#298

Well, my test was not a success. Didn't get too far before a silly mistake that I could have corrected failed me right out! This time I had the parking brake on during the air brake leak test, which is no good, and any mistakes in your brake test fail you outright. Miserable! Foolish! Ah, the pain of an actual fail is so much more searing than a practice fail. Well, I can try again on Tuesday, and I have promised the tester a perfect test at that time. And by gum, I shall deliver!

Dang, man, though. Fuck. Would have preferred to pass. That would have been preferable, to me. But, as my tester said basically immediately--everything happens for a reason. I believed this as a child, then I doubted it, then unequivocally held that nothing happens for any reason, and eventually I came to believe once more that every particle in the universe is exactly where it needs to be for all time. I did not proceed with my test and pass it today, and the consequences of that will affect my life and the life of those around me such that years from now, I will look back and say "None of this would have happened if I'd passed my test right away. Thank God. I say Yes to this life with an obstinate joy. Do you hear me, demon? A stubborn, relentless joy, a firm and clear and uncompromising Yes!"

*

Ha! Feel better already. Also, we got plenty more moving done. Still a lot to do, but life changes so fast all the time, and people are always doing everything they can to make it faster and faster--annoyances it may contain, but this slow-burn move has its beauties and advantages, as well. 

*

Ezra just came up to me and showed me that someone is selling my books at a higher price than the one I set. Through eBay! Couldn't really care less about the money angle or whatever. Any angle. Guess I hope they do a better job than me? I mean, it is barely possible to do worse. Also the seller is very obviously a bot.

*

Looking back at this post--and my life--I get the sense about myself as a terrible letdown to my family, especially in times/cultures with exacting expectations regarding the product of family units. I have fun imagining myself falling pretty neatly into the a Japanese stereotype of dudes like me. A disgrace, but not like, the worst conceivable disgrace. A faintly amusing, mostly harmless, embarrassing failure--"Gakkari shita chōnan. So fortunate for the parents that there followed other sons, better sons, sons who did not squander their promise."

Drifter mindset, drifting life. Head in the clouds, buried in books, lost in space. I may have mentioned before that at an overnight camp, I was given the nickname "The Wandering Fetus". And, well, yes. To offset this, I've done my best to work hard and at the very least not be a freeloader or a burden, and tried hard to do right and be a support to those around me, when I wasn't drunk off my nutsack or letting the devil take it all.

So it goes! Peace out and give head, good people. Or don't! Your choices are your own.

--JL

#297

If, when typing it up in this here blank space, I bring up truth and its unknowability a lot, it is because this concept, this question of the truth--and it is a Question--Quest--is the thing I have been thinking about the most, every day, for as long as I can remember. I don't believe I have gone through a single day of this life without asking myself at least once what the truth is, the real Truth, the Supraliminal Immanent capital-T Truth before which all miniscule-t temporal workaday truths are lies. The question of the true nature of God, in other words. My hubris has always been the wish to look upon the face of God. 

Death may show me, or be the starting-point of new stage of the Quest. I'm cool either way. What can I surmise in my lifetime? What does the Question do for me in my lifespan, how does it shape my existence and my being in the world? I'm finding out. Seeing, and at the end, I will see what I have seen. Seen what I will see. Man, is it hot in here? I'm woozy. This form of contemplation has this effect on me. Not vertigo or anxiety--a feeling of my corporeal liquidity changing state. Brain simmering up to a boil. Vascular system filling up with clouds.

*

Tomorrow is my bus-driving test! I've learnt to drive a school bus, and should pass barring I mess up on any of the pass/fail elements which fail your whole deal immediately. On my pretest yesterday I did just that--the bus is not secure at a stop such as a railway crossing even if the parking brake is engaged and the service brake is pressed unless it is neutral gear, and I forgot that gear change, and only that, once--but that's a total fail. I am confident, however, that tomorrow will be a successful endeavor! Mistakes are the greatest of all teachers, their stinging, acrid lessons always the most enduring.

Whole process got me thinking about other stuff I could learn and get certified for, like CPR (one should have this on lock anyway, but haven't been certified since I was a teenager) and, dunno, whatever. Could get more endorsements on my commercial license, for example. Maybe I could learn to drive an ambulance, or a fire truck? So much seems possible now that I can maneuver forty feet and almost five tons. What else is licensed and useful? At what point does one have an embarrassing amount of licenses?

*

Ok, that's that for today. Please peace the fuck out.

--JL

#296

No matter how much I write about internet--its pernicious toxins, its miraculous fruits--its mysteries, lies, and obfuscations--its great telescopic beam aimed everywhere and nowhere--it feels like I hardly say anything. This is probably because I don't know much, if anything about internet, in the end, no matter how much of it I read and experience. It may be like a dream, in that it is an unreality that is integral to the makeup of reality. One cautious observation: its portion of that makeup has grown strangely and of its own properties, like an organism. Or a virus, or a cancer. 

Often one reads what internet scholars have to say about internet and one can agree, while wondering why it doesn't feel like the whole story. I think this is because any one person is only ever writing about a small part of the internet, like someone describing the part of an iceberg visible above the water. The internet is thousands of miles of deep, deep ocean full of icebergs--truly, the net is vast--but typically we zero in on a few peaks when we talk about the whole shebang. I mean, there's trenches down there. Billions of cubic meters of water. Why so much babble about this or that algorithm, or a couple of companies? Because you have a word count on your article. Because books and dissertations can only be so long.

Again, like a dream, writing about them is no substitute for dreaming them, and if there is an art and science to dreaming, there is only so much that others can tell you. The dreamer must dream in order to dream. So it is with perceiving the internet--diving into strange waters to see what you haven't seen before. Fishing for strange fishes.

Most people just hang out on top of one or two of the most enormous icebergs, trusting official reports about the reality of the underwater vastness, and call that the whole internet. Just like most people read an article or three, an introduction, an excerpt, and a short-form analysis, then feel qualified to tell you all about Aristotle's influence on Western thought, or what Nietzsche really meant, signified, and believed, or what effect a needle traveling at lightspeed can really have. These people don't know shit about fuck and can't be talked or listened to by any individual with even moderate presence of mind, but they are legion, and amongst themselves, they reinforce each other and create a certain social reality of perception and sufficiency of knowledge. They cannot be taught further, except by the next fragment forthcoming from their usual sources, which they absorb only to maintain the intellectual capital which is socially functional to them. And in the end, society has lots of functions to fill, and there is nothing wrong with that. We can't all endlessly wonder what the deeper meaning is to every phenomena that we encounter in life, or live as completionists and subtext addicts. People have a busy day to get to, so they'll eat disinformation over breakfast and regurgitate it over lunch.

Of course, this can be stressful nonetheless, but it doesn't really matter any more or less than, say, a giant humanoid insect in your dream telling you that in the crystal caves you just traversed, you left behind something important--yet, you cannot turn back. That is also kind of stressful, but functionally, concretely, you can keep dreaming, shift the dream, do whatever, even wake up. Neither will it interfere with you unduly in waking life, though the memory of it all is something to chew on. Similarly, on internet, it's easy to keep your mouth shut, and click away, or log off. There is more to think about elsewhere, different nutrients you could be absorbing, new and interesting vistas not available above the surface of the water that you could contemplate. 

Internet is supposed to tell us something about the real world; it is even supposed to inform us about reality, but that is not what it is really for, and not what it really does. But what even is the real world in the first place? The iceberg metaphor is equally applicable. 

No one knows anything. It's fun to exchange ideas about it, nice to think about, but far as I can determine, the only truth that has never been known by anyone lies in accepting and admitting the unknowability of the truth.

--JL 

#295

Each time I reread all the Calvin and Hobbes, I reflect upon how precious little philosophic and literary work has ever really done more for me than reinforce and enrich what is contained within its aggregate panels. In his comic strip, Mr. Watterson covers the full human range. It's all in there, and if you don't believe me, read it again. 

Not reading Calvin and Hobbes at this precise moment. Just thinking about it, as one does on a Sunday morning. 

*

SSSSSssssssde[pppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp---=

Thank you, beloved domesticated feline, for your contributions to this humble blog.

*

Monday morning, now. I'd hoped to generate more thoughts about whatever in order to feel this entry complete, to experience that round, alloyed sensation of the post being done. This did not happen. Sunday got real lazy. Well, I took some more stuff off the apartment walls and did the dishes, which is not nothing. It's not a lot, either. There was plenty more stuff to do which I did not, and that trend continues even as I type.

The apartment space empties slowly, and the new house fills slowly. We painted our room (two tones of green, for peace and headache soothing) and Ezra's office (his preferred bright yellow, for energy and focus [I can't be long in there, as such yellow saturation tends to give me headaches]). Well, Ezra and his mom painted his office, and did most of the work on the room. I helped some in there. Mostly, I've moved objects, largely books. All that remains in the apartment is the several books I'm reading currently and the nonfiction stacks. My office/bookroom was once some form of giant closet, with a degree of built-in shelving. My plan is to paint many symbols in black and gold and silver on the shelves and flat ceiling. This, combined with all my books, the art to be hung on the sloping part of the ceiling (the second floor is seemingly a converted attic, so our room and the bookroom have that triangular shape upper-story rooms sometimes have) and the objects that can be housed there should make for a room of great power and strong magic. Hope it's the place where I finish all my current projects and many more.

There's so much fucking work to do, though. Transforming the yard areas, fixing gutters, cat-proofing the necessaries, lots more painting, and much else.

Well, It's what life is for and all about,

*

Thinking a lot about old friends lately. Morbidly, you know. How many more will die without my getting to see them again even once? And I'm so underground and off the map that in the large bulk of cases, I don't even know how to contact people, and people have very few options in ascertaining that I'm still alive myself. 

All there is is what will be, and there is nothing in this world to fear, but I can't help but feel a certain sadness around it all. My own fault, of course. Solitude, privacy, and hermitage come at a high price. 

*

Been warming up for a real theological post, real godhead/spirit shit, but that is not this post. Soon, though. 

My practical bus driver test is on Sunday! I better work pretty hard this week. 

--JL

#294

To continue on a bit from yesterday: a wholly disproportionate percentage of our lives are made up of and/or reliant on pure anecdote. The human being has been raised that way, yes, for lack of many better options. We are memetic animals and that's just how it is. However, there is a difference between a demonstrative meme (which can be concrete or metaphorical) and the other kinds, which can be divided roughly into three groups: theoretical (like hypotheses), recreational (tall tales, jokes, and the like), and bullshit. 

Bullshit's alright in sane measure. Fertilizer, y'know. Problem is, as I said, in the proportion. The huge difference between a demonstrative meme--for example: the sun rises in a direction which is one of four cardinal directions and sets in a second, from which the remaining pair can be derived--and bullshit--for example: masturbating will make you go blind.

Well, see, the sun rises in the east. It might not always do so forever into an infinite future, but it's demonstrable for the present, day in and day out. And while you might masturbate, and go blind, no one can prove that there exists a correlation there, meaning that, for the present, to assert causation is to propagate bullshit. 

Because bullshit can sound so much like a theoretical meme, and theoretical memes can sometimes become demonstrated, or seem to be demonstrated, and therefore concrete enough for honest use, bullshit often passes for the truth. Individuals can build whole worldviews based on anecdotal bullshit and believe they are operating on rational grounds, when they are really being manipulated by tricksters, officers of a nation-state, or sacerdotal entities.

There's nothing wrong with that--as I say, governments bank on this to form order from chaos, and it seems tolerable within certain limits--but it can be frustrating, and get out of control fast, because once you believe a little too much bullshit, it's hard to determine where bullshit-eating has to stop. What is persuasive becomes more real than what is true. The truth has no real sales pitch; bullshit has infinity of them and they almost always sound better. Sophistry.

Anyway. All this is to say that we would do well to instill in ourselves a rigorous metric of verification before incorporating any new information into our thinking, and be engaged in a dispassionate vetting process of what we think we believe. Thus, our Socratic thinking, praise God. 

*

Don't know why I feel compelled to try to squeeze these things out on such a crunch time--after waking up, exercising, and making coffee, before breakfast and getting ready to leave for work. But the hours are quite busy after work these days, what with moving books and painting walls/ceilings and whatnot, so I guess they wouldn't get typed otherwise.

Truth is, while I detest working on a deadline, and won't really do it even if I set it myself for some inane reason, I enjoy the challenge of a time trial. Even if I fail, or generate totally idiotic drivel, it's more of a fun time.

Ok, peace the fuck out

--JL

#293

The importance of the divides between experiential evidence, experimental evidence, and anecdotal evidence has always existed. It can be hazarded, and I will do so, that most people's worldviews throughout the winding course of our (from an individual's perspective) vast shared history is composed of utile and applied experiential evidence combined with anecdotal evidence which amounts to a materially invalid but socially encouraged set of opinions. Experimental evidence is a truly rare and expensive gem, and, like the gems we dig up from the living earth, is valued at even more than it is worth. Again, like gems, more people hear about it or see it in the possession of a select few than are able to touch, use, or own it themselves. Again, like gems, many fakes exist, some very difficult to distinguish from the real thing, some enshrined as the legitimate article. Now more than ever. 

Now more than ever. I truly loathe that construction. Part of that loathing is its legitimate applicability.

How much does it matter to a person who will never travel further than two hundred miles away from where they squat on the daily whether the planet is round, flat, or an irregular spheroid? They're not gonna try to sail a boat to wherever the fuck. They don't have to triangulate or plot jack shit on any chart. How much does the exact speed of the planet hurtling through space--or its static majesty as it sits in state at the precise center of the universe--actually affect how you get your next meal, or deal with local levels of precipitation and humidity?

The quality of the average person's life is so rarely affected by what scientists fight about. Well, formerly. Applied sciences have jacked us into a technological dystopia, and experimental evidence is rammed right up our collective asshole. The idea that science might be a conspiracy is reserved for those who literally cannot perform a simple calculation, one that a man naked underneath his toga could do with a standing pole and its shadow thousands of years ago. Poles still cast shadows, and unless calculators are a conspiracy, the math is easier to perform than ever.

This is still not to say that experiential evidence has lost its primacy. Who in the vast aggregate really gives a fuck about quantum computers? Solid-state physics? Learning a martial art, or stonemasonry--there's news you can use. I love science, history, all the nerd shit--love it--but as I make my way through life, I can't help but think that the world consistently demonstrates to me that these are playthings for me and for people like me; that the root of life is very far removed from these castles in the air. What good is an advanced society if it requires and produces extreme unhappiness even for its most lavished beneficiaries, and worse from those consigned to serve them? Some good, but rather less than optimal potentialities. Who is happier than someone with no idea that a new smartphone is necessary for happiness? No one infected by the concept, I deem.

Yet, we bring these castles to ground, force them into the life-root position, and while the case is very cogent for all the wonderful things we have accomplished with this thing of ours of sharing the results of our experiments, the case that life is extremely close to being completely fucking ruined for everyone, human and non-human, is equally cogent. One thing I feel comfortable stating unequivocally is that we moved too fast, too heedless, with too narrow of a field of vision and too linear an idea of progress.

Agriculture was once an experiment. Maybe Cain wasn't the best dude, but maybe he got a raw deal. Ursula K. Le Guin, when writing about the many possible ways once could conceive of and determine what could be classified a highly developed society or civilization, mentioned the possibility of paleolithic technology and a highly developed and communal contemplative philosophy. We have the exact opposite, and I think we're pretty developed, but what we have simply seems less durable in the long run and less desirable in the first place, at least to me.

Well, we'll see what happens. I'm not really trying to make a point or anything. You know how it is around here. 

*

Oh, I guess my point initially was going to be that people are infuriating when they pretend that hearing about proof is the same as obtaining it for themselves. But I suppose that fury is immaturity on my own part. People are gonna do what they're gonna do. A wise man said: to see the truth, discard all opinions. Think I'm paraphrasing several wise folk. At any rate, I should take that advice myself, perhaps moreso than the people to whom I'm prescribing it.

Damn, what a useless post. Sorry everybody. 

--JL

#292

Instead of learning to drive the bus when I was supposed to begin learning to drive the bus, I was caught by the kind of extremely powerful illness that sweeps previously contact-restricted populations when the operant restrictions are lifted. So, I've only gotten to drive Friday and yesterday, but it is worth noting that since I last posted, I have been behind the wheel of a school bus, a wholly unprecedented condition in my personal existence. Kinda cool. Pretty cool, I should say. I like driving, and driving is kind of like a video game, so it's kind of like learning a new video game. Most of the rest of the time, though, I was suffering under the yoke of a particularly miserable head cold, and that just sucked. Didn't even wanna write. Wondered if the negative forces of the universe had sent this illness into my body to prevent me from writing, which is the kind of thing I think about when I am running a low-grade fever. Being sick inflames my superstition and paranoia, as well as any number of tissues and membranes. 

Speaking of all that, judging by what I've been reading online, signs point to another brutal sweep of very bad illness, epidemic/pandemic style, on multiple fronts. Should...do my health insurance paperwork. Probably. Should...restock my supply of immune system supplements. 

*

Welp! I'll try to generate something interesting next time, which will be soon, maybe this evening. That's all I could reasonably squeeze in between waking up, getting nutrition and coffee, and having to soon depart for more bus driving.

Peace!

--JL