December 29, 2020

I stepped into the shower thinking that something is missing, that something isn't right in my life, that I am supposed to be doing something more important—saving the world from destruction, working on the alchemist's opus magnum, or whatever other dream. But instead I am putzing about the apartment, waiting for my menial job to start. 

Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story came to mind, and it took me a bit to figure out exactly why. From a writer's perspective, Buzz is actually quite clever. Buzz comes into this world with (flase) a priori knowledge, thinking that he is a Space Ranger equipped with deadly weapons and military training. But he's really just a child's toy, which he eventually learns to truly appreciate. He overcomes his inborn fantasies/complexes and fruitfully embraces reality. 

I wonder how many times I have arrived at this same conclusion—that I must stay in the present, awake, attentive, and with care, all in spite of the feeling that this is worthless and that I belong somewhere else. If I would like to go somewhere better, I must make my way from here, this spot right here where I am standing; this is the end and the beginning, the end and the means. 

"Each day is equal to the rest," said the weeping philosopher.

It appears that the process of realizing the value of my everyday-mundane-life is like the sun, rising, then setting again. I'll be here again, with a new metaphor or story in hand.

...

Last night, I couldn't sleep, so I was sharpening our kitchen knives, thinking about the following: 

For years now, I have felt a part of me, an internal part of me somewhere deep, struggling with the distinction between being and experiencing. It's as if a deep part of myself didn't understand how to differentiate between these until just recently. (I have the intuition that this is related to a process of maturation, a concretizing of identity.) These two words are deceptively simple and, at times, almost interchangeable. But I will be differentiating them here.

Being and experiencing are related to each other, quite intimately. 

Being is what a man is. 
Experiencing is what a man feels he is.

I'll tell you of two:
Humble is the first,
Internally exalted,
his station is low.
The other is mighty,
tho may not feel it so.

..

A ghost speaks: Many great things can be achieved with little awareness.

I do not know what he means.

...

The world at large is uninterested in me as I am. Yet, I crave its attention, a tiny seedling in me wants to be adored like a celebrity. 

A ghost speaks: respect is more mindful than adoration. 

I do not know what he means. 

December 17, 2020

Yesterday, I was hiding from the rain, standing under an airplane, probably one of UPS's MD-11's or 757's. I waved hi to a coworker, and—over the noise of an idling airplane (or whatever the technical word for it is when an airplane is hooked up to generators on the runway and makes a lot of noise, but the turbofans aren't running to avoid sucking in FOD or union employees)—I said, "Melodie, right?"

She nodded yes with big starry eyes that were framed by good-looking, yet obviously fake, eyelashes. We stood relatively close to each other for a while without really looking at eachother or talking. I realized that (and how) I enjoyed her mere presence, something I wouldn't have noticed, oh say, a year or two ago. I also noticed that Phil, a 40 year old truck driver who wants to become a pilot and also my favorite coworker, noticed me waving hi to Melodie; he nodded his head, to himself with a kind of, "huh, okay then," as if to acknowledge that a part of my personality is flirtation. —And then May, who has been exceptionally friendly to me, walked past the three of us. She looked angry, jealous even.

I stood under that jet for ten minutes and stared out into the air ramp for ten minutes, processing what had just happened, thinking about how I would be here, writing this.

Granted, it is entirely possible that I am projecting all of the drama I have described here. Even if that is the case, this is still the drama that I am (perhaps only semi-consciously) living. This is the game that I am playing whether I choose to acknowledge it or not. —Not that I want to play this particular game. We all play social games. A Jungian analyst would say that we're all living various myths and that it is in our best interest to understand the myths we're living because sometimes those myths are not in our best interest, which is what I'm trying to do here.

Standing under the jet, I realized a game that I play—or perhaps a strategy, or a modus operandi. It's a bit devious. When I go into a new place, I turn on my charm and I lightly flirt. This flirtation isn't explicitly sexual. It is possible to flirt with people's various interests. In this non-sexual sense, flirtation is non-committal socialization; or perhaps that is what charm is. Anyway, I "flirt", promising more social-attention than I care to give. This is attractive to some people. However, I merely continue to flirt; that's all they get—shallow, friendly greetings and small talk. I am not really able to move beyond this stage and really get to know the person because that would ruin the charm, and they would see that I cannot live up to the expectations set by my charm. 

The end result of excessive charm ends in one of two extreme cases: (1) enthrallment or (2) disenchantment/disappointment.

If someone is enthralled, they worship someone in the way that movie stars are beloved by their fans. The result of this is a cruel power dynamic, but it may also be fairly inconsequential.  Disenchantment may also work in my favor; the person may realize that they cannot have me, and I relish their misery because it proves my superiority (false superiority that is). Whereas when I elicit disappointment, it hurts my pride and vanity.

On a bigger scale, I think I am driven to this "charming/flirtatious behavior" by my need to feel special. I enjoy feeling like a celebrity when I walk into work. I don't want to be merely greeted by people; I want their adoration. The worst part of this is that I think many people have recognized this behavior in me. I don't imagine that they always had the words for it, much less a reason to call me out on it, since confronting me wouldn't do them any good. 

I would do better to earn respect, not adoration. I suspect that is a very important distinction for me to make when I try to gather people's attention, especially in the work place.

....

I've been reading The Listening Society at work during my downtime between planes, oftentimes huddled over my phone in an attempt to keep the screen dry from rain. There is one main argument in this book which I find simple, yet profound: the reason for much of the suffering in this world is that many people have failed to (psychologically) develop themselves across a sufficient number of domains. The author then also describes the process of development in a way that I agree with; moreover, this process unfolds in the individual and within a group/culture/society (scalefree). This parallels "my" ideas on sophistication as a virtue and our human tendency to a particular type of universality. 

Reading this book has been uncomfortable in the way that reading Nietzsche was uncomfortable. But, at least, it is more hopeful.

December 14, 2020: Family Garden

A lot has happened in the past two weeks. Perhaps the most important thing is that I started working, and I also drove down to Redmond, Oregon to take the entrance exam for the IBEW. I'll hear back in 4-6 weeks, hopefully sooner. 

It's 9am. I have work in the early noon. I have a pot of coffee brewing. 

I have a story from my high school days. It's about one of those moments in time where a lot of information is suddenly revealed in a flash of light.

"Thunderbolt Steers All Things," said the weeping philosopher. 

As a teenager, I attended a Bible study every friday evening with my family. The Bible study was lead by Shawn Sather. He was an interesting guy who deserves to be written about in a separate entry. Half the time my parents would host the Bible study, and the Sather's would host the other half. 

Sometime during my sophomore or junior year, when I went to the Sather's house for Bible study, I saw a picture of the Doak's hanging on their fridge. The Doak's were a family close to the Sathers who lived in Alaska. They were a beautiful Christian family. The father of the family was a retired army sergeant major (or first sergeant, who knows). And, what I believe was their oldest daughter, who was nearly my age, was also exceptionally beautiful. —Tall, pale white, dark hair, blue eyes (probably), and looked nothing like any of the (all but exclusively) Mexican girls I went to school with. For better or worse, I can't remember her face or the clothes that she was wearing, other than the fact that it was a sweater. —I fell in love with her picture. And I do mean love. 

I never met her. I met her father, John Doak. I met her brother, Tom. But I never met her. Almost every time I went to the Sather's house, I would look at that picture on their fridge. I would stare too long. I thought I was being sneaky, but now I'm sure I wasn't.

Falling in love with a picture is a metaphor that adequately describes how capable I was of loving someone. The Andy that went to that Bible study was only capable of loving the mere image of a person. I had more feelings for that picture than the girl I lost my virginity to. —Is that tragic or merely pathetic? (Now, after reflection, it is tragic; back then it was pathetic.)

But when I woke up this morning, I wasn't thinking about the picture I fell in love with. (—Jessica, perhaps? I would rather forget her name.) I woke up thinking of John.

The night of one particular Bible study, I knew the Doak's were visiting, so I was trying to be on my best behavior. I walked into the Sather's living room. John was there, sitting, speaking with somewhen. He noticed me when I stepped in.

He looked me up and down and said, "Oh, you're a punk." 

His tone made it obvious that I did not have his respect or approval. Apparently, that comment lodged itself really deep since I'm writing about it now, twelve years later.

I was wearing bootcut Bullhead Jeans from PacSun that were torn at my heels from being stepped on by my converse, which were dirty and written on with pen. I was probably wearing a too-tight Volcom shirt or a tattoo-inspired graphic-T from Anchor Blue. I didn't feel cool or trendy, (and I wasn't). I only remember feeling an urge to dress in that particular style. I was beholden to values I didn't understand.

I didn't consider myself a punk. I had a specific idea of what it meant to be punk. Punks were anarchists, and while I appreciated the aesthetics and rebellious energy of anarchy, I had every intention of joining the military after I graduated high school. I thought I was a good teenager, a Christian. I spent my Fridays at Bible Studies—not with friends or girls (not yet anyway).  I figured John didn't understand me—not the real me, at least. So, his comment rolled of my shoulder, but it left an ugly taste in my mouth.

But he was right. His judgement was—as far as he was considered—very correct. He had no business respecting me. He could see that I was not like him.  John had his niche; he was a well-established American, a Christian, the father of a large family, and a retired soldier. He was well-adapted. And it was in his interest to protect his family from people like me. The World at Large was calling me. I was not a good christian. I was already beginning to lead a double life that would, only a few years later, cleave in two, leaving me on the side of atheism.

John did not understand me, nor did he care to try; but I do suppose that I could have eventually earned his respect. (On the contrary, Shawn thought he understood me, and he idealized me.)  John saw that I wasn't a good Christian; I certainly did not look like one. He could tell that I was trouble. He knew that I was not like him. He could see that I would not do well in his community.  I was an outsider. All of which was true. Despite my ability to keep a cool face and have reasonable conversations, I was immature—emotionally stunted. If he would have let me into his life I would have been trouble.  And he made his feelings instantly clear with his first words to me. 

Well, good riddance, John. Thank you for sparing me your virtues and vices. For now I know how tall the walls are around your family's garden and how vast is the world outside of it. And I know that you can hardly even bear to look beyond those walls, for there isn't a gate. 

...

The past weeks I have looked back at my days in college. I've thought about a few of my relationships. Back then I wouldn't allow myself to say, "I love you." I always wanted to say "love" and really mean it. I didn't want to cheapen the word. Instead I withheld the word when I should have said it. I left love unacknowledged. And because of that I lived in a poorer world. Sorry. I won't name you here. But I have in my heart. 

November 24, 2020

I'm sitting at my desk, which means Caitlin is in bed working. We'll switch later, and I'll be sitting in bed. I ate a sugar free yoghurt this morning. It was fine, but the taste of the artificial sweetener is still lingering half-an-hour later. Lastly, I'm appropriately caffeinated, which is a nice change.

I started work yesterday. I spent the entire day doing HR mandated training—safety videos, how to efficiently load shipping containers, tips to prevent heat exhaustion, etc. I will be doing the same thing the entire week.

To be frank, I am disappointed. I joined the military, got a BA, moved to Seattle, and this is what I get? I get paid a bit more than minimum wage to do a job that anyone with a functioning body and reliable transportation can do?

I was earning nearly twice as much last year. Granted, I was miserable. I left that life because I was miserable. I needed to leave. I hoped for a bright future. And what was the future is now the present. And the present isn't bright. It feels pathetic.

I think I know what I have been doing wrong. It's an existential thing. I have Irvin D. Yalom's book Staring at the Sun to thank for this insight. I have lived my life in the expectation that it would resemble an ever-growing upwards spiral of increasing potential and opportunities. That is where I found my sense of safety. That is how I escaped my own personal fear of death. 

I thought I was brave because I joined the army. I thought I had a grip on my fear of death because I was able to read The Death of Ivan Ilyich and still be mostly-unbothered by thinking about slowly wasting away on my deathbed. I thought I was facing my mortality every time I rode a motorcycle.

But those are not the ways that I fear death. 

My safety bubble—what Jung would call the womb-tomb—is my hope in my merely-latent potential. 

The tragic thing about (my) latent potential is how much greatness and beauty it promises and how little substance it seems to generate when I actually try to access it. I've accused others of getting high on their dreams; now I see that I am doing the same thing.

I've said this all before in different words. This time it is a little bit more accurate. This time it is a little bit more real. This time it is a little more incarnate. 

...

Better to have true despair than false hope. 

...

Moving boxes for UPS is only temporary. It is humble. Many people look down on it; I know this because I look down on it. I know I shouldn't; and this would be less painful if I didn't. But I do, and I'm working on understanding the meaning and value this type of work can provide. 

I fucking hate the thought of working only to make someone else more wealthy. I just don't want to be—or feel—used.

Well, it's not like I have any other choice right now. I hate this. But at least I know I hate this. 

Hate is okay. I just shouldn't grow resentful. Hate may become fuel. But resentment is always poison. 

I will try to learn as much as I can. I will try to make this a valuable experience.

...

A ghost speaks: Every moment is a microcosm.

...

A dubious koan inspired by Nietzsche comes to mind:

How do you do it so that you can do it forever?

...

My writing here is not achieving anything. 

But my writing is doing something: I am transforming my thoughts.

November 22, 2020

It's early in the morning. I woke up at 5:00am from a mild nightmare. I read an internet comment where someone threatened to kill me, telling me that I would be choking on my own blood. I didn't wake up scared; I just woke up with no hope of going back to sleep. Then the following sentence immediately came to mind: 

“Our culture has formed a deep epistemic-schism that makes it appear is if there were two realities.”

Then I thought of mitosis. So I looked up a PBS CrashCourse video on the subject. The image that I had in mind was of the telophase of mitosis where a single cell forms two quasi-poles (centrosomes) that pull the cell into two parts. 

What is interesting about this metaphor is that DNA is like a zipper that splits in two, which fits into my intuition that despite the fact that both sides appear to be fundamentally different are actually mere inversions of the other side. Granted, I don't fully trust this intuition, but that is where my head is at.

...

I created a Twitter. 

I asked James about Q Anon because it seemed like Q related stuff was getting much more traction recently. Oh, am I late to the party. He pointed me to two interviews of Sarah Hightower. She's an Aum Shinrikyo expert and looks at Q conspiracy through the lens of cult-studies. I created my Twitter account so that I could follow her. 

I am afraid she might be too influenced by studying Aum. Or maybe I don't understand her finer points well enough. She seems to think that there is a massive cult forming in the US which is based around the Q Conspiracy. 

I won't call Q a cult because the problem is that Q does not have definitive leadership. However, there are certain cult-like qualities. But the cult-like qualities are not merely cult-like; they are quasi-religious and mythological in nature. I think we're dealing with something more broad than a cult. 

I would go as far as to say that this is more like the emergence of a culture. 

I think Q-Conspiracies are the folklore and mythology of this emerging culture, and they are (somehow) compatible with American Christian religious values. Q-Conspiracies are transmitting and communicating values—not facts. Values are transformed slowly over time; they are not reasoned with through logic. This is the world of dreams.

I'm not sure if this is the sign a culture that is in the process of emerging or if it is in its death throes. 

...

My ideal leftist movement? Pragmatic, patriotic but not bellicose, the kind of left that is pro-union, the kind that is distrusting of large corporations but not anti-business.

...

I didn't realize until recently that one of my closest friends in the army has become heavily influenced by Q. He used their language but never name dropped Q. He was convinced Trump was a genius. In 2016-2017 he tried to comfort me by saying to trust the plan.

One of my first exes, who is very conservative, is also up the Q hole, sharing "proof" of massive pedophile rings. I didn't realize that there was a common thread between my army friend and my ex because they're such different people.

...

Photography is a matter of perspective.

It's interesting to apply this to profile photos and uploads in a generalized way.

If a person only takes selfies, they're liable to be a mirror-gazing narcissist.

If a person only has photos taken of them by other people, especially by a photographer, they're liable to rely to heavily on the perceptions and perspectives of others. 

If a person has a diversity of pictures, that is a good sign.

If a person has over-curated photos, that is a bad sign; they're liable to hide the bad parts. (Which I am guilty of.)

...

I have a hard time framing things. —I think it's why I can't finish any stories.— When I go through my old sketchbooks, I draw in fragments. I never complete one picture. I would do best to draw a square and then fill it in with an entire picture even if it's simple bullshit. 

The Problem: disembodied, alienated, lacking context, ungrounded.

We frame things out of necessity.  

On psychedelics I learned that "all things are connected". But that truth took too much space in my head. I lost myself in that idea, that interconnectedness. 

The frame is Apollonian. The great unified mass is Dionysian. 

...

How would I go about drawing a Jungian Mandala? In a way it's a meta-frame (frame as referenced above).

Metaframe. Framing frames.

A mandala is a representation of a lens/paradigm more than it is of a frame. 

...

Went down a Random Rabbit Hole: Discovered the phrase Metamodernism. 

On the wikipedia page, there is a reference to a 2010 paper that refers to metamodernism as being derived from Plato's metaxy (middleness/moderation) rather than meta as "aboutness" or "abstraction." 

This is important. 

From wiki:

For the metamodern generation, according to Vermeulen, "grand narratives are as necessary as they are problematic, hope is not simply something to distrust, love not necessarily something to be ridiculed."

Vermeulen asserts that "metamodernism is not so much a philosophy—which implies a closed ontology—as it is an attempt at a vernacular, or…a sort of open source document, that might contextualise and explain what is going on around us, in political economy as much as in the arts."[11] The return of a Romantic sensibility has been posited as a key characteristic of metamodernism, observed by Vermeulen and van den Akker in the architecture of Herzog & de Meuron, 

...

My brain and/or heart has decided that it wants to listen to Billie Eilish. I don't want to want this. But I do, so I will, in this case at least.

...

The rabbit hole deepens: https://metamoderna.org/what-is-a-metameme/ 

Hanzi Freinacht seems to be saying that the metameme is the meme (idea/ideology) that unifies other memes (according to a particular process). It might be the caffeine talking, but holy fucking shit, this guy is interesting.

...

From https://metamoderna.org/what-is-a-metameme/ 

...memes are developmentally determined, and that goes for all memes from the pure technical to the more ideological. That means that not any kind of meme can emerge, or take root, at a given time and place, but that the possible memes that can emerge and prosper are limited by which other memes currently exist. More specifically, the kinds of memes that may emerge in a given context depend on the overall developmental level of that cultural context’s other memes.

This reminds me of CG Jung's quote where he says he treats the contents of the unconscious like animals in the garden, they come up and visit him, but they have a life of their own. 

A metameme is thus a non-randomly ordered collection of memes in which the memes that don’t fit in with the other memes simple cannot emerge or co-exist without breaking the very logic of what holds the metameme together. Each metameme builds on its predecessor, but it is by definition not merely a further development of it. Not only is a metameme the overall context in which all other memes are ordered, non-randomly, but also the basis of which they are rejected if they don’t fit the overall logic and structure. So what differentiates one metameme from another is that they are always in direct opposition to one another. Just like modernity was in direct opposition to the ancien régime that came before, the postmodern metameme is in direct opposition to modernity. And with that opposition follows the threat of replacing its predecessor. Scary stuff. This dynamic explains much more of history than what it’s usually given credit to.

Hmm. This is like a more sophisticated version of the Hegelian/Marxist dialectic .

Further reading his work he seems to overlap the two words ideology and meta-meme. 

Meta-ideology, there's a word I could use.

Today we are living in a particular multi-centered time where the gravitational shredding of society is particular noticeable. Somehow the old conflict between left and right (in economic terms) has diminished in importance compared to the rifts felt by the conflict between the pre-modern, modern and postmodern metamemes—something that has been amplified by today’s globalized and multicultural society.

This type of cleaving is somewhat loosely related to what I described earlier as mitosis. 

Modern > Post Modern > Metamodernism (as an attempt at unifying the Modern with the Post Modern)

Hanzi seems to believe that there is a clear path of development—that Postmodernism is more sophisticated than Modernism and that Metamodernism is more sophisticated than Postmodernism. This is in agreement with Kuhn's theory of paradigms, which Hanzi directly mentions.

...

Oscillation between ideas/things is apparently something important to metamodernism. I relate to this very deeply.

...

An old blogpost of mine bears a significant resemblance to an article linked to an article linked to an article (3 deg. separation) written about metamodernism.  Not sure what that means, but it is interesting.

...

I need to look up the following two metamodern authors: Quentin Meillassoux and Karen Barad.

November 17, 2020

It occurred to me that I am mad at reality. 

Or rather, I am mad at my real—material—circumstances.

I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's true.

...

Strange question. Maybe an obvious question.—

Do I have power over myself?

If I can exercise power over myself, then I am not powerless. 

That makes me feel better. But it sounds stoic. I don't like stoicism. Stoicism is problematic in that it can be life-denying and life-suppressing—self-imprisonment.

It makes more sense to say that myself is my source of power. I have the power to change things. So what if my accomplishments are ephemeral and relatively trivial?

Lastly, I have the power to transform my attitude. I don't have to remain beholden to despair—looking up at titans. I can take pride in my own excellences. I can take pride in myself.

November 16, 2020

 Rant:

I am in a bad mood because of the new COVID restrictions, namely the fact that the gym is closing again tomorrow for at least one month.

I understand the reason why. I am fully, rationally aware of why it's happening.

But, right now, the rational reason—the facts—do not make me feel any better. I don't care how fucking reasonable these restrictions are or how many lives are going to be saved, I am pissed. That's human nature. That's my nature.

I don't think the restrictions are objectively ethical. However, they were put into place by people who were voted into power, so they're, as far as I'm concerned, an extension of the collective public will; I'll respect that. But it's hard to respect Inslee's smug face. He's not suffering. He, among others, is gaining power through this. I can feel it in my churning gut.