What can I say?

Phony optimism, phony hope, trite inspirational quotes shared around online, which sound pretty and life changing, but change nothing.. They're like candy, they get people high on some half-witty little statement about life that's just a lie, giving them a plastic sense of hope. They get their fix, and then they're back next week for another, but nothing is different. It's like when people say how this or that musician changed their life. Saved them. "I wouldn't be alive right now".. and this they always say with slurring words, as they drink themselves into oblivion in their pointless mess of a life.

My mind recognizes patterns. All human minds do, we are incredible pattern-recognizing machines. So when it comes to salvation, to happiness, meaning, I can't help but observe the events unfolding in my life, and it's always - trying to analyze the data, what's happening.. is this something special? I'll do something new, something I haven't done before, or haven't gone as far in, or whatever, I'll see this or that situation, this or that success, failure, odd event, different event, and my mind is always analyzing it, like, "am I on the path to meaning?" "does this mean something special?" "Am I finally making real, meaningful, substantial progress, spiritually?" But of course, it's never anything. I am here wasting time with this elaborate mental structure that tricks me into wasting a life's worth of time.

The world is full of phony romances, I have not observed otherwise, not once. People are lying to themselves, out of desperation.
And isn't religion kind of the same? Romance and religion, they go hand in hand, on a deeper level. We are looking for completion, one way or another. I mean what is 'god'? For me, the meaning in it is the idea of a being which can love me and lead me and overall complete me, and finally make me not feel alone, for once truly not alone. And we as people tell ourselves constantly, you know, this new system, this new theology, religion, this new romance, we've finally figured it out, we've finally found completion. But we're lying to ourselves in desperation. We're phony whores and it cheapens us and it cheapens the value in existence. But maybe if you stay together long enough, maybe if you stick it out it will come true? But it won't. We're trying desperately to be in love, telling everything to ourselves to convince ourselves, when we do not truly honestly feel it.

And worldly justice: if you're really good and you really believe.. well, there are still no promises. Do not be fooled by the lies - the world does operate by cruel social hierarchies which are not only just unfair, but which punish the meek and loving most. That is not to say "oh we know that, just keep trying, it will eventually turn out", "you've just got to believe or.. or keep suffering forever, and then it will work."
Like, oh, I'm sorry, was I caring wrong? Was it not enough that I gave while you took?
No, it is corrupt to the bones and sometimes will destroy well more then just a small helping of justice. You will not get what you put in.

Don't entertain the lies they tell you in the stories they show you, about people getting what they deserve. You don't have to feel like a big bad negativity jerk for not buying it. (if) You're not the one who made the world this way.

Oh, and self improvement, here we go. College, career, working out, raising kids, the channeling of oneself into a task and watching of its results as a way of simulating the experience of the illusion of improvement, progress, in one's existence in this realm. To subtly make oneself feel they are progressing on the deeper meaningful level too.
And, watching the "progress" of humanity, the development of nations, technology, exploration, science, etc. It's the same thing.

And you'll find a huge amount of lies in all of the religions, and all of the drugs, and all of the life-changing lifestyles, self-help books, music lifestyles, etc. It's multiplicity, it's insanity, the human organism desperately looking for answers and branching out into every conceivable possibility, but finding nothing.

Someday you will die, and it is indeed possible it will be quite senseless. You will not gain a sense of completion or purpose to life simply by getting older, being old, living a long life, "full life".. You will be left with the same non-answers you have now, and wonder "what was the point of this?" as your candlelight is burning out.

"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing"
(Shakespeare)

"— (3:14. everything that god made, that will be forever.) "

People like to ridicule this, they say, "yeah we all know, tell us something new Ben"
Or they say, "Man you've got to change your attitude"
As if to imply my seeking hasn't been honest enough, selfless enough, intelligent enough, or otherwise. But when I look I observe that it's exactly those things that have precisely formed my attitude?

What is passed off as positivity I perceive less to be good, and more often to be an attack on the truth. You want me to forget all that I have learned. You want me to be weak and relinquish the answers I have honestly observed, in favor of drunken-ing myself towards some positive outlook, like maybe everything will be ok in situations in which it won't, like sedating myself for a time.. Mulling the positive lies over in my mind until I can't help but find myself back in this predicament, ultimately remaining lost. Forever. No! I won't accept it and I don't feel guilty for my negativity. Why should I even? I don't want to close my eyes on what I have learned, because I fear that if I do, an entire picture will never form and I'll never understand existence. That I'll just be stuck in a permanent cycle of lies and false progress, forever. Do you understand what it means to say you want the truth, you want answers, understanding, fulfillment, and won't tolerate waiting a second longer than you judge you have to? And maybe an entire picture will never form. Maybe it's not even possible, I have to be willing to accept that.

I find the optimism and show the world makes to be so ugly.. always on to some new thing, some trendy thing, but it's always just the same old nothing, and unbearably stale. It's just the damn phoniness that revolts me.

"Pineal Cones, Stars, Eternal Loneliness & Overwhelming Insignificance"

Why does every path seem to be a dead end to no answers? False hope? What is a conceivable purpose for this nature? I'd rather not trade in the latest one for another lie. I don't want to be old and still mulling over the same garbage. What kind of lives are these that we lead?

The Great (Inner) Struggle

When I was younger, I felt like our inner struggles were a metaphor for the struggles "out there", the big action packed ones we see on the screen. Like an inferior version of them, and don't really compare, and it's only a real struggle if it's physical and visual and superficial. It's only a real struggle if it's World War I, and that's important.

In my shift of valuing the internal more, I understand these big struggles we see on the screen only to reflect our inner turmoil. Indeed, most of us will never even get involved in some big awesome gunfight like we see on the screen, (and most of the time we do, we're just being posers and trying to imitate what we see on the screen), and yet we still have this obsession with creating those struggles on screen. These battles and big acts we see going on in the world are the inferior reflection of what we feel within. They are merely a symbol and expression of the struggle for meaning we feel within ourselves.

Let us not marginalize the internal just because it's not as tangible, "real". It shouldn't be belittled, as if petty, silly emo nonsense by comparison. It's a lot more real. It is our inner struggle which creates literal wars, through which we get a sense of escape from the inner discontent, not the other way around. Frustrations build up and build up until, inevitably, war erupts as an outlet, and it is through war that we get a sense of meaning and hope that we may escape our troubles.

The struggle of life, what basic human validation means, the ego games we play, loneliness and the meaning of love is far grander and more profound & meaningful then anything you could make a movie about or begin to fantasize about.

"Have a Nice Life"

What Makes You Like a Person?

People will like you, but will not understand what it is that makes them like you, what traits and qualities. What they might say to justify it is generally a poor understanding of themselves, and a superficial interpretation. They don't know what qualities makes a person truly valuable.

This opens up the way for people to really like a person while simultaneously speaking scathingly against the very values that person stands for most and is all about. Sometimes they will even do this in an attempt to impress that person, to make them think they are 'cool', only to disturb them.

Of course, there's plenty of (mostly?) faux-respect we have for each other, based on manipulations, instincts, intimidation. For example, the way people are impressed by aggressiveness, or will obsess over someone who ignores them, or drawn towards someone who can provide them with rub-off status or power. This is not true good respect about a person however.


As for why often times people with good qualities are disrespected anyways? I'm not really sure, but I suppose it's sort of the inverse of the above faux-respect. Like someone who you feel will tarnish your own status with their own 'loser' status, so you are compelled to ridicule them to gain power, and the value they have is not readily apparent or expressed enough to overcome such instincts.



Anways...
one way or another, we don't know what has value.

Why Nothing Changes

I think I got a grip on how the 'modern' human mind works,
spend half of all your time trying to be "sexy",
spend the other half of all your time complaining and acting confused as to why gender roles, problems, and polarity "still" exist. not to mention all the other problems in the world. And why nothing ever changes. It's what you wanted?

So we get this paradigm shoved down our throat where we're constantly being fed these conflicting messages. Like, "you can do this but just don't act these certain particular ways about it." And being told what we need to do to fix the problem, you know, like all the feminist "rules", but the goal is something that is literally impossible to attain. You do what they tell you, and you'll find you're doomed to never being able to get it right. Because people want to have their cake and eat it, too. You can't change the problem by rearranging the surface, and we choose this distraction of the surface to avoid the real problem. If you want to be a body instead of aspiring to be a mind, that's what you get. And in actuality I think it may go even farther than that; I'm not sure people even really want to change anything. They just want to manipulate ideological structures to gain ego, manage guilt and push blame around. I get the hugest sense of irony from people when they do this, and I think they subconsciously feel it too. Because that's what you do when you feel guilty, you put on a facade that seems opposite, to portray yourself as righteous.

Conformity, Social Pressures & Guilt

I mentioned before how guilt is often, perhaps even mostly just the fear of going against other people's opinions on right and wrong, rather than a sincere inward quest.

As I experientially follow this line of thinking, I find it interesting where my psychology moves to. It can be unnatural to hold onto at times if I stop thinking, I guess I tend to default back to a conformist interpretation of right and wrong. But if I maintain focus and awareness and look inside myself for what is right and wrong, I find something else.

I am aware that at times I have even been afraid to confront myself in how I really feel about something, this or that. When the group states its opinion about how right or wrong something is, I feel the overwhelming pressure to clam up on my inner self, to not even ask myself how I really feel and go into denial with myself. Like I feel like I'm just an unknowing creature, that wouldn't dare go against the tide of others. Like I wouldn't want to go against what the crowd is thinking, like I want to prove myself to the crowd that I'm not "one of those people", and this pressure pushes upon me is as if god himself was telling me I'm guilty and damned, and I'm desperately trying to escape accusation without so much as even considering to stop and ask myself how I really feel.

This kind of guilt, it's not even sincere guilt, I find. It's just conformity, the social pressures.

I guess you could say that we are feeble creatures, humans, and so for us other people hold authority, as we look for answers and right and wrong. But we should be the ones who hold authority. Not the arrogance of self-power, but consulting the self, and letting honesty, this inner sense be your guide, and your god, not other people (or ideologies, religions, political thought systems, etc.)


And yet it's still hard in many ways to fully face and confront the fact of just how different my conception is of how I really feel about everything, from what the world shows and tells me I should feel. How backward the world is, on both right and wrong. I think my personal and private world, my private self, in an aspect, gains it's sense of personalization and vulnerability from this concept itself. The fact that it differs so much, that what I really feel I am afraid to admit to, even to myself.
This difference between how the world says things are and how I really feel is profound and disturbingly disjointed. How to put.... I guess you could say kind of like a spiritual conspiracy theory.

And, on somewhat of a side thought, what are "conspiracy theories" anyways?  I think we as humans have attraction to them, on an emotional level. And I think that's because they represent something to us. This sense we have or wish to have that there is some grand design running beneath everything, hidden, and when we find it, it blows everything else out of the water. I think we have this attraction to the concept of conspiracy theories because it's a distant, removed metaphor for what we are sensing on a subconscious, spiritual level, towards our lives and existence in a much more general and deeper sense.

Not So Special Disorder

As they say, "everyone's got something". Everyone thinks they have a special 'disorder' or issue, and perceives this state as something more unique to them than it actually is.

What this really refects when you realize the ubiquity of this kind of mentality, is the fact that culture is so artificial and false. The nature of what we really experience and the way our minds actually operate is stigmatized to the point where we don't even dare to confront our selves.

So these vulnerabilities - the sense of significance we have for things, what hurts us, what upsets us, what we secretly have sensitivity towards - get intimidated first, and then repressed through that intimidation, and finally morphed and contorted into a complexity of other supposed shallow issues that we inevitably project the repressed anxiety onto.

And no one is in a position to fix the problem. The psychologists and therapists are just in league with the problem. They'd love for you to believe that your real problem is just addiction to cigarettes or "low self esteem" or "bipolar disorder".  The politicians are just in the game too, of people who channel all their anxiety into politics. Even the gurus and authors and preachers usually just end up in the business of selling shallow advice and capitalizing on social trends.

All anyone can do is confront their own self directly and learn the truth, to escape from being a false, manipulated pawn of culture. To be true. These problems are the inevitable result of power hungry culture; a lack of love; a lack of responsibility by all people to give validation. The misuse, collection and bastardization of love for power. As soon as that is broken, and excused, the intimidation, manipulation, rationalization, deception, distraction, repression, and all the other problems begin, and cannot be stopped.

Morbid Fascination of Sexuality

It's funny how the psychology that drives sexuality (and everything that follows) turns everyone into everything they would otherwise  never want to be. It's this morbid fascination for humanity. It will turn you into a blithering dog of a creature while telling you that you are gaining value. And everything is rendered backwards according to it's own ideology.. it is very curious how it distorts the perception of everything so radically. It is exactly the reason for so much wrong and soullessness in the world, yet through the mentality of sexual egotism people are led to believe it offers salvation for everything.

A small example, let's take art or music.. it is exactly the sort of soulful inspiration quite apart from sexuality that gives it any and all meaning. These themes of things like having one's own personal world, uniqueness, individuality, personal value, the sense of belonging, or not belonging, or belonging to an outside group, alienation, sadness, anger, passion, depth of love, depth of self-understanding, sentiment, nostalgia, and so on, and it is exactly things like power hungry social dynamics that ultimately end up destroying the meaning that music had or could have. This concept of "selling out".. it's a wonder people don't realize how it's basically a parable for the mentality behind sexuality. And yet again and again, endlessly, we see stupid artists thinking that if they add more sexuality/related ego nature to their act, desperately, that they're making it "cooler". And time and again, before you know it, they're all washed up. They end up just seeking acceptance and power, and don't even realize that not only are they losing the meaning, (this underlying value, themes that drew people to them in the first place and gave them a sense of connection) but that this is the exact reason they're losing meaning. They end up seeking acceptance and power, social hierarchy, inclusion of themselves at the exclusion of others, superficiality, and nobody respects that, not on the deepest level, not really. It seems "cool", I guess, to them, at the time they're doing it. And yet, no matter what they claim, nor how "extreme" they go about it, manipulating the surface to portray themselves as special, they're just being weak, yielding to pressure, conforming, losing integrity, and they have nothing real to say, because they have lost sight of the foundation of value, in favor of power and ego.