There is a great illusion that we pursue. To be in control of events; to suppress the chaotic forces that swirl around us. The dream of constancy is a butterfly aloft above the chasm. To know that this is the case is no solace. The materiality of the self resists with equal force, and so our flesh remains intact, and our identity demands similar continuity. The threat of dissolution through death, or worse, through incapacity, stalks each of us. The persistent continuity of the flesh belies the fragility of its intentionality. Your musculature will retain its shape even while your will and hopes are distorted out of shape. Your lungs will keep breathing, and your heart will keep beating, even while the you that you believe you are is slowly, inexorably evaporating. This is entropy.

And how does one discover this evaporation? Through anxiousness and dread. The thoughtless fear of disappearance will numb you. That tingling of the fingertips, the shortness of breath: the body is not in distress. It will adjust. But the you that you think you are will be reduced in preference for the body. And you are nothing but, after all. The you that you think you are, if all else fails, will sleep.

There is the essential quality of familial relationships, i.e. between the suckling child and the nurturing mother. Beyond that the connections become strained and the entropic forces pull what is artificial and dispensable apart. Fathers are eliminable. What will naturally decay must be held together by force, and if local force proves insufficient then increase the size of the family. Church temples, burning inside with the fervor of the faithful, bind the sheaves together, burn the sheaves together and so keep the hoarfrost of cold death outside the Family of God. The wind eventually blows from within, blows the doors off of the church, and sweeps out the charred (m)embers of the host, onto the street, cold and quiet.

Political entities, parties that like termite colonies serve the queen to grow the party, grow the swarm, consume the soldiers/workers. This is held together by its own weight, but those flying buttresses will crack eventually. More disorder, colder, quieter.

The state, a reified, sado-masochistic fantasy, is mass hypnosis.

Culture is that awful pop tune stuck in your head.

Yes, the bits of us that matter are matter and they are spinning away from each other (faster than the speed of light?) Disturbing.

I’m browsing a slender book by Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech… The parrhesiastes tells the truth. Where are our parrhesiastes now? Who can contain the truth? Who can speak the truth, when we live in a googly world?

I am challenged by the notion of truth. What does it mean? Is it mere authenticity (surely this must be a necessary condition). But one can be earnest and earnestly wrong. Or authentically inane. Help me, Oh Tyche! to speak truthfully! To risk the truth! To care more for the truth than for my own skin.

I’ll just leave it at that. It sounds better with Mahler in the background.

What does it mean to suffer? We all know, and fear, physical pain. It’s the gold standard of suffering. We can’t help but cringe at the thought of being slowly tortured by a sadistic captor. The public spectacle of torture reminds us daily of the possibility and the imagination works its wonders on our mind.

We have all had physical pain of some sort. Some of us have suffered from chronic, lingering pain. It’s unpleasant. It’s fucking painful. And there are degrees of pain that we don’t want to contemplate. We are grateful that when your tooth abscesses you don’t have to drink a half a bottle of whiskey while a half-drunk “dentist” removes the offending source of the pain from your mouth with a grimy pair of pliers. We count ourselves fortunate that we don’t live in fear of that kind of physical pain. There are piles of palliative chemicals that will help us through the occasional physical trauma. For those that suffer intense, chronic pain the chemicals can only modify the intensity. Physical pain is a threat, but not the way it was even a century ago.

No one welcomes physical pain. We fear it at the most primeval level of our being. But it’s not a fear that keeps us up at night. It is not a fear, for most, that is the source of our dread of the day, if we have it. Physical pain is simple pain. It is pure and real. You can’t question it. In fact, it may be the most real phenomenon any of us will ever experience. How do you deny it? There is an immediacy, a reality of physical pain that transcends the fuzzy narcissism of everyday experience. There is clarity in physical suffering. The body is threatened. Everything is focused on that fact, a fact that is indisputable.

But what about the many other lesser types of suffering? Where do they fit in? Anxiety is not physical suffering. It shouldn’t even be in the same class as physical pain. But what causes real misery in this world? Is it physical pain or mental anguish.

Misery is a disease of the mind. Physical pain is not misery. It is just pure unadulterated suffering. The fear of suffering is misery. The fear of living is misery. Ennui is misery. Self loathing is misery. Politics is misery. Sickness of the mind is misery. Misery has no gradations. It is a negation of life. Living becomes a liability, a burden. Misery is the sickness of the human world. Obscured by whatever distraction money can buy, it persists.

It is for the relief of this misery that any political/social agenda ought to be bent.

It has come to my attention that the most pressing issue before us, as a species, is to preserve to the greatest possible extent possible the conditions within which we currently reside. All economic and political organs must in all places and at all times do their utmost (and by that I mean anything goes) to insure that the the current basic structure that under-girds modern civilization be reinforced, patched, jury-rigged, duct-taped, plastered, stuccoed etc…

There is not only a linguistic connection between Statist and statist. They are of the same nature. All institutions (the appellation entails what follows) are inclined to preserve sameness, continuity, rigidity, conformity ad nauseum.

I submit to you that we create these institutions for that purpose alone. With continuity we derive the hope of predictability. Sameness is saneness.

“Give me that old time religion, give me that old time religion, give me that old time religion, it’s good enough for me.” (You’re singing along right now, right?)

In my continuing quest to find a power greater than myself who can aid me in aleviating my severe akrasia I have had a recent insight into the spiritual domain that might work. Since the greatest obstacle to faith in such a being, in my view, is the problem of evil, I think I have found a way to avoid it altogether.

The trick is to limit the scope of activity of this higher being. If you make the thing omnipotent then it has to be responsible for everything and that gets you into trouble with little deformed babies and Nazi atrocities and all that kind of stuff. So in keeping with my severe solipsistic tendencies I simply limit the scope of this being’s activity to me.

Since I kind of like the expression Spirit of the Universe I have modified it to Spirit of My Universe or SOMU.

SOMU is concerned only with what happens to me. SOMU is not responsible for what is happening in Libya, nor is it his will that Kim Jong Il continues his tyrannical rule over the poor North Koreans. Nor did SOMU have anything to do with historical atrocities like Hitler or Stalin since these terrible events preceded my existence.

Now I do have some issues with how SOMU has been handling my life. In fact, I’m not sure that I’ve alleviated that problem of evil after all. But since SOMU is concerned only with his perfect plan for my life, then I have to have faith that whatever evil things have happened to me happened because that’s what SOMU wanted to happen. Maybe to teach me a lesson or something. Maybe SOMU punishes me sometimes when I get out of line. But it’s OK, because he is only doing it to help me and his raison d’etre is 100% me all day and all night.

But now that I know about SOMU, maybe we can start making some progress on some of my problems. Maybe SOMU can help me quit smoking. Or if SOMU doesn’t want me to quit smoking, maybe he can give me a couple hundred extra dollars every month and some health insurance in case I get lung cancer. He already helped me quit drinking. Now maybe if he could just make the anxiety go away during the eighteen or nineteen hours of the day that I am conscious. But whatever happens, it’s OK, because now I know that SOMU is on it!

What a relief.

My religion endorses rebellion. You must be rational, and accept the world as it is–be humble about it. Recognize your powerlessness and still be in rebellion. Say to yourself: “Yes, I resist the world in which I have been flung. I will resist it, and make it into something else”.

Your rebellion must be utterly internalized. Let it be drained of emotion. It is dispassionate. It is not angry or boastful, but persistent and patient.

Certain modes that appear to conflict can harmonize with each other. Humility and rebellion co-locate in the will. Either by itself is destructive. Humility without rebellion is directionless, morbid and self-effacing. Rebellion without humility is spiteful, malignant and irrational.

(Words of the Abonilox – submitted for consideration)

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