Actually, what are my goals?
It is hard to say.
I've discovered so much about reality since I began my journey, that what were my goals are mine no longer.
Compared to 10 years ago, some of those discoveries that have radically altered my views are as follows:
1. People may complain about being miserable, but most of them are extremely happy the way they are. That is why there is no use explaining or complaining to other people -- they think you are just like them, griping to let off steam. Substantive reality escapes them.
2. Most people don't care what is true. They press forth with their ideological quests. I guess concern for truthfulness was my shamanic wound, imparted and bequeathed to me by Nietzsche. I'm all over it.
3. Most people do not have good emotional hygiene That means, if you befriend them, they might end up attributing negative qualities to you later, stemming from their personal frustrations. The same goes for people with an ideological bent: the more sincere you are with them, the more they will use you and abuse you. Even getting close enough to ask them questions can be a contamination risk, since they will label you with the elements of their personalities or experiences they do not like.
4. Ninety percent of the burden I've been carrying has not been my own, but that of others who emotionally blackmailed me with the suggestion, "If you carry this for me, you will belong, and at least everything will be well."
5. I have suffered for too long from post-traumatic migrant guilt. That is over.
6. American culture is responsible of a lot of oversimplifying meaning, through the anti-intellectual milieu of its media.
7. People are happy so long as they can breed. The majority of those who do not have an intellect or hobby enjoy breeding.
8. Capitalism now permeates everything. What can I get from that? If that sentence doesn't benefit me, why did I bother reading it. I am the almighty consumer. Bow down and give me tea.
9. Most people can be very normal at a basic level, quite logical and decent, one-on-one.
10. My African hopes are either fulfilled or dead. Many are fulfilled and others are dead. I can't bring back the past.
It is hard to say.
I've discovered so much about reality since I began my journey, that what were my goals are mine no longer.
Compared to 10 years ago, some of those discoveries that have radically altered my views are as follows:
1. People may complain about being miserable, but most of them are extremely happy the way they are. That is why there is no use explaining or complaining to other people -- they think you are just like them, griping to let off steam. Substantive reality escapes them.
2. Most people don't care what is true. They press forth with their ideological quests. I guess concern for truthfulness was my shamanic wound, imparted and bequeathed to me by Nietzsche. I'm all over it.
3. Most people do not have good emotional hygiene That means, if you befriend them, they might end up attributing negative qualities to you later, stemming from their personal frustrations. The same goes for people with an ideological bent: the more sincere you are with them, the more they will use you and abuse you. Even getting close enough to ask them questions can be a contamination risk, since they will label you with the elements of their personalities or experiences they do not like.
4. Ninety percent of the burden I've been carrying has not been my own, but that of others who emotionally blackmailed me with the suggestion, "If you carry this for me, you will belong, and at least everything will be well."
5. I have suffered for too long from post-traumatic migrant guilt. That is over.
6. American culture is responsible of a lot of oversimplifying meaning, through the anti-intellectual milieu of its media.
7. People are happy so long as they can breed. The majority of those who do not have an intellect or hobby enjoy breeding.
8. Capitalism now permeates everything. What can I get from that? If that sentence doesn't benefit me, why did I bother reading it. I am the almighty consumer. Bow down and give me tea.
9. Most people can be very normal at a basic level, quite logical and decent, one-on-one.
10. My African hopes are either fulfilled or dead. Many are fulfilled and others are dead. I can't bring back the past.
2 comments:
People are lost little tortured victims of our conditioning.
I think your post is solid; I only take umbrage with your first assertion.
People aren't extremely happy; they're extremely motivated. Everyone has something to get them out of bed in the morning, whether it's Machiavellian office politics revolving around the petty cash safe or turning enough tricks to get that iPhone 5 or slaving away to prove to their parents they've come good after an emotionally-manipulated childhood of guilt or to clock days and weeks and years of award-winning work whilst daydreaming about a girl you work with but will never talk to for 17 months and you quit without ever even saying "Hi". (I mean, for example).
This is not extremely happy. People just try to make the best of it and almost all of them are imagining that's what they're doing when no one has a clue about a damn thing. There's no use explaining things because they block everyone out as we're a race of sociopaths; they'll register what you say and instantly dump it and remain friends with you. Nobody's on nobody's side, least of all their own.
The rest of your observations are on point. It's all a lie of course; 99% of people never punch through the wrapping paper. Those that do have two options, reset their targets to loftier goals to perpetuate the lie....
Or scream in existential terror that all their suffering, all their work, all their pain and all their agony and shame and turmoil and everything they've ever done might as well as not have been real. Except it was real, it was painful, and it's the lies that aren't real. So they scream.
Or they hook back up with Chris Brown. All that pain & drama would be for nothing, otherwise. And cycles are formed.
What am I babbling about. People aren't happy. We're just positive feelers; we're a hope-filled, revisionist species, writing our lies in real time telling ourselves we're doing fine.
I've never had the sense that all my hopes and expectations have been denied. At least, not in the sense that I have felt devastation, so much as a certain amount of vindication and relief. Western culture seems to have got things back to front in many ways, at least in positing the there is no other vital strata of meaning and experience that lies under the level where people strive and are ambitious.
There are other levels for sure. These are not passive, but potentially active deeper layers.
That is psychology, though. Metaphysically speaking, there is certainly nothing. Therefore, one had better make sure that one enjoys the constructs of one's mind, or else.
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