Went deep into the ol’ mental illness today.
I had no idea I even wanted to talk about this until the time came to make my video of the day and this stuff just kinda floated to the surface.
I am a very complicated dude.
Anyhow, here it is :
And now for the part where I use this blog to say the stuff I wish I’d said in the vid.
Like what my actual revelation was : it was that I may not want anything. At least, nothing I can actually get.
I mean, when I think about what I really want, it’s to get into a limo, be driven to a five star hotel, check into my penthouse suite, take a long luxurious nap on the no doubt incredibly comfortable and cozy bed, and then order me some room service and a small army of male sex workers to help me sow a hell of a lot of wild oats.
So ya know, I do have dreams.
But that’s easy. Dreams are easy when you know they’re impossible to achieve. With no possible pressure to actually do anything about them, you can dream all you like.
But when the question becomes what do you want to do, right now, then the executive function becomes involved and the infinite hallway of infinite doors shows up and crashes smack dab into my lack of desires or instincts to help me pick the door that has what I want behind it and so I am once more left stranded at the crossroads of life.
And somewhere up the sky
Waiting for me to learn to fly
Is a portal leading out of this lie
And I will get there, by and by
Lyrics to a song, perhaps? Perhaps.
But not today.
I suppose you can’t really learn to fly incrementally, just like you can’t jump across a chasm in stages. You either jump or you don’t.
And so it’s all still waiting for me to walk out of these chains that aren’t even real and stop living by the rules of my woefully incomplete logical understanding of the world and my place in it and its cause and effect, and just be happy for no reason at all.
That’s how it always should be. Happiness should be our default state. We should be happy unless we have a damn good reason not to be.
I think people from more Mediterranean cultures get this way better than we pale ghosts from the frozen North.
This requires faith, or something like it, though. There has to be a discontinuity in the logical chains of justification to allow for something to happen (like being happy) without there needing to be a reason for it to happen.
Because those reasons ain’t coming. Not until I make myself happy enough to go out there and find them.
There has to be some sort of internal well of happiness to draw from. I am not sure where those come from. Early indoctrination into faith seems plausible. After all, God’s love is infinite and eternal and forgives all, so it fits the bill at least in theory.
Unfortunately people get faith all tied up with dogma and superstition.
But that’s a topic for another day.
There is also the concept of simply granting yourself permission to be happy, which is admirable in its simplicity but like a lot of simple solutions, doesn’t work.
We are talking about hacking your fundamental table of values, after all, as well as your personal sense of cause and effect, and that can’t be done by fiat. That would destabilize the whole structure of your psyche.
That’s why religion, mysticism, and magick is wrapped up in rituals and symbols and incantations. It’s to keep that kind of monkeying with your settings limited to very specific conditions in order to preserve mental stability.
So now you know.
More after the break.
I can be such a prick
I was just thinking about the debates I have had over free will in the past, and how much pleasure I derived from telling the people who don’t believe in free will that I thought they were dead wrong but they couldn’t get mad at me about it because according to them, I have no choice in the matter.
Mua ha ha. I get such a kick out of doing things like that. And I like that I enjoy that kind of thing so much. This is not, according to me, a character flaw.
But it’s not exactly nice, is it?
And I am, obviously, fine with that. Unlike some of my fellow lefties, I have no problem with people thinking I am mean or nasty or not at all nice if what they are basing it on is me acting on my beliefs to do what I think of as right.
Sometimes the right thing to do is not the nice thing to do. And I act on principle, not social approval, so I accept this as part of life.
And I have no problem with enjoying the downfall of those I dislike, assuming it is vaguely proportional and/or related to why I think they are scum.
Like, I don’t want to see Jordan Peterson run over by a bus or shot by an assassin, but if he suffered the logical consequence of a policy he himself espoused, I would enjoy his suffering very, very much.
So I am learning to accept that while I think of myself as a very sweet, warmhearted, empathic person who really truly cares about others, I am also a stone hearted prick perfect willing to grind someone’s face into their own hypocrisy like I am rubbing a dog’s nose in their own mess to teach them to behave.
To me, there’s no conflict. But I can see how to someone who is not me, it could seem very schizophrenic indeed.
What can I say, I am a glittering jewel with a million facets and it is impossible to take in all that I am with a single glance.
To some, I suppose, that might make me an alluring and captivating mystery.
Ick. I mean, whatever floats your boat, but I don’t want to be mysterious. I want to be known and understood.
That’s just… um… not gonna be easy.
Maybe I should start my own wiki… ooh, or train an AI assistant…
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.