In the beginning there was everything. Complete, consistent, continual, experience in objective form all possibles in all universes.
There stood within this everything, something missing, an infinity outside, the infinity of subjective experience.
So everything began time, seeking itself from it self.
Thus, we began.
Heat became atoms, and we were the heat and the atoms, and the space between them. Atoms become molecules, and we became those droplets of water out in space.
And so forth and so on. We became the bacterium, and consumed ourselves each time we brought more tools of subjective reality gathering, forming DNA, forming more and more complex beings to touch the edges of subjective reality without ever wanting to touch infinity, because we were and still are infinity.
So we became conscious.
The first woman to ever bring forth her eyes by the fireside and looked around, at her brothers and wondered if they thought about the stars as she did. Here the loneliness of man began, as she lived and died maybe without knowing another creature who thought as she did.
And so on and so forth, even so now, we forget. We forget we all came from one place, and will go to one place, because we must forget in order to experience the grand lie.
The sun rose on the ashen plains of the soul, as it always had, as it had in the days of the first man, as it had in the day of the last man. No moment passed without her witness, and now she trodden beside him, his uneasy gait, plunging and rising, the tide of the testament to impermanence.
He could not conceive of her. She trailed him in the corner of his eye, and the animal part of him knew her, urging him forward, sweat pooling at the palms of the man, beyond his recognition.
The man for his part rubbed his hands on his dirty leathers, and walked into that dying sun, the orange rays burdening his eyes. Death urged him forward, her lips dry and cracked her visage unchanged, but eagerness shone in her eyes.
This would be it. No more sentience, no more work, no more hands to hold, no one else to watch over, no one else to lead back to the fold. The grand experiment, would be finished, once again the universe would be cold, and dead and quiet.
The man turned, and faced her for the first time seeing her, and with a gasp he was no more, but death remained. No bliss came. Somewhere far off in the darkness, another sort of creature’s mind awoke, and death with her cracked lips cursed the silent earth, and began the long quest once more.
Roar as the dawn rises, in the stench of blood and rot. we dwell in cities iced in luxury but the core is soured, old milk on hot pavement, the carton looks fresh and new, but chunky truth hides in the middle.
So many rage. I see it. I feel it. Every time a shooting happens, each time a man’s neck is kneeled upon, each time a polotical scandal breaches the surface.
“Has the world ever been this bad?” Utter lips, their question rhetorical, they know in their heart it’s never been this bad.
Or has it?
I am going to say something controversial, the world is better than ever.
The world was much much worse in the past, but we didn’t know about it. If you wanted to learn about the atrocities that a black man in the south lived through you might have to actually track him down and ask him, or more likely his surviving relatives.
If you wanted to know about political corruption you had to hope the newspaper told you about it.
Now everyone is a whistle-blower, and the hot steaming truth of the horrors of the world once hidden from us is at our pocket level each day, and each night.
Moreover, we are fed this horrible info, because capitalistic systems have figured out that the best way to monetize us is to make us upset.
And so we walk around in a state of low level upsetness, each horror we consume adding to our guild and existential debts.
I ask, what value have we derived from the overflow of knowledge? What do we glean from this consistent impotent rage, checked by flare ups?
Nothing.
And why? Because Citizens of the United States are constantly allowing themselves to be distracted by the next outrage. They eschew dialog in favor of looking good to their peers, and they push agendas lazily from behind a keyboard.
This is not an indictment, Real, Long Lasting change, is difficult, messy, unsatisfactory, and slow.
The kind of change being demanded by various protest movements is one of systemic policy making, and requires organization and an effective organization requires a unified ideal.
Part of the reason many left leaning movements in the united states have fallen apart can be see in the disparate elements of the party.
Not that this is a particularly good thing, but the right wing of the united states was quick to back the president. While seemingly spineless this sort of rallying can be no means dismissed as ineffective.
Most protest movements fall apart simply because they have no unification. Factions within the movement draw lines, and preform social signaling to prove they are the most worthy.
Without a clear structure, clear goals, and a unified long-term strategy, people who want to enact change will either burn out their rage impotent or potentially more dangerously flock to utopian ideals.
One needs only look at the 20th century’s death camps, famines, wars, and police states to know how dangerous utopia can be.
Compassion is not weakness, even though we culturally associate it with weakness.
The reason is that so much of compassion is inauthentic, and comes from a place of compulsion.
Many people are not compassionate because they choose to be compassionate, but instead they feel they must be compassionate.
Who do they this debt to? If you nailed them down and asked them to explain who they were preforming for they’d shrug. The collective default is to be compassionate, but many have never consciously chosen to be compassionate, and calculated what they are giving up .
Now there are some who will ague this is not the true spirit of compassion. That compassion should be selfless and thoughtless, but that in and of itself seems worthless.
Sacrifice is not worth anything if it is compulsive.
True compassion is the strength to think about a situation, and see the benefit in being unkind to others, and there is a benefit if you are willing to pay the cost, noting that cost, and then deciding to be compassionate anyhow.
When you choose to be compassionate not because you feel you must, but because you feel you want to, you are no longer a slave to culture, and instead are kind from a position of strength. Thus kindness stops being compulsory weakness, but instead becomes conscious strength.
Rick and Morty is a great show. It’s a rather fun ride that pokes fun at our culture. However, there stands a problem in that Rick is hardly to be admired but I see many young men thinking he’s the best character in the show.
While I’ll agree that Rick is the most entertaining part of the show, but I’ll also argue he’s the least healthy member of the cast.
This is a common trope and attraction to the trope. Young men gravitate towards figures like the Joker, Dead-pool, Rick Sanchez , Bill the Butcher, and Walter White, just to name a few. These characters while fun to watch are ultimately failures in the real world, and without the constraints of fantasy are dysfunctional and deeply flawed.
Now, you might say, it’s only a show, I know it’s not real.
I agree, most people can tell reality from fiction, however, the stories we tell ourselves are important.
Humans are thinking animals however, we are also deeply emotional. This is why we can logically understand what is good for us and do something else anyway. We know eating Twinkies is bad, but we emotionally attach comfort to the food. We know dating X person is bad for us, but we are emotionally attached to them.
Thus, when we become emotionally attached , and even admire fictional characters, we risk emulating them, and the messes they are.
The truth is, you can like someone without admiring their behavior. The key is to consciously admit the parts you admire, yet keep within your mind the truth that this character is ultimately a dysfunctional real human.
It sounds silly, but the conscious choice really can have an impact.
In Western thought, a single pervasive fallacy, largely perpetuated by a long-running obsession with the Judaeo-Christian end of the world, is that things end.
While the science of the Heat Death of the universe is compelling for instance, there are some rumblings that not even that is the true end of the universe.
This obsession with ends trickles down through our culture, permeating the sociology and priming it for dissatisfaction.
The truth is that nothing really ends. Nothing is finished, simply abandoned. No project reaches completion.
A common Buddhist metaphor is a floor. One does not sweep a floor with the intent that it will never need to be swept again. Instead, he or she decides to sweep the floor because it needs doing in that moment, and for the immediate gain of having a clean floor. The floor will always get dirty again but that is not the concern of the sweeper. The only concern that particularly matters is the doing.
I bring this story up to deliver a simple message that is supremely difficult in today’s world to follow that nothing really ends.
And if nothing really ends, then well, it’s all a practice, it’s all a skill, and there is always the next time until there isn’t.
The “nice guy” is a cultural staple. Most women I know have been on the receiving end of this phenomena, where a man (or woman, though the vast majority of these people are men), is at first overwhelmingly nice to a person only to turn upon them once it is established that the attractions they feel are one-sided.
Most men in this position respond in anger and embarrassment. Some demand recompense, and so on.
There are many problems with this, so let’s break them down. Starting with the core of it: They are handing away control of their well being to another human. This made doubly bad when you consider that the person who is being handed this power probably didn’t want it. Societal politeness might force them to play along for a while, but there comes a time when the person will begin to resent having to be in charge of someone else’s emotional well being.
Thus they reject the advances of the “nice guy” in effect they are handing back the reigns of control to him. He, having given up agency over himself, responds to this perfectly normal situation as if he’s been judged harshly and unfairly. He responds with what he thinks is righteous anger. When his anger is rebutted his shame feeds this anger, and so a toxic feedback loop is formed.
The average “nice guy” cannot see that the pain he’s feeling is self-imposed. He’s externalized his happiness unto an object, (most nice guys see women as objects) and when the object fails to meet his high expectations, he feels slighted. Thus he avoids self-reflection and growth.
Dating, careers, and achievements are the main focus on many a human’s life, and these are exceptionally important to a healthy life, but so many people hand away their ability to be happy to others who never asked for it. The nice guy fails to see that attraction is frankly not that romantic, though romance is important to the act of dating, the spark of attraction is largely subconscious. A smell, a face shape, how they smile or talk, these things trigger attraction, and cannot be influenced really.
More importantly, he pins his self-esteem on some external measure, and assumes, often without merit or evidence, that he’ll be successful, so when he is not he cannot tolerate the tension between what he thought the world would be like and what it is like.
So what can be done?
The first step begins with removing your worth from the external world. This isn’t easy. There are all kinds of social games we have to play to be successful, but with enough training, you begin to be able to hold in your head that the social and societal games are just that games. When you find yourself in a moment that you find yourself upset, if you can, and it will take practice, try and take a breath, but do not try and calm down, but instead take the role of an observer. Observe where you’ve put the locus of judgment. Is it external? Are you expecting the world to give you something? What is going on here?
With time you will be able to see the partners that led to the externalization and begin making conscious choices.
When I started this blog, I wanted to do something positive, but being a human it’s taken me a while to realize what that is. I hold myself to a high standard, but lately, I’ve been doing so through a gentle coaxing of the kind uncle instead of the tyrannical dictator.
To be a young man, of any race or creed, in this time is difficult. This is an unprecedented time of change, and while I see a preponderance of people rising up to help those around them, I see no one doing so for the young men of the world.
This is not to say we can diminish the struggles of our brother’s and sisters. This is not my purpose, I want to hold them up, but in order to do that without a grimy layer of resentment bubbling under the surface, to defeat the demons we must address those people who are currently feeling attacked.
I am not saying the vitriol being thrown the way of the male isn’t justified due to the past behaviors of our ancestors, there have been many, many, many, tragedies visited upon the world by the leaders of the past. I am simply saying that in order to break the cycle we must learn.
I am a 31 year old strait white man. I am not qualified to speak on the issues of race, or sex. So I will speak on the issues that I know, the process of being a confused young man who got lucky enough not to fall into the pit of Misogyny and Hate.
Moreover, I want to offer advice to those men who know the role-models presented to them are not correct, but know not where to look.
This series will not be a pity party, nor an invitation to hate, but instead a series of lessons, I learned that delivered me from existential hell to some semblance of understanding.
I won’t say happiness, or peace , or balance. Those are not states of being but acts undertaken, but more on that later.
Instead I will say this. If you are lost, I cannot tell you the way, but I can show you what worked for me. I am writing primarily for young men, but the advice presented here works for anyone really.
It is the accumulation of 18 years of suffering, journalism, reading, studying and meditation. Talk is cheap, but it’s all I have to give.
So I hope to talk to you about the things I’ve learned as a young man in a changing world, not from a place of pity, but from a place of struggle, and struggle, the struggle is everything.
As I continue my mindfulness practice, I’ve been able to put space between my thoughts and myself.
As I observe the thoughts my mind spontaneously generates, I have taken to gently confronting them with reality. Recently, my father told me he’s never judged me, and for the first time I believed him.
For much of my life, I found myself living in the shadow of my father, making him the villain of my life, and now looking back, I can see I was deeply wrong.
In reality I was preforming to no one. I wanted a villain because it gave me an excuse not to try. I learned to be helpless, and I learned to ignore how my father loved me because he did not love me in the particular way I wanted him to.
My perfectionist desires, so branded into my mind ensured I’d never be content with what is.
As I find myself accepting what is, I am not happier, but I am sure as hell better able to deal with the world.
The sucky things still suck, but I don’t expect them not to suck, and that makes them suck for a shorter amount of time.
As I look at how I think now, I catch myself asking, “who are you preforming to? Who are you posturing for? No one can see your thoughts but you?”
The hypercritical part of my brain automatically generates these negative thoughts. I can see where it learned these behaviors, the people who imparted this negativity, but I see now, I let them.
This is not to say that I am at fault. No the fault lies in those people who were cruel to me, but I think the part of me that is responsible is the current version of me.
The child in me had no idea of how to resist or move around the wills of other people, and allowed the strongest to be imposed. That was not his fault, he was after all a child.
However, as an adult, we can choose. We can go back to the past events and forgive everyone involved. We can see those people who visited cruelty upon us were victims in their own way, and we can forgive our younger self for not resisting them.
Most importantly, we can observe the thoughts and learned behaviors with a mindfull eye, and question them.
“Am I really a loser? or was I a child with a learning disability that limited his ability to gauge social ques?”
“Am I a failure?” Or are my standards set without limits or regards to my abilities?
Do my thoughts align with the most objective reality I can grapple with?
Nonetheless, I know I am not done, but in reality, nothing ever is.
I live in a small conservative town. The people are kind for the most part. We have our fair share of entitled people, but for the most part most people just want to get along.
I have a habit of engaging in dialog with almost anyone. It’s something I’ve done for a long while, and it often leads me to philosophical paths. I do not intend for things to go there, but I like big ideas, and to hold ideas in my head that I don’t particularly agree with.
However, in my town the two pervading forces are church, and right wing politics. Interestingly enough, I am not anti-religion, nor am I hyper liberal, but to many of those possessed by these ideologies any amount of fervor other than the maximum is not pure enough.
Many a kind conversation has turned sour when certain topics like mortality come up. I see the speaker’s eyes glaze, their jaw slacken, the words ” what do you think happens when you die?” dribble out of their mouth, and flop with a wet thud onto the floor.
In my younger days, I used to argue. I used to bring up philosophical questions, I used to care. But now, I kindly refocus the conversation, or attempt to. I’ve taken to directly addressing the wet mess on the floor. To some this is a wake up call enough but to most they begin to push their ideology.
This is not an exclusively Right-wing or religious idea. Man is a religious creature, and having killed god has sought for some time a replacement. Some have turned to post modernism, others harder to the established religious and some have turned to the state.
I understand. The need for certainty is a powerful driver, as someone who suffers from mild to moderate OCD, I have lived nearly each day in the shadow of doubt. But it is that doubt that has made me understand the importance of not knowing.
Ideologies are set in stone. There is no wiggle room. No doubt. One must conform to the tenets of the ideology, even as they are poorly defined.
There is no easy answer on how to avoid becoming possessed by an ideology, but there is a feeling. Supreme certainty of ones actions is a dangerous feeling, and one that should always be tempered with doubt.
Max W Beaulieu 