#511

Thought of the day, related to the last post:

Consciousness is a disgusting, inheritable disease. The idea that a "higher order" of consciousness infected us with this abortive, flawed operating system is as perfectly reasonable as any other irreperably underinformed notion that our finite and completely maladaptive code generators are capable of manifesting, and the intervention of alien species as reasonable as the idea of a surveilling creator-god or pantheon. This smorgasboard of illusion holds up generation after generation because one of the symptoms of our shared illness is to see that the collective mass of interacting symptoms plays out like a big horrible perfect shakespeare play if you happen to have a comfortable balcony seat, or can imagine one, as our diseased and overburdened brains are wont to do. 

Fucking goddamn things'll imagine fricking anything. Plus, because they are lazy on top of everything else that is wrong with them--cuntivorous and cocktivorous to the detriment of the psyche and the species, for instance--they will tend to repeat what they have seen before. So everything is still full-blown animal shit, even though by nature of iterating complexities and fractal growth it seems very different to the casual observer.

"Of course I am not a monkey! Look at my top hat! The top hat is a symbol--it shows that I am smart and beautiful, a god! I made a machine to think for me and solve all my problems because I am so smart and industrious! I am sure I did a good job because, see above, I am not a monkey! I am smart and beautiful, a god! I have the fanciest hat! I will repeat this, not quite the same way, until I die! And my children will repeat after me!"

Concussively stupid. Draining. Worse, I've written it before.

But I can save myself labor, if that's what interests me. There exists one convenient term to encapsulate all this: farce.

Utter farce.

*

Must be very tired--things must be bad--because readers have actually checked in, concerned, that something worse than usual is wrong with me. 

Maybe. Thoughts of the day, related to my well-being in the here and now:

The farce has me down, and I am not in an accepting mode. Resentful of my impending desctruction, even though there is not one single solitary thing that I can do to avoid it and retain my selfhood, which is the only real possession I have--without it I am nothing. This seems obvious, but think about it. Maybe it was true for you and you already gave up the ole self-ghost a long time ago, just kept on doing stuff because everybody does stuff all the time and they incessantly bray that it is normal and good to always be running around busy and providing themselves and others with proofs of authenticity and badges of correct accomplishment. But that is farce. It's just not true that anyone has to do anything. They are kidding themselves with trinkets, but you don't have to let them kid you, though if you would prefer to be kidded that is perfectly fine.

Anyway, an impasse: there is nothing I want to do as I await destruction. All action is contributing to farce, and I am tired of farce. So I do the things I always want to do, farce or no farce: I read, and play, and paint, staying as much as possible in my dark room with the curtains drawn and the space heater cranked to max. I think in circles and speak as little as possible to anyone. This is an act of hypocrisy, wasteful and selfish, but it's mine, and it's all I am fit to accomplish.

The only thing left is to lose my guilt about it and be as honest as possible.

I am going to eat what food I have availabe and enjoy being warm and entertained at the expense of others weaker and less fortunate than myself, feeding off their pain and their pointless deaths until I also die in a futile and meaningless way.

Heidegger was right about everything. Getting raped by this farce means no one ever has to say they are sorry for anything, ever. That's what Dostoevsky said, too, and Jesus and the Buddha. It is up to you if you decide farce is farce because of phenomenology or because of God or because the truth of infinity means that everything must be. It doesn't matter which you pick because it doesn't affect anything, not even you. From here you can sell special insights by the immaterial pound or give them away for free.

You will either let everything go or keep right on having what you can get, clinging to your safety and rationalizing whatever you must in order to do so. As will I. Others will keep on wanting, or decide to destroy the world. Too bad for us all. But none of us are better or worse than the other. In fact, we are all one infinite thing.

There is no one to blame for this. No one to hold responsible. If everyone is guilty, no one is.

*

Grappling with all this along with being unable to tear my eyes away has meant that I don't even bother to put on clothes anymore until I absolutely have to, and I am just flat-out not going to get a job. I feel fine, whatever. Exhausted. Just done.

This is my new "praxis": anti-resistant non-participation. If you get it and feel like getting in on it, you'll quit your job and peaceably wait for whatever is going to happen to just happen already with as much equanimity as you can summon.

The revolution has already begun!

*

Fun post next time. Why not.

--JL

#497

Prohibiting myself from writing or even thinking about current events--after this one broadside I am allowing for.

• It's fine to destroy Teslas and whatever--anything that hurts any corporation above a certain size and evil-to-utility ratio is fine--but we need to go harder and broader at the same time. Smash our vile, disgusting smartphones with a hammer. Destroy our corporate personal computers and start building our own or supporting local silicon-heads instead of that Ruined, Accurs'd Vale. Why did we never get a garden, boutique economy going around personal computing? We obviously, obviously need local blacksmiths, but for code, and hardware, and cybertronic upgrades. Anyway, stop buying stuff from massive online retailers, stop using paypal, uber, venmo, streaming services, social media--every digital cancer metastasized by a flock of cretinous salesvampires, every pustule on the face and ass of our society, economy, and body politic we have allowed to become an angry and infected pressurized geyser of pus and befoulment in the name of our own ease and convenience, in the name of saving a buck today using slave labor and cheating and lying and bullying and warfighting and pretending tomorrow was going to be ok. It never was. Chickens always, inevitably come home to roost. But if we all stopped all at once the world would change the next day. Prove me wrong.

*

In emulation of the great sand painters of our global cultural heritage, I've been doing chalk art on the sidewalk basically the same afternoon or evening that it's going to rain. It seems to release something in me of its own tone and texture apart from painting or drawing, but akin to both. And I don't have to store it, which, believe me, is a huge plus currently.

*

Last night as I was drifting off to bed I realized that my truest, oldest, most personal and most total ambition, such as the word can be applied to my temperament, is to be like Dick Van Dyke in the old Mary Poppins movie.

Bert and Ian Malcolm. Them, and Madmartigan from Willow, who is played by Val Kilmer. My protean, formative masculine ideals. The drifting, indefatigable workingman artist, the cynical, analytical trickster-intellect with a side of strong ethics and jokes, and the wild, diamond-in-the-rough fighter who is not the protagonist. All men queered in interesting ways by their characterizations and roles in their narrative, just by the by.

Plus, y'know, Batman. Also Val Kilmer! But more Mask of the Phantasm Batman, with the miserable, guilty, weeping, basically insane Bruce.

Wow, it really is all very complete and turnkey! Sometimes it can swing around to seem that we as individuals are not really very complicated phenomena after all. 

*

PAX EGRESS

PAX EXEGESIS

PAX EMESIS

--JL