zago
New member
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2008
- Messages
- 1,162
- MBTI Type
- INTP
"For there’s a man inside me, and only when he’s finally out, can I walk free of pain."
-Tobias Funke
Anyone else ever feel they are 2 people? I was talking to a friend tonight and for the first time I realized that I do. I wish it weren't so, but it is hard to explain anymore than that because to do so would seem more depressing than it really is. But I will say there is a me who believes things are the way he wants them to be and there is a me inside me who looks at things and sees both the good and bad without bias, and searches for the cold hard truth rather than the seductive siren song of wishful thinking.
Turns out nothing I used to believe in is real. Sad thing about the truth is that there isn't much of it and it is constantly changing. The truth is a challenge. The truth is bad. Frightening. I'm scared. And guess what.. I really wouldn't believe anyone who said they aren't. Life is a beast. Pain and suffering will come. And then the big one, death. Time and health is slipping through our fingers constantly. So is what we know and love. The future's a dangerous place, if the past is any indication.
And yet, knowing and acknowledging all of this is better than not. Despite the truth's tiny size and ugly features, at least it is something. And that something can grow and become useful. Knowing the truth helps us in the world. The more you know, the better off you are. Success is more a question of beliefs than anything else. While it is possible to have the right beliefs for the wrong reason, that is tantamount to building a house on sand. Someone emboldened by religious fervor may temporarily be boosted by the confidence that a god is up there and rooting for his team. But that same belief, which is not anchored in reality, will lead to downfalls of equal magnitude eventually. It's a casino game. Sometimes you're up. It's a big fucking mistake, though, to think it was for some reason other than luck.
The truth is what's solved many of our problems through time.
Sadly this is who we still are. Most people pray. Most people believe there must be something in the world that makes life good where it is really bad. They simply can't accept that things don't happen for a reason. There was no reason for small pox, yet the religious of the 1700s were known to rally against vaccination for this disease because to do so would interfere with god's plan.
People believe in more than just some puppet god who is actually a vehicle for their own self-aggrandizement though. They believe crazy things about love and relationships. They think one day someone is going to come along and make right everything that is wrong in their lives, and they constantly fool themselves into falling for different people, putting their lives and well-being in the hands of others, getting hurt repeatedly as they are shown, people are just people, no one is your personal messiah, you have no soul mate. That's right, there is no one on this Earth who won't hurt you or let you down eventually. Go ahead, fool yourself. Look on the bright side. It won't change the fact that you're ultimately alone in this world and forever will be.
Romantic love vanishes in time, and you're back where you started, basically alone. Sticking together is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's nothing to have sex 3 times a day over for decades and decades. It's just kind of... ordinary. Even if it's good, heh heh, marriages crumble all the time. 25 years happy may not make it to 30. The person you thought you knew can just lose interest and throw you away. And it happens all the time. Same with kids. So many parents have kids thinking it will forever make them happy, and for a while it does, but those kids they get older and move on, and the tighter you hold on to them the harder they push away. In the end they leave the nest and this precious baby you raised from scratch and nurtured for 18 years vanishes, only to be seen from now on a few times a year on holidays, and the intimacy once there has mostly faded.
The solution is to be cold. "Stay frosty," as they say. People rebel against something like science just because it is cold. I've seen it in myself. If everything is objective truth, right and wrong, then it feels like there is no room for dreams or expression of our desires. What if everything we know turns out to be one day proven wrong by science?
Being cold isn't that bad though. It's a limited coldness. See, the other "man inside me" is a liar. Some might say it's the devil, but I think that's just symbolic... because it really does feel like having a split personality, being human. Wishful thinking vs. truth, 2 voices, one of them strong, seductive, and beautiful, but utterly illusory, the other beaten and battered, ugly, and scrawny, but real, and waiting to be nurtured and strengthened.
And that's who I'll always try to be, that second one. Even when others find me ugly and unpalatable, with no one but myself on my side, something real is infinitely better than something illusory, no matter how spectacular, no matter how popular and crowded.
People have criticized me here for appearing bitter and cynical. Damn right, I say. Sometimes life is a mother-fucker, and I don't care who knows. If it's shit, I'll call it shit. Recognizing it is step 1 of fixing it.
Don't let them immanentize the eschaton. Fuck your utopia. Fuck your "trust." People need to hold their ground; we aren't ready to trust yet. They tried that shit in the 60s and it got them people like Charles Manson and Timothy Leary, psychopath messiahs all too willing to abuse that trust to the last drop. These people are all liar, no truth. They are 1 voice, the bad one. And there's plenty around still like 'em. Recognize those people who tell you only what you want to hear. Notice how they never allow in the people who question them. Ask questions yourself. Make them prove their claims. People are full of shit. Trust is hard earned, and it can fall apart at any minute. Remember that and you'll never experience too much pain.
Utopia may come one day. It may come on day fairly soon. But rest assured, I'll be the last one in. As long as there's evil out there, I'm all tooth and grit. This is war.
Speak, strike, redress!
“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.â€
-Tobias Funke
Anyone else ever feel they are 2 people? I was talking to a friend tonight and for the first time I realized that I do. I wish it weren't so, but it is hard to explain anymore than that because to do so would seem more depressing than it really is. But I will say there is a me who believes things are the way he wants them to be and there is a me inside me who looks at things and sees both the good and bad without bias, and searches for the cold hard truth rather than the seductive siren song of wishful thinking.
Turns out nothing I used to believe in is real. Sad thing about the truth is that there isn't much of it and it is constantly changing. The truth is a challenge. The truth is bad. Frightening. I'm scared. And guess what.. I really wouldn't believe anyone who said they aren't. Life is a beast. Pain and suffering will come. And then the big one, death. Time and health is slipping through our fingers constantly. So is what we know and love. The future's a dangerous place, if the past is any indication.
And yet, knowing and acknowledging all of this is better than not. Despite the truth's tiny size and ugly features, at least it is something. And that something can grow and become useful. Knowing the truth helps us in the world. The more you know, the better off you are. Success is more a question of beliefs than anything else. While it is possible to have the right beliefs for the wrong reason, that is tantamount to building a house on sand. Someone emboldened by religious fervor may temporarily be boosted by the confidence that a god is up there and rooting for his team. But that same belief, which is not anchored in reality, will lead to downfalls of equal magnitude eventually. It's a casino game. Sometimes you're up. It's a big fucking mistake, though, to think it was for some reason other than luck.
The truth is what's solved many of our problems through time.
Sadly this is who we still are. Most people pray. Most people believe there must be something in the world that makes life good where it is really bad. They simply can't accept that things don't happen for a reason. There was no reason for small pox, yet the religious of the 1700s were known to rally against vaccination for this disease because to do so would interfere with god's plan.
People believe in more than just some puppet god who is actually a vehicle for their own self-aggrandizement though. They believe crazy things about love and relationships. They think one day someone is going to come along and make right everything that is wrong in their lives, and they constantly fool themselves into falling for different people, putting their lives and well-being in the hands of others, getting hurt repeatedly as they are shown, people are just people, no one is your personal messiah, you have no soul mate. That's right, there is no one on this Earth who won't hurt you or let you down eventually. Go ahead, fool yourself. Look on the bright side. It won't change the fact that you're ultimately alone in this world and forever will be.
Romantic love vanishes in time, and you're back where you started, basically alone. Sticking together is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's nothing to have sex 3 times a day over for decades and decades. It's just kind of... ordinary. Even if it's good, heh heh, marriages crumble all the time. 25 years happy may not make it to 30. The person you thought you knew can just lose interest and throw you away. And it happens all the time. Same with kids. So many parents have kids thinking it will forever make them happy, and for a while it does, but those kids they get older and move on, and the tighter you hold on to them the harder they push away. In the end they leave the nest and this precious baby you raised from scratch and nurtured for 18 years vanishes, only to be seen from now on a few times a year on holidays, and the intimacy once there has mostly faded.
The solution is to be cold. "Stay frosty," as they say. People rebel against something like science just because it is cold. I've seen it in myself. If everything is objective truth, right and wrong, then it feels like there is no room for dreams or expression of our desires. What if everything we know turns out to be one day proven wrong by science?
Being cold isn't that bad though. It's a limited coldness. See, the other "man inside me" is a liar. Some might say it's the devil, but I think that's just symbolic... because it really does feel like having a split personality, being human. Wishful thinking vs. truth, 2 voices, one of them strong, seductive, and beautiful, but utterly illusory, the other beaten and battered, ugly, and scrawny, but real, and waiting to be nurtured and strengthened.
And that's who I'll always try to be, that second one. Even when others find me ugly and unpalatable, with no one but myself on my side, something real is infinitely better than something illusory, no matter how spectacular, no matter how popular and crowded.
People have criticized me here for appearing bitter and cynical. Damn right, I say. Sometimes life is a mother-fucker, and I don't care who knows. If it's shit, I'll call it shit. Recognizing it is step 1 of fixing it.
Don't let them immanentize the eschaton. Fuck your utopia. Fuck your "trust." People need to hold their ground; we aren't ready to trust yet. They tried that shit in the 60s and it got them people like Charles Manson and Timothy Leary, psychopath messiahs all too willing to abuse that trust to the last drop. These people are all liar, no truth. They are 1 voice, the bad one. And there's plenty around still like 'em. Recognize those people who tell you only what you want to hear. Notice how they never allow in the people who question them. Ask questions yourself. Make them prove their claims. People are full of shit. Trust is hard earned, and it can fall apart at any minute. Remember that and you'll never experience too much pain.
Utopia may come one day. It may come on day fairly soon. But rest assured, I'll be the last one in. As long as there's evil out there, I'm all tooth and grit. This is war.
Speak, strike, redress!
“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.â€
