What I Desire
Arguments go through stages, when they're held under the guise of politeness, and because everyone is so invested in who they are, what they stand for, what they're worth, etc. they rarely end cleanly, with one side saying, "Aha! I see your point." No, no - instead, they ramble on until they're so muddled that only a draw seems conceivable, or both sides go into oblivious denial of the relevance of the other and start repeating dogma until all observers leave. In some cases, however, people instead opt for a soft landing and deftly transfer the conversation from argument to explanation.
I'm fondest of these. It's not hard to debate someone else into a stupor, or to sabotage every point they make, or even to make them look foolish to the people standing nearby. These things do not take skill as much as persistence and aggression, although some skill is part of it as well. For this reason, anyone with half a brain and determination can clobber someone else with repeated argument corresponding to deconstruction of the other's point of view, and end up with a "win," although most people are too punch-drunk on their own self-importance to ever admit it. But these battles keep both sides polarized; it's better to early in the debate imply a draw, and then explain the advantages of what you have to say. You might not convince anyone but you will at least make their doubt less uniform and foreboding.
When I'm talking to people about things of weight, namely what I believe and the direction in which I hope politics goes, these draws turn to my advantage because instead of talking about what we have now, I can talk about the future. Most people of any quality of intellect whatsoever recognize, no matter how far they hide it behind unconscious desires and thoughts, that there is an order to the cosmos and that we, stumbling human beings, have a piece of its consciousness but know little of the whole. This is the idea that knowledge can be discovered, and even if they cannot articulate it, most of them want - on some level - to know anything that might lead to more of what we call "truth."
After the beers are put down, and the night has grown old, and everyone is tired enough to be honest but too tired to continue a fractious discussion, what usually comes out of the experience is a questioning alone these lines. What is true - and its grandfather question, What is real? We usually get to these when someone, pretending to be exasperated by whatever I've said (usually, "We've got seven billion people - that means 6.9 billion extras"), finally gets down to the question: so what is it that you desire? Translation: what kind of order would you like to see on earth?
I think most people would be initially disappointed by the answer.
I'd like to see peace, so that wars can mean something again. These political-economic wars not only grind us down by slaughtering our professional troops, but they bore us all into tears. We're off slaughtering the latest pretend-Hitler, hoping to fight some evil for as long as it is that we can keep our attention focused on it. These are useless. I'd like to split us up into smaller entities, and have more skillful wars, involving accuracy and hand-to-hand combat, preferrably with swords. That's a ballsy kind of war, a real war, an interesting war, the kind that makes honest heroes. Bombing people from thirty thousand feet or spraying bushes with machine-gun fire doesn't really make for heroism as much as it does the same kind of effective functionalism that keeps a car running, or defragments a hard drive.
I'd like to see an end to our pillage and pollution of our environment. The only way to do this is to radically cut back on our numbers, and cut back on our "freedom" to carry home whatever stack of plastic junk we can afford, only to pitch it into the landfill days later. No more disposable pens, lighters, fast food cups. If you think about it, all of the packaging in our society ends up in the landfill, with the products that come shocking cheap because they're garbage following not far behind. By the same token, but not as a result solely of this reason, I'd junk all the excess paperwork we do that bores us into a reactionary stupor.
I'd like to see freedom from ethnic strife, and my experience teaches me that the only way to do this is to separate ethnic groups. You cannot pretend to be what you are not, and you feel best among those who have for generations been like you. People who have been abused or otherwise have low self-esteem might want to mix racially, but I've yet to find a well-adjusted race-mixer. They're just broken people, like all the girls who end up sluts because daddy raped them repeatedly while saying "good night," or all the boys wearing sailor hats who don't realize that no amount of anal sex can fill a wound in the soul. Our ethnic strife, and our desire to salve it via the passive means of multiculturalism, comes about because we've discarded our cultural-ethnic identities as our societies have collapsed. I'd fix this.
I'd like to see a return to the small community. We move wherever the jobs take us, and thus our friendships, too, are disposable (and please do not be so naive as to tell me that Internet "friendships" are lasting - they're based on being unable to see the less-than-ideal parts of people, where true friendship means accepting them warts and all). When one is inexperienced in the world, a small community becomes boring; when one has experienced enough of the world, it's all boring, and the stability and possibilities offered by a small community are refreshing. They're not disposable. You get to actually know people, and to be important for what you do for a community, not for how much money you give to some ineffective charity.
I'd burn all the singles bars and dating services. These are great places for more hookups that like a television show, pass a few hours comfortably and then end in loneliness as you find out all the illusions were hollow. If you need a whole lot of sex, there's probably something wrong with you, usually a self-confidence issue. It's better to have a place where you can see women in day to day life and realize their strengths and weaknesses honestly, then pick the one that matches you the best. When there is no illusion, love and relationships are founded on reality, where it seems to me modern relationships are like used car sales: cover up the defects long enough for the bill to be signed, and then pray to some nonexistent god to patch up the rest.
I would like to end all of the pointless jobs and mindless labor that people do for the sake of being employed and feeling like full citizens. This is stupid; most jobs could be done in a fifth the time required, and so we could send a lot of people home. Further, I'd like jobs to mean something, instead of being paper-shuffling or elaborate schemes to con fellow citizens into certain actions. Healthy people don't mind working hard if what is achieved is meaningful, but they become depressed deep within when their jobs are bureaucratic creations that have little to do with reality. Even the most boring jobs are tolerable when you know what you contribute to a community, and feel both needed and thankful for others in that role.
I'd destroy the culture of offense, and through it, the concept that people are sacred just because they live. Life is cheap and there's a lot of it. The only things that deserve respect are those that earn it. Unearned respect makes people feel unconsciously greasy, because they're given a cheap gift that does not recognize their own nascent abilities, and does not encourage them to grow. When respect is expensive and hard-won, it means something. Otherwise, it's just words on a form or in the mouth of a television announcer, and means nothing. I would bring back adversity, and the idea of heroism, or doing a task because it needs to be done - regardless of consequences or personal cost.
I'd murder the loudmouths, complainers, whiners, priests and other passive people. They sabotage everything that one does by claiming injury anytime someone else takes action; it's like bin Laden versus America, in that America contentedly bombs Arab lands and then claims injury when the Arabs fight back, using that perceived injury to spur its people on to war. Or the "Holocaust," or slavery reparations, or people who were offended by any number of opinions, symbols, or ideas. Life should be tough and often offensive; at least it encourages people to fight, and not just whine. Even more, however, the culture of offense allows all good ideas to be shot down because someone is offended, and since we're all equal, we cannot point out that that person is a whining idiot and therefore will be offended by any sensible idea and thus should always be ignored.
I would march fat people across America and produce skinny people or corpses, no matter which; in either case, they would have conquered their fatness and thus in part fulfilled a destiny.
All the people who live on constant medication, or otherwise in the arms of doctors, I'd slaughter, along with their offspring. You can fix a car any number of times, but the only way you make one that's fun to drive is by designing a better one, like a VW beetle, so that its owner is free from constant worry, fear, and pain. People who live in that state always make terrible decisions and because they lack self-confidence and health, will sabotage any decision that benefits the healthy.
I would change every form of human organization from a state of mind that everyone must be included to a mindset that rewards excellence, and if some get left out, too bad. We're not all good at everything. Maturity is accepting that, not bending over backwards to make even the retarded kid feel like a star football player, because cheap praise is easy to see through and you make even the retarded kid feel like you're condescending to him. Condescension, guilt, pity, shame, etc. are mental diseases. I would not tolerate them.
There are some obvious targets as well, like televisions and insane religious cults, but these would fall as a result of the reforms I've already mentioned. Even Christianity would lose its nutcase sensibility if put into the context of a healthy society (and selective executions of the most emotionally esurient priests). I suppose it's fair to mention that when I cut the population down, I'd leave the best among us alone, and focus on sterilizing and murdering the people with the least intelligence, health and moral character. Why breed the worst? Kill them, so the next generation are better. When you figure that one out, you will have defeated half of the death-fear that clutches dying civilizations like our own.
Beyond what is mentioned here already, the specifics are hazy, and they don't need to be clear at this time. What is clear from what I've offered is a paradigm shift: from individualistic, economic-competitive individualism to a sense of an organic cosmic whole. In this view, we are not demigods who created themselves and whose word is law, but atoms in the service of a larger order. Over time, we'd come to see this order as holy, again, and we'd cease our pointless infighting and excessive self-indulgence in favor of working for the greatness of our world and our people. For the first time in many years, mental health would come to the population as whole. That's what I desire. And to that end, I write.
July 5, 2005
http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/desire/
Arguments go through stages, when they're held under the guise of politeness, and because everyone is so invested in who they are, what they stand for, what they're worth, etc. they rarely end cleanly, with one side saying, "Aha! I see your point." No, no - instead, they ramble on until they're so muddled that only a draw seems conceivable, or both sides go into oblivious denial of the relevance of the other and start repeating dogma until all observers leave. In some cases, however, people instead opt for a soft landing and deftly transfer the conversation from argument to explanation.
I'm fondest of these. It's not hard to debate someone else into a stupor, or to sabotage every point they make, or even to make them look foolish to the people standing nearby. These things do not take skill as much as persistence and aggression, although some skill is part of it as well. For this reason, anyone with half a brain and determination can clobber someone else with repeated argument corresponding to deconstruction of the other's point of view, and end up with a "win," although most people are too punch-drunk on their own self-importance to ever admit it. But these battles keep both sides polarized; it's better to early in the debate imply a draw, and then explain the advantages of what you have to say. You might not convince anyone but you will at least make their doubt less uniform and foreboding.
When I'm talking to people about things of weight, namely what I believe and the direction in which I hope politics goes, these draws turn to my advantage because instead of talking about what we have now, I can talk about the future. Most people of any quality of intellect whatsoever recognize, no matter how far they hide it behind unconscious desires and thoughts, that there is an order to the cosmos and that we, stumbling human beings, have a piece of its consciousness but know little of the whole. This is the idea that knowledge can be discovered, and even if they cannot articulate it, most of them want - on some level - to know anything that might lead to more of what we call "truth."
After the beers are put down, and the night has grown old, and everyone is tired enough to be honest but too tired to continue a fractious discussion, what usually comes out of the experience is a questioning alone these lines. What is true - and its grandfather question, What is real? We usually get to these when someone, pretending to be exasperated by whatever I've said (usually, "We've got seven billion people - that means 6.9 billion extras"), finally gets down to the question: so what is it that you desire? Translation: what kind of order would you like to see on earth?
I think most people would be initially disappointed by the answer.
I'd like to see peace, so that wars can mean something again. These political-economic wars not only grind us down by slaughtering our professional troops, but they bore us all into tears. We're off slaughtering the latest pretend-Hitler, hoping to fight some evil for as long as it is that we can keep our attention focused on it. These are useless. I'd like to split us up into smaller entities, and have more skillful wars, involving accuracy and hand-to-hand combat, preferrably with swords. That's a ballsy kind of war, a real war, an interesting war, the kind that makes honest heroes. Bombing people from thirty thousand feet or spraying bushes with machine-gun fire doesn't really make for heroism as much as it does the same kind of effective functionalism that keeps a car running, or defragments a hard drive.
I'd like to see an end to our pillage and pollution of our environment. The only way to do this is to radically cut back on our numbers, and cut back on our "freedom" to carry home whatever stack of plastic junk we can afford, only to pitch it into the landfill days later. No more disposable pens, lighters, fast food cups. If you think about it, all of the packaging in our society ends up in the landfill, with the products that come shocking cheap because they're garbage following not far behind. By the same token, but not as a result solely of this reason, I'd junk all the excess paperwork we do that bores us into a reactionary stupor.
I'd like to see freedom from ethnic strife, and my experience teaches me that the only way to do this is to separate ethnic groups. You cannot pretend to be what you are not, and you feel best among those who have for generations been like you. People who have been abused or otherwise have low self-esteem might want to mix racially, but I've yet to find a well-adjusted race-mixer. They're just broken people, like all the girls who end up sluts because daddy raped them repeatedly while saying "good night," or all the boys wearing sailor hats who don't realize that no amount of anal sex can fill a wound in the soul. Our ethnic strife, and our desire to salve it via the passive means of multiculturalism, comes about because we've discarded our cultural-ethnic identities as our societies have collapsed. I'd fix this.
I'd like to see a return to the small community. We move wherever the jobs take us, and thus our friendships, too, are disposable (and please do not be so naive as to tell me that Internet "friendships" are lasting - they're based on being unable to see the less-than-ideal parts of people, where true friendship means accepting them warts and all). When one is inexperienced in the world, a small community becomes boring; when one has experienced enough of the world, it's all boring, and the stability and possibilities offered by a small community are refreshing. They're not disposable. You get to actually know people, and to be important for what you do for a community, not for how much money you give to some ineffective charity.
I'd burn all the singles bars and dating services. These are great places for more hookups that like a television show, pass a few hours comfortably and then end in loneliness as you find out all the illusions were hollow. If you need a whole lot of sex, there's probably something wrong with you, usually a self-confidence issue. It's better to have a place where you can see women in day to day life and realize their strengths and weaknesses honestly, then pick the one that matches you the best. When there is no illusion, love and relationships are founded on reality, where it seems to me modern relationships are like used car sales: cover up the defects long enough for the bill to be signed, and then pray to some nonexistent god to patch up the rest.
I would like to end all of the pointless jobs and mindless labor that people do for the sake of being employed and feeling like full citizens. This is stupid; most jobs could be done in a fifth the time required, and so we could send a lot of people home. Further, I'd like jobs to mean something, instead of being paper-shuffling or elaborate schemes to con fellow citizens into certain actions. Healthy people don't mind working hard if what is achieved is meaningful, but they become depressed deep within when their jobs are bureaucratic creations that have little to do with reality. Even the most boring jobs are tolerable when you know what you contribute to a community, and feel both needed and thankful for others in that role.
I'd destroy the culture of offense, and through it, the concept that people are sacred just because they live. Life is cheap and there's a lot of it. The only things that deserve respect are those that earn it. Unearned respect makes people feel unconsciously greasy, because they're given a cheap gift that does not recognize their own nascent abilities, and does not encourage them to grow. When respect is expensive and hard-won, it means something. Otherwise, it's just words on a form or in the mouth of a television announcer, and means nothing. I would bring back adversity, and the idea of heroism, or doing a task because it needs to be done - regardless of consequences or personal cost.
I'd murder the loudmouths, complainers, whiners, priests and other passive people. They sabotage everything that one does by claiming injury anytime someone else takes action; it's like bin Laden versus America, in that America contentedly bombs Arab lands and then claims injury when the Arabs fight back, using that perceived injury to spur its people on to war. Or the "Holocaust," or slavery reparations, or people who were offended by any number of opinions, symbols, or ideas. Life should be tough and often offensive; at least it encourages people to fight, and not just whine. Even more, however, the culture of offense allows all good ideas to be shot down because someone is offended, and since we're all equal, we cannot point out that that person is a whining idiot and therefore will be offended by any sensible idea and thus should always be ignored.
I would march fat people across America and produce skinny people or corpses, no matter which; in either case, they would have conquered their fatness and thus in part fulfilled a destiny.
All the people who live on constant medication, or otherwise in the arms of doctors, I'd slaughter, along with their offspring. You can fix a car any number of times, but the only way you make one that's fun to drive is by designing a better one, like a VW beetle, so that its owner is free from constant worry, fear, and pain. People who live in that state always make terrible decisions and because they lack self-confidence and health, will sabotage any decision that benefits the healthy.
I would change every form of human organization from a state of mind that everyone must be included to a mindset that rewards excellence, and if some get left out, too bad. We're not all good at everything. Maturity is accepting that, not bending over backwards to make even the retarded kid feel like a star football player, because cheap praise is easy to see through and you make even the retarded kid feel like you're condescending to him. Condescension, guilt, pity, shame, etc. are mental diseases. I would not tolerate them.
There are some obvious targets as well, like televisions and insane religious cults, but these would fall as a result of the reforms I've already mentioned. Even Christianity would lose its nutcase sensibility if put into the context of a healthy society (and selective executions of the most emotionally esurient priests). I suppose it's fair to mention that when I cut the population down, I'd leave the best among us alone, and focus on sterilizing and murdering the people with the least intelligence, health and moral character. Why breed the worst? Kill them, so the next generation are better. When you figure that one out, you will have defeated half of the death-fear that clutches dying civilizations like our own.
Beyond what is mentioned here already, the specifics are hazy, and they don't need to be clear at this time. What is clear from what I've offered is a paradigm shift: from individualistic, economic-competitive individualism to a sense of an organic cosmic whole. In this view, we are not demigods who created themselves and whose word is law, but atoms in the service of a larger order. Over time, we'd come to see this order as holy, again, and we'd cease our pointless infighting and excessive self-indulgence in favor of working for the greatness of our world and our people. For the first time in many years, mental health would come to the population as whole. That's what I desire. And to that end, I write.
July 5, 2005
http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/desire/
