. I will not teach them the futility of humanity. They will have to learn that on their own. They will have to come into reconciliation on their own. If they find peace and a piece of life then I will cherish their successes. But at least now they know the meaning of futility.
I, all the while, will embrace this two dimensional existence. I will nod, say kind things, give a child candy and the homeless money. I will make promises to my friends and abide by my obligations. On the surface I will be a friend, a father, a partner. But what depth I have reserved will be only for the internal pursuits of discord. I will find my own dimension in order to exist. My planet will be whatever my mind allows for, whatever my heart feels, on any given day I will live in a distant universe. I will curse them all, I'm sure, but I will be living in my own constant.
I have become static in my own abyss. Frozen in time. My emotional pursuits have plateaued. I've found my niche. As no one knows me now know one will know me tomorrow or the week after. I am passive without remorse. I'll follow nothing but the mirror.
As blame is questioned, I will take some responsibility for the misanthropic transformation and subsequent demise. I was on a path so long ago. That I'll admit. But when reaching out, accepting words and actions, I became vulnerable. I took a leap with some, with many, only to find the mirror. So, as I take blame for what curses I brought upon myself, I also look out, at the hand I held out for others, and at the others, I look out, and have realized that what trusts were promised, accepted, were empty words and awkward looks.
That is individual life. We all have demons. We all must do everything to take care of the self. We are not children. No one truly puts themselves out there. They hold on to their own. They hold on to what makes them safe. It is their life and it is the only one they will ever have. I do not blame them. That is part of the realization. That is part of the misanthropy. That is the antithesis of humanism. It is not about the greater good. It's about the individual. No more. We do what we need to do to survive.
To survive. Some are content with distance, with hyperreality. Some can live at such distance. Some actually find depth in a perverse bastardization of existence. That alone defies and decimates humanism. Yet they call themselves humanists. Or spiritual. Or progressive. Or, worse, all at the same time. Yet they live in social networks, texting environments, inter-web falsehoods. They are consumed not by what is real but what they have been told is real. They are nothing but symbols, simulations. People unable to live in the blood world. An emoticon is not a facial expression. It is two pecks on a keyboard. It is a fallacy. It is the beginning of the end.
For that I embrace misanthropy. For that my transformation is complete. I will not compete. I will not trust. Not because people are untrustworthy. In fact, I believe their are intentions are pure. But their intentions are borne from selfishness. From selfsurvival. That is not a criticism. It is a reality. And it is a reality I am prepared to accept. I will not insult others anymore. I will not put them in a cave. I will not dance shadows in front of them. I will not dare to presume any form of ignorance. I will simply nod from a distance. My dance with them will be robotic. Nothing more because that is what existence has become. I am two-dimensional now to all but the mirror. That is my misanthropic cave.
It’s just something I knew I had to do. The transformation is complete.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Reconciling Humanism with Misanthropy
We can embrace our own humanism, ignoring other formal religions that require a deity. We can question what some call spiritualism, those who seem mostly to need a belief, and call them at least a friend.
But unfortunately I can't stop questioning now what humanism really is. I struggle between wanting man to perpetuate the betterment of man, and the commands of misanthropy to have disdain for humans. Can I reconcile the two? Can I be a selective humanist? Or a selective misanthrope? Do I hate some while still relying on all? Doesn't humanism require a continuous, unbroken chain? Thus, if I hate one, only one, haven't I broken that chain?
Maybe it's not disdain, but mistrust. At this point, do I stay pure to humanism while taking solace in misanthropy? TO BE CONTINUED . . .
But unfortunately I can't stop questioning now what humanism really is. I struggle between wanting man to perpetuate the betterment of man, and the commands of misanthropy to have disdain for humans. Can I reconcile the two? Can I be a selective humanist? Or a selective misanthrope? Do I hate some while still relying on all? Doesn't humanism require a continuous, unbroken chain? Thus, if I hate one, only one, haven't I broken that chain?
Maybe it's not disdain, but mistrust. At this point, do I stay pure to humanism while taking solace in misanthropy? TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Passing Father, This is Your Chair
He sits in the chair he inherited when his father passed. Each morning, each night, the occasional afternoon, he sits. As the youngest with numerous siblings, he can't help wonder why his father's wife gave him the chair. She never said his father wanted him to have it. It was her gift to him. He's often wondered what made her think she had the power to choose how to divide his father's possessions. But she did, at least with respect to the chair. The chair he's sitting in now. Black, leather, cold, complex. The opposite of his father.
He'll close his eyes as often as he breaths and think of what ways he could possibly communicate with his father now. The picture, not a gift from anyone, but one he himself took, is the only way, the only one way, he has to pretend to communicate. Next to that picture are framed photos of the children. His father's grandchildren, the youngest, a son, he never knew. The son, the youngest, never knew his grandfather.
The dark of morning, before the sun begins its ascent, blackens the room, everything the darkness envelops. He can't see around him, but he feels the leather touching every exposed part of his skin. To him it's yet another attempt at communicating. He opens his mouth, begins to speak, stops, and is capable only of a whispered gasp.
The daylight breaks through slowly. He passes on any other thought, keeps his eyes closed, stands with a wobble and curses the silence. Yet briefly he believes his father is alive again.
He'll close his eyes as often as he breaths and think of what ways he could possibly communicate with his father now. The picture, not a gift from anyone, but one he himself took, is the only way, the only one way, he has to pretend to communicate. Next to that picture are framed photos of the children. His father's grandchildren, the youngest, a son, he never knew. The son, the youngest, never knew his grandfather.
The dark of morning, before the sun begins its ascent, blackens the room, everything the darkness envelops. He can't see around him, but he feels the leather touching every exposed part of his skin. To him it's yet another attempt at communicating. He opens his mouth, begins to speak, stops, and is capable only of a whispered gasp.
The daylight breaks through slowly. He passes on any other thought, keeps his eyes closed, stands with a wobble and curses the silence. Yet briefly he believes his father is alive again.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Reflections on the Consequence of a Continued Refusal to Communicate
No matter how angry you might be at me right now for what I actually haven't done, it pales in comparison to how angry I am at you for taking everything away. The only difference is I've learned to control my anger, to stop the flow of such negative emotion. I am learning to live with your choice. Now it's time you did the same. And the next time you have a concern, please at least afford me the courtesy that 17 years have earned me by expressing yourself verbally and not with a few words typed into a phone. That's just insulting and, in every context, embarrassing. This is the real beginning of getting my life back, or at least salvaging what life you left me with and what remains.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Easy to be Hard
Something made me think of these words tonight, from the Hair musical. It just seemed to fit.
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend
How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to give in
Easy to help out
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who say they care about social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who care about evil
And social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd?
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend
How can people be so heartless
You know I'm hung up on you
Easy to give in
Easy to help out
And especially people
Who care about strangers
Who say they care about social injustice
Do you only
Care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needing friend?
I need a friend
How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no
Monday, November 28, 2011
Shadows and Caves
There's seeing without seeing, hearing without hearing, touching without touching, smelling without smelling, and, worst of all, talking without talking. The face moves. The hands flip, flutter, the eyes pretend to be alive. And all the while I sit there staring one way and the other. As the mouth moves no sound makes its way across the table. I glance down at the candle and lean in closer to feel the heat rising, to sniff the fragrance, vanilla of some sort as the color would indicate. Mint would have been too obvious. Yet there is nothing, no smell, denying, or at least defying the senses, barely enough light.
At that moment I'd rather be in Plato's cave watching shadows dance on the wall. I'd rather feel the ignorance of suppressed reality, chained with real steel, letting the sharp shackle's edge cut into my wrists, ankles, and neck. I would feel the world to be more real with shadows and a distant flame than I do at this moment, again watching the mouth move without the slightest hint of sound. So as I grip the chair I feel all I can do is move pack, float towards the door, finding night and if lucky rain, even a slight mist. Instead, I fall to the ground, hitting the cold cement and continuing downwards through the pores, not knowing when my skin will finish dripping.
At that moment I'd rather be in Plato's cave watching shadows dance on the wall. I'd rather feel the ignorance of suppressed reality, chained with real steel, letting the sharp shackle's edge cut into my wrists, ankles, and neck. I would feel the world to be more real with shadows and a distant flame than I do at this moment, again watching the mouth move without the slightest hint of sound. So as I grip the chair I feel all I can do is move pack, float towards the door, finding night and if lucky rain, even a slight mist. Instead, I fall to the ground, hitting the cold cement and continuing downwards through the pores, not knowing when my skin will finish dripping.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
The Insanity of the Simulacra
The insanity of the simulacra assures the inevitable fall deep into the abyss on non-reality. When closely assigning different symbols that become in themselves non-symbols, and then taking those same symbols and seeing them as only simulated images, we are left trusting nothing. We are left at the bottom of a chasm for which we ourselves created. Do I really sit at this keyboard and type these useless words, or am I merely simulating an action for which no real validity exists? Do I simulate breathing just because it is all the rage or do I do it out of necessity for survival? And the worst questions of all: Is the pain of solitude truly a pain from the heart or is it only an illness that I have created to simulate the experience of desperation?
It all amounts to nothing, yet it is all I know. In a paradox, it is all I can trust. I trust my existence by remaining skeptical of that very existence I treasure. The latter questions can never be answered, not even through death, because arguably death in itself is nothing more than a hyperreal, simulated experience. So why do I not attempt suicide? Perhaps because my hyper-death would be confused in the cloudiness of the simulacra. I will not be able to tell whether or not I only simulated my own death or if my own death really occurred. And I must think of the simulated occurrence that even brought me to consider any death at all. Am I in need of such compassion, companionship? Does such compatability truly exist? Am I ill from this longing or am I only going through the superficial motions of feeling such?
By example, I picture a moment, a man, people, living in a community of sorts. One day a man awakes to find his life upside down, his partner gone, leaving nothing but a note explaining that she has moved on. The man is forlorn, empty, devastated. His world is no longer his world yet it is the only world he thinks he could possibly know. As the day passes and he finally summons the courage to reach out for support, he learns that others this day have also experienced the same brutal rudeness. He gathers a few like victims and together they all sit, in silence, trying desperately to work through the pieces that led to such an abrupt severance. The vacating partners, at the same time, also sit together, somewhere on the other side of town, laughing and applauding their success in simulating a break-up and are now occasionally wondering when they will end the charade and return home so that the joke can be explained and that the act was nothing more than a mere simulation.
Here lies the quite obvious problem created by these acts. To the victims, this was not a simulation but a reality. To the actors, this was not reality but a simulation. What, then, defines the difference? Simple. The third order simulacra.
What is afforded humanity through this third order simulacra is the representation of a representation of a representation that allows true reality to be cast to the wind and the hyperreal to take control. In other words, it no longer matters whether or not these actors truly fled because the actual event was never really a part of reality to begin with. And for that matter, nothing we ever do, see, smell, taste, or touch will ever be a member of the first order simulacra. We are, in a sense, in the process of canceling ourselves out.
This leads to the more promising aspect of this consideration by finally realizing and appreciating the freedom imposed on us by no longer being a part of a tangible and valid reality. In the Sartrian world, this is perhaps analogous to that sense of freedom when we first experience choice. And with this freedom we are now afforded in the hyperreal the comforts of the absurd. Vertigo will no longer apply. Signs will mean nothing. Differentiating between love and hate will become irrelevant. It all sounds so simple, I grant, but we must all become somehow aware. The futilists will say Baudrillard was right. The nihilists will hail him as a god and the opportunists will keep selling their goods at an increased rate to a society that knows no better. I will doubt everything.
But in the meantime, I must make sure that I perform in correspondence to the simulacra. I must achieve everything and hope for nothing. In the words of Rimbaud, I must call to the executioners so I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I do this in response to all I have ever come to know. The symbols of love have become just that, symbols. There is no longer anything that stands behind that atrocious word. The iconoclasts defied the symbol of god to prove that nothing existed but a simple image. Love is reared the same way and must be exposed even more cruelly. In bitterness all becomes clear and the defamation of something so obscenely treasured stands as nothing but a testament to the rampant confusions that found life in the industrial age. Blindness would have been such a more preferable state were I to come to understand the importance of simulated insanity. I could have existed peacefully in the simulacra had certain circumstances not presented themselves so forcefully. But I believe I am all the better for my awakening because in the hyperreal, I might still be asleep.
As I sit next to tomorrow in hopes for yesterday I can conclude that no solution will ever be afforded the questions within the questions. When I look out the window I will see the same thing that has existed there for a millennium and wonder why I never saw it before. The shape will be different, of course, than it was in ths inception, but the meaning will remain the same. The regurgitated aftereffects will provide the world with the exact contradictions for which our lives are based. The simulacra will no longer be a simulacra but a void. Under a different pretext, this void will make everything clear and unimaginable. In this void will be a mirror. The reflection from this mirror will be a word, and that word will be regret. On that day I will conclude that this was all against nature and I will damn hyperreality accordingly.
It all amounts to nothing, yet it is all I know. In a paradox, it is all I can trust. I trust my existence by remaining skeptical of that very existence I treasure. The latter questions can never be answered, not even through death, because arguably death in itself is nothing more than a hyperreal, simulated experience. So why do I not attempt suicide? Perhaps because my hyper-death would be confused in the cloudiness of the simulacra. I will not be able to tell whether or not I only simulated my own death or if my own death really occurred. And I must think of the simulated occurrence that even brought me to consider any death at all. Am I in need of such compassion, companionship? Does such compatability truly exist? Am I ill from this longing or am I only going through the superficial motions of feeling such?
By example, I picture a moment, a man, people, living in a community of sorts. One day a man awakes to find his life upside down, his partner gone, leaving nothing but a note explaining that she has moved on. The man is forlorn, empty, devastated. His world is no longer his world yet it is the only world he thinks he could possibly know. As the day passes and he finally summons the courage to reach out for support, he learns that others this day have also experienced the same brutal rudeness. He gathers a few like victims and together they all sit, in silence, trying desperately to work through the pieces that led to such an abrupt severance. The vacating partners, at the same time, also sit together, somewhere on the other side of town, laughing and applauding their success in simulating a break-up and are now occasionally wondering when they will end the charade and return home so that the joke can be explained and that the act was nothing more than a mere simulation.
Here lies the quite obvious problem created by these acts. To the victims, this was not a simulation but a reality. To the actors, this was not reality but a simulation. What, then, defines the difference? Simple. The third order simulacra.
What is afforded humanity through this third order simulacra is the representation of a representation of a representation that allows true reality to be cast to the wind and the hyperreal to take control. In other words, it no longer matters whether or not these actors truly fled because the actual event was never really a part of reality to begin with. And for that matter, nothing we ever do, see, smell, taste, or touch will ever be a member of the first order simulacra. We are, in a sense, in the process of canceling ourselves out.
This leads to the more promising aspect of this consideration by finally realizing and appreciating the freedom imposed on us by no longer being a part of a tangible and valid reality. In the Sartrian world, this is perhaps analogous to that sense of freedom when we first experience choice. And with this freedom we are now afforded in the hyperreal the comforts of the absurd. Vertigo will no longer apply. Signs will mean nothing. Differentiating between love and hate will become irrelevant. It all sounds so simple, I grant, but we must all become somehow aware. The futilists will say Baudrillard was right. The nihilists will hail him as a god and the opportunists will keep selling their goods at an increased rate to a society that knows no better. I will doubt everything.
But in the meantime, I must make sure that I perform in correspondence to the simulacra. I must achieve everything and hope for nothing. In the words of Rimbaud, I must call to the executioners so I might gnaw their rifle-butts while dying. I do this in response to all I have ever come to know. The symbols of love have become just that, symbols. There is no longer anything that stands behind that atrocious word. The iconoclasts defied the symbol of god to prove that nothing existed but a simple image. Love is reared the same way and must be exposed even more cruelly. In bitterness all becomes clear and the defamation of something so obscenely treasured stands as nothing but a testament to the rampant confusions that found life in the industrial age. Blindness would have been such a more preferable state were I to come to understand the importance of simulated insanity. I could have existed peacefully in the simulacra had certain circumstances not presented themselves so forcefully. But I believe I am all the better for my awakening because in the hyperreal, I might still be asleep.
As I sit next to tomorrow in hopes for yesterday I can conclude that no solution will ever be afforded the questions within the questions. When I look out the window I will see the same thing that has existed there for a millennium and wonder why I never saw it before. The shape will be different, of course, than it was in ths inception, but the meaning will remain the same. The regurgitated aftereffects will provide the world with the exact contradictions for which our lives are based. The simulacra will no longer be a simulacra but a void. Under a different pretext, this void will make everything clear and unimaginable. In this void will be a mirror. The reflection from this mirror will be a word, and that word will be regret. On that day I will conclude that this was all against nature and I will damn hyperreality accordingly.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Baudrillard and de Beauvoir
I am not smart enough to know Baudrillard. Not in the literal or philosophical. I know him as an idea. I know his ideas as a start. I've created my own bastardization of Baudrillard. I've taken what I believe to be what he meant, and now make my own understanding of the simulation, the simulacra, which for me is the demise.
All I can do is watch simulations occur around us. I cannot trust the glass on my table, the cat rubbing my foot, the note I've received earlier. I cannot claim to exist when existence has been removed. I can sit and stare and observe. For that at best I am a voyeur, as these simulations have led me to no longer participate, only observe. And always to question. I do not know the people on the other side. Those people do not even know themselves. They exist in their own real which is the farthest state of consciousness. They are not conscious not awake. They simulate their own world. And I watch, desperate to avoid participation. If we stand down now we still stand a chance. I'll not not embrace this hyperreal. I resist. In an out of context (possible mis-)quote from de Beauvoir, "choose to exist, I exist, choose to exist, I exist. There will be a dawn."
All I can do is watch simulations occur around us. I cannot trust the glass on my table, the cat rubbing my foot, the note I've received earlier. I cannot claim to exist when existence has been removed. I can sit and stare and observe. For that at best I am a voyeur, as these simulations have led me to no longer participate, only observe. And always to question. I do not know the people on the other side. Those people do not even know themselves. They exist in their own real which is the farthest state of consciousness. They are not conscious not awake. They simulate their own world. And I watch, desperate to avoid participation. If we stand down now we still stand a chance. I'll not not embrace this hyperreal. I resist. In an out of context (possible mis-)quote from de Beauvoir, "choose to exist, I exist, choose to exist, I exist. There will be a dawn."
Simulations to our Detriment
We communicate today to our detriment, in a way that separates us, takes us further away, further into a simulation. We no longer exist in the real and our ability to function as humans were meant to function is now lost. Or rather, we are losing. We are simulations. Hidden. Dying.
If we meet someone, on the street, face to face, as part of a dance, we function best. We see the face, hear the tones, read signs. We exist. On the phone we fair less well. We cannot gauge gestures but we can still know because if nothing else the ascent and descent of the voice tells stories still in a three dimensional form. By email we remove ourselves once more from reality, but at least we carry words in intelligent depth, unfortunately still losing, but at least having the ability to reach into our own minds to formulate words for as long as it takes.
But a new distance has been created and it's a distance that takes us the furthest we've ever been from the real. We text. In short bursts we text. And in this new world we have truly left the real, we have become nothing but simulations. We create nothing but simulations. The relationships we form are not relationships but a simulation of a relationship. We are no longer responsible, held accountable, ourselves. We are a shade hollow and less than two dimensional. We have completely separated ourselves from utter truth.
A text is but a weak hook to feel close to a humanity we are no longer a part of. We have chosen to exist with so little. Our path is tenuous. Those we draw in or are drawn in by play a game of false perpetuation.
Let us know that we fail today and are drawing our last breath. The short type is nothing but the death of interaction. I'll shun it from here on.
If we meet someone, on the street, face to face, as part of a dance, we function best. We see the face, hear the tones, read signs. We exist. On the phone we fair less well. We cannot gauge gestures but we can still know because if nothing else the ascent and descent of the voice tells stories still in a three dimensional form. By email we remove ourselves once more from reality, but at least we carry words in intelligent depth, unfortunately still losing, but at least having the ability to reach into our own minds to formulate words for as long as it takes.
But a new distance has been created and it's a distance that takes us the furthest we've ever been from the real. We text. In short bursts we text. And in this new world we have truly left the real, we have become nothing but simulations. We create nothing but simulations. The relationships we form are not relationships but a simulation of a relationship. We are no longer responsible, held accountable, ourselves. We are a shade hollow and less than two dimensional. We have completely separated ourselves from utter truth.
A text is but a weak hook to feel close to a humanity we are no longer a part of. We have chosen to exist with so little. Our path is tenuous. Those we draw in or are drawn in by play a game of false perpetuation.
Let us know that we fail today and are drawing our last breath. The short type is nothing but the death of interaction. I'll shun it from here on.
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