I miss...

I miss being forced to lie down on a mat to take a nap, but being too excited and alive to ever be able to fall asleep. I miss finger painting being a grade. I miss making creative snacks for snack time, like green eggs and ham that were actually green, and celery stick with peanut butter and raisins on them so they resembled ants on a log. I miss being able to hit mean boys in the head with a fallen palm tree branch and getting away with it unpunished. I miss riding hours for hours on end in the afternoon. I miss kids bringing in cupcakes for the class because they were lucky enough to have birthdays during the school year. I miss picking out a box of Valentine's Day cards, folding them all up, and passing them out to people to be placed in our self-made and decorated heart-shaped envelopes. I miss rolling around in the dirt. Did I mention I miss naps? I'd definitely take them now, in fact I'd take one right now instead of writing this if I could. Gosh, I miss kindergarten.

Monday's Excerpts - 1984 by George Orwell

     Doing another weekly blog post, very similar to Thursday's Thoughts. This one is pretty self-explanatory. I'll be picking a book every week and posting three excerpts from the title that I favor the most. The excerpts could contain spoilers, but I'll post a warning every Monday (consider this your warning for this week), so be careful reading further if you don't want the book spoiled.

This Week's Book: 1984 by George Orwell

     “I’m not interested in the next generation, dear. I’m interested in us.”

     “You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,” he told her.

     She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in delight. (Page 129)

—————

    “Listen. The more men you’ve had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?”

    “Yes, perfectly.”

    “I hate purity, I hate goodness. I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”

    “Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I’m corrupt to the bones.” (Pages 104-105)

—————

    Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself—that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink. (Pages 32-33)

The unbeneficial crops of FarmVille

     So the post I have been working on for hours magically deleted itself, remind me again why I thought it'd be a good idea to trust Blogger to not magically delete my post again? I knew I should have used Office, despite it being a pain in the ass for the type of post I was making.. anyway, not going to get upset over it, no need. Besides, objects don't have agents to get angry at, right everybody? Haha.

     Instead of my personally productive post, I'll take this time to express how ridiculous I think it is for people to play games like FarmVille and Mafia/Dragon/Vampire/etc. Wars.

     I've been wanting to get this publicly off my chest for a while now. Truthfully, and I'm going to be honest here even though this has a possibility of provoking insult within people of my family, I think it's pathetic to waste expansive amounts of time taking care of virtual crops and animals, or shooting virtual members of the mob for fake money. I see people around me, intelligent people capable of great productivity, wasting their lives playing these games for absolutely no gain. Sure, it may be as little as thirty minutes a day, but typically it's hours, if not their entire day.

     In a way, it's hypocritical of me to say anything negative about these games that have taken the web by storm. I played Everquest 2 for a good two years or so, and avidly at that. I raided—the most hardcore level of play—every single night for hours on end outside of my normal play time, which was from when I woke up to when it was raid time. Regardless, I quit the game because I recognized it was pointless, an absolute time sink because I gained nothing intellectually from it that I couldn't have received elsewhere faster, and I was wasting away in front of a screen physically, emotionally, and mentally.

     Of course, I took EQ2 to an extreme that I haven't witnessed in anyone with the games cluttering Facebook, but still the negative effects remain the same.

     I won't accept the excuses "I play it to relax" or "it's what I do in my personal time for fun"  or any variation of the two as condonable reasons for sitting in front of a screen clicking away at things that don't matter or even physically exist. There are plenty of other activities that can be partaken in for relaxation or pleasure that are also productive, sometimes even equally.

     You could try reading a book, an article (of something related to news outside of celebrity gossip), a newspaper. You could walk the dog, plant a real garden, or do fun outdoor activities like hiking, boating, cycling, or whatever you would perceive as enjoyable.

     Don't play a video game (outside of games like Brain Age, but even they should be played sparingly as they are still games), don't read trash magazines. They are pointless, unproductive, a waste of time, and negative to your life whether you recognize it now or not. You might actually come to discover—like I did—that if you quit now partially unwilling, you'll discover why it was so important, beneficial, and positive later on that you did.

     I cannot help but mentally and often physically shake my head when I witness my loved ones partaking in these unjustifiable activities. The world is a beautiful place, more magical than any religious writing, fairytale, or website. Don't offend it by experiencing it vicariously through the internet by personal choice of laziness.

Writhing at War

            There are some days where I have this idea in my head that the day is meant for my suffering. I am not sure exactly what causes or triggers this, but I cannot deny its relentless force within me, begging me to bring myself pain, screaming for self torture. It sounds very sadistic, maybe even masochistic, but I assure you it’s not.

            I feel guilty. I feel ashamed I said how I really felt when I wrote an email last night. I feel like I should regret it now, but a large part of me is internally yelling, telling me to not ever regret being honest with how I feel about a situation or person’s actions. The core of my personality is battling with the sickness that has devoured it.

I am nearly positive it has always been my childhood conditioning that has silenced me, and now it washes waves of guilt and shame over me whenever the truth peeks out of my lips.

The mental war that wages within me is fighting itself, and has been for a long time. The oppression of truth is wearing thin, and my self is not sure what to do. What tactic to throw next, because they want to win, but sub-consciously within my sub-conscious they know I’m only fighting myself.

            It never should have been this hard for me to be honest with someone or something, perhaps if I could have been sooner it wouldn’t have flowed out of me like a sea of red anger last night. Now it is extreme, and I’m going to pay for something I didn’t even do past this present.

I cannot be fairly charged with acting a certain way because of whatever conditioning I am coated with, nor can I be fairly charged with behaving a way not desired. The latter should be praised if anything. I am trying, so desperately trying to become something I’m outside forcibly not. One day when I figure out how to make the decision of simply becoming what I must be, then I will see, be, the change I wish to see in the world. And the world is me.

"You survived it when it happened, 

you'll survive when you remember it."

Thursday's Thoughts - Theme: Becoming

     I haven't forgotten about this, so no worries. I slacked hardcore, but this is part of my collection of resolutions for 2010. This will be posted every week unless something really ridiculous occurs, I promise!

This Week's Theme: Becoming

"If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." - Jesus Christ from the Gospel of Thomas

“What is to give light must endure burning.” - Viktor Frankl

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."  - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

     I borrowed these quotes from "Becoming", a blog authored by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, PhD. She is the founder and CEO of MISS Foundation, and is a professor and researcher at Arizona State University. I didn't take the theme name from her blog, but I realized that all the quotes listed on her blog—probably over a hundred, easily—are all based around becoming something, but not just anything. We must become what we are meant to be. Dr. Cacciatore is inspirational, especially to someone like me.

Calculate Your God Delusion Index

     Picked up The God Delusion again today, so I can finally finish reading it. Upon its completion, I'll be moving on to The Origin of Species or Climbing Mount Improbable.

     I'd make a poll for my readers to vote on which route I should head down first, but I'm not sure I even have enough readers to make it worthwhile. I'm also not sure if I have enough readers that have read both books, or have an understanding of both to have a reasoning behind the choice they'd make. Ah, well! If you have an opinion, feel free to post it here.

     Moving on, I found the following video on Samuel's "Buddhist Okie". I don't normally watch six minute videos, especially requiring interaction, but this flew by considering how much I laughed at the ridiculousness of it (you'll see the humor if you're atheist as well). However, it's not exactly meant to be a joke, which is the baffling part.

     Anyway, you'll need a pen and paper unless you're good at keeping a numeral score in your head. I'm personally not the greatest at it, but turns out I didn't need to— I got a score of zero. Make me proud and get the same, or at least have it churn your brain enough that were you to take it again you'd get a lower score. I'd love to know what you got, so post it in a comment once you're done. Even if you get something insanely high, don't worry.

Happy birthday Marilyn Manson

"Tell me something beautiful, 
Tell me something free, 
Tell me something beautiful 
And I wish that I could be."

     You've been an inspirational influence on me for six years in counting. I could speculate "what if"'s all day long on how things might be different if my dad hadn't played The Matrix soundtrack for me when he did, but the truth is I'm not sure where I'd be right now had he not.

     People—my dad included, interestingly enough—have frequently claimed I would have found you anyway eventually, found atheism, found critical and analytical thinking. Even if that were true I'd be pushed back a lot farther than I am now, and although my discovery was up to chance I feel a compelling need to credit you—and my few other influences, not all of celebrity status, one being Maynard—in some way to shaping me what I have become so far and will become in the future. I don't think they realize perhaps I want to bestow you with this honor, I choose to, shall I become something great, something credible. Hopefully I will do enough of the "right" things to craft my person into something incredible, as that's where my sights are set.

     So I thank you Manson, for opening my eyes when they so desperately needed to be peeled back and blinded by white. I especially thank you for prying them open every day of agony I have ever faced in reminiscence of my childhood, showing me the truth in my horrors although it made me weep on countless occasions. I can recall every pang of pain I have endured inspired by your music, art, work, etc., being welcomed with conscious open arms.

"I hate what I have become to escape what I hated being. . .
. . .Here is my real head, here is my real head
I wear this fucking mask because you cannot handle me."

     Thank you for songs like "Kinderfeld" and "Organ Grinder", thank you for recognizing sexual childhood abuse, self mutilation, the faults of Christianity and religion, thank you for being brave when I couldn't, when we couldn't. Thank you for saying "shoot up the mall, the school, the president of whatever, and whoever else wants to fights", despite them censoring the capabilities of your statement. As juvenile as the line can come across, I'm sure those of us that have heard the real version of "Blank and White" can recognize the strength and importance in what you were saying. I'm sure we—those that wish to fight—all hope and strive to live in the light of your legacy, I hope we won't disappoint by standing in your shadow that you've sold to millions of others. I hope I won't disappoint. Your help and guidance, although accepted by me for it to lend my heart a holding hand, has changed my life forever. I knew from the very moment I heard "Rock is Dead" that things would never be the same. I felt something powerful, something new to me and the world. You were something I wanted to be near, or be just like.

     Just yesterday my friend Sarah pointed out that I idolized you, Manson, and commented on how that was silly. In actuality, I don't idolize you at all and the idea of idolizing you has never crossed my mind. I do not idolize anyone because I know any place of standing in the world is within my steps if only I move my feet. Idolizing is for the weak and blind, idolizing is also for the even sadder individuals who do not want to work hard enough to get what they could claim. Not doing what one is capable of is worse by personal opinion than not being capable at all.

     My feelings of you are that of an influence, which I regard as the highest honor you can hold someone. I allow you to influence me, something I wish the parents of Denver, CO and the rest of the world would recognize, in ways that I choose. You influence me to be strong when I feel my weakest, but you do not influence me to do drugs, for two simple examples amongst many. The elaboration could continue on, but my point is we all pick and choose what to do with our influences, there is no force within the spectrum. Blindness for any reason is not a plausible, defensible force that I'll believe in, either.

     You may not need or want it, but I felt defense of my influence was necessary today. Everyone deserves to relax one day a year, and if a little slack comes with a birthday, so be it— I'd take advantage, I do every year in fact. Happy birthday.

-----

MARILYN MANSON - OMEGA MESSAGE 015

7.29.99

It is time for their world to be destroyed. It is time for a new age, the Age of Horus. It is time for a new standard, a new canvas, and a new artist. We must forget this wasted generation and amputate it before the mind rots away with it. Paint it, record it, write it down before they kill you with their slow poisonous stupidity. Make yourself heard.

This Internet is your middle finger to the universe, don't let them break it.

Fuck their world. Let's make our own.

The third and final Beast
Marilyn Manson

Recognizing Darwinism

            I get it now, how important it is to know of the world before you attempt to know of anything else. Within that, fully understanding process of evolution through natural selection (the obvious truth), and realizing there is no sky-god reclining on a cloud mapping out my life. I believe in evolution, I disbelieve in gods, but I don’t really know in-depth what all that entirely means.

            So now I’ve come to the conclusion that to grasp anything of the world to my fullest potential, I need to grasp why I’m here, and unfortunately but especially why I’m not. Instead of reading on with my list of famous fiction and sociology non-fiction, I’m going to head in the direction of Darwinism and read The Origin of Species after I finish 1984.

            For a long time I thought it was silly to prioritize reading Dawkins and the like before anything else. I regard religion—or lack of religion, depending on how you play with words—as a hobby when practiced beyond principle belief or disbelief. By reading The God Delusion with priority over Huxley or Orwell, I considered that hypocritical because it appeared to me as a hobby— entertainment if you will.

I was clearly wrong. If I believe in things I know little of, or don’t have a solid list of the truths I’ve recognized,  it will affect everything else I do in one way or another, sometimes big, sometimes small. It would be impossible and ridiculous for me to hold a sociological argument about why people are a certain way when I don’t even know why the world is a certain way.

            I’m not sure how I conceived the idea that not knowing of the world before knowing of its inhabitants wasn’t the most important thing I could be focusing my studies on.

In the very least, we are fortunate I didn’t need much convincing or evidence to recognize reality. I wonder if that says something of my character?

The tiniest love

(Written a few days ago, finished up today.)

            On the few occasions I spent time with my birth mother and my brother Kirk, she would constantly obsess over his food consumption. Had he eaten enough, had he eaten too little, had he eaten too fast?

I was used to her creating the illusion of caring about my brother more than me in all aspects, so this was just another usual thing.

However, somewhere along the way something changed and she decided that since she wasn't around to take care of her son and I was around, I would be in charge of making sure he doesn't choke to death on a chicken nugget. "Make sure you watch your brother, don't let him eat too fast."

            She never once told me to watch my brother to make sure he doesn't get into trouble, grows up into a good person, respects his elders, respects his belongings; she wasn't interested in instilling values—although everything was through me—that she didn't have.

You would think though, someone lacking important aspects of being a respectful human being that’s productive to society would want their child to grow up better than they did. There is a chance an adult without poor upbringing would recognize its importance, but considering she's sociopathic—at least by my analysis—it has never crossed her mind and never will because her conscience does not even exist.

            Today I had just walked out of therapy, and I was getting into my mom's car. I was on the phone with my dad, and we were talking about my session, my previous night, and we got on the subject of what I had eaten because my medication annihilates my appetite and it is common for me to forget to eat because I won't be hungry, plus I had just mentioned that I couldn't sleep at all last night. I said that I had eaten yesterday once, I had nachos at the movies. I hadn't eaten since then, so I would eat something today relatively soon even though I was not hungry (he suggested I eat so my energy from lack of sleep doesn't run low).

            As I reassured him, my mom chimed in and said, "Oh you will be eating soon."

            She said it in a way that she says a lot of things—matter-of-fact. When it comes to my mom and rules around respect for others, property, items, and self, there's pretty much a zilch chance of wavering it.

            I guess what I’m trying to say is how grateful I am for something so profound to me. A lot of people I come across are extremely selfish and disrespectful towards their parents over the most trivial things without any reason behind their actions other than “just because”.

I came to the conclusion that because during the crucial years of childhood development, I was not raised within a loving environment or home, and truthfully my childhood was the complete opposite. Any form of love expressed now is entirely unexpected, and means so much more than it would had I grown up normally.

So while my friends may be complaining their parents harp on them when they’re out late at night, I’m thankful every time my dad calls me to ask me where I am and who I’m with.

Today when both of my parents cared about what I had eaten and when I had eaten last even though I’m seventeen. . . it really hit home because it was something specific that I had never gotten when I should have, when it mattered most.

Someone had to go this far.

            It’s hard to believe it has been ten years since ten years ago.

            How ridiculous does that sound?

It’s baffling to think of all that has changed in my life within a single decade. I haven’t even been alive for two, and already my life has lead into so many directions, only to weave in and out of traffic into another. Scarily, many different turns have been made without a final destination in mind.

Somehow I survived, but I’m not thanking anyone.

            For once, I don’t feel like reflecting. I don’t even feel it necessary to.

I believe I’ve learned something.

Constant reflection is just as counter-productive as never gazing into the past at all. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” [Friedrich Nietzsche]

I’ve recognized the necessity of facing my past to be able to whole-heartedly accept it, but now I have also had light shed on another truth: I cannot ever allow the past to consume me, even for a sole dangerous second.

Since I am mainly focusing on myself in history, I am easily mirrored into the present just by gazing, which is dangerous even with reason for peering at all.

I must tread lightly for now, until everything is over with. This mainly includes acceptance and writing my autobiography.

Tearing myself apart for the aforementioned to be completed feels relative to how the actual events affected me originally, sometimes worse because I am more knowledgeable than I was as a child. It’s simple for me to resent situations at a greater ease, but that doesn’t mean that I do.

I completed all my new years resolutions for 2009, but I think my best accomplishments of this past year have all been something greater than what I intended to do. In comparison to my successes, my listed resolutions seem silly in their mediocrity, as if written by a ten year old. I think it’s safe to say I’m too young to live this life.

This time next decade I’ll have a Ph. D, or close to it. That’s frightening in a way, because it promises with guarantee that so much will change from now until then, possibly even more dramatically than the time span of seven to seventeen. Part of me thinks I won’t be able to handle that, but then I know deep down that unless someone murders me within the next ten years, I’ll be unstoppable from there on out.

Hell, I am unstoppable now, I always have been. I’ve always just stopped myself for one reason or another. To elaborate, I have never lost anything, I gave things away. Even control, I gave willingly. I admit but I do not submit.

Walking away from 2009 means I have stepped outside of my defining decade.

Stay tuned for what I do with my definition.